Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Honestly, I would stay away from buying links unless you are ina really really black hat, super competitive niche like Online Casino, Gambling, Rx, Adult etc etc.

Those guys are clearly selling links with PR. Huge Red Flag. Stay away.

I would suggest building content with that budget, content that helps your user find what they are looking for. Content that they would link to and so on instead of spending your money on junk links.

Back in October 2011, Google introduced SSL search as default search for all logged in users. There's no way to get search query data for such users. For technology oriented sites, I have seen that number to go as high at 80% and others vary.

Unfortunately, no option exists / it's not possible to get the data. It would defeat the purpose of an HTTPS search.

You can download the entire crawl and see if there's actually that many pages. Or post the URL here.

You can also test using a crawling software tool like Xenu or Screaming Frog to test it.

You can also post/private message the link here and I can take a look.

If I were you, I'd consider merging them. The intent of the page is to sell and I'd rather present them what they are looking for right there or a clear call to action.

I am guessing you have multiple sets of pages like these. What's I'd do is find 1-2 examples of lower risk pages and merge them. Make sure you use the better ranking page and optimize it better (if you can) and then 301 redirect the other page to this page.

Based on the results of this test, you should have a solid plan of action. I hope this helps.

James, that is definitely a good thought. Consider adding EXIF data to your images or add more accurate data including GPS data if you can, depending upon nature of data. I am sure, it will start getting used more and more in times to come.

You can. It's just that Free Tools like GA, provide you a lot more data and reporting that AWStats can't. Still, there's no reason for you not to use AWStats if that serves your needs and that's all your care about in terms of basic daily/monthly reporting.

I agree with Andrea's comments. I'd also like to highlight the answer from within the question.

"My main competitor has a lot more pages".

Great content, strengthens your entire website. Attracts more social media activity, more shares, more time spent on site etc etc. So If I were you, I'd see what I can do to provide useful content. Find the gaps. Look at your analytics, see what keywords people are using to come to your website. Do you update your content ? Is there an opportunity there ? If you can, see what people are looking for in your site-search.

I hope this helps.

I'd also recommend to look at your blog not just for SEO reasons as a link that helps towards SEO, but as your customer acquisition and brand awareness tool. The SEO Benefit is a freebie (maybe an essential freebie) that you get out of it. So if you think of this blog with this attitude, you'll end up building a great blog with tons of content, great readership and so on.

And to directly answer your question, honestly since it's just 1 domain name, I would not worry about it too much. As donford set, you'll technically get a little bit more value if this blog was hosted on a different Class C IP. Other then that, I wouldn't worry much about changing registrars etc. Not a big deal, however if it bothers you and you'd like to shift the domain to a different registrar, that's okay as well. Again, I would not stress much on this small issue.

I hope this helps.

I agree with Matt. Build great content and Authority on one domain name and focus your strength and efforts there. Don't divide them too much. That way all the efforts you do within this site, helps and complements each and every page on the website. Works better long term.

Awstats, back in those days worked wonders. One advantage it has is that it's Server Side, which is crunching Raw Log Files. Other then that, GA and similar Analytics are much more advanced today and provide an insane amount of data and reporting. You can do Week over Week, Month Over Month, Year Over Year kinds of analysis, and other custom reporting, which you can't do with AWstats and alike.

I have an interesting situation.

Current URLs Example1:

www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234-1.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234-1-1.html

Canonical on All Above URLs:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234.html

New URL:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-4567.html

Current URLs Example2:

www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10-1.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10-1-1.html

Canonical on All Above URLs:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10.html

New URL:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789.html

Current URLs Example3:

www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5-1.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5-1-1.html

Canonical on All Above URLs:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html

New URL:
www.domain.com/american-red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html

I want to make sure all variations of the above URL redirect to the new URLs.  However, as you see in Example 3, we are dealing with variables that are passed on. (+5 in this case).

Question 1: What wildcard 301 redirect / regular expression can I use to tackle these ?

Question 2: If we redirect www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html to www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html and www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html contains the canonical tag www.domain.com/american-red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html, any concerns or red flags here ?

