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I'm with Alan - in theory, the canonical would pass the link-juice to the version with the link, but you're not only misleading the client - you're one step away from cloaking the link. You could actually get your own clients penalized for this, and that seems very short-sighted. Add the NOINDEX on top of this, and I'd be willing to bet that the value of these links would be very low. Even if the client approved followed white-label pages with footer links, for example, we're seeing those types of links get devalued - they're just too easy to get. Now, you add these links all at once, NOINDEX the page, and canonical to a weird variant, and you've painted a very suspicious picture for Google. It might work for a while, but you're taking a significant risk for potentially a very small gain.

Hi Bfrent, Sorry to trouble you again. I'm gradually working through your suggestions, I'm keen to get to back to where i was and beyond, but don't want to try to many changes at once. Realistically what  review period should I give each change? how long do I give google to revie and reindex? I ask, because the site is bouncing about all over the place at the moment, page 6 | Page 2 | page 22 | Page 14.... Thanks in advance GTN

I wouldn't worry too much if you are using your brand name or domain name then you are building natural links. Personally, if you have different types of widgets then vary the anchor text / URL in the embed code for each.

This is a solid SEO strategy as long as the content is unique. Ways you can additionally add value is by making sure you are changing product names and titles;url descriptions; product image titles; meta tag descriptions; etc....... Some of your competitors might see it as an attempt to generate more results for the same business...because of this you should be aware of some of the giveaways of this strategy. Here is a post from a  fellow seomoz'r that gives some examples: (see link below) http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/uncover-competitors-using-multiple-sites-for-multiple-first-page-rankings Here are 4 different sites and look at the image description: dead giveaway they are related. http://www.samplesite1.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG http://www.samplesite2.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG http://www.samplesite3.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG http://www.samplesite4.com/heels/assets/ProdStandard/J09.JPG here are 4 different sites and look at the url description. dead giveaway they are related. http://www.samplesite1.com/contacts/lens-406.asp http://www.samplesite2.com/contact-lenses/lens406.asp http://www.samplesite3.com/lenses/lens-id406.asp http://www.samplesite4.com/contacts/product406.asp MAKE SURE YOU CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON DIFFERENTIATING AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. Make it happen.

You want your redirect rules on the server, not client site. In Apache you can do this with mod_write and the .htaccess file like so. To add the www RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] To remove the www: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L] In IIS they have a rewrite command too. I've not used it myself but this should help: http://www.petermoss.com/post/How-to-redirect-non-www-domain-to-www-domain-requests-in-IIS-7.aspx

Yeah, I'll have a look, thanks. The problem is this, I manage over 100 sites, 2 have received the dreaded warning - they have a small amount of spam I admit, others have more. None of the sites I manage have even 30% links spam. Simply impossible to know what google considers spam. I guess that means it has to be 100% white hat, but we all know that many will continue to test the boundaries, and do it successfully> Point is, the rules of the game have never been clear,  and personally, i think there's a big ppc agenda at google.

Thanks.

Following ethical white hat practices against a non white hat is a sure way of fail. There aren't that many stories of how white hat prevails,and if they do it's usually on a non-competitive keyword like toilet seat covers. Sadly, in a high competitive market on the good old wild wild web, you do have to step out of what a community deems "ethical" and go into what works. Fight fire with fire is all I can say. PM if you want some suggestions.

Thx Donnie for the reply, I see your point however for some reason these guys are ranking above others in the same space... It reminds me of the LockSmith Spam but in a different way.. Yes, they are over optimizing but the algo has not done anything about this.. I am a white hat SEO and don't believe in following this technique.. I found a company I posted in the past that did the samething and found it ranks. http://www.seomoz.org/q/has-anyone-had-experience-with-nsphere-net

Agree with Robert. Also, if you're concerned about Google getting access to your GA data you can always disable sharing it with them from your GA account.

Hi Josh, If you have a list of actual URLs which always return a 500 Error, the problem is a bug in the code. You should send the list of URLs to your developer and ask him/her to fix them. Often, once a bug is identified and fixed, it will correct all or most of the errors. If you check the URLs and find that the 500 Errors are intermittent (sometimes OK, sometimes returning an error), you should  take a look at this question I answered about random 500 Errors. Hope that helps, Sha

Hi John, You've gotten some good responses from members here. I have a few suggestions to add. Remember that citations are extremely important in local campaigns. Citations are not necessarily links. They are simply indexed mentions of your company's name, address and phone numbers. These might included directory listings, mentions of you in local news, on blogs, review sites or what have you. If citation building is new to you, I recommend reading Miles' Anderson's list of top 50 citation sources for the UK and USA: http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938 Also, I understand your concerns that your readers may not read all of your content. That's always the case, but remember that every page on your site is potential entry page to your website. Even if someone coming to a page about 'driveways in gateshead' does no more that glance at the title and look for a phone number, at least they've come to you because you've got a page that exactly matches what they were searching for. Copywriting is critical to nearly all local marketing campaigns. Finally, as you mention you are new to SEO, and I'm inferring from that that you are also new to Local SEO. Is your site well-optimized for local search with strong local hooks in place? And, have you created and claimed a complete, violation-free Google Place page for the business? Be sure you are compliant with the guidelines. And don't forget about reviews. They count, too. Hope these thoughts help!