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In my opinion, your page is over-optimized for your primary keyword. I would look into some variant keywords you can optimize this page for. Here is what I see as "Over-Optimized" for that exact keyword:

Page Title = OK, could use some customization
Description = OK
Breadcrumbs = Exact Keyword along with the Exact Title Tag (Sort of okay, I'd say)
H1 Tag = Exact Keyword. As well as a Title Tag to your H1 Tag ? That's too much. That's clearly there for SEO and SEO Only.

In that 1 paragraph of copy, you have the same keyword in Bold, twice. The image with a good filename and alt tag is okay.

What I'd look into is, what are some other long tail keywords that you can optimize your page for. That would help you in 2 ways.

1. Remove the Over-Optimization
2. Help you rank for that low(er) hanging fruit.

Unrelated to this keyword/page, but overall:

You don't need the following tags on every single page:

I hope this helps.

Great idea.

Is this a wordpress based site ? What CMS are you using ? How were you able to get domain.com/sample and domain.com/sample.html be the same page ? Either way, canonical tag is the correct solution in this case. There's no need for a 301 and if you do 301 redirects, you are not really fixing the issue caused by your CMS System.

I would therefore strongly advise to use the canonical tag. That's the intended use of that tag.

Steve

Check the rankings manually using different computers / locations. Call family/friends and have them check to make sure your tool is reporting it correctly.

You are right, it should not move that much on a "daily" basis. There's no reason to.

Enam, I would not worriota out it. This is a natural link. Think of other social networks like twitter. If you were to tweet your link and 10,000 users retweet it, you have that many links from different pages within twitter.com

this s the nature and structure of the website, don't stress yourself about this. If this was coming from a crappy domain or spammy bloon other it would be something to worry about.

I hope this helps. Have a good weekend.

Mark, I don't think there's much I am able to say without looking at the site in question. How's your link profile ? What does your link profile looks like compared to the sites you are competing with ?

Danny

I found your question from last month. I am guessing by now you would have already pitched your client. However, I'll share an interesting post at Search Engine Land.

http://searchengineland.com/why-do-brands-overlook-the-seo-opportunity-for-non-branded-keywords-149542

It's not really fashion world, but it gets the point across.

I hope that helps you and/or other readers and business in similar state of mind

This is a very common problem in the world of search. Both in SEO and PPC.

Thomas

When Google typically rolls out algorithm updates, specially the Panda's and Penguin's of the world, they typically first launch them on Google.com and based on how they perform and tweaks, eventually roll them out on International and Non-english sites.

I would say yes, there could potentially be a difference based on Search Volume. I would do some competition analysis, see how others in your niche have been affected and not been affected, identify patterns. I would also recommend doing a detailed SEO Audit for your sites and building a strategy on where the gaps are identified.

How are you ranking now ? Are you / were you doing any specific kinds of link building ? Did you over-do any one kinds of links ?

Biance

I would add the .com in there for Branding reasons. However if your page titles and way over 66 characters, I'd leave the .com alone (not recommended). The question is, are you building your brand as Tripping or Tripping.com ? That should help answer the question pretty accurately :).

I hope this helps.

You are on the right track Dana. No, using absolute URLs is not going to cause a meaningful increase in server response time / page load time. I would look at other sitewide header/footer issues, javascripts / CSS and possible images on CDN etc.

Louie, are you sure you are not seeing personalized search results ?

I would suggest using Incognito/Private browsing and/or clear your cookies. Also use the Search Tools option at Google.com and change your zip code to a random city and then recheck your rankings.

If you are still on top of the SERPS, good. Congratulations. Google usually likes fresh content and sometimes it can have effects like these. Content is King = Almost all the time

EndeR, if you search on Google for https://www.google.com/search?q=marriage+photographer+New+York or your apartment rental keywords, you'll see that the SERPS of today have changed and evolved a lot over the years. Instead of trying to find a niche for a business, that's relatively easy to rank, I would rather concentrate on a niche you have business knowledge of. That way:

• You understand the business
• You have trade knowledge that you can apply to the website and
• You understand your target audience and customer.

This lets you operate that niche online/offline business much better. Other then that, whatever business you create, as long as you can produce the traffic, whether it's an online classifieds or  an online games website or an online user cars website, traffic = money.

