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Sometimes they rank well simply because they have been around for a very long time. Other times it's because they have many links pointing to them from various sources. Sometimes it can be simply that Google hasn't caught on to them yet but there days might be numbered. Remember Panda only impacted around 12% as per Wikipedia. And Penguin impacted even less. So this means that either every other site is using only white hat tactics or they have flown under the radar for now but Google is always making adjustments.

Yeah and I'd also suggest utilizing the Yoast SEO plug-in. Best I've found at a high level.

thanks for that

Hi Joel Pages or Posts do not affect search rankings, but as Mark very well points out they differ in functionality. PAGES are for static (not tied to a date) content. Pages are like what you'd get on a regular 'ol website. POSTS are for dated content, like an ongoing blog or new items. Posts are what you'd typically think of as a blog. This article I did on WordPress for the Moz blog might help you further. -Dan

Thanks for the update Larry. Please hit us up if you want anyone to revisit it for you. -Dan

Hi Emma, How do you post your news articles to your site currently? Are the articles unique content, or are you sourcing your content from elsewhere?

Google is pretty clear on hidden text: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66353 In practice, it's pretty common to "organize" text using CSS or Javascript in a way that sometimes hides it from the user. In your case, since your intention is not to deceive search engines, but to enhance user experience, one option would be to include the "read more" via javascript, and then include the same text in a <no script="">tag.</no> Keep in mind, Google will read this as html text on the page, and often in the same position as you place it on the page. So if you place several paragraphs of text in a no script tag towards the top of the page... ask yourself is this is how you want Google to view your homepage. As long as you follow Google's guidelines, and are careful to make your text accessible, you should be fine.

I actually just looked at the same problem yesterday. I personally used feedburner. It is a google product first off, which just makes things simpler. Personally, I am a big fan of Google Reader, so it has really easy integration of these things. As far as a plugin, I used FeedBurner FeedSmith to plugin to my website.

Great comment, thank you Keri! The subject of mortgages is not the most fascinating to most people, but hopefully I can at least keep it as interesting as possible while still providing great info. Thanks!

Without any content you're also setting yourself up to get hit by the next monster Google update.  I would make sure you lay out all of these reasons to add content and the risks of not having any and make sure they are aware of it.  If they still won't budge, then just do the best you can and when the day comes when they realize they aren't seeing results they'll already know why.

Willny In general there is no such thing as too much content. But you mentioned that some of the articles seem not fluent.. that could be another way of saying they are spammy. If this is the case simply go through the articles and make them sound natural. Subdomain vs directories. In most all cases you want to go with directories or pages, as sub-domains can be viewed as separate websites completely. If the site was hit by Penguin / Panda then the previous owner probably did some un-natural stuff to try and rank. This may explain why his articles seem spammy it may also indicate a bigger problem like buying links / exchanging links / and blantant spamming on forums / blogs / social media. Make sure you look at the backlink structure of the site before you go killing pages. Hope that helps

#1 - I haven't seen a guide that specific, but http://www.seomoz.org/blog/down-and-dirty-write-your-own-url-rewrite should be helpful #2 - you can move whenever you'd like, but if you're worried about Panda, I'd be careful and make sure that all the pages on your site are unique and highly valuable to visitors. Google's got some pretty sophisticated algorithms to figure that stuff out. You might want to try http://www.seomoz.org/blog/replicate-googles-panda-questionnaire-whiteboard-friday You're correct that if you get hit by Panda, having subdomains may help insulate the main domain from the penalty. But long term, you should be aiming for maximum benefit and not just protection. If you do things right, you won't need to worry about Panda.

many thanks for this. will do it now.

Yes 301 is the best option if possible, Next would be canonical.

Hi Harry, There are various ways in which you can try to secure guest posts on sites within your niche. To start off, there a few tools out there that will help you find opportunities (sites that are looking for articles). My Blog Guest (http://myblogguest.com/) is probably the best at the moment but Guestr (http://guestr.com) and blogger linkup (http://www.bloggerlinkup.com/) are also great. You can also use this twitter tool to help source opportunities. Alternatives to the above include searching Google for sites that accept guest posts (look for 'write for us' and similar pages) and simply connecting with a site that you really want to write for (sending an email, asking on Twitter etc) If you're going to do this, make sure you get across the fact that you are genuinely interested in writing for them and not just wanting a link (as this will get you nowhere). It's also a good idea to include a couple of article ideas and examples of any previous posts in your intial approach to a site. Hope this helps!

As far as i know the community of SEomoz.. i don't think they even prefer using content writing software as mostly writing is all manual and need lot of research and analysis instead of some machine to write for you... Although SEO Gadget have a content generation tool that can help you get lot of ideas for writing content https://seogadget.co.uk/content-strategy-generator-tool-v2-update/

Great concept. Never thought of trying this through Wordpress. I have a  few set site templates that I teach beginners how to use. Makes the layout consistent and the content clean. But again, never tried this with wordpress.But I have found that Yola works well for this.