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Excactly what I was looking for.  Thanks.

Just an update, on Oct 15th, 2012 I added the links in my various websites to use Rel=author.  Today, October 30th, 2012 (only 15 days later) I see my image live in the SERPs!  Ya hoo!

and that's for all my websites I added including my company site, books website, and my blog sub-domain.  Thanks SEO Moz for an awesome suggestion to do this.  I really stand out now. 

P.S.  I just did my happy dance before writing this. 

You're welcome.  I hope it all works out as you expect.

This is where it goes a bit over my head as a programer, which I'm not, but we would need to dive into the code a bit.  I'm not sure I can be of help with details, but from what I'm understanding is as follows.

I understand that if a product is in stock, it shows the page, if the product is not in stock, rather than that pages information changing to say it is no longer in stock, you get redirected to or the page changes to a new page that simply says it can't find what you are looking for.

If I'm right, you need to change the code so when a product is not found or no longer in stock, instead of pointing to this dead page returning zero, or instead of just having that page deleted (in turn being 404), have the page change content or redirect to another page saying it is no longer in stock.

I'm not sure I'm clear here, but what I'm saying is, have it direct to a page you created yourself that says you are temporarily out of stock, rather than the program automatically generating a 404 page.

I hope this helps send you in the right direction, otherwise I'm no programer so can't give you exact instructions, but maybe someone who knows e-commerce programming can help here.

OK, from what I can see in your example link and what you just confirmed in your last note, the problem is in the design of the database search.

If a product is out of stock, instead of just saying that particular product is out of stock, it comes back with a 0 search results returned.  It's basically searching for something and takes you to a page saying that doesn't exist.  That would totally explain why you are getting soft 404 errors because you are basically searching for a page that doesn't exist.

You need your web developer to fix this so it takes you to a proper page with some sort of information rather than what is currently a nice looking soft 404 page.

This makes some sense.  It's always helpful to be active online and search engines seem to prefer pages that are active and have up to date content.  I found this out by accident years ago just updating my website constantly, not for SEO purposes, but because I like to keep my website current.  All the time, it's been helping my rankings and I didn't even know it.

You should suggest to your various authors (if they are different people) that they post updates, as minor an update as it may seem, it is still a content change / addition / update.  That's what matters, along with driving visitors to your Google+ page via Facebook, Twitter, various social network websites and email blasts.  I have all my websites including social networking, linking to each other.

So, regardless if it's true or not, it's a good idea to  keep Google+ pages update frequently, because if it's not true now, it maybe later on, and you want to be ahead of the game. 

I'm not an expert in this area, but it sounds like a coding issue.  Somehow when Google looks at the page it triggers that error.  If I understand correctly, when you are out of stock, the system automatically generates a message that says it is out of stock.  What does that page look like?  Maybe if you post an example of that webpage it could be helpful.

I'm thinking you will need to modify that out of stock template so it includes other information.  Whether it be as Kaushal recommended, or even just plain text saying anything.  Maybe "Sorry we are currently out of stock, please check back later or contact us for an ETA".  Having other information on the page should show to Google it is still an active page with content on it.  One way or another, the problem sounds like it's with that out of stock template the database is using.

Maybe I'm way off, but if you link to an example page, that would probably help.

Thanks Klarke, this is very reassuring to know.  I'm going to try both as you suggest and see how it appears.  I just setup my Google+ page.  I read that Google Plus pages do appear and SEOmoz itself shows up in the SERPs, so I'm assuming it does work.  I'll try both as you suggest anyway.

Thanks for sending me in the right direction.  I went on to research rel=publisher and found http://www.vervesearch.com/blog/seo/how-to-implement-the-relpublisher-google-authorship-mark-up/ which details the steps and more. I've now setup my Google+ business page and just need to wait for the post card in the mail.

Hello, not sure if you are clear in your question.  You have a gamings news site and setting up some scholarship program that you want best SEO advice for marketing this program?  It sounds like a general question which this entire website will help you with various tips and tricks on best seo advice in many areas.

The design of your site is something you want to be user friendly, inviting and easy to use.  You may edit it alot over time and that is also good for SEO, keep it fresh! 

As for contacting high schools and colleges, that's nothing to do with seo unfortunately but definitely going to help generate traffic to your site to get the ball rolling.  Getting a feedback form on your website to learn from your visitors how to improve your site would be helpful too.  Again, not really an SEO question/answer, but certainly helps build traffic and gain intelligence on your customers and potential customers.

If you have specific questions about various SEO strategies, feel free to post multiple questions.  It's better to write multiple specific and seperate questions to get specific answers.  Hope this was helpful to get you started.

I understand I can use Rel=author with Google+ for article's I write, and I understand I can use the same code for regular websites, which I'm still waiting to see show up in the SERPs, but my question is as follows...

Is Rel=author appropriate for regular business websites (since we are business owners, not authors of articles), or is there some other Schema.org tag that should be used which will also show our images in the SERPs?

I'd like my business logo to show up in the SERPs for my business page and my personal photo to show up for my blog pages.

OK, I just checked again now and my new image is showing in Google's Rich Snippet Tester.  The not so good news is my image doesn't show in the live results yet.  At least I know it updates the image pretty quickly, but apparently, what I've read, it can take a while to show up in the live SERPs, so I'll have to just be patient now and hope they allow it soon.

I'm using http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets to test my rel="author" tag which was successful, but I noticed I wanted to change my image in Google+ as it is not what I want.

I changed my image in Google+, it's been over 14 hours now and still not showing the new picture using the RichSnippets tool.  I know Google can take a couple weeks at least to show changes in search results, but this RichSnippet tool I thought was immeidate.

