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It might be just me, but if these are brand new videos, it makes sense to just add them as new videos and do nothing to the old ones. Your #2. "Add the new videos, and leave the old videos untouched". I'd do that.

Thanks Chris, I just used that tool. Looks great. And now allows 2500 domain checks.

Chad

It can't be added in the template file, hard-coded for it to be the same tag on every page. Looks like this piece of code was added in the header template file.

For homepage, default.aspx this code is fine:

http://www.tisbest.org" />

However, on other pages, like http://www.tisbest.org/buy-charity-gift-cards.aspx, the canonical should be rel="canonical" href="http://www.tisbest.org/buy-charity-gift-cards.aspx" />

I hope this helps.

Who's going to Pubcon ? I know a lot of the SEOMOZ Folks are there every year.

Looks like SEOMOZ is an Exhibitor as well.

Also, anybody flying from the Houston area ?

As Keri recommended below, it would be much more productive in the long run to build this using unique content on your own website instead of 50 thin Squidoo lens pages. They used to work 5 years ago...not any more.

I would not worry about it that much if it's just a short number. However, if it's a larger string of numbers, I'd recommend moving it towards the end of the URL if possible or completely getting rid of it.

If it's something like:

www.example.com/red-widgets-c1.php or www.example.com/c1-red-widgets.php both are fine, but I'd prefer the 1st one. I hope this helps.

Chad

I just checked your website and no, it's incorrect. All pages of your website have the canonical set to the homepage, which is like telling Google to 301 redirect all your pages to the homepage. I would recommend to remove it/fix it right away.

I agree 100% with you Steve. Thanks. Justin, I hope all this helps.

Saeed I'd suggest you scale it down to maybe 5 lenses about specific niches or maybe just 1-2. Too many links of one type, is manipulative link building. If there was no SEO benefit, would you still do it ? I would consider spending the same time in strengthening the content, internal links and or trying to acquire 2-5 high authority links or maybe just 1 high authority link, the kind of link that money can't buy....a pure natural link. The impact of that kind of link would be much more then the benefit of the 50 squidoo lenses and the possible risk.

There's no way for you to force the affiliates to do a canonical tag from their website to yours. For you it makes sense, for them it doesn't. Because once they do a canonical tag to your website, their pages won't be indexed any more which means if their traffic source is SEO, they won't get any of that. There's no reason for them to do it. The best way to think is if you can do the datafeed without descriptions or maybe much shorter version of the meta description, like a lot of merchants do Short Descriptions. It helps both the affiliates as well as the merchants. Less duplicate content. I hope that helps.

Great question and yes, now that's a story. When you do such a press release, it could also be picked up by traditional media, featured on news sites etc. And that;s what you need. What that would do is drive domain authority to your website which is what you need to drive power to this domain to compete. So it could be something like:

XYZ Family Hired Local NY Bankruptcy Law Firm ABC Lawyers.

Bold is the name of the firm, hyper-linked/anchor text. The surrounding text helps.

I would also consider getting listed in industry / legal directories, participate in community law/legal websites etc.

I would not suggest doing a Press Release for SEO Only reason. Think about this from a user's perspective:

• 1. Is the reader going to feel he is reading a news or a advertorial ?* 2. Do you have something worthwhile to report via a press release ?* 3. If you were the reader, would you be interested in reading that PR ? And if yes, would you be satisfied after reading it ?

  Next and the most important. DO NOT do anchor text links. After the several rounds of algorithm updates, those kinds of links don't help. If you really get a decent reason to do the PR, do it. But then, just link to the relevant page or your homepage with the name of the business / law firm. Don't do anchor text.

  I know this kind of leads you into a total opposite direction, but with thinking about how many anchor text links, I can see where you were headed. I hope this helps.

Gavin Since you have added the noindex in the pages, the best way is to let Google crawl those pages, see the noindex and remove them. The other option is to keep everything as is and request these parameter pages via your Google Webmaster Console. Option 1: You never know how long it takes Option 2: This should happen relatively fast I would therefore suggest keeping everything as is and doing a removal request.

Matt, You might want to use a spider/crawling tool on your website and find the broken links.* Find broken links on your site with Xenu's Link Sleuth* Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Both of these tools will be able to crawl your website and find any 404's and the origin/linking pages. I hope this helps.

Well, as long as it's building your brand and your facebook/twitter brand pages are getting the credit, without actually seeing the media assets, it would not be possible to say if there are any other opportunities. If you'd like, you can share it here or send it via a private message and I'd take a look.

James, after reading all the responses you have at the time of writing this answer, I strongly suggest trying to find another .com / .org and do the 301 redirect. That way you "might" have a minor short term loss, but you can regain the affiliation and be better off long term. I agree with Crimson and others, I would not go with the .io domain name. If you are targeting global, why not use a global domain. I hope this helps.

