Hello Mick,

What you are describing here sounds like an on-page Silo to me. It will not generate any negative feedback from Google if you do it correctly. We actually recently instituted this strategy with a windows and doors company in the UK (windows & doors London, windows & doors Suffolk, windows & doors Ipswich, etc.) and have had tremendous results. Combined with a solid link-building campaign, they shot up the rankings to be #1 and have held it for over a year now. We have not seen any negative attention or penalties.

The upshot is that this tactic, if properly implemented, will generate significant ranking boosts alongside a decent link-building approach. You will do quite well if you are going after geo-specific keywords and you build your site architecture around them. I cannot vouch for individual pages put together piecemeal, however. The structure we put in place took about 2 months and was well-researched beforehand.

If you want, feel free to reach out and I would be happy to send along more advice regarding our process.

Hope this helps and best of luck with moving forward!

Rob

Hello Anirban,

The main reason large-scale websites like Indeed feature so prominently on SERP's is that there are more ranking factors at work than just content. While Panda has been created to avoid duplicate content issues and it is widely known that duplicate content can lead to penalties and reduced ranking potential, duplicate content can be over-shadowed by other ranking factors, like a website's link profile and it's Authority relative to websites in its niche.

For example, Wikipedia is widely cited by webmasters around the world, but it features a lot of repetition and is an internal linking nightmare where crawling and indexing are concerned. That being said, it is normal to find a Wikipedia page every time a "What Is" query is made.

Youtube is in a similar situation. There are duplicated videos and content galore on that domain, but it is linked to so frequently that it simply cannot be beaten when it comes to domain authority and relevance.

While Indeed is probably being impacted by duplicate content, this pales in comparison to its link profile and the relevance it has in its industry.

Hope this helps! Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Best regards,

Rob

Hello Christopher,

Bolding in and of itself confers no technical SEO advantage. However, it does have a "soft" SEO impact in that it can make content more accessible and readable from a user perspective. This might make it more likely to be shared, linked to, or otherwise cited, improving your potential reach and therefore helping with positive ranking signals to Google.

Dry, basic text can make a reader bored and increase Bounce Rate.

However, well-cited, original content with proper emphasis on relevant topics and words can make all the difference when it comes to user reception.

See the difference? Google will too, over time.

Hope this helps!

Rob

Hello Julio,

Yoast is a great plugin to use as a general framework for SEO practice - this does not mean you have to follow the instructions to the letter, but it does give you some ideas in how to create quality content and it is extremely easy to use. I use it as my go-to plug-in whenever I am setting up a site on Wordpress.

Somewhat dated, but still fairly effective, guide to using Wordpress:

http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

Here are some more plugin options for you to consider:

http://moz.com/ugc/roundup-of-35-wordpress-seo-plugins

Help with optimizing Wordpress:

http://moz.com/webinars/advanced-wordpress-seo

These will all help - in short, I would strongly suggest Yoast as an SEO tool for Wordpress. Feel free to fire any questions you have my way.

Rob

Hello benseb,

From what I'm understanding, your best bet is to 301 to the new page (assuming it provides quality content). Even though you may lose some "link juice" in the process, it is still a better option than risking poor url structure and link equity.

Even producing some mildly relevant content would help you out in this case - using the same old, tired content and making the 301 simply for Google's sake might not be the best strategy, but if you can freshen it up and 301 correctly that would be optimal.

Best of luck,

Rob

If you are hitting the 200-300 comments/page mark it might be better to get into pagination from a sheer UX perspective - depending on their dedication to the content matter, it is unlikely that the average user is going to want to sift through so many comments after reading your content.

I don't know what audience you are targeting, but it seems to me that 25-50 would be sufficient to capture the essence of most commenting sections regardless of topic and would also help with loading times.

Ray makes a great point about the canonical tag and rel tags though - as with everything, your strategy has to account for your specific situation and marketing approach.