So in this approach, you're adding additional links rather than limiting the amount of navigational links that are allowed to be followed from the homepage.

I'm one to believe that structure should be based less on link-juice goals and more on what will provide value to the user.You can use a variety of tricks to modify the flow of linkjuice, but I don't know of any tricks that modify the logic people use to find what they're looking for.

Your question can be broken into 3 parts (category depth and linkjuice distribution being closely related):

1. Max links on homepage (or any page for that matter)

It used to be said to keep it under some magical threshold (60, 80, 100, etc.), but I have researched this topic extensively and there are many people who believe the number of links is not important so long as your navigation makes sense. Since 'mega-menu' madness set in a couple years ago, I struggle to see how having 200 links on your homepage can do anything other than dilute the linkjuice and domain specificity. The idea of there being a penalty or that the bottom 'x' links are not crawled doesn't carry much weight these days.

2. Linkjuice distribution strategy

I break my strategies into 2 major approaches with the difference being the method for accomplishing link distribution.

The first approach being large sites with hundreds of categories. In this case, it is better to organize logically and then use robots.txt to control (limit) the amount of internal links pointing to your less important category pages. There are many ways to do this and I'll give you an example of one way to 'automate' it. One mega menu could be used on the homepage that points to your important categories, blocking crawling for the others. A copy of this menu that allows all links to be followed can be used on second and third level categories, so the less important categories can be indexed, yet not carry the weight of a link from the homepage. This is a over-simplified example, but you should be able to extrapolate the gist here.

The second approach, for smaller sites, is to follow UI guidelines, where the hierarchy is set without regard of category value. Then, tweak your textual links to direct linkjuice to more important categories. Again, just a simple example.

3. Category depth

You've already done your research.. users don't like to click through. However, this is the natural state of humanity, so I'd focus less on how deep you ago and concentrate on the 'user experience', where your content has more sensible categorization and more relevant connections between products-categories.  Do you want to be forced into click 7 times to reach the product you're looking for? (of course not)  So, why not make navigating to the 'deeper' products more accessible via technology (menus, parametric filters, etc) or content grouping?

Google is constantly tweaking - I do not have a single website where half of the keyword rankings don't fluctuate back and forth as you have described. Especially so are those keywords that don't exist on the first two pages.  One week we're on page 3 and then "POOF" and vice versa.

Donnie gives you the right advice. Take it and run.

Sure would.

1. Nothing lives or dies by a single link (spam or not).

2. If you have a link profile that doesn't elicit the red flag, those few links from spam-ish sites with descent authority seem to help out in my experience.

3. It's in your industry, so even a cookie-cutter 'directory' has it's place when it is highly relevant.  It's still an effective way to build links no matter what the fear-mongering SEOs say

Inquiring minds want to know: so how did it go?

Different content = smooth sailing.  Make sure that your meta content is also different and you're safe.

Have you checked the links in your homepage header? Hosting/server platform? Could you take a screenshot of your folder layout and post it?

Too bad I don't have your link profile before the drop...  maybe the previous company had some heavy-duty paid links holding you up.  I'll check back later.

Disclaimer: The site I'm referencing is not live yet, but may be relevant to this question.

Welcome to my favorite SEO topic of 2011.  I'm about 60-90 days out from debuting an SEO-friendly/AJAX faceted navigated ecommerce site and it has been a wild ride.  After doing some technical wheelies and wiping out due to unsuspected gusts of wind (sorry for being overly metaphorical), I ended up crafting a hybrid site that doesn't attempt to give the spiders access to AJAX.  Instead, we have a standard text-link navigational structure (for SEO) that is visually de-emphasized.. with AJAX as the emphasized interface (for UI).  If you succeed in an AJAX interface that offers SEO-control, I would like a spot in your dojo, sensei.

Again, if this question wasn't meant to aid you in development and you just want some examples, my apologies.

You do have a slew of spammy links, but it doesn't justify the drop that you're seeing.  I'll look a little deeper over the next couple of days and let you know if anything else jumps out at me.

Were you working with an SEO company when you noticed the drop?

I like your approach! You are doing what most will probably recommend- play it safe.  As it has been said, markets fall faster than they rise...  and you may be the victim of this.  You have a much better profile than most 1st pagers, so my initial thoughts are that you have some black magic to rinse from your site.

I'll stick my neck out for the SEOMozzers to wring and suggest that you do some due diligence on your own before hiring another SEO.  I've worked with companies that have used SEOs on both sides of the coin and am usually hesitant to pick up a project after significant "black-hat" work has been done.  The first place I'd look is at your link profile... where have they spattered your link? If this turns out to look similar to your better ranking competitor's, the issue is probably something to get an SEO involved in.  SEO consultation might be another option to consider.  Better yet, this forum is a perfect first step!

