Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks to you both. If anyone has any Unicorn dust or batwing hair, I could use it.

Still smiling cause I just love what we do.

Best

84 Thumbs UP!!!!! Override the system Rand. This is true Rock and Roll...over.

Made my week. I have to have 5 of these. Really, really, really.

Oh, I am in trouble now with a new Hobby. Robert, Marine and now, Naval Captain!

Keri,
I would appreciate it if while I am taking certain medications you refrain from emotional statements. People in this place know me as a former Marine and I am having to explain the difference between misty eyes due to allergies and that other thing that occurs to those less uh, you know, uhh strong manly Marine types.

Best to you and anyone whomever called themselves a Mozzer.

Chad,

Chris makes a good point re the leaders in ranking and what are they doing. I would also look for chinks in armor. But, first I would stop what you are doing and back up: Do you have a sales funnel? Do you have a serious KWA? Do you have a sitemap predicated on KWA and UI/UX (Factoring in user habits? Likely user habits if the company is new?). To me url structure comes to a degree as a result of these items.

Once you have those, typically on a site of any size (we have particular expertise in the tourist industries on our dev team) you will have certain issues that you will need to make decisions on based on the clients needs, ui/ux, best seo that really are business decisions and you will likely get right - if you take it in order IMO. But that said, the structure I follow is based on some basic SEO rules - four clicks max, four clicks max, keep it simple for the bot (they all can't be Roger), then: What are the important business KWs I must rank for (destination first or event first or mode first, etc.) I would follow that down the line. Personally, I have never searched on Tour company (ies) nor have I searched on "destinations" or "Sights" so I would not have that in my architecture unless the KWA showed I should. So, instead of destinations for example what are they looking for specifically and can I get that in a menu/ sub-directory etc. Then follow your brain.

Sorry that I cannot give you a do it like this: A/B/C but from the fact you are looking I think you will get this and make it happen. My opinion is that after domain what is the first thing they are looking for that is a category then what specifically within that and then other data for a decision. To me you tell the search engine that you are at my domain...this is the most important keyword here, this is next, and this is the final destination that is rock solid.

Hope this helps,

Robert

Craig,

Listen to what EGOL says, especially this line: "There will also be a few types of products/services that I like to sell/provide.  So I would identify the targets on the basis of profit volume, success rate and services that make us whistle while we work.  I would attack these with  vigor."

When we interview our potential clients we go about his point this way: What do you sell, provide, etc. and, typically we get the laundry list. We then ask this: Every business sells a lot of things and over time they learn that they can sell a thousand widgets and it takes a ton of work and they only make $20. But, they can sell 20 hungtuns and it takes just an hour each and they make $1,000 per. We need to know which of these products are the hungtuns, the ones you really, really, want to sell.

Every business has just a few of these typically. I would rock these pages just like he says.

Best, great job as always EGOL.

Robert (Now I am really rolling out!)

Sorry Craig, 
I got pulled away literally. Knee surgery so I am at the mercy of others right now. (Humbling).

As to this particular set of issues here, let's discuss some things that may provide additional clarity for you:

To a certain degree you are asking about eCommerce as if this were eCommerce while also asking about localization which is antithetical to eCommerce as it is viewed today. (I will refrain from an example by name, but say think of many large computer or electronics retailers who have an online site and locations.) (Also, I have no desire to venture toward the conversation around various apparel colors please, but I do have a few opinions I will give here.)

There is nothing good or bad in what you are doing inherently. Using auto parts, you could be the local Bob's Auto Parts who grew and is now also facing the Internet and trying to come up with options. You could be a huge National Auto Parts Chain that lazily was pushed into the 21st century and realizing they own real estate all over must also deal with this "internet thing." There is nothing wrong in either. If you are an online concern who is trying to appear local by having a few pseudo local operations, I don't like it because you may be messing with a client of mine or two (So, yes, I have skin in the game) but there is still nothing inherently wrong with the attempt IMO.

The mixing of the two is causing you a problem but I do not think it is as big as you think.

What I do think is you may think you are not ranking for reason A, but actually it is reason something else. But, that is a real issue for you. So, let's try and approach it less globally and more specifically:

• From the eCommerce side you would not want to have duplicate product pages - but you are only in 5 markets. (Interpretation - I do not believe google will in any way penalize you for the product - broccoli seeds - being identical on all 5 city sub pages. (I would not use someone elses product page 5 times though.) Oh, proof is needed of my opinion... GWMT duplicate content issue per Webmaster Blog. 
• That said, the issue is ranking in individual cities for these products - (But you throw in a curve if at any time you are saying that some cities won't have the item all the time). So back to broccoli, if Rocky Mt. is not going to have broccoli seeds, I do not think you get a broccoli seed page there. But, assuming they all have Broccoli seeds and you use the same product verbiage identically, no problem. You are going to have different city verbiage though - **Is that correct? **If not, and you are just using the city in Places and Title Tags, you have a different problem in that you are not optimizing locally IMO. Your Rocky Mt. Page must differ from Fredericksburg from Charleston, etc. "That's a fact Jack."
• Next, you seem stuck on Business name first and you state: _"We see a substantial amount of their traffic coming in from direct company name queries, company name + location name,..." _So you are seeing a query for the company name and location or you are seeing a query for Company name + Location + Item or Company name + Item + location? Not Direct traffic - Queries from WMT?
• I think one problem is possibly not attaching enough value to the Title tag and URL structure. I would be surprised to see queries as you state (not that I am saying you do not, it would simply surprise me as that is not something I have seen before - and I have yet to see it all.) I cannot say enough that IMO its Product, location, Brand.
• Next, you are using place schema and that is great. Are you using review schema? Think about it and yes you can use both (Yes, we do.). Frankly I would use authorship as well, but you cannot have both authorship and review schema show in a serp. (That is why I suggest reviews) and most CMS (more common) have review plugins that work fairly well.

