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The Penguin update as described by Google is to hit 'over optimized' sites. Creating duplicate pages with minimal word changes for the purpose of SEO is exactly the kind of thing that Penguin is for - so no, its not an easy opportunity, its not an opportunity at all.

Its hard to know for sure without spending considerable time looking at the background.

If you havent already id advise looking at your Google Webmaster Tools (if you have it set up) for issues and errors and also your SEOMOZ campaign (if you have it set up) for issues and errors. Very often these can give you big clues.

Also - did you change anything major on the site recently e.g. content management system, robots text file etc?

Are you getting your content from elsewhere i.e are your posts sourced from other sites?

No is the short answer. Having almost identical pages  with only minimal differences (for the purposes of SEO) is exactly the kind of spammy thing the recent Penguin & Panda updates are clamping down on. If you dont have stores in california, new york etc Google doesnt want to rank you for those terms.

PPC would be a better solution for those kinds of terms if they can get past the minimum search threshold.

Optimising product pages for types of hammers e.g. claw hammers is the way to go.

In the Google Places listing the 'categories' are mega important but under-used. If they arent using all 5 available categories they are missing out on serious traffic.

Most hotels will just have 'hotels' or 'self catering' (i forget the exact default options). Use ALL the categories to rank for more terms. If they need traffic pronto add 'spring break', 'mothers day' 'weekend break' 'last minute break' categories - you get the idea. This is an awesome trick I use for a holiday cottage client e.g. I use 'christmas break' 'easter break' 'dog friendly' and other out of the box terms as categories to keep pace with seasonal demand.

Note: Google will not always listings for ALL category entries, you'll have to try it and see.

Theres a 1000 bullet points that could follow but heres a few important ones:

• Stop keyword stuffing in your content e.g. here http://www.tickettrail.com/performer/madonna-tickets.aspx. You've overdone 'madonna tickets' to say the least.

• You have no h1 on the performer pages.

• There is little content, you need to write more descriptively and for the user not search engines.

• Be more focussed on the keywords, you're right theres lots of ticket sites. You are a long way from competing with them for terms like 'madonna tickets'. Things like 'tickets for madonna paris' you have more chance of ranking for and its more targeted.

• Your url structure could be improved e.g. http://www.tickettrail.com/tickets/stadio-giuseppe-meazza/06_14_2012_800_pm/madonna-tickets.aspx is 4 sub folders deep - which could make those pages appear really unimportant, something like /maddonna-tickets-rome-14th-june would be better.

• These pages could also attract really targeted visitors if for example you optimised it for 'madonna tickets rome 14th june'.

• You've got some weird stuff going on in your code. Look at line 25 in your source code for the madonna tickets page!

Make sure in your rss feeds you have your link/anchor text back to your site. That anyone copying your feeds is inadvertently giving you a link to the original source.

Google Webmaster tools will tell you aggregate rank data by keyword per page including search impressions. This gives you a great way to know which keyword SEO opportunities there are.

You said you set up targeting for the UK so why are you concerned that it doesnt rank on Google.lk?

If you want to geo-target a website for a particular countries search results you'll find lots of good blog posts about how to do it right here on SEOMOZ. Aside from that heres a few pointers:

• You really need the country specific TLD or at worst a country neutral one e.g. .net. If you want to target the uk then you will do much better having a co.uk TLD. If you DO have a co.uk TLD this is the main reason why you dont rank in Google.lk.

• Ensure the website content is written in the language of the country you want to target.

• Try and attract links from country specific tlds e.g. if you want to target google.lk search results try and get links from .lk websites e.g. website.lk

Hi,

Does the rel=next, rel=prev markup help you out with this problem? See http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

Ive used it a couple of times to help stop pages been seen as dupe content where those pages are duplicate (meta, main content, images etc) except for example reviews, or comments e.g. /product_x   /product_x_review_page1   /product_x_review_page2   /product_x_review_page_3

Andy

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Hi, ive pm'd you an example.

Thanks,

Andy

I have 2 clients that have apparently random examples of the 'show map of' link in Google search results. The maps/addresses are accurate and for airports.

They are both aggregators, they service the airports e.g. lax airport shuttle (not actual example) BUT DO NOT have Google Place listings for these pages either manually OR auto populated from Google, DO NOT have the map or address info on the pages that are returned in the search results with the map link.

Does anyone know how this is the case? Its great that this happens for them but id like to know how/why so I can replicate across all their appropriate pages. My understanding was that for this to happen you HAD to have Google Place pages for the appropriate pages (which they cant do as they are aggregators).

Thanks in advance,

Andy

Thank you. THANK YOU!

Thanks.

A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?