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ccgdm

You can redirect the traffic based on IP address of the traffic coming in so long as the googlebot is seeing the same redirection. This is from GWMT on geolocation and IP delivery. Otherwise you are cloaking in the eyes of Google:

IP delivery: Serving targeted/different content to users based on their IP address, often because the IP address provides geographic information. Because IP delivery can be viewed as a specific type of geolocation, similar rules apply. Googlebot should see the same content a typical user from the same IP address would see. (Bold is mine).

There are a ton of scripts on the web for doing this depending on your situation.

Best

Nancy

** I want to add a 'cool' way for the user to display the pictures **

So, you want a method for site visitors or customers to display their travel pics?

If so, the first question is how are you building the site? Are you using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, etc.? Are you having it built online by one of the canned website companies?

If you are using a CMS, I would suggest going to the plugins for that particular CMS and seeing what is available (WP has PhotoSmash, etc - Joomla has RS Gallery 2). Note that you need to research this a bit and be clear on what you want or don't want.

As to the SEO stand point, there are various ways you can work with JQuery, AJAX and still maintain SEO (I won't go into each as that would be a bit). You need to decide on one and then follow up with questions around it. (JQuery slider and maintaining seo for example.) I think if you use a CMS, you will find a good solution that is SEO friendly.

As to the images and amount per page, etc. here is what I would say. First, travel site: try to categorize the images by geography. Make sure each image has a way to put in alt text and give the user a good description of what it is, why they need it, and how to develop good alt text. So a given page would be travels to Costa Rica - this allows users to post pics from their recent trip there. By keeping it geo located, you will keep your keywords around Travel and Costa Rica. (You could sub into Diving, Volcanoe exploring, Rain Forests, etc.

You can then have good title tag, url, H1, H2 meta descrip, etc. With your images try to insure they are geo tagged and consider a way of using Schema as this will put you in the forefront.

Hope this helps you out,

Edit: Nancy I totally forgot to put in that you should also have a mechanism for GeoTagging by the user as that will be huge in a travel site. Let us know how it works out.

As to question one, I believe it is force of habit. That is how they always did it.

As to question 2, Your issue with Burfieldcreative is that you have it 301'd to the JamesBurfield.co.uk. By virtue of that it has no links and will not have any links. Both the www and the non www of burfieldcreative.co.uk are 301'd to the old site. There is no value in either of the new domains at this moment. If they had a link, they would be passing the juice to the old site due to the 301's.

I think you are putting too much into BurfieldCreative vs JamesBurfield issue. If, your issue is you are already branded as Burfield Creative or you are going to put a lot of time, money, and other resources into BurfieldCreative being your brand, then you should stop and do this: Set the www.JamesBurfield.co.uk and the non www of same to 301to the new URL TO URL in the .htaccess file. If you do this any other way you are going to lose something that is hard to regain. You must be clear as to what you are doing. Do not proceed until you are. Once you switch, you are going to lose some of your links and some of your authority (up to ten percent). Be sure that is where you want to go. Remember you can put BurfieldCreative.co.uk all over and few will realize they landed on JamesBurfield. So, be sure it is  a necessary change.

You are a web design firm and you are doing well with domain and page Authority. If you screw this up you are going to hate yourself and it will take a lot of ale/beer/wine/whiskey, etc. to make you not feel it. Trust me PLEASE.

Everything in my body is saying leave it as you have it and set the preferred as explained before. But, there are other mozzers who might interject here.

Best

I found your post interesting, but I have had a different experience this week in that several sites that we have been nurturing moved up a significant amount page 4 to page 2, several moved up over a dozen positions. Hope that means we have been doing a good job and not that Google knocked some others around.

I was pondering your very issue re older domains and expiring domains over the last couple of days. I have not seen an expiring domain lose ranking before. (Hopefully, we never will as that is the last thing I need. A registrar with one more reason to send me another expiration notice - you ignored our last 300 emails that started two years before your domain expired.....do you really want to lose DA???? Contact us NOW!)

But, the question regarding what to do with a domain that is "unused" is interesting. We typically buy most extensions for any TLD and those are built around several keyword groups as we begin to develop a campaign. So, assuming we are building a group of sites around a new dental paint that never has to be whitened...... Dental-paint.com, .net, .org, .info, etc. along with Never-whiten-with-dental-paint.org, .com, .net, .info, etc.

From these, our clients will typically use 3 or 4 so there are a group that are left. Maybe, never used before. I will sometimes let an intern build a site as a project for their degree, etc. Rarely do they end up with any real DA.

