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It sounds like Martijn solved your problem, but I still wanted to add that robots.txt exclusions keep search bots from reading pages that are disallowed, but it does not stop those pages from being returned in search results.  When those pages do appear, a lot of times they'll have a page description along the lines of "A description of this page is not available due to this sites robots.txt". If you want to ensure that pages are kept out of search engines results, you have to use the noindex meta tag on each page.

Hi Chris, Correct me if this information is outdated, but Open Site Explorer sees no inbound links pointing to the site. Ahrefs (a similar tool) sees <a>two</a>. Along with David's points about on-site optimisation, this is a big problem - even with all the changes Google has made in the past couple of years regarding site quality, links are still a very important part of the ranking algorithm. It's very hard to rank well without quality inbound links from third party websites. I would look seriously into link development - the link building section of this blog is a great resource for ideas and current practices.

First of all, I'd like a little more information about the "legal reasons" that are forcing to you create ccTLDs for Canada and the UK. What you're doing now is actually ideal for international SEO when it comes to the same language, so I wouldn't want to change things unless it's really necessary. Is it because the EU has stricter laws regarding privacy? In that case, I'd recommend following the strictest laws for the entire .com site and leaving it at that. Is it because your company has to offer different legal information from country to country? If that's true, I'd post all legal information on my site, for all countries, and let visitors look at the pieces that are most relevant. Is it because you're starting to sell different products? In that case, yes, you probably need a new ccTLD since you technically have different sites, but that means that you can't really use hreflang, since your product pages will be different. If it's something I didn't list, and you absolutely have to create new ccTLDs, the best recommendation is to use hreflang. You can either use it in the of your page, like you said, or in the XML sitemap so the extra code doesn't have to be loaded with each page. Hreflangs work a little like canonicals, so Google can choose to pay attention to the international versions of the site or ignore them, but eventually yes, your UK and Canadian sites should rank as well as your .com site. There will definitely be a dip in traffic as Google figures things out, though. Hope this helps, and good luck!

I have 2 websites as well and they are in the same niche, i made sure the write completely different content that is helpful to my visitors. Different titles and descriptions as well.

I don't think it's a big deal not to have it, but for something that can be done in literally 10 seconds I'd play safe than sorry. To explain what I meant about the duplicate home pages, you can often have multiple versions accessible to the public. For example: Yourself.com www.yourself.com www.yourself.com/index.php I haven't looked at how you have it set up, but all should go only to one version to prevent home page duplication, and the final version you decide on would be the one you include in the sitemap. Hope that helps!

Hi Nathan, Can I ask for a bit of pronoun clarification in this: "I am working with an Insurance agent and he has Google Alerts setup on his company name. He has received two alerts where his name only appears in the URL. If you click the links they bring you to a competitor's Yahoo Local profile page with their name and info. If you look at the URL it has his company's name and city in the URL." Is 'his' referring to your client's company name and city or the competitor's name and city?

This is all great information! Mozzers rule! So I am in the process of recommending 301 redirects from a stronger domain (old but still getting a lot of traffic) to a weaker one (new, refreshed design, same product). No one is maintaing the old site and we want to pass the link juice. I am concerned that what happened to Cindy will happen to us. I want that traffic and I want to make sure that the 301 redirect will work. And of course, don't block old domain with robot.txt One question though: What happens over time with the 301 redirect? I am assuming that the newer domain will eventually show in search results for the KWs that triggered the old domain to show. Is that a safe assumption?

I'm not sure if I would do it that way. First, look at your analytics for each language, and see which ones it makes sense to accommodate. Remember, it's not just setting up all the profiles, it's also having to update them all separately. Extra time spent for how much of a return? Also, because of your business type, will people really interact with the social side of your business? Or are you setting it up solely for search engine validation purposes? I'm not an expert as this, but I'm betting most platforms have a translator built in. Here is a link I found for Facebook. You probably want to check out the others for yourself and see what is available. http://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-moves-into-international-translation-efforts/

Personally, I'd leave them in place. I don't think it does any harm to have the bread crumbs in place. Now if it was creating additional URL's I would say you may have an issue but I don't think you have anything to worry about. If anything it could provide a benefit

I don't think so, if anything there is a benefit. The only thing I don't like about press release sites is that you don't have control over where they submit your release. You pay them a fee, write your release and then how for the best. I haven't seen any negative effects from doing press releases. Just make sure what you put out there is something someone will find helpful or useful.

I agree. Get rid of all the links that do not offer any benefit. Remove external links that don't point to good, relevant info. Disavow inbound links from any banned or questionable sources. Even if the links pointing at you are no follow, the links can still get visited. Remember, it's up to Google to respect the no follow rule. In some cases they may ignore it, if they think it's a relevant link.

Hi Chenzo, We've actually just back a report as spam button in the PM system that you can use for this. This account also triggered some other systems we have, so I've already banned it. Thanks for letting us know! I've gone and removed some of the information, but will leave the question up so people know what to do if they do get spammed. Keri

I base myself almost exclusively on google seo.  I start a Little bit of adwords and some articles, press releases, web hosting and dedicated server listings and directories.  I am also present in social media but without too much action. It seems like its a full time job for each aspect of SEO. I would need 3 or 4 employees working exclusivelly on that to start competing with the big guys

Exactly, it depends as per the content & structure of the page and website. Make it sure, whatever you are doing should be for humans not search engines. Best practice is, you can use combinations of anchor texts, like exact keywords as anchor texts + long phrases having your targeted keyword.

Sorry if there are typos btw, doing this from my mobile. Let me know if I can be of any further help. I'd be glad to provide more insight.

Just wanted to add, no I don't think there would be any adverse effects on ranking, unless the site was compromised somehow. Since you are on a completely different system, you should be fine with a resubmission. On a side note, since you are on WordPress now, make sure you have the right file permissions, and shell access turned off. Hackers love a WordPress site that is unprepared. Best of luck with the new site!

Any SEO agency should be able to do this for you.  We do a one-off removal for clients for a set fee and they pay once - after that, we do all the work for removal. If it's denied, we do resubmission and get it taken care of.  That's something you should be looking for - make sure they don't do it once-off because if they don't get everything, you'll be paying again. (You don't want someone to be overly aggressive with the disavow, either. You will lose the good links as well.)