Hi Micromano,

I'd say that having one big website, rather than four smaller ones, is what I'd recommend also, combined with a really sound and solid website structure. Whilst authorship is less of a focus, I wouldn't remove any work you've done on that, as there've been mentions from Google staff that this may come back in the future. Re: branding, I'd say that it's incredibly important- if a company has a really strong 'About Us' page, which details experience and history and really demonstrates that your company is real and trustworthy, this will help both rankings and user trust (leading to greater conversion rates).

In response to your two questions about parent pages, I'd say the URL is less important. What's important is that you use the parent pages to build your site's architecture in terms of links. So, the homepage of your website should have clear, bold links to the 4 areas you cover, and your website's navigation should ideally be structured with 4 links, and maybe drop-down menus for the sub-pages of each area? If search engines can infer the structure of your site just by following your links, this will help (and will help users too!)

You should also make sure each of the 4 'area' pages is filled with rich information, and is structured as a landing page with general information, and links to the most important sub-pages.

In summary, site architecture is a lot more important than just the URLs of the site, I'd recommend you use good internal linking structures to indicate that your site is structured in this way.

Hope this helps! 
Zoe

Hi,

I'd take caution, provided you haven't built any shady linking yourself. I would never recommend disavowing links which have been built naturally even if they are from somewhat unrelated websites, unless they are spam or seem maliciously built. Also, you should try to remove the problem links before you disavow them- read this post for some useful tips!

Hope this helps, 
Zoe

Hi Nick,

Is your website responsive, or do you have a separate mobile site?

If it's a separate mobile site, is there a difference between the content on each? If so, I'd have a look at the content and investigate whether the mobile version is more user friendly, for example.

If it's a responsive site, or if the content is the same, I'd investigate the competition. Perform a search for the keyword from a mobile device, and from a desktop device, and check if the websites which are ranking above you on desktop but not mobile have mobile-friendly websites. I've seen this affect some clients more and more, and where we have a mobile-friendly site, that site often ranks slightly better for mobile queries.

Hope this helps, if you do have more information I'd be happy to help some more! 
Zoe

Hi,

How are you checking the rankings? Through looking at the SERP, or through a tool like Moz? If it's just been changed today, I'd say this is probably coincidence, depending on what you've changed it to. Google doesn't update meta data in real time, and so you'll probably not see a change for a couple of hours-up to a week, depending on how often Google re-indexes your site.

This is more likely to be caused by something else, from the sound of it!

Hope this helps, 
Zoe

Hi,

I'm not aware of any tools which can automate this, but I can share my usual process with you. When I'm approaching a new E-Commerce store's keyword research, I'll usually create a prioritised list of the top pages on site, based on the client's goals, and current top page data. Ideally each product page will have the target keyword in the title- though this isn't always the case- so I'd go through based on popularity of products, and best margins, to ensure the keywords are good, and the descriptions are unique and optimised. Are the products already generating sales, or are they sold elsewhere? Could you get a list of the best sellers from other platforms?

I'll usually make a prioritised list of pages in Excel, usually starting with the homepage, then categories, then sub categories and products, to write optimised descriptions & meta data. It can be a huge job- I have one client with over 20,000 products and nearly 3,000 categories for example- but I haven't found a way to really automate this process yet!

Definitely keen to hear how other SEOs respond to this, it's a very interesting question. 
Hope this helps, 
Zoe