Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Istvan, Well thought out. Good response.

Best to you.

Good point Ryan. There would need to be some checks and balances. (Thumbs up, down, etc.). But, in the end, if you have a true believer move to another agency they are going to spread the word and moz becomes richer for it.

Peter,

I do not see a huge problem as probably 20 occurrences are around brand names Microsofts Flight Simulator X for example. There are a couple of places where it is a bit overdone Fly Away Simulations flight simulator downloads directory.... could be Fly Away Simulations has a great download directory for all types of simulators. 
But, that may just be nit picking. I think on the whole you are fine but watch the internal links as you are really heading to the edge with that.

Best,

Robert

Miriam,

This is the issue with most of these that makes it so difficult on the business. They are almost always tied to additional media. IMO, it is run these commercials (that you would not normally run because...) and get the added value of the local SEO. The problem we see is there is always some catch - they want access to the local accounts, links to them get put in, etc. Again, I have not dealt with CBS yet, but this is what we see with the others. 
Remember, when they say free and added value and you complain it isn't any good.... Well, its just a free added value (and the main reason the business did the spend to start with).

BTW, good link to Anderson's piece.

Best

The dark check signifies that that url is the ranking url for that metric. So in your example here, 38 is the highest page authority and three urls are tied with one linking root domain each, and so forth.

The highlighting simply gives you a visual as to who is higher or lower (darker equal higher).

Glad to have you here with us in the land of Moz..

Best

Attiya, The only way you can do that is to have separate memberships. So, if you are on a Pro membership and need additional capacity for campaigns, rank tracking, etc. get a second pro as opposed to a Pro plus. 
We are on Pro Plus and are going to add a pro as opposed to going to Pro Elite. If we get to the point where we need  additional campaigns provided by having the elite versus two pro plus (one campaign), we will likely just get another pro so that we have an additional staff member on Moz. For me, I see the value as an agency for my people to be involved as themselves so that they are more engaged.

They can all be on moz without paying and set up accounts prior to going to pro, etc.

Best of luck to you,

Robert

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,

First, in campaigns, settings - when you select the search engine, at the end is a drop down menu for country.

Second in Rank checker, you have a similar drop down menu.

Assuming you are incognito as a separate page when checking and not moving back and forth between incognito and non incognito pages, your search results should be the same if all are on same SearchEngine.sk.

Hope this helps you out.

Best,

Greg, 
Given that I almost sent you how to in Apache....I hope this helps it is from:http://www.tugberkugurlu.com/archive/remove-trailing-slash-from-the-urls-of-your-asp-net-web-site-with-iis-7-url-rewrite-module

Full disclosure is I am not an asp.net guy but I saw you are using it with IIS7 and this is all about it. Hope it helps. The code is about 2/3rds down.

Hope it helps.

Stuart,

I think this will depend on the context you are using when you say campaign? Assuming you are using a Twitter button and are wanting to get social metrics from it for the site overall, I would think you are better off with only one site wide. Also, of the plugins available, I am not aware of any that give you multiple options. That said, if you want to use your personal for a page and your business for a page (assuming you are not blogging where you could set the personal as an example to the blog portion and the business to the site pages portion) you are likely able to use two different plugins one for pages where in you are using personal and one for business. 
On plugins that are site wide, you will likely need to have a blog for one and the site for the other.

Hope this helps,

Well,

Sorry, your understanding is incorrect. Domain authority is just that, an overall value for the domain. So, if you go to a site where the links all come to a home page or the vast majority do, you are going to see a high PA for the home page PA. If that same site has 50 pages with few links you are going to see a lot of PA=1.

So, while the home page is important it does not outweigh the fact that overall the site is not that highly trafficked. This is a reason sites have trouble with conversions of inner pages sometimes.  All the value is placed on the home page and someone then has 500 internal links from that page so it does not even help the inner pages.

Remember this in the search engine world pages are ranked and not sites. So, PA is more important from that point of view.