So, that is the approach I would take. Where you can locally, I would insure I had my own local pictures and they contain the appropriate Exif data, etc. In other words, I would nail my local optimization at every turn. I think then you will be fine with the products in those markets.

But, hey, it's just an opinion.

I would love to know how you handle and how it works out. After you are down the road PM me please. All the best, I'm gonna wheel on outta here.......

OK Miriam, this is funny.

I go through this whole thing in my head as I sit here confined on a Saturday. I keep wondering why each product would be optimized, but rationalize it this way: He could have 5 auto parts stores and many of those parts will be localized by searchers. But, still how far do you go? I think that for some business owners they really will put the effort in to rank each and every one.

Now, for the plants I can see certain gardeners looking for a specific plant, but most are looking for location. I am a gardener; I would not search for Basham Crepe Myrtle Houston. I would go to the nearest nursery first.

So, it will be interesting to see how they lay this out.

Best to you,

Craig,

Your issue is not uncommon but I would first suggest you reconsider your Title Tag structure and go with either product | location | brand (best IMO) or location | product | brand (OK IMO). Typically the keyword closest to the front of the Title Tag is attributed as receiving the most weight. If you want to optimize for searches on the company name, I would put it first. The cautionary here is that you really need to have a lot of searches on your company name if that is what you are doing. (In other words, companies like Nike, etc. should have brand first.)

The URL structure you have using sub folders is how I would go, but if you can take /product/ out as a sub directory that would be even better. This will typically depend on items such as your menu structure, CMS, etc. and is not hyper-critical.

Your concern re duplicate content is astute and there is a fix that is easy to implement. What you want to do is use a rel=canonical for the actual product you want to display. Google provides easy to do instructions in WMT/Canonicalization. You already have the url structure correct and for each you will choose which is the canonical for that product so you end up actually having the urls as you have here, and they all point to the canonical. With rel=canonical you are telling google, no matter what is here in the url, this is the page.

You stated that your problem as in some areas you can rank well for a given product/service and in another not rank as well. You also state you implemented Schema markup for each location that carries the item on product page. So what markup Type are you using: Place, Event, Product, Review...? If you are using product markup where you are having trouble ranking locally, and you are not using Place markup for a local business, you are missing an opportunity to help yourself.

If you have a B&M location you can obviously utilize that markup. You stated you have claimed the listings in Google Places for each location, is each location showing in maps? is each location showing in a seven pack (or whatever # pack is showing)? Make sure that you have correctly optimized each locally. Make sure you have not thrown in superfluous categories or geotarget KW's. You can make mistakes here that will work against your product pages showing. 
The moral of the story is the SEO moral: It is not playing a flute well, it is making sure all in the orchestra are playing well and at the same time and to the same tune. (OK, I just made that one up, gotta go copyright it!)

Hope that helps you out. This is a good question and I hope to see others respond as well.

Best

C3,

One of the things I would suggest is to start by having success defined utilizing KPI's, analytics, etc. Did you have an engagement with what they were to accomplish and so forth. Have a baseline of where the site was prior to the newcom coming on board. When did the changes take place (were they put into GA on the dates they occurred?)? What is the result since then? What else was done during that period? Now you have a starting point.

Next, I would suggest you get the lower cost ahrefs membership (even if only for a month) and run your site through ahrefs. You will have a near complete list of links to the site. Where are the 100 within this? How do they compare to the other links coming to the site? Also, look at the microsites and see if your site is the only one being linked to. Remember if you have your link and another, they gave half the value of the link away.

If this was the key strategy, when was it implemented and what has changed since then. Remember that data is your friend. With our clients we are careful to get a baseline, talk about the issues they are facing, delineate potential risks, etc. With these sites, run them in copyscape and see if even the unique content is unique. Did you pay for unique?

Next, I would run the site through a moz campaign and see what I see. I would look at GWMT and see if the linking sites are showing in GWMT and I would look to see how many new pages are being indexed subsequently. If someone is saying that this linking strategy is key and you have duplicate meta descriptions, Title Tags, no H1, etc. (run the site through Xenu and you will have all of that and more), I think you can find a dozen places where someone in SEO says, if you do not do the on page, etc. there is no reason to do the other.

So, the data will be your friend if you want to show whether or not this is working. Hey, if it is let us know and how and maybe we will all say, they are right, I was wrong.

Best,

Robert

Well, I reckon I missed the party this time. Sorry, but I just got a ton of responses to this and am in a bit of a compromised position here as far as being able to respond, etc. (In the hospital but they think I will make it. No, it is not a face lift - but I would be interested in your pills.)

ViperChill, First, I made a mistake in the way I went about this. I would try to give you context, but it would sound like an excuse. I went after you, "this guy" when I should have gone solely after the issue I disagreed with; I broke my own rule and you do have my apology because I was wrong.

My point about the copywriters was exactly as it reads: given that I employ them I must be on the side of the debate that says content really matters. It had nothing other than that attached to it.

