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Regarding footer links... Google more or less knows they are footer links and treats them as such. If it doesn't make much sense to have so many links then don't. There are better ways to drill down to crucial content that is not one click away from home page nav in general (e.g. content!).

URL length does not matter, but it's good to have a nice hierarchy for clarity (much like breadcrumbs) - however I have noticed an interesting thing... when you do site: Google (among other things) sorts site pages by URL length, starting from shorter down to longer URLs. Does this impact rankings? Maybe. How much? Probably to a tiny digree if at all.

So far I have not seen any differenece between the two. In one video Matt Cutts did state that full URL can be safer in some situations though, so if you have an equal choice it would make sense to choose that one.

I recommend you review the following page: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#ranking-factors as it pretty much contains everything you need to get started.

Title remains the strongest element, internal linking is something people often forget to utilise - and even tiny little things like alt tags on images...

PS: There is a new one coming up for 2011 so keep an eye out for that one.

Could you please clarify your question, are you talking about rich snippets, optimisation of SERP snippet or optimisation of page in general?

If the page you're linked from is linked directly from homepage (anywhere from it, including footer) or any other PR6 page on that site it will likely have PR5 (unless the number of outgoing links is excessive, or PR value is barely PR6 - for example PR 4.6). Worst case scenario is PR4 in the next public update (although pagerank is already received in realtime).

Typically PR drops one toolbar point each link depth down.

Legend. Thank you.

Links from content area seem to be a lot more potent. If you're looking to boost your rankings through internal linking I would find editorial links to be the right way to go if possible. One tip I guess would be to look at preventing double links to same page. For example link from footer goes to same page as link main nav, sidebar and content area.

If you have better links to subsidise with the same money - go ahead. Otherwise leave them as they are. Link is a link, however if it looks reallys pammy than it's worth going through trouble of removal. If this was my site I would try to avoid a massive link drop and remove gradually.

All that, yet I have still secured Yahoo listing for our site. How's that? I'm not saying I had money to throw around but it's basically a significant directory to be in - even outside SEO value. My vote still goes towards yes if the site is important to you and you are not willing to cut corners.

Yes you can get links like that - and you know what works really well? Lies and misrepresentation. I know because I have seen it. Basically getting the link "Google legit" way (e.g. not buying links) but totally unethical in every other way. For example I know of a team who says they are a doctor of physics at some university and bull their way into gov/edu listings on the basis of false identity. Once their client found out they were fired immediately.

I disagree with your view that "windsurfing equipment" is a bad thing for the users. Consider the fact that they will arrive through results to your site. If the phrase "windsurfing equipment" is in the TITLE of your page that will display as a clickable element in search results and also assure the user they're clicking on the right thing.

As far as SEO goes, having an exact phrase somewhere in the title is an advantage to having a partial title (e.g. only "equipment").

Hi Dave, thanks, I am familiar with that article. I am interested in people's personal opinion.

Any difference or are you actually on the same thing once you hop on a boat/ferry?

Internal linking channels juice being accumulated through inbound links and the two work as a team. I am interested to hear from those who have either tested or have a fairly good gut feeling about the impact of internal links on rankings (as an additional signal).

Also in your opinion how does internal linking compare to external links pointing to the same page (e.g. impact of benefit/ranking gained through internal linking + inbound links as opposed to scenario where there is no relevant internal links at all).

Conditions:

• Relevant anchor text used (or close contextual variation)
• Measuring impact on a single phrase (or relevant phrase variation)
• Internal links can be from unlimited pages on the same site (even site-wide)
• External inbound links can be only to the target page (disregarding inbound links to other pages).
• Disregarding layout based navigation as internal links and focusing on content based links only (contextual, editorial links).

For example:

• Internal link ranking impact: 10%
• External link ranking impact: 90%

Since this is a simplified model feel free to provide necessary clarifications below your estimate.

Looking forward to your answers!

If I understand this correctly:

1. subdomain = affiliate ID
2. subdomain(s) content =  main content

In this case you can use rel="canonical" and point to main page. This will prevent duplication and sort out your link building worries.

My recommendation would be to re-optimise the same page to a new product name (title/H1...etc) if the users expect that product name. If it's still an unknown term then ensure that you have the new name present on the site in form of a disclosure: e.g. This product is now officially called XYZ and that will ensure you're found for it. The only thing you're missing out on is phrase in URL. Potentially when consumers do the switch of terminology you could set up a new URL and 301 the old one to it.

I deal with this problem often. Couple of questions:

1. Do you use faceted navigation in your sidebar?
2. Do you have a superfooter with lost of links?
3. What percentage of your links are in the main nav?
4. How many links are in the content area in average or per page type?

I found that you can safely exceed "100" quoted by Google if your site is strong enough. It was just a number that they made up, obviously the value is not absolute, but I would probably not push it past 150.

I do it in a few steps:

1. Determine competitor that's one above.
2. Determine competitors for each phrase.
3. Measure strength of competitor's site.
4. Measure the strength of competitor's page.
5. Calculate traffic increase by one position based on current CTR and CTR averages across all phrases.

This process can be applied to multiple ranking scenarios.

Definitely invest in two unique copies of text. If there are thousands and you are unable to get them all done at once you may try variable driven text, however replacing one element and expecting Google to like it is a bit too much.

Alt, although a valid signal is not as heavy as title for example, so I suggest that you do not compromise the integrity and quality of site for SEO purposes only and manipulation of this tag. Use ALT as it should be used and describe your illustrations, photos, products images and diagrams well enough so that a visually impaired may get an idea of what the image is. That's what Google expects you to do and is generally a win-win.