Hope this clarifies,

Best

Sorry Matthew, Just got this. 
Make sure each attorney has his/her own listing in Places, Bing Business Portal, Yahoo Local. You can also set them up individually in major/local directories or review sites.

OK, I had to check and it appears they are in most major cities. Here is a screen shot from a page in San Fran. I checked several and am posting SF because I have no clients there. Notice how there is a browser issue on the page. Also when I clicked on the business - First united credit union it took me to a featured directory page without that business. Soooo, hmmmm. Check it out.

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This is a sticky question that requires I go to my Zen place before writing. OK, I think I am there. 
Typically, with these type services (TV station, Radio, Newspapers, Yellow Pages, etc) They use the Internet SEO piece as a "value add" (I actually receive an email this week from a person with a low level of SEO knowledge not to mention business acumen where they tried to explain some of the SEO failures as this is a value add and was FREE!!!). So, It adds value unless it doesn't add value and that is why it is free.

Anyone can get you listed on a business directory ( we will set you up on ten for and the search engines for $1000 a month - just kidding). What I would suggest is this:

Ask precisely what you can expect in clear deliverables.

Make sure that if they say things like get you ranked on certain keywords you ask things like which keywords and where do they get them from. If they are charging that much, I would expect some quality keyword research from them. Do not give them access to your GA or FTP, etc. prior to knowing the facts and having seen their keyword research. 
These companies want a one year or more agreement. To me, and it is just my opinion, I do not like agreements like this at all. If they are that good, why can't they give you a 30 day out? If there are no early term deliverables like in depth keyword and competitive analysis, I would not do it personally. If they say we are getting you in these directories: say 10 and Google, Bing, and Yahoo they will have earned the first two months at most in my opinion.

Now HERE YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS: (caps for emphasis not yelling): If they are setting these up with their own account name (email address) and password and they want you to simply call them with the PIN codes that come in, you need to understand that they can put anything in the listing they want including having a link to their url. (Kinda helps them out). Be careful if what they do has an alternate number that rings to your business number for tracking purposes. If that number is in Places, etc, the calls could be from anywhere and they will get credit. I know they are CBS and they would never do anything like that..... I have never done business with them, but have seen enough others and am clear they do little SEO for the cost.

I have a real estate client who did something similar with a large well known media company recently. About 6 or 8 of their agents bought the package. They got an "optimized" landing page, and placed in a business listing,etc.. One of the agents is a direct client as well and she got an email that she would be getting the PIN cards and make sure she emailed the pin to them. She forwarded to me and I started looking. The landing page was set up with her name preceded by the realtor initials: XYZ - Suzy Agent. (Obviously no help to Suzy Agent). the site url was initially a dynamically generated one and then she got one almost as soon as I got the email about PINs. The url she got was around high end real estate. My first question was who owns it and where is it hosted - media company and at their offices. Of Course. As I looked over the landing page I started scratching my head and asked my client if she gave them information to put on page - no she did not.
I wrote the head of the RE section for this media company and they informed me that their SEO partner wrote it and that all content was unique and created by them and that the media staff checked everything over. What was funny was that the content was from a site we designed, developed, and copy wrote every sentence for. I know, because at that time I knew the agent very well and wrote the content myself. (The agent is my wife)

They took three or four keyword phrases and whenever they could fit them in a sentence, they did in bold. Their big SEO strategy was to just put keywords in the alt text and have a lot of images. So, instead of a pic of a home saying Beautiful stucco home in XYZ neighborhood on wonderful lane, it would say High end real estate realtor.

They put a video on the site of one of her properties and it has no alt text associated and has their name all over the video.

So, I stayed as Zen as I could. If I can help you just let me know. I would be happy to look at what they say they are supplying and tell you what you should ask, etc. No charge. It is a passion with me.

Good Luck.