I did not think you were trying to 'rank for Rand' but I am open to the pills still I saw it as Rand's name is so unusual alleviating the surname would have little effect given the semantic context. I did read the article before I wrote. I did not evaluate it line by line. I felt you were minimally being the provocateur with statements like you made as I addressed. Yes, I do see it as tearing someone down when you make statements after pointing to their post such as - "what this person is saying is no longer relevant," and "you can't take this type of person seriously for making these types of statements in 2013." If I said you were lacking relevance in what you said, or that you were not to be taken seriously, I do believe you would take it as me tearing you down. (And, I would be, and it would be wrong IMO).

To me it is no different (better or worse) than what I did with the blanket "you are using it all to sell something." (I hate it when others assign motive to my actions and I did that to you. I just had an experience where someone did this with me and that really makes me feel stupid for having done it here to you within a week or two of that experience. Again, I was wrong for that.)

Now, you state I dislike you. No, really I don't but I can certainly say if that is what you believe it would be on me. As to my site being down... I have a few but we are up according to our various monitoring services; the main marketing one is up and has been so not sure which you might be referring to. If you have a url please let me know.

Again, I was wrong for making it personal about you. I hope you can accept that and we can move on. I have zero ill will toward you. In fact, kind of enjoyed taking a look at all of this when I had nothing to do but ... wait. Aaarrgghh. Sometimes it is good to realize how wrong one can be.

Best to you, Best to all,

Robert

Wissam

Thanks for the most excellent link to the John Mueller post. I learned something new today thanks to you.

Best,

Robert

Laurens

I had to read this a couple of times to understand but there are a few questions: Still in position 1? Conversion rate sitewide dropped 4 % points... do you mean from 5% to 1% or do you mean from 5% to 4.8%?

For traffic from the keyword dropped 80% I would look at it like this: If the keyword was a phrase with two or more words: hot bananas tonight and that auto-complete no longer finished to be the full term I could see a lot of banana lovers just leaving tonight off, and subsequently you would see much of that traffic for the "newer" auto complete (hot bananas) IMO. But to drop 80% just because of this would be something to see.

As to your conversions dropping that is what makes the picture quite cloudy. You have to look at other/similar keywords and ask the same questions. If you see the same drop across the others I don't think you can say this caused it.

If total traffic dropped by 10% and the keyword was 80% then look at site traffic and this KW traffic prior over time. Get a median ratio of the two. So KW = 100 visits overall equal 1000 prior to change. Then KW = 20 and site = 900 after drop. For the keyword traffic that remained, is the conversion rate different? So, same keyword, different conversion?

Once you lay these out you will have more actionable data. I would look at visitor flow, etc. in analytics and slowly draw a picture of precisely what is happening. Don't look to prove it is the change in auto complete. Go see what is there, get the data down, then draw a conclusion. It may end up the same, but you will know you covered the bases.

I know this is not a perfect answer for you, but I hope it helps.

Best

C3

You have some good responses but this is another of those where it is hard to sit on the sidelines. I have to ask a few different questions with a situation like this; first, forget what they did re the C blocks. What was the desired result they were seeking? What was the plan (with rationale) to achieve that result? And, no matter the answer to any of that, what percentage of optimization/ranking do they or their client believe is related to linking?

So, do they really spend this much effort on a 20 to 30% factor? And remember, this is not effort around bringing in quality links, it is effort around linking as if that is the Holy Grail of SEO. Given the time spend, the opportunity spend, the actual cost to the client, etc. Is this 80% plus of the SEO effort? I would be surprised if it wasn't. Usually when I come across this kind of thing, the "SEO" firm doing it is doing it as some sort of silver bullet SEO. They have discovered a secret way to sprinkle unicorn dust on the algorithm, etc.

To me and in my opinion, it is not white hat, grey hat, or black hat with sequins. It is just a waste of time and energy. It is just highly inefficient. Are they saying they can do more with this strategy than say the people on this forum with an actual strategy? If you are worrying about can linking via multiple C blocks from EMD's I own for some sort of benefit to some site, I think you are looking at SEO from a very odd perspective (not you, I am using the global you as if for anyone who). Interesting approach.

Best

I will respond to all here and I sincerely appreciate what each of you has shared. 
There is no law that one of our firms is aware of re interns. We do have schools that try to push unpaid interns (I think they are afraid people won't pay) and we just say we only take paid interns. Our interns in high school start at $10 per hour and college start at $12. We do have interns who are given raises fairly soon in the internship because they prove themselves early on.

Interestingly, all must write. (EGOL). We had a computer science major just finishing freshman year at college and this was his first job. He is going to be excellent at Computer Science...he is a brilliant writer and he never knew it. Brilliant. I smile writing about him.

One of our interns walked into our VPs office and he had been given a task of designing wire frame and comp for a client once the KWA and sitemap were finished. I was sitting in the conference room next door when he said to the VP "I can't do this, this is not really my forte." Johnray paused a brief moment and said OK, I need you to understand something, this is business, we do not have an option to tell a client we cannot do something. I would appreciate you going back and finishing, and then he looked down at his work.

The intern nailed wire frame and design with little intervention, but he wanted to quit. This was not his area of expertise. Of course we look over all and our clients are protected with NDA and non competes, etc. But it's amazing to watch as the people realize they can do more than they ever dreamed. It is truly fulfilling.

To each of you I say Kudos. I would love a world that was open source, open education, and where interns were brought in to learn and thrive in an organization. We now have two interns in good positions who are no longer interns. One in web dev and the other in writing and social media.

Thanks to all of you,

Robert

Paul,

This is a good question and as they say in the art world "an important piece."

I am going to list an assumption or two here:

There is a single domain with sub directories for each location. (Not micro sites, sub domains, etc. for location).

