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Can you post an example PDF link ? Are they cached in Google ? You might also want to considering generating a PDF XML Sitemap.

I don't have examples that I could share in a QA Forum, but think from Google's Webspam team perspective. Artificial SERP manipluation in indeed a big problem for them. Think about the Whitehouse Google Bomb (Bush's Miserable Failure Search). It's just too easy to detect and not worth the risk. It all depends site to site, depending upon a site's link profile history and age.

IMO this is sort of like a Brand vs Non-Brand discussion.

Let's say you are Colgate. And your website is Toothpaste.com

The question would be whether people would search you using Colgate or Toothpaste.

I understand and imagine the dilemma you are in as to how to utilize the domain. I would also consider creating a blog on the physicians name if you think content can be created around it. as EGOL and other's have recommended, the question is what's your long term strategy. What keywords do you target in your existing domain etc.

USA.

Checked using Google.com again using Firefox this time. #6

You are #6 here in the US (checked in Chrome). Can you see when your rankings shifted ? It might have been the Google Adsense Penalty, but looks highly unlikely to me. I think some minor on-page optimization can help you get back. Slow and Steady wins the race

I would download the backlinks from Google Webmaster Console or Open Site Explorer and see if those links are there. Maybe some other links appeared to the tool as stronger. IN Google Webmaster Console, you can also find last found date which is helpful.

Now trying to answer your question: Is it possible for someone outside an organization to remove links?
It is technically possible for a competition to reach out to people who are linking to you and figure out a way to get those links removed and / or changed to their own websites. Is it happening in your case, the only way to check would be to find 10-20 examples of sites that were linking to you and see what happened. If needed, reach out to the website owner to find out.

I agree. Looks like we are all on the same page. However, again depending on the link profile of the client, I wouldn't do 1 style of links only. I would suggest doing all kinds of links, follow, nofollow, directory links, guest blog posts, press releases, donations scattered all over the web over a period of time. As long as they are all related links, they all add up. Plus you don't want competition to see which links helped you. A natural link profile will have all kinds of links, not just mostly directory links or mostly comment spam and so on.

I would suggest not overdoing any 1 style of links. That does not look natural in the SERPS.

Sebastian, you should consider doing the following:

A. Verify your domain in Google Webmaster Console and set whatever your preferred display URL is.One with www or without.

B. Let's say you decide to use the www version, which is what most webmasters prefer, setup a .htaccess file as below. This will take care of the problem. It will help you avoid any duplicate content issues in Google. It will also avoid the possibility of split page rank and/or split link popularity (inbound links).It's nicer, and more consistent.

<code class="htaccess" title="in your .htaccess file">RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]</code>

I would strongly suggest doing the rel=canonical tag on all pages to the original/correct URLs. So in your CMS, the canonical tag is added, all those variations of the pages will point to the same URL just in case Google Bots find those pages.

You are on the right track about doing a canonical.

In my opinion and a test I conducted last year, the plural worked out to be better. Again, the test was not a 100% apples to apples comparison.

I registered 2 domains one singular and the other plural on different registrars. Hosted them on different servers. Got 5 articles written for each site (and that is where it starts getting different), since I am not using the exact same articles on both domains, I am sure this also factored in. In my test, the plural ranked much better in the SERPS not just for the head keyword, but a lot of variations/long tail keywords. The singular one also ranked, but for a lot less keywords.

I would do the plural any-day unless it's a niche where plural sounds weird. I hope that makes sense and helps. SEO History in your example makes it a much better and easier decision.

I am presuming all those domains are linking to each other, correct ?

Are they regular or nofollow links ? It boils down how much authority you have on your main domain as well as the other domains. If I were you, I will keep the main e-commerce website on one server and everything else including niche blogs etc on a different server. It's not just SEO, but also security issues.

Essentially, to answer your question, it may not be hurting you to have the niche blogs, a forum with user generated content, the articles site and the corporate site on the same IP/server, but it would help you a lot more if they were on a different server, possibly different Class C IPs. So, you will gain from these links being on a different server. Keep in mind, these links are important for you and its good to increase their value by hosting them separately, because these sites are links that your competition can never get linked from. I would also consider doing a nofollow on them, and that's just my thoughts. I prefer lower risk. Again, it depends on what your e-commerce website's link profile is.