Alan,

I haven't seen a significant traffic drop on Bing for any of our sites (say over 10%) I have seen some odd movements in rankings on Bing for the last few months. I am not sure what they are doing overall, but it is affecting some areas more than others (an example would be around automotive where one of our clients who had been at a rank of 2 to 15 on about 15 keywords for some time, all of a sudden fell to the 30s on several. No changes to site, etc. So, we will keep digging. It can happen when someone is new are something becomes hot for some reason, but until you keep digging and watching, you won't know. 
I am assuming you are not doing PPC of any kind, etc?
Have you looked at your sources of traffic to see what changed there?
Say on given terms are you getting a lot less traffic or has referral or direct traffic fallen off?

Hope it helps.

Alan,

At the beginning of each month, any response or reply gets you a point up to 20 points. Once you hit the 20 level you points only come from others giving you a thumbs up, or moz endorsement, or new question that gets good answer or three thumbs, etc.

So, hang in there and keep at it. As you give good answers you will get thumbs up. You also can have a quality question (this one has been asked a few times), say something that causes people to really think out of the box or consider a difficult white/black hat issue, etc.

Good having you answering, stay at it.

Best

Hey Shara

I think where you are headed is a good start. So, for main tab for IPhone cases (tab will be title tag) you would have IPhone Cases / Shop Confections (note there should be a pipe - straight line vertical - and not a slash betsween. I am on an interns keyboard and realized he needs new keyboard).

Under that you will have each of the titles you list above: iphone 4 case personalized, monogrammed iphone 4 case, personalized and monogrammed iphone case, preppy phone case, personalized iPhone case, monogrammed iPhone case****. I would set these up in the order of IP4 first (personalized, monogrammed, personalized and monogrammed) then general IPhone ( IPhone case preppy, IPhone case personalized , IPhone case monogrammed). So, no matter what additional description, you are always starting with IPhone case or IPhone 4 Case. For your different colors, designs, etc. to the extent your eCommerce platform will allow, you want to be able to select a color variation without changing the url. So if I am on IPhone 4 case monogrammed, and it comes in solid or striped with different variations of colors, I would have the color selector change the color for solid page, and for design page. This should prevent dupe content. If you do the title tags this way you won't have duplicate title tags.

Hope this helps,

Robert

Rob, you have a problem. Or two.

First, somehow your images files are showing up and I believe this is causing a duplicate content issue. If I were to guess, I would say that you are new to joomla and may have set something up incorrectly. Without seeing your Joomla dashboard, it is hard to say exactly what is going on though.

When you do a Site:www.amcoexterminating.com or Site:amcoexterminating.com you get mostly images and pdfs. You also see excluded content and when you click on it you see the same.

The only site url that is not a pdf is  http://www.amcoexterminating.com/images/ so Google is not seeing any other url. This is due to Robots.txt or bad site map, Joomla settings that control these, etc.

I wish I could be of more help, but without seeing what the settings are in the dashboard, I cannot find the issue (using firebug, etc.).

Best

Edit: Alan has some good info in his response. Also, in Joomla on the Global Configuration there is an SEO Settings near top on right. Within that is a selection for Use Apache mod_rewrite if you selected this did you rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess before you activated this? 
Above it is a selection for search engine friendly urls, have you selected that?

Good move Matthew on the campaign...you will hug yourself one day soon. PS: Make sure you set them each up in Local.

Let us know if we can help.

Matthew,

Josh, Brandon, and Kevin all make great points and, I would write down each of their suggestions as a list.

Handling attorneys (notice I did not say Law Sites) is a horse of an odd color. First, you need to set up your GA and GWMT for the firm so that you have impeccable tracking. Now you are a pro member and you need to immediately go into Campaigns and set up a campaign for this firm. Matthew - Don't read anymore, go set up the campaign and come back and finish reading when that is done

Then you are going to want to consider two things: First, a click to call system that allows a searcher coming to the site to put a number in and be speaking with a lawyer/etc. immediately or very quickly and a system where in you have chat available that pops up on the screen. Both of these will help and most track everything as the companies want to keep the business.