The pages are optimized for each locale: Say, Cherry Hill, Newark, and NYC.

So, what are your options for tracking these? The best I have found is to track based on KW plus geo locator for the various keywords. So, house painter + each city, etc. Now, you will know what are the key terms and you can use a ton of different tracking options from Raven, SEMrush, WooRank, Moz, etc. If I were you, I would set each as its own campaign like with Moz. So, even though it is a single domain, you set it up with subdirectories instead. In this way when you list competitors you are able to use different competitors for each.

It is not as easy as most would like, but it is the best I have found.

Best of luck,

I was reading a CNN article about interns at the White House and how much it costs them financially as the position is unpaid. Recently there was a story re a Bank of America intern who had died after working 72 hours straight - I did not read up on it and have no opinion, but interns are in the news.

We use interns regularly and we only use paid interns. The rationale behind it is that we are not looking for free labor, we are looking for bright people who want to learn and contribute and if they are going to contribute, why would we not pay them. Secondarily, whenever I have been in a place where the interns were not paid, they seemed to be in charge of coffee and donuts. (And that's my job.)

We want to have them teaching and learning from day one. We place real client issues in their hands and we are very serious about it. The work is always checked by a senior staff member, but I never cease to be amazed by what they can produce when you believe in them. We recently had 6 heading back to college or HS and we put on a crepe party with a local creperie in our offices. It was a huge success. It was funny to see a couple of other marketing firms that know us come out within a day or two with how they are looking to hire interns. As I looked at those and others, I found several large agency types stating they take interns but they are not paid and mainly because of the superior experience, etc. So, if you have interns do you pay them or not and why? I am not looking for anything around right or wrong, I am trying to let you know if you are diligent in hiring them, you will be astounded at what they and you can achieve.

AWCthreads

I hate these kinds of discussions ... because I just have to respond. Its as if I have the angel on one side and the devil on the other - move on dude, no, no, say something (you know you have a perfect opinion)... etc.

But, what I find interesting about the post of VC is that it is only meant for one thing: to sell him and his stuff. The "I only did this because my 0 page rank two page sites were outranking my ..." etc.

When he talks about the 6 clients he has with 50 websites, and he says to people like me:  "I’m a huge fan, but what Rand recently advocated on his blog is just…totally misguided the total opposite to what is really working right now." and

"While I can understand that preaching “build good content, focus on growing your brand’ sounds great and it’s what people want to hear, for a HUGE percentage of search phrases, this is just no longer relevant. I just can’t take anyone seriously who mentions these things anymore in 2013"

Really? You can't? What do you take seriously? I have copywriters on staff so you can guess where I fall in the content debate (I did not realize there was one). At the end of the day, any site, any page is subject to one thing that rules the day no matter how super clever you are with SEO: If you answer a query in the meta description and then you give the person who clicked on it exactly what they wanted, you are going to do just fine with ranking at some point and probably some point soon. 
People make statements like this guy does to drive traffic. That is what he is doing. He mentions not using Rand's surname as if he is a stand up guy, but do a non personalized search on Rand and tell me what you come up with. Then do Rand, SEO and tell me. There are so many Rand's in the world...not.

So, let the guy have his few seconds to sell him and his knowledge. The easiest way to sell knowledge is to tear down others. Someone will always listen. So, quit listening to the dummies who say things from the Franklin mint will not appreciate, go by that coin set they just made - you are gonna be rich!!!!

Best

You need to be logged into GA with the accounts you are trying to link. If you are not on those accounts you will not be able to link to them. Log into your GA, Log into Moz, then retry.

Adam,

I went to your site and I think it is a good site and you are regularly posting, etc. (I thought I would see it static based on what you said; good job). You could use an H1 about Golf Equipment on the home page since that is what you seem to be about. I am not suggesting this, but at some point you may want to look at url structure re what you are. When you use terms like product-review as opposed to golf-product-reviews or golf-equipment-reviews, you are cheating yourself a bit. Same is true with Title Tags, etc. I don't like to see sites fail to take advantage of what they are.

In your menus have Golf Company Reviews, Improve Your Golf Game etc. as opposed to generics.

As to your dropping a bit, do not get too aggressive over it. Look at traffic and ranking and see if there is a corollary and which way it points. I would not be surprised to see you move up at this point even without change. Given the quality of site, make small changes over time. Do not go crazy out of fear of dropping.

Best

Denise

First, with Local, there are many factors that must be considered and it helps to give us as much info as possible. When I search zip code 21236 in Google non personalized, I get "Nottingham" when I look at a zip map, parts of White Marsh fall into this zip as well.

As to confusion vs geo confusion, it is likely more that the local is not clean and that is causing the problem. I urge you to not look at competitors, but look at your citation sites, Bing, Yahoo, G+, etc. Make sure all are consistent. When we take on clients who were DIY prior they always try to throw in extra areas and they try to throw in plenty of categories - and they shoot themselves in the foot. What is your on page like - url structure, etc.?

To think you can plug in Baltimore and then get listed there is faulty. If my address were Nottingham, that is exactly what I would put. You can still have other pages that optimize for that geographic area you want to work your way into like Baltimore.

I hope that helps a bit.

alhalinan

Having used the planner quite a bit, i have to say it has a lot of plusses. I love the geotargeting feature that is more precise, etc. I think we all saw it as change.... but, not too bad. One nice thing is it actually will save some of the data so that if you leave the page accidentally you are not crying. When you come back it asks if you wish to start new or resume.

