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http://awesomescreenshot.com/0083hrd674

I think it's automatically chosen by Google. You can only tell Google which pages you'd prefer not to be sitelinks.

Alt text should be a description of the image. So I would include the product title as well as the keywords. e.g. By the Sea - Blue Sea Glass Necklace

Longer with more keyword for sure.

Title is important for rankings so definitely include keywords describing the product with search terms.

edit: to defend my point, look at the titles of the largest ecommerce sites like amazon, walmart, overstock - they have the product title which contains many relevant terms.

"I am wondering if it may be better to have one page dedicated to the specific material properties, one page dedicated to specific applications, and one page dedicated to available types. "

^ this. Create a page targeting each type of customer (one looking for a specific material, one looking for a specific application and one for available types). You can use similar content with some quoted content blocks on each page, just make sure there is unique content there as well that tailors the content searching for a specific need.

I would not noindex the quizzes, especially if they are getting links and shares. If you add a paragraph or two about what the quiz is and how to interpret results (or average results, other info about the quiz), that should be enough content for search engines to determine the page relevance (in combination with the links/shares it's getting).

Another way to add more content is to encourage users to share/comment on their results.

Just for my own organization. I know that in all the Google examples, the x-default tag is at the bottom. Overall, I don't believe it makes a difference.

I don't think it should be removed, that's why I included it.

Check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ce9jv91beQ

English (default) desktop page has these:

http://www.site.com/">
http://www.site.com" hreflang="en">
http://www.site.com/es/" hreflang="es">
http://www.site.com" hreflang="x-default">
http://m.site.com/" >

English Mobile page has these:

http://www.site.com/">
http://m.site.com/" hreflang="en">
http://m.site.com/es/" hreflang="es">
http://m.site.com/" hreflang="x-default">

Spanish Desktop version:

http://www.site.com/es/">
http://www.site.com/es/" hreflang="es">
http://www.site.com/" hreflang="en">
http://www.site.com/" hreflang="x-default">
http://m.site.com/es/" >

Spanish Mobile version:

http://www.site.com/es/"> http://m.site.com/es/" hreflang="es">
http://m.site.com/" hreflang="en">
http://m.site.com/" hreflang="x-default">

Long as you have the 301 redirects set up properly, you should be good.

Bing webmaster tools has it's own "Site Move" feature but I'm not sure you need to use it.

In my experience, yes. Domain age is a factor, especially when it has backlinks pointing to it. Just make sure they are high quality, relevant websites and the domain isn't penalized in any way.

That being said, you can index a new site almost just as quickly if you know what to do (ping google, share on social media, bookmark).

To go along with that, when did you set up the redirects? It can take 2-3 weeks for rankings to bounce back to where they once were.

In addition, you changed the site design/structure which could also affect rankings. Perhaps a paragraph of text used to be near the top of the page which helped you rank well but in the new design, it is positioned lower so gets less relevance score.

Or maybe the new layout has more repeating elements (dupe text) or more links per page (decreasing authority per link). There are lots of things that could potentially explain the slight decrease.

I would give it a couple weeks to see how the rankings bounce back and re-evaluate then.

Nope, you are fine.

Duplicate content = 2+ copies of the same text on 2+ separate indexable URLs

Don't think anyone would have a straight answer but my best guess is no. It would affect the value of a link if you choose to point from competitor --> main site (link is devalued) but I don't think it would affect rankings.

So ideally you would do page to page redirects which would be on the .htaccess level. Meaning sitea.com/topicx redirects to siteb.com/similartopicx

If you don't have that ability/don't want to do that, use the DNS 301 and point it all to siteb.com. I would also first verify both websites in GWT and tell Google the website is moving locations.

Looks fine to me - http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2F54.86.51.30%2Fsearch-space-for-rent%2FHouston%23top

Great layout btw

Should only have 1 H1 per page... ideally containing the target keyword. If this were a blog post, your H1 would be your article title.

H2 would be used more for subheadings, i.e. if you split your article up into sections with subheadings, each should be an H2

H3-H6 are just sub-sub headings, etc.

Overall, I believe H1 (and perhaps to an even lesser extent H2) has any SEO value - even though it is very minute since it's easily gamed.

Shot in the dark but maybe a sitewide link was removed? e.g. you posted a comment on a blog, it appeared in the sidebar under "recent comments", moz picked them up, your comment is no longer recent, lose all the sitewide backlinks, see that drop.

If you've exported your backlinks previously when you had a lot, compare the current links to the old list and see where they differ.

Index status, Pagerank, DA, Moz Trust, Social Engagement, Alexa, etc. There are tons of possible variables but the standard for a "good" site would vary by industry. Honestly, you are better off manually looking through all of the links and determining whether a site is 1) indexed in google 2) not filled with spam 3) related to your website (that goes for directories and low DA sites as well)

Rule of thumb: if you think it might be a bad link, it probably is.

I set up 8 goals in analytics and Google seems to have auto placed them into their own Goal sets (first 5 = Goal Set 1, last 3 are Goal Set 2). http://awesomescreenshot.com/05134f1tad

Any idea how to edit and group these up myself?

Yeah, that tool simplifies schema.org examples. Just enter the info into it, see how the HTML should look, then copy/paste/edit it to match your websites HTML.

I'm a big fan of popup contact forms.. the user isn't taken to another page and everything else goes into the background. But you'd have to test both variations for yourself to see which converts better for your traffic.

In terms of tracking changes, you'd need to change it to an event (on submit) type goal.

Advantage to doing it via HTML: picked up by all search engines, not just Google.

Don't think there is an advantage over doing it through GWT.. except that it might be easier to use for the less technically inclined.