Next, for where you are you need to go into the keyword tool while logged into an account (not external tool) and do keyword research on the three different areas. If you are unsure, just put keyword research in the search bar on SEOmoz and you will have a hundred resources. Personally, I do not believe you need anything other than the Keyword Tool in AdWords for this project. Get a good list of keywords and see where your competition is missing the boat. Brandon mentioned using a city locator and he is spot on. Be sure you look at how keywords are ordered: city-bk-atty vs bk-atty-city. Trust me, most of your competitors are not looking at this.

Now, use what the others have given you with your best 5 to 8 pages per atty. BK - Chap7,11,13, how to (do this), etc, Criminal (here I am not listing anything I have ever done....) DWI, theft, robbery, etc., Divorce - child custody, how to, etc.

Do not spend a lot of time on ego pages... about attorney smith who walks on water in between being an astronaut and playing first base on the local slow pitch team....

Control them now. Tell them what YOU need from THEM. Tell them what reports they will get and when. Show them the first report out of the campaign wherein they rank for nothing. Give them a report monthly on keyword rankings, etc.

Lastly, as to blogs, they will all tell you how they are great writers, etc. Say, "that is super, we need about a dozen blogs to start with. Nothing tomorrow, but one a day for the next few weeks." Then give them a list of potential titles. If one of the three follows through you have an asset. If not, don't push it as you have just put the blog page to bed unless they want to pay you to write (hire a copywriter) a blog a week for each, etc.

Hope this helps, control them, best.

Jon

Given it is a real estate site, here is how we would proceed.

We would use 301's in the .htaccess file from url to url. One issue with RE is that your listing content changes so you may not want to go to the trouble of making the change on listings that have previously sold unless you are wanting the archived data to be seen for a reason. (In TX only RE brokers and agents can access past sales data - don't get me started )
Now, if your sub domains are such that people have them bookmarked or have specific reasons for going to them versus your new site, you could add a blog, etc. You would lose the links going from pertinent urls, but it would be over time and, if you kept fresh content along with adding new links, you may find one to be beneficial. It is really a judgement call for you and a work/benefit call.

Some RE sites utilize Iframes to bring the data in so you need to be aware of any limitations around that. We handle a some RE sites in TX and there are issues as the result of MLS systems being on IFrames and being tied to Explorer as the only usable browser.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thanks EGOL.

Do you know where you are hosted? Have you called them to see if the server is down or intermittently down?

Here is a how to resolve link.

Look at bottom and follow the directions regarding using the wayback machine to see if it is temporary or the server is down for maintenance.

That given, if you give us a url, it is easier to assist you.

Best, let us know.

Will,

I appreciate your dilemma, but will start with a why are things as they are: I had a few quotes from firms who used this and they basically tried to sell me the world for £500 a month.

So I have done my own SEO over the past 5 months and I think the figures are slowly going up, as are visits and sales (albeit slower than the visits).

There is a reason that there are fees associated with SEO. There is a lot of work involved and there is a lot of learning involved. A corollary to this is medicine. As an RN I would often hear someone saying: They charged me $1,000 and all they did was look in my throat and and write me a prescription. No, the hospital bought land and built a facility, the nurses, doctors and techs all went to school for many years at a high cost and the hospital has to pay them based on that and their value in the marketplace. So, you paid $1,000 for the convenience of coming into a trauma center for a quick diagnosis of a flu or strep throat and for the ability to be given a prescription as opposed to having one of us kill a chicken, smear you with blood, and shout oba doba do while another one throws rocks at the moon. (Not really sure that would cure the flu, but I sure as hell wouldn't complain about it anymore).

So, there is a reason for the costs of SEO. I am going to give you a quick glance audit that will hopefully provide insight and assistance though. Secondarily, your second sentence re I think the figures is a bit troubling as they either are or they are not. You need to know that and how much precisely given that you are in eCommerce.

So, first and foremost, we speak often here of the www vs non www issue. You have a big issue in that when you enter your url without the www you get either web5 or a 404. This is costing you $$. I am not sure what you are built on, and the web5 reminds me of a server or platform some time back, but there are a lot of great coders who may see this and help. Minimally, you should go into GWMT and select www as your preferred domain. When there is no preferred domain and (for your situation) the non is not 301 redirected to the www, you are seen as two sites as opposed to one. Now, that said, you may have done this in some way server side or with a plug in that i am not seeing, but you have blocked visitors who do not use www when typing in a domain. (probably most mozzers and maybe 40% of population).

