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Donford's answer is good then - they're probably ignoring those meta description tags as not relevant to the search query.  So it's not that they won't display them (assuming they're correctly set up) it's more that they're ignoring them as they're not relevant. From the horse's mouth: "Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content." http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35624

rel="<a class="external" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">canonical</a>" href="http://www.seomoz.org" to my home page like that similar to all pages, like that i created rel=canonical to all my pages ``` rel="<a class="external" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">canonical</a>" href="http://www.seomoz.org/about-us.php" to about us.... like that for every page

Hi Simon, The goal of HTML validation should be to ensure your web pages will display properly in all major browsers, devices (iPads, smartphones, etc) and can be crawled properly by search engines. The goal is not necessarily to get the green "This document was successfully checked as ...." badge. In brief, the w3c validator tool has not been designed to handle that specific metadata. The issue has been reported as a bug and, while the bug has been marked as "fixed", a solution has not been offered yet. For now you can either use validator.nu or Google's Rich Snippets testing tool to test your microdata. If you yearn for the green "valid code" stamp you can move your microdata to javascript although that action simply hides the code from the validator tool. Your code is no more or less valid either way.

Thanks for following up, JustDucky.

Thanks Vikas_Rana for your helpful answer. Another thing to know. Should I continue with this link building strategy or should I change the strategy?

I have never worked with Actinic, but any web-application would have a HTTP server serving content. If your domain remains the same but your new site's URL structure changes, then I would look at rewrite rules for pages/categories redirecting to the new content. In essence you have an old application which you will turn off (it will not serve any data) as it will be replaced with something new. So on your new system (I sounds like it will be IIS) you will configure a series of rewrite rules  - any indexed traffic or linked pages would then redirect. GWMT will be a good guideline (as well as your server logs) for 404's. If you can't fix them pro-actively, looking at the logs will be your best option. If you don't rewrite you will pretty much drop pagerank and SERPs.

You are looking at two different measures. One is PR which is a Google product and the other is domain authority/page authority which was developed by SEOmoz. As such, they are not comparable. Just because google chooses to "punish" a site/directory does not mean that it impacts the way in which moz looks at it. I hope this assists,

I agree with Robert on all points. To keep it out of the dev team's overwhelmed hands, just use http://code.google.com/p/googlesitemapgenerator/ or one of the many free generators online to create your sitemaps intermittently. Maybe 3 months or 6 months down the road the dev team can come up with something when they're less crushed from the site move and you can have them do something similar to Google XML sitemaps plugin for Wordpress which updates the sitemap everytime you add new content.  Until then, submitting the freely generated ones should give Google at least a little heads up and feel like you're doing the right thing.

I think there is no definite answer here. I will say however that when i schema a video that is embedded and has some views (vimeo, YT) it seems to appear faster in SERPs. So that might be a weighing factor when Google determines whether to use an image or video.

Alan : Thanks for sharing your experience in such detail.

Diego, As Paul said, do not chase the page-rank. You can however get a better idea using SEOMoz Opensite Explorer.org's DA/PA (Domain Authority and Page Authority Score). Again, this is just to get a rough estimate on a relative score comparison between you and your competition. I hope that helps.

I agree with Jared. No need to convert the product titles into H1s or H2s. If there were sub-categories on this page, then it would make sense to have the primary category as H1 and the sub-categories as H2s and so on. But products are not H2s / Headings in this layout. A description would be good however.

Check List: Move old content to the new domain 301 as many pages to the same content on the new domain as possible Submit a change of address through Google Webmaster Tools Contact site owners that give you high quality incoming links, request they change the links from the old site to the new site (personal preference) Keep building new high quality links to your site's content level pages. Note: If it's a brand new domain, Google is going to put your site through about a three month trial period before it accurately ranks you. From my understanding it's done to help prevent spam.

Hi Marcus! I sent you a PM Thanks!!

I agree with Robert. There could be multiple other factors. The search landscape has changed and evolved drastically in the last 10 years. And it will continue to. The economy adds to the competition because everybody is trying to get online and get a piece of the pie. You are definitely as the right place in terms of trying to figure it out. I would suggest getting an SEO Audit done as well as a competition analysis and create a plan for the next 3-6-12 months to regain your position, strengthen your domain, brand and do whatever it takes to get back on top. What it would take, depends on what your competition is doing. I hope this helps.