My guess is that the penalties expired then. If you received letters, there would be a notification under the "Manual Actions" tab. They expire every year I believe.

If that's the case, I wouldn't worry about it.

EDIT: try accessing your site via https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration

yes. That's pretty much the whole point of the hreflang tag.

It tells crawlers that "this page.co.uk is the same as page.com, but i want you to show the .co.uk version to people in the UK).

I'm assuming its just the domain.. no website and no current rankings/traffic. Unless you have the resources to manage another blog (loading it up with content, funneling it to your money site), I'd just go for the 301 redirect.

Set up GWT and see which pages have external links to them (via the 404 errors page), then choose appropriate pages on your money site to redirect to.

Unnatural link messages = manual penalty, so yes. You should submit a RR. I would go through all of your links, disavow all of the bad ones that you weren't able to remove, then submit the RR. If you do it right, you shouldn't have any problems having the penalty lifted (its been a while and you seem to have been doing a lot to remedy the issue)

Only thing I can think of is doing it via pushstate/hashbang. It's for AJAX but maybe you can adapt it to Java?

Since it's suspended, google will recrawl and discover the link and gone and you should be in the clear. Did you experience a drop in rankings?

I see you as #18. My guess is that you have lots of backlinks from sites that are in Europe but not so much from US based sites. I would run competitor link audits of our site vs top ranking sites for those terms in US.

1. www.arcas.co.uk
2. www.tigerchick.com
3. www.webdesignsedinburgh.co.uk
4. www.prettyklicks.com/web-design-edinburgh/
5. www.webwisecreative.co.uk
6. www.70two.co.uk
7. 11beats.co.uk
8. www.mercurytide.co.uk
9. www.clooti.co.uk
10. www.dialogue-web-design-edinburgh.co.uk

Nope, you can just have a regular sitemap with all of the urls. Then on the actual pages, declare the localities via the hreflang tag.

Overall, you should declare the location associations on either the pages, the sitemap, or ideally, both. The more direction you can give crawlers, the easier it would be to understand.

You can do #1 if the actual pages have the hreflang tags on them

#2 = suggested by G

#3 = most likely to index all pages and associations

I would just set the rel=canonical to the main categories. It would reduce duplicate content, send more strength to the main categories and as you said, people would probably prefer to see the full product list as opposed to just new arrivals on your site (so you don't need that to appear in search).

Although the canonical should solve the issue, try adding a ? after your url and before your variables - that is the default way variables are declared and couple help solve problems.

http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636&category_id=270&sizes=12x15,12x18&click=sizes

to

http://www.cyrusrugs.com/bridge-traditional-area-rug-item-7636**?**category_id=270&sizes=12x15,12x18&click=sizes

You should also try Sam's suggestion.. although I too don't think should make a difference.

Acquisition > All Traffic

Change "Primary Source" to "Keyword", then choose which goal you want to see conversion info for

Looked over it briefly, looks fine. Point more internal links to that page though.. currently only have them from all "fundraising supplies" categories/products. Add to blog, link from text in other categories, special offers, etc.

Remove the following line:

Disallow: */wp-content/

And add:
Allow: /wp-includes/js/

Check out these posts on blog syndication. It can be a great source of exposure for your site.

Make sure the original post on your site is already indexed first and you link back to it from any place that the post is syndicated.

1. It's treated more like a link from the same domain - because it was being gamed. Here is a video where Matt says subfolders and subdomains are pretty much equivalent. Google has special rules for .wordpress.com, .blogspot.com, etc

2. Yes, but make sure you match up the 301 redirects on the page level, not just a mass redirect to the homepage of the new domain

It shouldn't (its a hashtag anchor, not a new variable) but add a canonical url to the page anyways to avoid all duplicate content issues

Probably - I've never tracked something like this or read anything on the subject. In general, just 301 redirect from dev to live URLs and eventually the rankings will transfer. It may take a couple weeks though.

If your website is just syndicated content, it will hurt your seo.  But if you are doing your own activities and add in articles from other places around the web (which creates a beneficial user experience), it can help you get more readers and links.

I would not expect that the aggregated content would rank well on your website as it is just a duplicate from another site that deserves rankings for related keyphrases.

I know that if you stuffed the link with other keywords.. e.g. "product name, product variation, buy product online, cheap product name", then you can get an overoptimization penalty. I have not seen a case when linking with the same related, non-spammy text causes a penalty (theoretically, any page linked from a header navigation can be penalized then).

Maybe share the url so we can see?

1 install across multiple domains can be done via domain mapping - and I recommend you do that.

The cctld domains will help you rank locally and having 1 wp installation requires much less maintenance. In addition, use a plugin like WPML to easily manage multiple languages and let it handle the SEO for you (by setting up proper sitemaps and hreflang tags)

destinationbigbear.com/blog would be ideal.

You should stop posting to http://destinationbigbear.wordpress.com/ asap and put all future content onto your main site.

Does http://destinationbigbear.wordpress.com/ get any traffic? If not, i'd copy over all of the posts and 301 from old urls to new ones.

I would create the blog on your own domain and have them link to that page. That would help you rank all of the other pages on your website as well. Having it on another website won't help your rankings as much as direct links to your site.

With your thousands of guests, I would also try to streamline some way for them to leave reviews on your website as well as travel review websites. That would 1) help you rank locally 2) get you to the top of other lists/directories and attract more links to your website

a) I would load up several awesome articles from the get go. that way if a person visits your blog when you first start dripping, there is other content than just the 1-2 posts for them to view.

b) i do recommend dripping the posts... I don't believe staggering has any SEO effect. just think your potential readers and the ideal schedule for them to return to your site and convert.