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Well....there are so so many things that can contribute to a fall in rankings...that I can't mention them all here... But a drop - if I read you right - from #6 to #10 is not a drop really at all...just normal fluctuations...i.e. this is how the rankings flutter... Have you checked tho to see if you're looking at the rankings using Personalized Search? Incognito? WebHistory on/off? Do some googling for those topics....read...and learn! Not trying to be dismissive here - just that there really is no 'answer' that you'd be satisfied with....honestly!

If you are moving down consistently then it is most likely not all of your competition suddenly started to work for that keyword.  How to fix your site is complex but you should start with looking at the page that was receiving the traffic and check for changes that were made recently, make sure that you are following best practices for your content and technical pieces.  You should also check your back links as recently many people who had used certain link building tactics have seen decreases as Google updates.

Absolutely! Yeah I'm just not sold on... A) The amount of work it would take to transition each site B) The risk of something going wrong C) The actual ranking benefit/advantage it would actually produce D) The value of it for our users And for that reason... I'm out! lol

Appears that moz is not supporting IE either...tho they are supposed to be "working" on it...but till they actually do get the analytics to work in IE - use Chrome.... Not fun to try to explain that to a client tho...

Backlinks are going to matter much, much more than number of pages. Don't use subdomains; they share almost no domain authority with the parent domain.  AND, you aren't as likely to get a country-specific boost as if you used a country-specific TLD,  Possibly you're just unclear on the difference: if so, here you go: the subdomains are qualifiers to the left of the domain (e.g. www., blog., etc.) and TLDs are the right side of the domain (e.g. .com, .org, .co.uk, etc.). E.g. use www.toaddiaries.ca instead of ca.toaddiaries.com. If the content is really similar across the various countries, i.e. it's just translated, you should use rel=canonical (pointing to the country-specific page) and hreflang alternate (in ALL pages, pointing to all of the other versions of the page).  See Maile's talk on this here. Pay close attention to the distinctions between LANGUAGE and COUNTRY, e.g. spanish versions might exist for dozens of countries, and those differences matter.

Yes it is better to ask the users to register right after the homepage but it will take some time that is the main reason you should apply  some  different tactics.

Hi, This is an interesting question and I was just looking it up a few days ago. Answers to your questions: Yes, google can and does read ampersands and plusses and does show slightly different results depending on which you use. Maybe, if you check the SERPs for ‘black & white football’ and ‘black + white football’ are they different? When I took a quick look they were different - so once your ‘black & white football’ page starts ranking, check SERPs for ‘black + white football’ – you may be in the same place for this keyword, or you may be much lower. If you’re at the same position there’s no need to optimise another page, if you’re lower then maybe you should create a page. Be sure to check search volumes first though, there’s no reason to spend time creating a unique and optimised page for the keyword using a plus instead of an ampersand if nobody is searching for it. Yes they notice and treat each one slightly differently. Take these 3 example searches for ‘design and branding’: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=design+and+branding&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&ip=0.0.0.0&pws=0&uule=w+CAIQICIA&gws_rd=ssl https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=design+%26+branding&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF- 8&ip=0.0.0.0&pws=0&uule=w+CAIQICIA&gws_rd=ssl https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=design+%2B+branding&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&ip=0.0.0.0&pws=0&uule=w+CAIQICIA&gws_rd=ssl We’re seeing a lot of the same domains showing up - with a lot of the same pages - but in different positions as well as some sites sneaking onto page one for one term, and halfway down page 2 for another. Take www.steve-edge.com – currently at 7^th for ‘design & branding’, 16^th for ‘design and branding’ and 20^th for ‘design + branding’. So there’s the answer - yes Google can understand plus signs and ampersands, and yes they do treat each query slightly differently. You may be found at the same position for all variations, you may see fluctuations between each SERP, but what’s most important is checking to see if people are actually searching those terms with plus signs or ampersands before going to make the page - because there’s no point creating and optimising a page that nobody is looking for when the page they are looking for is being found fine. Hope that helps! Tom

Hi Matt-Antonino, Great - thank you. Ok, I'm glad it's not going to be a problem! Thanks again, J

Thanks for taking the time to feedback each of you. My site is 'new' so I am simply trying to glance ahead and set-up in a fashion that accommodates  good SEO practices and future (possible) expansion e.g. additional course topic areas to avoid site wide rewrites/redirects. From what I gather there isn't much between the two approaches. So I will move forward with: www.site.com/training-courses/business-analysis (so that in future '/project-management' and other areas can be accommodated simply). This is based on the assumption that the folder/sub-folder structure count as keywords, and not solely the page slug? I also hear from your responses that content is king, and I should not rely on the URL to be the main contributor. Interestingly, for me, when setting up my first Moz campaign today the word 'course' was not suggested, with other non-critical words that feature far less often being suggested instead. Again - thanks for your insight, appreciated.

