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If you use an external domain you can potentially choose a keyword match domain which may be beneficial (if it hasn't already been taken by someone else).

However I would recommend hosting your blog on your main site at www.example.com/blog. Any links achieved by the blog will also benefit the rest of the pages on the main site domain whereas any links to a separate blog will only benefit the ranking of the blog.

Links are the major component of the algorithms which decide where you rank therefore you will need to build links with the required anchor text Appliance Repair as currently there are only a couple using that anchor text to your site.

All other things being equal if competitor sites have more links and especially more relevant ones they will rank above your site for this term.

Hope this helps!

I would recommend Barry's original solution as not only does it fix the issue you mentioned, it takes care of a couple of other potential duplicate content issues (slashes elsewhere and www vs non-www)

Marcus's solution should be fine if want to fix the one issue on the single page.mentioned.

Just because a page is shown as a sitelink under the main listing on the SERPs doesn't mean it can't also appear as a seperate result. A site I look after has the number one ranking for its main keyphrase, has site links and also one of the site links pages is displayed in second place.

If the page is not ranking for the desired keyphrase currently then removing it from showing as a sitelink will not mean it will automatically appear as a result in the listing.

If this was the case then the strategy for any site with sitelinks would be to minimise the number of sitelinks to maximise the number of other pagespushed into the top 10.

Many large retailers will have ecommerce sites with products and pages of content in completely unrelated niches so your extra pages of loosely related should be fine. They may not rank highly for the terms related to the main theme though.

As David says I wouldn't worry too much and Monica makes a good point about communicating this to the client.

Tell the client that your comprehensive audit spotted this potential issue and that you have a recommended course of action to rectify it.

If you have unique, relevant keyword targeted content on each site then I don't think you will have any issues with Google.

However the largest component of ranking well is related to links and this kind of approach means any inbound links may be splt multiple ways. It may be better to focus on the one site ensuring that it is fully optimised from an on-page perspective and also undertaking link building rather than splitting efforts between 3 sites.

In theory I wouldn't expect it to be an issue that the same products are being sold but you may wish to ensure that the text content varies. If you look at it from Google point of view is it worth them showing all three sites if the user will only find the same information.

Not sure of the advantages that you see by this approach. Having to set up and monitor 3 sites instead of one and having potential inbound links (hugely important to SEO) split between 3 sites makes me think that you would be better off with the one site.

There wouldn't usually be an issue about using the same H1 tag on multiple pages but if with the CMS you are using  H1 tag = Title tag then you will end up with lots of duplicate titled pages. This reduces th opportunity for targeting multiple keywords and phrases across multiple pages.

As most pages will focus on a different subject or product, then most titles will be different and most H1's will be different.

The correlation between the existence of H1 tags and rankings has been shown in testing by guys at SEO Moz to be a low positive if I remember rightly so I wouldn't get too hung up about the H1, focus more on the Title.

Hope this helps.

This is a common issue for CMS's and one I have faced too.

If whatever you put in the heading is used as the title then you will want to make sure that the heading is unique, relevant as both a heading and a title, ensure it is targeted at your key words or phrases BUT also as the heading will be spotted on the page by the user it must make sense for them too.

No point having a heading which confuses the user and sends them in the wrong direction.

Hope this helps.

If Google came out today and said "site traffic, time on site and bounce rate are all going to be factors of our algorithm" then ethically-challenged individuals and companies may considering banks of users based in places with low labour costs to try to manipulate the algorithm.

It is almost certain that Google has considered this in the past but is worried that people may try and game the system. As such I would expect any ranking element related to the quality of a site to be more complex.

There are suggestions that Google is trying to get algorithms to be able to judge the aesthetic quality of a site and that this could be a factor in the future

The way to rank for spelling errors is to optimise for them. Rather than littering the site with poor spelling which will not look good to the user you should try to include the misspelling as genuine content.

For example a light hearted blog post with incorrect spelling vs correct spelling in the title and page name. In the content t could mention the spelling mistakes and unusual terms that people use to find your site (gathered from the analytics data).

It may not be the most interesting post for the visitor and will struggle to gain page specific links but you will have a page optimised in terms of content for the misspelling. If you don't really want people to read it release it to the site at a quiet time and then follow up with a stong post which people will read and the spelling blog post will be overshadowed.

Hope this helps.

Just because a site is seemingly not relevant doesn't mean the site doesn't have domain or page authority. A combination of link related factors are used to judge the quality of a link.

Oviously the best link would be from a relevant and authoritative site but if CNN linked to your site and they are a news network which has nothing to do with your business (low relevancy) it can still carry a high level of authority because of who they are.

A few random links from unrelated businesses isn't going to hurt your site, 1000 or 10000 spammy links from unrelated sites might.

As mentioned in the other responses go for the targeted keyphrase in the Title Tag if you haven't got enough room to append the company name.

I have come across individuals or organisations that have been adamant that they want it in for "branding" reasons.I just show them the analytics report of more people searching for the service than the brand or if its not an existing site the Google estimated local search volumes.

Usually the figures will win out over any potential vanity.

Assuming everything else being equal it is often the case that when a site is moved to a new URL and 301 redirected (which I see you have done) that there is a short term dip in rankings and traffic.

If you have access to the Campaign tools here I would set up a campaign for that site and the crawl diagnostics may point you in the right direction of any problems you may have introduced during the switch.

If you haven't enagaged anyone to undertake link building for you and these links have been created then it does seem suspicious.

You suggest that some of the links are going but obviously it may be worth monitoring this. As suggested below contacting the relevant sites may be worthwhile but if they are spammy sites of porn sites they may not be worried about your concerns.

I would use open site explorer to see if this has happened to any of my competitors or to see if any of them are obviously using a link building agency as this may have originated from an attempted stitch up by an overzealous rival.

I have set up facebook pages for a couple of local sites and the facebook pages themselves have bounced about between page 1 and page 2, appearing on page 1 within a week.

The business owners have tended to leave the pages to stagnate despite my advice and they are still showing on page 2 with no links but a keyword match name.

If the client (or you on their behalf) is prepared to update the status, tweet etc regularly then there may be SEO value but also wider marketing value. If the Twitter page and Facebook page are never updated then it may not be a wise use of your time which you mention is limited.

By the sounds of it the existing site is doing well and may have built up some domain authority which wouldn't be present with new micro sites. This may help the new landing pages rank higher than the microsites/

If the campaigns for the microsites go well and you achieve a number of inbound links although you can 301 redirect them to the existing site after the microsites have served their purpose their is no guarantee that 100% of 'link juice' will be passed on.

I think that your instinct to keep everything onsite is the correct one in this instance but that rather than adding more content to the existing landing pages you use the experience you have gianed and the lessons you have learned to develop new landing pages for these niches.

Hope this helps!

There is a whole Learn SEO section at SEO Moz and I would also recommend becoming aware of Google's SEO advice at:-

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

and a PDF guide http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Hope this helps!

It may be that when someone searches for product one that the site product-one-review.com is better than the product one page on the .com site all other things (links etc) being equal.

However what happens if the visitor wants to buy product one and product two at the same visit and in the same transaction, would they have to jump between two different sites? Would there be duplicate content on the product one site about product two that was also on the product two site.

There are non-SEO considerations to take account of.

I would go for the .com site with pages devoted to and fully optimised for each product and then try and link build for those product pages.

Hope this helps!