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Good luck!

So the non dub version of the URL points to www right now. Somehow, what they plan to do is take 25% of all visitors to our website and send them to www2 instead of www. I don't know how this works personally. I guess with analytics, how do you even set that up? As a separate profile in Google Analytics? But the domain is the same, so can you do sub-domain specific? I need separate analytics for the new site to make sure conversions look good, and that's what I'm not sure how to set up. My secondary concern is doing a noindex on the www2 subdomain. Is that the best way to keep this out of the index? Once testing is done we'll move the new site to www and redirect www2 to it as well. Any thoughts on that set up?

If you gain access to the site's Search Console (Google product) then you can view all the search queries connecting with the site over time. The ones driving the most clicks would be the priority ones to 'look after' in a take-over scenario. Use the search-query data from Search Console, do not use the "keyword" data from Google Analytics (as at this point, years after Not Provided, it provides a virtually worthless sample)

So those sitelinks you see for [squatty potty website] are what I want showing up for [squatty potty] as well. I see a couple text links is all, not expanded full sitelinks.

I suppose it all depends on who set up the account in the first place, if they did all the ground work and set up the campaigns, and ad groups then they probably don't have to let you see it. I would rather have my account set up in house initially then grant access to third parties who then get tagged as an editor etc, that way you remain as the account holder. I do not think it unreasonable that you have asked for evidence of what they are bidding on, negatived keywords, search terms, ad trials, optimisation etc. It is all basic data that can be shared. Like Egol said, look into your contract and see what they should be divulging via their reports etc. Finally.... Are they proving their worth? If not consider outsourcing to someone/ some agency that can or is willing to share, build a relationship and improve.

yeah Majestic and others are picking them all up. OSE just doesn't.

I use overseas development team but generally for small fix &  maintain issues. After working with different developers now I have a good contacts that i work with but I did have pretty bad experiences in the past... such as messing with codes and not fixing it, leaving the task half and once I had to pay double to get it fixed etc.. You need to be very careful  with overseas agencies as it is not easy to reach them as it looks. However, working with local agency doesn't mean that you will get a good quality job. One of my client, worked with agency in Brighton, I can easily say they weren't good at all and company lost quite a lot money for small fixes and maintains until they move to another agency. I think the best way is to work with an agency who has a good reputation and good reviews. It seems it won't be a inexpensive project. I know couple of good developers in Turkey, just to get an idea if you want to get a quotation i am happy to drop them a line to find out for you.

Hey there! So while I don't have a list of spammy websites here's a general overview of how I analyze whether or not a website is spammy or not: Does the website have a high Spam Score when running it through Moz's Link Explorer? Does the website have an alternative TLD? (ga, rn, cl) Does the website have a low domain authority? Does the website use similar templates to others that are possibly low quality? Does the website cover a topic that's totally unrelated to the linking site? Is the website part of a blogspot link network? Does the website pass the "eye test" and look like it could be useful for users? Of course one or two of these qualities does not make a site low quality but raises a flag that it could be. For me if a site has multiple factors that make it low quality and doesn't appear to pass the "eye test", then I might consider it a spammy domain. You can then submit all spammy domains to your disavow file.

Based on the cached pages I saw, I'd say it's a spam site. It also returned a 403 error in Lynx, so I presume the site is no longer active or just temporarily down rather than only visible to robots.

Hi Daniel, I can put you in touch with one of the best fitness trainers (certainly in my area) who is actually very active on the web and his own blog. Would this help? Matt

Google seems to be selective in displaying the rich snippets in results. I have a site that uses ratings snippets and only a tiny percent of the SERPs display with the rating stars. I can't figure out why some display with snippets and some without (# of ratings, rating score to not appear to factor), there must be something in the algorithm that decides this but it is not clear to me.

I am doing the http:// and including the full URL. Should I add the link code? I didn't realize that was an HTML editor. ** Yes, you need to add the html code: full: text . That will work for sure.

Matt's statement also implies the changed the codename and/or didn't release the internal codename, so it's really tough to say. Even publicly, they called it the "Webspam update" prior to "Penguin".

Definitely, interested in helping out.   Email me at greg @ LeanWagon

Daniel, thanks for asking this question. I don't personally know any decent ones so I will be building a link building department soon. I really hope someone puts a decent company here. One of the things I have done (which has worked) was article spinning. I wrote a bunch original content and had a Philippine company spin it for me. I don't really recommend it if someone is just starting out. I can PM yu the information. What about these guys that Rand recommends? http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended#link-building

That's just it, their web developer has all sorts of problems. I had to set up their wild card redirect because he had no idea how. Now I'm having to figure out how to install this tracking stuff because he has no idea. Would be a lot easier if they had a web developer that knew web development

I believe this should solve your problem: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7610787/htaccess-wildcard-redirect-fix

Second goal would be to improve conversions. I would begin here as this is the bottom line.  You want the best you can afford on this job. Ryan recommends SiteTuners.  I have used them and they are very good.  They will take one of your pages and give you back a proposed new design (for that page)  that you can test.... and tweak as they provide guidance.  Then when you have a kickass conversion rate then build the rest of your site design around it. Their work will probably include input on aesthetics... so I would not have someone expensive design a new site and then hear SiteTuners tell you it sucks.

Hi, I just did this and had similar issues It looks like the .htaccess is correct at the old domain. but you need to put in re-directors at the new domain that will take in these extra items due to these directories do not exist at the new domain. There could be an easier way, without putting a redirect after a redirect (which possibly losses a little extra juice) but I am not aware of a way without redirecting all 404 queries. after you have put back the 301 that was working at the OLD domain In the .htaccess at the NEW domain you would put Redirect /category/models/next/2 http://www.example.com/ This will tell any queries for http://www.example.com/category/models/next/2 to redirect to http://www.example.com or whatever you put in.... hope this helps!

I couldn't agree more, Steve. I tried about 4 different of these networks and the success was only temporary.  It would be absurd to think that Google doesn't have a full time employee whose only job is to discover those networks! I don't even touch spinning any more.  It continuously becomes less effective.  Instead of dealing with those tactics, I would rather spend my time making a quick video and posting it to a couple of video sites, then embedding it on a new post. I'm keeping my money out of those networks.