Cesar/Stephan, personally I have not seen much difference or I should clearly say any difference between a Dallas Restaurant site hosted in Dallas vs a Dallas Restaurant site hosted in New York. I just don't see any evidence today, but from a country perspective, it definitely plays a role. So if you were targeting Toronto Restaurants, the site hosted in Toronto/Canada would be better then hosted in Dallas/NY/USA. It would then also mean looking at a .ca domain vs a .com

However, this could change tomorrow and it would not be a big surprise if local hosting influences local rankings. So if you have the choice to host it locally, where your target customer is, do it. Expect no gains because of it today, but there's nothing to loose, right ?

As for Auto Suggest, yes, location plays a role. Just search for weather. You'd see your city's weather information. If you fly to another city and then refresh that weather results page, the results will change to reflect that city.

I hope this helps.

A natural link profile is a combination of all kinds of links. I would also continue to build great content. That PDF is the best one I like. People would only link to it if it's useful. So continue to do those. Depending upon your niche, find industry influencers and see if they are willing to blog, tweet, facebook, pin your website/url etc.

Competition Backlinks is also a nice way to look at what's out there.

Resource Links = Not my favorite

Guest Posts = These are directory links of today. They are being over used, spammed like crazy.

Just not over do any one kind of links. That's it. I hope this helps.

Hey Chris, i agree with masdigitalmedia. Look at that SEOMoz recommended list. Look for somebody local in your area if you can and if not, at-least somebody who can visit you every once in a while.

If you have specific questions, there's always SEOMoz Q&A

Good Luck.

Oliver, I looked at the featured listings on Manta.com

Think of it from a traffic generation perspective and the ROI behind that rather then the SEO Value. The link is a nofollow link, so it's not technically / directly passing any link juice, but I still like the link if it fits your budget and brings you ROI in terms of traffic. Don't look for ROI in terms of a "Paid Link".

I would also make sure you are listed, verified in other similar sites/yellow pages etc.

Link, I would say yes, you are on the right track. Just make sure the content you are building is helping your users. They come to your website/blog looking for that information, and you want them to get in touch with you. It's best if you continue to keep it on top of your head while building the content, rather then completely getting distracted. Don't get me wrong, I am 100% on the SEO Side, but thinking about the user at the same time. There's no point in ranking for a keyword, the visitor coming in and saying, no, this is not what I was looking for.

Just watch and monitor your bounce rate and eventually consider replicating the look and feel of your website within your wordpress theme. It's possible.

Good Luck.

Is it a local business ? Correct me if I am wrong, but judging by your question, it does not sound like it is.

Honestly, there are tons of other creative ways of building content and links. I would take a deep dive into those opportunities and if you have exhausted all such options, I would take a 2nd dive. But why build links only for SEO reasons. Try and build something that actually helps the business otherwise get some brand awareness and helps acquire customers. I know it's easier said then done, and vary drastically by industry.

Robert

I completely understand what you are trying to do. It can and will work. However, I'd suggest you look into your current backlink profile and see if there are diverse kinds of links, natural links. Also, don't overdo any one kind of link building tactic. This is not a 100% Bait and Switch, but, I'll ask you this, if SEO did not exist, would you still do it ? Think of this as a Custom Acquisition and Brand Awareness technique while helping towards SEO.

I am dealing with an interesting situation. Here's what's going on:

Current URLs Example1:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234-1.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234-1-1.html

Canonical on All Above URLs:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234.html

New URL:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-4567.html

Current URLs Example2:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10-1.html
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10-1-1.html

Canonical on All Above URLs:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-1234+10.html

New URL:
www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789.html

I want to make sure all variations of the above URL redirect to the new url. What wildcard 301 redirect / regular expression can I use to tackle these ?

70-100% Traffic Spikes for New Sites / Newer Sites which are relatively small sites with minimal traffic or sites that were penalized in the past ?

Again, if you received 1000 uniques a day in the past and now receive 1700-2000 uniques a day and it's nothing seasonal, I would keep a close watch and carefully keep doing what you have been doing. Without overdoing anything specific.

I would also monitor some rankings to identify if this is the effect of 1 keyword improving or 50 keywords improving in rankings. There are so many things that can impact your rankings.

Steve, if you are looking for a full time job, I would suggest you look at inbound.org and other job sites or job aggregation sites like indeed.com for your location. If you are looking for projects/freelance work etc, odesk.com. elance.com etc are your best bet.