Rodgers, did this show up in SEOMoz crawl report or Google Webmaster Console ? I am guessing it's SEOMoz's crawl report. If that's the one, this might be a bug. Just send an email to help@seomoz.org

Igor Are you seeing these warning/errors for Duplicate Titles or Descriptions ? And are you seeing those via the Google Webmaster Console ?

I see there's an opportunity to customize the meta data a little bit better then what it is currently and it would help to know where the errors are coming from and how you are ranking for some of these terms.

Savio

It's always a good call to remove unwanted links, links that user's don't use. Sometimes these pages are thin content pages, lead to within the site duplicate content issues as well. I would strongly recommend removing the links, but then just with this change, expecting a major change, I guess not, but then it depends upon all the other metrics of your website.

It might also make sense to consider doing a no-index on them. Is this a wordpress blog ? If yes, you can use All-In-One SEO ro Yoast SEO Plugin to  noindex on you tag pages.

Then look at your website and see if you see any SERP movements and continue to audit the site and refine the structure, add new content, build links and repeat. It's a continuous process you know I am sure

I hope this helps.

I agree with Tim and Adam and that said, sub-folders are better as a general rule of thumb for sure.

You might also want to refer to other similar questions here on SEOMOZ.

• http://www.seomoz.org/q/blogs-are-best-when-hosted-on-domain-subdomain-or* http://www.seomoz.org/q/setting-up-a-company-blog-subdomain-or-new-url* http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-vs-blog

  and the post from Matt Cutts as well as the article from Rand that Adam mentioned.

  • http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/* http://www.seomoz.org/q/subdomains-vs-subfolders

Diego, As Paul said, do not chase the page-rank. You can however get a better idea using SEOMoz Opensite Explorer.org's DA/PA (Domain Authority and Page Authority Score). Again, this is just to get a rough estimate on a relative score comparison between you and your competition. I hope that helps.

Tks, is it just for 1 keyword or a lot of keywords / URLs combinations that you are noticing the off-page strengths being strong but still not ranking. To me it's an opportunity to do the architecture SEO Audit and see what you can do to help the entire website, structural changes. If it's just 1-2 pages, then copy optimization, meta optimization on that page along.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the update Erica. Great question David. I was thinking about it a couple days ago.

For a franchise scenario, it would be best to use a sub-domain, however it does depend on other things as well.

1. Would franchises be able to control / add / edit any content on these sites ?
2. Any duplicate content issues between multiple sites ?
3. Do all of them need to be indexed in the search engines and getting/targetting search traffic ?

As a general rule, for SEO, sub-folders are much better, but in your scenario, it's a different case.

You might also want to refer to other similar questions here on SEOMOZ.

1. http://www.seomoz.org/q/blogs-are-best-when-hosted-on-domain-subdomain-or
2. http://www.seomoz.org/q/setting-up-a-company-blog-subdomain-or-new-url
3. http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-vs-blog

and the post from Matt Cutts

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/

Kyle I was not aware of it, but looks interesting. Thanks for sharing. I agree with you, I think it could be useful. Thanks.

It really depends on the niche and the kind of websites you are trying to promote. If it makes sense, I would try and start with 1 website and optimize it for global and see how it works for you. Based on your success, you should be able to decide what the next steps are and usually it makes sense to continue to strengthen that 1 website, but then do you like all your eggs in 1 basket. It becomes a tough decision.

Therefore, I'd recommend you to concentrate on 1 for now and see how that evolves.

Thanks Rob. @Tutugirl, see Rob's answer. He answered the timing piece very well... "IF they were really press releases, how would they be timed? "

I agree with Robert. There could be multiple other factors. The search landscape has changed and evolved drastically in the last 10 years. And it will continue to. The economy adds to the competition because everybody is trying to get online and get a piece of the pie. You are definitely as the right place in terms of trying to figure it out. I would suggest getting an SEO Audit done as well as a competition analysis and create a plan for the next 3-6-12 months to regain your position, strengthen your domain, brand and do whatever it takes to get back on top. What it would take, depends on what your competition is doing. I hope this helps.

If you have a reason to have a press release, definitely do it. Think about it from a user's perspective. If they see your press release in Google News, would they read it and if they do, is that something they'd call a news ?

As for the distribution, yes, all/most sites have "some" SEO value. But the way I think about a PR is...distribute it with the intent of it getting picked up by offline media potentially and other news outlets..not just for the backlink.

Also, I would not recommend doing too many press releases just for a backlink.

I agree with Mathhew. completely. Test it on a small scale, there are so many other metrics that influence the rankings that it's best to test it and if it works, do it on a larger scale. Quoted from Mathhew's response "Another way to approach this would be to take a sample of ~50 products that get some traffic from search right now. Take unique pictures and write unique content for those products. Then, measure the results. Did organic traffic increase after 30, 60, 90 days? If so, you know that you've got a problem with duplicate content worth correcting."

