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Thanks for the reply Dana.  No, a view-all page is not an option, some of the categories have over 11,000 items - so we can rule that out!

I've looked at all of the existing resources, and while all of them offer great advice, nothing touches on the subject of multiple sort options - they seem to be only for standard page 1, page 2... etc listings.

The link you provided to the YouMoz post we have read through thoroughly and they do it a little differently.  In their example, they sort the items on the current page, while our sort options would change the order of the entire category, therefore we can't use canonical... as the page content is 100% different.

We want to work with multiple sort options and wanted to know the best way to do this.

We need a bit of advice on a site we are working on.

Currently, the site displays items in the categories in order of date and all of the pages of the category listing are rel prev/next tagged correctly.

This is great, and works really well - however we want to include some more sorting options (by popularity, name, file size... etc) into the mix.

What's the best way to go about this using the correct tags?  Is it better to NOINDEX all of the sorting options and just leave the default by date listings indexed?

Also, we cannot canonical the sorted options to their counterparts because the page content would be different.

Any ideas?  Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Thank you for your replies guys.

So from your comments, I'm under the impression that it's OK to use boilerplate text that is not the company/brand name in titles. I mean, if I was to use "FSX Addon Boeing 747" then we would have over 20,000 pages with "FSX Addon" at the start of the title tag...that's okay?

From research and reading, I was under the impression to steer away from templating in a post panda/penguin world...not just in page content but titles too.

Ler me know your thoughts!

Just a quick question to hear a few opinions on page titles in a post penguin/panda world.

For example, we are working on a large downloads portal that offers Addons for games called FSX and FS2004... Page titles are currently as follows:

Concorde for FSX - Civil Aircraft Downloads
British Airways Boeing 747 for FSX - Civil Aircraft Downloads
Quants Airbus A380 for FSX - Civil Aircraft Downloads

I thought it would be beneficial to remove the boilerplate "Civil Aircraft Downloads" to stop the template effect in the titles. Yay or nay? Good idea or bad idea? Other ideas?

Also, after removing that the titles would be as follows:

British Airways Boeing 747 for FSX

We still will have "for FSX" boiler plate text...is this okay? Perhaps we should remove the "for" and just have the title as "FSX Concorde" or "Concorde FSX" -what do you guys think?

Are there any other title suggestions you guys can recommend?

Your thoughts, tips and suggestions are very much appreciated.

Thank you do your reply Dana.

The site is over 10 years old, however the URL schema was already updated just over a year ago to the URLs I mentioned above.

Before that, everything was from the root...for example:

http://domain.com/article1234.html
http://domain.com/download1234.html

From a SEO standpoint, do you think that updating the URL structure will be beneficial? I.e. is it really worth it? Are we missing out on organic traffic with the current scheme? And would it be worth changing? Or could we get on just fine without changing anything?

Thank you for your suggestions and comments.

Sorry that this post looks so messy, I'm posting from an iPad and it's not taking the line breaks from the plain text editor... I'll see if I can add some HTML breaks...

We are considering restructuring the URL scheme on one of the websites we maintain.

We have a few options.

Currently news article URLs are as follows:
http://domain.com/news/1234/article-title-name/

Download section URLs are as follows:
http://domain.com/downloads/files/1234/file-title-of-download-here/

Forum URLS:
http://forum.domain.com/forum/topic/1234/title-of-forum-topic-here/

We feel that these are a bit too long for both SEO and user experience. We want to remove as many directories from the URLs as possible.

From experience, what do you recommend changing for the example URLs above?

We have some ideas below...and we need to keep the ID in the URLs...however I know this is a little frustrating.

Some ideas we have for news articles:
http://domain.com/news/article-title-shorter-1234
http://domain.com/article-title-shorter-n1234

Some ideas for the download pages:
http://domain.com/downloads/file-title-shorter-d1234
http://domain.com/downloads/files/file-title-shorter-1234
http://domain.com/file-title-shorter-d1234

Some ideas for the forum URLs:
http://forum.domain.com/topic-title-shorter-t1234
http://forum.domain.com/topic/topic-title-shorter-1234

What do you think of these suggestions? Any other URL ideas? Recommended URL length?

The purpose of is question was to find the perfect URLs for the site we are working on; your thoughts, suggestions and tips are very much appreciated.

We have been doing some testing with additional images on a page.

For example, the page here:
http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2550/sukhoi-su-27-flanker-package-for-fsx/ 

Notice the images under the heading Images/Screenshots

After adding these images, we noticed a ranking drop for that page (-27 places) in the SERPS.

Could the large amount of images - in particular the links on the images (links to the larger versions) be causing it to dilute the value of the actual page?

Any suggestions, advice or opinions will be much appreciated.

Thank you EGOL for your reply.

You're answer is along the lines of what I was already thinking.  Have you had any experience with MTurk for getting this content written?