As to the white/grey/black hat issues, for me it always seems to be around expediency. Personally, I have always wanted what I want, when I want it and I always want it now or yesterday!!! So, I can either opt for the expedient and hope my client doesn't pay the price or endeavor to take the high road. My personal opinion is that one person saying something is wrong does not make it so. So, I try to measure my actions against how I feel when I see others doing something similar.

I hate it when I see so many sites with links, for example for urologists that com from caps-or us, honkytonkyjonky, expotexto, monkeymania, etc. I read about Google penalizing people but then see that the vast majority of links used on professional practice sites are so bogus that ....well they are.

What's an SEO marketer to do. For me, I just don't have time to deal with the junk directories and I have learned that some of them will get to me anyway. I watch as big directories of national companies take money from their clients then put nofollow links to the sites. (Can't wait until there is some sort of exclusion for a site that is simply a lawyer, doctor, dentist, carpenter, etc. directory - when I want a dentist for an implant I do not want to be served up Yahoo.local.dentist from some other place or specialty. )

So, I am submitting to the better directories then pushing clients to go to vendors, etc. for links and we do all that we can to blog, PR Web, etc.

Personally, there is satisfaction at the end of the day in knowing we "Out-optimized the other guy and we did it on the up and up with quality site metrics, quality links, thought out keyword and link strategies, and a commitment to look at it every day in order to keep the client on top or moving toward the top."

And one last thing. We stayed on top of our game because we are connected to such a great group of marketing pros through SEOmoz. Sorry for the sentimentality, but I never cease to be amazed at the willingness to help one another get better and better and better.

Thanks for a thought provoking question,

Corey,

Got to give you props on the info and the post. I had not seen it before and now am glad I came to Q&A tonight. Excellent info.

Good CMS advice (if you gotta fix, don't recreate it). Super advice on the canonical.

Boodreaux, given your experience level, if you are not using a CMS like WP or Joomla, make sure your developer understands the custom coding and the various permutations.

Best to both.

Vijay

First and most importantly is you have a huge problem with page load times. Huge. 
In YSlow you are grading out at a D. I have attached an image as the problems are too numerous to list. Your issue is because on home page you are close to timing out and on others you are not resolving at all. As I ran test, it was taking your Vimeo feed a loooonnnngggg time in the test. Don't know if that is part of problem or not. 
Given the issues and the title tags, etc. I don't see how you were ranking that highly. With a page load time of at least 10 seconds, you are not going to rank.

You need to add expires headers, need to move java script to the bottom of page, need a CDN, need to get rid of all the cookies, etc.

Even after the site was cached on my machine (new macpro 17 with solid state drive, 16 gigs of sdram, etc) it took over 8 seconds to load. This is the problem.

Keri had a great suggestion with checking in the main browsers for compatibility. I noticed in Chrome the video got to where it was hesitating a lot but not in firefox.

Another thought is since this in on a WP platform, did you by any chance change anything in the coding on the theme? Can't think of other reasons for page load problem and the absence of pages all together. I know that the only url I got to resolve was the home page.

Hope it helps.

rGlRy.png

Shara, 
I think I followed you, but you need to understand what you are doing here so I will be a bit more in depth:

For the above url : http://www.confectionsbysharaspaperie.com/products/personalized-gifts/orange-yellow-and-gray-funky-floral-personalized-phone-case-spcase59

You have a title tag that is 93 characters long, set up for a search on orange, yellow, and gray funky floral monogrammed I Phone Case. Now, the good news is you will rank first on this search. The bad news is no one searches for this. So, with every variation you have one more non searched title tag keyword phrase.

when you look at what people search on, you see that there are over a half million searches per month in US on I Phone Case, 12,000 on Custom I Phone Case, and 9000 on personalized I phone case. Zero on monogrammed and on all additional variants you are using like custom monogrammed, custom personalized, etc.

So, your title tags need to be around these searched keywords. Adding the blue red double striped, etc. does not assist you. Get them to the site first and then easily get them to the types. That said your meta descriptions should sell not describe. This is what makes a person click to go to your site: Custom I Phone cases in many styles never seen before. Personalized, inexpensive, overnight shipping 800-123-4567. (Find variations for every page).

Now back to duped content: Your duplicate content is caused by using a page for every design and color variant. You need to break them down into say Mod designs, contemp. designs, solid color, etc. Then, when someone goes to that page they see the pics that do not become new urls. I will have my Drupal dev look at it tomorrow, but I know there are some smarter eComm drupal devs than me on moz.

