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Hi Jennifer, Ranking factors remain valid - the remark of Matt was rather on the fact that for targeting a country better methods exist that just adding the country in the url. If you already have done that, and try to capture search queries of type 'bookkeeping Spain' - adding the keyword Spain to the url/title/H1 will help. Hope this clarifies, Dirk

Hi Shamshuddin, Like Dennis said, spam score shows how many of the 17 possible spam flags are triggered. These flags are triggered on link metrics or on-page metrics. Based on the amount of flags triggered Moz found  a correlation between those factors and the amount of websites that have been penalized. Here is the correlation between the amount of triggered flags and the amount of penalized websites: 0 flags = 0,5% of found websites were penalized 1 flag = 1,0% of found websites were penalized 2 flags = 2,0% of found websites were penalized 3 flags = 4,2% of found websites were penalized 4 flags = 7,5% of found websites were penalized 5 flags = 11,4% of found websites were penalized 6 flags = 16,2% of found websites were penalized 7 flags = 30,6% of found websites were penalized 8 flags = 56,8% of found websites were penalized 9 flags = 71,9% of found websites were penalized 10 flags = 77,3% of found websites were penalized 11 flags = 87,3% of found websites were penalized 12 flags = 93,4% of found websites were penalized 13 flags = 98% of found websites were penalized 14 flags = 100% of found websites were penalized 15 flags = 100% of found websites were penalized 16 flags = 100% of found websites were penalized 17 flags = 100% of found websites were penalized In your case there is no need to worry. If you wonder which spam flag you triggered you can check http://bit.ly/1P5WSeG and then click on any one of the graph icons  on the left of the domains in the results and you will see this: http://bit.ly/1GdbEyS  I hope this helps! PS. There is a whiteboard friday about this subject too: http://moz.com/blog/understanding-and-applying-mozs-spam-score-metric-whiteboard-friday

One of my favourite test sites is https://usabilityhub.com. You can create numerous tests asking pretty much all the questions you have in your list above. The big bonus is it is credit free for the community edition, although you can buy bulk credits or subscribe if you wish to, I tend to acrew new credits  the free way by performing the odd test for other users. It is definately worth a look.

Hi Dirk My opinion somewhat varies. They have been requesting webmasters unblock css, js and images for some time now so they can evaluate the layout and design with their algo. Most of the elements I mentioned can be done algorithmically. The poor font color, the lact of padding / margins, the lack of social buttons, poor text readability because of no line breaks. I'm wary of user engagement metrics, especially as being reported 3rd hand. Side-note - as we all know, they do have a "mobile-friendly" UX test, which evaluates basically the same types of things for mobile - there's no reason they can't for desktop but just haven't told us.

Hi there!! Yes, you are right, slow and steady is the best way. Thank you for taking time to answer my question. Cheers!

Hi there Go for relevance - you can have a link from a high domain authority site that isn't remotely relevant and it won't do you any good. If the chamber of commerce sites are relevant to the area you serve, then go for it - you're an operating business in that area. I have to say this though, don't build links strictly for the metrics of the site - build for links that you feel are going to benefit your business, bring you traffic, potentially convert your audience, and offer value to the user. The best way to link build is to ask the following questions: Does this link help my website? Is this link relevant to my website? Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it? Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website? If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy? Majestic has a great tool to help you understand the topical relevance of a site's backlink profile. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Thanks for your responses (regardless of names :)). The error message I get is  - Reciprocal not found -. The weird thing is that I only get that error message beside the URL I test. I.e. If I test www.test.com/canada/ It will show the second link as www.test.com/usa/ as it should, but beside my /canada/ link it will show "Reciprocal not found". But if I redo the same test, and enter www.test.com/usa/ it will show 'Reciprocal not found" beside the USA link, but not beside the Canada one. So the Reciprocal not found error stays with the URL I'm actually entering. Does this make sense?

Patrick pretty much nailed it. For one thing, Google's index is bigger than ours, as they have the resources to crawl a lot more, a lot faster. Our index also tends to focus on somewhat higher-authority links—the ones that will really count in your backlink profile. There's some more information on how the index works and why URLs may be missing here.

Thanks Jon, I'll look forward to using the updates.  I was just using the MozBar within the last 30 minutes to evaluate a potential SEO client. Thanks for your focus on product improvement! Paul

My thought is that for some reason, with the Canadian and US proximity, the algo could see the US page as stronger. Do you see in Analytics for the few times this happens, the organic traffic to that page, is it border Canadian towns? It's definitely not perfect with bordering countries, but if you are geo-targeted correctly and the content is different, then overall you should not have major issues. If you'd like, tell me a few terms and your domain and I'll check it out.

Sounds great, there shouldn't be any problems then. Good luck with the launch!

Hi Justin Ask yourself: Do all of these 39 pages individually provide value? Can you condense these pages into 6? Have you considered a content audit? Have you checked your rankings for these 39 pages? Check Google & Bing Webmaster Tools / SEMRush Your organic traffic? Check analytics Do these pages have good backlinks? Check Majestic / Open Site Explorer Longer content has correlations with better rankings based on some studies Backlinko ranking study Searchmetrics ranking study This is a big decision and a big undertaking. You need to assess the value of these pieces - you said so yourself they are pretty well done. But, if they can be condensed into these six pieces and you have a plan in place to do so, then good luck! But, if you find in your assessment that there is user / search value to these pages, then you need to take a comb through everything and really make sure this is the route you want to take. There are definitely risks. Hope this helps! Good luck!

I just want to chime in on the "most people don't bother to consult sitemaps  - if they need to consult it to find their way on your site you probably have a UX problem" statement. I agree, but a lot of sites DO have a UX problem, and for that reason I use HTML sitemaps. If you're in a hurry, and let's face it, everyone is, you can go directly to the HTML sitemap and search for whatever it is you're looking for. And yes, a lot of sites still DON'T have search either b/c they think their UX is fine and therefore don't need search. Can't tell you how many times I've had that conversation with site developers....

"how to create stuff something"   (some people would pick this because they think that the absence of "in" makes for better keyword optimization) "how to create stuff in something"   (I pick this because in addition to sounding better to the user it might be clicked more, and being clicked more, in my opinion, is more valuable today than keyword optimization.  Why?  Because google is pretty good at getting the keywords from your article into the title tag but getting people to do what you want them to do takes much more finesse. )

It seems to crawl all the wordpress folders and media files.  Is there not a tool that will tell you just your live website URLs, I'm after creating a site map and a mass re-organising content exercise, so want a list in excel of URLs. Any tips welcome Thanks Sarah

Hi Eva, your case is quite similar to the Belgium one described in a answer here above. Said that I did not see anyone pointing you to some important thing that you're maybe forgetting to do. Your site is a .com, a generic domain name. Generic domain names target the world by default, and that is why you have a lot of visit from Mexico for your Spanish version of the site. Therefore, what I'd suggest you to do this check: Go to Google Webmaster Tools; Go to: Search Traffic > International Targeting Click on the "Country" tab Control if the site is targeting the USA. If not, target users in United States. Doing that, you are telling Google that your site is meant for users in the United States and not in others countries, so it won't have that much visibility in regional Googles like google.com.mx. Then, as suggested by others here, implement the hreflang annotations (read the resources linked in the other answers). In the specific case of the home pages (yes, both: English version and Spanish version), the annotation will be these: These hreflang are telling Google: This URL must be presented to all people using Spanish in the USA; This other URL must be presented to all people using English in the USA.