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If I were going to disallow something I would go with noindex tags. The robots file is perfect with just those 2 lines. Then, there are some plugins that will help you avoid any SEO issue like SEO by Yoast. Personally I like to noindex,follow tags, categories, and archive pages, that's it. But again, noindex, follow with a robots tag on the page, not using the robots.txt. SEO by Yoast will make that as easy as it can ever be with just a small configuration steps. Give it a try, you can always disable plugins Wish you the best!

The great guru Seth Godin wrote about this on Saturday: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/11/tenacity-is-not-the-same-as-persistence.html Seth wrote: "Persistence is doing something again and again until it works. It sounds like 'pestering' for a reason. "Tenacity is using new data to make new decisions to find new pathways to find new ways to achieve a goal when the old ways didn't work. "Telemarketers are persistent, Nike is tenacious." My $0.02 is that if someone doesn't respond to the first 3-4 phone calls, it's unlikely that you're going to "wear them down" by trying to be persistent.  You're probably just bugging them. Instead, try to find a new way to get their attention and link to your site. If it's a really valuable note, send a package with cookies, and a message tying in your pitch.  Send flowers.  Do something out of the box to get through the clutter... Hope this helps... -- Jeff

Hey Jeffrey, So in general I wouldn't lose too much sleep over GWT 404 errors.  No matter how many I've fixed, a few pop up that I have no idea how Google landed on them.  The ones I'd worry about most are the ones that have links pointing to them, internal or external.  GWT should give you the referring page so check those out and fix them. If there are a few that keep cropping up just 301 redirect them to another page. You should take a look at the sitemap and if there are /feed/ URLs in there, remove them and resubmit. Hope that helps, Jacob

Hi Herlamba, What you are seeing in your screenshot is an iteration of Google's knowledge graph for a local business. In order to qualify for such a display, your business must meet Google's requirements. These are: You have in-person transactions with customers, either at your place of business (like a restaurant) or at their homes or businesses (like a plumber) You have a physical address that is not shared by any other business and is not a virtual location of any kind. You have a unique local phone number that is not shared by any other business. This should not be a toll free, vanity or call tracking number. If you can say yes to ALL THREE of the above requirements, then you qualify for inclusion in Google's local index. Your first step should be to acquaint yourself thoroughly with the Google Places Quality Guidelines: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en You will then be pursuing local visibility via a variety of methods, including: Developing a strong, crawlable, locally-optimized website Creating a Google+ Local page for your business Building citations for your local business in a variety of local business indexes like Yelp, Best of Web, HotFrog, etc. You can use a free tool like GetListed.org to make this process easiest. Earning reviews on a variety of platforms, including on your Google+ Local page Other forms of marketing including, but not limited to, linkbuilding, Social Media, video marketing, etc. If Local SEO is totally new to you, you might like to read my article on the Rudiments of Local SEO. You will want to study Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 to see a worldwide industry survey that organizes which factors have most influence on Local Rankings. http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors Once you have built a clear enough cluster of data about your business on the web, Google will be able to index it all and is likely to display a knowledge graph like the one in your screenshot for branded searches for your business, or within the local pack of results.

Monkey wrenches always welcome! Thanks! I'll look further...

Be sure you're targeting the person/writer and not the company.

Thanks Anthony, I have heard this recently. My problem is I want to find a solution and repeat it 20,000 times LOL.

I'd say the blogs probably aren't doing anything for you algorithmically and I'm guessing they're not what was sending you the non-repeat traffic.  If you're paying for sitewides that are not nofollowed, you should think seriously about stopping that.  Pay for links on other sites as much as you like but make sure they're nofollowed.