This is a complex issue because if, for example, you decide to include more informative textual content, the consequent increase in rank and traffic may not off-set the drop in conversion rate that a 'new informative' layout might result in.  That said, I think you can find creative ways to move in the direction of informative without sacrificing conversion.  You may even find conversion improving, but you'll only figure this out through experimentation. I would introduce new textual elements- articles (targeted text) to compliment your already successful homepage- and also fill in the basic 'holes' in your strategy outlined above.

A side note: fitness has a huge internet presence.  Get social and take advantage of the many bloggers who are happy to host a good colorful article or video about such 'unconventional' training.

I've never heard of canonical being used to point at another domain.  Alan's advice is the same as mine- "duplicate" the content on subdomain.domain.A.com and 301 redirect the URLs.  Alan also makes a good suggestion in implementing your 301 redirects globally rather than page by page.

This is one of the most frustrating phenomenon in SEO- you kill the competition on every level, yet your most prized keyword leaves you in 2nd.  If you're tracking your high-value keyword (and a slew of others), you will probably notice constant flux in rank for most terms, even if only by 1 position.  I wouldn't be surprised if what you're seeing is temporary.  A client of mine struggles constantly to keep the #1 position for a high-value term and, without fail, temporarily falls to as low as #3.  Sometimes that temporary lasts longer than others.  In my experience, the most effective tool for quickly returning to paradise has been keyword-rich links from moderate to high PR pages.  Sometimes, a few internal links that use the keyword/phrase in context does the trick. But, Google is getting smarter and these old tricks aren't the near guarantee that they use to be.  People are included in the algorithm now and I'm guessing you've already done this, so back to the drawing board...

The .org domain may be giving the site some footing.  What I would consider to be a much more significant factor- The competition has more on-page text, making it more informative (in a textual sense), while the ultimate site is more obviously commercial in my opinion.  I'm also suspicious of the affiliate advertising possibly carrying some weight for your competitor.

All this said, the competitor's site is much more informative and less commercially-oriented.  Obviously, changing the content will affect conversion, so weighing the pros/cons of position vs. conversion will probably have to be talked about. You can either hope that this is a temporary change that can be fixed by a good link or tackle the real problem.  Google is getting smarter, so informative webpages are creeping past their more commercial competitors.  I'd argue that 99% of the web is commercial, but what dominates your pages- persuasive advertisement or information?

Google makes semantic level query assumptions by default now- that's part of the function that allows google to suggest queries as you type.  To address your question more directly, it depends on the individual terms and whether or not Google is giving complete, partial, or no equivalence to those terms.  Non-profit and nonprofit are treated nearly the same in organic ranking- the top results are identical and the remaining results have more variance. You can experiment with this idea and you'll see some of this phenomena.

As for "concrete evidence"- you aren't going to get it.  You should study the results of your individual terms' rankings because that's exactly what Google did to weight potential results... at least, it's a part of what they did.  They have a vast army of "raters" that look into the relevance of query/results and assign a value to the search engine's success/lack of success.  In the end, a load of data is collected in various categorically-structured groups of search terms. Are they using the data attached to these unique categories to craft a more relevant set of results?  I don't know if they are, but I find it hard to believe they flush all of that expensive data down the drain just to use an umbrella algorithm to spit out all query results.

In the end, I think you'll find that worrying about the minor difference between the two is wasted time if you're looking for a concrete answer.  To avoid the pitfall, stick to a single convention on each individual page, but vary the convention from page to page.  When you search one or the other, watch how Google bolds the alternate terms in the list of results..  Compare the 1st page results of the two alternate terms..  are you seeing a pattern? With the other components of SEO on-track, it effectively won't matter at all.

That list largely depends on the type of business.  Are your customers likely to purchase your product/service again in the future?

For one of my clients, registration requirement was a no-brainer.  They offer a complex, technical product as well as support through the purchase cycle.  The amount of information needed to close a transaction was relatively large and a returning customer is a big win for this company.  Once a user is registered, it takes seconds to fill out an RFQ and receive a response that has all of the additional information that goes into providing a quote already available.

To the contrary, if you're selling healing crystals or colon-cleansing products (not that these aren't as plausible as a cosmic muffin in the sky watching our every move), you are less likely to have a return visitor and you want to get that conversion on the first visit.

If you're somewhere in the middle, there's no reason that you can't make both options available while adding some incentive to the more comprehensive RFQ form.