I see this page is already ranking for Fortis Watches in Top 10 in Google. I see the opportunity to optimize the page title a bit as well as working on increasing the overall authority of the domain name.

Looks like they have a brand page for a lot of watch brands, and I would suggest working on the overall domain authority that is going to improve the rankings for each one of them as well as improving page title etc. I see there's opportunity for sure.

Daniel, are you displaying product description on these category pages ? If not, if it's just the product name, you are fine.

Deb, Daniel's case does not sound like having multiple URLs of the same Product. It's just that the same product is listed under multiple categories. So depending upon the percentage of duplicate products vs the unique products listed in a category, it may or may not be okay. Also, this may vary based on how big your website is, unique content on the category level pages as well as the overall domain authority.

Daniel

I am guessing you have around 200 products exposed in approximately 18 categories, however there may be some overlap in the products within the categories, but the product URLs themselves are unique, so there is no content duplication between the product URLs themselves. You are just checking to make sure if a Red Widget Listed under Category A as well as Category B is okay. With your ratio being 3-4 out of 10, I won't be concerned.

If however this increases to over 50%, I'd be concerned in having 20 category pages being duplicate of each other by over 50%. The closer to 100%, the higher the risk. The closer to 0%, the lower the risk.

And it's just the product name you display on the category level page, not the product description right ? If yes, I'd say you are good to go. Don't worry about it too much at this point.

I hope this helps.

I agree with Corey and Fabio, 100%. I would suggest you to talk to your user on this page. Connect with them and use the language as it pertains to your specific audience. As for meta data, Corey again has some great advice there.

Dan

This differs so much from industry to industry and your audience. I strongly suggest you to A/B test it. Let the data suggest you what makes most sense to your user. I might have a similar situation but a totally different target audience and behavior and if you follow what I say, it might totally mess up your conversions, whereas that same style or presentation might be a rockstar for me.

I hope that makes sense.

How widespread is your "products" appearing in multiple categories ? ARe you talking about 8 out of 10 products in the category duplicate / very similar to the same collection appearing in the other category ? It really depends how many categories you have, how many products, how deep this is compared to what other unique data you have on the page combined with your domain authority etc.

As for Show All, do you also have page 1, page 2 and a show all ? Do they have unique page titles and descriptions ? What do you want to appear in the SERPS for the users ? So if I search on Google for Red Widgets, what's a good experience for me. Is it to land on Page 1 or the View-All page ? Based on what you want to do, I suggest you look at:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html

I hope this helps.

It's hard to say without looking at the URLs. You can either PM or post here so that you can have more concrete answer to this problem.

If both sites are needed for users, only one of them should be served to the BOTS, so decide the one you need indexed in the Search Engines and then you can do a cross domain canonical from one website to another if that makes sense.

I hope this helps. I can clarify further based on the URLs current situation.

You'd have to add the disallow in robots.txt and then go into the Google Webmaster Console, use the Remove URLs option to get Google to deindex that page.

From Google:

Use **robots.txt **to specify how search engines should crawl your site, or request **removal **of URLs from Google's search results ( have you read our removal requirements? ). Only site owners and users with full permissions can request removals.

Does content exist on both the websites ? Does one redirect to the other or are both of them indexed ? What kind of redirect ? I would essentially suggest to use Webmaster Console to use the change domain feature for the old domain from where you are moving content from to the new domain or I should say your main/preferred domain you want to keep in the SERPS.

Hint Hint: Those redirects starting with /ugc/ pointing to /blog/ are stored somewhere, right ?

I agree with Zach and I would suggest going with the other option you already have in your head.

"We could instead offer pro bono services to a small business with a limited web presence – that would be useful to her, and constructive.  But I'd like to have a better understanding of what signals Google looks for when deciding whether to index a website in local search, and see whether possible to dupe those algos."

In my opinion, that's the best way to go. @Zach, thanks for posting those links. I will check out your post.

Now, that's a good point Keri. Does that mean it "might" be coming soon ?

"there's not a category for looking at all YouMoz posts that have been promoted to the main blog."

