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Let me try and tackle these one by one: Capitalization: Yes - typically you can handle this with a server-level redirect that forces all URLs to be lower case. Google will see the upper case version as a separate page, and that's why it's getting flagged as duplicate content. Be sure to double check that this is being process as a 301 and not a 302. Wheregoes.com is an easy quick way to check. 5 Sleep Options: I'm not sure why, but http://www.bellybelly.com.au/5-sleep-options-for-your-baby-where-will-your-baby-sleep is producing a list of articles almost identical to the ones being shown at /birth. So, that's the cause for the duplicate content here. I'm guessing it's a CMS error of some kind. f196 vs f193: These are showing as duplicate because there's nothing unique on the page except for Queensland vs Victoria. You'll need to find a way to highlight threads that are about Queensland or about Victoria to make this page useful, or you can simply "noindex, follow" these pages so that the duplicate content is irrelevant. /tas/doulas vs tas/etc., etc. These are duplicate content because they all say "No advertisers found matching your criteria." That's it. They need to have some real actual content, otherwise there's no reason for them to exist. For these directory listings, try creating a bunch of free listings to serve as temporary filler and it will also encourage other competitors that they should consider doing a listing as well.

Thanks for your suggestions Peter and Matt!

Hi Peter, Thank you so much!!. It make sense to me. Best Regards.

An image with no image? That would be just like an HTML error. It would be a mistake to think that doint this would be good for your SEO.

Hi Dustin, You're right—in general, a drop in DA that corresponds with a drop in your competitors' DA is most likely due to changes in the Mozscape index (though not the algorithm so much). It's best to look at DA less as an absolute value than as a benchmark against the competitors in your space. Matt

Yes, I am actually one of those third party affiliates, so I need to remove those pages from the index as currently there are 61,000 pages indexed (all duplicate, affiliate content). As I slowly build SEO pages I plan to index my SEO side of the site bit by bit. The strange thing is that teh SEM pages do have links, they are coming organically just from being in the publics eye.  In a way its a nice problem to have, as I'm hoping to capture the juice and funnel it over to the new SEO pages.  make sense? Best, Rob PS - i'm up for coffee anytime.  I'll let you know when I'm in town.

I have been using GSERP.com for several months now, and it seems to be reliable and accurate. It is free, in beta-test, with no pricing plans yet announced. The rankings correlate well with actual Google search query results, and are updated on a daily basis. It has a few quirks, such as the graphing feature usability (not being able to deselect all and then select specific keywords, you have to deselect keywords one-by-one, as far as I can tell.) Also, be sure to set your default country correctly. The GSERP results are downloadable, which makes it handy to keep track week-to-week and month-to-month and compare results with the average SERP rankings you see in Google Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools. There are several other good rank tracking tools, but most cost $50 per month, more or less.

Interesting... one of my clients has the opposite problem. Bounce rate is over 50% yet average pages per visit is over 4 and average time per page is over 3 minutes. Peter's suggestion seems to be a very good one. Check individual pages to see who needs fixing the most. Put more oil on the squeaky wheels.

I'm using https://serps.com/tools/rank_checker

Hi Oren, Great! So glad to help.

Currently Google Authorship only supports one author per post as far as SERPs go (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/08/relauthor-frequently-asked-advanced.html) but I would recommend adding bylines for all authors on a post so if/when Google allows for multiple authors you have everyone show up there. Does this company page get considered as author? Technically no. Authorship is meant for individual people whereas Publisher is meant for Brands. However, Publisher may show up withyour Google+ logo if a person who follows you is signed into their Google Plus Profile.  You should have set up rel=publisher to identify cardekho as the publisher of the site and whomever is the author should have a byline.  If there are multiple authors then each author should have a byline.  Google will only support one image in the SERPs however and it will generally be an author. Would this company profile marked as rel=author help in any ranking benefit as an individual Author profile helps in search results? Again this should be a rel=publisher schema markup issue.  Having authorship show up in search results does tend to lead to higher click through rates but for pure ranking factor as related to Authorship, I think the jury is still out.  I still think domain level metrics are more important then author stats.

Yes, this is a great video by Matt Cutts.  But I think he's mostly addressing how Google perceived people were trying to abuse their system, and what changes they made as a result. Basically, he's saying that a subdomain doesn't make a big difference to Google's search rankings, and that in the past, people would use subdomains so that they could get additional search ranking placements (one for the main domain, another for a subdomain).  He's made it clear that Google has put an end to this practice. What he doesn't discuss is whether putting content on a subdomain is going to affect how Google scores the site, and if it scores a subdomain separately. Most of the research out there still shows that the domain ranking is set differently for a subdomain vs. a subdirectory.  Perhaps this might change in the future, but the general school of thought is that if you put all of your inbound links, social media shares, and content development into one domain (www.domain.com), it will do better than splitting the effort (part goes to shop.domain.com and part goes to www.domain.com). Thanks!!

Here is a correction :: Posting on Google+ is not the same as Google+1's. Google +1's Amazing Correlation with Higher Search Rankings - Moz http://moz.com/blog/google-plus-correlations by Cyrus Shepard - in 11,464 Google+ circles Aug 20, 2013 - Many publishers have added Google+ authorship information to their websites in order for author photos to appear in Google search results. . . . _(Edit: This should say "posting on Google+" instead of Google +1s. It's clear that Google doesn't use the raw number of +1s directly in its search algorithm, but Google+ posts have SEO benefits unlike other social platforms.) _— August 20th, 2013 - Posted by Cyrus Shepard

Hi Sherwood, We haven't had any recent reports of this behaviour. Have you tried logging out, then clearing you cache beyond your cookies before logging back in? Please also check you're not booking Moz cookies. If you're still having trouble please send details of your OS, browser version, and screenshots/screencasts of this behaviour, if you're able to capture it, to help@moz.com Thanks! Jo

Hi Howlusa, My 2 cents: I prefer .com/birthday-parties-chicago It's very easy to understand and should stand you in good stead.

Hello Erick, According to this article on S.E.W. it is best practice to optimize the product description in your PLA feed, but they do not provide any "proof" of the efficacy of this practice. This CPC Strategy post says the same thing, and this YouMoz post has a comments section with several experienced marketers corroborating the best practice: "However after looking at the descriptions in the feed, the max CPC pricing and the keywords that triggered the ads I started to understand that PLAs require as much SEO attention as a regular organic page does to work well." "We tend to make sure all product titles and descriptions are keyword optimised in the first place but you are right, this is very often overlooked." Unfortunately I do not have, nor can I find, any "proof" that Google uses the product description play a large factor in the ranking of product listing ads. I will leave this open as a discussion in hopes that someone else can update if it is ever proved. Until then, I recommend writing product description text that uses your top keywords - typically the product name/model - while focusing on how it is going to entice the shopper to click on your result.

I wouldn't do anything that could look spammy, and I'd say that might. The traditional way to use an acronym is to place it in brackets directly after the first mention of the written out term i.e. "Yesterday I bought a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich (BLT)" and then use the acronym for the rest of the article. Write for your audience though - do they know what a BLT is? If so I might use BLT in the title. Have you done any keyword research to see which would work best? Saying all that, Google is getting better at recognising synonyms. If I type BLT into Google, I get results for Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato too - Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato is bolded in the search results, so Google know they're often the same thing. Edit - I've just had a thought - using an acronym might not be the best example of different phrases. Check this out: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-latent-semantic-indexing-seo-defined/21642/ and http://moz.com/community/q/latent-semantic-indexing-does-this-help-rankings-relevance You used to be able to search for synonyms in Google using the tilde ~ but they dropped the feature earlier this year.