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Many thanks for taking the time to reply. Ryan - I am talking to CMS Source about these options; it's not possible with the current configuration but it looks like we may be able to change this with a bit of development work. Sean - Thanks, I had considered the canonical, which would at least prevent a duplicate content issue although I think we need to take measures to stop this admin. subdomain being accessible which this won't help with. Lynn - Thanks, I'll do that as an interim measure. Thanks Kate

Hi David. Congrats on the rankings. Something I'd consider for a project like this would be split testing what you currently have with new designs.  For example, the flyer printing page might work well talking about all the ways the company's superior printing has met customers needs, then you can show several examples--nightclub flyers, community board flyers, handout flyers, etc.--with testimonials, content, and imagery around each. That way you're not only increasing the content that could possibly rank, but also focusing on driving more business for your clients.  Key features would be simple anchor-based on page navigation, engaging content and graphics, stories of past customer satisfaction.

Hi Miguel. How recently did you make the switch?  The reason being, it takes Google some time to crawl all the changes, index, and then finally pass along old authority.  Here's an older Q&A that speaks to this: http://moz.com/community/q/how-long-for-authority-to-transfer-form-an-old-page-to-a-new-page-via-a-301-redirect-moz-pa-score-update. Especially Dr. Pete's answer of... It can vary quite a bit. The page has to be recrawled/recached, which can take anywhere from hours to weeks, depending on how much authority the page has. That's usually the big delay. After that, Google may on occasion delay passing authority, but we don't have proof of that (there are just cases where it seems like they do). If it's just a handful of pages, re-fetch them through Google Webmaster Tools. It never hurts to kick the crawlers. Hopefully this helps you out.  Changing things back early on might cause even more delays, so it's better to stick with the change if it hasn't been very long at all.

But to answer you specifically, yes, there is a chance the bots could read the URLs without hyphens.

One more thing... That you may also find helpful the leaked Google Qualaity Rater Guidelines - it was leaked to us SEO practitioners last July or so... Google for that term - but here's my own blog posting on it - http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2014/07/shhhh-google-quality-rater-guidelines-2014-leaked/ - and there's a link there too to download the 11 mb .pdf....

Thanks Monica and Jarno, appreciate you taking the time to give your opinions. Completely agree with what you have said. There are obviously many multinational businesses so I cant see why Google will have an issue with having multiple sites (even pointing at each other) as long as it provides value, firstly to the visitor in terms of trust and also as a trust signal to Google (assisting them provide more reliable results.) In my mind the advantages far out-way the "potential risk". On the flip side doing it to manipulate ranking, purely to pass link juice or replicating and re-purposing content across multiple sites could have a negative impact but I don think that applies in this case. Will do some more research and see whether webmaster support has posts on dealing with multinational brand sites. Thanks again!

Guess we have to set up a second CMS, content etc. OK... submit to them. If I ran a plumbing site and one brand tried to tell me how to run my biz I would do an analysis and determine where they fall into the market importance.   I might decide to.... A) quit selling their CrappyBrand Plumbing Supplies B) quit selling all other brands and focus on their CadillacBrand Plumbing Supplies C) continue as I am and see if they cancel me D) build a little outhouse to sell their crappy stuff E) keep my current site and put a lot of effort into a site that sells only their brand Consider doing an analysis before you spend any effort to kiss their feet.  My crystal ball says there are going to be hundreds of sites selling their CrappyBrand Plumbing Supplies and nobody is going to be making good money from them. The aim is not to manipulate the rankings, Your client might not be trying to manipulate rankings.   But the plumbing manufacturer is trying to flood the SERPs and manipluate vendors.  My decision making would not be.... "Yes Sir".... or even binary.

Absolutely, as Don and Monica have raised, your unique content is outweighed by your "duplicate" content. Get some more rich text. For instance, put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think about content that would make you buy the product with NO DOUBTS! Things like testimonials/reviews will aid the user Why not introduce some protocols or tips to make the content different? More images with optimised file names and alt tags (don't just name images 187041111-370_370.jpg!) How about a short description of the product on top under the title and then a descriptive unique one further into the page? It helps spiders crawl your keywords early, it sells the product in a instant to users and it enriches the page. It's no different to real world. In the real world a user might do research before making the purchase instore, why not offer that research on your page itself to re-affirm this is the product you want and in turn make your page a more optimised one?

Hi Bas I have seen most of this case with CMS like Wordpress. I haven't yet faced this with Magento yet. But with WP i am using some SEO plugins and maybe that can be one reason. But i manually checked meta title and description of each pages via the source code view and it is the same as i used. But the meta description that is being displayed by google is obvious threat for CTR. I am trying to find if i can find any answer to this issue ( if it is really an issue ). You must  have a look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HX_8BAhB4

Using the right meta title and description is the best practice for on page seo. Since the competition for the keywords are low, you should be able to rank easily for those keywords. All the very best

I'm interested to know answer to this question too. I'm about to introduce a CDN as our company is a global one and i'm hoping a CDN would reduce the page load time and thus reduce the average load time GA reports.. Curious why GA is recording worse for you.

Hi I don't really think that you will have hard time ranking up in google for adult toys store. My friend ranked #1 successfully for multiple keywords related to adult toys store. His target was local and his google page was ranking number 1 for certain terms. Also what i think is you don't really have to build backlinks from porn websites. You can create quality contents regarding your brand and then get quality backlinks to the store you are trying to rank. So what i think is you really don't have to worry.

Thank you, I will try that out.

In the end it wouldn't matter that much but I would also prefer using dashes as well.

Thanks Ryan.

Indeed.com uses the double hyphen in their URL scheme and it certainly doesn't seem to hurt them.  I Imagine this is due to being able to reconstitute this back from URL rewriting so they know the difference between a dash in the URL that replaces a "space" vs a -- which would reconstitute back to a dash. Example:q-Tennis-Channel-jobs.html Maps back to the company Tennis Channel Example: /cmp/Sag--aftra Maps back to the company Sag-Aftra

Right you are Keri, there's no fooling you I have not read that post you mentioned but I'll be sure to take a look. What you mentioned is exactly the problem we are facing -- how can we go about finding all the ways people are searching for and finding us organically? Where are all the places we can be in SERPs? Not sure if we will ever get a complete answer but we are trying our best. Thanks for the reference!