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1. Yes, although initially a lot of them will be displayed in the serps but overtime the search engines should work out that you are the originator of the content and the other websites will be weeded out of the search results. To test this run a search for the title of one of the latest seomoz blog items then run a search for a very old seomoz blog item. The recent one will have loads of duplicate results but the old one will most likely just have the original seomoz blog.

2. Article directories were penalised in the panda update and have had their ability to rank and pass link juice reduced. Don't expect to get too much value from them, you should get value from any other sites picking up the article though.

As an alternative to article syndication is may be worth considering doing some guest blogging?

Hi Alex

Option 2 would have the benefit that you could potentially occupy 4 spots in the first page of the search results for each keyword phrase. You would need to be careful to ensure no duplicate content across the domains and also be very careful when interlinking.

To throw another option in there why not just have one site so your link building efforts are not spread across 4 properties?

Hi Robert

Slightly unrelated to your question but...

The search results for the phrase  "Coventry wedding photography" are dominated by local search results. If you haven't already submit your website to Google Places. Make sure you fill in as much of your profile as possible and encourage clients to make reviews.

To start with I would conduct some keyword research to identify bin related phrases that are generating search volume and you could deliver some interesting content around.

I would also consider creating some link worthy content, a competition may be worth a try maybe giving school children the opportunity to produce a graphic design to cover one of your bins? This should increase your blog posts ability to rank in the serps.

From a user perspective I would break the posts up with some images and maybe some bullet points and sub headings to make them easier to digest. Including images would also give you the opportunity to optimise the image alt text.

I would also make sure all your posts only contain one meta description as multiple meta descriptions can confuse search engines:

On URL www.imrubbish.co.uk/blog/2011/07/best-recycling-bin/:

name="description" content="I'm Rubbish.co.uk Blog">

name="description" content="Our best selling bin so far this year has been the Open Top Recycle 50 and Recycle 30 litre. Both come with a choice of  2 coloured bases, 6 coloured lids and" />

No idea why you are getting this issue, however, I think 40500 is the correct figure for broad match. 390 seems far too small, just consider the number of people you would get searching for drupal development [city name].

I am based in the UK and the external keyword tool is delivering the following results:

Drupal development - broad, global - 40500

Interestingly though:

Drupal development - local, exact - 390

If you own an e-commerce site you would want to know:

• products viewed
• products purchased
• purchase date
• visits to purchase
• etc

This data could be used to serve them with related products, make it easier to find previously looked at products ,drive behavioral targeted e-mail campaigns etc...

I would start by looking at the design of the site.

You are asking users to part with good sums of money yet the site design looks quite dated and I would definitely bounce.

In terms of resources there is loads of useful info on this site. I would start with http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo if you have not already.

See below quote from http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8692

"The estimates are for searches on Google only; they don't include estimates for the number of clicks your ads might receive on placements you choose or on the rest of the Google Network."

Black hat in my book....be interested to hear how you get on if you do try this strategy though.

It depends what priority you give someone liking etc the page as a goal and the impact lots of likes will have on conversions.

If you have an e-commerce site and are including the social buttons on your product pages I would ensure they are secondary in prominence to your buy now buttons but still have good visibility, so definitely above the fold.

Possibly because the CTR would be lower if the title tags and meta descriptions included synonyms rather than the original search phrase.

Even though the searcher will most likely know the synonyms mean the same thing they may have a tendency to click on the results that use the language that they use.

How about adding a call to action or site slogan in the title tag to increase the CTR?

I have had a quick play with SerpIQ. I thought the following bits were quite interesting:

• can be used to find related terms and you can then dig down into the keyword difficulty for each keyword
• provides data on the availability of exact match domains for a keyword
• keywords can be grouped together to manage the keyword research process

I think if the first point could be automated i.e. you give it a keyword it then goes off and finds related keywords and provides difficulty scores for them it could be a lot more useful.

However, in terms of usability and usefulness I thought the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool is far superior and won't be swapping any time soon. Some useful ideas for possible future upgrades for SEOmoz though.

If the scheme has a very clear target market you may even want to consider a bit of old fashioned marketing and send some info to targets in the post.

I have just had a look at the search results for the query "web design sheffield" which ranks as 48% keyword difficulty using the keyword difficulty tool.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=web+design+sheffield

The No 2 results evoluted.net appears to have built most of it's links through footer links which suggests it does have value for SEO purposes.

I guess the concern is that the clients sites content is likely to be completely unrelated to the developers sites content, however, it is a legitimate relationship and the developer is simply being credited for their good work.

You can attempt to recycle content to try and squeeze more links out of it. For example if you have quiz you could update it with new questions or if say you have written an e-mail cheat sheet you could update it every year to reflect changing techniques and technologies.

You could also look to promote old content in response to new events. An example would be a company who have written an article on steps you can take to prevent your phone being hacked. At present the UK news is dominated by a phone hacking scandal by one of the newspapers, there couldn't be a better time for the companies article to build some links if they can promote it properly.

There is a recent discussion on this on the webmaster world forums that might be worth checking out:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4305209.htm

A few posters are claiming that they have tested it and the second link does not pass link juice.

Very quick and minor point but I would look at the colours that you use on your homepage buttons. The bottom piece of text on the buttons e.g. 'free consultation' is very difficult to make out, which could be a particular for issue for people whose eyesight may be in decline.

Hi John

I suspect when users visit the site they see the first item which is by far the most prominent on the page and think yikes when they see the price tag. This may also not be helped by the fact that one of the top Adwords adverts has a title of HP Ink Cartridges £6.99.

Another reason may be that consumers in this market do a lot of comparison shopping before buying. It may be interesting to look at your visits to purchase reports to see how many users visit then return at a later date to actually make the purchase.

I would suggest running some tests on different layouts for the page you mention. I would look at the impact of reordering the products so a cheaper product is first and also test reducing the amount of space dedicated to each product so you can display more products above the fold.

If you are worried that reordering products would reduce sales of your most expensive item you could attempt to sell-up on the product pages for the other items.

Hope this helps.