So, I suggest taking it around the block a couple of times.

Howl,

1. I would mark all up as a food establishment. Under menu/cuisine where you serve no food I would simply put an alcohol menu or link or on cuisine put we server beer, wine, tequila. etc. The reason is this: you are using schema because it is good for you and the search engines. Within the various schema are other properties. So for FoodEstablishment there is ... Bar or Pub. A bar or pub is a food establishment. So is an ice cream shop, winery, brewery, etc.

2. This is the page url. For me in Houston... http://www.howlatthemoon.com/locations/location-houston

3. I suggest you put in your own review schema and make the site where your customers can review you. Why would you want to serve yelp?? What do they do for you? Your site is using Joomla and with a quick check I found several review plugins you could utilize to make life simpler. We do not use Joomla as much but we often use a review plugin with our WP sites. And, it passes the markup test with Google.

4. Opening Hours - Here is the schema for opening hours. Pretty easy. If you look at the bottom of Local Business, you will see what will or will not work.

5. Here is the actual event schema from Schema.org

1. Upcoming shows

2. <div< span="">itemprop="event"itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Event"></div<>

3. <a< span="">href="foo-fighters-may20-fedexforum"itemprop="url"></a<>

4. <span< span="">itemprop="name">FedExForum</span<>

5. <span< span="">itemprop="location">Memphis, TN, US</span<>

6. <meta< span="">itemprop="startDate"content="2011-05-20">May 20</meta<>

7. <a< span="">href="ticketmaster.com/foofighters/may20-2011"itemprop="offers">Buy tickets</a<>

8. <div< span="">itemprop="event"itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/Event"></div<>

9. <a< span="">href="foo-fighters-may23-midamericacenter"itemprop="url"></a<>

10. <span< span="">itemprop="name">Mid America Center</span<>

11. <span< span="">itemprop="location">Council Bluffs, IA, US</span<>

12. <meta< span="">itemprop="startDate"content="2011-05-23">May 23</meta<>

13. <a< span="">href="ticketmaster.com/foofighters/may23-2011"itemprop="offers">Buy tickets</a<>

So, you are going down the right path, I have never been to Howl in Houston but will check it out.

Best,

Robert

David,

The important part of what you have here is that you add a result: ...with the logo appearing in Google SERPs? While Google may be considering it given your link, I do not yet see it, but we act as if they will. They will show in the knowledge graph, from your G+, etc.

We utilize structured data at every turn possible and I have yet to see a logo result in the serps. (Obviously, I do not have a client in every web vertical so that is a limitation). But, think a second about to whom a logo result is very important - big box retailers, Nike's, News Outlets, etc. Do a search on these and you will see there is no Nike logo result showing up, etc. (I do a few of these searches as my son plays HS Basketball)

If you use the structured data testing tool in GWMT, you should be able to see if your markup is correct. I have attached a shot with redaction of the markup on one of our pages. Note the arrow points to Logo from the structured data test page. Note the largest redacted url is where the image is pulled from.

If you are wanting to be a bit ahead of the curve, I would suggest you simply tell your designer that while it does not yet appear to be showing anywhere, by including it, your client/company/etc. will be ready. As to the image of the logo this particular one is a file of about 200-300 kB with dimensions of 800 x 532.

Hope that helps you out,

Robert

BMEfPWp.png

Two very good answers IMO by Moosa and Philipp. I am not sure why you are removing, but remember there will be cached pages on the web for some indefinite period. If it was only a short time, etc. maybe very few or hard to find, but typically there is something...somewhere.

BEST

Hello Bob,

Considering you are selling stickers regarding supplements, etc. you really do not have a worry. First, no poison words and second, the search engines have already said, "we need your help with this and we would like to provide a solution." Since you are selling a product: use Product markup and there will be no question as to what you are involved in. 
Even if you did not, and you were still selling stickers. The robots will look at a lot on the page and they will semantically infer who or what you are / are selling, etc. So, if you have supplements over and over and discount preceeds it, the inference will be that you are selling discount supplements. But if you have stickers for supplement bottles. Stickers for supplement boxes, etc. you will fall elsewhere. (Yes, all, I am being simplistic.)

Good question though as I have heard the 'rumors' of the poison words, etc. Just never seen any proof.

Hi Scott

First, DMOZ is a reasonable goal, but do not place more weight on it than it really deserves. It is a nice link, but there are tons of sites not listed in DMOZ that do very well. But, to get listed is not a do this, this, and this and you will get listed.

First, have you submitted it at all? I will assume you have not, but from looking at your business I will also assume you have gone to the dmoz site and read what to do or not to do. Because we are an agency and we are working daily to assist clients, we submit sites from time to time to dmoz. Some are listed, some not. One key IMO is that you have good content. Since you are in a reasonably competitive vertical with moving, I would be very sure to have unique content (don't rush out and change as you have some authority, etc.) that is not a rehash of other sites. With each site, make sure you go for a couple of the good paid directories (Yahoo directory, BOTW, etc.). Make sure you are submitting for what you do and not trying to use it as some mechanism to move a particular business segment, etc.

Three or four years ago, we had built a site for a client and written some very good custom content. Somehow the content around the main portion of the site was all over the web on news feeds, etc. Very shortly later, that site was in dmoz. Then within about a month another site of that client was listed and his main hit at same time. So, was I smart or lucky...probably a bit of both. But, do all you know from MOZ, etc. and submit both sites. Then you have to wait.

Best

Mark,

First this is a great question and I truly appreciate your being real and saying hey, I am a bit lost here. Everyone gets lost in this world and by saying it you help them out.

