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Yes, the problem is that it is not flat HTML. I think that the site was originally a flat HTML site, with inline CSS (and JavaScript on page) that was added into a CMS (which isn't the best CMS for SEO, in my opinion). Personally, I think flat HTML (coded in modern markup) sites are better to work with on the small scale due to the amount of flexibility they offer. Actual HTML sites are not my real issue, my issue is the unclean code. It is way beyond current standards, there are bits of Java in there that don't do anything and the code is very long for the size of the page and the amount of content on there. My question basically is, would two sites with identical content (ignoring the issue of duplication for the purposes of this hypothetical), rank differently if one had new, clean and error free code and one was the original with the errors and the out of date code?

In terms of SEO, subfolders are almost always the better option. If your brand pages are in a subfolder, they will receive more of a boost in rankings because they are considered part of the main site by search engines. More of the link authority and trust will be passed to pages in a subfolder. Subdomains are considered as a separate site by search engines - for example the blogs like sitename.blogspot.com or sitename.wordpress.com and receive little trust and authority from the rest of the site.

Yes. definitely have to agree with that. If you're doing it for SEO, don't bother. You'll be found for your business name anyway.

try to discuss the environment with this company..  http://www.softheme.com/independent-testing

Hi CFSSEO, I would suggest reading the following: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions Might help you fix your problem. Regards

Good to know. Thanks Kevin!

Thanks for your input here Marcus.  Next stop for me is the 'Link Building' section! You also make an interesting point about 'engaging visitors' which I will take on board and investigate possible solutions.

We have not used MTurk.  I think that it would be very hard to find a Turker who would have the background knowledge needed to write accurate content for our site and the writing skills needed to pass my picky requirements. I can't share URLs but for the image content we just write detailed explainations of the images.  As they say, an image is worth 1000 words.  These articles might expand well beyond the single image and have four, five or six by the time we are finished. I know that writing 9000 of these would be very time consuming.  Just pick the ones with the highest traffic or the highest traffic potential and start writing articles.  I am writing an article for one of my pages today and probably tomorrow and have hundreds more to write.

Thanks Ben!

Ah patience, can't help you with that one! It may take a while for your links to appear in Open Site Explorer. There can be a lag of 1month+ due to the crawl/update cycle. You can find details of the next update here: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule You might be able to find fresher link using an alternative such as MajesticSEO or even google webmaster tools. I believe the best way to ensure that the mozscape index finds your site is to make sure you've got some links from sites already in the index with high domain authorities. Also, keep an eye on your google analytics and see where you might be getting referral traffic. If you know a site is passing good qualified visitors who convert then I'd see how you can develop the relationship with that site. (Also, find out why they're linking to you and see what other similar opportunities are out there.) Completely get the issues regarding the specific part numbers etc. I'm guessing you can't count on repeat business either? How much do you know about who your customers are? Apart from their very specific needs (finding a particular replacement part) can you target any content toward their more general needs/goals? Where do these people go for advice? Are there particular user groups/forums or other online/offline communities that you could target? Have you had any thoughts about how you can position yourself as the go-to place for these type of parts? What makes you different to the competition?

It can also depend on the user expectation, the type of content you're delivering and the nice/demographic you're targeting. If you're running a site to support education in Africa, you would probably want to make sure the site is optimised for lower band-width connections. If someone clicks on a link expecting a graphically rich, interactive site then they'll probably be prepared to wait a little longer. (Such as a high-quality images of the week page) Also, remember that this is going to vary from device to device. No mobile visitor is going to thank you for trying to download gigabytes of data on a page! As Matt says, keep an eye on your page load speed, look at where your visitors are abandoning your site to see if it's likely that page load times are an issue. Understand the who your page is aimed at and the technologies/platforms that they are using to consume your content. On the flip side, there's no point having a page that's quick to load if the content is so brief/thin that it wasn't worth clicking on the link! Key really is to make sure the content is worth the time and answers the visitors questions/satisfies their goals. When creating pages, think about the user intent and make sure you're designing for the visitor. Remember visitors are investing their time/attention in your site - make sure they get a return! If you can spend time testing your assumptions then that'll help you make changes based on real data rather than guesswork. Hope this helps.

I'd honestly start with the assumption that you are building a new site, rather than changing the platform from the existing one.  If you think that the current content is strong then keep that, but start afresh with the actual build.

You're welcome

It'd help if you gave the URL for more specific advice. Your categories shouldn't go more than two levels deep if you can help it. Cabelas does a good job of this, considering they have many thousands of products (http://www.cabelas.com/) Category pages should be paged in some sort of manner, showing 20 products by default. Any links from filtered navigation aren't bad, those are mostly ignored. Cabelas has 458 links on their homepage, so it's not terrible to get in the higher range. It's just not recommended, because you are splitting up the authority so many different ways. In their case, Cabelas also has extremely high domain authority, so they can also get away with it more easily than smaller guys.

Hi Peter. Thanks for your response. There is a sub domain in place at the moment, like you suggested. From a SEO stand point would it be better to have the whole thing separate because I've run a few SEO checks and I'm wondering is it having a negative effect on my main site down even though it is a sub domain.

Hello Rufus, Thanks for taking your time to help me out. However I'm still not 100$ clear on how I should proceed. For question 1: Would it be ok to combine keywords/phrases in the title tag like this "IBM, DELL, HP. Servers, Workstations, Storage" (would the search engine use the best combination of any of the following or would it rate it differently if I were to use something like this: "IBM Servers, DELL Servers, HP Servers, IBM Workstations, etc..." ? For Question 2: Do you recommend to use a combination of CMS & Ecommerce for a single site, would that be of any benefit? For Question 3: You recommend to create a seperate page for each keyword phrase and write some good content using the targeted keyword(s) and then have a link on the home page to that page, correct? So for the homepage would you recommend using keywords that target our brand OR a few of the product keywords that we think would bring the most traffic in from search engines? Just to confirm, the home page (index.html) wouldn't necessarily have a higher ranking vs let's say (dell-servers.html) just based on its hierarchy or being the home page. (obviously excluding the SEO work)? Thanks again!

Thats great! The canonical URLs are showing URLs without slash as they are probably reflecting their original URL which is without slash. Hope Google clears them soon..

Hi SEOPA, Any update on Ultimento? Has it worked out for you through a Magento upgrade? And the Ultimento 3.1 upgrade? Has it been worth the investment so far? Kevin

Thanks for your useful feedback Dan, Anthony and Marisa - much appreciated

Thanks Robert, me too!