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A couple of thoughts (It's not something I've had to do) Wouldn't you make the links on the navigation menu no-follow? I'm assuming that you don't want search engines to index your members only content. You don't want the members only content ranking for keywords do you (and if it's not being indexed then how can it?) Would it not be an idea to try any get some value out of the inbound links by using 301 redirects to relevant indexed content when the user is not logged in? I don't know what type of site/services you're offering, but if people following these external links to your member only content are potentially customers then it would be worth presenting them with a page that reassures them that the content they are looking for can be found within the site, present the benefits of becoming a member etc... Even better, If you can make the appeal relevant to the content they are trying to access. Interested to find out what everyone else does!

I am also very interested in hearing any information about a "good" percentage. We also have pages with no to much content leading to the menus and footer being the larger part of the content of the page. This marks the pages as duplicates. Despite also searching for an answer, I can give a little input. If your pages do not have the same content, however Google/SEOmoz labels them as duplicates, you should not just add the canonical link. Not if the pages do not have the same topic or compete for the same keyword. I have been told that marking up the pages correctly will give a better crawl from google. If one uses the markups from schema.org, one should be able to mark up the menu as a menu, footer as a footer, content as content - in a way such that Google looks at the actual content and not the layout and menus. Hope this was of some help. -Rasmus

Hi Atul, I'll have to apologize for this answer, because I'm not quite sure what the answer is to the question. I haven't read a lot upon this recent release of Google because it probably wont affect the industry I operate in. For now I think you would only see results from Google+. But I think it would be useful for more people if you add this as a separate question.

It will take a lot of work on your part to build up a bunch of satellite sites that is important enough for those bloggers to care about. While it could work eventually, I think it's a lot of work when you could be working on better strategies with those sites. Keep in mind that if there really are only about 100 of these sites, that's not many. If you go around giving them the idea that you're a spammy or low-quality brand, then they'll never trust you, and you will have burned any possibility of a future relationship. Rather than trying to exchange link for link, try something like this: Offer them something else of value: write a guest post for them, interview them and publish it on your site or somewhere else. Trade them some of your product that they can use for a giveaway or review. If you're content-based site that isn't selling anything, then this one's off the table. If you already have a big social following, you could try offering them a social mention of their site: post them on your brand's Facebook/Twitter/Google+ account. This is only going to work if you have a good size following; if you have 23 Facebook fans it'll be an insult to them. In general, embrace the concept of giving and they will all start returning the favor. Start talking them up in your Twitter feed and linking to content they're publishing and they'll notice. Then, after warming the relationship, you can start finding ways to partner with them. The link should be something that you ask for after other communication, not at the beginning.

Hi Atul Sharma, If you have a Google+ account, Go check the seoMoz Google+ account. Rand published a great Whiteboard+ there on 14th. You will find your answer in that video. I hope it helped, Istvan

Hi Carl, This is always tough for a ecommerce site. I have heard some people say dont worry about it, others say you should always be around 100. But if we use amazon.com as an example they have about 300+ links on any given page, yes they are Amazon and a content giant but it tells you too many links on a page isnt the end of the world. If I was you I would concentrate more on great product descriptions/content than keeping the links down. I am counting 175 links on your homepage. If you really want to get that number down a bit, here are some observations I noticed at first glance: You have 17 links in your footer - all of which seem to be useless, start by getting rid of those. It looks like there are multiple items in the dropdown menu also what could be duplicates (you have maternity under dresses, but you also have dresses under maternity). See if you cant combine some links and shorten up your dropdown menus also. I think you can easily trim your links down you just have to be creative, but those should give you a starting point.

Wow, this is really great advice!  I'll get to work on your suggestions ASAP!

Thanks

I guess as you mention .htaccess you are running apache - try this example: http://www.isitebuild.com/301-redirect.htm If you are using cpanel I would add it as a parked domain - then follow the instructions in that link to do the redirect through .htaccess . Parked domains on cpanel/whm don't redirect, so you will have a duplicate content problem if you miss out the .htaccess step.  Remember to update as many incoming links as you can as well. Although the 301 will pass the rank on, it does keep a little to itself, so update your biggest incoming links to point to the new domain.

General rule of thumb: Never count on SE's spidering javaScript, but also never assume that they won't. In this case, I do not think you should expect to get any link juice from those drop-downs.

You have to find the right balance for your site and what works for both users and rankings. When thinking about text for your website header to explain who you are, you'll want to think of it as a short blurb. I wouldn't write more than 150 words and be very precise in what you want to rank and tell your users. Less text means less of a big block and might ease a lot of your aesthetic concerns. As Mark Twain said, if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter.

Agreed. I've used a bunch of Wordpress SEO plugins, and the latest version of Yoast is the best. Also, some Wordpress frameworks, like Thesis come with enhanced SEO customization options. Title tags for categories is one of them.

Chris - thanks for the heads up.  It's been a month since we made the changes and we haven't started to crawl back up the rankings yet. I'll see how it goes and report back. Cheers Dave

Hi Carl, First, hosting location isn't a massive factor in terms of SEO - this wasn't always the case - however as sites are hosted in locations that they don't target (e.g. UK sites hosted in the USA) I think this is largely ignored. As such I'd suggest your hosting location shouldn't cause you major heartache. In terms of the US vs UK question - it really depends on how much time / resource you have. If you have the time to devote to content creation, linkbuilding etc for both the .co.uk and the .com then great - if not focusing your efforts on one site and going down the subfolder route - /uk and /us is probably the best option for you. Do be careful not to replicate the sites in the UK and US folders though - you'll need to create separate, unique content for each. Finally, re the IP redirect - this really isn't a tactic I favour. The issue with implementing a redirect based on IP is that as Google bot crawls from a US IP you can effectively render the UK version of the site invisible to bots. As such I favour the approach taken by CheapFlights. If you hit the .com version of the site from a UK IP you get sent to this 'choose your country' page - http://www.cheapflights.com/workers/profile-select.aspx?sref=CFUK&redirect=GeoIP&geoip=GB&cfref=CFUS&spt=Home&rp=/. This allows users to select the appropriate site for them and allows the bots to crawl both versions. I hope this helps, Hannah

I'm not a pro when it comes to technical server set ups, so maybe Keri can jump in with some better knowledge. It seems to me like you have everything set up on your server correctly. And it looks like Google currently has only one version indexed of the original page in question. You site navigation menu points to the capitalized version of the URL, but somewhere on your site there must be a link that points to the lowercase version which would explain how SEOmoz found the duplication when crawling your site, and if SEOmoz can find, so can Google. I still think you should use the rel=canonical attribute just to be safe. Again, I'm not that great at technical stuff. Sorry I couldn't be of more help here. Tim

Thanks EGOL. What is the code to redirect    http://www.blog.abccompany.com  to  http://www.abccompany.com/blog

Totally agree!!! Well said! Especially with the move to the "social web" it is more important than ever before to create reasons to visit a website. Create something truly useful and unique that makes people want to come and tell there friends about it. Saying that this is hard these days but still do-able. Ask yourself: Why should people visit my site? What's in it for them? Why am I different?

Thanks EGOL, that's in line with what I thought.  One of them does produce a small flow of visitors.  My inclination is to recommend editing the content on that satellite to reflect its keyword and only link in to the couple of relevant sub categories at the main site.  All other non relevant content would be removed The others I would redirect to the appropriate internal page of the website. All the best and thanks again.

I would vote for absolute as well. Google seems to be handling the relative URL - see screenshot - http://screencast.com/t/qdg3cOucHM - it is only indexing the canonical version of the page. But if you can get your cart software to do absolute, that'd be ideal. -Dan