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Seems like that's the end of that then. Could it be because of the same pressure from Google applied to Raven regarding their Google SERPs feature?

Yes Tom, thanks that has helped.

I wonder whether a mixed strategy might be more effectiveby:

• Using ccTLD for competivie markets  subdomains

• Subdomains or Folders for non competitive markets that can be swayed by by DA

When a market starts to increas ein competitiveness then a shift to a ccTLD can be done for greater targetting.

Would this make sense from an SEO point of view?

Hi

I know this has been covered in a few questions but seen nothing recent that may take into account changes google may have applied.

We would like to target multiple english speaking counties with a new project and I'm a little unsure as to whether ccTLD, subdomain or subfolders are the best way to publish country specific information.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Hi,Since Penguin 2.0 we've taken a 20-25% knock but not recieved an unatural link message from Google. After sending a bunch of removal requests, I decided to submit a disavow file anyway two weeks ago and tried to make sure I rooted out some links that were built way back when our site started and link building best practice was a bit shadier.

Analysis of our backlink profile points to about 40-50% links coming from general directories, wondering if perhaps their weight has been adjusted and this is why the drop occured? Having said that we have some high quality links from government sources and highly trusted sites so not too spammy.

Can anyone shed some light or offer suggestions?

Thanx

Any news on a time frame?

Is there any chance you could email me your sitemap as produced by wordpress? info[at]pathfindermedia[dot]co[dot]uk I'll take a closer look at whats being excluded.

Another possibility could be your robots.txt file, is it blocking some directories?

Looks like the only downside is google trying to algorithmically determine a more suitable title, which isn't that bad as these are not really high priority ranking pages.

Thank for the help.

Hi Irina,

• Meta keywords are unlikely to cause a penaly and are simply ignored. So you can do them but it's probably a waste of time.

• news_keywords only works if you are an accepted news source in google news and it's likely that this will only effect news results. This tag was created to give journalist more freedom with their headlines so they don't have to keyword stuff the headline. It's meant to lead to a more natural looking article while still giving an option to give some keyword indication of the theme.

Hope that helps.

Mulith

Yeah I suppose. But what happens when this is on a large scale, would that have a punitive effect?

Yes I'm afraid they are useless when it comes to incorporating them into your SEO stategy.

Better to take the energy you would have expended tracking down do follow comment opportunities and spend it creating rich content like posts, guides, infographic(high quality only) and useful widgets.

Yes it's harder now than pre Panda but good in a way because the barrier for entry is that little bit higher and that gives you an advantage over new starters who want to cut corners and steal your customers.

Good luck, you're going to rock!

Yup better to use "-".

The + sign along with the & and % operands can be problematic for spiders and in some cases browsers too.

Might I suggest using screen size or user agent to trigger the option to the user something like:

"We've detected that you may be using a mobile device. Would you like to go to our mobile friendly site instead?"

Research shows giving folks a choice results in a better experience. Nothing more annoying that not having the choice, especially considering the wide array of screen sizes that are now being used. The live site may be more user friendly and you'll also get some valuable feedback on how popular you mobile site is.

Hi Irina,

• Meta keywords are unlikely to cause a penaly and are simply ignored. So you can do them but it's probably a waste of time.

• news_keywords only works if you are an accepted news source in google news and it's likely that this will only effect news results. This tag was created to give journalist more freedom with their headlines so they don't have to keyword stuff the headline. It's meant to lead to a more natural looking article while still giving an option to give some keyword indication of the theme.

Hope that helps.

Mulith

Hi All,

I am setting up a new site and I want to make use of subdomains to target multiple countries as follows:

uk.mydomain.com

us.mydomain.com

australia.mydomain.com

etc.

Now i know what you're all going to say, why not use folders as they are more effective. Well I did think of this but decided against it because I would like to make the best of a low competition industry.

I want to push my competitors as far down in the SE's as possible and i plan to do this by targeting generic non locational search terms with both sites so I can hog the top 4 spots.as follows:

www.mydomain.com

www.mydomain.com/keyterm

uk.mydomain.com

uk.mydomain.com/keyterm-in-the-UK

Whats steps can I take to ensure rank passes to my subdomains?

Is it better to start the site with folders like www.mydomain.com/us/keyterm and then 301 them to subdomains at a later stage or should i start with the subdomains?

Looks like the only downside is google trying to algorithmically determine a more suitable title, which isn't that bad as these are not really high priority ranking pages.

Thank for the help.

Hi Ovieira,

This is not necessarily an indication that there are pages that are hidden from crawlers and the missing pages could simply be low priority for the moment. Or could have been created after the initial crawl had taken place.

The best way to check is to run a crawler like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and that will give you a better idea. If the sitemap generates a complement of your pages then it's probably just a case of waiting until the next Moz crawl.

Mulith