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Hey there, Thank you all for helping with this...

Hi Tom, if you think your question had been answered, I kindly ask you to change the status of this Q&A to "Answered". If it is not, please explain why you consider this question not answered. Ciao

To add to what Miriam said, as I am in the process of handling a merger for a client right now and am dealing with this same issue. In my client's case, they are building a new website that represents the merged company, migrating the content from both sites into one (in many cases content on both sites is redundant so we eliminate/consolidate some) and then we will use 301 redirects mapped from the old site content to the new site content.

Hello! I can confirm our tools are capturing the rankings as they appear for the locale and search engines setup. For example when searching on Google directly for "auto shops" with location set to Woodbridge, VA, the home page is not found in the top 50 search results. The issues linked by Kyle are only for delayed collections and we currently have no known issues with our accuracy. You can run manual searches using an incognito window with your location set in Google to try to confirm: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s269/sh/2d300953-e7c7-4977-851d-f86859a0b07d/856c23223ddebededbf9ba82374e3081 Hope this helps!

Hey Kevin! Back in 2012 when Google stopped supporting Geo Sitemaps, they made a point of explaining that they were still supporting KML files. See: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/28/google-still-supporting-kml-files-but-not-the-use-of-geo-sitemaps/ and https://developers.google.com/maps/support/kmlmaps However, as Patrick mentions, Schema has become much more the markup of choice in the past few years.

Hi Varun, It sounds like you've identified some important things to work on. I want to be sure I'm understanding this explanation from you: "Client deals in two way that is local and global. He gets requirement of manpower from Local employers and then search for right people around the globe to employee them with organizations" Does the business meet face-to-face with its customers at a place of business? Or are all transactions happening virtually, such as on-line or over the phone?

Hi J.P.! I'm glad Matt is helping you; he knows his stuff. There's actually a Moz tool that could provide some insight, too—the Keyword Difficulty tool. It can give you an analysis of all the sites ranking 1-10 for any given keyword, including which factors are most likely to be helping them. You may be able to glean what's helping them pull ahead. I'd recommend Cyrus's video on the tool. Good luck!

R.E. Original question - Nothing funny here looks like a standard Meta description. Note: It used to be standard that Google pulled only ever the Meta description but now if they consider it more relevant they'll (Google) will pull any page content that's relevant to the search query, no matter if it appears at the top, middle or bottom of a a page - you really can't dictate this since you can't possibly predict all possible search queries which will result in visitors to your site. I'd stick to writing strong Meta & page titles & descriptions providing high quality content and letting Google handle what it pulls! You may want to look into the Schema.org markup to see what you can dictate. Sam

Great information!  Thanks!  I will act on this and make some progress. I can't believe our h1 tag (all this time) has been seen as one word FingersDueling Pianos!

Good discussion here. I want to add, I noticed that you had categorized your question in two of our Local SEO categories, so I'm guessing you might be specifically looking to hire a Local SEO. If that's true, I recommend that you check out the websites of some of the experts who participated in the Moz Local Ranking Factors 2014 Survey. You'll see them listed on the left side of the survey in the box titled 'Contributors'. There are some very good companies represented there: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors If you specifically need Local SEO rather than traditional SEO, you'll want to be sure you're working with Local experts.

I would post a nice, but very obvious banner at the top of the site that says something like this... Mr Egol has joined the law practice of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe.  WIth smaller font below giving your new address, phone and email. Clicking the banner could go to your profile page at the new firm with a nofollowed link.

Yes use noindex, follow for that

For russia and china you're right it does make sens. But I'm still very concerned about working on so many domains rather than just one

That's a tough one. Though it sounds like the issues you've been careful about would mostly be targeting Panda, Penguin has to do more with links. How does your backlink profile look? Maybe run it through Moz's new spam score feature to find any unwanted links.

Hi Cole, Unfortunately, yes - the set of pages being surfaced by Patrick would pretty much fit Google's definition of doorway pages, in my opinion. The content has been duplicated across multiple pages, simply switching out the city names. I recommend a couple of things here: Read the thread I started about the doorway pages update when it rolled out: http://moz.com/community/q/how-google-s-doorway-pages-update-affects-local-seo If you are currently developing these thin/duplicate content pages for yourself and your clients, this is definitely a great moment for you to rethink your strategy. It's my personal belief that content should only be published if it is unique and helpful. If you don't have unique content to publish on these types of city landing pages, then you don't have a reason to publish them. Each local business that wants to cover cities in which they lack physical locations faces this same interesting challenge - identifying the legitimate connections between the business and the focus communities. These real-world connections need to be showcased on the landing pages. If they don't yet exist, the business needs to discover if the relationships can be developed and then showcased. If there are no opportunities for relationships, then these types of page don't really belong on the website in question. Fortunately, a website design company has the opportunity to build direct relationships with its clients in the various cities it is serving. For example, if Alexandria is a city in which you have clients, your Alexandria page can be the place you write up these projects, including project descriptions, customer testimonials , video content, etc. When you've achieved showcasing, perhaps, five great clients on the Alexandria page, see what else you can do to make it unique. For example, does you company host or participate in industry events in this city? Sponsor a little league team there? Have a unique take on rising industries in the city? Anything you can think of that will demonstrate the strong relationship you've built on the business scene in a town will prove to new potential customers that you are very involved in serving businesses in their city. There are no shortcuts here. Developing the writing for these pages calls for your greatest creativity and a decision to allot time and funding to creating city-related pages that are the gold standard in your industry and geographies. This mindset has always been appropriate, but now, with Google's doorway update, it has become a must. Recommend you also read: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/30/16-ways-to-create-unique-local-content-for-cities-where-you-want-to-rank/

Thanks, this is what I had figured, but I wasn't 100% sure. I suppose using /hockey-equipment/about-us/ was a bit of an exaggerated example, but what about a more subtle/practical implementation? Specifically, do you think it would make any noticeable difference between using, say... domain.com/about-us/ (and /contact/ and anything else that's obviously NOT equipment) domain.com/hockey-equipment/skates/ (and /sticks/ and other stuff that is actually equipment) vs domain.com/about-us/ (and /contact/ and anything else that's obviously NOT equipment, same as above) domain.com/hockey-skates/ (exact same page as would be on /hockey-equipment/skates/) domain.com/hockey-sticks/ I assume that at this level, it becomes a "6 of one, half a dozen of the other" situation, but again, not 100% sure.

I will recommend that you take a look at the Moz Guide on this topic: http://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo Google will differentiate content if it is served on a different domain in a different content. So a 1:1 relationship should in theory not create DC as long as it is not in the same language. However, I would take the time to make sure that the content is written properly in the right tongue and take into account local cultural aspects. Which method are you using? domain.com/fr/ fr.domain.com or domain.fr?

Hi Larry Glad that all made sense. Sometimes this can get really confusing - I have had a few car dealers in the past that had the same questions and sometimes it's just a matter of expectations and being realistic with search engines. Let me know if you have any more questions - happy to help where I can!

Hi Adam, Are the ticket pages on the sub domain the same as the event pages on the main domain except with the ticketing system included? If yes it would make more sense to canonical each event ticketing page back to the same event page so: tickets.domain.com/event1 -> domain.com/event1. If the ticketing pages are not meant to be indexed at all then I would put the robots no index tag on them also (or a robots file on the whole subdomain) and keep an eye on GWT to make sure none of them creep in. Canonical tags are a 'recommendation' not a rule so if your plans are for these pages to not be indexed at all best to ensure that as completely as possible.

So glad that was helpful, Bob! Good luck!