Amosnet,

Where the image resides as a static file does not matter. Whether served by the CDN or your site, any image still needs to have good alt text associated with it (describe the image as opposed to 33 keywords). The CDN will probably offer some benefit (especially if you have a lot of JS or images, etc.) as it should increase page load speed. I do not know how much value is allotted, but I do know once you start going over about 5 sec. it begins to affect adwords. We try to keep all or ours to about 2 to 3 sec. max.

Best

Andrew,

I can understand that you are concerned re the bounce rate, but you are likely over-concerned where you do not need to be. The reason is no site is losing ranking to bounce rate. Yes, there is a very low amount of debate on this, but I do not see it in the day to day and I look over a lot of sites. First, with your WMT settings as you have them, Google knows where your market is.

So, to help you feel better, do this: Take a look at your non UK traffic. Is the high bounce rate coming from there? If so and if the algorithm takes it into account (it does not), then the algorithm also takes into account the bounce is from other than your proclaimed market. (The increase in BR).

Worry about  your traffic in the UK - is it up or down? Is your time on site increasing or decreasing? How many page views are you getting over time? Have you gotten your content to a place where it is not the same descriptions and images as others selling the same furniture? Then, or before, how are you converting? Are your sales good? Increasing? Decreasing?

Last question is this. Assume for whatever reason, that a crazy Yank goes to your site and sees a lovely divan he wishes to purchase and is willing to pay $1,000 to ship it to Texas... Would you let him?

Best to you,

Robert

Tim,

I am going to give you an answer that you missed:

"Ok so here is the question. A few months ago i decided to join pingler.com and pay for the service as i was using the free service, but after four months now i have not noticed any changes... "

So, what were you expecting to happen? Since you instituted this practice, how much content has changed or been added? If the answer is little or none, well why are you pinging?

In SEO, as in fitness, bodybuilding, etc. there are always 'magic' ways to improve. In about the mid 80's the craze in fitness was creatine. If you take creatine you can jump over a building in three weeks... etc. I do not know if the desire to find shortcuts is a more rooted value in the US or if it is global (yes, I have travelled, but just not sure). However, it is very apparent in all SEO and people seem to grab each item, ride it a short distance, jump off and grab another. So here is my suggestion: 
Read all on your site, check for dupes web-wide (copyscape.com), clean those up, insure your on-page SEO is in line with SEOmoz recommendations, create content and compare it to your competitor's - whose is better? If you said yours, send a copy of yours and your competitor's to three people who tell you the absolute truth; if all three say yours is better, put it up!

You can take every gimmick, black hat, gray hat, green hat (sorry can't disclose these as they are inner sanctum SEO level and above only) and creatine and I will manage: Content, answering the query, UI/UX, basic good SEO, etc. IMO there is no way you will catch me in three to six months. Yes, I mean it.

That is the best advice I can give you regarding Pingler.com

Best to you and Great Luck going forward,

Robert

Chris,

I can assure you I would not utilize snide as a communications tool with the rare exception of if I knew Tim was mean to kids or animals. So, I did use it as a tool to get him to go hmmmm? 
The reason is simply that having been at this a long time I see people with excellent intent get screwed by following some "scheme or strategy" down a road simply because they were unawares. Tim has a large celebrity news site that does well and he is not a novice to Q & A so has seen my answers before. I would hope that he understood I was not in the least using it as a put-down.

Tim, 
If it was seen as a put down, please, please forgive me.

Thanks

Robert

Rohan

This is one of my favorite topics and Matt makes great points. But, IMO there is not a right or wrong. Yes, SEOmoz has a great best practices page (see Matt's link) on this and when I look at it I always wonder as to its age or last update. (One of the reasons is that as the web expands, there are less and less .com/.net sites and it clearly says here that:

Top level domains (like .com) are the extensions associated with domain names. For best ranking results, avoid uncommon top-level domains (TLDs). Like hyphens, TLDs such as .info, .cc, .ws, and .name are spam indicators.

Here is why I question this: I do not believe that "spammy" can be quantified and I have yet to find a spammy test that was reliable. Also, I question what a spam indicator is and in the absence of any other relevant 'spam indicator' what affect it might have on ranking. Is it that Google has a spam indicator in the algorithm that absent any other evidence, devalues at some level a hyphen or a .info? I would love to see the proof.

Note: My incredulity is driven by results we achieve using hyphens as needed or .info as needed.

Today there are too many instances where hyphens are needed just to be able to figure out what it says. (Or to insure correct interpretation: expertsexchange.com is the classic in this group) Yes, if this is an EMD and if it is in a branded or common context someone who already knows of it might not use the hyphens.

But, if we are looking to capture those who are searching for something they don't yet know of, they are not typing in amityuniversity delhi with or without. They are searching for something like universities in Delhi, graphic design schools delhi, etc. They are not going to the SERPs and on finding what they want, going to the address bar and typing it in; they are clicking the link in the SERP and going to the page.

So, my rule is this: Use Hyphens to clarify a long or confusing domain/sub domain name. Use hyphens competitively if you desire an EMD where one is not available for a high impact page.

We are an agency and do a lot of sites that clients come to us with no domain name for. We use hyphens and non hyphens. I have yet to see where a hyphenated domain is negatively impacted to a level that gave me pause. I am sure based on experience that a hyphenated EMD does have more impact than a non hyphenated domain that is not exact match.

I look forward to a vigorous discussion on this oft discussed issue!

As to the how many is most (typically one or two, cant think of where we used three).

As to those of us who do this daily, I don't think we are a good group to ask because we get used to certain conventions. My experience is that we are ahead of a lot of non hyphen domains in some tough verticals. But, we really bust it with all SEO and try to be cutting edge. (May not have as much to do with hyphens, if anything).

Suspicious users. Maybe in the past. But with the growth of the last five years, I would think it is much less a factor.

With Google, I just do not believe it is a factor, but am willing to be wrong. Again, they are out there everyday and short of going to .whatever, it is easier to use exact match with hyphens at times. Now, if EMD becomes a non-issue, so will hyphens.

We are going into a new area with a client over the weekend and I went in and bought every .com, .net, .info, .org with hyphen and non hyphen today. There were two .coms and a .net missing around roughly 40 root domain permutations. I look forward to the day I can just brand the domain/sub-domain and not make a registrar rich.

Best,

All the best,

Alan,

When you say "carousel" do you mean a slider that has images that rotate through in a slideshow format? If so, they are not bad for SEO per se. Also having text below is not bad for SEO. Again, you need to realize that you are asking a question in a vacuum and if you give more data we might be able to help you decipher the problem.

The change from drupal to WP should not have a negative effect per se. A question is did the urls change? If they did, did you do 301 redirects in the .htaccess file on a url to url basis? (This is the more common problem I see with new clients who come to us with a problem after a site change.)

From a UI/UX perspective, how large is the slider relative to the page? How fast? Is there music? Etc. So, the devil is in the details. (Did you change from an IDX feed for your listings to RETS?) With a site change and rankings drop, you have to look first and foremost at what was changed and then use the process of elimination to ferret out the problem.

I hope this gives you at least a bit of insight,

Robert