I agree.... love the dashes only. Also a little bit of usability, dashes are easier to type (not that a lot of people are typing long urls with dashes or underscores, but dash is one key press and then underscore is 2 keys)

I agree with Anthony...go ahead and do it. If there are any old links you can get updated to the new domain, it would only help and then new links to the new domain of-course. So yes, no need to wait really.

I agree with Marko & Matt. Just do domain.com/blog or janesmithphotography.com/blog It makes perfect sense to do it that way. Even sub-domains are treated as separate domains, so blog.janesmithphotography.com won't be as good as if you do janesmithphotography.com/blog.

Is the URL generating a 404 / included in robots.txt as an exclusion ? If yes, you might want to check with a HTTP header tool to verify the correct 404 is being displayed. Maybe post details here. If nothing works, send a message in the Google support forum and that should do it.

Removal Requirements (https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59819)

To remove a page or image, you must do one of the following:

• Make sure the content is no longer live on the web. Requests for the page must return an HTTP 404 (not found) or 410 status code.
• Block the content using a robots.txt file.
• Block the content using a meta noindex tag.

Yes, that works. Essentially, I think a canonical is a better solution. So it's perfect. After a couple days, check the 2 URLs in Google using cache:url1.com and cache:url2.com and see if Google detects them both as the one you are using in your canonical tag.

Ilya, pm or post the URL and I can have a quick look at it. Give me an example of 1-2 pages where you think there should be a canonical tag or are duplicate and I can let you know what I think.

How much other unique content is there on the page (if any) ? Judging by your question, it does not sound like there's a much bigger piece of content that's unique to this page only. So if you have 1-2 paragraphs of sales pitch which is duplicate or similar to the sales pitch or promotional copy on other pages, it's okay if the ratio of the duplicate snippet is small. If however it's a big proportion, then it's thin content and the site may drop off in the SERPS. I would recommend doing a complete SEO Audit, see what you are doing, how you are ranking, what the competition is doing and how they are ranking and create an SEO roadmap to follow. I hope this helps.

That's indeed the right question

Gavin, that's a more generic response. In this scenario, unless you can make a 404 happen, it won't work and therefore is not applicable. Noindex and / or the canonical tag are the choices and I would try and get those going if possible.

Great points Dr Pete.

Ben, can you host the page somewhere else and call it in an iframe maybe. Or a Javascript Modal window the contents of which are stored in a folder which is denied in robots.txt or Just deny the bots access to this file. If I were you, I would post it anywhere but on the same domain.

Just my 2c. Think about it.

I know there are 5 other responses so far and mine is the 6th one. Honestly, I would not link out to them. I would not create a connection between all your guest posts and you...it does sort of a web-ring which used to exist over a decade ago. These will clearly get seen as reciprocal links. If I were you and I had domain authority, I would not do it. If you want to, why not share them on your Facebook page. Tweet them. Whatever else makes sense...except linking directly from the site where all those guest posts are linking to.

Some people may disagree....but I would rather have those links be as one-way links instead of reciprocal links.

OMG, that does not look good. I completely understand. The best way in my opinion would be to add a noindex meta tag on these pages and let Google crawl them. Once they re-index them with the noindex, that should take care of the problem. However, be careful since you want to make sure that noindex tag does not appear on your real pages, just the AJAX ones.

Another option might be to consider the canonical tag, but then technically these pages are not duplicate pages, they just should not exist. Are you verified and using the Google Webmaster Console ? If yes, see if you can get some of these pages excluded via the URL removal tool. The best way is to add the noindex tag in my opinion.

William, the SE traffic includes both SEO and PPC. Do you and the competition both do Paid Search ?

You might also want to make sure those / any links are cached in Google by doing a cache:siteurl.com to see if the Google cache of that page has your link in it. As long as it shows up there, it will show up in these links reports overtime.

Also, I would like to take the opportunity and suggest not to "over-do" any one kinds of links.

I agree. They look damn scary. You can tell by looking at the list, they look like directory sort of links. Yes, definitely not a good idea...might might work really really short term but will haunt long term.

Provide some examples of how Google sent the un-natural links warning to hundreds of thousands of website owners. Link building / Off-page is always a bit tricky and the best bet is to build great content and if one out of 10 pieces of excellent, well researched, well written content ends up being loved, you get a ton of good quality, natural links, that money can't buy and your competition won't be able to achieve...easily.

You can do a comparative analysis using tools like www.semrush.com

I hope that helps.

Wendy, if SEOMOZ can see it, I am sure Google can see it as well. I would login to your webmaster console and check the index status. Do you have an XML sitemap submitted for your website ? Once you do, you'll have a more accurate read on the number of pages you submitted and how many of them are indexed. The new index status Google introduced last month also lets you see pages Google ignored for multiple reasons.

I hope this helps.