While I doubt you'll be unearthing a final opinion on anything here, I'll add to the chorus:  it is SEO friendly- it's javascript.  If you intend to ignore the legal implications and the load-time drawback, you're in business!

As it turns out, I feel dissatisfied in joining the chorus.  I think it's obvious that there's only one thing we can do now...

Time for a TYPOGRAPHY CAGE MATCH!

Cufón v. sIFR v. @font-face

I love these questions because they defy the laws of Google gravity!  There are many "indicators" outside of the commonly discussed you find most often in these forums.  You are on the right track in suspecting that Google takes the format of a site's content into consideration.  If a site has relevant textual content along with a variety of downloadable .doc or .pdf files with relevant titles, preference may be swayed toward the site that seems to offer the most relevant information.  Variety does matter, whether you're offering content that's supported by images, videos, outbound links, .doc documents, or .pdf documents, etc.

I also suspect that .net extension carries more weight than .ro, but there's no conclusive evidence that I can find.

Viewing the source will look different, depending on how you're getting the source into an editor.  On many CRM (wordpress, joomla, etc) the source code can display differently than it is stored on the back-end.

Luckily, spaces don't matter.  They are essentially deleted when a browser renders them.

The title and description tags must be in the section and it doesn't matter where they are within the head section .  Just make sure they don't come after the tag.

Don't worry, be happy.

Without going into the detailed components of any website transition, expect the usual drop in rank temporarily.  The new structure and content will have to be indexed again. To minimize the impact, remember why you're doing this in the first place.  If you're tidying up your SEO through the transition (and it would be silly not to), you'll be in a better position a few weeks out of the gate.

Secondly, for those businesses relying on new visitors for the lion's share of revenue, you have to rely on secondary channels.  If you haven't developed a great Adwords campaign yet, now's your opportunity.  It is almost customary for me to triple Adwords spend the first few weeks out of a transition when a client has enough history to justify a highly-targeted and tracked Adwords spend.  A series of emails to our client list is also done in concert with the 'new look'. Knowing nearly zilch about your business, mitigating the fallout is going to be tough because it necessarily relies on your alternative channels.

If your question is geared toward the details of a transition, there are tons of articles already here on SEOMoz and elsewhere on this subject.  As you probably already know from doing your research, your efforts should be focused on polishing your on-page SEO, making sure your 301 redirects are ready and functional, and doing what you can get a jumpstart on any indexing issues that Googlebot might find.

Some quick thoughts:

1. Take advantage of seomoz site crawler for issues sometime before going live- this will help detect any possible URL (duplicate) problems that are common in transition.  Don't forget about redirecting any PPC campaigns you may have.

2. Based on experience, ranking will suffer in transition, regardless of preparation.  If you spent time tightening your SEO metadata and structured your website exactly the same, you should see overall improvement after a few weeks.  How quickly you are reindexed varies from one site to another.  If you're seeing 20,000+ visitors a month, indexing should be relatively quick (that's just based off of my small statistical sample of personal experience.)

3. XML sitemap should be the current site you want to have indexed... not sure what you mean when you say you'd include the old site pages, which might lead to indexing problems no matter how you might work that out.  With luck, your 301's will feed the wounded patient until Googlebot comes to stitch everything up.

If you could document your experience, it would be really helpful.  Test and measurement = smart SEO

I would suggest the expanded menu as a static menu bar on all of your pages, but at least the top level pages.  The homepage is by far the most important for the reasons stated above- it looks like your deeper pages are getting indexed, so that's not an issue.

Then it looks like it's time to start link-building!

There are a bunch to choose from, but here's a list of some freebies that pack a big punch:

http://www.shimonsandler.com/duplicate-content-tools/

SEO and user experience would benefit from an expanded list on the homepage.  People like to see their options laid out in front of them.  It also will help PR on those individual pages that are only visible when the menu is expanded.

Measure your page rank on those second level pages, edit the homepage to display the expanded menu, wait 3 weeks and measure your rank again.  SEOMoz has a handy keyword tracking tool that would help here.

This strategy is starting to be widely adopted because it is very effective (even on large ecommerce sites with many times more category links than you have).  There is a reason that books start off with a table of content

You're swimming upstream, but it's not impossible for you to break to the top of results on your relatively broad term.  Google wants very narrowly constructed "variety" in the first few results.  Variety is interpreted within a keyword/key phrase's ambiguity (most have some amount of ambiguity).  In your example, is someone who searches "laser marking" interested in the process of laser marking, products (commercial or consumer), etc...   Google decided that they want to include the best example of each at the top.  This ideal is only partially realized, but it's a defined goal in their search quality and I think they hit it more often on broad search terms.