Could you provide me an example of one of your 200 word image and 1000 word image pages?  I just want to take a look to see how you've gone about writing relevant copy for an image.

It did cross my mind to NOINDEX these pages, but you're right - investing time in the content would be much more valuable in the long run - it's just that there are over 9,000 pages to get this content written for!

Thank you again for your reply.

I'm currently working on a website that has a video, image and media gallery with over 9,000 items.

The gallery can be found here:
http://flyawaysimulation.com/images/16/microsoft-flight-simulator-x/

Every image has a page of its own.  Therefore, essentially 9,000 pages of very thin content, especially the image pages with no UGC comments.

Does anyone here have any tips to "panda-proof" these pages?  The images still need to be indexed.  What can we do here?

The site also hosts videos, which of course the page the video resides on needs to stay in the index too (like youtube).  Example of the video page here:

http://flyawaysimulation.com/images/media/9371/fsps-3d-real-cockpit-effect-for-fsx/

Really want to hear your thoughts.

Thanks in advance!

After posting this topic, we found that including all of the comments on the same page helped with long tail queries and alike. We haven't implemented pagination with the comments though, I think the most we have on one page is around 120 reasonably lengthy comments. I would add pagination for anything longer than that - you could use the REL=next and REL=previous tags on these pages to ensure that the engines group the pages together so they know they are the same piece of content. I hope this helps! Let us know what you decide.

I'm doing some work on http://flyawaysimulation.com/ and would like some tips to avoid keyword stuffing for the term "flight simulator" on this page.

Currently, there are about 42 occurrences of the term "flight simulator" on this page - which is above the SEOmoz 15 term recommended limit.

However, looking at the page - they have used the term fairly and it doesn't appear that "inappropriate".

Could you guys have a look and let me know your thoughts?  What can be done?  Where can the repetitions be removed from without hurting internal SEO?

Also, from an SEO standpoint how could we improve the site menu?  For example, if  the word "downloads" were removed from the Downloads-->FSX Downloads, FS2004 Downloads, X-Plane Downloads menu (for example just FSX, FS2004, X-Plane) to remove repetition of the phrase - would engines understand that those are "Downloads" because of it being under the "Downloads" drop down list?

Your thoughts, suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your reply.  I think you may have misunderstood my question a little.  I was asking if...

This tag:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">

is the same as this tag:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">

?

Currently we employ this tag on pages we want to keep out of the index but want link juice to flow through them:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">

Is the tag above the same as:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,FOLLOW">

Or should we be specifying the "FOLLOW" in our tag?

Would there be any benefit or penalty for implementing a links directory with over 300 external links to websites that somtimes return the link? Or would it be more beneficial to simply ask for one way inbound links when gaining links? For example this section of this website: http://directory.flyawaysimulation.com/ This is their directory and most but not all of the sites in that directory link back to them. Your ideas, thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your responses guys.

I was also asking if there would be any SEO benefit of "DO-FOLLOWING" the links?  I.E. Google noticing that the page content doesn't include any NOFOLLOW links?

Most, if not all of the links are to legitamate aviation related websites.

We run a busy aviation website, with lots of members who post external links within our forum.  Currently, we implement NOFOLLOW tags on all external links or links to external sites not in our domain portfolio.

Would we benefit from removing the NOFOLLOW attribute?  Would we benefit from keeping it?

Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Would it be beneficial to NOINDEX category listing pages except for the first page.  For example on this site:

http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/101/fsx-missions/

Has lots of pages such as Page 2, Page 3, Page 4... etc:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aflyawaysimulation.com+fsx+missions

Would there be any SEO benefit of NOINDEX on these pages?  Of course, FOLLOW is default, so links would still be followed and juice applied.

Your thoughts and suggestions are much appreciated.

The question is in the title: Should HTML Heading Tags ALWAYS be in Hierarchical Order?

For example, using them in order: H1, H2, H3... etc.

Or is it OK to have H2 tags before the main H1 tag on a page? - for example sidebar content with H2 headings before the main content H1 tag?

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for that reply.  What about paginated META Description tags?  Remove them completely?

Thank you for your responses.

I think 30 is a reasonable number as we currently have 15 per page.

Also, for the numbered pages - what would be preferred titles:

"Page Title (Page 2)"

or

"Page 2 for Page Title"

When optimizing a forum topic page for SEO, would it be better to have a higher number of posts per page than seperating the topic up into multiple pages?

For example, out of the box a forum may display 15 posts per topic page - would there be any SEO benifit in changing that number to say 30 posts per page?  I.e. more content per page and decreasing unnecessary "page 2, page 3, page 4"... etc.

Your thoughts and comments are most appreciated.

In SEO terms, what would be the best method: High number of items per page or low number with more pages?

For example, this category listing here:

http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/90/fsx-civil-aircraft/

It has 10 items per page.  Would there be any benefit of changing a listing like that to 20 items in order to decrease the number of pages in the category?

Also, what other ways could you increase the SEO of category listings like that?

