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I wouldn't do that. I would use ALL my time focusing only on one site. Besides they are probably going to have the same c-block.

I'm looking at this from a linkbait type strategy. We want to disable embedding from all 3rd parties, but linking these 3rd party sites back to our main site and allowing visitors to embed from there. We do have channels setup on YouTube/Vimeo but don't really have the resources to brand out/optimize individual sites past that. Our industry is heavily regulated so our CTA is incredibly subtle by design, it basically is directing the watcher to visit our site to learn more. Thanks!

I agree... don't try to wear the client's hat.  Big mistake.  It doesn't fit. If you are contacting "experts" they will know that you know nothing before you finish speaking two sentences.  Get your client to schmooze them,.

hi i agree with the advice from brent couldn't have said it better myself, here an articles you may find useful: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection http://www.seomoz.org/q/setting-up-a-301-redirect-from-expired-webpages http://www.seomoz.org/blog/hey-google-im-over-here-a-301-experiment hope they help, good luck with the task

Hello JDCline, What you a referencing is one of the chief practices of a strong Local SEO campaign - creating unique, optimized content that features services + geo terms. This can certainly be accomplished, but the chief challenges typically are: 1. Helping the client understand the value of his investment in this. 2. Finding a copywriter who is also a Local SEO and knows what they are doing. 3. Being creative with your subject. Different industries are easier than others to write extensively about, but there isn't actually any subject that cannot benefit from creative treatment of this kind. I am not sure from your post whether the website you linked to is the one with which you are working. Is this your site, your client's site, or a competitor's site, perhaps? If the topic is insurance, it is one of the tougher topics for creative copywriting, but brainstorming ideas can help. For example, consider doing an interview with one of your agents in Baltimore Maryland. Do a Q&A page with him about the types of insurance most sought after by local people. Talk about anything unique to the area. For example, in a coastal state, perhaps people purchase lots of boat insurance, whereas, in a flood-prone state, perhaps flood insurance is a major need. Do bear in mind, however, that Local SEO hangs on NAP (name, address, phone number). If you have actual offices in each of these cities, then your company is in a position to go after local search rankings. If you do not have actual offices there, you must expect to be outranked by true local companies. Your only hope is to gun for secondary organic rankings, typically shown below the true local rankings if you do not have offices in your target cities. Hope this explanation helps. The rule to follow is not to duplicate any of your content. You must write each page as a unique, free-standing article and then build a menu of these articles that offer specific local or regional guidance for human users.

Oh, sorry - didn't realize those two pages were different. Can Google crawl the members page? I'm not completely clear where the ref= version is coming from. Actually, I missed something. You have both the root ("/") version and the "/home" version being indexed, but the root version is cached as your other site. This could indicate that Google is connecting them. This is the cache of CollegeXpress, and it's the Careers and Colleges page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:w8YxyZPf5cgJ:www.collegexpress.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us I thought I had ruled this issue out, but apparently not. I'm not clear if Google thinks they're duplicated (which I'm not really seeing to be the case) or if there are some weird redirects or cross-linking causing the problem. I've seen this happen once or twice, but usually when sites were heavily duplicated.

IMO, those popups should either be (A) real pages with more content or (B) content on the product pages that is in the HTML of the product page, hidden on pageload by javascript and then "popped up" via javascript when clicked. I'd rather have one big product page with lots of content on different products than 90 mini-pages without much value that I have to noindex so customers aren't stumbling upon them via search engines.

Nope, in most cases these blogs are owned by people who simply sell links. To be able to sell links, they have to have some content around it and so they start publishing crap - since content quality/ people's opinion is not at all important here. This is where the shady companies you mentioned come in - they create mini "review" sites and get links from these junk blogs. Obviously these are shady companies and they have something to hide which is why they are spending so much effort to bury the negative reviews, rather than go after the root cause of this negative publicity.

Definitely have it go to your own site. Having spent 10 years in the newspaper industry (IT/Web) I'd be shocked if they know SEO.

I should have added that they should open and fulfill a Google Places account

I appreciate the effort Phil. I have not been successful either unfortunately. Hopefully it will be addressed soon as we are not the only ones with t his issue from what I've found. Best, Kevin

It is better than the profession not getting old... The profession, for me, is one in which you are continually learning, by virtue of that you never get old... Best to you, LMK if I can help.

The social network is targeted towards business professionals and companies.

Well then, I guess my question should be what easy SEO steps for a non-SEO person should go on that PDF?

Brenan, Overall, from a branding perspective I would use the commas for the name as it is more readable.  What James is saying is absolutely correct: about the line (the pipe) it is what is used to separate the business name or brand name from the page or site title in a title tag: (His advice is spot on) Trane Air Conditioners | Jones Plumbing Heating and AC For me, one thing I would check if this is really someone doing AC repair, is do people there search more using AC repair or air conditioner repair, etc. I think you may find that spelled out is better from search quantity point of view. But, if you think you can be more competitive around the ones with less, that is attractive too. Hope we helped.

Thanks for your help that's a great idea regarding the blogs - 2 questions, 1. would I just need to alt-tag the image and that's it? or would I have to write a blurb on the blog post to discuss a topic that is related and insert the brand's name into the title of the post, and somewhere in the text as well?

Good question Nicholas, What we have done in the past and (I believe is a best practice) is to 301 url to url wherever possible. I would not do a splash page, on your pages if you added something in the header of SuperWidgets: Welcome GreatWidgets members, two great companies have now become one greater company, etc. The 301 gets you the juice infusion, GW customers are not freaking out is great too. On the local, it really will be around what other assets. Brick and mortar, staying open or closing, etc. You won't be able to use a 301'd url in Places, but the others will still resolve. As to unclaimed, I would claim and then use that for as long as it is good. Best,

Check out Couto Solutions, they're a top 3rd party developer for Community Software powerhouse Telligent: http://www.coutosolutions.com/Products/Telligent_Community/Add_Ons/Building_Blocks/Bragger_Badges/Overview.aspx -- bunch of screenshots of different implementations they've done. Hopefully that spurs some ideas. Best, Evan