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Hi Brad,

I'd actually take the opposite position of Alan. I would distribute the press release first and then post it to your site a bit later. I see press releases ability to build external links as one of their biggest values. If there is a concern for duplication, I'd rather have the external postings of the release 'count' in the eyes of google as opposed to the internal.

I wouldn't worry too much about it either way though. Press releases are posted and reposted all over the web, and that's just the way it goes.

Your press release should be linking to important content on your site. It's unlikely that the brief content on the PR would be a significant source of organic traffic for your own site, opposed to the content the release is actually writing about and linking to.

The only time I would do it the other way around, would be if I was creating a PR for a company that is popular and newsworthy no matter what. If SEOmoz had a press release, it would make sense to post it on their own site first because people within the industry are going to find it and link to it, therefore creating many more external links to their actual domain.

Long story short, in my opinion, new/small website should submit first. Big/popular website should post on their own site first.

You really shouldn't worry about this. GWT or Moz Tools, etc try their best to alert you to possible duplicate content, often times based on pages having duplicate title tags. Not everything listed in those sections is necessarily a problem.

When it comes to the paginated pages above, you may still want to consider implementing something like NoIndex, Follow on those pages.

I would Recommend implementing NoIndex, Follow on your Paginated/Archive pages of your blog.

YourSite.com/blog/page=2 isn't a valuable landing page for Google. You don't need to let them index it.

Typically, if you want to use the Canonical Tag for pagination, you would have it point to a View All style page, such as friendly-url.html&view=all.

If you have too many products/pages in the pagination series, you might want to consider removing the canonical tag and implementing rel=prev/next. You can get more info here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

Those discrepancies would not concern me, but there are some differences between all the things you list:

Total indexed: 2,360 Search Console - this is likely a reasonably accurate list of the number of pages you have indexed in Google. You could use a tool like URL Profiler to check index status of specific URLs.

About 2,920 results Google search "site:example.com" - site: search is less accurate and will likely return a different number each time you do it, even if it's just moments apart.

Sitemap: 1,229 URLs: these are URLs you added to a sitemap because they are priority pages you want to make sure Google has indexed and hopefully ranked. You control this number.

Screaming Frog Spider: 1,352 URLs - Screaming Frog is going to start on your homepage and crawl the site attempting to discover as many URLs as possible. If you are not linking to a page, SF won't be able to crawl it. Google on the other hand may have old pages, old URL structures or pages that were linked from an external website in their index and they won't forget them.

A really important question is: how many pages do you have that you want to be indexed? Is Google's index bloated with pages that you want to keep out? Figure these things out, and then try to adjust your sitemaps, noindex, robots.txt as needed.

The Moz recommended list is great, but a bit on the high end side of project scope for many Small to Med sized businesses. Another resource for you to check out is Credo. There are some good agencies and consultants listed there as well as some info on the types of work they specialize in and the rates of the projects they take on.

Is this a sidebar (sitewide) widget or a single page/post style widget?

Here are a few of my thoughts:

The sitewide style widget would be safest for a site with an established natural backlink profile already built up. If the site is relatively new, consider adjusting the widget (making it bigger?) so it is something that is featured on a single page instead of every page.

If it is sitewide, make sure your anchor text is simply the company or website name. If it is single page, consider using anchor text that reads natural.

Derek- This isn't the easy answer, but what you need to do in this instance is test. Run a simple A/B test.

I think you are fine. All of the URLs above seem to point to single focused pages, based around an immigration issue related to South Africa.

The way you have it now probably isn't the slickest looking for branding, but I don't think you'll be seen as spam and I try prefer to leave the URLs the same unless change is absolutely necessary.

Nathan- There is no right answer for this. All I can do is repeat the usual advice. It's quality, not quantity. Vary your anchor text.

Attempt to build some links that also benefit users. Instead of commenting, contact the niche blogs and ask if you can write a guest post. This will result in a followed link that adds value to the web instead of a nofollowed link buried in the comment section. Also, this will result in your product/brand being the focus of the site's readers.

