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thanks for the effort Lewis...I will have another read through the terms...

"How does google decide if a listing from one city shows up in another?" -- It depends on the amount of competition that search term has and how well everyones Google Places pages are optimized for that term.  If there is a lot of competition for that term then it will stick with that city, if there are not a lot of quality matches it will expand it's results. "Any ideas on improving the distance your listings show up for?" -- Optimize you Google Places page for the keywords you want to show up for. Your Places page is going to be centered around your physical address first, then it is going to look at the content you added for title, description, and any other info you add.  If your business covers a wider area like a neighboring town then make sure you include the name of that town in your description or title if it is appropriate. Your success will depend on how competitive the market in that area is and how optimized your page and others pages are for those location you are looking in.

I have heard many people say "Never pay for a link". I only pay for those directories if it gets me a backlink. My rule is that if it's under 10 bucks, I'll do it. My dentists pay me good money every month and a $10 one time fee isn't going to break the bank especially if it gets you a lifetime backlink.

There are a lot of different reasons why they chose this way to place the blog (software, hosting-limits, easiest out-of-the-box setup, etc..) It does not do too much "damage" though. Having a sub-folder is the best-practise but using sub-domain is the second best. It would be "harmful" if they used another domain, which is not the case.

Hi Marcus, Yes I'm afraid so, the client in question removed a word from their company name and therefore they need to change the URL. I'm pretty happy that we'll be able to do it with the minumum of damage, just wanted to put the question out here in case someone had an alternative method based on experience.  I agree there's no perfect way to do it, however I think building some strength for the new site before killing the old one is as good a plan as any. Thanks again.

Yep, you can suggest up to 15 parameters to ignore I believe (that's from memory but its a good few)

Thanks a lot!

It's certainly on a case-by-case basis as I've seen. Certain terms (ex. photographers) is searched much more as a plural than as singular. The real answer to this question is do your keyword research, and see which terms is more sought after.

Some good advice from Google on changing domains here: https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105&hl=en I have never 301'd 50 different sites either, however I wouldn't just leave it up to the 301s to inform Google - use the 'Change of Address' function in Webmaster Tools.  If you haven't already got Webmaster Tools set up on all of the old sites, I'd say that's an essential task to do first.  Then you can tell Google manually that the new site is replacing the old one/s.  You'll have to repeat the process 50 times but it's quick, easy and well worth the effort. Google suggest that you leave the 301s in place on the old site/s for at least 180 days - but probably better to listen to Marcus and Alan; 12 months won't do any harm. I'd also get the new site up and running concurrently for a few weeks first, if it's a new domain or if it hasn't had any content on it for a while.  A client recently immediately killed their old site upon launching the new domain, found out the new domain had previously been burnt, and it tool 6-8 weeks to recover rankings for the new site after a 'reconsideration request'.  It cost them organic traffic and extra PPC spend. Maybe others would advise against this?  Realise it's potentially duplicate content but a short cross-over period would enable the old sites to continue providing temporary value as the new site registers.

Pleasure buddy, hope it helps!

Here is one possible way to handle the situation: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics

I would double check and make sure that all your campaigns: Email, Bing/other networks PPC & Retargeting ads etc. All have Google's utm parameters setup on them.  These are all areas that webmasters tend to overlook.  The PPC ads tend to still be listed under organic search, but you can't segment out the paid or non-paid Bing (other network PPC) traffic without the tracking installed.  Here is a great blog post that Avinash wrote on tracking direct traffic correctly.  I would start here and make sure you have everything setup correctly before looking for other nuances.  http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2010/09/excellent-web-analytics-tip-analyze-direct-traffic.html

Thank Ryan, Does that mean registering 100's of expired domains with backlinks and 301-ing them all to the main site would be a viable link building strategy?  It shouldn't in theory because the original 'votes' were to the expired site not the new site. But how would Google algorithmically work this out other than just devaluing heavily a 301 redirect from one domain to another.  And if they did that surely the minisiste would be the best option? Thanks again David