Hi Jen We are in the fortunate/crazy situation where we have a custom CMS so the actual redirects are not really a problem from a technical standpoint, it is just wondering if we should The main site - the biggest and busiest - has a discussion board and a shop, and a blog which the others don't so the articles are about 10% of the indexed content, and about 11% are unique.. the other 2 sites, one has 0.003% unique articles and the other 1.829% ... sounds pretty bad when I put it like that! We haven't seen a noticeable dip, just general disappointing performance, I think I will try and rope someone into doing a full CSI on the data Have you seen anywhere that has recovered from a comparable situation? The pondering at this end was that the damage was already done, and that was that. thanks

Thanks Peter When we launched we wanted to present content first & then "buy" later so your comments support this, although there is a temptation of course to stray from this in order  to build traffic quicker! We have moved from about page 9 to page 2 & 3 of some of our key words and rising weekly, i just need to keep telling myself we have only been live 3 months! Hopefully with the tweaks we are making shortly with some of  your pointers it shoudl all add value Many thanks Ash

Hey Ryan, it will be the same URL but we won't display the complicated JS (which the bot unfortunately can't interpret) to the googlebot, just the same structure. Thanks for your help, I'm afraid despite your best efforts, I'm still not sure what the best practice is here... Anyone? Thanks, Frank

OK I just checked it and it is now updated to the correct preview. So it took up to approx 19 hours to change. Although bear in mind I wasn't checking it all the time, could be faster. Also note, if you have started highlighting the old version, when you go back into the saved one it will still have the old preview, so you need to start over again. I can also confirm the preview in the data highlighter is not connected to Google's cache of the page in the index, as the old version of the page is still cached.

Thank you very much Matt!

I agree with Anthony, it's not a problem - the user would just copy and paste the URL in. I think this can cause an issue on Windows servers since they would return the same page for Double-Beds-Luxury and double-beds-luxury (like Amazon does). Since Google interprets characters literally, accidentally linking to the wrong page can make it appear like you have dupe content - Google usually figures this out but it's thought it can dilute your link juice to that page. But you've mentioned that the page 404s if you lower the case which is good, I guess the site's on a linux server. I don't think here's nothing to worry about at all with leaving the caps as they are.

Mmm... tricky question, as I usually don't like to have the currency changing depending on IP. Therefore, I don't if my idea is correct and surely should need to be tested. As you probably know, the Schema.org/Offer preview the mark up for currencies. What I'd probably do should be calling the product description, photo, prices and currencies with a PHP call (if your site is on php), and the code snippet called would be mark-up with the Schema.org corresponding to the "country".

I was speaking in terms of the pictures in your portfolio on your site not the blog, as I assumed those were the images you were talking about.  Was I incorrect?

Under Manual Actions "No manual webspam actions found." So what do I do next? All of my websites do link to each other. They are on the same IP address. (I told webhost to spread across 5 IP's and they didn't) Each website is templated based. =[

It's really hard to speak in generalities. If the site had <100 back-links, and some of those links were questionable or they were all targeted to a couple of phrases, then yes, a Penguin update could cause you trouble. The other option is that Google gave you some leeway out the gate and then re-evaluated your link profile and found it to be weak. Given that you ranked back in May, though, that seems unlikely (usually, that would happen in the first 30-60 days, in my experience). A couple of things to check: (1) Has anything about your indexed site change (such as duplicates of these pages)? (2) Were there any technical or design changes to the site? (3) Have you engaged in any recent link-building that could be questionable? (4) Are you ranking for exact-match versions of the keywords (in quote)? The more you can isolate the problem, the better. Penalty diagnosis is tricky.

If it makes you feel any better, this is the solution about once a month in Q&A. You're not the first, and you certainly won't be the last!

I would recommend that you place everything in at once and get all your pages indexed as soon as you can. However, you continually look to update and make changes to the content of those pages. This will help to signal to google that you website content is being updated and is staying fresh and relevant. A blog would be a great idea for you and is an effective device for SEO. Installing a blog and adding posts will further help to 1) provide useful content to your users 2) keep your site fresh and updated 3) generate links if you have exceptional and promote your blog well. These aspects if done well, and provided your site is properly onsite optimised, will help your rankings improve. All the best!