All of your content with the exception of the long design keyword phrase is EXACTLY the same:

This tone on tone red circular pattern on the personalized phone case offers tough protection while looking fabulous!  For your iPhone a silicone skin surrounds your phone completely, absorbing all impact and shock. Wrapped around the skin is a tough, ABS plastic shell, which completely secures your iPhone and adds another level of protection. For the Blackberry, Samsung Galaxy S phones and iTouches we offer the tough hard to break plastic. Each case is designed and heat printed so there is no fading or rubbing off.  Love things that are personalized and have an iPad?  Take a look at our personalized or monogrammed iPad folio cases.

You can replace tone on tone red circular pattern with any of these:

trendy, colorful swirl design or trendy color block diagonal stripes or etc.

lastly, your H1's are all starting off with Confections by Shara's Paperie and then the trendy, colorful,,,,,,, Sorry, you are just hurting yourself with all of this. The H1 has a role in the algorithm and unless people are searching on Shara's Paperie at a rate that I am just oblivious to, and we know they are not searching on trendy, striped, vertical, tango ....., then these are bad. Having them all be identical (essentially) is killing you.

So, you have your work cut out for you and you need to understand that there are NO Shortcuts. Whoever built the site put everything in for their ease as opposed to for SEO purposes. Now the work seems to be falling on you.

Lastly, I handle a printing client (very large format) and am aware you can put a picture onto vinyl, etc for putting on anything. I do not notice anything like that with your cases. Have you ever thought of that? I think it would be a seller if I could upload a photo to your site on a predetermined template (for accurate sizing and alignment to case) and have that as my case pic.

Best to you,

PRWeb is owned by Vocus (think Buffet). We are an agency and gave a lot of consideration to using them recently. We had several clients that we felt might be able to benefit. My main issue was in them wanting to get a big check up front and then wanting to tell us when we could send out a release. They tout that they know everything about SEO and that it is proprietary, but based on what I found I find that a gross stretch. So, do not go into it thinking they are doing SEO, I do not think they got it much more than being able to spell it.

With PRnewswire, they got a bit hit by most recent Panda iteration. Most will say that both companies are pretty close and from what we saw they are. I think one thing you must do is insure you are writing something truly newsworthy. 
We see a lot of attorneys use these resources and simply throw their name on regurgitated content. I just don't think it helps.
So, if you go with one of them or with Marketwire, be sure you write quality releases that people will want to read.

Hope it helps a little.

Ewan,

I would remove the 301 on a very simple premise: the previous domain had (based on you stating it was penalized) a lot of poor links. If that is true, why would you want to even go down that road to try to bring juice that likely does not exist any longer? Also, was the "penalty" a manual or algorithmic? Was it based on a date of inception for something like Panda, Penguin, or an update of same?

But, even though I would remove the 301, you cannot draw a correlation that a new domain: example.co.uk is ranking poorly due to the 301's from the .com. That is correlation equalling causation and, typically, it does not. First, what additional quality links are now coming to new domain that are independent of the 301 coming in? Second, is on-page, KW analysis, etc. for new domain all as it should be or did previous SEO miss on any of that? If it is possible for localization there with the domain, when new domain was created did someone make changes to local, citation sites, etc.? Is there a change from previous social such that the social now resolves to the new domain.

There are many questions here, but I think I would be remiss to claim that taking the 301 off would cause some rise in rankings. It is more likely that other factors will have a larger impact. Note, given you still need to redirect to the new site, you could use a 302 (temporary) redirect to prevent juice passing. You could use a meta refresh but that is a bit slow to most and not really recommended. There are other redirects and I would be interested to see what others suggest as a way to redirect while preserving the "autonomy" of the new domain. My first thought is still the 302. On a certain level, you could continue to attempt removal and mitigation of poor links to old site while you keep new up. Ryan Kent  does a lot more with link removal I believe. If the site is of particular value in customers/revenue, etc. you might PM him. If you do a site search on him here, you will find several links to answers on link removal/penalty removal.

I hope this helps you out,

Robert

Capitol Shine,

Great question and you are asking it at the right time...before you build the site. I like your question about comparing the ranking of websites in their portfolio but would suggest you not use that as an end all. Here is why. I am working on my wife's real estate site. She has about 15 communities in Houston that are important on her site, but we put our content efforts into five. She kills for those, but the others are all over the place depending on the term used. That is the other issue - do you know what their client wanted to rank for? So, look at their on page if they tout SEO. Do they have duplicate meta descriptions or no meta descriptions at all? Do they have a bunch of 404's? Have they taken care of the www.mysite.com vs. mysite.com with the canonical and domain preference in GWMT?