Next, here on SEOmoz, there are several guides you should read. Beginner's guide to SEO being the starter for you. Also this from Danny Dover on Small Business SEO.

You have overlong title tags (you are attempting to tell all in the wrong place. No more than 70 characters).

Your meta descriptions should be different for every page and should be designed to make me want to click on your site in a search. It is a sales tool for click through. So, instead of telling what you have, think of what are they searching for: men's designer shirts at great prices, easy to fit, fast and free delivery, guaranteed return for no fit, etc.

Your H-1 is the same on all pages (win a pair of creative trainers...) The H1 should apply to the page and the free offer should be side bar content.

You need to do some key word research to insure you know what people are searching on. (You can start with your Google analytics to see where traffic is coming from - what search terms.)

You have an ad for Like to Fight in the bottom left of page. When I click on it I leave your site but not for another window or tab. When I close like to fight, you are gone. This is a personal issue to me with eCommerce in that if they were searching for Armani burlap mens underwear, found you ranked, liked your meta description, clicked on it, then clicked on the ad and, not liking what they saw, closed it...well you may lose a potential customer. What if they search on same again, but see a different company they go after as opposed to browsing your store? I hope you own like to fight and it makes you more money or that they pay you a ton per visitor.

Lastly, you could use some good quality links. As near as I can decipher, your main traffic keyword is around designer menswear. I don't see you in the first 3 to 4 pages of Google.ie.... so, that isn't good.

You will need to learn a lot or pay someone to assist you. Now, I am not sure that pounds 500 per month is the best you can do there, so shop around. I would think that in pounds you could find someone to do an initial site evaluation for around 500 to 1000 pounds. Then likely about 200 to 300 pounds per month. (If they like clothes and are men, well make a trade). But, understand this, you will pay no matter what: If you do it you will pay in time to learn what needs to be done and how to do it and in sales lost during that time. Or, you can find someone and pay them.

Here is the good news, For what I gave you I ask only one thing: If you see someone who needs a hand, a cup of coffee, or pound or two to get a meal, help them out.

Good luck,

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

As to question 1, doesn't matter. As I see it most (about 60%) still use www, but since it resolves to the one selected it doesn't matter.

I am attaching images using the jamesburfield.co.uk. As it is now, your new url is 301'd to that anyway. Using OSE you will see that your www had a LOT more links. By doing a 301 to the non you would be losing some significant juice even though it is somewhere between less than 1 percent and 10 percent. (I advocate for 301's due to the small loss all the time; with yours, there is too much to lose by going with non www IMHO).

You have 4 linking root domains in the non and 165 in the www. Since no matter what someone puts they will end up on the www if you set the 301 to it and make it preferred in GWMT, you should do all to resolve to www as preferred domain. See images below.

TSn21.png UpQAR.png

Gareth

Without knowing your domain it is a bit of a more difficult question. Assuming you have  not already selected non www as preferred domain in GWMT and done a 301 redirect in .htaccess file already, you need to consider this: If you www has the preponderance of links coming to it, when you make they change you will be giving up a larger amount of juice than if you did it from the other. But, in any case you need a preferred domain and you need to choose one or the other. If you choose www. even if someone puts the non www in it will resolve to the www. So, I would do it based on which had the least link value and make that one link to the one with the most. Then in GWMT select the one with the most link value as preferred.

Best

Miriam, 
We do a lot in terms of communicating with our clients in writing (probably my nursing background coupled with being bitten by not doing it). You really said something I like here:

_This is what I do. At the time that I am setting up my clients' listings, I tell the client, in writing, that they are likely to be contacted by these companies offering additional paid services. I tell them that they are not obliged to purchase any of these services and that we do not recommend these services. I also tell them that they are welcome to forward any marketing offers to me. I am explicit about this at the time we are doing the work and if the client forgets, I simply keep repeating the same message over and over to them. It's just part of the job, I guess. Some clients eventually get it, others don't. _

I am going to put something in writing today regarding this.  We tell our clients everything about the processes we use for them and what we expect of them and they should expect of us. This is good on telling them what to expect from others.

