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I was surprised to see those too.

Thanks for the tip!

I'm currently reading a book called "In the Plex" by Steven Levy which talks about how Google got started.  They talk about how Google learned to predict relevance.  I'll paraphrase the example because I don't have the book in front of me. Let's say someone typed in the search phrase - i want to buy a cat, and they get their page of search results.  But let's say that they immediately go back and do another search.  (This tells Google that their results didn't provide an answer).  So this time they type in, i want to buy a kitten.  Now, Google knows that cat and kitten are relevant to each other.  Similarly, if their next search was i want to buy a devon rex then Google knows that cat, kitten, and devon rex are all similar terms.  Of course, the algorithm wouldn't change for just one user's search but rather if hundreds of people were interchanging cat for kitten then eventually the algo learns that they are relevant to each other. So, how can you use this for seo purposes?  Check out this search for i want to buy a cat -cat The "-cat" tells Google not to include searches that use the word cat.  So, you get results that Google thinks are relevant to I want to buy a cat.  From this search I can see that I should also be targetting the words, kitten, persian, siamese, main coon, etc. This is a quick off-the-top-of my head example, but you could certainly play with it.

Thanks!

Did you check this tool http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/video-xml-sitemaps/ ?

The link might not be in the OSE index which is where the PA data is coming from.  If you do have a clean link pointing to the page you can be pretty sure there's some link juice flowing to it, but it will take time for the site to be crawled and that link strength to be added.

I have the ability to place our own applications for our agency in unique folders but the links I will be distributing to other agencies are specific to each agency. They are links that are auto-generated by our web application that has the agency's identifying information embedded in it so that the agency gets their proper commission. This conversation has been good though because I was going to build a bond application library into the site with a link to each specific application. I will now restructure the site so that the link provided will lead to a well named sub-folder that has the actual application framed into the page. I should probably also make sure that I don't just frame in an external application ONLY. I should probably place content on each page alongside the application that is relevant to the type of bond they are applying for. Would everyone agree?

Hi Keri, thank you very much for your response. I already have cheap, free, inexpensive and variations of such negatives, but the link you mentioned has some really useful information. Thanks a bunch!

Doing both covers all the bases.  I can't recall who it was that did the test (@TonyAdam on Twitter I think) but the test involved rel=canonical and 301s being implemented, and the discovery was that rel=canonical was acknowledged faster than the 301s. And at the very least, doing both won't hurt.

Thanks a lot. It is a relief.

The only thing that possibly helps with Wordpress is that it does come with plugins that you have to install by the way that automatically updates your sitemap to Google.  I know a sitemap is not any significant help in ranking but it prods Google to tell them "Hi look a new page" but again as the previous posters mention this is usually just a receny bump. There are lots of other 'SEO' (deliberate italics here that make life easier for titles and descriptions.  But as far as Googel cares your site is just text and if you make it attractive they will/may come back more often.

Thanks Alan.  That's really helpful and not something I was aware of.

Thanks for the site, I also have a site that went online this year and was curious to know wich page rank I will probly have after the update