Now, I prefer web developers vs. web designers (Please no one take offense). By this I mean someone who can design from the stand point of understanding architecture, some SEO, coding, and can find ways to stretch themselves and not do what everyone else does. If the sites are all template looking, well, they are template looking. I like to give a client something more. You want someone who is proficient in Adobe beyond photoshop. You want someone who understands how to use code to make things happen that the rest of the world has not caught up with yet. You can also ask them  how they are using Schema today to improve the outcomes of their clients. (That will suggest how well they are at keeping up.)

Lastly, and most important of all. PLEASE Read and Re-read: Find out how they approach the building of the website. (But don't ask that question.) Are they telling you a lot about what you will need to do? Are they telling you that if you do not have the content they will not start building? Are they telling you that they will not work with another developer? Do they have a website with a questionnaire on it or a way of gathering data about what you might like? These are things they should be doing and things they should have. Here is why:

Most people start building the website while they are designing it. When you do this, things will change at the design and development level and inevitably stall the project. The way to approach a website build is to know what you want to accomplish first. Be clear on what features are important to you. Be clear on what look your potential clients will want and that the dev/design team can do that.

If you put the design phase with the build phase you will not get the kind of site that it appears you want. Find someone that will tell you, "This is how we do it; we will work with you in our framework."

Lastly, ask if you can speak with their last three customers... You will learn a lot.

Good question, looking forward to the site,

Robert

David

I think what you are referring to is HTML sitemaps vs XML Sitemaps and the inclusion of both. Google prefers XML and people use HTML : From GWMT -

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, Including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

I agree with the others, that an HTML sitemap can be helpful to visitors. For indexing, we use XML.

Best

Clovis

You state:** However, we are having serious problems with my hosting service and the site is unavailable for more than 15 hours.**

Do you have a plan to have the site back up shortly? Next few days even?

** I wonder if this kind of instability can cause some punishment on Google**

Assuming it is not a regular occurrence and the site will be back up in the next day or two even, I do not believe it will be a problem with Google. One thing you could do as soon as it is back up is request to have it reindexed in GWMT. That just gets anything that may have been missed addressed.

I don't understand when you say **Unfortunately we also have no provision for him to return to work. **

Are you meaning the server or an employee who in some way has caused the problem? Again, everything will center around your timetable with getting the site back up. If you can fill in some of the details it will help mozzers in assisting you.

best

EGOL,

This is a great add. Jason, please read what EGOL has here as it elucidates what I should have spelled out along with talking with the client. My point in talking with them was to discover how these keywords convert for them and the impact that has on their business.

Egol, thanks again.

We are considering taking a candidate for office on as a client. The run would be for a state office in the U.S. by someone who is involved in politics/government but not currently an elected official. The candidacy would not be for a couple of years and the exploratory committee approached us asking if we would take on. Sooo, decision time.

First, yes I like the candidate (as much as I like business I could not do it otherwise).

Next, candidate has no real public persona other than FB, LinkedIn, etc. Our approach is to shut all down all social first - to prevent anything that is harmless from being manipulated - and then revise to a political run. Also to create a site for candidate that is not necessarily a political one that could gain some DA, PA over time as the candidate begins to put out opinion pieces, etc. around their beliefs in what is workable/needed.

We would maintain the site utilizing SEO until the announcement to run is made and then have a full political candidacy site go live with 301's from old site. Obviously, I am not at liberty to say names, etc. and some of our strategy specifics must be kept confidential as well. I would be interested in your opinions and thoughts on the approach and also if someone has handled SEO/SEM politically and has insight as to whether I should act like I am in the movies and ... RUN FORREST RUN!!!

Thanks,

Maureen

First given that the "strapline" or, as we call it in the states the tagline, is in the footer you can say it likely will have little impact positive or negative. (Google knows what a footer is - links there are discounted). Secondarily the address on every page is a plus in my opinion from a local SEO point of view. 
As to SEO classes and using same keywords on each page, think of it this way: A site selling auto parts is going to have a hard time not having the word auto on nearly every page but what pages rank for will be the individual types of parts.

Since Family Law is the core competency of the firm, I would leave it for that reason too. Simply put, not everything on a page can be SEO driven, unless you realize that a given message and quality content are, ultimately, SEO. So, keep the strap line and give it a go.

Best

PS As part of my ongoing quest to improve open source development...please ask your design firm if they used any open source plugins and if they contributed to them. Let's keep open source Open.

