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Just realized I never answered the question about the title tag appearing further down - I think this is normal. Yoast SEO tries to put all it's output in the head together, and it's usually near the end of the section, so it's suppressing WP's default <title>tag higher up, then spitting out a new one down lower. My understanding is that the position of the <title> has no effect on SEO.</p></title>

Nonindex sounds like a great idea. But should those empty search pages have the HTTP status 404 or 200?

thanks so much for your reply Brian that makes a lot of sense. I'm now just waiting for another couple of links to get indexed, then hopefully I'll see some rewards for the work done! Cheers, Marcus

A 301 is counted by google as a link, both John Muller and Matt Cutts said that few times. So it's just a link. But since it's from a competitor domain, it is potentially a very powerful link, because google algo is believed to value links from websites within your topic/business/field much more than just any link. And I have seen that work that way with my eyes a couple of times. "Potentially", because of course it does depends on many factors, like that competitor metrics, such as DA/MT/TF/etc... If the competitor domain is well established, I wouldn't worry too much about the redirect being flag as manipulative by search engines. Of course if it's the best choice to 301 the root, 301 with some logic, or keep the website online as it is... Depends on many other factors, not all SEO related.

Thanks Rand. I suspected so. It was a very intriguing experiment you conducted. My take away... there are no more short cuts without getting into trouble with Google... just smart and hard work, keeping your plate clean. Thanks for your response!

Hi there! It looks like we haven't indexed the new version of your site yet. It can take a few index updates for your current URL to appear in Open Site Explorer, so keep an eye on our index update schedule here and check out our new link data with each update. I hope this helps - thank you! Kevin Help Team

Thanks Robert, I am talking about scenarios when our site has two pages coming up in rankings results but the first one is less relevant than the second. It sounds like the ideas in the Moz article from 2010 are still true. The search results are appearing in a particular order because the search engine is getting more powerful signals from the less relevant page for one reason or another and we need to intelligently dissect the content and ranking signals on both pages to understand what might be happening. Thanks!

Edmond, Having read your question and the response above I have one thing I would add based on years of marketing experience (not just digital): With any ppc campaign you should always be running A/B testing as a mechanism to either improve conversions or validate what you are doing. I think this is the most under utilized tool in all paid search.  Running an agency I can tell you that we occasionally fall into the trap of not doing this regularly with clients who are being very successful. To me that means we are complacent and due to have a fall. So, I urge A/B testing. Robert

I totally agree with Logan Ray, Donford and Mike Roberts. It sounds like the content will slightly differ from location to location. If this is the case then I agree with the "rel=canonical" method and with the sub domain method to point to main site's root domain. For SEO Link Juice, I think you probably want to focus little more on the content uniqueness of each individual location "mini-site" and power it from other sites such as Yelp or Google Local. These sites are localized so though it's probably a  "nofollow" link (meaning: no link juice), it does draw visitors to click on the link for your local site. I guess this also ties into how do you want to do your Local SEO and how do you plan on tackling the social media information dissemination. If your client is in fact have full understanding of their business use case as in different branding for each site, then unique content development will also play a key role. At this point, you probably want to focus little more on Page Authority and increase the link equity that goes into this particular page. For the product pages or categories, you probably just want to have a "follow" just on the root domain categories not on your sub domains. In this way, google only crawl/re-crawl and eventually index the products from your root domain while recognizing the other sub domains as location.

Hey Jamie! Sorry to hear about your frustration with the Google Analytics feature. I can definitely understand why this would be a pain point for you. While we don't offer a search function for Google Analytics profiles at this time, I'm happy to give this feedback to our product team! Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

Hi Thomas Unless I'm mistaken. If you list multiple user agents before a rule all the users agents are subjected to the rule. So what you have is a list of 3 user agents allowed "anything" disallowed 4 specific things. In the end the rules apply to all. Don

Hi Radi, That is a bit normal. The reason that it appears to happen is the browser is trying to render HTML data. If you come across this it could be because of a slow internet connection or a problem with the server hosting content. I would suggest a force refresh Windows & Mac CTRL+F5. Usually that fixes the problem. Good luck, Don

Oh man, thank you so much! I'll go ahead and take a read/look at it all. Thanks again man!

Well for starters, it will level the playing field that has been altered pending what SEO tools site you use, each site having their pro's and con's about them, with google releasing their 360 suite, these site's will up their game that much more to retain users meaning we'll not have to pick or choose what site to be a part of, we'll have the same tools available, at the same indexing power. Or google will be so good with their indexing that these sites we all use will be for community questions and answers / blogs only. I would like to see a better backlink index setup from MOZ, as I'm not paying for ahref.com and others if I already have one here. IMO google sees adwords writing on the wall of SERPs and knows that organic search will become the norm and they'll either get rid of adwords completely or stuff it to the side again so they don't lose users to another less ad crammed SERPs. Their moving towards mobile mainly right now, which ads really should have no place in, since the size issue is that much more stressed. With virtual reality and augmented reality, SERPs will change as well as ads, this archaic means of paying for exposure works but won't for much longer as users have more and more avenues to turn to when frustrated. The 360 suite interests me, however I don't see myself jumping ship just yet.