In most cases using a generic email works. Some sort of a catch-all mailbox, where SPAM gets filtered. I usuallysetup a local@domain.com email and set forwarding to a gmail specially for that domain. That gmail could then be set to forward to my email. In that way, all the SPAM gets filtered. I hope that makes sense. It works for me. I hope it works for you :).

I agree with Marek. However, there's value in having the Category in there specially if your categories are keyword rich. Don't worry about duplicate pages. One post will only have one default category in the Slug (Most of the times, its the 1st one you selected in Wordpress). I also sometimes like to use /%category%/%postname%.html or /%category%/%postname%.php which gives the effect of pages under a folder, vs folder inside a folder. Just my 2c.

I would not bother. Imagine Fortune 500 companies with 10;s of thousands of employees and each with their browser homepage set to company homepage. Think about web design/e-commerce companies where design teams are looking at the site, browsing the site and then not to forget the QA team. I would definitely not worry about 1 person

I actually have a completely different experience. Within the same domain, not between 2 domains. Lets say my page is http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage-1.html http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage-2.html http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage-3.html Each of them is actually http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage.html So each of the above pages (all 4) contain a canonical tag to the original page http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage.html What happens is when I check in the SERPS, nothing except http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage.html show up doing site: checks. However, if I do a cache: for any of the 4 pages, the http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage.html shows up. So Google identifies each of the URLs, but only returns http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage.html in my case.

Are you linking to the internal page from your homepage with that exact keyword as the anchor text ?If that's the case, it might be a Keyword Cannibalization issue. See Rand's article if that's the issue... here.

Honestly, if I were you, I would optimize the homepage a little better if you really prefer the homepage to rank or improve the inner page content/presentation that's already ranking vs the canonical and or 301 stuff. There's some risk involved in that approach. That's my 2c.

Based on my experience and a look of your site, I am inclined to believe that your local / GEO keywords associated rankings might not get impacted as much if you get rid of it from the Page titles. Test it on some pages and use more important/low hanging fruit/long tail relevant keywords and see what that does. Test it on maybe 10-20 of your pages which do not get any GEO traffic, but rank for non-geo keywords and see if those pages can rank for 1-2 additional keywords.

To me it sounds more like domain authority issue, lack of deep links, aged deep links. Gain them as natural as possible, over a period of time. Diversify your link profile. Your competition, those are on page 1, 2, are those in the 400 total root domains range. Again, just the root domains is not the criteria, as the age of the pages, deep links, anchor text, diversity of the links, age of those links all contribute.

You can test, but I am guessing blocking the search result URLs might not do enough. But this would be an interesting test. I would be curious to know what happens. Again, there might be algorithm updates that happen concurrently that could impact the actual test, but you could get a relative idea based on the dates when you block those pages both via a noindex and a disallow.

Let me know. Feel free to touch base via the QA or via email about this.

@Jvalops, it varies a lot based on industry and audience. If I were you, I would do a test on the website to see if your audience likes it or not. I have seen lots of variations in the results in different product niches.

Does your site have the ability to choose number of products to display per page on the Search Result Pages ? Do you also have a View-All page ? Do you have canonical tags on these Paginated pages ? I am trying to understand whether you also have Duplicate content issues along with the Duplicate Page title issue...

Great response Nicholas. @AWCthreads, Do you have your city/station in the footer ? How many pages do you have in your site ? Do all of them have City/State targeting in them via Page Titles ? Do all of them get traffic from keywords with Geo data attached ? Does your website have a Regional Dmoz listing ?

Carl It would be best to identify and create a list of those part-time bloggers and find their contact information, twitter, facebook etc and then reach out to them. You could also possibly acquire their wordpress/blogspot subdomains and have the content "move" to your site if it's relevant as well as hire them for future posts. I know wordpress.com hosted subdomains can be redirected to domains for a fee. I am not sure if blogspot has similar ability, guess not.