Could profanity such as swear words or cursing decrease the trust Google has in a website?  For example, abusive comments... etc?  I'm not talking about the SafeSearch filter, I'm talking about the overall trust of the website.

Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

What would be the best SEO META Description tag for forum topics on a forum type website?

I can think of a few options so far

1. Snippet of first post.
2. Title of the topic with templated trailing text
3. Remove description tag completely

Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

We are considering expanding our site navigation menu (horizontal) at the top of our pages.  However, once implemented, this would include around 30-40 links at the top of the page; before the content of the page.

How much effect (good/bad) would this have on SEO?

Are their any other options? (perhaps rendering the menu after the main content with CSS)?

Any thoughts, suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Can including advertising slots at the top and side of pages have a negative effect on SEO?

Can Google detect these advertising slots?  Can they work our advertising pixels to page content pixels ratio?

Any ideas, suggestions, comments and opinions are greatly appreciated!

In the eyes of Google, would the font text size of say a news article affect SEO?  For example, a slightly larger font being easier to read by those with bad eyes?  Accessibility?  If so, what size would be ideal? 10, 12, 14?

Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

If for example on a discussion forum, what would be the best way to stop pages such as the posting page (where a user posts a topic or message) from being indexed AND not diluting PageRank too? If we added them to the Disallow on robots.txt, would pagerank still flow through the links to those blocked pages or would it stay concentrated on the linking page? Your ideas and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

With the latest Google updates in both cracking down on useless pages and concentrating on high quality content, would it be beneficial to include user posted comments on the same page as the content or a separate page? Having a separate page with enough comments on it would he worth warranting, especially as extra pages add extra pagerank but would it be better to include them with the original article/post? Your ideas and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Any ideas and suggestions guys?

I.e...what we would like to do is "break free" from the UK Whois and server ip location flags.

Thanks for the response. Ok say we wanted to target all English speaking countries with a slight focus on the US search market and we had a UK ip address and UK Whois contact details...would the best setting be "unlisted" or to not specify at all?

What if we published an address in the UK as the contact/WHOIS details but wanted to target the USA market? The server resides in the UK, the domain WHOIS resides in the UK - but what are the best methods to target the US search market?  The domain is a .com domain.

The question is in the title: Does publishing your physical company address increase your Google Trust?

I.e. on the contact page of the website, providing a physical address.  The address would match the WHOIS entry for the domain, and allow customers to contact you via post.

One of the category has over 65 pages.  You're suggesting writing something unique for each page?  It can be done...

Fellows,

We are deciding whether we should include our category description on all pages of the category listing - for example; page 1, page 2, page 3...

The category description is currently a few paragraphs of text that sits on page 1 of the category only at present.  It also includes an image (linked to a large version of it) with appropriate ALT text.

Would we benefit from including this introductory text on the rest of the pages in the category?  Or should we leave it on the first page only?  Would it flag up duplicate signals?

Ideas please!

Thanks.

OK, so I have taken it upon myself to now have our URLs as follows:

/news/853/free-flight-simulator/

Anything else gets 301'd to the correct URL.  /news/853/free-flight-simulator would be 301'd to /news/853/free-flight-simulator/ along with /news/853/free-flight-sifsfsdfdsfmulator/ ... etc.

Also, trailing slash?  Or no trailing slash?

Without

/downloads/878/fsx-concorde

With

/downloads/878/fsx-concorde/

Dear Theo,

Thank you for your response - i found your article very interesting.

So, just to clarify - in our case, the best URL method would be:

/images/aosta-valley/6816/
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
/forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/

This would remove the suffixes and also have the ID numbers at the end; placing the target keywords closer to the root of the URL; which makes a very slight difference...

EDIT: Upon thinking about it, I feel that the final keyword-targeted page would be more natural if it appeared at the end of the URL.  For example: /images/6816/aosta-valley/ (like you have done on your blog).

Also, should I limit the amount of hyphenated words in the URL?  For example in your blog, you have /does-adding-a-suffix-to-my-urls-affect-my-seo/ - perhaps it would be more concentrated and less spammy as /adding-suffix-urls-affect-seo/ ?

Let me know your thoughts.

Thank you for your help!

We have thousands of pages on our website; news articles, forum topics, download pages... etc - and at present they all reside in the root of the domain /.

For example:

/aosta-valley-i6816.html
/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html

We are considering moving over to a new URL system where we use directories.  For example, the above URLs would be the following:

/images/aosta-valley-i6816.html
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
/forums/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html

Would we have any benefit in using directories for SEO purposes?  Would our current system perhaps mean too many files in the root / flagging as spammy?  Would it be even better to use the following system which removes file endings completely and suggests each page is a directory:

/images/aosta-valley/6816/
/downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
/forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/

If so, what would be better: /images/aosta-valley/6816/ or /images/6816/aosta-valley/

Just looking for some clarity to our problem!

Thank you for your help guys!