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You should use nofollow only for linking sites you don't trust or endorse, sponsored links, etc. but not for internal linking, the PageRank sculpting days of this method are long gone, and you'll just burn your link juice and impair it's flow throughout your site.
If you need to exclude some pages of your site from being indexed just use the noindex meta tag.
Check the following resources:
Should internal links use rel="nofollow"?
We were just talking about that the other day, check the following thread:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/site-url-called-out-but-not-clickable
Now, if you manage to turn some of those mentions to live links, that could be great too!
Cheers!
That's weird, try the following:
-Click over the URL and see if it allows you to change it.
-Try to edit the slug with the "Quick edit" button at the 'page list' page, before entering the editor.
-Check your screen options (opciones de pantalla) in the upper right section of the page to see if you have all editing options enabled.
If that fails (maybe one of the many installed plugins is creating a conflict), you can always create a new page with the URL you want, copy the content from your old page and set it as your new landing page (don't forget to redirect the previous page to the new one).
Yes, it is important and appropriate both for optimization and usability.
You can edit the URL by opening the post or page you are using as homepage in the editor and clicking the "EDIT" button next to the URL (slug), check the attached image.
You should try to avoid soft 404s since they are confusing for users as well as for search engines. A good solution is to use custom 404 pages, that way you can return the correct code to the bots and provide some useful content for your users. Also, you should try to redirect some of those 404s to pages with related content in your website, check for the ones that carry the most link juice, traffic, etc.
Read on:
Using ccTLDs is the heaviest factor you could use to geotarget your websites and
in that case you shouldn't need to use local IP addresses for geotargeting, although if you have the budget, it could give you an extra boost along helping you with other factors such as latency.
You won't be able to use Google's webmaster tools geographic target since this feature is only for gTLDs, ccTLDs are targeted to it's country by default.
Some resources that could prove useful:
Working with multi-regional websites
International SEO: Where to Host and How to Target - Whiteboard Friday
Check this Whiteboard Friday:
How Unique Does Content Need to Be to Perform Well in Search Engines?
I'm sure it will clear some doubts!
Xenu's Link Sleuth is a great tool for that (and other things), although some people complain is not as ready-out-of-the-box as they would wish, it has a fair enough learning curve.
Here's a blog post @SEOmoz about it (with some instructions): Xenu's Link Sleuth - More Than Just A Broken Links Finder
But you can give a try to this Broken Link Checker Tool first, maybe it'll save you some time if it can find it.
Good luck!
If it's a quality site, relevant to your niche and the links are useful for both sites users, everything should be fine, and both sites could benefit from the exchange.
If in doubt, you can always ask for an editorial link instead of site-wide links.
Check out this video for more info: Whiteboard Friday - Sitewide, Reciprocal, and Directory Links
It's called PageRank sculpting, it seemed to work fine for a while long ago, but Google keeps changing it's interpretation of 'nofollow' links (PR just vanishes at the link or goes through anyway before disappearing, in any case not helpful for sculpting PR),
Probably the best way to sculpt your site would be linking to non essential pages only when strictly necessary or using the 'noindex' tag for those pages, you can read more about it on the following links:
Here's Cutt's answer to that: Matt Cutts on Shared Hosting
You'll find contradictory information on the subject and some SEOs will advice not to include stop words in the title, however, if as you say, the keyword set you're targeting explicitly contains it, I would still include it (i.e. wouldn't remove 'for' from 'homes for sale').
Now if we're talking about a high number of stop words that aren't particularly useful or descriptive, maybe it would be best to exclude them, especially from the URL (.i.e. 'a small guide of the black sea for you' could be better off with an URL like /black-sea-guide/).
IMO, I guess the best practice would be to use the title/URL that better describes your content and makes more sense for the users you're trying to engage.
You should try to avoid soft 404s since they are confusing for users as well as for search engines. A good solution is to use custom 404 pages, that way you can return the correct code to the bots and provide some useful content for your users. Also, you should try to redirect some of those 404s to pages with related content in your website, check for the ones that carry the most link juice, traffic, etc.
Read on:
We were just talking about that the other day, check the following thread:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/site-url-called-out-but-not-clickable
Now, if you manage to turn some of those mentions to live links, that could be great too!
Cheers!
Apart from server location, your link profile carries a lot of weight. For example, if you are targeting users in Germany, you'd want to get links from German IP's and .de domains.
Besides that, the other important thing would be to establish your geographic target within GWT (domain geolocation). You can read more here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399
Well, that's a broad question, so I guess you're also looking for a generic answer.
Here are a few links to get you started within SEOmoz:
5 Ways to Improve Your Ranking Signals
Make sure to also check the Whiteboard Fridays category, where you'll find many amazing videos full of useful information and tips!
Good luck!
I don't know if there's a definitive answer on this, since it's effects wouldn't be easy to measure, but if you think about it, it makes sense that it should be taken into account to some extent, and if not, at least users would be able to learn about your site.
Off course, as regular links do, I guess it would depend on the context, relevance, and reputation of the page where the mention takes place.
Also, from a branding point of view, it would be positive (again, depending on the context), it seems one of the functions of the new SEOmoz Fresh Web Explorer is precisely to find out about mentions.
Check out this post where they carried out an experiment about the subject and also cite Matt Cutt's reponse to the question (although very old): http://dejanseo.com.au/seo-experiment-with-non-link-references/
If you checked and all is fine, it maybe a be a temporary bug, it happens from time to time.
The 100% rate could be that it was only one crawl, hence 100% error rate (1 of 1), just wait for the next crawl.
Anyway, in the meantime, check your domain with a DNS checker, you can use www.dnsstuff.com, www.intodns.com or dnscheck.pingdom.com/ to make sure everything is working correctly or to see if there's anything you need to take to your hosting provider.
