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Thanks everyone! I feel so much more secure about going after this same industry domain. I agree it is good business. Thanks Carla

Yup I've seen that about Bing too.. although after discussion with our front-end developer, we're going to stick with it in the name of good HTML. Our traffic from Bing doesn't represent a big enough ratio to use improper syntax.

Then perhaps improving the design might solve the problem. You could use a treeview... Example: http://www.programmingsolution.net/useful-js/jquery-treeview.php

To the OP, We are also on Volusion and have found that adding the Meta Robots tag for noindex, follow  in the meta override area for categories has worked for us.  We haven't found a way to add it however to the SearchResults page at this time.

Jon - If you have the different websites running with different languages (i.e. .com is English, .nl is Dutch, .fr is French, etc), then you should probably have a separate sitemap for each site. If they are all the same language, and you just have the site loading with .com / .nl / .fr, then Google will see this as duplicate content and you should likely make changes to keep them a bit more separate... Thanks, -- Jeff

Correct to assume but incorrect to think that's enough to get ranked. "Link juice" decays rather rapidly as it spreads out across your site. So yes, your rankings will fall. What you need to do is get a marketing campaign going. Build content, gain organic links, and continue to grow engagement. You've got the technical aspect sorted (it seems) so now it's time to get people coming to your site. Social/blog/etc to build your community. Good luck!

Do you have feedback on my answer? I do believe it answers this question. I think you are confused with local/business results and G+ pages appearing on the right rail.

OK, I understand now. Looking at the source code I think it is making it hard for a crawler (Moz or Google) to make sense of it. Combine that with the AJAX running as it is I think it is not straightforward for a person to navigate either - just saying it how it is for me as a visitor to the site With regard to Google, I think this is further compounded for them to relate what they can crawl to pages it will serve as relevant results for a search. On the AJAX stuff this blog post by Matthew Edgar on Moz may help: Can Google Really Access Content in JavaScript? Really? Particularly striking for me is what Matthew says at the end: Yes, Google can execute some JavaScript to find content but Google has limitations on what it can do, and what it can understand. The best practice remains the same: put the content you want Google to crawl and index in basic HTML. For example, use jQuery tabs to put the content on one file instead of AJAX tabs that spreads out the content across several files. In short, make it easy for Google to access your content. Sorry, I don't mean for my thoughts to be seen as negative, but I hope the info helps you in some way. Peter

re="canonical"  - or noindex the video section, dependent on how similar the pages are. If they're different enough, a "noindex,follow" tag will be more appropriate.

Hi Jason, The difference is: a mobile sitemap is a sitemap showing the URLs of your separate mobile pages. the mobile annotation you mentioned above, for the regular desktop sitemap, is just a way of indicating that there is an alternate version of the desktop page for mobile users (it's basically serving the same purpose as the rel=alternate 'switchboard' tags that go in the desktop page's HTML). You would still need to include the rel=canonical switchboard tag annotation in the mobile page's HTML. Hope that helps!

Hi, I'm wondering what implementation you used for the rel=canonical? I'm very surprised to hear that adding the tags negatively impacted the mobile site's ranking in the mobile SERPs; all it should have done is change the URL to the m. version. I would not recommend the workaround you suggested, as redirecting a ranking and indexed page to a noindexed page (let alone several noindexed pages) will most likely cause confusion for the crawler.

Thanks a lot Anthony. Unfortunately the problem cannot be fixed at programming level so I'll try the "solution" with the canonical tags. Cheers!

Just make sure they're linking to your most important pages, and the link equity should flow to them. Otherwise I wouldn't worry about it.

Hi Sukhbir, Currently, the best way I know of reporting that a location has closed is to go to this page: https://support.google.com/places/ Click the red 'Contact Us' button. Go through the wizard, choosing the 'my listing has incorrect information' and then the 'this business no longer exists' options. Link to the URL of the Google+ Local page for the closed location, and in the additional notes section, explained that this branch of the business has closed, though the others remain open. My understanding is that this does not completely delete the location from Google's system - there is currently no way to do so - but will prevent it from appearing for your service related terms. It may still appear for people searching specifically for that location, but will have a label on it stating that the business is closed. Not a perfect solution, but the best I know of that Google currently offers. Beyond this, I would recommend that you manually remove as many third party citations of the business on other directories such as YP.com, Yelp, CitySearch, etc., so that you are getting rid of as much data as possible that supports the existence of the business. Your website should be edited to remove absolutely all references to the closed location. Not sure about redirecting pages. My main goal would simply be to get rid of any references to the closed location. Hope this helps!

Well put, thanks Dan. I'm going to stick with the 302 "temporarily." Wink, wink. After all, everything is temporary right?!

302 and 307 are the same except for one small thing, with a 307, the redirect must be the same method as the original request, if the original was a GET then the redirect must be a GET, if it was a POST the redirect must be a POST. A 302 allows for a change in method, but who ever changes the method? just use a 302

I stick with one page, and use the terms interchangeably within the text itself and use the more frequently searched word as the keyword in urls and title tags.

Hey thanks very much for your help.

Thanks for all the helpful advice. We are using Vimeo Plus set to 'private' as a way to keep our costs down. We did look at Wistia and really liked their hosting service and functionality, but it's just too expensive right now.

Definitely agree with others that this is not Hummingbird. It's possible that you were hit with something more like Penguin - Google only warns about manual penalties in GWT, not algorithmic penalties. Also agree with others that these tactics are absolutely likely to get you in trouble sooner or later. Unfortunately, new sites are very vulnerable. I believe there's almost a reverse sandbox in play right now (for lack of a better phrase) - new sites get a grace period and can rank pretty well out the gate. Then, Google starts looking for signals to sort out if the site has long-term potential and should continue to rank. If you've hit low-quality tactics hard very early, this is when the hammer is likely to come down, and it's going to come down hard, because you don't have many positive signals in play. Without a foundation of solid, legitimate links, social signals, etc., and spammy links are going to do a lot more damage. If you've hit these tactics really hard, and the sites are that new, I'll be brutally honest - you're probably either going to have to cut or disavow the vast majority of your links or just start over. You pushed too hard, too fast, from your description.