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Hello bizzer, 1. I dont know... it's up to you! Maybe you prefer to start no indexing the forum, check if your users like it, and then start indexing it after a while. In my opinion, create the forum, add the "no index" tag, check if users like it and wait for some results,... and if you decide to keep it, then change the "no index" tag, and do everything necessary to have it SEO-friendly (probably Discourse forums are already SEO-friendly). 2.  I answered you too fast (I was in a rush), sorry. For sure, the best option is going to GWT and delete your indexed URLs. But the other option may work too! Luis

You're right. If you removed the redirects, there's no need disavow. I assumed that was what you had done to remove the links given you said you sold Site A. In my personal experience, it can take Google months, up to 8 months, to drop links. Hopefully in your case it won't take that long.

Thanks for the opinions.  I hate how the Fear of Google makes me have to potentially do or not do things that I think are to the benefit of users. By the way, since forums are such a pain to manage, the forum I'm thinking of using is the new Discourse that a lot of large companies (like Dropbox, for example) are using. Because it runs on an complex environment I don't want to host personally, I'd host it at somewhere like DiscourseHosting.com (too expensive at Discourse' own hosting since they are just going after big sites). for something like eighty bucks a month. Technical question: Because it's going to be hosted elsewhere from my own server, I need to map it to a subdirectory, forum.mysite.com, rather than mysite.com/forum (live example: http://bbs.boingboing.net/).  There's not disadvantage to this is there?  I have not heard of one. Also, I'd be interested in any options in this choice of forum platform, in case anyone has ever used it, or is interested in checking it out. It works differently than the usual forums.

Honestly, there could be a very real world impact on your SERPs without you understanding it. I suggest not blocking all traffic from foreign countries. Let's take this scenario as an example: I have an ecommerce website that only sells to the United States. I really only care about the US traffic, since that is where my sales can come from. However, many of my inbound site links seem to be coming from Outside US traffic. This outside US traffic cannot buy from me, in fact, they cannot buy many of the products I sell because they are not available in their country. Even so, when investigating my link profile, I notice that some users are getting the products I sell from somewhere and then blogging about how they love the product. They include a link back to my site since they know I sell the product. Now, it's true that most traffic from that referral source will not convert to paid users. But, the links they provide are helping me in the SERPs, which brings in the qualified traffic that converts to sales. In regards to the bounce rate =: You're not actually decreasing the bounce rate. Instead, you've identified the accurate segment of users to be measuring bounce rate from. In your Google Analytics, you should filter out the foreign traffic so that you're only measuring the correct segment of traffic that is important to you. Now you have the best of both worlds - your reports show the accurate target segment and its metrics, as well as, any benefit that comes from the foreign traffic and link building.

And do you think that Google always knows who the original site is? Do they always check history? On top of more aged content, we are the only one with tens of thousands of FB Likes (wish they were G+, but our users do not use that), and thousands of comments. All real.

I would argue that if this is the type of person who could be your customer you can keep it as is and let google index it.  As you said, it is helping you in the short term.  Upon any manual review, it would seem that it would pass easily, and that it is not any type of auto-generated spam or produced with the intention of manipulating pagerank or search results. Could it get you filtered in the future? Maybe, but more likely maybe not. Is it helping bring in more of the same kind of people?  I think it is.  But I don't think you have a reason to shy away from such legitimate engagement.

Thanks.  So it's not true that Google doesn't like two pages from the same website ranking at the top of page one for the same exact term? I could swear I've heard this several times.

What you want to be careful of it falling into the trap of keyword duplication / keyword cannibalisation. This is why it's important to ensure every page is well focussed. To answer your question, Google only really wants to deliver one of your pages for a desired term, so it is very likely that the homepage would drop if you were to optimise the internal pages. That said, it's not always a bad thing, because someone searches for "Cheap Phone Plans" and are taken to a page just about that, can help convert more readily - as long as you do the work to the page, of course. -Andy

Either way is good.  Just as an FYI I likely won't be able to respond until tomorrow morning as my little one will be waking up from her nap soon and the rest of today (being a Sunday) is family time for us.  Thanks! Marie

If your ads negatively affect the users experience, then yes it could hurt your page interaction. What you are describing sounds very conservative, and I doubt it affects your page at all. Even if you had more ads, as long as they are out of the way and do not intrude on the user you should be fine. Ads do not affect your page rank or position in any way. If that was the case, plenty of sites would be non-existent.

