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Hi Kristina Thanks for commenting and for the link, useful stuff Re the flow chart i interpret that as saying that if we are creating a sub site in a different language to target a different country (on the WP MS network.domain.com/tr network but domain mapped to its own country spedcific TLD), unless that country has multiple language versions used then we don't need to use hreflang and that geotargeting in GWT will suffice ? So really only time i need to use hreflang on top of geotargeting in GWT will be when very similar content in very similar languages (such as US English pages targeting USA google, and UK English pages targeting UK google) Re hreflang though - the dev have already set up custom fields for me so we at least have the option for as & when we may need to add hreflang to the pages: So am i right in thinking we add one hreflang tag to each page for each language version of it ? (so we end up with as many hreflangs on each page, referencing the alternate page relevant to that country code, as there are different language versions of the page ?) If so then the system is now set up for this but their asking me If I only ever want to add one tag to each page - effectively one that defines the language of the page you are on, then I could have a much simpler system than the one they have built! I take it the answer is no since we now have and want the above former solution ? Also the WP MS system uses Yoast that we ideally want for various seo reasons. It adds a canonical tag and theres some discussion out there re using hreflang tag and canonical together may cause issues, so is it best to keep canonical via Yoast or aks dev to suppress Yoast so no canonical ? Sorry for more questions and thanks for your help !! All Best Dan

Hello, I have a Blog In Which I am Using Google Translate, Which Can Convert the Blog into Multilanguages. Is it Suggested to use Herflang Tags in My Blog. Thanks In Advance ( Blog I Have Mention is signature) Ashish Sharma Govtjobstyari.com

Linda, OK, thanks. Grateful to have another opinion on it. It seems like this site has suffered, but the rest of links look reasonable. However, the previous SEO done appears to have been link building with complete absence of keyword research and subsequent optimisation of pages, posts, etc. Regards, Steve

Hey Chris, Thanks for the question! During the initial campaign setup it's just a url validation that we do. There's not actually a user-agent associated with it. We just look for something to resolve with a 200 response. If you've got your exception setup for rogerbot then that should be fine to proceed despite the warning. I hope that helps. Cheers, Joel..

With this info, I would go with Robots.txt because, as you say, it outweighs any potential loss given the use of the pages and the absence of links. Thanks

Good follow up question and I probably should have mentioned it even if GWMT did not. Yes, if you are a local business use that Schema. If you are an organization use that schema. It will help with your geo targeting. Best

The best way, that I know of, to identify the demographics is to use the Google Analytics along with Google Adwords. Spending a certain amount of money, on certain areas using geotagging, you can use all that data on Google Analytics and get a good impression of the demographics. The only thing you have to find out for yourself is what amount of data you need in that region and for that particular field that you are targeting.

Thanks Robert, I definitely feel that the process is the most important thing. Also, generally companies who have a process are on top of a lot of other things. I appreciate the response. Jesse

I just now found this conversation and I want to commend Travis for digging in. Some other things to consider: Age of the domain and also of the local campaign. If Lifepoint got an earlier 'start' on the web than Sylvania, this could have something to do with it. It does not look like an industry centroid is at play here, because both churches seem fairly equally distant to what I see as the cluster for 'churches in tyler tx' Could Sylvania have any negative issues like duplicate listings that could hold them back? You might like to check out: http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures

I think this could be an attempt at negative SEO.  But whether or not the links will hurt you is hard to say.  I see all kinds of odd links that just randomly appear in some site profiles, but these look like they were made deliberately.  One other explanation that is not negative SEO is if someone at your company, or a well meaning friend has ever purchased a cheap link building plan.  I've seen links like these appear as the result of fiverr gigs or purchasing one of those "buy 1000 links for $100" type things. Google says they're really good at determining whether negative SEO is happening and just not counting these links.  However, if this were my site, I'd probably disavow these once every 2-4 weeks just to be sure.  Make sure you disavow them on the domain level. If it is a competitor who is using xrumer or something similar to pepper the web with links to you then hopefully it will stop when they decide to give up.  There's really no way to determine who is doing it though as these really are all most likely automated. I think that anyone who is in a really competitive space like this needs to be monitoring for negative SEO regularly.  Again, I think in most cases it won't hurt you, but Google is certainly not perfect and I wouldn't take the chance.

Yes it is true that the link is outdated, but not the key idea that it supports. You need to target the right keywords to bring the right people to your site. And as we know a SEO strategy is not just the keywords, it is also the right content and the way you display it. Meaning that you should be able to support the keywords that you chose to target.

1. It sounds like the site already has the www right now. You don't really need to change it, but since you want to, then go ahead and forward it. I have never experienced any bad coming from this personally. I does take a while to get ALL the urls that are indexed to show the right one but aside from that, none really. 2. Is it going to be an easily spammable, unmoderated platform? Then I'd go with user.domain.com. But in most cases, use the /folder.

Thank you!!!

Eric, I understand how it feels to get that first great link. Don't reindex or resubmit sitemap. Here is a little trick... Go into webmaster tools and the 3rd or 4th button on the left going down is CRAWL. Click that and the third item on the dropdown is Fetch as Google. (You are going to use it for getting the page crawled, but that is not the original intent for this tool.)  Click Fetch as Google and put the URL of the page in. IF the page is your home page, leave blank and then hit fetch. That should get it crawled fairly quickly.  Note. This does not mean it will show up in links to your site in the next few days or even weeks. I have seen it take two months to get a link to show in GWMT. Hope this helps, good luck as you go forward. Edit: Sorry click Fetch and Render then click Index. Forgot about this. Robert

Amway, Your question needs quite a bit of clarification. Google's geo preference works a bit differently than just .com vs. .us for the same /similar content.  So, if you use a .US outside of the US you are stating you want to target US customers. A .com is not country specific so it won't necessarily exclude any region, but if you are outside the US, with server outside the US and with no geo targeting input, and your customer is in the US, I would use a .US.  A .com is generally better for the US than a .us for the US customer, but for a different reason than Google.  If a US customer sees .US for one result and a similar result (different site) with .com, I believe that 8 times out of 10 they will take the .com because they are more comfortable with it. I hope that helps.  Remember, if you are using the same or very similar content, be very careful with canonicalization, etc. when trying to use both. Best, Robert

How long has it been since the change? Google will need weeks and week to recrawl and reindex all the stuff. If it's been a while, this is one of those issues where we kind of need the URL. It can be a lot of different things, and sometimes it's a lot faster and easier if someone just gets in there and digs around.

Thank you both for the feedback, Yes, I am not looking to have two pages correct, The theme and topic of the page is currently targeting the plural variant, and i feel this is the best way for it with how our site is laid out, However i am saying it would be possible for me to change how the content is written to accommodate the singular variant of the word (Where more search traffic is)  however i don't think this would be the right thing to do, If i stick to my guns and the content and page is targeted towards plural, Google would still look after me for ranking for both variants, I content and translation support from a colleague in Germany, and have as long as it takes Thanks James