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Thanks everyone! Will check these out when I get a chance, prepping for SMX West at the moment.

Thanks

It certainly does confuse my understanding. Thanks for your help at clarifying things:)

Thank you Guys for all of your responses!

I think the point is, mydomain.com/Page.html 301's to mydomain.com/page.html but mydomain.com/page.html?x=y canonicals to mydomain.com/page.html so in this case both have a function. but having said that I would fix the links to mydomain.com/Page.html as using a 301 leaks link juice, they are good when correcting a external link, but an internal link should be fixed by fixing the link itself.

Hi Bryan, In order for a business to qualify for inclusion in Google's local pack of results, it must meet the following criteria: Have a unique, staffed, physical address. This cannot be a virtual office or P.O. box. 2. Have a unique local area code phone number. Not toll free, vanity or call tracking numbers. 3. Have face-to-face transactions with customers, either at the place of business (like a dentist) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber). If the business can say 'yes' to ALL THREE of these things, then it qualifies, and it's time to read the Google Places Quality Guidelines to become acquainted with all of Google's various policies. See: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en If the business cannot say yes to any of the above or fails to meet any of the criteria in the Google Places Quality Guidelines, then it should not pursue Google local pack rankings. It's very important to understand Google's bias toward physical locale. Most businesses can strive to achieve local pack rankings only for their city of location. In other words, a plumber located in San Jose, California can hope to achieve local results for searches that include the term 'san jose' or that stem from San Jose-based devices. He cannot typically expect to appear in the local pack for his additional service cities where he lacks a physical location. Instead, he must pursue organic rankings for these location-less cities. There are exceptions to this in scenarios of low competition. For example, if your business is one of only two chimney sweep companies serving 5 different cities, there is a chance that Google may surface you in the local pack for more than one city, simply because their is little competition and there are few choices. This is typically the exception rather than the rule, however. Pursuing organic rankings for your additional service cities involves the creation of city landing pages. You can read more about this here: http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403 Pursuing high local rankings involves a ton of different efforts. You might find these resources helpful: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors http://moz.com/blog/top-20-local-search-ranking-factors-an-illustrated-guide So, the first step is to determine how the business model fits in with Google's view of local businesses and then proceed accordingly.

Thanks for your reply, Gianluca.

Hi Claudio, you've received some great tips here. Did any responses help answer your question? If so, please mark them as "good answers". Either way, we'd love an update. Thanks! Christy

You aren't doing poorly at all!

Hi James, In this case, I would try and remove the poor-quality links. Disavowal is a good tool is you can't remove something, but if a link is truly gone, it can't hurt you again in the future. It can be time-consuming, but the process of removal works best if requests come from an official company email account. We have found that it's best to follow up a week or so later if you get no response. Any links you can't remove that you feel are particularly bad, you can disavow. This isn't a necessity and you might want to wait until you think they're hurting - Matt Cutts did say this week that you can feel free to disavow links when you're _not _penalised, but I tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to that advice. I'd definitely try to remove them first. This should eliminate the need to start with a fresh website or fresh content. Cheers, Jane

Just to let you know that the page was indexed in less than 24hrs. We didn't use Tony's tiip (share on G+) but we did all the following: Used GWT tool - fetch as googlebot Submit the URL using the button that appears after fetching as googlebot Included some sidewide links to the page Included the page in our sitemap.xml Thanks all folks who added some insights and tips!

Well I appreciate your experience enough to believe you are probably correct.  I have read many of your responses to people here.  You know your stuff.

Hi Tony Thank you for taking the time to respond to my question. I take on board your comments regarding the top level menu structure, I will discuss this with my designer and see how we can get this to work. Regarding the noindex of the "Air Filters" landing pages for example, the reason why I thought this would be applicable (in my original structure plan)  is largely due to the fact that the page content (i.e. the products listed in here) will be for the most part a collection of the products listed across my additional "Audi Air Filters" and "Ford Air Filters" pages so would this not be content canonicalization? I thought noindexing the "Air Filters" landing pages would be the correct thing to do? Thanks. Kris

Thanks Keri, thats exactly what i wanted!