Best of luck.

A reverse proxy can be an alternative for sites that are unable to put their blog in a subfolder. If you currently have a blog in a subdomain, you can use a reverse proxy to essentially put it in a subfolder. From my understanding, using a reverse proxy can have some drawbacks though, such as performance/speed issues.

Subdomain vs Subfolder

Subfolder is the preferred method for sites that don't already have a ton of authority. All links pointing at the blog will strengthen the entire domain.

Subdomain can be a useful technique for strong sites that can support essentially starting a new site. This can allow you to grab additional spots in the SERPs.

Shoot for a company that will help you get links on blog posts with editorial standards. You want links on websites that meet some of these basics:

• Visible author profile
• Consistent topic/focus for the website is similar to your niche
• Visible social proof on posts (comments, likes, tweets)

Ask yourself: Does my link belong there? Will it help anyone on that page? Will people on that page visit my site and find what I offer interesting?

Meeting those criteria above will ensure you are getting great links. I'm a realist though, and understand not every link you get will be fantastic. Nor does it have to be. Those are just the types of links you should be putting effort towards.

You are absolutely correct that creating profiles by the 1,000s is not valuable.

I would optimize for on-page quality (great writing) and not worry about optimizing for an awkward keyword phrase, even if there is search volume.

Say you put 'Solar Panels for Home' as a bold headline somewhere on your page. Maybe you go up a ranking spot or two, perhaps gather a bit more traffic. Are those new visitors or the previous regular visitors going to convert after reading something like that?

Google is getting pretty smart. Write about the topic (solar panels for homes) in a natural way and you'll be just fine.

If you really want to try and force something in there, you could try something like this:

"Solar panels, for home use, are becoming increasingly more affordable...."

You are on the right path and realize you have a problem.

My #1 suggestion would be to fix this at a programming/development level to prevent this from happening. Canonical tags can be used to help/fix the problem, but they are more of a suggestion to the search engines as opposed to a 100% perfect fix.

If you can't eliminate the problem, have no fear using the canonical tags. Each category, subcategory and product should have their own canonical URL and the duplicates can canonicalize back to them.

Hi Dennis-

SEOmoz's Competitive Link Finder tool will do this for you.

http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-intersect

The canonical tag is unnecessary if you don't have problems with URL variations (tracking parameters, session ids, etc). Don't just think about external links though, if your own CMS or internal linking structure links to the same pages in different ways, the canonical tag can be a patch while you work on a development fix.

All that being said, I'm a fan of having it on every page.

Good point Andy and I agree with your statements.

No, there are not.

My recommendation: Use these as guidelines but don't obsess over the grade. Get to a A or B level, then switch your attention to usability, conversion and overall awesomeness of the page.

I would absolutely fix them, as this is something you have control over and crawl/speed are an important issue. As for other SEO benefits...the only way to find out is to fix them. Statements such as "90% of the link juice is passed through a 301 redirect" have been kicked around for years. It's hard to know the truth/accuracy of those statements, but there is absolutely no harm in updating the links, and potential benefit.

Hi Samuel-

There are a lot of benefits to allowing guest posting on your site. The key is to have a high standard for contributors. Doing so will result in great content on your site. Some benefits as follows:

• Great content made for your site. This will likely result in some organic traffic, social sharing and some links pointed at your great content. The great content on your site will help your site be recognized as a thought leader in your niche. Best of all, you didn't have to spend much time working on it.

• The guest author will likely promote their post on your site by linking to it, tweeting it and sharing it on other social profiles. This will expose their fans to your site and work. Increasing your brand's presence.

• The guest author will owe you a solid and very likely allow you to guest post on their site. This will allow you to promote a selected piece of content/keyword from your site.

There is nothing wrong with reciprocal linking if it is done in a way that is beneficial to both sites. The only problem with reciprocal linking is that it is often abused in a spammy way that is nothing more then a link exchange attempting to manipulate page rank. If you are doing a reciprocal exchange only for the link, you should probably avoid it.