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Not sure what it's going to take to kill this theory that visitor stats are used as a ranking factor, but here's some food for thought. Google has shown repeatedly that their primary focus for ranking factors is things which can be consistently applied to all sites, and are hard to fake or game. (And they work very hard to punish sites they do catch faking or gaming ranking signals.) The only way they could gather these visitor traffic signals is by jacking into your Google Analytics or Adwords/Adsense accounts Google Analytics is used on a little over 60% of websites. So Google would be ignoring over 40% of websites (including many of the really big players who use enterprise analytics like WebTrends, SiteCatalyst etc) using data from Adwords/Adsense would be even more unreliable as an even smaller percentage of sites use these. incorrect implementation of tracking codes causes completely inaccurate Analytics data. I see this on new client sites all the time in 30 seconds I can adjust your website to have Analytics report any Bounce Rate you want. another trivial tweak to your site's code and I can have Analytics report double or triple your pageviews. Bottom line, trying to track visitor stats is far too unreliable and easily manipulated, not to mention outside their own terms of service. On top of that, Matt Cutts is on record as categorically stating that Google does not use visitor stats as ranking signals. (I was in the room at SMX Advanced last year when he said it. ** The one exception to this is Google's use of bounce rate from the actual SERP pages. It's widely considered that having a user click on your site from a SERP, then quickly bounce back to the SERP for another search is an indication of negative quality of your site. In addition to all of the above, as you yourself state, Bob, there are many sites where a short time on site and few pages viewed can be indication of a site that does its job very well. IMO Google's not dumb enough to measure all sites with the same yardstick like that. Hope that makes sense. Paul

So you're saying that you can get a link on a links page, which has very few outbound links, from a charity website? I think you should take it, the website will most likely have a good authority and will be held in high regard over time as long as the site owners are responsible with their external linking strategies.

If the site that hosts the links dies so do the links. If the page that the link points to dies so does the power unless you 301 redirect it to another page on your site. If this is the case you need to keep an eye on 404 pages in OSE or similar and if those pages have power redirect them

Hi Bob, Is it going to look natural ? I think its not about relevancy but its about is the link natural to user. If its look natural then go ahead.

It would seem like you are creating a giant web of backlinks that you really have no control over. Especially, if they are pushed down the post by other comments and if they are short lived what is the point because they do not generate any traffic to your site? What happens if one of the sites you are building the links to, in order to increase your own backlink value, suddenly goes spammy or something happens and they are penalized? If these sites let you build links easily without using a "no follow" then they let everybody and could eventually attract unwanted attention that might result in a penalty. How soon Google figures this out is based on your total link profile and whether the links are to sites that are relevant to yours. I agree with T & R above and this type of tactic seems like something Google would catch on to eventually, if it has not already. It is my understanding that the Google/Bing search bots can differentiate between high quality links and links from forums and other low quality sites. If so, the secondary links you are trying to build are not being given as much value as you might think. Time spent pursuing ways to skirt the algorithm is time wasted that could have been spent developing the other high ranking backlinks.

How this is done will determine if Google is OK with it and it's debatable because there is opportunity to get yourself into a pinch.  To get to your primary question, yes, most likely, assuming you are covering some of the same keywords and industries, you will be competing against yourself for rankings (and possibly confuse your audience). Multiple sites for one company or brand work best when there's better differentiation between them; for example, Honda has a site for cars and powersports, but a different one for financing. However, Ford pretty much rolls everything under one. So, again, the outcomes will be based on how you do it and what it means for the customer experience. As for registration, we own a lot of domains and it's never been a problem. While this is a direction I'd never advocate for, in your case, you don't mention why you want to go down this route, so I don't want to guess at your strategy and goals. This article has some good details on risks especially in the comments ("Is Google OK with this?": http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/uncover-competitors-using-multiple-sites-for-multiple-first-page-rankings).

I think your question is about internal linking structure. If so, check out Moz's best practices on internal linking. In deciding which internal links to keep on the homepage, think about those links that would be most helpful to the visitors of your site.

As long as google can crawl the text the same weight will be applied as if it was out of accordions. But you should make sure that google can in fact crawl the text by using Fetch as Google on your Webmaster Tools account. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=158587

You mean like this - http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=2472737 (See 'About Google+ and your ads'. Lots of websites use a jquery tabbing system to show/hide information.

See how google index your page, if you are linking same pages with diff anchor from one page - then beware of Google's penguin update. Google is hammering for overly optimized pages. To your question - I think google will see first link discovered on page.

To answer your specific question, a lot of times Google displays algo created title tags if it believes that the one supplied by the webmaster is not good enough or does not contain the query term being searched for. If Google is changing the title tag even when the search term is present in the title you have mentioned on the page then you might consider changing it and making it more meaningful. Having said that, there is no guarantee that Google will pick and display your changed title even if it matches the search term and is grammatically correct and good to read.

hi hard to tell if you actually can't visit the site,but in a nutshell #1 = quality of your content or content is king #2 if you sell those products yeah categorize them, no worries. #3 google does not list you because of the design, so it is your choice, but is as #1, as customers want easy to access products. what ever works for your customers best! regards, jim cetin

So here is what you need to do. Compile all this data: Export opensiteexplorer followed/301'd links to your root domain excluding internal site linking Get a list of any links you or contracted seo acquired and their respective landing pages into excel get a list of all your targeted keywords and their rankings over any dates you have (ex. I run weekly updates so I have a column for every week). Categorize all your keywords and landing pages on your site Pivot out your rankings to see if a landing page type or keyword type dropped.  If so, follow the trail and see if it correlates to any specific links you acquired or any specific anchor text you acquired. Look at your link profile and see if you are too heavy in any specific areas or if you have any links that may be deemed shady.

And site speed is based off of those users with Google Toolbar installed. A tool like Firebug with Yslow can help identify things slowing down your site, and can give you another view of your site speed.