Premio Oscar gives a lot of good advice here. He is exactly right IMO. For you and your business, I would suggest you take a couple of small steps and then go forward as the way seems to point. A cautionary is that when one says 'qualified' it can mean many things when a salesperson is in front of you. Here is what I would tell you if you are a small(er) business person.

First, if the company you are going to do PPC with has: A directory, a book, etc. I would pass.

If the company does it all SEO/PPC/WebDesign AND they do not tell you which keywords they are buying, show you true Google Analytics/Adwords docs on same and the spend is a fixed monthly amount on a term contract, I would pass (OK, I would laugh and then pass).

By qualified, based on the answer he gave I believe PremioOscar is saying: A person who is devoted to PPC or a firm that has people who can tell you: we created this ad group, it goes to this landing page, (Question them if it is just a page on your site and especially your home page), we are spending this much as our max per click, etc. Our spend resulted in these specific KW's doing well and these sucked. etc.

You want someone/ some firm who is a pro. If they are pushing you into contextual they have to tell you the breakdown of % contextual (search partners, adsense) vs. search and they HAVE to tell you what they have included and WHY and just as more importantly - what they EXCLUDED. (Otherwise you will be on every dog and pony site in the universe and you will get traffic...that does not buy.)

If you have ever worked with an agency, you have likely paid fees like 18 to 20% of the spend and I will tell you that if the fee is that low and you are not spending 5 figures plus per month or more, you are underpaying and that should bother you (unless maybe it is a lone individual who is adwords certified or particularly bright and has little or no overhead). I would expect to pay 30% and pay it gladly - disclosure I work in an agency (please do not take this as a pitch - I am giving disclosure only - I cannot take on your PPC). The reason for the 30% is again, PremioOscar's: _It does work if done properly, but it takes time, patience and a hell of a lot of DAILY work. _There is no BARGAIN true ppc in my opinion. Aggregation of a 1000 clients into $500 + per month spends typically means there is no transparency, it's mostly contextual or on "their" properties, and the commission they are actually making is well above 30%. Did I say Well Above?

Premio's comment about the work, patience, and time is great; I have not seen a better cautionary lately.

I wish you success, thanks for a great question to start the day,

Robert

Forget the CNAME, A record as it is all poor advice. (Yes, I said it - poor advice). When you say only one hosting account, etc. (Hosting is virtual hosting. Only for the mainsite. If I was given acccess to the 20 others, I would put a .htaccess with a 301 redirect there. But that's not an option.) there are things that do not add up here. These others to be up MUST be hosted somewhere. Where? They are not parked domains if links are going to them and they link to main site. (They may be a dupe, but they exist.) So let's go another way. First, if you are familiar with ahrefs.com, this is where I am getting the data from. I like a lot of software, but ahrefs is a real go to for me on links at times (not the only one).

For these sites, compared to what you have coming into the main site, I see no tremendous value. Yes, the one has some links, but comparatively to the main site, I do not believe you are going to see much change if you do not have it - if any. But, you could see some change based on your having duplicate content all over Europe. You will end that by shutting these down. I think that is more important than the links issue.

If you want to give the client comfort I would suggest something we are doing with a client we are taking from about 50 domains (some with significant links others are so what domains) to ONE: We classified ours as Critical, Basic, and Goodbye. For the Critical it is full 301 etc. for the Basic it is a homepage to homepage (client had input on this) and for the others we are ending them with a domain to domain for 90 days then goodbye. NOTE: They actually had little duplicate content. We do a few a week and so far no loss. For yours do one of these every week or two and start with the nothing ones. Then if the last one www.vochtweringsbedrijf.nl and you turn it off and a week or two later you have an issue, you will know that is the issue and be able to choose to revive or not. (I do not think you will).

Make sure you look at analytics at traffic (my guess is it is little or none) for the sites and if one is getting a lot, then you have a reason to keep it. As it stands now, you are screwing up local, SEO overall, duped content, etc. This should be an improvement - based on the info I have at hand.

All the best, and welcome aboard Moz.

Robert

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Hans, 
I am following up as I hear the pain in your writing.

I think we try to avoid bad absolutes here with a passion, but that most here is fairly straightforward. Per what Highland has, and what your needs are, the CName changes are not what I would do. Absolutely not. Ever. (Hope that is clear without telling you what you should do).

As to the problem with the other domains, it is difficult to give a do this or do that due to the fact we are seeing only example.com etc. and there is in no way anything close to the whole picture. It is kind of like going to the doctor and saying I have some pain. If you cannot give specifics, it is too hard to treat. She does not want to give you the wrong drug for the pain you have. We don't either.

To try and cover all of the permutations you could be facing is to have to write a text book in redirect how to, etc. So we are left with more generalities which is what we have given you along with some specifics.

You said this, "The only reason the 20 domain names exist, is to avoid competitors to registrate them." To me, that says, goodbye domains. You also said there are "some links to them," which generally means they were for more than registration prevention. If you do a domain to domain redirect (301 of homepage essentially) you will LIKELY get most of the juice, but your "webmaster" does not want to do that. So, what are your options now:

Shut them down or not. Those are the only options. The CName thing does nothing for you.

So, there you have the most direction I think anyone can give. I sincerely hope it helps,

Robert

Referral Candy,

That is a great suggestion you gave to Shailendra, re Google Hangouts, we are using it and I feel as if we started late even though many or still not using it.

Good work,

Thanks,

Given what you have here, the schema should be added to the mobile.