Rmedlin04

My opinion is that you should decide based on the amount of time/effort/$ you must expend versus what they do for you. I think when you have links from relevant sites it improves your site and chances for additional traffic. Too often we are out looking for the PA 60+ sites that we can get for the juice without thought to whether or not there is a fit. 
That is due not just to "gaming" the system, but the reality that we all need to rank above our competitors and the current algorithm(s) require it.
I would still go after the relevant links based on the resource allocation question being one I could live with.

Best

Mandi,

I think you are meaning redirected as opposed to proxied. (Canonical in this case - from GWMT)

Two ways:

• Add a rel="canonical" link to the  section of the non-canonical version of each HTML page.

  To specify a canonical link to the page http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish, create a element as follows:

  Copy this link into the  section of all non-canonical versions of the page, such as http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish&sort=price.

  If you publish content on both http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish and https://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish, you can specify the canonical version of the page. Create the  element:

  Add this link to the  section of https://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish.

• **Indicate the canonical version of a URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header.**Adding rel="canonical" to the head section of a page is useful for HTML content, but it can't be used for PDFs and other file types indexed by Google Web Search. In these cases you can indicate a canonical URL by responding with the Link rel="canonical" HTTP header, like this (note that to use this option, you'll need to be able to configure your server):

Hope this helps,

Robert

One thing Brian that might clarify for all is that the candidate cannot announce prior to a certain date within the next 6 months. That was the reason for the somewhat understated site prior to the official launch.

As I go forward, I will PM you.

Thanks,

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

Ryan, as usual you and EGOL do a masterful job here. I do want to add one thing though: While Ken and Adam may have never heard of you, I have. This was an attempt at getting links by a couple of pikers. Sorry, that's how I see it. Frankly, I think:

THE UNINFORMED POSTING STUPID BLOGS TO OLD MEDIA SITES FOR LINKS IS DEAD!!!

Was tempted to link to something here.....

Brett,

Your question is "How do they affect SEO?" Simply put, they can sometimes increase the speed with which a site loads, but there are caveats. Seeing all your questions around site speed, I would suggest trying this link to Yahoo (comes from YSlow)

So, if the site is too slow, beyond user experience issues (which to me are the bigger issues usually around a slow site) you can cost yourself in PPC and, IMO if UX issues are significant, SEO ranking.

Hope this helps,

Great stuff, we will talk soon Brian. I am looking forward to it.

Best

Fuad,

What I see is 30 pixel padding. I see the bullet, but do not believe it is an issue. It is still showing as an H1 in code and on mozbar. 
In your Joomla settings, look at global and see if there is something set on your particular theme causing this if it concerns you.

Hope that helps

EGOL,

As to forbes and you doing the SEO: I have sent them a letter telling them they would!

Matt,

This info from google doesn't have anything to do with duplicate content.

The first one is about title tags and even that says they (Google) may try to improve the title. Nothing about the meta.

The second is from a Google forum in 2008 and says to first check dmoz to see if the meta is appearing there.  If you just say, hey use noodp, noydir, you are making an assumption that is problematic.

The third where you have John Mueller, it is again about Titles and not using keyword stuffing.

Here is the issue Matt: When you state something like that (and I have made the same mistake) and leave a lot out, someone who doesn't do this day to day, assumes something that is simply not true. Frankly, I know of no instance where duplicate content has caused a SERP snippet to change.

Yes, you can use noodp, noydir, but you need to explain why and not say its because of duplicate content. The snippet he gives says "Provides a range of web design and print design services."  If you put that search on Google.com.au, there is no duplicate content issue.

Yes, that does appear on dmoz, not on Yahoo Directory. But, it also appears on several directory type sites. Will using noodp keep it from happening? Only if that is the source.

So, I have thumbed you up for the courtesy of a reply to me (evens out the thumb down). Thanks for the reply and, feel free to let me know if I stray or if you believe something here is incorrect. I am open to being wrong and having it pointed out.

All the best,

Robert

For me I would use the .com vs .me.uk.

As to the hyphen, if 100 people respond, it will be roughly 50/50. I use both and never have seen a problem. If I were doing a domain like englishroserestaurant, I would use hyphens. Yes, I would. Its just easier to read and remember, IMO.

As to EMD's unless someone is searching for this exact restaurant, its not an EMD (at least one that anyone is looking for).

Best

The first thing you want to do is go into Yelp and claim your business. Make sure that you put as much info (don't go crazy with a ton of categories, etc. keep it simple) as is pertinent. Name of business, location, phone, hours, information, etc.

Then, it is about getting reviews, etc. If you have clients who will go in and do this, ask them to.

Hope it helps,

PS After you do this, within a few days they will call to sell you advertising. We don't handle any clients it makes sense for (since it is based on impressions, etc) so we do not recommend it. If we were handling a restaurant it would interest me.

