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Hi Keith, I think it really depends how much you want to invest in technology and how much controll you have over the dealer websites. Wish I had a better answer for you or more data to go on. There's been a test or two over the years that Google follows links through iFrames, but so little research has been done in this area it's almost impossible to give solid advice. Typically SEOs avoid any sort of iframe because it's really not the best way to code content on your own site, but this seems to be a different situation. If controlling the content is important, in my opinion I don't see a huge problem using frames, but it's something you'd want to keep your eye on. My gut tells me everything should be fine, but if Google suddenly sees 100's of new frames all pointing to the same content, this might start to look a little strange. I agree that the cross domain rel=canonical would be a nightmare in regards to keeping things consistent, and likely hard to implement. Another option would be to use something like XML feeds, but my guess is this might be more technical investment than is warranted.

Ain't nothin' comfortable about that.  It's why you need to charge your local clients significant fee.  UBL (for example) takes care of the updating but you have to deal with dupes and untangling their shotgun approach to creating profiles and the overhead of figuring out their reporting.  Once you hit their professional level service ( I think they still call it that) things start getting weird for you as an agency.  Their basic service gets much of the distribution taken care of and then you can take are of dealing with the sites that require profiles and verification. Still, you gotta charge the client appropriately.

This is what we have done with pdfs.   Assign rel="canonical" in .htaccess. We did this with a few hundred files and it took google a LONG time to find and credit them.

Hi Keith, If these businesses are in the same metropolitan area, then I definitely give thumbs up to consolidation. Yes, put 301 redirects in place. Regarding optimizing the footer, there is not a problem with listing several addresses. As long as you have 10 or less locations, consider this a fine practice. I do recommend using hCard for the the formatting of the addresses...and do make your Contact Page a good strong page featuring both addresses in hCard. Also a good idea to make a Google MyMap for each location and embed and link to it on the contact page. Make the copy clear that you've got the 2 locations from the homepage forward. I feel you are making a smart choice for this business. Good luck!

Hi Keith, You need to choose 1 "master" sort order, use the pagination techniques outlined in the link Alex posted, and rel=canonical all of the other sort orders to the main page of your "master" sort order. Michael.

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Alan, I appreciate your effort here. These are the sources I already shared A complete summary of everything shared in those articles you quote: 1. It doesn't make a difference to google which method is used. When I examine all the information and analysis, it seems to indicate Google will index the content either way. How well that content will rank in Google is a different topic. There are reasons to keep content separate, such as when discussing topics unrelated to the main site, in which case a subdomain would be best. 2. Matt uses the directory approach, and he recommends for others to do the same. AT BEST you can get that it is close to even with a slighter preference towards subfolders based on that information. The Rand offers outstanding analysis as to why subfolders are the superior choice. Rand's analysis is in 2009, 2 years after the original articles quoted from Matt. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites The bottom line, it's up to you how much you care about your site and it's performance. Personally, I am a fighter. I also micro-manage website architecture because in many aspects, it is a one-time set it and forget it type of thing. Whether to use subdirectories vs subfolders, whether to use underscores in URLs vs dashes, etc. are things you do one time and then it is automated forever. A detailed list of reasons supporting the subfolder approach has been offered. The DA, time, costs, etc. all support subfolders. If you wish to ignore all those strong, positive benefits and go with a subdomain then that is your choice. Good luck.

Thank you kind sir!

I would do in this order.... Make content rich service description pages for Town A, B, and C. When they start ranking as well as your current homepage I would then reoptimize the homepage for the Portland metro area.

I'm still puzzled about what caused the page to rank better. One thing you probably thought of is to try and link from your blog page to your static one and see how this goes. Also you might consider the rel=author option when linking to your static page. At 3AM, I'm mostly writing down what pops up in my head. If your static pages goes up, then you at least will be sure that the blog page is performing better and not your static page being pushed down due to some external or internal issues.

I'd echo the suggestion to start a new thread on this, we've all theorized about this and I've also heard it mentioned directly from an industry guru as a tactic he knew was being employed by some - and working. It would be great to have us all analyze and pick this apart to see how and why it's happening. In theory sites should be able to avoid being "hurt" by this kind of thing, just not helped, with the reason being that as we know, anyone could blast anyone else with bad links. But what is apparently happening is not simply these spammy links being discounted, but a penalty actively being imposed, which goes against what most of us have heard and believed until recently. Would love to see some of the great minds here take a crack at it. -Dan