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I tend to agree with Moosa that cross-domain canonical can be a bit unpredictable. In theory, it can work well for syndicated (or anything like syndicated) content, and I've heard of examples where it worked very well. Some big newspapers use it, for example. There are also cases where Google can choose to ignore cross-domain canonical, so sometimes you have to try it and see. The good news is that the risk is low - worst case, it just won't do much. Of course, it can keep your other sites from ranking for that same content, but it sounds like that's what you intend anyway. My gut reaction is that it should boost the main site somewhat - I just don't know how much. My only warning about the 301-redirect is that these approaches are very different in one respect - the visitors. A 301-redirect will take visitors from one site to the other. A cross-domain canonical only impacts Google. The 301-redirect is typically more powerful in this case, but it may not be appropriate for your scenario.

Hi, Search Engines caulculate ranking by using many different factors and that is how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into play.  A few of the well known factors Search Engines use are on-page SEO (Title Tags, Keywords in Content, URL, Anchor Text, Image Alt Text, Image URL, Content above Fold, and minimum ads above fold) and the infamous backlinks from authority sites. There are many more factors Search engines use but what were mentioned above are only a few examples.  Google has 200+ factors they use to determine a site's ranking on the SERP. Here is a SEO guide from Seomoz that might help you understand SEO better and how search engines determine ranking http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Thanks for the reply. No message in GWMT - in fact, the opposite.... they confirmed that there has been no manual penalty after we submitted a re-consideration request. I understand what you mean about the lack of backlinks and sharing.  Nevertheless, the drop is relatively sudden... it was not gradual. I feel that if it was a lack of sharing and backlinks then we would have seen a steady decline as our competitors gained more exposure. Furthermore, the drop is across ALL sources - including direct and referral? Any advice on how you explain why we see a drop from all sources?  If the drop is due to lack of BLing or social, then the drop would be limited to organic search, no? Thanks in advance!

Hi, I think you need to check this - http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml This is the most comprehensive list on local SEO that I have come across in my life. Hope you will find it helpful too.

Yes it is possible. I will start with a saying in this business. SEO Organic rankings will largely depend on how organic friendly your content is. I have never seen a website that had very share-able, power, dynamic content that not rank. The power is in what you offer. If you what you offer is not very powerful in word-of-mouth; chances are you are in very a emotional roller-coaster ride. A large part of what many webmasters miss is that your product, service, information, website/blog has to be very useful. What will become of a very useful website, product, and or service is the link profile for your website and very high rankings. People ask me, "So how does SEO play into such a powerhouse?" Or why do I need SEO if my product, service, website is so raw! SEO is more than just manipulating links and content. Keyword research will help you silo your website by targeting long-tail-keywords like you mention earlier. Keyword research helps you ensure you setup a series of implicit and explicit conversation with your user, which will develop into many landing pages with a targeted conversion. That conversion could be to filter into a semantic-powerhouse email program (designed to generate revenue), coupon offer, instant discount on some product to checkout, a phone call, a lead, something. The Keyword Research will evolve into marketing persona project that will help you understand how to direct users throughout your website to an end result. After the Keyword Research, Persona Map and Content Conversation-Conversion Map,you'll need to silo (Google it tons of blog post our there on what this is and how to do it) your website and come up with a schema that interconnects your website for site-usability and crawl-ability is critical to ensure that you can rank for just about any keyword relative to your niche without having to resort into blackhat/grayhat linking. You can just do high-quality press releases, directories, and community advertising to promote your content. *This is pretty much the only strategy that can ensure enough natural organic links develop to your root page on your server and any other inner directory or page in your site. Hopefully this is a little clearer.

Google will also take page speed into account as a factor on ranking sites in mobile search since a faster load time means better user experience on a mobile device.

I'm happy to hear you've found it useful. We're definitely working on next steps to make it more powerful - should be some cool data coming out on the site and blog over the next few months.

I'll expand on Francisco's answer.  Individual blog posts should be able to be liked / shared as a stand-alone quality piece of content.  However you should also offer a site-wide social like/follow method in the header or sidebar, separate from individual post sharing methods.  This allows for maximum conversion opportunities most appropriate to a site visitor's intent.

All else being equal, I think it's very similar - you're just diluting your unique keywords. The only exception would be if the phrase "cheap 2012 honda accord" is very high volume. Then, you might want to target that on the page. I'd be selective about that, though - don't just add it to every URL. Unfortunately, "cheap" is just one of those words that looks low quality to Google, because everyone is chasing. So, I think you have to be all that much more careful. If you sold only used cars and you wanted "used-" ("used-2012-honda-accord", for example) in your URLs, that might be different. I'd still proceed with caution, but at least "used" would be a meaningful aspect of your business and the user experience. "Cheap" is a value judgment that everyone wants to claim.

Thanks guys. It appears for lower competitive terms it has low/no impact but for more competitive terms it does matter a lot.

Hi, It is good to know that your site is indexed and you did on page optimization and have a good amount of unique articles.  However, did you conduct keyword research on what other people are searching for? You may have a lot of articles but if you don't know what your audience is searching for then you couldnt have included keywords in your articles and on page seo. Make sure to include keywords (since you just started, target easy long tail keywords) in your article and on-page seo.  Try to build some backlinks and that will definitely help.

I wonder how much money Google make per user of their search engine. Would you pay for vanoogle.com? Say, US$20 a year? $50? $100? TV channels without commercials isn't so strange a concept - here in the UK we have the BBC! Though we have to pay a yearly license. Partly as a result of the lack of adverts, I watch more television on the BBC than all other channels combined. The quality is often higher too. The TV license converts to about US$240.

Can you make your website title related to your content. If its not possible can you possible can you add more content. Is your title is keyword stuffed ? Is it look like title really ? Can you share URL with us ?

Hi Sarah, You're welcome! I was glad to have information to share. I have been so impressed with this forum and loving the help I am receiving. It's amazing! Good luck to you. I hope everything works out.

Based on their reputation, I would be wary.  They might be trying to sell you a domain name that they don't even own. You should be able to check the whois record to see who owns the non-hyphenated version of the domain (assuming they don't have whois privacy setup).  If your friend really wants to get the domain, they could try to contact that domain owner directly, rather than replying to a spam email. Also, for any domain transaction (even small transactions like this), you use escrow, especially if there's reason to suspect fraud from the other party. There's a service ecop.com that specializes in low value escrow transactions.

Hi Kathy, Raven made a decision to stop showing ranking reports on their own, I don't believe they had to give them up (as far as I know). We currently don't have any plans on changing our services, but we did recently ask folks to help us understand what data is most necessary for them: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-data-matters-most-to-marketers-take-the-survey. It'd be great if you could fill that out as well. Thanks! Jen

As far as what penguin looks like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37509645@N04/3661744750/ Personally I see a large traffic drop followed by a long, slow decrease or a large traffic drop followed by an increase in traffic. The reason I see this is because it seems that when it comes to SEO, it's kind of like life.  You cannot site idle.  You're either moving forward or backward.  If the site owner doesn't care about the site, then the slow long drop will occur.  If they care about the site, they will do everything possible to get the site back up and ranking well.