Hope it helps

Hello Luke,

I would approach it like this. FIrst, ask the question: What is the best way to maximize the locations I want given I am between two distinct geographic areas? If you want to insure you are hitting both, what is at your disposal?

For Google + you will have the choice of one or the other and I go with which is most important first. Then, mention the other. In search, someone searching for city A is going to pull geographically (given all other things are equal) from city center point out. If you are center of city A that is great, if you are halfway out, you will be in the search, etc. But, then make sure you have other indicators like your title tags. If each city is important I would have two pages (one on each city with differing content). That is better than a single page of content and title tags as you have them.

If, your only other option is to use the title tags with both, keep them at 70 characters and have a go at it. You won't hurt anything, but it is not the highest value approach.

Hope this helps you out,

Robert

Bobrock4

First, you need to 301 url to url as a best practice. Second, you need to understand that the more difficult issue is you changed domain name and that may cause Google, etc. to take a little longer to credit the 301 (due to bad practices in the past). That said, there is a great resource on moz that considers whether you are on a LAMP stack or microsoft, etc.

The link is in Learn SEO  and is better than just giving you a rewrite rule as it will allow you to comprehend what is happening and why.

I hope you find this helpful.

Robert

Pulsesol

As to the first question (are they OK)- They are just keywords/phrases essentially. If you believe that is the way to improve your lot with this portion of on site, I guess they are OK. But, they are pretty much spammy titles IMHO.

So, the way to change that is to follow a bit of convention as opposed to seeing what you can get in the 65-70 characters:
Let's say your site is Cool Online Pharmacy then for Cat Skin Care I would have a title tag like this:

Discounted Skincare Products for Cats | Cool Online Pharmacy (I do not believe there is a need for the word buy, but will get some disagreement on that I am sure)

Then: For Nebulisers     Nebulisers | Discount Nebulisers | Cool Online Pharmacy

I don't think based on title tag alone that you would face a penalty doing these the way you have them. I do think that they look terrible and people will see them as poorly done. By having the brand second after the pipe ( | ) you are branding the site and at the same time insuring your keywords are first.

Best

Edit: You do not need UK in the title tag if site is a ccTLD, if GWMT is set to EN - UK, or if server is in UK. (You need to follow one of these anyway so you do not need UK in title)

Hello Robert,

I will give you a method here that may assist you on the reindex side:

In GWMT go to Health> Fetch as Googlebot

In the url space following the initial domain, put an offending page and then click Fetch

It usually takes less than 5 seconds and you will see "success" with a green check mark followed by a button for Submit to Index. (Given the situation, I highly urge you to click it!

Note: If the entire site is affected, you will want to use URL and Linked pages on submission (you only get ten of these per month) and if not, just that url. (You get 500 Fetches a month).

This should help get you indexed more rapidly. PLEASE do not tell anyone as it is a secret!!

Good Luck,

Robert

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

You can see how many pages google has indexed in GWMT. Log in, Under Dashboard, click on Optimization and then on Sitemaps. It will show you how many pages submitted and how many indexed.

Best

Robert,

I am trying to help so please do not take this as being affrontive. You are talking of a site as opposed to a page. What is ranked is a page; are you seeing each page slowly dropping or are you seeing the home page drop and referring to that as the site dropping?

If it is the homepage that is at issue, for what keywords are you having an issue? I am curious as to "took a hit with Panda," and what you saw that led to that assumption?

Generally, if a page is drifting downward it is the result of stale content, no traffic, etc. I like to look at those issues from a keyword query to meta description to on site and content kind of methodology. What are you seeing as to traffic over time?

I realize this is not an answer, but hopefully the clarification will assist in helping you.

Best

Luke,

The first thing I see is this sentence: These internal pages have low PR, yet are performing well in terms of SERPs.

So in answering you, I will treat it as I would a client. Do these pages bring you business, improve your ROI, etc.? If the answer is yes, I am going to approach the problem very cautiously. Let's assume they are important.

For those pages that are offending you say there are a couple (I will guess that means not more than 5). If your site is fairly large 50 plus pages for example, I do not see these pages impacting the site negatively in our current environment. But, you could simply send a few messages out to those linking and request that they remove the links.
Keep a record that you did and send more than one request. At the same time, go out and get a few good links to the same pages to make the weight change a bit toward better links.

If you change the urls of the pages there is no need to change 404. Simply leave it as a search for what you were looking for. Those directories won't be searching. You are correct in not doing redirect involving old urls in this case.