Good Job.

EGOL,

While I do not think your response is without merit and I do sometimes consider the issue of which is easier to remember, I am not sure it is as relevant as it was when Rand made that post in 2007. As we see so many sites today with hyphens, I think more people are used to them. But, that does not mean it won't happen.

I think, once someone has seen it visually it is not an issue. If I am doing radio it is. With a non visual medium, you are forced to spell it out and say something like (remember to put in a hyphen between Rons and kickass and Site.net!) That is not a great option.

With most of our sites, people are clicking the link organically for our eCommerce where there are return customers, we are leaving cookies and bookmark options.

As to spending money to get the site you want, it is relative depending on the client. If a client is new (I have a small client who came from a relative that is two ladies who do baby sitting and pet sitting and we are building a 5 to 6 page site for) to business and has a low budget, getting the dream domain is sometimes not possible. Yes, for Fortune 500 they will likely blow a bunch for insuring a branding option.

But, again, it is two sides to a very interesting coin.

Always appreciate your opinions as you think before you write.
Best

My personal opinion is that you can do either, but I would go with the hyphen.com. The reason for me is simple it is easier to read. That said, you will shortly have other opinions and they will revolve around being spammy. There is no increase or decrease in SEO value and I have yet to see any quantification of the spammy factor and any effect on CTR or conversions. But, I don't think the hyphen will out perform the non hyphen.net. I think all things being equal, they will be equal.

Best

Yes you have. First, your content is the same on every page except for adding the city info. That is duplicate content and not good. You would be better served to use your home page as you are and mention the other three cities there. You can even use a link to a page telling how you have a truck in San Luis Obispo on every Tues,/Thurs. etc. 
Also, you need to go into Google and set up a Google Places account How to for Google Places. Go into Bing and set up a Bing Business Portal Account,  and then set up with Angies list, BBB, merchant circle, etc. These are going to help you a thousand times more. You can only set up an account for a business where you are located in that city. You can't do Atascadero and then set up accounts in other three cities. But it will help a lot in Atascadero.

Hope this is helpful.

edit added links

If you want to do this, for a purpose other than getting links from the sites you are linking to (reciprocal links), and you want them to have some measure of SEO relevance, you would put them from a portion of the content where you can link to a really relevant authority. For you, under services you have air conditioner repair/recharge. In that you mention Freon. You could link Freon to the Wikipedia article on same or to DuPont. You could also link to other refrigerants that have replaced Freon. In this way, your content is more scholarly or deep which helps in some peoples opinions. (I like to do this with content). Make sure it is a good source and make sure it has readability factored in.

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I am working on it as we speak. Funny, after I wrote that last night it became one of those thoughts that will not leeeaaavvveeee.

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salvyy

My suggestion, given your location is to first look at those on SEOmoz who are available in Europe or Italy. As to cost, I am not sure what they charge there. I do know there are some brilliant SEO people in Europe and Italy. (Yes, I know Italy is in Europe and am making a distinction ) If you choose a company from the US, I would look for someone on SEOmoz as well.

I would suggest finding at least three no matter where they are from, PM them, and give them all the same list of what you need. Then, ask each to provide a proposal and quote. You choose based on what you come up with that best fits your needs.

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If you take a look at what changed first, there may be clues as to whether or not you changed something that should not have been. 
With any change we make in sites, we are very clear there will be fluctuations in the rankings for up to a couple of months. Now, typically, you will begin to see movement after a few weeks but it is not guaranteed. I would wait a couple of more weeks and see if you are moving back up. 
If we had a few more details we could likely help a bit more.

