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Hi Runnerkik, As Paul suggested using Opensiteexplorer.org is a good way to go. When PR was everything back in the day i just the following formula to calculate the PR flow of the link: PR{flow} = PR {page} / N{links} * 0,85 + 0,15 So for a page with PR of 3 and 115 links on page you get: PR{flow} = (3 / 115) * 0,85 + 0,15 = 0.17217 points of link juice. When you reached enough inbound link juice you would go up a PR level. Since we no longer (primarily) look at PR of a page for building links (because we want to earn links) you get less of a say in the matter. If someone embeds your link in their site there is not much you can do about but contact them (if you don't want it). Writing good content created a natural flow of inbound links combine this with social media and you get a consistent inbound picture which would be appreciated by the search engines. If the site has a nice domain authority figure and the page your going for has a nice page authority figure you'll know how to pursue that. Still you can always assess if it is a link you want using the formula. It always worked for me (and still does). hope this helps kind regards Jarno

For the domain, google will not penalize you at all. You might get a lot of value for the keyword in the domain. Just dont get penalities for bad linking between your websites etc.

Great, many thanks guys - I will keep going with what I was intending to do! Wendy

I wrote about this a while back - I think it 98% still applies today: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many It's really a question of dilution - the more thinly you spread your internal link "juice" (PR, basically), the less each page gets. So, it's often a balancing act. There's rarely one right answer, but I find that less is often more. I think Istvan's point about users is important, too. It's easy for people to get overloaded with options. I've seen sites with 500+ links that presented them very well, but that's rare. At the same time, those were big brand sites with a lot of inbound links and authority, so they can play by different rules.

You need to fix it quickly. Yes, canonical is a suggestion, but in my experience it's a very strong suggestion. I ran an experiment a while back where setting rel=canonical sitewide wreaked havoc on one of my sites: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization Now, Google may recognize it's a mistake and ignore it, but they also may just take days or weeks to process it, and the damage is just going to increase. I'd fix it ASAP and try to get appropriate (self-referencing) canonical tags in place.

When you are looking at your keywords, you can't miss it, it's to the right of the big, green "Add Keywords" button.

If inherited these sites I would probably make unique location pages on the primary domain and do a 301 redirect of the microsites to their respective pages on the main domain. Before I did this I would first look at current rankings and if these sites are all showing kickass rankings, conversions and performing superbly then I would allow them to run "as is" until performance changed.  In that case I would improve the duplicate pages, making them unique and focused on services offered in their respective community.

Hi Joseph, I want to be sure I understand your question. I believe what you are asking about is why it is uncommon for a business with a local ranking (with the grey lettered pin) to also have a first page organic ranking? If I'm misunderstanding, please let me know, but I'm pretty sure that this is what you are asking about. Let me give you some history on this. Prior to the Venice Update in March of this year, it was quite common for strong local businesses to be able to dominate the search engine results. A single business might have a pinned local ranking, one or more organic rankings, video results and citations (from places like Merchant Circle and Yelp) all on page 1 of the Google search engine results. After Venice, however, there was a pretty obvious change in this that was noted by lots and lots of Local SEOs and Local business owners. Suddenly, if you had achieved a Local rank, you were very unlikely to have a second, organic listing on page 1. In fact, for some months, I could not find a single business that was achieving this multi-spot dominance any more. However, we started to see some changes in this a few months away from Venice. Linda Buquet and some other Local SEOs managed to get double rankings by optimizing a secondary page of a client's website in a few instances. Adam Steele of Nightlight Media wrote a piece on this topic, which you can read here: http://www.nightlitemedia.com/2012/05/organic-and-google-places-ranking-on-page-1/ Definitely read that to see if it helps. However, I believe that things have changed again. I am encountering enough instances of businesses being able to get multiple page 1 rankings these days to believe that there has been some tweak to the environment. However, I will add that where I am seeing these double rankings tends to be in smaller towns with modest competition, though there are some exceptions to this. I would not advise you to build 2 different websites for the same business. That would likely lead to confusion on Google's part and a possible loss of trust in your profile/loss of rankings. Rather, it's important to understand that when you achieve a local ranking (in the pinned local results) you haven't actually lost your organic ranking; it's simply been subsumed into the blended/local ranking which is comprised of both organic and pure local factors. Nearly all results I see these days are blended results, drawing on both organic and local signals. Very, very few are the old Pack results any more. So, what can you do? Don't knock a high Local ranking. Heatmap studies indicate that more eyes are drawn to the local listings than the organic ones. But, do build the strongest site you can, ensuring that all pages are properly optimized and that all of your Google Local participation is violation free. And, expect the display to keep changing. I could hit publish on this right now and wake up tomorrow to discover that Google has again changed the ratio of businesses getting double page one rankings. This stuff is constantly in flux. Hope this information helps!

