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Hi again! Despite how much people say SEO is changing, I'm not sure I would change my answer much from the one I gave just under 3 years ago. Let me update one statement at a time: I don't think that there are many categories where the traffic sent warrants $299/year any more. In fact I would say that in most cases the referral traffic from a Yahoo directory listing is close to zero. The above is still true, but even more so now.  Do you get any traffic from it? As you say though, it has a lot of authority. It is also well established, tightly curated and is certainly known by those building engines. Therefore inclusion could at least been seen as a check that the site is not utter tripe. However, logically at least, a link in their directory shouldn't lend much more weight than that. Any value on this front has probably diminished even further.  If it was seen as a special case that highlighted quality sites, I don't think that would be the case any more.  The overall quality has diminished, great sites don't bother listing any more and Google has had another 3 years to work that out. I have not seen a measurable result from either adding or removing a site from the directory in recent years. It may well bring benefit as part of a bigger picture, who other than Google can really say? No change there.  I probably haven't added a site to Yahoo directory since then though. However I wouldn't expect to see an increase from adding your site - even factoring in the additional links from directories who use it as a seed. People aren't really creating directories like that any more, and if they did then links from them would likely be more damaging than helpful.  I can't imagine that anyone would use the Yahoo directory as a seed for a quality site any more anyway. It's worth mentioning that it is technically a different directory now, but I still don't think it is worth it.  Wouldn't you have rather spent that last $900 on something more tangible?

You could do a lot worse than having a look here Michael: https://moz.com/blog/using-modern-seo-to-build-brand-authority But, I have also found Quora to be pretty good, and is more reputable than some. -Andy

rel=canonical is a good alternative to noindex.  Both will prevent the article on your site from going into the index of Google or other search engines who honor rel=canonical.  From what I have seen, noindex works quicker. The advantage of rel=canonical is that much of the link value of the article with the rel=canonical will be transferred to the specified source article.   I have used it on content that I own and have published on two domains.  The copy that receives the benefit of rel=canonical ranks better than expected.

I _really _doubt that you'd see any negative effects from having one hyphen in the domain name. Google is trying to discourage domains like www.best-office-space-in-nyc-new-york.com—that is, spammy, keyword-stuffed domains. Of course, I can't make any guarantees on that, but I'd be pretty surprised if that one hyphen caused any noticeable trouble. That said, you may want to just check on the domain sans-hyphen, if only so you can sleep a little better.

Yeah, these are the newish attributed answer boxes (that come from the index/web), and here's what we know so far. Basically, if Google interprets a query as question-like (which is an ability that may have come out of Hummingbird or been increased by that update), then they look at the sites ranking on page 1 and try to see who's title/snippet/content best match the question. In other words, you have to rank on page 1 organically, and then you have to provide a decent answer. This second part still seems pretty crude right now - Google seems to be trying to match against question/answer keywords in a fairly literal way. So, if you see a competitor ranking, you may want to tweak your page title, Meta Description, and on-page content to better match the intent of the question or to sound more like a succinct answer.

Hi Patrick: Thanks so much for your detailed and thorough response!!! While I have some doubts about our brand name, we were solely considering changing our very spammy sounding URL that contains the two hyphens. But from what you say, even if we do that, we may have a limitation in that the company name "Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc." contains the match anchor text of "Manhattan Office Space".  So if we need to stay away from match anchor text in both the domain in the URL, this rebranding is going need to go a lot deeper than anticipated. My thoughts were solely to replace www.nyc-officespace-leader.com with www.metro-manhattan.com but this is still problematic.  Perhaps a domain of www.mmos.com (abbreviation of Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.) would be better? Or www.lastNameerealestate.com possible? Thanks for the resources on the migration. I understand that special care must be taken regarding NAP information for the move to be successful. But I would think this is less of an issue if we are only changing the domain name. Could we keep our company name and solely change the URL or this an incomplete job? Are there any resources you can think that would help us think up both a new corporate name and domain name? Maybe we should consider tackling both at the same time as www.nyc-officespace-leader.com plus the corporate name of Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. don't sound like the most SEO friendly combination.

Hi Luis, Thanks for your response! So I managed to update all urls with the correct hreftags and submitted a new sitemap also have used google fetch to index the pages - I went to do a search in australia and it is still showing the new zealand meta tag description can you take a look?  Or something I'm doing wrong here?

Hi Tom, I'm glad Oleg and Ade answered your original question! To get the best responses for your new questions (and make it easy for others to find answers if they have the same questions), please post each new question individually (i.e., as a brand new question). Thanks so much, and I hope you are having a good day. Christy

All good stuff.  I must admit I am ignorant around the Open Directory Information and how it impacts Google display Information. I’ve put in a request with DMOZ.  I’ll be adding the meta tag you suggested, and I’ll reach out to our Communications team to see if they have the ability to edit legacy company’s old Wiki page.  Fingers crossed. I’ll continue to dig through the links Patrick provided. I’m a team of one – so really have no one to bounce ideas off of - it’s great to be able to reach out to people that have some real tangible knowledge.  Thanks again and if any other ideas feel free to pass them along.

Looks like it will actually be a "waste of time", per Google's John Mueller. "Google's John Mueller in a Google+ hangout was asked this at 51:40 mark and answered they will be going away. He said "it is kind of a waste of time" since "soon they will not be shown at all." - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-emoji-waste-of-time-20258.html Hope this helps. Mike

Yes, that is what is happening. Google will often use the title that is on the page, but it does not always do that. It will use a different title if it thinks a different title is more relevant to the searcher's intent. This is especially true if the content on the page does not match the title. (For example, on the Elexio page, the words "Church Management Software" are not even present on the page, other than the title, description, and schema.)

