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Heres a good article which may help http://www.hispanicmarketadvisors.com/blog/spanish-seo-domain-per-language-subdomains-or-language-folders

"When you do a search would you rather get the official companies or a site with a news feed or aggregation ran by a 3rd party source?"

• As I say in many cases the branded site isnt going to be your first port of call. E.g. Who buys their Wilson tennis racket from Wilson.com when you can get the same product may times cheaper elsewhere (random example, im not picking on Wilson!) and with honest reviews e.g. 'the strings on this racket are poor'?

Ive just this minuted posted a discussion about Google hurting aggregators on this very forum http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-google-making-life-harder-for-aggregators.

I think you may be seeing ranking drop for a branded term as I believe Google is working on reducing sites optimised for branded terms when they arent the brand owner.

Theres been a bunch of updates recently which have hurt aggregators:

• Reducing the number of search results to 7 for branded search queries

• The DMCA update which penalises those with trademark related takedown requests against them.

• At least 2 'domain diversity' updates, the most recent last week, which seeks to reduce the ability of sites to dominate SERPS e.g. a site which may have 2 search results on page 1 now may have 1.

Plus Its commonly believed that Google favours big brands over smaller brands e.g. Marriott over examplehotelaggregator.com.

Is this a deliberate ploy against aggregators in favour of brands i.e. does Google believe a brand site is a better search result than an aggregator?

A brand site returned above an aggregator for a branded term may be seen by Google as a better fit, a better search result that should be higher. But is that true? Consumers like to see unbiased reviews and lowest prices and that isnt always available at the brand site.

Thoughts please.

i personally wouldnt entertain subfolder/aftersubfolder/aftersubfolder but look at how you may be able to do something like /subfolder-productx-examplez. Dont bury the pages too far in your url structure.

Bear in mind theres been alot of recent Google algo changes, your rankings may have changed because of something other than page titles.

BTW - I say that especially applies to the travel industry - ive seen alot of flux for aggregators of late.

I do think a navigation restructure is the way to do it and a way to better focus your link juice. No following certain links no longer works for internal site links - Google see's through that now.

Instead of your categories nav including a/or multiple sub cat nav links (im guessing thats how it currently works) on every page, inc the sub cat links on the main cat pages not as part of the main cat nav e.g. dont inc red widget, blue widget, green widget under the main 'widget' navigation, instead add links to red, blue, green widget on the main widget page. Hope that makes sense.

The Google 'Pirate' (no official name) seems to have gone largely undiscussed since it was launched last - Fri 10th August http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-algorithms.html. The idea of it is to ensure those 'Pirating' content or abusing trademarks e.g. fake ugg boot sites and file sharing sites do not appear higher in the search results than the genuine websites. Google is using DMCA take down requests for labeling sites as Pirate and demote their rankings,

Im amazed not even seomoz has covered the subject yet as far as I can see, yet it is a hugely important new update, albeit affecting a relatively small number of sites now, and in some cases (at least one I know first hand) seemingly without justification (the example I know is not a file sharing, fake goods, trademark abusive site at all.)

Google updating its search algorithm based on DMCA take down requests seems a bit strong - these are takedown requests, not legal proof that a site is infringing a trademark. A real weapon for negative SEO?

Anyone else had experience of the pirate update or know much more about it? Outside Danny Sullivan I dont see many SEO folk covering it.

Heres my own insights into it and what ive learned about what (only innocently) affected sites should do to appeal http://www.andy-maclean.net/the-google-pirate-dmca-guidance/

Use the google category and google product type in your adwords product extensions for best chance of getting product/image ads showing in search results. Make sure your campaigns/product types in Adwords are matched to your product feed.

Use the google category and google product type in your adwords product extensions for best chance of getting product/image ads showing in search results. Make sure your campaigns/product types in Adwords are matched to your product feed.

Hi,

The 3rd time I googled it I got this http://screencast.com/t/Y6PERH67F29M

Maybe one way would be to start another 'discussion' i.e. forum thread on a high authority domain site (probably not SEOMOZ!) to oust that particular 'discussion' search result. Notice the markup on the search result: 20 posts - 2 authors - 11 Oct 2010? Look for another forum that uses the mark up - a more recent forum page would be more trusted for their potential consumers.

