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Another good idea that I often use: where are your customers pain points, and what sort of information might they be looking for online? Use Google Keyword Planner to choose a subject that you think your customers are interested in, but that there are no good answers on. Research the answer, write it up in a guide, and put it on your site. It'll build your brand awareness even when people aren't actively looking for your services, plus any inbound links it gets will help your domain authority. Hope that helps!

Hi Jane, Thanks for your clarification. Since a higher number of people have asked about META description and title tags changes I guess this is a Panda effect. I know what to do next, a lot of rewriting work. Marcel

WOW that's allot of external CSS files and allot of External JS files.I would suggest you try to reduce the CSS to just one file on any one page and also see if there's any JavaScript which isn't required for the page. Some of the images seem to take a while to load on a slower connection too, try to keep the physical size small. Good Luck Dave

If consolidating the domains into subdomains is inevitable, then 301s are going to be the way to go. Just be careful to redirect everything to where it should go in the subdomain, and do it one chunk if you can. You don't want to 301 some stuff, then re-301 or do a second round later. Be as clear as you can to Google. once you are ready to move the site, do it all at once, so Google can clearly see that everything from the domain is now at the new domain. So yeah, wholesale switch, just make sure the client understands what he's getting himself into. There is no exact number with regards to traffic loss, chance of recovery, risk of things not going smoothly, etc. Make sure they are aware of all the risks and how to best lower the possibility of something bad happening.

Thanks William. We found screaming frog recently. Why nobody ever told us about it before is amazing.

HI, yes i did twice "fetch as Google", and yes the page is new so prob is a matter of time or probably Google is displaying what he wants as DJ123 was saying...

Hi Christopher, The set-up you have at the moment is actually fine for SEO - http://www.fdmgroup.com/ resolves the website. http://fdmgroup.com/ employs a 301 redirect to take users and search engines to http://www.fdmgroup.com/: http://i.imgur.com/et4AKYV.png This is correct, http://fdmgroup.com/ would be seen as a separate "version" of the home page if it was allowed to load without sending everyone on to the "www" version via the 301 redirect. Furthermore, every page within the http://fdmgroup.com/ "version" of the website would be duplicated from the "www" version of each page. If you want to change to use http://fdmgroup.com/ instead, using that both on advertising and having that be the version of the website that resolves for both users and search engines, you will need to reverse that 301 redirect. This will mean that when people try to visit http://**www.**fdmgroup.com/, they are redirected to http://fdmgroup.com/. This is a simple process. However, it is inadvisable to go through redirection like this unless you really, really have to. When you redirect a URL with a 301 redirect, a large portion of the URL's authority is passed on to the new URL. Not all of the authority is passed though. As a result, your rankings and traffic can take a little hit for a short while. This is not usually a big problem, and usually resolves itself quickly but it is best avoided unless the redirection really has to take place. I am tempted to say that "it looks cleaner" is not the best reason to go through this change when your current set-up is totally fine and correct for SEO purposes. That said, you absolutely could reference fdmgroup.com in offline advertising for stylistic purposes. When people type that URL in, they'll be redirected to the www version just as they are now. This is pretty common because of the stylistic benefits of not including www in TV / print advertising.

I'd like to thank you all for the input. As it happens, it seems the last google update has completely changed the rankings for most of the EMD we were tracking. So either they really had crappy "other" optimization techniques, or google changes the importance of EMD. Here's what I can take from this conversation: 1. EMD with good quality content and a descent back link will most probably rank higher then a domain without EMD in the domain name, but with similar/same content & backlink structure. 2. EMD with descent content and good backlink structure are probable a good place to have a link to the money site, but certainly not an option to replace the money site domain (which was never the intention) Thank you all for your input.

Hi Sandeep Sorry for the confusion. A $1 authorization hold is a common practice to verify your billing details. It is not a charge that will clear and is instantly voided so you will see it disappear from your account after a couple of days. We do warn about this authorization right below the billing field: http://www.screencast.com/t/teArPdOj More information about the holds can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_hold Hope this helps!

thanks! i fixed it yesterday. So now i start the waiting proces greetings!

OK tx so much!

Hi Damien, So if I'm reading this correctly, the consultant is saying that due to the size of the site (tens of thousands of pages), and the need to categorise its content, that subdomains are the best choice. I would say that there are far bigger websites using categories within subfolders, notably big retailers, e.g. http://www.marksandspencer.com/c/beauty, http://www.marksandspencer.com/c/food-and-wine, http://www.marksandspencer.com/c/mands-bank http://www.waitrose.com/home/inspiration.html, http://www.waitrose.com/home/wine.html, http://www.waitrose.com/content/waitrose/en/home/tv/highlights.html (<-- the last one being a crappy version, but a subdomain nonetheless) and so do websites that deal with providing content for very different audiences: http://www.ncaa.com/schools/tampa, http://www.ncaa.com/championships/lacrosse-men/d1/tickets, http://www.ncaa.com/news/swimming-men/article/2014-03-29/golden-bears-and-coach-david-durden-earn-third-national-title, http://www.ncaa.com/stats/football/fbs Has the consultant provided examples of other websites doing this that would take on the same structure? There are hundreds of examples of websites whose structure / categories are properly understood despite existing in subdirectories, so I'm still sceptical that this is a necessity. This is not to say that a subdomain approach wouldn't work and is definitively bad or anything, I'm just not really convinced that the reasoning is strong enough to move content away from the root domain. I disagree about user experience - from a user's perspective, the only difference between subfolders and subdomains is the URL they can see in the address bar. The rest is aesthetic. You can do or not do everything you'd do with the design of a website using subdirectories that you'd do with a website(s) employing subdomains. For example, just because content sits on www.icy-veins.com/wow/, its navigation wouldn't have to link to www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/ or mention the other brand in any way if you don't want to. You can still have separate conversion funnels, newsletter sign-ups, advertising pages, etc.

Hi William and Jennifer, Thank you for your words of wisdom. Regards Mark

Hi Gianluca, Your comment made me doubt my research. I started a new question about it. Do you have a minut to give your vision on my situation? I would really appreciate it. https://moz.com/community/q/duplicated-content-multi-language-regional-websites Best regards, Bob

yes, that is the super simple explanation my mind was blanking on. thanks!

Yep, it's another "it depends" - if Moz links to Search Engine Land in multiple blog posts over many years (as it has done), this is going to count for more than one vote. Those links also undoubtedly go to different pages on SEL's site (new posts, etc.). But if I write one blog post every other day, linking to my affiliate site in every post, this really won't help the affiliate site at all

Hi Jane & Spencer, Thank you for the additional information. Regards Mark