Note, you do have a few on page issues you might wish to address. (title tag length, keyword cannibalization, etc )

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Keri brings up a good point here. For me, when I am in my office and someone comes in and says we need a ....... (which always ends in some new or improved technology piece), If we are mid project, I like being able to go to one vendor who has both eComm and B&M because I can peruse, see inventory, and purchase for pickup. The purchase for pickup is great as it is guaranteed to be on the counter in 30 min or less and, I do not have to stand in the interminable line.... Impatient I am.

If that retailer needs proof of eCommerce impact, they just have to look at that. Remember, these products could have been bought online. Secondarily, I do not prefer locations that do not have eComm sites or sites that have a thorough description of their offerings in a retail location. To me, today, eCommerce saves me money....especially with retail in the store purchases because it saves me time.

Good on 301. On rel=canon, I did not mean to imply "each page to itself." There are various issues that arise in coding pages, making changes to pages, etc. So, here is a classic: to a non coder, www.example.com and www.example.com/ are the same page. To the bots they are two. So by inserting rel=canon for that page you are saying if example.com/ comes up treat it the same as example.com.

For your example, if it were me, manual juicer and highest rated manual juicer are very distinctly different pages. The first could lead to a description of 4 and the second speaks only to one. You have to be careful with this in the SEO because if you get too diffuse in adding modifiers to the keyword (making them long tail for example) you can draw strength from the main keyword page. Sometimes it is good to do, sometimes not....this part is the art of SEO.

BTW........what type of OR wine???? (Nothing like a Willamette Valley Pinot....and, yes, I know how to pronounce Willamette!)

Well done @SEOConsult.

Al

To be thorough we would need a bit more information, but there are several reasons you will see this type discrepancy (higher in AdWords than Analytics):

In Adwords the conversion is counted as a click and in Analytics as a visit. This generally means higher in analytics than AdWords. With Adwords the conversion is counted when the click occurs, in Analytics the conversion is counted the day it occurs which can cause a discrepancy.

Also, with AdWords you have invalid click technology with takes away anything deemed suspicious making the Analytics import have fewer transactions.

When you are importing Analytics goals, the goals are not counted until the customer completes them and then there is a delay of up to 24 hours which can cause a discrepancy.

Hope that helps

With mozTrust, it is really about the links you have coming to that sub domain. If they are from Wikipedia, a well known news source, three large teaching hospitals, SEOmoz, etc. then you are going to have a very high mozTrust. If, you are parking subdomains and then linking to them this will obviously cause a lower score as those domains have nothing linked to them and have no reason to be trusted.

If you are going out getting lots of low end links, the mozTrust will be low. So, the key to higher mozTrust is higher quality links.

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AWC this is a good question and I started writing then decided to take a breather and came back as I just did not see a clear answer. I leaned toward what Keri had in that if you saw traffic exiting from the contact page or the map or store location page, that would at least provide a clue. If you track back and say that these people were looking at umbrellas, did you see a corresponding increase in umbrellas? But, the traffic is likely more diffuse in terms of products. The exit page does seem to hold a clue though.

However, you might be better served to design a test that would give you more data. So, is there a way to look at items that are more often purchased locally than shipped? Say an item that is more time is of the essence? An example for me would be tarps after a bad storm? Items associated with weather? Items that repair vital equipment (like your car or lawn mower or a plunger). If you see searches for generators after the lights go out in an area and it is unknown when they will be back, are you seeing searches to the eComm site and then purchases in the retail store after exits? For plumbing supplies do you see searches on plungers, augers, etc. and then exits without purchasing? Can you in any way correlate that with local purchases? I would even look at having something on the site like "Press here to text our address and phone to your cell phone" (Gosh that is so good I may have to adopt it!!).

Hope this helps, wish it were imminently more definitive.