I know you said "new". But how new is it ? Are you also constantly working on your Link Profile ? I have seen "Monster" Authority sites within thousand's of those search pages ranking with no issues. So yes, as Tyler said, it might make sense to do a disallow via robots.txt as well as a noindex tag. Are you getting decent enough rankings on your category pages ? Again, it all boils down to the authority of the site/domain.

If you look at the cache version of the page, it still shows pagination and only shows the default 12 products to Google on Page 1. Therefore there's no real impact in terms of Direct SEO impact as far as "On-page" SEO ranking factors are concerned. I hope this helps.

It sounds like it's been a while since you demoted those pages. I think this sounds more like a bug that it's not happening. You could go to the Google Webmaster Forum and submit a request there or if it's urgent and the following solution is doable, you could try blocking those 3 pages via a noindex tag or via robots.txt and see if they get removed that way. Once the pages have been removed using that technique, you could remove the noindex tags or disallows in robots.txt unless you would prefer to keep it that way and you don't want those 3 pages to show up anywhere...period. I hope that helps.

I think the shirts having variations like:

FUNKTION Mens Short Sleeve Red Golf Shirt 
FUNKTION Short Sleeve Black Golf Shirt for Men

Might work. This would give you good rankings in Google Products (Google Shopping) and as far as the listing for your category page is concerned, that's the page that should be ranking for Golf Shirts or Golf Shirts for Men or Men's Golf Shirts.

What do you mean when you say "link on google gets removed."

Do you see drop in rankings ? Where does it rank now and does it disappear from the 1000 results or just gets dropped ? Because the rank/shift could be for a variety of reasons.

It is being picked up from your DMOZ Listing in http://www.dmoz.org/Society/Law/Services/Lawyers_and_Law_Firms/General_Practice/North_America/United_States/Mississippi/

• Fortenberry Law Group - Trust and estate law firm providing probate-related representation to clients throughout the United States. Handles probate matters in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

Add a meta tag as following in your HTML code if you don't want that to happen.

<meta name="googlebot" content="noodp">

This will take care of the problem.

I think this becomes a usability issue. If I want to link to XYZ Apartment and I link to www.example.com/category/apartments-apartment1, tomorrow, the content of this page changed and its now referencing ABC Apartment, which is not what I intended to do. So it does not sound like a great idea. Another thing, can you do www.example.com/city-state/apartments-name-of-the-apartment-1 www.example.com/city-state/apartments-name-of-the-apartment-2 www.example.com/city-state/apartments-name-of-the-apartment-3 I hope that helps.

Yes, I would recommend you remove the alias.

Next, I would suggest you redirect the specific pages from the old domain/site of the company you acquired to the pages that make most sense for the user on your site. Like if you took over certain products from that company and merged them into your products (or services), a 301 from the products page to your products page would make sense and so on.

This will pass on the SEO value to the respective pages much better rather then a complete redirect from the entire site to just your homepage.

I suggested this based on the fact that you wrote, the acquired company's domain is ranking better, which demonstrates the presence of some sort of authority in terms of backlinks and trust and aging factor in the SERPS.

Great suggestions from Keri and Holly. I would like to add: On the townstate.com, try to do an Infographic about something. Maybe an interesting chart about the Real Estate Market Trends in the last 1-3 years within your city/state. Some top 10 lists like: Top 10 Reasons Why TownName is a Great City to Live In. Top 10 Jobs in TownName Area Top 10 Cities Where People Move from... You get the idea. I hope that helps.

It would not be a good idea to interlink them for SEO reasons as you mention "creating a link wheel/pyramid". I would ask these questions to myself: 1. Do all the sites have unique content ? 2. Do they have any duplicate/repurposed content at all between theme ? 3. Do uses on one website need to navigate to the other website, since it provides value to the user ? 4. Have you considered nofollow links ? This is a bigger strategy discussion that you have to do to figure out your next steps. If they don't provide too much of a value, how about you aggrgate the content on 1, maybe 2 or 3 combined sites instead of 50 and 301 the rest ? It's really difficult to answer further without knowing more in detail. I hope this atleast invokes some questions and a long term SEO strategy.

I agree, this is not automated but so far, from what we know, looks like a nice and clean option. Thanks.