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Good catch on the subdomains! That is a separate issue, and I am recommending they move everything to a clientsite.com/folder setup. The sub-domains do have unique content (except for the news) and they set it up that way because they've seen other sites, like Google, set up sub-domains for maps and their other products.

What's a good explanation to the client for why other large sites like Google set up different content sections as subdomains vs. the folder approach I am recommending?

A client has a news section at www.clientsite.com/news and also at subdomain.clientsite.com/news. The stories within each section are identical:

www.clientsite.com/news/story-11-5-2011

subdomain.clientsite.com/news/story-11-5-2011

What's the best way to avoid a duplicate content issue within the site? A 301 redirect doesn't seem appropriate from the user experience point of view.

Is applying a rel=canonical <www.clientsite.com news="" story-a-b-c="">to each story within the subdomain news section the best option? They have 100's of stories, wondering if there might be an easier way?</www.clientsite.com>

Also, the news pages list the story headline and the first 3 lines of copy. Do these summaries present duplicate content issues with the full story page?

Thank you!

Thank you kind sir!

When I view source, and view as Googlebot it's showing as 1 long page of content = good. However, the developer uses some redirects and dynamic page generation to pull this off. I didn't see any issues from a Search perspective but would appreciate a second opinion:

Click here

Thanks!

Client has a site that ranks well for "Town_A_KW", "Town_B_KW" and "Town_C_KW". The home page is the page that's ranking. These towns are part of the larger metro area for Portland. They want to start ranking for "Portland_KW" and normally, I'd recommend optimizing the home page for this phrase, and better optimizing the sub-pages for town A, B and C KW's.

The client is understandably nervous about messing with re-targeting the home page since it already ranks well. Is it best to:

1. Add "Portland_KW" to home page meta titles, content, etc. to try and rank for that phrase? (so home page would be optimized for Town A, B and C KW's + Portland_KW).

2. Re-target home page for "Portland_KW" only, and better optimize sub-pages for town A, B and C?

3. Leave home page as is, and create a "Portland KW" sub-page? (client's original idea).

Thanks in advance for your insights!

No worries. If the blog page had gone viral I think that could be an explanation, but this isn't close to approaching that.

FYI -- checked with a source in another city, and he also saw the blog result outranking the static page. It's an odd one. If anyone has any ideas, let's hear them!

Weird. I signed out of Google, appended &pws=0 and I still get the blog page ranking #12, static page #61. The weird thing is the client is seeing the same dynamic. Weird.

Just to be double sure we are on the same page, blog is the one ending with "mid-year-update/".

Just PM'd you, thanks. They don't have much social activity in general. The static page scores well for the target KW using the Term Target tool, the blog page does not -- although both pages have authoritative and market-appropriate content.

I ran a crawl test and there's no 302 -- the site does appear to be down right now though. I used Rank Tracker for the rankings. Did you get wildly different rankings?

Just PM'd you there URL's. Thx for taking a look. I'm happy to send anyone else the URL's that wants to investigate. Thank you!

Static page crawled 7/15, blog page crawled 8/1. It's a client, so not sure when the last time the static page was modified. Looks like the blog page was created around June.

Blog page ranks 10 in Google, while the static page is on page 7. What makes it more interesting is that the blog page scores an "F" with the Term Target tool while the static page scores an "A".

Static page has more inbound links and a mR/mT of 3.89/ 4.54 vs. 3.71/ 4.14 for the blog page.

Any ideas on how to approach this one?

No -- no link building and they bought the domain.

I'm helping out a friend with his legal blog, and in checking OSE I found scores of backlinks that appear paid, but he says they've done no link buying at all.  Here are a couple of examples:

http://solidinspiration.com/odhkj/degry.php?b=317022
http://retservilo.com/wzkuz/koex.php?u=391050

They don't look like the typical paid link sites because of the number of links on the page, and the fact they're not all hyperlinked and anchor text.  Almost looks like hacked sites.  Stranger still, they point to the non-www version of the site, and they have non-www redirected to www.

Anyone seen this before?

Thanks --