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Not looking for on-page content, site errors fixing or anything realted to insite (well online to optimize insite content or structure if its not already 100% optimized) but looking for someone to get me white hat methods to get backlinks and rank for my keywords im interested in i dont mean entirely hands-off last seo we had, we didnt check his work for 2 last months and he did 0 work, so yea i would be checking month by month the work being done to be sure theres proper work being done at the end mostly look for a seo who can get me higher rankings for specific keywords overall

Hi There I also do not know how this is done at the coding level in WordPress. The Yoast plugin handles it automatically - that's probably the least painful to get it implemented!

As others have said, that result is not, unfortunately, something you can outrank - it's not organic, and it doesn't have to compete with organic listings. Once Google determines the query requires a definition result, that one-box will be at the top. Why does Google determine this query needs a definition? Unfortunately, we're not entirely sure. It's possible you could do something to influence that decision, such as build a brand so powerful around the keyword that Google shifts the entire query to a different intent. Honestly, though, that's a tall order. So, what are some more realistic options? (1) Buy AdWords ads. Yeah, I know it's not the answer you expect from me, but the top 3 ads come above one-boxes (try a search for "assurance" to see what I mean). Sometimes, you do what you gotta do. (2) Work on mid-tail keywords surrounding that keyword. There are probably variants on "resting" that are more advantageous to rank for and will convert better. If your client isn't a household name, then people searching for "resting" probably aren't looking for them, and this isn't really that great of a keyword to obsess over. (3) Focus on "brand" signals like social accounts (especially Google+), get yourself into Freebase, and see if it's possible to get some kind of Knowledge Graph entity related to your brand. This is going to take some doing, but it's possible.

A 301 is the way to go then. This helps Google understand how pages have moved. -Andy

Some great advice above. Just to echo the following: Your orphan page idea does sound like the best way to direct the flow of link juice to where you want it to be I've done something similar to this in the past and can confirm the value will flow from .edu -> landing page -> focus pages you link to.

Sadly you are asking a question that is impossible to give a concrete answer to. There are many factors involved, meaning it is possible that you 'may' notice a drop, but on the other hand, it is just as likely (if a good job is done of the work) that you will notice no drop at all. -Andy

Hi there, I've seen and heard a few examples similar to yours where someone has tried to remove a Google penalty by redirecting to a new domain. In most cases, it hasn't really worked and as you've described, it seems to take a bit of time for the negative links to the old domain to take effect on the new one. If you think about it from Google's perspective, this makes sense. If you could just remove a penalty by moving to a new domain and doing a redirect, then that would be far too easy in most cases. If I were going to move to a new domain in order to escape a penalty, I think I'd probably not redirect the old pages and manually attempt to realign any good links I had so that they pointed at the new site. But this would definitely be a last resort, I'd rather do as much link removal and disavow as possible before trying to move to a new domain. Cheers. Paddy

Hi there! Has this issue been resolved?

Hi, If you have confirmed the pages are actually indexed, I really wouldn't worry about it. I have seen numbers of pages indexed jump around in the past on many different sites. -Andy

Glad to help

Well that says the change of address tool isn't working so that doesn't make me feel too great.

I don't think that can be had for the price. I pay around $260 for a single xeon with a ssd and 8 gig.

Last time I looked at GA's terms of service, it couldn't be used to capture personally identifiable information. This would help Alan see how many people are staying on the page versus how many filled out the form, but not collect the actual data of their content information.

Hi, This is completely normal at the moment. Many 301 URLs stay in the index for 6-12 months. Case in point, google this: site:seomoz.org There isn't anything you can do. Verify your 301s are set-up correctly. Move on.

Thanks for the update.  Glad you got it figured out.

Hi Erin, I'll wait for your contact then. If I can help with any other information please let me know. Cheers, Guilherme.

Hi PeteC12, (1) I wouldn't 404 those pages. I'd 301 or canonicalize them.  Canonicalize if you want to keep the location pages live for useability. If you're set on or well down the path to remove redundant location pages, then 301 redirect. Even though there's no limit to the number of redirects you can create for a site, they can slow it down (because 301's trigger an extra HTTP request and cause latency). Given the size of your site, I'd recommend doing some analysis to figure out which pages actually have incoming links. If there's no evidence of incoming links, then I wouldn't bother 301ing them but rather monitor your analytics closely to put 301s in place only if page-not-found errors start showing up because of personal bookmarks. For performance reasons, I'd also be careful to eliminate any interim redirects. By that I mean, for example, if Liverpool-Suburb (A) points to Liverpool (B) and Liverpool (B) points to parent-carpet-cleaner (C), skip the middle step and redirect Liverpool-Suburb (A) directly to parent-carpet-cleaner (C). I'd also make sure my 404 page notes your redesign and explains that some pages have been removed from the site and point visitors to a user-friendly sitemap. Should you keep location pages that rank well but show no evidence of traffic (using keyword planner)? Don't rely on Google Planner. If you have analytics in place, look at actual page traffic to see how many organic entrances you're earning to these pages. Base your decision on that. Should you remove thin pages until you have time to flesh out the content a bit more? Well that problem may have been solved given it's been a few months since you asked the question. If not, and you're worried about penalties, noindex or 302 (temporarily redirect) rather than remove them. Sorry you had to wait 3 months to get an opinion. So many questions get answered, sometimes yours can get buried. I apologize if I'm too late.

I don't have a strong opinion but there was a good article on the topic on Searchengineland