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Hi Baptiste... yes, we failed to get him to even have one /category/ in there... I do not know why he couldn't do this.....!

Right, the most important keywords are the first one's on the left. If you feel it best to add a title, do it, but it will be slightly better Search Eninge Ranking wise to omit the title.

How long has this been? I noticed a while back that report cards don' t update quickly. Put the call ticket in as David suggested.

Thanks Hellemans, you think things should be ok but it's always good to get an outside opinion

If you go ahead, unfortunately, there's no warning from Google (in Webmaster Tools or elsewhere) about penalties. You'll sometimes see a message after the penalty is in place (but sometimes not at all). If it does happen, you can typically fix it, request re-consideration in Webmaster Tools, and within a few weeks to months, they'll lift it (presuming you've made the fix). That penalty/re-consideration process can be quite painful, though. In the event it happens, there's no long-term impact to PageRank/Authority/link metrics about the site. Best of luck, Rand

Well, I would recommend you alter the internal links to just point to the new '/' default, but in the meantime... I would have thought your code would have worked, but every time I try it my site falls over. It might work for you though. Give it a try but test it straight away I'll see if I can get a different version working on my test site for you if not

Thanks article is good read.

Penalty can affect you in two ways: Manual Penalty Algorithmic Penalty (Automatic) Reconsideration request is useful for the first one, not the second. This means that if you have been algorithmically penalised you will need to remove the source of the problem and the issue will self-resolve. The problem is that Google will not ever tell you what you did wrong. Aint that a bitch! What may have happened in your case is two things: Your penalty is lifted and your rankings are where they are as you lack good natural links. You have removed manual penalty but the algorithmic one still lingers. Options? Clean up some more and wait a few weeks. Contingency plan? Dump the domain and move on if you can afford to do this from business point of view. Sometimes you can get away with 301 from A to B, however if you are a higher impact website you will not stay under a radar long. Best of luck mate. I feel your pain.

Hahah! My favorite answer these days is...it depends. , if you have a mortgage company to push, then find your white flag now. But if you have a niche industry, then yes, it is possible. But like everyone else has said. make the on-page rock solid and work on links.

Thanks for your response. As an SEO, I would have to agree with your approach but I don't think the decision to merge these different mediums on the online front will rest with the SEO, however, when asked for my two cents, i can give them the option that is most likely to bring maximum benefits. Cheers!

I think they are very usefull on top of the page. As you would probably link to the pages in the breadcrumbs in another way if you wouldn't have the breadcrumbs, it doesn't really matter for your linking structure. Haven't seen any evidence or experience that links in breadcrumbs are less valuable because they are in the breadcrumb. As for additional placement at the bottom: I think it depends on the page. On a content page, actually quite some people scroll down reading and at the bottom they look for alternative resources. Why not add the breadcrumb also there along with other relevant links.

Hi Hansj: Yes, the imgaes that existed had no alt tags, all lived on one URL with a generic page title. So as far as optimising these images goes, I've given them all descriptive and relevant alt tags, H1 tags and page title, and then added to sitemap.xml. I am now in the process of measuring the sucess of this and thats where the PA came in. So if image A was steadily moving up the SERP's yet Images C & D were having no impact what could be the influencing factors? Obviously there will be many factors asto why, but I thought that PA could play a part in the overall monitoring. Thanks for the reply