Hope this helps and provides a bit of perspective.

best

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

First, good move by client to not use translation plug in IMO.

So, you have a Chinese site in Chinese and you are adding English and Korean or, it is a new venture? (server question made me think this). Good question on server hosting.

The answer is based on what all you want to accomplish: Is the site to be a multi lingual site, multi regional sit, or both?

If you are wanting to be multi regional then your client is  wanting to rank in Baidu for China, Naver - Korea, and Google US/UK/AU, etc. Or, for multi lingual, you could be just looking to sell to disparate people living in China. For both, you get the pic. 
HERE Is a great GWT link for setup of domains/sub domains/directories, etc  Note this has an excellent table further down.

Avoiding duplicate content can be accomplished multiple ways and Google has made some real strides with the use of rel-alternate-hreflang link elements

So, you have a bit of reading, but if you can supply a few answers, we can help you out.

All the best,

All Star,

This is a fantastic question. It appears you have done some homework and I will suggest a bit more along with some ideas. First, since we are an agency we face this with our clients and it is never easy. The reasons are many: Time and effort involved, cost involved (on a lot of levels), the page rank issue you describe, etc. 
If I can implore you to first stop, I think you will find that preparation will be key. We have a saying here, "You do not design as you build; You design, then you build." We are clear with clients: if we do not have what we need from you to start the build from an accepted wire frame, site map, comp, content (images, text or copywriting agreement, etc.) we will not start the build. So, you have to stop all and decide one step at a time what will be there before you change. This will save you time and $$. Another thing I would say is this task is not as daunting as you may think once you get a plan in place.

I checked out your site and I must say, visually, I liked it. (I don't say that often). But, you are correct about navigation issues as I was lost quickly. So, don't change anything, yet. Go to GA and in top left you will see Audience as a left side bar first and below it, at bottom of that box, Visitor Flow. This is going to teach you where the dead ends are for sure.

My guess is you are having a lot of people bounce from the home page, when really what they need seems to be there. As you go through the Visitor Flow, you do not really need to go deeply past the 6th or 7th interaction unless you see something that seems grossly amiss. So, on first/second past go 10 or 12 interactions deep just to see what is going on and get really familiar. Then look at the pages where it seems like almost all dropped off. What were they looking for that you failed to give them? Next, look at the queries and the keywords that started all these people down the road for knowledge on what they wanted...and did not find. When you feel you have the intelligence from the data, you begin to design the changes.

I would set up a spreadsheet of dropoffs and other 'roadblocks' first. Don't get tempted to start deciding on changes yet. You have a bit to work with, but hundreds of pages is not insurmountable at all as you will see, if you stay process oriented.

As to your comment above about a grid, here is how I would approach it:

Once you know where the drop-off points are, you now will begin to design ... no, not a site map, a wire frame. Because, my suggestion is your menu structure needs changing on the home page. When I go to a page bottom menu, it takes me to the other sites. The menu structure on these is much more user friendly (with exception of top right two items) IMO. With designing the wire frame you want to keep this home page fairly close, but IMO the bottom menu should be right or left. If you are losing anyone from top menu, I think there may be a different issue than architecture. You may need a bit more info/direction for those going to top items. (In lead gen with this vertical I am unsure as sometimes, less is more. If you like your results here - do not change it at all). NOTE: Given you have essentially 'two' sites in structure, you may want to look at two wire frames. One for home/landing site and top level items - one for bottom menu items.

Once you know your wire frame, then you begin the site map (your grid essentially). Use what you have learned to determine where the changes should be, but follow the common rules of get them there in steps of three (or four if must be) clicks max. And, here is a good answer around ecommerce sites from Alan Bleiweiss around url structure for ecommerce that I think is applicable - look at his explanation along with the structure for the pearls.

Because of the way you have set up the individual sites you will have an opportunity to self correct a bit. You can take one of the mid traffic sites from the bottom menu and use it as a guinea pig of sorts. (I understand in some ways it will link out to dead ends you haven't changed, but it still could provide clues going forward). Don't be tempted to go with the worst as it might not give enough data.

Once you have processed the data from this, you can reassess your site map, make needed changes, and prepare to launch remake. Stay with it, do not rush. Your enemy will be trying to, "get it done." I promise if you do the research and plan the design before you start,  you will get it done really quickly once you commence.

The devil is in the preparation. Make sure you remember to 301 in .htaccess file all changed urls so that the link juice passes to new url. Also, resubmit site map when you finish so that you are sure Google is aware and reindexes asap.