I hope this helps.

Suzanne

Before your rankings started dropped, was there any specific you were doing on your website in terms of SEO/Internet Marketing ?

Any Social Media stuff ?

I see your rankings were relatively much better same time last year. This year, it's been much worse. However, you have not fallen off completely.

Did you hire any SEO services ? Any link building ? Any Google unnatural links warnings ? The timing of your rankings dropping coincides with some updates last year.

Are you signed up and verified in Google Webmaster Console ?

Link Building is always a tough one and all you need to do is to be creative. Look at your competition for your primary and secondary keywords and see what they are doing for links. Slow and steady build your domain profile.

The problem is, unfortunately, there are no short-cuts. And just one more piece of advice, don't overdo any one particular kinds of links. A mix and match of everything adds up to become a natural link profile. That's what you need to compete in the niche. It's also a steady on-going process. FYI.

I hope this helps.

My vote goes for jeremyparker.net as well.

George, just make sure in trying to rank for your primary keyword, don't get "too many" links, too fast, "contain your perfect anchor text", even if it's your brand name. Too many links, similar looking links, are always a bad sign. They are simply manipulated links. You need to get natural links and build more of a link profile, as in reputation. Simple words, something like Brand building.

So get a variation of all your anchor texts, good or bad, even acronyms etc...they all add-up towards your domain profile. Which is what you'd need for your domain to rank for a keyword like that.

I hope this helps.

Considering what's done is done and the point that your old domain is penalized, can you possibly do/try any of the following ?

1. Ignore the fact that those links are appearing in your backlink profile for the new domain. See whether this new website works/ranks.

2. If it doesn't (at all), can you possibly disavow those "article marketing" links for the old domain and do nothing at all for the new domain (since those links are not really linking to your new domain).

Coming back to point 1, what I'd like to ask is, other then seeing those links in GWT, are there any other red flags that you are seeing in terms of not ranking, any penalty messages, unnatural links warning on the new or was there any messages on the old domain when you got penalized ?

Looks much better Keri. Until yesterday it was supper difficult during certain hours of the day for pages to load, specially when you tried to answer. Looks great so far.

Sara

Would you be doing a robots.txt deny or can you do a noindex,nofollow ? You don't want Google to see it or you don't want google to index it ?

This is very similar to acquiring a premium domain or website and not using it for a year and then launching it. In my experience the domain value was still there.

I hope this helps.

I agree. Just another link. Even nofollow links are good links, but no, this one is not a nofollow link. It's a dofollow as they say..link :).

Well, give it 2-4 weeks. Considering that, I would try to (I know it's difficult) to try and work on the other aspects of your business/websites. Build some more content/pages, optimize etc and see how the changes reflect in the SERPS.

I hope this helps.

All kinds of links, together make up a natural link profile. Never use any one kinds of links too much. When you do that, that's when the trouble begins.

I think of Link Building as brand building. What would you do if the Search Engines did not exist ? What would you do to get your website some traffic ? The answer lies within

Yup. In that case, I'd go with a BBB listing for the Massage business as well as the Law Firm.

Jesse, you have some great responses below. So great question to begin with. I also like the 4 example scenarios you posted. What I'd like to ask is, what percentage of their business is driven directly/indirectly from their websites ?

Once you know how much money a business generates from a website, you can then put some sort of an ROI and budget you are willing to spend to expand on to that. Now, the question is, would you list your business in BBB if there was no SEO value ? Let's say we go back in 1996 when Google does not exist. You have Altavsita, Dogpile, Excite.com and so on. They don't look at the BBB listings. They only look at the Meta Data. Would you still list yourself ? If you'd say yes then, I'd say yes today. If it was no then, let it be a no today.

However, if you are also struggling with some rankings and looking for some brand citations etc, you might get listed and move on. It's not really going to move the dial. Don't expect that you list today and in X amount of time, your rankings improve.

I don't know if I helped you or confused you further. Just my 2c, for whatever it's worth

Haven't seen or used it myself but looks decent enough for tracking, rank analysis etc.

There are 2 aspects to removing these pages (I am presuming these URLs are already indexed in Google).