Best

Sorry to take so long to get back with you, long and busy day.

"but how to market our products and services on social media channels in a manner that can even attract the attention of totally irrelevant and unrelated people. I want people to view our campaigns and make it viral and create a perception that even an ERP company can create engaging campaigns across the channels."

IMO, when you say the above, you are to a great degree on the right path. At the same time think about how many people want something to be "viral." If there were magic to "viral" I would go into that business exclusively and be a billionaire in a year or two. Viral does not happen by wanting it; it happens by continuously creating content people share and comment on and that you engage with back and forth. You might try a hundred or more pieces of content and get varying levels of response and engagement, and not have any of it bring you even a thousand visitors. But, over time it will grow your traffic.

Except for certain situations or businesses, the idea of approaching social media for immediate conversions does not work to any great degree. The approach of using it for engagement does.

Hope that helps,

Robert

Highland,

Thanks for great server side explanation.

Hans,

Highland gives a very good explanation to the other side of the equation your webmaster was suggesting. The important thing for me is that it speaks to what your 'webmaster' was saying and that a CNAME record is not the same as a 301. What the webmaster suggests will do precisely what Highland says with regard to duplicate content and will have no benefit for passing link juice.

Best,

Shailendra,

Given you are an ERP provider, I would suggest the following in terms of making a social media choice: Google+ is a good decision but you would be remiss to not also utilize Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, probably in that order. I say LinkedIn because that is where your prospective client likely is and that person is likely to Tweet and Follow, and YouTube can be a very effective way to increase your visibility. Like with everything, what you put into all of these is what matters. Your question seems to be: What do I need to do to make this effort pay off for your firm? My suggestion would be that if you are simply going to start with +1, Linked, Tweet, YouTube icons that people utilize that is the bare beginnings.

Next, you have to create a reason for people to do all the connecting and talking, adding your firm into their circles, follows, etc.

A great example of this occurred recently for us when one of our copywriters  +Lauren Cohrs who is still in college wrote a clever post on how Facebook is better than Google+. As the result of all of the back and forth and others picking it up and commenting and arguing, etc. we saw a huge bump in traffic. Note that the traffic brought us zero in the way of conversions, prospects, etc. What I found highly interesting was our average visits were around 100 per day; the spike was to 1360 over three days with the peak day being 828 and after that we are now averaging around 125 per day (that is a 25% increase in traffic).

Will that always happen? No. But if it happens even semi occasionally it will benefit us and it will benefit you. I look forward to seeing you and your firm out there.

All the best,

Robert

Hans,

In order to correctly answer this there is more data needed:

Is www.maindomain.com the Main Domain you are potentially pointing the others to?

With the other cctld's, (.eu, .nl, etc) are they sites that are up and running? What about the other .com?

Given you have 'OtherDomain.com's', are they similar sites with a different domain name or are they altogether different sites? Are there domains with languages that are not served by the Main Domain you are redirecting to? Have you looked at traffic to all in GA? What about local?

Is there a business purpose to any of the Non Main sites that would negate changing any of them? Make sure you have talked all the possibilities through with the client or you are going to cause yourself a problem. Please.

What type of "hosting account" is being used? Someone hosting a domain on a network solutions, bluehost, etc for $5 - $10 per month? Dedicated server? Semi dedicated server? etc.

I am not sure who the 'webmaster' is, but they need to understand the reasons you are contemplating this. Frankly, they seem to not want to do the 301's (given the size(# of urls) of the varying domains, varying url structures, are they all exclusively on LAMP stacks or exclusively on IIS, etc. it can be a daunting task.)

If they are simply domains that have no pages or pages with no real link value, a domain to domain redirect takes care of the rare bird who may have one in a bookmark, etc. and, if there is no real chance you would need to worry re bookmarks, you can simply turn them off.

So, you are at a place where you need to answer a lot of questions before you make a decision. A note here since you said, "...a new client.." is that if these are in the least extensive or are critical domains that you really need to be able to preserve the link value or the traffic from you should consider a fee for each domain like that. We charge US $250 for a simple domain to be redirected and a small domain (site) that is critical and has even 10 pages we charge a minimum of US $750. It can go up significantly from there. Why? Because we are a knowledge business and we have learned the knowledge at great cost to us. Also, there is risk involved in this and if something goes wrong, the client will be expecting you to handle it out of your pocket.

If you can answer the questions, I am sure some of us can assist you with the decision tree you face.

Best,

Robert

The assumption it appears some are making is that a search for Spas in Key West only returns pages with Spas in Key West as the "optimized term" which is not true. If your traffic for the query is such that Spas "in" (each specific location) is higher, use in. Typically, that is not the query. Typically the way searches search in the broader sense is to alleviate that connector. If your research shows more for utilizing "in" , I would use it.

Hope that clarifies.

Good luck.

AA in Florida,

I would not use the connector "in" for optimization. The reason being is the query utilizing "in" is rarely made. So, when optimizing for Spas Florida, you say Florida Spas ( don't worry about someone searching for Spas Florida; they will see you). 
If the product is a Spa, and you are using a geo location term with it, no matter what the traffic is, you need to optimize for it: that is the business you or your client is in.

Hope that helps,

Robert

I don't think your javascript usage is helping you. I am not sure as to why you would nofollow something you sought to improve for SEO.

As to speed, you have more issues than your provider's server. Download Google Insights and run the page speed tool. You will see what I mean.