Lastly, on the whole, this is a nice site IMO. You still need to get the on page corrected: duped meta descriptions mean you do not answer the query in the search snippet. Think about it, how many clicks are you losing? Have someone that can take simple direction go through and take out all the keywords from your CMS. You have title tags that are longer than your urls and do not help you.

The beauty is in your clean look and your content that is not a bunch of duplicated, stolen, spun, BS. I do applaud that for a site like this.

Thanks for giving me a little fun this morning,

Good Luck and I hope to see results in a month or two!

Robert

PS:  Please do not design as you build; design it all, then build it.

Ryan

Thanks for your input on this. The client is a seller of very big ticket item and the developer/seo she had was very clever at creating his own link farm/pyramid/etc. 
The good news for her was that she had a lot of industry cites that linked to her site and she has always done a great job at her own PR which brought in more quality links.

I was not trying to draw a corollary to specific links and PA/DA but show a broad picture around all the links (of which at least half were poor/bad) and how as those go away things change - which is I think a portion of what you are saying.

What I am showing with the images is that the links start going away and as the result DA/PA drops...but, we begin to see a concomitant rise in mozTrust which I believe can be taken as a signal - how exact I could not guess - that things will improve. It would appear that based on your comments I was a bit less than clear - thanks for the assist.

The reason we did not go into aggressive link removal with the client was due in large part to her relationship with past dev. She was very concerned about how they perceived their treatment. We had to be a bit cautious and we understood (and told her) the possible consequences.

Thanks for your clarity; I do believe there is more to come from Google around this issue.

All the best,

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

Hello Ricky

Miriam is correct regarding more info making life simpler for all, so please give us a bit more. 
That said, I will tell you that I believe in using maps in a site as opposed to images of maps for the geolocation feature they provide. For local, I prefer geo-tagged photos of real locations as opposed to a bunch of branding logos, etc. Having done a lot of real estate sites and tested various methodologies, I remain convinced, that the more you are clear about where you are re a site and local, the better the result will be when it comes to ranking. Given Picasa and given Google Business Photo efforts, I just think the proof is there. (no pun intended).

Best,

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!

Got an email this morning on a domain that is not privacy protected. (One of mine that I own significant extensions for).

I am attaching the email and the link. The thing did not throw me off because I know where all is and it had nothing identifiable, but to those with a domain and they want to keep it, this has to have some real chance of taking some peoples money.

The domain you land on is SecureTrans32456.com/order/.........

Just keeping the world alert...

best

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ndirseo

Since you "made a lot of optimization changes" I am going to assume you used fetch as Google a lot as well. If so, you will only have the option to Send URL and all linked pages 10 times per month. You can fetch as Google 500 times.

I think the issue here is simply one of bandwidth and overuse.  Think of it this way.Fetch as Google was designed to let you see the pages as Google sees them for the purpose of errors, those who had been spammed, etc. As more and more people began using it, they had to limit due to overuse.

If you have checked a page with Fetch as Google and it comes back ok, and you do that for the whole site, you should not have to use url and all linked pages that often as the pages are linked.

Hope this helps. I Have pointed to where you see the limits in GWMT with image.

Here is the link re webmaster tools.  Note its next to last paragraph.

Hope that helps,

Robert

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Steve

First, I stumbled onto this discussion and my mouth fell open as I gurgled out ... What the....

So, I then read the good answers from Thomas and Daniel and felt a twinge of relief. Here is what I suggest when you hear something like that: First ask the question It was your site that fell in rankings or someone elses? If they say someone elses, ask if they personally saw the rankings drop post implementation of the new design. If theirs, ask the same pointed questions if you were trying to help someone determine what the problem is. 
Now, once you ascertain (and I am willing to bet over 90% fall into this group) that they never personally saw the data, you have answer one: Somebody said that somebody said. OK, not great SEO work. But, if they say it is theirs or they got to dig through, ask this How did it affect the rankings and how did you determine that was the cause? Now you are getting into some serious SEO detective mojo! That's where we find the real answers.

Great question Steve!!

Good job Thomas and Daniel, Thanks for keeping the world clean!

Robert

PS - we build a lot of sites and 80% plus are responsive. We have see NO drop in rankings that could be attributable to a responsive design. BTW our site and several of our large firm owned sites are fully responsive and rocking cool. They are fine.

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,

I liked that EGOL, I did not catch it at all.

Edward,

When you say you made the site responsive and you serve a different version for mobile and tablets, I have to say I am confused. Are you stating that you made a site responsive, and you are serving a site that is different for mobile/tablet? My first thought is why make the site responsive if you are going to serve a mobile site?

For mobile there is schema that you should use (again, I am assuming you are serving two versions).

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