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Matt Cutts Subdomains vs. Subdirectories What's the difference between using  subdomains and subdirectories? When it comes to Google, there aren't major  differences between the two, so when you're making that decision, do what works  for you and your visitors. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/01/feeling-lucky-at-pubcon.html Deb, it really is a pretty personal choice. For something small like a blog, it probably won’t matter terribly much. I used a subdirectory because it’s easier to manage everything in one file storage space for me. However, if you think that someday you might want to use a hosted blog service to power your blog, then you might want to go with blog.example.com just because you could set up a CNAME or DNS alias so that blog.example.com pointed to your hosted blog service. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/

Thanks Ryan. I fully understand what you are saying and will be careful while making the change.

Thanks for the advice. Site A is my personal blog, which I never monetized.  Site B is an ecommerce site which sells products pretty much anyone who reads my blog can use. I'm considered an authority in my niche, so announcing the acquisition will absolutely drive sales on site B.  And letting people know about site A on site B, will definitely boost the credibility of Site B's brand.

Yup - even to capital letters...but, you are never going to get 100% perfection - and G knows that too - before we created our custom in-house citation and review tracking solution, we used to use just a simple spreadsheet; the first tab has your Google Places content exactly as it appears, then create a new tab for every citation - one tab group for existing citations that you may want to correct and one tab group for each new one that you create, always referring back to your GP tab as a reference. We say internally that Google Places is like an onion - many layers, often stinks and sometimes just makes you cry

Barry Schwartz also has a post about this on Search Engine Roundtable at http://www.seroundtable.com/google-title-tag-13704.html.

Yes, Google DOES recognize your request for branded sitelinks demotion. The only down side is that they unfortunately do not update within a week.  It took us two months of weekly tracking and demotion to finally get the branded sitelinks that we want displayed. In a nutshell, give it a few more weeks and you'll eventually see the requested URL demotions take effect.

At the very least you could edit the meta-tags and the title.   It might have to be hard-coded though depending on the CMS (if any) you're using.

Here are ten key questions (and some guideline answers) that you should put to a prospective SEO company plus some questions they should be asking you too... **What do you think about my site’s technical structure, on-page and off-page content and link profile? **Ask them to make some observations about these three key SEO factors that influence Search Engine visibility in relation to your site, especially link building. **What kind of changes will be required to your website and will they be noticeable?**You should expect them to talk about on-page and off-page changes. On-page will require the subtle inclusion of the targeted keyword phrases in various locations on each page, off-page will require changes to your meta data such as your title tag and meta descriptions **I know that developing an incoming link profile is important, how will you develop additional links to my site? **You should be looking for them to talk about quality of links as well as quantity and a balanced link profile including free and paid directories, local websites, government or educational institutions, your suppliers etc **Can you show me examples of your work? **Don’t bother with references, no one will provide you with a bad one. You just want to see that they can point to current examples of their successes – short competitive keyword phrases such as “computer repairs” rather than “computer repairs for left handed plumbers” **What volume of traffic increase is it reasonable to expect and over what time frame?**There are a lot of factors to consider here but assuming your site is technically sound and has quality original content you should expect a 50-100% increase in quality traffic within about three months and potentially much more if your site is languishing **What keyword phrases do you think should be targeted for my website? **Not easy during an initial discussion but they should be able to identify the core keywords for your industry and let you know how competitive the segment is. They should discuss geographic considerations and talk about the “money” keywords such as buy, find, deals, get, compare, best, cheap or luxury **How many people on your team? **This just allows you to understand whether you are dealing with a small, medium or large SEO firm. Each has it’s strengths and weaknesses. Small or one-person firms can be great but may get busy with other more lucrative clients or they may struggle to keep up with the latest trends. Large firms can be like a sausage factory, churning out SEO in bulk. **Who will be working on the assignment? **Often you may be speaking to a Business Development person or the company principal. They should be experts and probably are, but once you have signed up, you should expect to be dealing with a qualified SEO expert with at least three years SEO experience **How long have you been doing SEO? **This is a general fact finding question but you might be surprised at the answers you receive and the way they answer. If it is less than three years, keep shopping around. **Amongst all the SEO companies out there, in one minute, why should you choose them?**This is giving them the chance for their “elevator pitch”. If they can’t confidently answer this, move on…and you would be surprised how many will stumble at this question. Naturally, you should also ask them how much, for how long and whether there are any long term contractual obligations. You should also ask for a written proposal that clearly states every action and initiative that they will be undertaking. A smart SEO representative should also be asking YOU some questions. This enables them to evaluate you as a client. The very best SEO companies are busy and can afford to be selective when determining how reasonable your expectations are and how easy you will be to work with…SEO requires a partnership between client and provider to get the best results. What are some of the keywords you would like to turn up for? Who do you see as your major competitors, online and offline? How old is your URL? Do you have a Content Management System (CMS) to edit your site content? Have you conducted any SEO activities before? Are you using Pay-per-click advertising? What do you expect from your SEO investment and over what time frame? Can you provide access to your web stats or Google Analytics account? Do you have any other URL’s or websites? What other marketing initiatives do you undertake, online and offline? If they start asking you these kind of questions then you know you are well on the way to choosing your SEO provider. Hope that helps...

You might find GA's recent release of "real time" reporting useful... http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-right-now.html?utm_source=mandatory&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=v5default "We just turned the reports on for a number of you, and over the coming weeks, everyone will have access to Real-Time. If you can’t wait, sign up for early access here:https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/. We’d love to hear about how you are using (or planning to use) Real-Time, so please share in the comments."

I would recommend using a 301 redirect to the home page as this will pass link juice. If they can be redirected to the specific product category that would be useful. An alternative would be to still serve up the old page so it results in a 200 code or a 301 to a product suggestion page. Having a products like this suggestion page and or a search for products page would likely convert better than just a blanket 301 redirect to the home page. Another thing you could do is create an intelligent "catch" page that uses the search parameter (if there is one) or the title of the page referring the site and use that as a parameter for searching your products database and serving up some relevant products.

Hi Michael, I haven't used the plugin myself, but have seen a number of references to it around the traps. I do remember seeing some information that mentioned it is used by well known internet attorney Mike Young on his website mikeyounglaw dot com. Perhaps you could contact him direct and ask if he can offer any comment. Hope that helps, Sha

I have a couple thoughts for you: Make sure that your database is creating pages that are crawlable by search engines. Create unique content for those pages that are optimized for keywords and other SEO best practices. Especially check what HTML your database is spitting back out, not all CMSs are created equal. As far as what to do with those job pages after the position is filled, that's really up to you. I do think that people expect filled jobs to disappear into the void. Though you could put a "FILLED" announcement on the page and create something where it would recommend unfilled jobs that were similar. On an e-comm site I worked on, we decided to leave up sold out product pages, but make it super clear they were sold out (and of course, they were not linked internally anymore), due to the traffic coming from search engines who'd crawled those pages and external links. Then the pages had a "recommended products" on them which drove people to similar items.

It sorts first on how many links the domain has to your site and then on domain authority.

Thanks for the advice! We will definitely continue focusing on the long-tail on our site. We definitely aren't focusing solely on SEO for our business. It's tough, especially since I am teaching myself from scratch, so it is just one of the many ways we are trying to compete. Our hope is that in the long term it can be one of the many ways we drive new business. Thanks!

Thanks for all the responses. Think I'll opt for a server 301 to a suitable page