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Google doesn't believe these links are natural ones because they represent no value for a website visitor. From what I know the advice is to make them nofollow if you still want to keep it in the footer of the websites. Personalty I would go with another solution - I would place a dofollow link on a single page like for example the "About" page if it contains details about the website also and not only the company or on an "Impressum" page if the website has one.

Thanks a lot for your answer, I'm in contact with them now!

I agree with Chris. It's not just a case of ranking for a keyword, you've got to be able to do something with that traffic in order to satisfy the goals of your site/business. So, you need to consider relevancy of the page, the question the searcher is asking and their intent. It's tempting to try and use your most authoritative page (typically your home page) to try and compete for your competitive search terms. But you can't burden your home page with every keyword. Really you should be looking to get the searcher to the most relevant page on your site for their query. The more specific the keyword, the more specific the page. Think about which page is more likely to satisfy the searchers query, and have a higher chance of getting them to convert? A generic home page or one that's about the very specific thing they were searching for? Target keywords with the wrong page, and you can see some high bounce rates. It's just a shame in this (not-provided) world we're losing the ability to track the bounce rates for specific keywords.

Happy to help, Ash! I am very happy to hear that things are coming into focus for you. Yes, there is a lot of information out there, and the platform is rapidly changing. It can be overwhelming at times. You may want to consider joining a couple of Google+ communities on Google+. They are great places to network, as well as ask and answer questions about the Google+ platform. Of course, Q&A is always here to answer your questions as they arise, too. Cheers, Christy

Thanks everyone for such great answers! You've all helped a great deal in answering the question

Thank you so much!  I don't really like the way the 3rd party vendor set up the site (the IDX supplier). Do you know of any good IDX site providers?  Thanks again.

Hey Will, I should be thanking you man. I started distilled/U in beta and I have learned so much from it I am very grateful. I look forward to seeing you in Boston next year at Search Love. J, I agree with everything you said. All the best, Thomas

Hi Michael, Thanks man that means a lot! All the best, Thomas

Hi Kieran, I feel the pain you as a business owner would be going through when you don't see all those efforts performing. I am sure you have done your research on best practices however I would like to highlight the golden rule for online marketing success again for you. The secret is not volume, it's always quality and consistency. I completely agree with Peter that you should not scrap the old pages with mediocre content unless they are "Not Unique". I have often seen that mediocre content is usually created through article spinning practices. While there could be many ways to take a leap from here, however since I am not fully aware of your situation and limitations, here are some ideas: 1. List down all articles on your website in a spreadsheet and write down the following information against them: a) Topic b) Target Readers (Existing Customers / New Customers / Both) c) Target Location of Readers d) Objective of the article e) Actions you expect the readers to take f) Is the article Unique and Original? Please note this is not about the quality or creativity, pure uniqueness. g) Is the quality of article poor, fair, or excellent? This is on the basis of creativity, knowledge and engagement potential of the article. h) keywords being targeted in this article. 2. Put a filter on content quality and uniqueness and filter down all articles with fair and excellent quality and uniqueness. 3. Now starts the more difficult task of marketing these articles all over again. This is going to be time consuming and would need attention to detail. But hey honestly, there are no shortcuts to success. a) For each article that you have filtered out, make sure you verify this before proceeding any further. All those article pages you have selected MUST have appropriate ON PAGE Meta info. Ensure you have proper titles, descriptions and keywords for each of those pages. Also try and spend 5 minutes on each article and see if you can build internal links (3-4) for each one of them. b) For each article that you have filtered out, do a keyword detailed using Moz analysis and find out the links and ranking factors. I am assuming you know how to do this, or please contact me and I will help you through the steps. c) Now write following for each of those selected articles. A 200-300 word Press Release (teaser), a 30-40 word Facebook post (preferably with a picture), write a twitter post for that article, 50-100 words article preview teaser (inspired from the press release), Email Teaser (50-100 words) d) Now for each article please do the following, in no order (as per your convenience): i) Submit press release to sites like PRweb.com if your budget allows or choose sbwire.com or similar sites. ii) Share the facebook & twitter posts. iii) Through your moz analysis for the targeted keywords, identify blogs and forums which are relevant for your article and submit your article teaser that you created in previous step to these sites. iv) Send emails to all your existing customers who are relevant for that article and if possible invest in some email marketing list too. Please do not buy ready made lists however using hoovers / linkedin etc is advisable. I hope my suggestions help you drive higher and relevant traffic to your website. Please feel free to send me any questions you may have. Thanks & Regards, Prateek Chandra http://www.bizezee.com

Hi Donna, were you able to resolve this issue? We'd love an update, thanks! Christy

I'd second Federico Einhorn...  He's correct about the description tags. I did check the robot.txt file (looks okay) And the meta info also looks okay, too: <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">google-site-verification</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">ruda0O6aWmbMZZc-UyJEYH4lx6e8T41glM3QIo_Ae7Y</a>" /><meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">index,follow</a>" /><meta name="<a class="attribute-value">GOOGLEBOT</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">index,follow</a>" /> But I agree that it might not be included in Google Webmaster tools correctly, due to this message: Google promotion Try Google Webmaster Tools <cite>www.google.com/webmasters/</cite> Do you own shop.riversideexports.com? Get indexing and ranking data from Google. (see screenshot) google-site-shop-riverside-exports.com.jpg

Thanks Martijn, I figured the domain name doesn't needed to be included, but just wanted to be sure for Universal Analytics. Thanks, Brian

Hey Thomas, You can definitely remove a connection to GA by selecting the Disconnect button from the settings page but I'm afraid we don't have a way to know which account is connected by a user or an admin login. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience that causes. Chiaryn

As an update, here's a link to the Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet by Moz.  They do recommend the www.domain.com/blog: http://moz.com/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-edition Thanks! Jeff

Not that much people will actually link to you (people are naturally lazy or don't have blogs) so don't worry. I would just put the site's brand in there like "Link to Brand or url" and have it change from time to time. You can have you developer create a simple form where people can enter what they want and it would generate an embed code which will fit their site/blog perfectly. In my experience, people will choose to use social buttons rather than sharing actual links on their blogs (I'm referring to regular people unless you target bloggers) so having the buttons there would give you more benefits rather than not having it on the page.

Well, that's hard as I don't know your URLs and your parameters. You need to come up with a solution that covers all, but also avoid any duplicate content issues by redirecting the parameter based URL to rewrote ones. Let's say the file serving paintball masks and goggles is: Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx The parameter Manufacturer only shows the ones from that manufacturer. But does the naked URL shows all? If yes, then you have to noindex all of those with the parameter set. If no, then you can use some URL rewrite rules to make "static/easy to read URLs" using something like this: RewriteRule ^Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles/(.*)$ Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=$1 [L] This means that users accessing to /Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles/Empire will see the same page as /Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=Empire but on a friendlier way. That is if you have lots of manufacturers for paintball masks and goggles. Or if you have many manufacturers but not that many products from each, you can also write a different rule like: RewriteRule ^(.*)/Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles$ Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles-0Y.aspx?Manufacturer=$1 [L] Which will produce the same effects, but putting the manufacturer name on the from of the URL: /Empire/Paintball-Masks-And-Goggles. This not only involves creating some set or rewrite rules but also changing the code in your site to use the new URL structure you are creating with the rewrite rules. If you don't have the knowledge to make this kind of changes, I suggest you contact a web developer to carry on all the necessary steps. Feel free to private message me if you need more help.

Yes, with that many links I think that is the best thing to do. Peter

or maybe this: http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/search-engine-optimization/seo-dashboard-google-docs-seomoz-analytics/

Hi Peter, great. Thank you