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If Google did consider the class or id names as part of the text then people would be making sure they were full of keywords for their sites and it would be listed on SEOMoz as a spammy tactic.
As that's not the case I would say that Google doesn't include it.
Also you shouldn't be worrying too much about Keyword density - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-myths-that-scare-seos-but-shouldnt-whiteboard-friday
Although its from a few years ago this video from Matt Cutts seems to suggest that there wouldn't be an issue...
Testing different titles to see if you can improve your rankings for specific keywords or to focus on different keywords may be worthwhile but changing them for the sake of making a change is pointless.
I would recommend looking at the pages on the Learn SEO section of the site.
The two links below should answer your above questions.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/meta-description
Hope this helps
Had a similar temporary issue with a site that I look after I would suggest making sure that no unexpected redirects are set up and check that the robots.txt is not configured to restrict the crawling of the site.
Once I had done that I would recommend raising the issue with the SEOMoz Help desk http://seomoz.zendesk.com/home or emailing them on help@seomoz.org
Add robots.txt to stop Google crawling the subdirectories you don't want shown such as /home
More information is available on http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotstxt
What happens if its summer and I want to book my winter break or winter and I want to book my summer break. I would make sure that they are definitely sure they want two versions of the site before I started but if they are then there is a possible 3rd option to consider - subfolders - www.example.com/summer and www.example.com/winter
For 6 months you redirect anyone coming to the www.example.com site to the required seasonal version. Any links in will to an extent benefit the whole site rather than the one subdomain of the site.
One problem you are going to face is that if you build up links to the summer domain or folder then switch to the winter site some people may remove their link to you as it no longer points to the page that it did when they set up the link.
My preferred option would be a home page giving the option to get to navigate to both sets of content which is held in subfolders with the focus of the home page (in terms of content and design) switching when the seasons change.There would be no need for redirects, less SEO issues, better for a user who is planning ahead and means that any links achieved by either section of the site benefit the domain as a whole.
If wanted to minimise the footprint of the link to the other seasons site then like some sites that have small country selectors at the top of the screen there could be a small season selector that a user only uses when they want to view the off season site.
If a large site had a strong link profile for one page and then thousands of pages with no links or low value links then that one page may be worthy of a high authority rating but the domain as a whole probably wouldn't.
This question has been covered quite a few times in the Q&A section and I believe there may have even been blog posts on here regarding it.
try searching for site:seomoz.org "domain change" or similar and you should find lots of useful information from this site.
Yep - if you think you have a problem best to raise it with the Help team at help@seomoz.org
Hi Jury
If you haven't already i would recommend raising the issue through the help email address help@seomoz.org
On the Q&A forum we can pass thoughts or suggestions but the support team at seomoz will be best placed to answer this.
Hi Gavin, a video of interest to you may be this one from Matt Cutts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6g5hoBYlf0
Just because a site is doing something that goes against Google's Webmaster Guidelines doesn't mean that Google is automatically going to pick it up. However they are always working on ways to improve the quality of their results so it may only be a matter of time for some sites.
Rather than following the competitor site down a murky path it would be better for you to consider other ways to outperform them whether it is via enhanced content or a (non-paid, non-reciprocal) link building campaign
I would aim to have the page name with the full phrase (for example www.example.com/office-recycling-bins.html) and also have the full phrase in the title tags however in the navigation I would go for Office Bins, Kitchen Bins, Outdoor Bins etc.The user is aware that site is about recycling so doesn't need to be told on each navigation label.
If it happens I tend to use the task manager to kill it after 30 seconds.
2 or 3 years ago I remember seeing an article which suggested that there were certain "stop words" that would reduce the chance of a site rankinghighlyl but I have never seen any further articles or any empirical evidence and none of the sites I have worked on have profanities on them.
As suggested below there are some sites with "rude" content that still manage to get ranked well despite profanities but perhaps Google takes into account whether it is appropriate for the category of site.
Hi Atul
If users are searching on a term, for example Amy Winehouse the results prior to her death would have probably been Youtube videos, Lyrics, her official site (if she has one) etc
Immediately after her death users will be wanting to find out what happened, the latest update. As such the CTR for the existing SERP would probably be lower as the user doesn't want the Youtube video or lyrics etc. They want the QDF results to kick in and show the latest news item(s) at the top.
Hope that explains it.
Hi Ash
This weeks whiteboard Friday covered Negative rankign features and Adsense was featured.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-negative-ranking-factors-whiteboard-friday
At the link you can either watch the video or scroll through the transcript to the Adsense headign to see what was said.
SEOMoz's data suggests a negative correlation between Adsense and rankings.
Hope this helps.
Hi Geoff
The link below contains an article which may be of interest about when it is best to use one over the other.
http://www.whitefireseo.com/site-architecture/subdomain-or-subfolder-post-panda/
However I agree with EGOL's response.
Hope this helps.