First, you need to get these removed, so that they do not exist. Either a 404 or a Canonical to itself.

If it's a canonical, as Google recrawls these pages, they will drop the duplicates from their Index. If they are 404, then also they will drop or you can request remove via Google Webmaster Console.

I can's say specifically without looking at the actual example.

I hope this helps.

Just add canonical tags on your website so that search engines always only crawl one version of the URL. Typically, these duplicate URLs are created by the CMS. It might also be easier to remove these extra URLs, but then you have device=desktop on your desktop site and device =mobile on your mobile site. That makes me think it might be best to add a canonical tag on both sets of pages as well as having a rel=alternate.

I hope this helps.

Mark If you have had your category level or city/state level pages, whatever your architecture is, you'd see your detail pages getting crawled pretty quickly. Give it a week. I would also work on getting some deep links to your website. Google has mentioned several times, PR is a direct measure of how deep and how often Google crawls your website. So I would suggest working on building the domain authority and brand in terms of backlinks to the website. Other then that, as bstone81 said, generate sitemaps and sitemap of sitemaps and submit to Google.

I agree with Irving. Honestly, the better bet might be to get another number / forwarding number. You might be able to do an image on your own website, but think about all the Yellow page listings you you would have on the web with the same phone number. Keep it simple. Get another number for that 2nd business.

Definitely manipulative. However, as others here have said, give Google some time. They are constantly refining their algorithm to identify these kinds of manipulations. Again, this is one of hundreds and thousands of techniques people use to manipulate their SERPS and with millions of websites on the web, Google wants to automatically identify these, not manually.

We are basically discussing Video Optimization. Here's the thing. If you optimize your video with better titles, descriptions and it sounds like your descriptions already contain a backlink to your website. As Tom said, Embedding the video helps the video page (if at all), but not the site embedding it. In your case, it sounds like you are embedding it on the site that your video is linking to. So I agree with Tom. Answering your question directly, linking to the video (and embedding it) from other places on the web, helps your video page which in turn helps your money site if you are linking to your money site from the video. Just don't over do it. Too much of anything is bad. I hope this helps.

Landon

I agree with Dan. I would go with mydomain.com.au/blog

I answered a similar question earlier today.

See:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-better-to-have-a-blog-under-your-main-website-s-domain-or-should-the-company-s-blog-have-its-own-domain

Also see:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-on-a-separate-domain

and

http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdirectory-vs-subdomain

I hope this helps.

If your main domain ranks very well, and your blog on a separate domain and separate IP ranks well (presuming the blog has link juice of it's own), here's what I would consider:

1. How competitive is the niche you are trying to rank ? I am presuming it's finance based of your profile.

2. If you created 2 articles, similar topics and posted 1 on the blog and 1 on the website, which would rank better and why.

If the page on your site outranks your blog page, for same/similar keywords, you should consider merging the blog into your main website and do 301 redirects from the blog to your new URL.

EG:

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/blog/$1

I hope this helps.

Linda, if the content on the blog is going to be a very very targetted content for your website audience, I would suggest putting it on yourcompanydomain.com/blog.

Also see:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-on-a-separate-domain

and

http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdirectory-vs-subdomain

I hope these help.

How new is your website ? Do you have any sites linking to you currently ? You might want to check under Google Webmaster Console or Majestic SEO to see if they are reporting any backlinks (if at all they exist). If not, I would just concentrate on building links and eventually OSE will find you.

Well, just check every once in a while and see when the page gets updated again. Maybe set a reminder to check once a month. As for the 301s and 404s, there are in-built tools within DMOZ to detect those as well as expired/expiring domains etc and so on.

It's just that sometimes the queue is too long. And since it's volunteer work, there's just not much you can do. I know as an editor of a regional category, I used to have tons and tons of submissions and unless you are spending an hour a day, you can't catch-up and eventually you give up.

The editor for that category has tons and tons of categories he is authorized to edit, which makes me think he is a senior meta editor.

As I said above, DMOZ is not worth thinking too much about. I know it stresses one out, but it's beyond control. Submit It, forget it. Move on

The SEO value is to the people you are linking to. Not to your website. To your website, the value is in having these sites/links available for your potential customers so that they can check your actual work / portfolio if they are considering to hire you for your services.

