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When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here?
Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?
Probably not a big deal, but since we don't know everything that the bots are looking at, if it is an easy fix I would consider just updating the CSS.
I think it depends on whether you look more closely at visits or unique visits as a definition of traffic. It also depends on what you are trying to determine like how many visits it takes to drive a conversion or how many individual people convert on average.
You're right that people may not be fans of pest control like they would Pepsi, but you can create interesting content that people will share (worst infestation photos, top 10 most common pests, before/after). The goal with social will be to share and disseminate content, not direct Facebook fans for the company.
I do agree that social should be a part of what should be a more dedicated website content strategy.
You may also want to consider the effects of inbound links to the less optimal page that is ranking and consider updating that URL to have a better landing page experience.
Don't let B2B mean it has to be boring or geared specifically for a business audience. Focus on blog topics, infographics or other interesting pieces of content on where bed bugs are the worst, what bed bugs do, why you can't get rid of bed bugs without professional help, etc.
Google doesn't hold separate indexes for B2B and B2C so you will need to compete for terms like "bed bugs" with consumer facing companies that are spending a lot of time, money and effort on ranking for that term also.
For social media I would stay tuned to Google News alerts on bed bugs stories (there will be at least one a day I would think) and then use that to post online. Become an online expert in general bed bugs info and then let that expertise tie over naturally to how your company plays in the pest control space.
You probably want a two-phased approach.
Phase 1 - Keep domain.com ranking number one for the keywords you care about. Keep an eye for competition creep through these similar-named domains.
Phase 2 - Start pushing these other domains hot on your heels down the SERP by optimizing some of your other domains, sub-domains, blogs, social media or other web properties that will earn you more real estate on the SERP. For example, if you search iPod, Apple owns the top 4 results pointing to different pages on apple.com. This can be tricky to essentially compete with yourself on multiple pages for the same keyword, but it is the best way to push down your competition and appear as the undisputed expert.
Yeah, do the redirect and if possible keep hosting the sites on different servers--then it doesn't look like you are building your own link network. Try to avoid reciprocal links too (not always possible with mergers like this).
Duplicate content can pack a double punch since not only does it potentially look like spam to Google but it also divides up the value of the pages between the multiple sources. Best case is to eliminate duplicate content, but often the easier fix--especially when parameters are involved--is to use canonical.
Google doesn't always seem to respect the canonical tag, but it should help mitigate duplicate content errors that can definitely drag down the rankings.
Unless someone there is fiddling with the settings in Webmaster Tools for sitelinks I would chalk it up to Google constantly tweaking how things are displayed on the SERPs. It could even be a matter of what Google server you are hitting (one may show sitelinks and another may not).
It may be a little outside your budget but one of the base model DSLR cameras from Nikon or Canon shoot excellent HD video and you can tap into their extensive line of interchangeable lenses. This method would probably cost about $1000.
I have also gone the cheap route before and used a couple Kodak HD pocket cameras (Playtouch or Playsport). These record a good image as long as the lighting is decent and you don't require any movement or zooming. I would setup a two camera shoot and attach either a lapel mic or shotgun mic to the on-board mic port of one of the cameras.
The two camera shoot is nice because you can edit cuts better so you don't run into jump cuts. This is great when the person on-screen can't do it all in one take. Then just sync up the two files in a video editing program and cut to different angles when necessary.
Definitely for organic SEO you will want to include your geographic terms in the on-page content. In an ideal world you could rank for "luxury real estate" but in reality that is probably a very competitive term and by narrowing it to Dallas you will capture people looking in your market and will have a much better chance of actually appearing in the SERPs.
You may even want to consider other major suburbs in Dallas to catch some of those longer tail searches.
Nice looking blog. I have found this as well in blogs I have produced. Google seems to only include a certain threshold of blogs. Yours is a PR3 so it may not be in their "watch list."
I also find that they don't always include every site every time, even if it is a higher pagerank site.
My old logo did not fit well in the new Google+Local page and so I resized it and uploaded it a couple weeks ago using the Google Places admin tool. I have tried it on multiple locations but it does not show up on the actual Google+ page. The images do show up in the admin tool (so it wasn't that the logo didn't upload properly).
I changed the description text to see if any changes were going through and those appeared after about 24 hours.
Anyone been able to successfully upload new images to Google+Local?
Just to echo other responses, I wouldn't do anything to take away from one of the pages, but just continue any branding and link building efforts to just one of the pages. Adding a link from the secondary page to the primary page will help.
The notion that hurting one page will help the other doesn't really jive--just focus on building reputation for the page that matters.
Thanks Paul, what if there are limitations to posting the sitemap to another subdomain? Can Google connect the dots if sitemap.example.com is verified in your webmaster tools account and www.example.com/robots.txt points to the sitemap in the other subdomain?