Best,

I believe the best convention for brand is the _Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. _Typically, unless your brand is something that is the search term (Nike Tennis shoes, etc.) you want it last. If people who already know your brand are searching for you, they will find you IMO. (You have TTS in the domain and in every url as the result of that already). 
To me, working with clients, I want them to get the new customers to their site where possible with SEO. As the result of that desire, for title tags we use the convention I put here. People searching for music sets for example, may not know your brand, and you want the optimal opportunity to rank for that term. In that case the first convention is best. But...

...as to going through and changing all title tags and leaving all else the same, I am not sure I would spend time on that. If I am optimizing the site and doing multiple things to get it better for key terms, I would.

I hope that helps a bit,

Robert

Rob, 
With a question like this, without the benefit of knowing the site, it is nearly impossible to answer the question. I would look at it this way:

Is there a mistake that could have been made with the redirects or with the GA code in the new site that is making the data corrupt? (An example was my famous, "We lowered your bounce rate from 47% to nearly zero!" with a client we built a site for. Then I had to explain we had the GA code in the header and the footer and it was really the same...). That is where I would look first if I could think of no event in the US that would have caused the traffic increase.

I would look at the referred traffic to see if it holds a clue. I would look at the US for any event or at the site owner for anything that could have caused an increase; is the increase to a specific page or group of pages? At this point you are looking for clues.

I hope this at least points you in the right direction.

Robert

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

Peter

I agree with Jon,

Also, your page is loading quite slowly when I use Google Pagespeed insights. You might want to run it on the site and just look at what it is suggesting.

Hope this helps you out,

Robert

Good Job Tim, that was an excellent Dr Pete post.

Instabill,

Broadshout gives you the best answer in my opinion - use a subdirectory format. Note: If your site is large and has a lot of sub directories it could be problematic. If your blog is broken into categories and you then have blog/category/post/ you do not want them to have to go any deeper. So, make sure the to get to Blog, it is at most a one step process from the home page.

You said: "

1. Will changing the domain really be that helpful (i.e. will the change get our blog on page one for the term instabill)...

Well the answer is...  It is likely, but will depend on all the other factors as well. It will improve your ability to rank for that term better than what you have, all other things being equal.

Good luck.

Robert

Dan,

First, Good job on the linking evaluation, it sounds pretty thorough.

Without a complete picture, it is hard to say, but based solely on what you have here it doesn't appear to be something nefarious. I would add, however, that if I had a site with KW's ranking in spots 2-3 and then was on page 3 to 4 and it lasted for more than a couple of days, I would not lay it off to a Google 'wobble.'

I would suggest looking deeper and seeing what else is going on. Look into analytics and WMT for any trends like falling CTR, etc. Look at changes in query or landing page patterns. Look at the content and then at cached content for same pages to ensure yourself nothing changed on the page and then I would look at competitors who have been consistent during this period for differences between them and your client.

We have all seen a page move up or down in Google for 'no reason' from time to time, but if it is for more than a week, I certainly would be digging up everything. To wait loses too much time if there is a problem.

Best,

Robert

Thanks Ricky,

Another couple of things you should consider given the issues you face (and clean up the multiple Places listings first) are to set up a couple of sub-directory location pages and contact pages. So, list Loxahatchee on your Places/G+, but then set up a West Palm page and contact page, a Palm Beach Page and contact page, etc. for those areas you want to draw patients from. On those pages optimize the content for those locations and state you server "the area." Also consider schema or other markup for Place. As to title tags, Jesse is right that they actually are relevant - they are just not relevant alone - and if you can have the location in the url (sub directory) and in the Title tags and H1's, you are on your way.  
Good Luck to you.

Ricky,

You have issues. OK, I will give you the short version of why you are ranked below two OB/Gyn clinics that happen to be in Palm Beach Gardens and West Palm Beach (obgynpalmbeach.com) and (obgynspb.com) and, sorry Jesse it is not the title tags. You are located in Loxahatchee according to your website contact page and in Wellington Florida according to your Our Practice page and your Services main page.

You have no map API and use a simple image. Your driving directions goes to Bing maps and it shows your location as Loxahatchee Groves, Fl. (Yes, I know, it is in Palm Beach County). What I find interesting is that in the 3 pack there is actually a physician from Wellington, Fl. but she is consistent with Wellington.

So, you don't rank for the term ahead of others who are actually there in the eyes of Google. Your NAP is inconsistent and it is affecting more than Local and in an OB/Gyn practice - it is local. Even though you have used Obgyn and Palm Beach in some of your content and H1's, it is Palm Beach is not in your urls, etc. So, the reality is that you really are lucky to be ranking there given all that is working against you.

If you clean all of that up, I think even with Loxahatchee as an address, you could rank ahead of them. (I had a business in Miami for years and I think Google gets it.) You are just confusing the bots. I would definitely put in the API map, clean up NAP, URL's etc.

Let us know how it goes, 
Best,

Robert

AllieMcA

A funeral home is not a service area business. So, the question then is are you set up as AC_Pro suggested in Places for business? Here is the link to Google Places for Business. You should be able to sign in with the same account info as your G+. Do all there that is needed and when you get your postcard you know what to do.

I hope this helps; if we have missed something in this group of answers, please let us know and we will assist you. Also, we have a great Local person here (not me, she is smart) who is happy to help out others with short lessons, etc.

Best to you and your clients,

Robert

Scott,

Do a search on public relations Denver. Look at the pr blog one, then the one without shoes, then the one about mid page looking for interns. I am willing to bet you can find someone within that group that would take your $500. 
If you say they do a good job, I am willing to give them a shot as well.

Best,