LOL.

The editor of that category, looks like a very very senior edtor.

http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=nocturnal

Also notice the last update date on this page. When did you submit ?

Last update: Thursday, May 31, 2012 9:18:28 PM EDT

Claudio

You are not doing anything wrong with the fact that you are submitting.

Anita's point is, are you submitting the right Title and Description ?

Sometime, that's the key. Editors don't want to spend 5-10 minutes reviewing a listing as well as having to write/edit the Title and Description.

As I said above, I would suggest submitting the listing and forgetting about it. You may get listed tomorrow or you may never get listed. You just never know. That's the nature of DMOZ, the DMOZ of today.

SEOMoz might be telling you about Internal Links. And this might be a warning. Again, I understand the value of these links to potential clients. What you can do is nofollow these links so if there are any clients you are linking to which may have bad links to themselves, and get penalized, you don't want to be another one of those links linking to that site.

Nofollow'ing all those 125 links should do the trick. Also, SEOMoz Crawl Report for the number of outgoing links is more of a warning. I hope this helps.

Ayite, think of Link Building as Brand Building. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. You will have to come up with things that people would want to link to. Think of a combination of Link Bait, Infographics, Press Releases, Some Guest Posts and other misc links. Just a little bit of everything in your niche. Not too much of anything.

I would also start with analyzing your competition backlinks and see how and where they got/get their links from. Try to get some of those kinds of links.

It's a slow and steady, painful, expensive process. But it works.

Spun content has no value for the user. I would therefore suggest investing time and effort in building value to the user. If you are able to do that, you will gain loyalty amongst your users. Depending upon the niche and nature of your website, your user's may share your website on their blogs and social media. They may also come back to your website and so on. That does what Google is looking for in real sites...sites that should rank.

DMOZ over the last couple years has been Submit It and Forget it. There's not much you can do. I have been a DMOZ Editor in the past and it is what it is.

Also, in the days of today, I do not value a DMOZ listing as much as I used to 5-7 years ago. I would suggest to keep working on your alternate link strategies.

When you do country level sites, you might only be doing a handful. But when you get to US States, you are probably eventually going to do all the 50 states. That said, that's too many websites. I totally do a sub-folder. No questions. On country level sites, I'd do CC TLDs if that makes sense for your business.

I hope this helps and clarifies.

Great answers here already. All I'd like to add is: If the Search Engines did not exist / SEO did not exist ? Would you still link to them ? Are you going to be leading traffic to them ? Do you want to do that ?

I totally understand why the affiliate wants it. The question is, would you want to do it ?

Let's say for a second that you are able to manipulate this one ranking signal. Keep in mind there are well over 200 ranking signals. What would one do for the other factors ? There's too many items to manipulate. And if you have naturally been able to achieve 140 of those signals, would you really want to risk all your good and hard work and try to manipulate it ? I wouldn't.

I hope this helps.

Andrew, let's site abc.com is the site linking to your from their homepage. If you really want to check, just see cache:abc.com in Google and see if the page in Google's cache contains your link. Google may or may not show all of your backlinks.

Considering your site is new, and the fact that you are doing Guest Posts (which in my opinion are the Directory Submissions of 2011-2012-2013 years), I would look at diversifying your link building tactics to be more natural. Really natural. Specially if you want this site to rank for a long period.

I hope this helps.

Jason

You have some great detailed answers from Marie and Marcus. I guess the question I'd like to ask is, Why are you looking into this ? Did you get to a point where your site is not ranking as well before ? Or is it that you got an actual un-natural links warning ?

That could help justify what the next steps should be.

I agree with EGOL and Takeshi. If you want your blog to work and you have a content strategy in place where you will be adding a lot of useful content and you would want that content to rank by itself, I would try to put it on the domain.com/blog. Now you know that already, that's why you asked the question.

**One solution you might have is to find out if bigcommerce can do Reverse Proxy. That way a domain could be hosted at anywhere.whateverdomain.com but to the search engines and everything else it will appear as yourdomain.com/blog. **

The reason a lot of these hosted platforms do not allow wordpress is because of security issues. They then have another piece of software / files / plugins in the same environment which is sometimes a threat.