Run a spider simulator to see what Googlebot sees - it's either seen or not depending on the implementation of the code.

_It is a worthless practice and believe me, you are not going to get any benefit out of it. After Penguin and Panda update, this practice is now being treated as another spammy SEO technique whose sole purpose is to push the rankings of the website artificially. Rather than wasting your time on shoddy techniques like this, you should try your best to invest your time and money to come up with great quality content that adds value to your website. _

Hi Joseph, Like Corey, I'm reading your question as being about getting a high local ranking. If this isn't your intent, please correct me. Corey has linked to the Local Search Industry's premiere annual report, which surveys some of the top Local SEOs in the world. It's an extremely helpful document, and it outlines what participants feel are the top local rankings factors. Now, the 2012 report (I'm a yearly participant) was undertaken before the rollout of Google's big new local product - Google+ Local - which basically replaces the Google Place Pages of former times. So, be aware that there have been some major changes since publication, though the basic advice remains solid. Local SEO is the practice of obtaining high rankings both in the blended/local packs of results (the ones with the lettered pins on them) as well as high organic rankings for local terms that don't bring up the actual pinned local results. The lettered local results' rankings are derived from a combination of both organic signals (like the strength of the website, link profile, etc.) and local ones (like having a violation-free, complete Google+ page, number of citations from other local business directories, proximity to the centroid of business in a given city) etc. To qualify for inclusion in Google's local products, a business must meet all 3 of the following criteria: Have a unique, dedicated physical street address (not a P.O. box, shared address or virtual address) Have a unique, local phone number in the city of location (not a toll free number or shared number) Have in-person transactions with clientele either at the place of business (like a restaurant) or at the client's place of business (like a plumber) If any of those 3 things doesn't match the business model, then you cannot seek inclusion in Google+ Local. Most Local SEOs consider Mike Blumenthal to be the leading expert in the field, so if you're just getting into this, you should start reading his blog on a regular basis: http://www.blumenthals.com/blog You might also find a couple of recent articles from my blog to be useful in getting you into the right mindset about this unique field of SEO: The Zen of Local SEO http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1314 The Rudiments of Local SEO http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344 The main thing to understand about Local SEO is that it is constantly changing...arguably even more so than traditional SEO, so constant study is a must in this field. It's a really dynamic area to work in. Hope these resources help!

5 Steps: Take screenshots of ALL webpages Get a report on exactly how many pages were scraped and have evidence (usually Googling the site titles is very effective) Take screenshots of the meta data: Right click, click on view source, and take screenshots Once all is recorded send the website owner a Cease and Desist letter informing them to take everything offline and manually take off the pages from search indexes If they don't comply at that point any IP lawyer will help if you have all the documentation. Some will take the work pro-Bono because there's huge money to be won, especially if you did all the work for them already. Do NOT issue Cease and Desist letters without the screenshots. Usually what these guys will do is to change the appearance and add content to the meta tags and at  that point they will claim it was not plagiarized while still hurting you. It will not stand up in court. However, if you documented the scraping the only option the website owner will have is to take the plagiarized content offline completely. Any edits they do at that point is considered a scraping/plagiarism because you documented the offense. We've been able to prosecute 13 companies already. One company we publicly called out on Twitter during a popular chat leading to the company's downfall in 4 weeks. FIGHT FOR YOUR CONTENT!

There is a sandbox, and there will be chances to get hit by you, if you are competing for extreme competitive keywords. Then Google will put you under sandbox. As far as i heard on other forums, they got recovered from sandbox from 3-6 months.