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Although I wasn't able to find a concrete answer for you, It seems the general consensus is that moving ViewState to the bottom of the page can ensure a larger portion of your relevant content gets indexed, as well as improve the user experience by slightly improving page load time. Here we're some of the more helpful discussions I found : Moving ViewState to Improve ASP.NET SEO Moving ViewState for Better SEO ASP.NET HttpModule for Moving ViewState to Bottom I have never heard of any of these guys and cannot vouch for their knowledge.  Sorry I could not be of more help, best of luck!

This is my opinion and is not backed up by any concrete evidence. Given the choice, I would opt for the cross-domain rel canonical.  Matt Cuts has said that google prioritizes the original page in search results (link references rel canonical within domain, not cross-domain) and based on todays whiteboard friday and this video from matt cuts, I think rel canonical is the way things are moving, particularly for content syndication. Edit: It also just occurred to me that there is no reason you can't ask for both.  Rel canonical is helpful to GoogleBot determining who the original content creator is but offers absolutely nothing for the user.  It takes little more than the flick of a pen to require your syndication partners to include both rel canonical and a link back. Edit #2 : Regarding your question about the difference between the Google Source Attribution tag vs. Cross-Domain rel canonical : Update 2/11/11: We've had a lot of interest in these meta tags, particularly in how the syndication-source tag relates to rel=canonical. After evaluating this feedback, we’ve updated our system to use rel=canonical instead of syndication-source, if both are specified. If you know the full URL, rel=canonical is preferred, and you need not specify syndication-source. If you know a partial URL, or just the domain name, continue using syndication-source. We've also had people ask "why metatag instead of linktag"? We actually support both forms for the tag, and you can use either. However, we believe the linktag form is more in line with the spirit of the standard, and encourage new users to implement the linktag form rather than the metatag form we originally proposed. Source

Haha don't worry, we're all guilty of thinking into things too much

Thanks for your reply EGOL. That's exactly what I saw with one of the posts that had nofollow links. The sydication partner's version was ranking higher.

You can just remove your location in search settings -> preferences.

No worries... as a quick tip, Google some stuff, look at where the reviews originate in their places listing and then you'll know which sites to get reviews at

Thanks, this makes sense to me. So, if I get it right: -Rel-canonical is mostly to tell search engines which page to index. -A link shared on twitter or facebook or anywhere else for that matter that is a bitly will be like a 301 and will past most juice to my site. But here's what I still don't get....If my main page is a descriptive url (as above), but someone links to it using the ugly url (i.e. www.mydomain/question.php?id=1), will the juice from this link still help my page in the serps?  Would it be just as effective as if they had linked to the "correct" url?

Yeah I would take it anyway... don't forget that just because it has zero authority now, doesn't mean it won't get some good authority later.

I'll also add this - if the link and it's surrounding text are NOT directly related in a laser-focus manner to the content topical focus of the article itself, it's not even an ideal link from a "pure" SEO perspective, even if it's high up in the content area. Which just reinforces the whole "don't get lost on this being such a big deal" concept.

Google will do what Google will do. Just as results change when the query deserves freshness (think how search results for osama bin laden changed dramatically within two hours) so do some results deserve local emphasis, in google's mind at least. If the places results show up after the top three, then getting into those top three is the same as any other top three. If the places results are showing up before any others, there's nothing you can do to get yours ahead of the places results, that's just where google puts it. some searches even spread the places results out. A search for payday loans brings up A from the map as #1, then no places results again until #4. The key is SEO is SEO, so always have good, unique content and get good links and you will move up as high as you can.

What I'm not seeing addressed specifically in the thread is can the KW term within your H1 & Title differ? I get that if the whole title and whole header differ slightly like: Title: Best Plumber Local |100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! H1: Best Plumber Local offers 100% Satisfaction Guarantees! *Please note - not my best copywriting effort at play here Then it's not worth sweating over, so long as the searcher does't experience a disconnect between he SERP result and and the landing page messaging. My concern is over the need to target "ugly" KWs - terms that don't fit well in to the UX equation, but have exponentially more search volume than they "prettier" version.  Let's say "plumber local" has 1,000 monthly searches vs "local plumber" that has 300 monthly searches. But "local plumber" is much better for copy/user readability.  Can you use: Title for the SERP: Best Plumber Local |100% Satisfaction Guaranteed! H1 for UX: Best Local Plumber offers 100% Satisfaction Guarantees! ...and still be nicely optimized for "plumber local" assuming you can find a smooth way to work it into copy (easier than doing it in an H1), alt tag, and site has otherwise good authority/reputation. Also, ugly KW (plumber local) would be used in the url). Thanks is advance!

Until your site is the KickAss site in your SERPs just add something catchy to the title tag like "Schedule a Tour!" ....... or....... "Free Beer"........ or..... "See it Today!"

New backlinks can take up to two months to show in Open Site Explorer, because of the way the crawls are scheduled. Also, OSE only crawls the top 25% of the web, so if some of those links are on old forum threads in low-value sites, they may not show at all. Generally, they will show within two months.

What about when the old URL no longer exists at all (page no longer saved on server) - how can you do a 301?

[EDIT] Previous answer deleted because I had a brain fart and thought you were answering a different question I asked this morning!  LOL! Yes, this WBF was very timely!  It sounds like this is exactly what I need to do!

You'll find .es as well, of course, especially when the .com is already registered people will look at .es domains. But be prepared to find tons of very small businesses, clubs, associations, etc. with .com domains.