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs

Nadejda, I would suggest you file a DMCA complaint as well as send an email to the website owner/whois email/contact info. Also suggest reaching out to the domain registrar with a copy of the DMCA as well as to the Hosting company. 8 out of 10 times, this works. 1 out of the other 2 times, the offending site stop ranking and I was okay with that and then the last 1 was a bit of a struggle, took almost 2 months to stop ranking, but Google did identify it as duplicate and drop them in rankings.

Mark

Are you blocking all your bots to spider these erroneous URLs ? Is there a way for you to fix these such that either they don't exist or they are not duplicate anymore.

I'd just recommend looking from that perspective as well. Not just the intent of making those errors disappear from the SEOMoz report.

I hope this helps.

I agree with you one hundred percent Dr Pete. Thanks for your detailed insight. Always helps

Is Google showing an old page title you used ? Something from DMOZ or Yahoo Directory maybe ?

What I think it could be is that Google is using snippets of text on your page to generate the Page Title / Meta description to make it more relevant to the keyword you are searching for.

Let me know what you see.

In that case, I would not worry about it. Your domain/website will continue to rank for your Old Brand Name (unless it's a generic keyword). If it's a unique company / brand name, I would not worry about it.

Moreover, you can have an about us page detailing this transition on how Brand A became Brand B, just to make sure.

I hope this helps.

Would you just have a 1 page website or still operate as is, just with a new Brand Name ?

Great. You are good then. Nothing to worry. Pagerank on those paginated pages is Good.

Joseph

First of all, there's business value in doing that right ? Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing it. Right ?

Now having other websites browse your website in an iFrame, I'd say yes, the browsers and the bots know it's your website they are browsing, it's just the frame around it that's from that other website.

I would research to look into if there's a way for you to make it into some sort of a White Label (Powered by) kind of solution. Are you providing this solution for free or for a fee ?

You'd also have to worry about ease of implementation etc so I understand why you are considering an iFrame because from an implementation perspective it's probably the easiest route. Honestly, I would think more from a business perspective and do it if this means more business or branding for you.

I hope this helps. Maybe, maybe not.

What would happen to Company A's domain ? Is it going to be hosted with a page describing the acquisition and then linking to Company B ?

Yes, by using rel=prev,next, you are telling Google that these are paginated. I wouldn't worry about the fact that they have pagerank. It's flow of link juice internally and that's totally fine.

The question I have is whether you have a View-All page ? The reason I am asking is to understand if that could be causing you any duplicate content issues because if you do not have a canonical and you have a View All page, then all your paginated pages are subsets of your View-All page and you might want to think how you are handling that.

See:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/view-all-in-search-results.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

Follr, Great question.

It's not a manual process for any Search Engine to evaluate sites/domains when whois registration, nameservers etc take place. So I would not really worry about #1.

From my experience in handling this exact situation, as long as you 301 redirect Company A to company B (if Company B's domain is what ends up being used as the only/primary website). If there are products / categories being transferred from Company A to Company B, then if you can setup 301 redirects for Red Widgets on Company A to Red Widgets page on Company B, you should be good. When you 301 redirect the domain name for Company A, which would have all sorts of brand backlinks and history and age in the SERPS, I have seen them transition over to the new domain.

So in this case, even when there's no mention of Company A in Company B's website, companyB.com ranks for Company A's branded keywords.

I hope this helps.

Thanks Mat for a copy of their email.

I did not see that email come in. But that's a big change. What does Raven have to say about it ? Any other vendors using Adwords API facing similar issues ? Knock Knock Moz team.

Are you facing any ranking issues on your homepage / author pages ? Do you even want your author pages to rank ? Considering your answer, I'd suggest adding a noindex tag on your author profile pages, specially since you only have 2 authors.

Wordpress is like any other CMS. The same problem of SPAM exists with Google's Blogspot. Spam is everywhere and I don't think the Search engines are trying to use "What CMS are you using" to decide if you are SPAM.

I would not worry about getting penalized "Just because you decided to use Wordpress as a CMS/Blogging platform".

There are tons and tons of great, high authority, ranking websites made with all kinds of CMS platforms including Wordpress. So, I would say there's no merit to this.

Google's Matt Cutt's own blog is Wordpress Powered if that helps