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Not directly, since Twitter links are nofollowed, but it could help indirectly if you are promoting good content that viewers may want to share and link to after reading.

Hi, Marie is right - we can't provide you with numbers like this. The last time that this was possible was 2009 / 2010 (in my experience). You knew that if a well-ranked website had 1,000 inbound links and 50% of those had commercial anchor text, 5% of which was from a certain type of website, then those were good numbers. Not necessarily to copy, but successful numbers nonetheless and a framework for what was working at the time. Now, as Marie says, Google is far better at determining what is real and what isn't, so even if you stick to someone else's numbers in terms of where they get their links from, your attempt at copying that may not have the same results because it does not look nearly as natural or high-quality. I also have to point out that you have mentioned directories and social media: social media links are almost invariably nofollowed, so if you are acquiring them, you should be thinking about these links for other reasons besides SEO. A natural, high quality backlink profile will include social links, so don't forget about them, but they are not technically a source of inbound followed links anymore (for the most part). Directories are often low-quality / spammy and often require payment for inclusion. I would only have a site listed in a directory if I was doing it for other reasons than SEO nowadays too.

You need to set goals first for your account give a dollar target to those actions , track those goals in adwords and raise or lower bids based on how much those actions costed you to achieve per keyword. It could be a view of a key page , signup etc - but a 250 monthly budget is very low unless you have very little competitors.  - Look into google grants if you are a 501c3 non profit it can give you up to 10k of free spend* *if you can spend it - restrictions apply

Hi Simon, Like Andy says, is there a possibility that you can have these windows open in a new tab with a nofollow attribute if necessary? Whether to keep people on site or send them away has been a problem / debate in marketing for a long time (well before we had to worry about penalisation / outbound link issues to go with it). There's a fine line between keeping people on a site they no longer want to be on and accidentally allowing them to forget about where they were before. You might want to test different ways of sending visitors away to see which results in the best conversion metrics (whatever you choose those metrics to be). As a user, I almost invariably open links in new tabs myself, but different people have different ways of handling this themselves and I'd test what works best for your user base in terms of visitor retention / other goals.

Just wanted to update this, it took a month but since I decided to completely remove canonical tags and try and handle duplicate content with url rewrites and 301 redirects and I now have 114 out of 149 indexed from my sitemap which is much better. it ended up to dropping to 5 out of 149 at one point.

Ok! Our media agency asked Google and got the following answer: _My understanding is that your main goal is to be able to import those Google Analytics goals into AdWords, and yes you would need to use Autotagging for this. If you're already using manual tags, which it sounds like you're doing through core-metrics, you can still use Autotagging and Google Analytics will ignore those manual tags as long as they aren't Google tag parameters such as Campaign Source _

perfect, thank you so much

No problem... I have a new site too, and the wait is agonizing!

If you are looking for a more permanent option, use this tool: http://www.advancedwebranking.com/ This rank checker allows you to enter in your own keywords that you want to display the rank of. Better yet, it uses proxy servers so the results dont count against you. Only thing I would mention is to not run the report more often then once every two weeks, as this will make your impression count go way up. Here is a link to a site we set up a long time ago:  http://www.woodlandwindows.com/awr/ All the keyword choices showing up were ones that we chose. The front page listings show up in bold, so it's easy to see what is ranking, and what isn't. You don't have to have that large of a list. Also, if you are trying to use a free platform to help, Google analytics can show you your top visited pages, which more than likely has a direct effect on your topp ranking pages. When you link your webmaster account and analytics accounts together, you can view search query and keyword ranking info.

Hi Conrad, Aside from internal linking, it is also important to look at the page titles, and these could do with some work. When crafting page titles, you want to remember that Google has changed how they calculate how much is now shown, and this equates to 56 characters (512 pixels). MOZ has a tool to show you what would be seen here. You say that when someone searches for "active new zealand", then you want this page to be returned http://activeadventures.com/new-zealand However, the page title of that page is "New Zealand Hiking & Adventure Tours & Vacations | Active Adventure". This title is also a little spammy, and you need to get your desired phrase in there as well, if you can. Rather than what is there, I would have "Active New Zealand adventure tours | Active Adventure". This gets both key phrases in and fits into the 512 pixel limit that Google now has. Internal linking can also help by explaining more to Google about the pages as well. A strong anchor text around each phrase would be desirable here. If you want a hand with any of this, just drop me a PM and will be happy to give you some pointers. -Andy

Since you already know Wordpress, you probably already know Yoast's excellent Wordpress SEO plugin. Yoast has another plugin specifically for video. I'd recommend taking a look -- good luck!

Perfect, appreciate the help!

You're probably not using google.ca. It ranks slightly lower on google.com.

There are no Google penalties This is a little awkward to be sure of Roderick as there are manual and algorithmic penalties, the latter you won't be notified about. Can you tell me what you used to build the profile of backlinks to disavow? Based on what you say, this is where I would start looking. -Andy

Thanks for your help.