People searching for the company name are likely just looking for the website link and probably wont look too far down the page - what about doing some link building/social shares for the pages that rank in 3rd & 4th place? A quick check shows me that those pages only have 0-2 external links pointing to them, so should be quite easy to move them up and the negative one down potentially.

Also I see no ppc ad for that term from the Palicomp. Why not add one and inc your great customer service in the content - its likely to be cheap cpc's and you could push the negative search result further down the page if Google shows that ad and the one from pcspecialist.co.uk.

Good luck,

Andy

Maybe they were paying attention, spooky timing! http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-directory-submission-danger

If I understand you right heres a few things id do:

• http://www.newtravelsite.com/hotels/bristol/stgeorgeshotel/ isnt a great url protocol as you have 3 sub folders in there i.e. /hotels / bristol / stgeorgeshotel. It would be better as something like /hotels-bristol-st-georges-hotel. Also not the spacing between the hotel name, works better for seo and will help clickthrough rate in search results.
• Optimise the Bristol hotel page for Bristol hotel phrases. Optimise the hotel specific pages for hotel specific phrases, clickthrough rate and conversion rate should be good that way. You could also mix it up a bit on the hotel specific pages e.g. if you have a hotel near the docklands, inc it in your page title/h1 etc e.g. XYZ Hotel near Bristol Docklands. That way you're actually optimising for hotel name + hotel near Bristol Docklands (which should be pretty easy to rank for).
• Inc user reviews on the hotel pages and use rich snippets for the reviews, review count, pricing - this will then show up in your search results and give you a huge lift in clickthrough rate (ive seen 30%+ on the last site I did it for). Aside from that reviews are pretty vital in the hotel decision process. Obviously if the sites new this is a bit tricky though.

Andy

Interesting SEOmoz lists notable directories here http://www.seomoz.org/directories inc the ones you mention. You'd hope they'd be safe being right here on SEOmoz!

My opinion though is that directories mostly count for little though wont hurt you unless they make up 'too big' a portion of your links. The way Google is going and has been for some time - any link that is easy to get i.e. via directories, blogrolls etc are likely to not be worth much or anything and in excess will hurt not help you.

Definitely not the sub domain. Assuming you're adding content to help rank well for additional phrases and to improve your sites authority this is best done using subfolders i.e. store.com/answers. You'll get more link juice to those pages keeping them on the root domain. Also any links you get to these new pages benefit the whole root domain i.e. store.com, which isnt the case with links to a sub domain.

Hi Thanks for the reply.

The reason for the new pages for the old products is 2 fold really. 1) the sub domains dont rank as well as they could simply because they are sub domains, they get little link juice externally or internally and there is internal opposition (fear) to moving them to the root domain. The root domain is high authority, ranks well and so showcasing the products on the root domain is a great option. 2) People can use the product and use different search terms to find the product than is currently represented by the products on the sub domain e.g. a hotel in london home page can be optimised for hotel/accommodation keywords, it would also be useful to be found for 'short breaks in london' so you may chose to create a short breaks page. Same product, 2 different approaches and content required. (not actual example).

Ill take the 2p and spend it, im in the UK also.

I am developing a new set of pages for a series of products which exist on separate sub domains linked to the root domain. The product pages on the sub domains have rich snippets; review count, review score etc. The new pages im building out are for the same products though on the root domain and with different content. Im not comfortable marking those pages up with rich snippets too given they will have the same review counts, scores etc though would like to if its viable? Any thoughts/opinions?

Thanks,

Andy

A service like pr web is very good for well written and targeted releases. It's ability to target specific journalists and niches can mean you get decent secondary coverage on niche sites e.g the last pr I wrote got covered by a local news site. Links on many pr sites themselves are worth next to nothing as google must have them on their panda/penguin radar.

You're welcome!

You have to add the filter for 'only external' links. See here http://screencast.com/t/L4b7J4PA