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Ok thanks everyone. That's pretty much it. I set this post a Ungoing discussions but it was really a specific questions. Consider this answered.

Yes, def planning on changing it to benefit us but also want to make sure it isn't harming us (in terms of priorities for us fixing).... This doesn't seem like something Google will penalize us for?

Hi Martijn & Matt Many thanks for your quick replies, good stuff! All the best Nigel

Thanks for the answer, but If we took pagerank out of the equation and just focus on whether linking to an image provides any type of benefit, would a site be able to rank based on a high number of backlinks to images as opposed to pages?

Thanks Ryan - 1. I thought as much with Bing but wanted to see other people thoughts - I will hunt around for the submit in webmaster tools. It begs the obvious question what's better quality (bing being selective) or quantity (google analysing it all and deciding for its self).... To be debated at length! lol 2 & 3. W3C no errors and no css errors either..... I think it is the way we put the pages together using modules and laying them out via css - we employ our own coder. I don't really want to broadcast clients sites on forums etc.... But I am looking to improve to ensure we are doing things right - if something is not right we need to do it again and get it right. I don't want to get a rep for bad quality and bad work.

Check schema.org/product to understand how you should do it. Also Google has new guidelines and you can find them here. **Note: ** When you add rich snippets, it is JUST HELPING search engines understand what type of data your site has but this may not help your site/url rank on search engine as the ranking on a page does not depend on it. However for right context the URL may get benefit as it is having more structured information. So you should do it but it will work only if competitors have unstructured information

We don't usually take private info in public questions, but if you want to, Private Message me the domain (via my profile). I'm really curious about (1) and I'd love to take a peek.

Hi Robert, One possibility: A few months ago Google Webmaster Tools changed it's user interface to visually separate sitemaps submitted by you, and sitemaps submitted by others. The default view shows only sitemaps submitted by the Google account you are currently logged into. If sitemaps were submitted by others, or under another Google account you have access to, the screen may appear blank with the following message: "You have not submitted any sitemaps for this site." But sitemaps may still exist if you hit the "All" tab. (See screenshot attached) Hitting this tab will reveal all sitemaps Google has on file. This confuses a lot of webmasters, including myself, because it makes it look like the sitemap has disappeared, even though Google has a record of it and is actively crawling it. CnBIW.png

Consider if you should be guest posting or if you should instead be putting that same content exclusively on your own site. If you can place a guest post on this other site and it will deliver 100,000 visitors then giving them your content is probably a good thing. However, if you instead place that same content on your own site here is what might happen. Let's say that article pulls in just ten or eleven visitors per day that will be about 4000 visitors per year. Let's say that just one visitor out of a thousand buys something from your site then in each year it will product four sales. Let's say that ten visitors out of that thousand tweet or FB share a link to your article.  And those pull in another 500 visitors per year. Let's say that just one visitor in 20,000 will link back to your site. What will you have at the end of five years?  You will have the same number of links that you had from giving your content away.... You will have made about 25 sales and that article is still on your site. To me it makes an awful lot more sense to develop great content  and place it on my own website.  I am not going to build the site of my competitor. On top of that... if you give an article about a productive keyword topic to your competitor and their site outranks yours then you are just handing your lunch over to them. So, if you are a reasonably smart person who can make great content then don't give it away.  Keep it for use exclusively on your own site.  The only time that you should be giving it away is if you know that the traffic from the other site is going to be absolutely an astonishing number. Guest posting is enormously popular so there are going to be lots of people who agree with me.  That's OK.  They can give me their great content and I will enjoy eating their lunch.

Check out this resource for more information: http://www.seomoz.org/q/are-google-now-indexing-iframes

Google Webmaster Tools

as long as you 301 everything you should be ok from a ranking perspective, you're passing the PR. The new 3021 page will assume the rank position of the old url. Test the heck out of it before you push it live to make sure it's all working as expected though because you're doing a few things at once. i think you're smart in doing this.

I replied to your question with a video: http://marketingchris.com/video-answers/boss-is-killing-me-on-website-not-being-ranked-for-major-keywords-newer-site/ I hope it helps, but feel free to ask me any follow up questions

It definitely sounds like you should consider using HREFLANG as Matt already suggested. This can done via a sitemap and there is a nice tool from The Media Flow to help you with it: http://www.themediaflow.com/resources/tools/href-lang-tool/ Based on your example above (using sub-folders for different countries) you should also consider the following if you are not doing it already: Setting Geo-Location correctly in Google Web Master Tools for each country specific sub-folder. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.il/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html Try and make your content unique and relevant for the different locations and those users. I understand you may have the same products available for these different markets, but if possible make sure country related elements are unique £ / $ etc. Shipping information might be different for example. Wherever possible try and make it unique whilst trying to deliver the best experience for users from that country. Good luck!

Hi Yes i see your point about the benefit to the client , but much like guest posting or an artist adding his name to a pice of work, referrals is part of our business. We are looking to add our credentials to a clients site, so when someone visits the clients site likes the looks of it, we want them to think, "i might just contact this company" we are trying to develop the least spammist way of doing this.

Thank you guys for the responses. I will take your advice into consideration.