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1. Base it on user experience. Will it benefit the visitor if you have an external link on your page. If it does then add the external link. This will not only provide a good visitor experience and showcase your site as a trusted source for info , it will also help in your rankings if you're competing against a site that links to nothing or just poor quality internal links . This has been covered in another post here

2. Internal linking should again be done if its benefits the visitor experience and you have links to good quality related internal content. Keyword rich anchor text internal links are often used for getting high ranks for particular keywords. Just dont overdo it by using the keyword so much on a particular page that you suffer the consequences of the over optimization  penalty

3. i would say that an inbound link from the home page is more valuable than an inner page. You can benefit in 2 ways, more traffic referred to you assuming that the home page of that site gets the highest traffic out of all it's pages and the 2nd benefit is that the home page of that site has a higher trust factor as compared to it's inner pages with Google. I would recommend a text link over a button. Text links enjoy a higher CTR as compared to buttons/banners.

Ok then your best bet would be to review analytics for the landing pages with the highest traffic to give you a clue on the keywords. You should also check the bounce rates. If they are very high like 80 or 90%, it could be some sort of automated/bot traffic someone is sending to your site.

:):) well said.

Hi Rich,

I think just this one act of hiding text will not get you in trouble however if you combine this with other black hat techniques or your site exhibits spammy behavior then you're definitely in trouble. If one is able to access all the content in a text only browser then you should be ok. I would still try and educate the client on having a small block of introductory text above the product and category pages that would also help with conversions.

Her's the official link on hidden text by Google.

Jill Whalen's forum addresses this question here 

Here's another  link on this topic

yep, i would stick to a particular subject matter for a site and focus on it.

not necessarily, if you make the page specific to that keyword/topic and provide quality info you stand a chance to rank for it. Sites like about.com , ehow and wikipedia cover different topics and rank quite well . If you do address broad keywords in your blog, depending on the competition , you will have to build links specifically to that page for that specific keyword to rank high.

A downside to this : you might confuse the visitor if they land on that page and find out that your site covers a broad range of other topics that are of no interest for them . They will bounce off your site impacting your conversion rate.

i second Xenu .Excellent tool for checking outbound links

Here's another interesting tool that checks all the outbound links on a particular page and validates them

Hi Jorge,

How are your competitors ranking for their approach by using security testing tools directly. If they are doing well then i would adopt the same strategy and try to beat them with quality backlinks and good on site optimization. SEO is not the only thing you have to worry about , you also should keep conversion rates in mind. By first taking the visitors to a security tools page and then your product page you are increasing your conversion funnel and this might impact your conversion rates. At the end of the day , it's all about sales/revenue/leads/ROI so you dont want to do anything to jeopardize your conversions. That one extra step that the visitor has to take might result in fewer conversions.

Hi Pedro,

The "not provided" data might be occurring because they access your site using the secure version of Google. If the users are logged in using any Google product like gmail they automatically default to the secure version and Google hides that data. Even Firefox does the same by using the https for Google. I'm assuming that the 72 out of 148 are showing up in the organic side in analytics. If that is the case, your best bet is to drill down to the landing pages and see if there is a spike in traffic on any one particular landing page on the site.

Did you do any form of paid advertising. That could also be the reason for keywords not showing up.

Good post on this topic here.

My thoughts would be to separate that blog from the main site or only have related content and posts in the blog to your subject matter. If your idea is to rank high for the site related to the Genre that your site is focused on, then that blog content is not helping. You can still blog about different topics as long as they resonate with a single theme for example home improvement, home renovation, home repair etc.

If the intent of the blog is to just engage the community and spread your brand as you mentioned then it's ok but you wont really be getting any SEO benefit from the blog. Your rankings would basically be impacted with the on and off site optimization done for the site related to the keywords. If your competitor has a site ranking well and also a blog related to that topic, he should outrank you in this instance.

You can use Google's keyword suggestion tool , type in fabrication and welding in the keyword list and the website , check the box that says "only show ideas closely related to my search terms" . You should be able to pull a good keyword list using this tool.

In addition to this tool you can also use SEM Rush , type in the client's website and see what keywords they are ranking for that are related to your site. You can also use the keyword analysis tool from SEOMOZ.

good links, thanks Sanket.

Lewis,

I'd suggest putting up this requirement on vworker . Lots of talented and skilled people available on that site. I'm sure you'll get multiple bids on your project.

Citations are essentially sources where your company is mentioned typically with your address.

More info on this Link

You can use the help of companies like Customer Lobby and White Spark to research citations that can be used for your site.

David Mihm in his post here ranks the top factors that influence the local rankings.

Hi Hal,

Try reducing the keyword density of this keyword on your page. You are also using the keyword in your internal links with that keyword as the anchor text. Your site could have suffered from Google's over optimization penalty. Also check your links and report any bad links using the disavow tool.