Thanks. I did make the links nofollow, as the purpose wasn't to pass rank, but to show the user a site that is also helpful to them, and related as well. (And I get nervous even making links nofollow, as it could be a signal to Google that I'm trying to page sculpt of something -- just can't win.) Without giving away the exact sites, I'll try to describe with made-up site topics.  Let's say Site A is about how people can receive tax credits for installing solar in their home, and Site B is about saving money on electricity usage in the home.  Not the same products, but both interest the same user.  In my case, the sites are in the home telecommunications areas.

It feels like you're paying to much attention to the grains of sand and not enough attention to the beach. Think at scale--do you really want to be editing everyone's comments for ever and ever?  How would your audience think about that? If you're audience is prone to misspelings and grammer errors (and whose isn't) so be it.  One comment is worth a few errors and google's not going to ding you for that. Instead, think about how you can get more people who are going to make those errors to your site. Don't knock your audience if they're engaging with your content.

I have adsense on niche sites that are on same topic as small portions of much larger sites. I don't see any problem at all with adsense.

You may not like this answer as I'm not going to recommend some service which makes it easy to find quality blogs that will accept your content. Because that service does not exist. There are plenty of sites offering such services, but the quality of sites that partake are typically pretty sketchy. A few years ago this may have been an option, but now that guest posting has blown up, those sites are ineffective in my opinion. If you want real results, you'll have to do some outreach to secure posts on awesome sites that aren't simply a free-for-all accepting posts from anyone. Of course, this means the content you put forward has to be equally, if not more awesome.

Hi bizzer, Everyone should ideally have a mobile-friendly website, because the percentage of people accessing your site on mobile devices will only continue to increase. And if you already have a Wordpress site, switching to a responsive theme is a great way to achieve that. But...as you note, there are other considerations, such as potentially lost rankings. Only you know how much of a drop you can afford. It's a short-term sacrifice for long-term results. Generally speaking, my recommendation would always be that if you can possibly do it, you should. And Miki and Moosa made some good suggestions above for how to minimise the negative impact somewhat. Combined with good technical SEO going into the new source code, you should hopefully be able to regain your position fairly quickly. To answer your follow-up question: we don't know for sure, but it seems likely that having a mobile-friendly website could be a quality factor, whether now or later. Google have certainly discussed best practice guidelines for mobile, which seems to indicate that a good mobile experience is something which they care about. Apart from anything else, ~60% of mobile users will bounce if they land on a non-mobile-friendly site and go to a competitor, so that in itself will send a negative signal if you have a significant amount of mobile traffic. (and 15-20% isn't too shabby - even if some of that is tablet traffic, a responsive design will provide a better experience for them as well). Hope that helps!

It's possible that OSE never crawls that deeply into the directory pages of your niche--OSE doesn't get to every page on the web.  In the end, however, it's not what OSE shows, it's whether or not Google knows it's there and if Google assigns any value to it.  Essentially, a YDir link is a paid link and link juice shouldn't be expected from it.  However, you can drop the url (minus the "http://") do a site:dir.yahoo.com search for your company name and see if google's indexed that page. edit: However, you can do a google search on the url (minus the "http://") or a site:dir.yahoo.com search for your company name and see if google's indexed that page.

In my opinion, no problem. Wait for some other expert advices.

I believe that all links are seen as 'leakage' but by having a nofollow it shows that you aren't trying to spam or sell links for the sole purpose of link building.

I'd go for #2

.....since "real" ecommerce sites don't run ads as well? Sure they do.  Haven't you seen ads on amazon.com?  They are called "product ads from external websites" (look low on the page on right side).   Ebay has lots of ads.  Hayneedle stores have ads (look at bottom of page). I run ads on my ecommerce sites and block ads from direct competitors.  I vary their position depending upon how much I want to throttle my sales. ....I have a site now on precious metals which is high-content, low amount of adsense... Adsense does better for me with precious metals content than affiliate links.  But, then it will depend upon the type of content that you have.  Some topics inspire shopping more than others.  Of, course the PM sites will gladly buy links from you.... but I am not a seller. I was thinking I might choose one metals broker affiliate link (like a Goldbank or someone) and place it in the sidebar. Would that small change screw up my rankings? Probably not... if you nofollow the link. And, "a site with a shopping cart operated by the affiliate program" I'm not clear on this. Why is that? It makes you look like a retailer instead of an affiliate.