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You want to stay away from directories that have little to no screening process.  If it's easy to get, it's not worth it.  Make sure to do an "SEO background check" on them as well by checking their backlinks in open site explorer. See if they have good quality links, many linking c-blocks, DA, PA, PR, etc.. Here are some great directories, but you have to pay: Yahoo Directory ($299/Year) Best of the Web ($299/One-time) Business.com ($299/Year) JoeAnt ($39/One-time) SEOmoz also has a list of good directories here http://www.seomoz.org/directories

Hi, My main advice to you is to not worry about they are doing to rank above you.... I know that might seem counter-intuitve, but at this point it seems that is not really helping you, it is only making you focus on a goal that might not bring you business. As Eric says, 1. Are you sure these are good keywords that bring targeted traffic? If so, take away the idea of forensics, since you do not want to emulate what they are doing, you want to do things that make you stand apart from them... I am sure you have heard someone throw around the word "content" Well so am I.... Content...... Make sure you are providing a user experience on your website that would garner true interest in content that people looking for you, or looking for information around items/services you may provide. Build this content, and build a social circle around it, build relationships and the rankings will come, if they are truly using "Black Hat" tactics they will eventually either get penalized, or you will outrank them due to you will be providing a more genuine user experience with genuine content. Also this more sets you up for the future, as Search Engines might not be the only game in town for long, so making a more well rounded "person-centric" strategy in my opinion is better than worrying about why competitor a or b is beating you for a single term in Google. Hope this helps

I thought I would update your answer... https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1

I would say for sure number 2. Re-write/word the pages and use it as a chance to put some more fresh content in as well. All the best

We use excel. It's a bit old school, even though I have an Access certification and could prob dev something sexier. It's easier for sharing with clients and no training is needed. It's easy to let it get overwhelming, so we oly keep the key metrics that matter. On page updates, link building activity, and ranking results. It's let's us see enough info over time for us and our clients. Also is a good place to store all those passwords!

To your first question - the domain name matters much less than ever so if you have a name you like better as a brand name, use that. Having a great site up at exactkeyword.es won't help you much if any more than having a great site up at notreallyanykeywords.es Related just to your second question about managing two domains in Webmasters Tools. We manage about 45 domains in our main Webmasters Tools account so there is no problem managing multiple accounts. In fact, it's very easy when you want specific data to just go to that page, cycle through the domains and find it for each site.

Thanks EGOL

How this is done will determine if Google is OK with it and it's debatable because there is opportunity to get yourself into a pinch.  To get to your primary question, yes, most likely, assuming you are covering some of the same keywords and industries, you will be competing against yourself for rankings (and possibly confuse your audience). Multiple sites for one company or brand work best when there's better differentiation between them; for example, Honda has a site for cars and powersports, but a different one for financing. However, Ford pretty much rolls everything under one. So, again, the outcomes will be based on how you do it and what it means for the customer experience. As for registration, we own a lot of domains and it's never been a problem. While this is a direction I'd never advocate for, in your case, you don't mention why you want to go down this route, so I don't want to guess at your strategy and goals. This article has some good details on risks especially in the comments ("Is Google OK with this?": http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/uncover-competitors-using-multiple-sites-for-multiple-first-page-rankings).

We use OpenX on our site as a way to track and add banners that are only for our site and not advertising. Is there anyway to get SEO benefits from it or even add SWFObject to the flash ads?

I've had the best luck with expired domains by 'rehabbing' them.  More or less building out a high quality site related to the topic of the domain.  This is on a whole a 'gray hat' area, so use any of this advice at your own risk: 1.  be careful about analyzing and verifying the backlinks of domains.  DMOZ seems to remove links as soon as a domain goes past the expiration date, so don't count on getting that link.  Other directories like Yahoo Dir don't seem to care. 2.  often times a link looks great because it has lots of backlinks.  But those backlinks could have been domains all owned by the same person, and all expiring at the same time. 3.  I've rebuilt some domains that had completely dropped (so completely past the auction stage), and found them to have traffic shortly thereafter.  I've also rebuilt names that I thought were good, and had a great backlink profile, and never had them rank for anything.  So on a whole it's hard to understand why some domains perform better than others.

The hours it takes them is really not relevant since the contract will be "x" number of links per month for "$y". Focus your correspondence on the quality and relevancy of the links they are providing.  Hopefully the adding of links will take a natural progression and not all at once each month.

Basically, Google treats Syndicated content and duplicate content differently. So, if the competitor you are talking about is following the best practices for syndicated content and if Google sees their website or webpage to be more prominent (Because of more relevant/ related contents on that domain, SEO optimization or popularity etc.) and more relevant (Than the original creator of the content or the other syndication partners), in relation to the keywords searched for , then Google will show the content on that particular syndication partner's page (in this situation the competitor you are talking about) rather than that of original creator's page.And, no, as long as they are following the best practices for syndicated content, they won't have any problem. But, it could happen that in the future some other content syndication partner might be given more prominence over the other, if that page on that website has leveraged the content better or even the original creator might given more prominence if they do a good job at optimizing their syndicated content strategy. As far as syndicated content goes, Google says this: “If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.” So, in a nut shell...there are no penalties for properly syndicated content, but, just the fact that Google will decide which page to display based on it's prominence and best practices. But, yeah, if they are not following the best practices for content syndication, then, Google will start to see them as duplicate pages, and, then it is a different story. BTW, here is a post that will be of help to you which talks about how the original creators of the content can leverage it: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/06/28/content-creators-benefit-from-new-seo/

he is cloaking - with 307 redirect for normal web browsing and displaying optimized content for search engine bots. seems totally setup for post xmas market.

Not sure what your problems are with PHPLD and why you want to change, but for an alternative to PHPLD (but staying within PHP), you may want to check out phpmydirectory.com. I've only worked a little with both, but from what I've read and heard from other developers, phpMyDirectory has better options when it comes to plugins. Hope that helps. Thanks.

Hi Daan, Since you are talking about syndicated content and not duplicate content, there is a big difference and if you follow the best practices for syndicated content, you won't have any problems. The following links will be of help to you in how to go about it: http://www.wedowebcontent.com/blog/duplicated-vs-syndicated-web-content-after-google-panda.cfm http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359 http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-leveraging-syndicated-content-effectively

Thanks for the thought. I'm going to give it a try, didn't think about that. Nothing special about our 301's.