Welcome to the Q&A Forum

You shouldn`t take those numbers too serious although they are not really wrong... just see this info as a recommendation. There is a unwritten rule which recommends that the keyword density should be between 2 and 4 percent but you should focus on writing a good text in general. Of course you can keep in mind to use your keyword in a propriate way but what you do is: you write for humans not for machines... Its undeniable that your text wont rank for a keyword if you do not mention it (this might change in the future) but as I said: don`t focus too much on that. Write a good text (everybody has a different opinion about the definition "good" by the way) and review it... think of using your keyword so that your text will still be a good one...

I am not 100% (in general) sure but this recommendation in your screenshot f.ex. is closely connected with the activities of Barnes & Nobles and their listings in Google Shopping... furthermore this depends on the markup structure of the website/URL/page ... if there are good reviews Google will "link" to them...

Hi James Your OS might be defaulting .csv files as a different file type. You may need to change properties to open the filetype with Excel: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/choose-programs-windows-uses-default Hope this helps!

We've tried the affiliate route for lead gen on the CPL model and even though the ratio for leads/deal is high , it did turn out to deliver a positive ROI for the client. You can also try contacting agencies that specialize in this kind of lead gen and buy leads on a CPL model from them ( go only for exclusive leads or you'll be fighting 5-6 other competitors for the business)

Thanks Paul, I'm more curious about how and why these links are created.

If I look at the link profile of my own websites (which have never received linkbuilding services) I am shocked to see links from some awful looking sites.  I don't get excited about them because they are links from black hats and spammers who build mashup websites by slapping together information scrapped from other websites, grabbed from business directories and stolen from other sources. If I look at the link profile of almost any other site that has been on the web pulling reasonable traffic for at least a couple of years I will see the same thing.  Even the best sites on the web attract tons of spammy links without doing anything to produce them. So, I think that it is really hard to assess the links that you see pointing to other websites.  If you see stuff that looks like manufactured links... they probably are manufactured links but they are on spam sites of a type that google is not going to penalize you for. If I was in the lending space I would not be surprised by very many things.  And if a website does have really spammy link.... they might have been disavowed a long time ago.  Keep in mind that disavow has been around for a couple years or more and tons of people - especially in the lending industry - have disavowed an awful lot of links.

That's what I've been doing, Matt. No, not a silly answer. Maybe a silly question.

Thank you guys for your contributions! Much appreciated!

Thank you yet again for the great advice.  We have two major universities here in town...  This is a wonderful idea!

I wish I had a good answer. When Google takes liberties with snippets, it's not always easy to sort out why. The first stop is usually making sure the query is in the META description and the description isn't too long, and you've got both of those covered. Two long shots, but easy to try: (1) Add the NOODP Meta Tag (). Sometimes, it prevents not only descriptions from the Open Directory Project, but also Google taking liberties. Sometimes. (2) Consider pulling your domain name out of the META description. You're saying "Myrtle Beach Hotels" twice in both the title and META descriptions, and it's possible that that looks very slightly spammy to Google. If you can, make the description slightly more natural - the length is about right. Again, these are in no way guaranteed, but they're easy to try. I don't think tweaking the structure of the page is going to help. It's not Google recognizing the search results that's a problem - it's why they choose to rewrite. Unfortunately, we don't have a good handle on the why, at least in some cases.

Hi Michele! Campaigns can track sub-domains, root-domains, or sub-folders so if your sites can be accessed on their own as a sub-domain or sub-folder, you can create up to 5 campaigns to isolate the data. When creating a campaign and entering the URL you would use brand1.domain.com or www.domain.com/brand1/ and check the box below to "exclude subdomains" which means this will only track the sub-domain/folder you enter. Make sure you are entering the URL as they resolve on search engines so if you enter a few keywords and one of your URLs resolve as domain.com/brand then you want to add the URL without the "www" or vice-versa. Hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions!

The only thing I might add is that, depending on the business, it might be worth building a "Red Widgets" category (as an example). However, you would treat this like a sub-category and write its own category description. You would give it its own rel canonical tag, treating it as the root of the "Red Widgets" category root. Nine times out of ten it isn't necessary to give sorting and filtering options their own category page though, and a rel canonical tag to the canonical version of that page is the second best option. The first best option would be to not change the URL at all, only re-order the items, hiding some and featuring others. Most eCommerce platforms don't have this functionality at present, however. Rel Canonical was made to span the gap until they do.

I don't know if its common practice but its not a new fix. Never heard of there being any issues with doing it that way (at least no one has ever told me this suggestion threw other errors for them if it has).

If its relevant, done with usability in mind, and is not deceptive then it should be fine. Here's a related Article from Search Engine Roundtable with Matt Cutts video: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-hiding-content-17136.html

Have you thought of instead spending $1000 or $2000 on an audit that can identify your current problems, and give you direction so your staff can work on correcting the issues?

Andy and Alan covered what you need to do. One more thing to keep in mind, check the traffic, you don't want to lose those spot in the SERPS. You might want to consider fixing up the subdomain if it gets you conversions and traffic.

You will be ok, sites in different tld's are not treated as duplicate content. Matt cuts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

Hello Bart, thanks for reaching out to us! It looks like this address returns a 302 when we try to get access to this particular page. This is why the tool isn't working with your site. I think this is caused by the way the page is redirected, possibly in a loop. If you are able to address this or need extra help figuring this issue out, feel free to email help@Moz.com so we can dig a bit further and find the exact cause

Hi there, For the question of how long rankings will take to come back, unfortunately that's impossible to answer for sure. I had a client once mistakenly point all of their canonical tags at their home page, effectively de-indexing the whole site. The fixed the error within a day, but it took five weeks to get their rankings back. This was a very new website that had very little authority to begin with, but it was still a huge hit to take. If your site is a little older and more established, your recover should be a lot quicker. Unfortunately it's still very hard to put a time frame on this.