Hi! Hreflang (plus geotargeting domain to US and /es subfolder to Mexico on Google Webmaster Tools > Settings), will make that your US based users will see the US targeting URLs in Google.com, and the Mexican will see the ones targeting them in Google.com.mx. Regarding the content that will not be translated in Spanish, but still published in the /es subfolder, yes, you will have to canonicalize the duplicated content under /es toward its corresponding "American" URL. Hreflang, in fact, is not meant to solve duplicated content issues, just visualization in SERPs. For that reason, as Google itself finally explained, the rel="canonical" must be used. Said that, don't worry! Even if the canonical is implemented, the hreflang will still making Google to show the /es URL of the not translated pages. On the other hand, though, it is not wise to not localize everything in Spanish, also because - let's be honest - who in Mexico is using English for searching in Google.com.mx? P.S.: I was rereading your question before clicking "Post Response", and now I have a doubt. When you write: Would hreflang, besides showing the matching language version in the SERP´s,  restrain my site translated content (wich is pretty much the same) from being penalized fro duplicated content? Do you mean: "The content is translated but - well - it's the same as the English". If that is the case (but I don't think this interpretation is correct), then you don't have to implement any canonical (if not for others reasons), because the content is the "same", but in another languages, hence different.

Thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions. So, to be sure I am doing this correctly. I am building a totally new site. I will probably continue to use my primary domain name, even though it really has no relationship to my business in terms of key words. It has been out there for over 20 years and has domain authority of either 18 or 30 and authority of 21. The domain authority of 18 or 30 depends on whether you are talking about XXXX.com or XXXX.com/index.html. Obviously this is another issue that I need to address. I have an early version of the new site out there on the net, and Moz is telling me that I have a problem with duplicate pages. It is the same issue, YYY.com or YYY.com/index.html. (This is a new domain name that I am presently only using for testing, although it does contain excellent keywords in the domain name.) My next question refers to 301 redirects or canonical. I suspect canonical is easier. The question is, which is the best canonical page, YYY.com or YYY.com/indexhtml? I assume YYY.com, since there will be many other pages such as YYY.com/info.html, YYY.com/services.html, etc. My plan is to make many pages that will refer to various services that are also keywords, such as YYY.com/keyword-phrase-A.html, yyy.com/keyword-phrase-B.html, etc. I assume this is the best way. Also, I will have a number of instructional white-papers that will be keyword rich.

Hi, Dom, maybe you find something here: http://moz.com/community/q/does-anyone-know-of-any-tools-that-can-help-split-up-xml-sitemap-to-make-it-more-efficient-and-better-for-seo Splitting a sitemap can be useful for you to keep sight over the indexed url's.  But it's quit normal to run a sitemap with 5000 url's. the maximum is 50.000 url's for 1 sitemap, so it's not necessary. Grtz, Leonie

Resurrecting this thread. Anyone have info on connecting an OTA feed to Google Hotel Finder. It seems that Booking.com has the run of GHF and my company would like to get in on that? All thoughts/ideas are appreciated.

If the Spanish government is smart it will reverse or revise these rules.   If they don't reverse or revise their publishers will be starved of revenue and with that their quality must drop - if they don't go out of business.

Awesome thanks for checking but I see that is the XML sitemap and I'd need a HTML version that is customer facing.

If you want to share a set of urls I'd be happy to take a look at it in case anything else jumps out.

Hi Jarno, This worked perfectly, thank you! All the best, Rodney

If the use of the reviews is for the purpose of user experience there are review aggregates that will share reviews between two domains without placing them in the source code. This will leave out duplicate content penalties and it will not have any effect on SEO. Since the reviews will not be in the code, there will be no positive or negative SEO effects. Yotpo is an aggregate that displays reviews like an RSS feed, and it leaves them out of the source code.