Am I missing something here or am I just impatient?  I want my new photo to show.

Yes, I was with BBB at one point then a few clients said it was just a money grab and waste of my money.  I agreed at the time and cancelled my membership.  I never thought of it at the time about the value of the web link side of the membership.  I will certainly reconsider renewing my membership.  I am with the local chamber commerce for many years now.

Very interesting...This creates so many more questions.  How can you find these particular directories in the first place?  It's hard enough to find a massive number of directories to submit to just to start building some link backs, but to be picky about them will take even longer just to find one to post to.  I figured, if it's posted manually, that would be ok, as long as it's not fully automated, which the one I mentioned is not fully automated, but it helps find the directories and track which ones you've submitted to and if you've been approved or not.  I'm thinking it's ok as long as I don't buy into their automated services.

This particular service for directory submission is not an automatic submission, but it provides a list of directories to submit to, and it tracks what sites you've already visited/submitted to, and which ones of those approved your listing.  It's good for keeping track of your link building as far as directory submissions go, it would be great if I can find one that tracks link building in general in a similar way.  Anyone know of something like this?

Has anyone used easysubmits.com and what's your experience with it?  Any other directory submission or link building tools that help automate and manage the process like easysubmits.com says they can do?

I'm just looking at it currenlty and wanted to hear others thoughts before I get taken in by some black hat method that hurts my websites instead.

The .htaccess file is in placing directing www to non www, so I don't see what else I could do with that.  I forgot to mention the website was recently overhauled by someone else, and they are having me help with SEO.  Not sure if that has anything to do with it.  It looks like the .htaccess should be reversed so the non www points to the www which has more value.  Someone else designed this site and they are having me do the SEO on it for them.

I ran the SEO web crawler and it finished already.  Successfully crawled all pages.  I still have to wait for another week to get the main campaign updated and see results there, but I believe it may work too now.

I guess I solved my own problem after being directed to robots.txt by Jim.  I found that the Wordpress plugin for SEO xml sitemap creator was the problem because it created a virtual robots.txt file which sent me on a wild goose chase looking for a robots.txt file which didn't exist.  Creating a robots.txt file allowing all seems to be the solultion, incase anyone else has this same problem.

I was able to update my sitemap.xml with Google webmaster tools no problem.  I'm not 100% confident though that means the entire site is searchable by the spiders.  I guess I'll know for sure in a few days tops.

I've done some more looking into it and seems to be a problem when Wordpress uses the XML site generator plugin.  It creates a virtual robot.txt file, which is why I couldn't find the robot.txt file.  Apparently the only fix is to replace it with an actual robot.txt file forcing it to allow all.

I just replaced the robots.txt file with a real one allowing all.  SEOmoz estimates a few days to test site crawl and it's another 7 days before the next scheduled crawl.  I'd kinda like to find out sooner if it's not going to work.  There must be a faster test.  I don't need a detailed test, just a basic test that says, YEP, we can see this many pages or something like that.

OK, I'm a little frustred here.  I've waited a week for the next weekly index to take place after changing the privacy setting in a wordpress website so Google can index, but I still got the same problem.  Blocked by meta-robots, no index, no follow.  But I do not see a robot file anywhere and the privacy setting in this Wordpress site is set to allow search engines to index this site.  Website is www.marketalert.ca

What am I missing here?  Why can't I index the rest of the website and is there a faster way to test this rather than wait another week just to find out it didn't work again?

Awesome!  By adding the following code to my .htaccess file, and placing it in my public directory it works.  Didn't work from the root directory which I figured out later.  I think related concerns are solved now.  Now to see how the results show on the next crawl. 

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /index.html?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)index.html?$ "/$1" [NC,R=301,NE,L]

Thanks.  I was trying a mobile version of the website also at some point.  I will just delete that one for now.

I can try your idea but is forwarding from the page itself still good for SEO?

Well, I tried taking out the 2nd instance of RewriteEngine on but i Just get a 500 error now.  I put it back how it was for now.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.  Sorry I meant to say index.htm.  Thanks you both for making this very clear.  I've already created a .htaccess file to fix my twin domain issue, now I just have to modify the .htaccess file to include this code.

The code unfortunately doesn't seem to work when I upload it.  meaning, when I type in my website address including index.htm the display still says index.htm rather than removing that part.  Am I doing something wrong?  Here's what I have currently in my htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www|blog|askdaniel).
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.htm?\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.htm?$ "/$1" [R=301,L]

Thanks.  You answered my main question.  One other question then from that.  How can I remove the index.html file from the website but still have the main website load?  I believe the index.html file has to be located somewhere for the main page to know where to look.  Right?  I believe if you go to www.twinbytes.ca which is my website, it really looks at www.twinbytes.ca/index.html anyway to get the information to display.  Would I be correct in saying so?  I understand 90% of this, but this whole index.html for the home page thing is a bit confusing.

I thought I saw this somewhere on SEOmoz before but I was so busy by the time I got around to work on my SEO on my site, I realized I have this happening and can't recall if it is a problem which takes away from my ranking.

If my www.website.com is ranking well but I have internal menu links pointing to www.website.com/index.html instead of www.website.com will that take away from my www.website.com rankings?

Should I change all my menu links that point to /index.html to the full website url path www.website.com ?

This is great information, however I have a  rather unique problem.  My website has multiple subdomains (add on domains) and if I do the .htaccess trick, not only does it work for redirecting my main site, but it redirects all my domains!  Noooo!  Not sure what I can do about that, but if anyone has any suggestions on how to handle that particlar situation, that would be great!