Add this to your htaccess file (remove the .txt extension from the file in order to use it)

Remove index.php or index.htm/html from URL requests

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /(([^/]+/)*)index.(php|html?)\ HTTP/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/administrator
RewriteRule ^([^/]+/)*index.(html?|php)$ http://your_site_URL/$1 [R=301,L]

Obviously change the your_site_url to the your domain in   http://your_site_URL/$1

Also remove the # before RewriteEngine On to make these changes work.

Thanks for your response.

So in your opinion i am best to delete the G+ page and keep the local page?

I have seem to have a problem (well think its a problem!)

We have a google+ page for our website/ brand (which is verified) and also seem to have a separate google places G+ page (the one with just two tabs at the top.. Photos and About).

When you google our brand, google has added a google+ page link but this links to the places one and not our social g+ page.

Is it possible to merge these two pages into one?

ps i have added rel="publisher" directing to the main google+ page (not local) on the home page and the local G+ page is not verified.

Ben

Great words of wisdom from Martin!

There are one hell of a lot of designers and programmers/ developers out there that are great at what they do but have no idea about other aspects such as SEO (infact especially SEO).

If your on a budget then there will be a lot of work that you can do yourself to fix the issues, it will just take time and effort on your behalf to find them and learn how to fix the issues.  There is one hell of a lot of information and know how out there on the web .. use SEOmoz reports to identify the problems and then do the research on how to fix the issue.

I started my web business up in exactly the same way as you, and now I too am having to do the same work.. so far all done in house but soon i will have to outsource for the real fine detail.