Thanks Alex. Super helpful.

If they copy it then  submit a DMCA to Google.. I don't even bother asking people to take down content.  WHat I was referring to was legitimate referencing when they write their own unique article because they like the idea of my own article.  This latter thing is what I would like to achieve.  Social sharing helps get your content in front of other bloggers which can help facilitate this. Basically if you have good content, people will over time give you links naturally.

The official Youtube take on it is here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2404846 Unfortunately, you can’t merge or link separate YouTube channels. Similarly, you can’t transfer data from one channel to another (this includes videos). However, you can download your videos from your own channel. Once you've downloaded your video, you can re-upload it to a different channel. View count and other statistics will start over for the new upload. That's the official version.

Thank you for your answer Ryan. I read the article which is very helpful for correcting information that one has access to. However, I can't change the IMBA information and technically that info is correct, it is just not relevant to who Garrison Wynn has been for the past decade. It is as if they showed Ronald Reagan as an Actor from the same source instead of president. ( Maybe that is a bit extreme of an example.) But not to Garrison. So am I correct in saying that Google has NO particular source they will use first such as a Google BUSINESS (not personal) page? For the Brian Carter example Google did use his Wikapedia entry which makes sense; however, no where on his Wikipedia page does it say he is a football player. I dont believe Brian was ever a football player ( Sorry Brian if I'm missing something huge from your past) I'd like to see if anyone else has experience with the same issue and how if at all they were able to correct it? Thanks again for your help!

**UPDATE We hit #2 last night and have held the position this morning. Hopefully a stronger link profile will now take us to #1!

When I first started doing SEO, I did small niche sites, and to some extent I used exact match domains.  Furthermore, I dabbled in the old black hat arts as well. I can tell you that merging multiple sites into one was the best thing I have done (well, that and going completely white hat).  You can save so much time only focusing on one site, that you can spend alot more time creating better content, and like you say more time increasing the authority of one site rather than having to split your attentions over three. Sure, you may find in the short term that you don't do so well, but if you are wanting to think ahead and consider how you can expand even more with related topics and better ranking through a stronger domain authority then I think migrating into one site could well be worth considering.

Hi Dr. Meyers, Thanks again for the thoughtful answers. I wanted to share our final findings about this matter with the rest of the community.  It turns out that our client did face a pretty brutal N-SEO attack.  They were targeted with over 300 bad links (and still counting) in a period of 3.5 months. The links were targeted at sections of the brand name in an effort to confuse Google, and cause damage to brand name in search results.  As a result several pages of the website are still gone from the search results (in relation to brand name searches).  And this causes a fake ROR report to continue showing at the top of the search results when you search for our client's brand name (and someone also has built positive links to this ROR report). The final question to be answered was this:  what should be done about it?  Dr. Meyers was right that this is not a war that our client could win.  The only thing the client could try was to "build up the positive link profile to counter the bad links." Unfortunately, our client does not believe in chasing Google's algo changes around.  Therefore they won't spend money on link building strategies (and I don't disagree with this). During this process I learned a lot about N-SEO and the various types of people involved in it.  And it is not "very rare" like Google or the "just keep creating quality content" crowd want everyone to believe.  Here is very good (and I believe well researched) article about what is actually going on: web master world. com/ google/4677866. htm  And while we did not experience this N-SEO technique, here was a very good article on link injection: site olytics. com / black-hat-seo-technique-demystified/ Bottom line:  your average local small plumbing business, tire store, landscape company, etc., can be easily decimated in the search rankings in 2-4 weeks. And do most small companies like that have the resources to pay someone to start building positive link profiles to try and counter the attack?  The answer for most small businesses is No. Our client seems to think that the only way to really counter this garbage is force Google to do the right thing, via legislation. By the "right thing" he means this:  giving all companies on the Internet a "Bill of Rights" for their virtual storefront.  One of the Rights should be that the small business can determine what geography can be allowed to impact their search results.  99% of small businesses in the United States don't sell anything internationally.  Why should they then be penalized because someone posts garbage links on penalized servers in Europe, China, Mexico, etc.?  If they set their Webmaster Tools geo-target to "Illinois" or the "United States" then only links from servers in those areas should be allowed to affect their rankings (positive or negative).  Furthermore, if someone does find a way to institute a N-SEO attack from within the United States against your brand you would then have legal recourse to immediately do something about it.  It would not even require most small businesses to file a TRO/lawsuit/injunction. Most of it could be handled directly with the handful of U.S. hosting companies.  Would this idea stop all N-Seo attacks?  Of course not. But the situation would at least be manageable in your own country.  Furthermore, I think it would take the wind out of the sails of many N-SEO people if much of their cheap foreign labor was rendered useless (as U.S. hosting companies could be required to block foreign IPs that are caught posting garbage more than 1 time).  I think the reason a lot of people employee N-SEO people now is because it is easy, and they can't get caught. Make it more difficult and only the hardened criminals are going to continue with it. Our client has no resolution, but hopefully something in here helps a small business out there. Jake

Is the established website staying active? Or is he moving all business to the new website?  If the latter, feel free to update citations as well as redirecting to the new site.  If he's keeping both websites and they're different businesses, you'll have to treat the new one as a separate entity and go through the process of developing its marketing and SEO from scratch.  Keep the old citations pointing to the original site, and work on developing new ones for the new site.  Cheers!

Assuming this is your page -- https://plus.google.com/+ExchangeCapitalManagementIncAnnArbor/about -- about the only thing I could suggest is get some reviews. That would show more engagement than anything else. The Google+ page showed up when I searched for your company's name, but then I'm nowhere near Michigan.