Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I see you as Number One out here in Australia.

I guess a Phone survey might work. Whatever the number I am sure it is likely to be small. Maybe a good question to ask is how often do Small Businesses Regularly update their website's content.

I think we are still in the days of trying just to get many small business online. In our world we would expect everyone to be online, but you would be surprised at how few actually even have a website. Even fewer regularly update them and even less have attempted to optimize them.

I would look into internet statistics related to how many small businesses use the internet to conduct or acquire business and make some conservative assumptions from there.

The Google Small Business Network is still fairly young and is a good high level indicator of where we think we are vs where we actually are. http://www.google.com/smallbusinessnetwork/

Who knows maybe they will post something on Google Internet Stats: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/

-Phil

If all things end up be exactly the same your biggest risk is resetting your domains trust with Google. In theory a new website's owner may not run the website with the same credibility as the former owner... It is a risk to wear if you can justify the speed improvements cost differences etc...

The above being said it is something that happens on the net quite often. If your new structure will effectively be an improvement to users and you map everything correctly you should be o.k.

Here are some steps I have used before taken from the Bruce Clay Website:

Source: http://www.bruceclay.com/seo-tech-tips/techtips.htm

How to move a site to a new host

If you are moving your site to a new IP address or ISP this procedure will help minimize the downtime and confusion during DNS propagation.

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1. Set up the DNS on your new host to point to your existing (old host) site first. This is an important first step.
2. Now change the TLD (top level domain) information at your domain registrar to point to this new site DNS. Your old site should still show by either by IP or domain name. This step results in "propagation" which commonly takes 72 hours to update servers world-wide, so do not proceed with step 3 for about four days.
3. Copy your existing site to your new site and validate that all files have transferred and the links work.
4. After allowing 4 days for the DNS to be fully propagated, point your new DNS to your new site. Make sure that your old site mailboxes have been emptied before you change any DNS info at this time. Once this DNS change occurs you cannot get to your old mail.
5. If everything has been validated you should now also point the old DNS to your new site. This is a safety issue in case there is a lingering propagation error.
6. Search Engine rankings or bookmarked pages should transfer to your new site with a 301 redirect.

After everything has been checked you should be able to delete your old site after a sufficient amount of time has passed (not more than 3 months). Note that Google does cache the old DNS address information and until they verify that the site has moved and store the new DNS information they may not visit your new site. The 301 will assist in this area.

If you are moving from an IIS server to Linux (Apache) you should validate your formmail scripts, and any items that may not be cross platform compatible. If you are moving from Linux to IIS then your .htaccess file will not be compatible as well as the ability to CHMOD permissions. Validate all functions with your ISP Administrator (some of the following steps may need to be redone on your new server).

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Essentially it depends on the nature of your website. Viral Videos have great Social Prowess if the take off but often fail in delivering valuable closes. The additional link value gained can be temporary in nature. If I had a dedicated resource I would spend 30% on Link Building, 30% on Social and 60% on building Quality Content that would be valuable for both Social and Partners to link to and utilize.

• Phil

You can combine them all into one line .

The SEOmoz beginners guide has some info on it http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/search-engine-tools-and-services

For what its worth using Meta Robots to restrict crawling is actually better than simply using a Robots.txt. Largely because a Robot will still see a page url if it is linked to from another source and those links can pass page rank, but the page will never pass any forward.

-Phil

It probably would show under the 3rd Party Website.

Unless you have specific reasons for not displaying it then I would embed it actually on the page as Google will reward engagement objects.

I would surround the video with some good text content related to that Video.

If a listing on a website is no longer available to display is it better to resolve to a 301 redirect or use a 404?

I know from an SEO point of view a 301 will pass on the link value, but is that as valuable as saying tto the user hey that page is no lonoger available try something else?

Thanks!

Is the extra paragraph content on a different URL or just hidden with Ajax?

look at placing canonical on these pages and having a unique product page for every item.

Thanks Ryan.

I know the sitemap-index work. But was looking to know if there were any added benefits to manually submitted each one individually as well?

It really depends on who you go with. Personally I prefer to be in it for the Long Haul and 18 months seems like just about when the going gets good.  You can probably get away with doing a tiered profit sharing arrangement.

Is it better to submit all sitemap files contained in a Sitemap Index File manually to Google or is it about the same as just submitting the Master Sitemap Index File.

I have seen some larger websites do this as long as they put effective 301 redirects in place. Especially when they have deep directory structures and the marketing team needs a way to market to a specific sub segment of the website.

The best approach would be to focus on building core links to your main website, as the new urls will not likely have any pagerank to leverage and 301s still degrade link performance. It simply depends on what you are looking to achieve. If you are looking to market to specific website sections after a build, great but I would probably just try to keep your IA as clean and short as possible. Planning to shortcut URLs in would seem to take away focus form the importance of a clean IA - which in the long run will deliver you better SEO over time.

Now conversly to this. If you were auditing a client's website would you reccomend removal of an Author Meta Tag and Footer link...

I agree with Shelly. No follow is simply a hey we are not vouching for this external website. Google still follows no follow it just doesn't pass the page juice. It certainly is a good lead mechanism and if they syndicate then you may even have more than one link.  I would applaud yourself and keep on moving forward.

Thanks for the Reply Keith. I guess the main question is whether it is worth the cost and the tool actually performs as they describe. Do you see the tool fall short on any aspect? (I certainly won't ever get rid of my SEOmoz account) but for some of the large websites I run SEO for this may be a useful tool. Unfortunately there is just not a whole lot of industry information out there about it.

Oscar, did you get anymore insight in regards to SEOclarity? They do have a fairly impressive tool, but it is always a cost/benefit thing. If Anyone is using please chime in....

They are secondary contact information details (additional locations) address, city state etc...

My Concern if the page's Primary focus is about the Business Information and name and locality as a modifier placing additional localities on the page de-focuses the primary locality of the page.

-Phil

I have a particular Page which shows primary contact details as well as "additional" contact details for the client.

GIven I do not believe I want Google to misinterpret the focus of the page from the primary contact details which of the following three options would be best?

1. Place the "additional" contact details (w/maps) in Javascript, Ajax or similar to suppress them from being crawled.
2. Leave "additional" contact details alone but emphasize the Primary contact details by placing the Primary contact details in Rich Snippets/Microformats.
3. Do nothing and allow Google to Crawl the pages with all contact details

Thanks,

Phil