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Hi there! It sounds like there is something wrong with the plugin (either the installation or configuration). I know there was an issue about a year ago where the Yoast plugin was creating some weird links in sitemaps, but have not heard of anything like that recently. Do you have the most recent version of both the plugin and WordPress installed? Also, are you able to share the URLs of your problematic site map and a few of the broken links reported in GWT? Thanks

You already mentioned what I would do: "Set-up canonical links on all date specific pages On each /events/event-name/id/date page, set-up the canonical link to point back to the newly created /events/event-name page." I think that would be the best practice.

Both answers so far get to one of the points that I was going to make, always update redirects so that there is not a chain, but I wanted to add something else. You only need redirects as long as someone is linking to those pages. You should be taking time to fix any internal references to changed URLs and contacting websites that link to the old URLs and asking them to change the URLs. That should be a part of any site URL change. If you have only revised your URLs once, you only need redirects for 3-6 months while the search engines reindex everything. In that time, you should have changed all links to the old URLs. In your case, I'd drop all old redirects except for the last one and see what 404s you get. Find the referring site, and contact them to change the link to your site. Once that is all done, then you can work on this latest revision to change those links. Hope that helps!

Another thing to keep in mind is how the DA of your competitors has been behaving over the same period.  The number doesn't matter so much as how it moves in relation to your competition.

Hi Christopher, I'm not going to touch question #1 - that's a big can of worms that everybody has different opinions on. The big factor seems to be "Did you get a manual penalty?" If yes, there is a fairly standard set of steps to follow that wraps up with a Disavow. If no, you may or may not get any good out of doing a Disavow. But question # 2 is easier. I used the Link Detox tool at linkdetox.com to check my backlinks and really liked the way it clarified and classified each link. There is a trial package hidden way down at the bottom of this page: http://www.linkdetox.com/plans-pricing/   that lets you buy two opportunities to run your site through the program for 100euros ($130). That's what I used. You could also first check out the Penguin Analysis tool at penguinanalysis.com and invest $10 to run a few of your primary pages through it to see how likely it is that you have a algorithmic penalty from Google. If you don't, then chasing after a Disavow project may not be worthwhile. There was a Moz blog about it here: http://moz.com/blog/its-penguin-hunting-season-how-to-be-the-predator-not-the-prey Good luck!

Thanks Martijn

Hey Tommy, I don't think no-indexing and re-indexing a page will have a negative effect on its ability to rank. As long as all the same ranking signals are in place (links, mentions, on-page optimization, etc.), once it is added back to the index, it should have the same strength as it did the previous year. As you mentioned, the algorithm will most certainly change over the course of a year and you might have new competitors surface during that time, so I wouldn't expect it to rank in the same position. But your plan for dropping it from the index and re-adding should be fine. Tim

Hi Jason, Thanks for writing in. Without going into a full site audit (which could take hours-days) a few areas I might take a closer look at: As others have mentioned, the site design does have an outdated feel. Beyond user experience it looks like a site that might be vulnerable to Panda updates. Relentlessly improving user experience will likely lead to an increase in rankings. Is the new site a copy of the old? Just wondering if any duplicate content exist out there from the old site. If you, you probably want to make sure to remove all old content from Google's index. I'd give the site a full link audit. You can do this by hand using Google Webmaster Tools and Open Site Explorer. Lately, I've been using Link Detox with good results. Disavow any dodgy links you can't remove. Overall your link profile looks decent for your vertical, nothing too penalty worthy but some of the directory-style links may be suspect (or at least lower in value) in Google's eyes. Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Thank you Dana. I will be reviewing those links. I am coaching local companies on SEO practices and this is one of the topics that I will be diving into...if I come up with anything more detailed or specific ....I will let you know. Lately SEO seems to be more about coaching and content marketing than anything else...but that is a different issue Happy New Year! Carla

What are you comparing to - if not Etsy what do you believe should be first position? Etsy has a very high domain authority, a large link profile and social footprint.  The keyword is in the URL, the meta title and in content so for me it is a perfect candidate for grabbing pole position.  It also has a good volume of reviews.

Nick, Thank you for your answer, you eliminated my confusion. Have a wonderful new-years. -Carlos

How have you gotten your links so far? The strongest ones I see are very exact match looking, on homepages, and therefore I am wondering if they are paid links or other business deals.

Hi Peter, Many thanks for your thoughts and taking the time to answer. Yes I have been trying to add richer content on my most popular local pages although it can be quite difficult when you have 90 odd locations , so I've done the top 25-40 depending on the category and I will remove some of the lesser popular locations for now to decrease duplicate/thin content ratio. I agree , that the citations would be the way forward. I have started doing these as well for at least 20 locations although some don't have a link back to my local page but I believe that google is really looking for the NAP as a way of local verification as opposed to a link. Good point regarding the .com and co.uk. These mainly go to my home page but I am looking ay my competitors,their ratio is better than mine so I will try to improve this also. Thanks for the Miriam Ellis Article - I will study this in details. First impressions , it does look very good and has some great pointers. One again Many thanks Sarah

Hi Peter, There are no messages in GWT. I can't imaging it would be blocked in any kind of way. I have a link to tge sitemap on the footer of every page and and I'm not using a robot.txt file yet. Is there something I'm missing? Is there any kind of contact for this issue?

Thanks Alex, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I sent Matt Cutts a tweet about Open data and SEO but got no response...no surprise but at least I tried. Thanks for the info above...I am going to be watch this SEO variable.. Cheers! Carla

Thanks for your input. I started playing around with the Rank Checker Firefox extension this morning, and I like it so far. I was just hoping to add more tools to my arsenal in addition to Moz's keyword ranking tool.

Think about your overall domain authority and how you can increase it. Also, continue to invest time on how to build more content / articles that these profiles get internal links from. Are these articles contributed by the users ? How many profiles are you talking about ? What more can you do to get internal and to the profile pages as well as the article pages ?

Also if I do combine the 2 pages should i 301 the compare page to the other? Thanks Ash

Very true. Thanks for sharing thoughts on it !!

That could be a problem, yes. static.domain.com is another domain that www.domain.com and therefore the sitemap should be in www.domain.com for URLs on www.domain.com. I've seen image sitemaps in www.domain.com where all the images are on a subdomain, like static.domain.com and that wasn't an issue, but personally I'd suggest you put the sitemap in the www.domain.com.