Evelyn, keeping in mind that you launched the site end of Oct, you'll have to be patient with the rankings. I would have been very surprised if you new site had started ranking already. The fact that you are keeping both the domains might also make things tricky. Does the new site have any links pointing back to it. You could have done a 301 redirect from the old to the new URL and that might have helped the new site rank faster. What's your motivation to keep both the sites in the index?

Damien, you have a redirect to the non www version of your site. Try running the crawl again by eliminating the www in the URL , see if that fixes the issue.  (romancebookstore.com.au)

Max, i'd give it a couple of weeks more. If they are still under review, you're better off deleting them and starting over.

i'd say yes they would get indexed unless you're using the "no index" attribute for that page.

Hi Jay, you might find this post helpful

Matt Cutts confirmed that Google has a "parked domain detector" that filters out parked domains thereby eliminating any SEO benefits. Matt Cutts Video link 

yes by looking at those pages you might be facing the same issue with them. It's tough to estimate which keyword is getting you the penalty but i think it's safe to assume that the keyword you're using the most on a page might be culprit. The backlinks might not be showing up because they might not have indexed this link as yet. The backlink tools like majestic do not report all the links for a site with 100% accuracy.

Having your content syndicated or added on other sites can do no harm as long as those sites are good quality ones. The link value really depends on how those sites handle outbound links (if they use no follow tag or not for external links) . Aside from the link value, you could always benefit from the additional traffic those sites can potentially send your way. More info here

Yep, you're on the right track with your thought process. Google will try and give credit to the original source of the content.

Hi Avraam,

On the Leed page (www.cleanedison.com/leed)  the keyword Leed has been used over 20 times and you might be facing the impact of the over optimization penalty. Try to reduce the focus on this keyword on the page . More info here.

I don't think the adding the feed on your site will get you in any trouble as long as you link to the original source of the content. More Info Here

Hi Eric,

more info on the over optimization penalty here.

Lisa, try checking manually which URL is not getting indexed in Google. Make sure you do not have any no follows on those pages. If all the pages are connected / linked together, then Google will crawl your whole site eventually, just a matter of time.

when did you do the cleanup. Might take some time before you bounce back in the results.

What are the recommended ways to optimize the Google+ places page for clients. Do services like louder voice and customer lobby help? I'd love to get the group's opinion on what strategies are working for them on local optimization.

This issue that you're facing is quite common with franchise related websites as they follow one master template and just some localized content changes on each of the franchisee sites.

Each of the individual franchisee sites should invest in original content that separates it from the corporate site. Just having a 5% difference in content will not suffice and will do harm sooner or later.

A really good discussion on this topic in this Link 

In my opinion, add the 150k pages in the site map along with the 300k pages, let Google index all the pages and once they are all indexed , you can take a call on de indexing the 150k pages based on their traction.

Hi Bob,

Sent you a PM with details.

As mentioned in an earlier post today, you can have as many 301's as needed however the best practice to redirect them to related new pages on the site.

Matt Cutt's video here. 

Google has a really good post on this question . Link

The length of the content should be based on the actual content itself being presented and the visitor experience. If the information can be provided to the client in 250 words then that's what the length of the page should be.

Here's a link to a good post discussing this topic.

My suggestion based on a $300 budget would be to run a promo/contest where the client gives away something valued at $300 to the respondents. This has a better chance of going viral , generating buzz and quality backlinks as opposed to the directory route.

There is no cap on the number of 301 redirects that you can do although it is recommended to do the 301 not just to the home page but to the specific pages that you have replaced on the new site.

Matt Cutts answers this question in the video here

This post might be helpful for you.

Another Video explaining the tool Here

You site may have been impacted by the over optimization penalty. Redo the on site for your pages and ideally focus on only 1 keyword when optimizing the pages. Also check your backlinks and use the disavow tool to get rid of the bad ones.

Hi Raphael,

Did you follow all the steps as mentioned in this link. If yes then you will just have to wait till Baidu indexes your site.

Why would you want to redirect them to another page on the old site and explain it to the visitors. You can do that on the existing article page on the old site itself. I would advise against it because if you put a link to the new pages on the new site then Google will crawl the new site pages and associate your new site with the old one. You'd be better of deleting those articles off the old site and then adding them on the new site when they are no longer indexed by Google.

James,

Watch out for Google's over optimization penalty as you try and recover your ranks. Review all of your on site optimization and make any fixes as necessary to reduce the keyword density.

In addition to David's choice, my recommendations include:

• Advanced Web Rankings
• GShift Labs
• SEO Book Tools

Nathan,

Title - I'd use the keyphrase in the title tag

alt - I'd use a short description for the alt tag with the keyword in there , like a 5-6 word description.