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are we talking about an HTML site map or your XML site map? I would not use a parent page unless it was designed specifically to create a site map if it was that's cool use it. Because you have a functioning XML site map I am going to go ahead and assume that you're talking about an HTML site map what you showed us. Find the footer and create or use this link I've created for you Site Map and place it somewhere in the footer so it will show up on every page you can make a widget in the WordPress widget area and simply paste HTML link above into that area. For more on creating links use this http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp The XML sitemap & HTML function correctly http://i.imgur.com/tvZArJn.png & add here http://i.imgur.com/DBnMHK9.png http://arowautorental.com/sitemap.xml ( works just fine I would use Yoast but it's up to you) If you are talking about an HTML site map then you're in good shape. As long as it contains all the URLs from your site. if you do by any chance want to change or XML site map http://arowautorental.com/sitemap.xml ( works just fine I would use Yoast but it's up to you) https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/ https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/#xml-sitemap Just place it in a static area in your footer. You're all good I hope this helps, Tom tvZArJn.png DBnMHK9.png

Don't think they have any SEO issues though of this as still all links will point at the right URL from both social as the rest of the web. They seem to do a weird redirect back to the interstitial page and as they still seem to rank pretty well I doubt they see SEO issues on their side.

I would recommend getting the link from their root domain(s) to the service hosted on your own domain as that wold most likely be more valuable.  This would do a few things. Referral visits. You could see pretty quickly how many people are coming from the university site to your site using the link. Endorsement strength. By having the link and university's explanation of your service on their site, they're providing additional trust based on people's past interactions with the university. This is partially an SEO thing, but also a conversion factor, i.e., "I trust my Uni's opinion so this is probably a worthwhile service." Simpler. You'll be managing fewer domains (just you're own) and won't have to worry about technical changes on the uni's side regarding the redirection and subdomain. There's all that, plust the newly created subdomain wouldn't carry nearly as much trust and authority as the root domain. It's why Wordpress.org doesn't get in trouble in Google if someone creates: reallyspammysite.wordpress.org.  Hope that clears it up. If someone else has compelling reasons for the other method, I'll let them expand on it.

Hi Julio! Local search rankings are made up of many, many factors. To start learning about these, please make use of our free Local Learning Center: http://moz.com/learn/local I also highly recommend Matthew Hunt's post on local website optimization - it's really good: http://www.smallbusinessonlinecoach.com/blog/seo/onpage-optimization-local-seo-perfectly-optimized-local-page/ When you feel like you're getting these basics down, start diving into 2014's Local Search Ranking Factors survey: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors Hope these are helpful resources!

Hi Marty, I've seen a few reports like yours recently and was going to share a couple theories.  But then it occurred to me I should check to be sure you are talking about local pack rankings, the pinned results? Because that's what my theories relate to. The ranking fluctuations you are talking about, is that in pure organic or in the local pack results?

That's a fairly thorough redirect and has a pretty high likelihood of not delivering as much link juice compared to a standard, dead simple link.  Still, it's a nice page and those are well-known brands, so appearing there would have positive branding benefit for human eyeballs.

Thanks for your response. Screaming Frog is the tool I using when I came across this (I love this tool!). I bet these are just automatically generated by their CMS. That makes the most sense as to why someone would do this in this specific example. They don't have many webpages overall.

in addition to analyticsseo having an API SEMrush which is now doing on page and off page seo through their site audit option is allowing this at an extremely low price via their API. So those are two companies that will offer on page SEO via API I hope that helps, Tom

Don't use canonical tags on your other area pages. If you use canonical tags on your area pages that point back to the main page then you won't be able to rank them, and they won't even get indexed! Only use self-referential canonical tags on your area pages. You're facing a predicament that a lot of Seo's face. Building separate area pages is the most effective way to rank, period. The only exception to this rule is if your domain has huge authority (DA=70+). Then you can rank for different areas with a single page by just mentioning other areas in the page's copy somewhere. The way to rank for other areas is simple....but not easy. You're already going about it the right way. But I also do the following: Ensure the content is 100% unique, or at least 90%+ unique. Change all of the image file names, e.g: new-diaper-cleaning-area.jpg Change all of the image title and alt tags. To do this thoroughly takes a bit longer, but those ranking for the other areas may stick for many years to come, so it's worth the effort. Another secret little tip is to link out to an authority site in that area. So just Google 'Your Area Points of Interest' or 'Your Area Chamber of Commerce' and find the first PR5+ site in the results. Then link to them with a contextual link in the lower half of your page. Good Luck!

There's actually even more scenarios to it than just that, but thankfully there's a great Moz post on this from April 2014: http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights that covers your questions, and more. To your specifics, yes a user can set a specific language and Google will try to serve results weighted to their language settings, regardless of location (the German user in the UK per your example). They can also serve German results to anyone in Germany by default (location based). Again, the blog post breaks it all down very well. Go take a look and you should be able to parse what you need for your exact situation.  Cheers!

Hi Carla, How did the change go? I am having similar issues with one of our partners as it keeps on putting the brand name before the description. It is also not picking up a the new meta description. Rather frustrating for sure. L

Google's Geo Sitemaps were retired in 2012, in XML format, but there's still KML support in Google Maps: https://developers.google.com/kml/documentation/mapsSupport Here's a post discussing that as well: http://www.searchoptions.com.au/how-to-submit-kml-files-in-location-sitemap-for-your-local-business/

Google+ is relevant in personalized search results. If I visit a website, like a website's Google+ page, +1 its content in Google+, or share stuff from that website while logged into a Google account, then I will be more likely to see stuff from that website again in the future when I am logged into that Google account. Furthermore, Google+ authorship markup can still be shown in personalized search for selected Google+ content.

Hi Once the 301 redirects are in place and they should be done page by page not domain to buy domain. Creating a separate new URL that will hold content will not help actually it will hurt because that new URL will not have any authority. Simply redirect the URLs to the most relevant or exact URL on Wordpress. Take any of the quality content from the old (CMS A) and move that over to (CMS B) a.k.a. WordPress You will need a few of the things below. One of the most important ones is either a copy of screaming frog preferably the Pro version or deep crawl My preferred method is to use both but deep crawl rocks look at this article about site redevelopment it will index both sites and really make your life a lot easier http://deepcrawl.co.uk/use-cases/site-redevelopment http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ Definitely download the free version! & a pro- of screaming fraud there is a paid version it is 100 British pounds Read this guide it has incredible insight on how to use both tools http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide/ Here are the basics that you don't want to stray from at all take all this in before changing the URL. http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos http://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067216/The-10-Step-Site-Migration-Process http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-move-your-site-from-joomla-to-wordpress/ http://www.reviewzntips.com/migrate-from-joomla-to-wordpress/ I hope this helps, Thomas

Thanks Chris !

Great! Glad I could help. If you end up running an experiment similar to the one done by Social SEO I'm sure the community would love to here about it.