Your site isn't the best match in any of those cases because you offer a variety of laser-related products. Even if your site was dedicated strictly to product laser marking d'absolute, you'd be in a tough spot.  The best you can do as the algo currently exists is position 4 (epilog).

I'd also continue to work on the basics- blah, blah, blah AND inbound, keyword-rich links. Eyeballs on Epilog Dmitry.  You can do it.

The term "sterling" adds specificity to your somewhat broad search term "silver necklaces".

If you have a lot of domain authority and, thus, can compete for broad terms like "silver necklace", then choose option #3 and optimize for "silver necklaces".  (Yes, I know you didn't provide option 3).

If you don't have the authority, go with option #1 because it is more specific and, therefore, less competitive.

I'd opt out of #2 altogether.

Good luck!

Sure.

Date, location, internet, paper, marker, and tape.

Now that your question has been answered, I'd recommend that you limit your requests for advice to things a little (or a lot) more specific.  But who knows, maybe someone here will offer to post your flyers in their neighborhood...

Good luck

The purpose behind 'the schema' is to help search engines better match semantic search terms with relevant user information. Word out there is that is doesn't help in the SERPs.  See this article.  But it might and Google may have integrated it into their algo yesterday for all we know.

With it being relatively new in the search landscape and little evidence of testing out there, I'd recommend that you donate some time to the cause   It just so happens that you'll likely get your answer from doing so.  Here's how I'd do it:

1. Choose the pages you'll be measuring...  the more you use, the better the data...

2. Measure where these pages rank in your search results before making any changes.

3.. Divide those pages into thirds and apply the 'Events' schema to a third, the 'Aggregate Rating' to a third, and apply nothing to the remaining third.

4. Track and report your findings.

Obviously, there are some potential hang-ups here (ie. if you aren't ranking in the top 50 for your target keywords and are using SEOMoz to track).  After rubbing my magic 8-ball, I'm going to prophesize that you won't see a significant difference for a few reasons (or any at all).

Finally, I'd suggest that you persuade the engines to focus on the aggregate review information.  If you look around, you'll notice that reviews are being increasingly integrated as major indicators in search algos.  Events?  Not so much.

There are many issues at hand, but you get to decide which are important and which you're going to act on.  Either way, good luck!

It sounds like you're already nofollowing the links.  This will reduce the number of links on your page as the Search Engines see it, which looks to be your goal.

Assuming this is what you're aiming to do, there's no reason to hide your links.  If you don't want search engines OR users to see them, just get rid of them altogether.

When you say 'database driven', do you mean that your content is displayed via script?  If so, getting that content indexed won't be easy.  This is becoming a very common issue now that companies are going for a dazzling site rather than taking seo into consideration: http://www.brainhandles.com/techno-thoughts/does-google-index-dynamic-javascripted-content

If you are stuck with your investment on your current platform, I'd start creating static pages that target specific keywords rather than trying to get individual job pages indexed.  You could have a static page specifically about "nurse practitioner jobs".  Linking to individual opportunities would be labor intensive, but you could build a solid collection of well-targeted pages to get more impressions from organic search.

Link-building always helps, as you probably already know.

Good luck!

You can change crawl rate in Webmaster tools:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=48620

Good luck!

Root domain is shown by default.

The effectiveness of your canonical strategy would be better figured out by testing through the search engines, as they implement such 'suggestions' a variety of ways.  Here's an article that might help explain why this question is hard to answer:

http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/44947/does-mozrank-follow-canonical-and-301-correctly

I do think you're on the right track regarding the canonical strategy.  Now I recommend to do some research as to how Google is responding to this strategy.  When you search for your target terms, which version is showing in the results- www or root?

Your internal site search results do not get indexed...  it's the very process of indexing that allows you to do an internal site search.

If you have links going to websites that are also on the same C-block, you're OK if you only have a few links to those sites.  Google wants a great user experience, so give them one.  It's when your cross-linking begins to comprise a significant portion of your link inventory that you'll be in trouble.  If you want a ratio or percentage of how many links you can get away with, you'll have to throw on your tin-foil hat for an answer.  Again, because you're on the same C-block, I'd be careful, but not omit them completely because a few links to sister sites is perfectly reasonable if those sites are related (even if only because they're owned by the same entity).

Regarding the nofollow, that's a perfectly acceptable solution if you want to bulk up on your cross-linking for the user's benefit.  Kudos to your caution... you're dealing with an algorithm after all.

Are you describing a problem of semantics- different ways of saying the same location?

Are you looking for data that will help you choose the right "local" markets to pursue (demographic data)?

Are you marketing different products depending on the demographics of a location?

