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the best way is still absolute, prevents scrapers from inserting their urls also similar with Kate Morris' response on rel canonical absolute url recommendation http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/32136/canonical-url-absolute-or-relative-paths but there are cases that we use relative urls, but only when absolutely necessary.

go look for ways to use mod_rewrite on .htaccess on your site.

usually, you can change your url from www.example.com/category/index.php?page=bottles to www.example.com/category/index/page/bottles/ or something better like www.example.com/bottles.htm as long as you try and try to experiment.

We all know the world-famous SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors (http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors), and this article is from recommendations and opinions from the world's top SEO experts.

But not everyone were able to share their thoughts on what they think are important.

What do you think are this year's Search Engine Ranking Factors?

Tried that. I never seem to get the expected results from my past outsourced projects. Id recommend though to test it in house and then outsource it, following exactly how it should be done.

you an either add rel canonical on the dev site, use the url of the live site or make your dev site viewable only within your internal office ip

update your site daily so google sees something new everytime.

depends on your line of business really.

if most of your clients visit your office, place it high up.

but if you prefer contact via email or phone, place it on the contact page or at the buttom

i think its best to comply and get used to it. who knows, when this becomes a ranking factor, your sites already have an advantage because of what your decided to comply from the beginning.

I wonder how many here are doing SEO on their sites full-time and how many are working for a company or clients. Yes you might be doing both, but what do you do most of the time? Thanks!

i think you can use any seo software as long you see a measurable improvement in revenue after using them. i used to have a lot of paid seo tools before, now i only keep those that provided different statistics and helps reach and improve our goals.

Yes, saw this earlier. Thanks

But how about your personal experience ranking for Baidu?

I never tried to rank for Baidu before. What do you think are the best practices to dominate on China's most popular search engine (72% market share based from http://yfrog.com/h28asuaj)?

a) imho its best to keep the urls as is for old pages and all new pages will have the clean urls

b) theres an update that subdomains are now treated the same with folders

c)  for me its ok to release it all at once. just dont promote it yet. let search engines find in naturally.

d)  i dont understand this one hehehehe

Linking from the same ccTLDs always helps. If your managers can get good links like guest post or articles, that will help.

Since we consider him as an authority when it comes to Google related inquiries on SEO, should we treat his answers as Google's official reponse or he has some hidden / read-between-the-lines message everytime he answers? Thanks!

Here's my secret:

Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.
~ Proverbs 16:3

The rest, I'll never tell