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Here is the issue as I see it: how many pages are you "consolidating" and why? First, if you are using a 301, IMO you are saying I have links on this page and link juice I do not want to lose. I want to move that link juice to my new page of similar type content. If you have 5 pages as an example that you are "consolidating" and three have one link that is the same to each page, then I would take one of the three for the 301 to the new page. On the other two, if one has no links, I would not redirect it unless there was some navigational reason. If the last page had 12 links, etc. then it absolutely gets 301'd. 
It is likely that even 25 pages to one would not be an issue. The question is, is there a reason to redirect? If you are trying to redirect 50 pages for example and they are similar and all have different links, I would do the redirects slowly, maybe 3 to 5 per week for 10 weeks or more. The reason is I would not want it to take a chance an unnecessary flag is raised.
Yes, every page needs a rel=canon.

Gurus, shmurus, have you seen the friggin' Oracles!!! Last year the final was gurus 32 oracles 33 (but it was an OT loss for the gurus - gotta love their heart!)

Artience Girl

It is not unusual for each search engine or differing tools like Open Site Explorer to show differing links. With OSE, moz does not have the resources of Google so they focus on presenting the better or higher value links and typically will show 20 to25% of what you will find in GWMT.

If you could give us a url it would be easier to give you real direction as to why it is not being indexed in Bing. Given that OSE is showing five links, it is odd that Bing would not have indexed the site.

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Since you are using ccTLD's I do not believe you have to use rel=canon to the .com. If you have three distinct sites, the way you have the alternate here is correct. In the .com you would set geotargeting in WMT. Go to site configuration, click settings, choose geographic target and set for the US. This will insure that the .com is for U.S. and prevent confusion since you have the other two ccTLD's. 
You won't have duped content issues this way.

As to choosing the rel=canon, you could do it each for its own domain, or if you want to share content, etc. you could do a cross domain rel=canon.

Good retort EGOL. I'm impressed.

Were these all individual pages or was your homepage ranking for all three?

If the site being down occurred as Marisa suggested, you could go into GWMT and request a crawl. You can also look and see when you were last crawled. But, I still doubt that is the issue.

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What are you saying EGOL??? I shaved this morning!

Sal, Eyepaq is correct. It does appear that the redirect worked and was likely done correctly. I would also suggest setting the www. subdomain of the site as the preferred in GWMT.

I have to say this as well, to quote the kind eyepaq, "You do have a lot of SEO related issues...."

I always wonder with poker sites, betting sites, vitamin, etc. that the questions are "I did something correct, did I get penalized." One thing that I have learned through the Q&A is that Google is not nearly as strict with some of these issues as one might think. If they were, I am a bit unsure how some sites would rank on page 100.

Here is something to consider: What if you reduced the number of links on the page to your best 10 or 20? What if you had a poker site that did not try to capitalize on every affiliate offer on the planet and instead focused on providing the best clients to the top 10 or 20 sites and that provided content so compelling that novice or pro would want to read it.

There is a saying regarding real estate often heard hear in the US: You want to be the cheapest or most expensive house in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, with so many gambling sites, it is all about being like the rest of them. If you want to truly succeed, find a way to differentiate yourself from the pack.

Good luck. Good move on the 301.

From my experience it would not. Even in a highly competitive area, if you had no more than a six hour outage I just dont sees that kind of move. Another thing to look at is you say you went from pg 1 to  pg 6. For one keyword/page or for every page on the site?

To me,  If the server going down caused you to lose rank it would be diffuse and all pages would feel at least some effect. I have had a server out for nearly two days due to a poor server farm, we did not see much change in our sites.

Hope this helps. If you could give more info ( a url ) we could be more definitive.

I think Highland has a nice idea that could be developed. Here is another. Take Highlands idea and put 5 people in the first 15 to twenty seconds, then show the finished result (time lapse) in the next  15 to 20 seconds. After that slowly reveal who is whom. If there is enough of a difference in before and after,

You can always be a force for good and at the very end show the artist giving time to a lower socio economic group of girls, an elderly home, etc. I must say a charity we have worked with for a while has provided teenaged girls with makeup, perfume, etc. from high end retailers during Christmas. Girls that would not have gotten these any other way. It really does have an impact.

End the video with make up can change anything - even lives.

Hope you can make that work. let us know.