Either way, I know of a great tool to help you out.  It costs a little money (not much for research purposes) and it's called Google AdWords.       I get a GREAT DEAL of information from Adwords campaigns.  If you don't have any PPC experience, then I'd consider some good old-fashioned competitive research.  What are your competitors (within that geographic local) doing?  What words are they using in their copy?

Good luck!

Like most low barrier of entrance, web-based businesses, there are endless pseudo-professional "firms" and "individuals".

To get a rough estimate of licensed, established consultants and firms, try counting DMOZ entries.  It's not fool-proof, but neither is your question.  

Did this answer your question?

Here's probably the best information you're going to find on this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-places-seo-lessons-learned-from-rank-correlation-data

Was this article helpful?

Some clarification would help here.

1. Do you have a specific industry/category of keywords in which you are targeting?

2. Are you are using Google's Keyword Tool to research search term volume, but are coming up empty-handed because the local search doesn't have enough data to provide any information, as it is too specific?

3. What do you mean by incorporating geographical searches and "other keyword data"?

If question #2 is your issue, the best approach is to apply your research on those same category/product/industry keywords without the local terms inserted.  You can then extrapolate that data with mild accuracy to the local level (ie. use the global approach w/ local terms inserted)

Without server configuration, I'll take a stab at this.  I see only one potentially significant issue: Inbound links.  When someone links to the website, do you want to count on them linking  www.site.com instead of www.site.com/catalog  ?    Shorter URLs are easier to remember and they can improve the direct type-in traffic.

For navigational purposes, your server can resolve to the site homepage when the incomplete URL is entered into the browser, but a 301 redirect doesn't carry over all of the PR.

Less significant is the superfluous term in your URL.  Legend has it that shorter, simpler, more relevant keywords in your meta-data and URLs is the way to go.  Will a single additional term drop you in the SERP?  Highly unlikely.  Most ecommerce sites have to use a similar format.

If you don't have reasons of necessity, go with the short URL.  301 redirects (URL iterations 2,3,4,etc to a single URL format) should suffice for those site that have been live for some time.

Duplicate content on individual pages will affect your entire site.  My advice: fix it.  Finding a solution is possibly more simple than you might assume. At the very least, automate a title edit that provides unique titles that have relevant keywords insterted in the title string.

There is an endless assortment of articles that describe this very phenomenon, thanks to Google's Panda update(s).

Google doesn't share it's algorithm details, but there's enough observed and documented cause/effect regarding this issue to put this on your priority list.

That said, if you didn't see a drop in rankings through Panda, your duplicate to unique content ratio is probably good enough for this to drop down your list of priorities, but not off.

Looking forward to hearing about your course of action.  Good luck.

There are a few possible issues at play. The first thing you might do is look at your URL structure as you are navigating through your categories, products/SKUs.

1. If you are filtering and sorting without the URL structure changing, getting properly indexed will be your challenge.  Noindex vs.canonical is moot in this case.

2. If you are are filtering and sorting and the URL is changing with every parameter change, then you have to worry about duplicate content.  Robots.txt vs. canonical steps into the game and here's an example that I fell illustrates it best.  As you'll see, there are more ways than one and it will come down to which one is most easily done for your specific site while achieving the link structure that you desire.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-block-redirect-or-canonical

If you are using AJAX, a good xml sitemap is your lifeblood.

Good luck!

It looks like the disparity of traffic is largely due to your recent entry into the market, the primary contributor to the SEO factors already mentioned.  Many factors are at play, as usual, and here are some interesting sidenotes:

(According to Wikipedia)

The Atlanta metropolitan area, with 5,268,860 people,<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference">[4]</sup> is the third largest in the Southern United States and ranks fourth in the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered within city boundaries, behind New York City, Houston, and Dallas. Atlanta Metropolitan Area ranks as the 10th largest cybercity (high-tech center) in the US, with 126,700 high-tech jobs (tech jobs=high turnover=more home sales=internet savvy population).

Atlanta is far more dynamic in the real-estate market than Nashville

The Nashville metropolitan area = 1,600,358

Music industry professionals don't tend to move around much, especially country music industry professionals.

My opinion: with time and some SEO effort, you can reduce the traffic gap, but not close it.

Google won't index image-embedded text on a webpage (currently only .pdf documents)

If you want a little more insurance, which you won't really need, use your handy robot.txt or rel="canonical"

As usual, keep your eyes forward:

"While search engines may not use OCR for indexing the content of web pages now, that doesn’t mean that they might not in the future, and there are some indications that the search engines are developing a much greater proficiency in the use of optical character recognition."

Here's that article, including some great references.

Good luck.