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If you are talking about Change of Address, I thought that's for moving sites to a new domain.  Our domain is staying the same.  Thanks for your advice about links.  We have a lot of citations pointing to the old extensions (they have 53 locations)

That makes sense.  Thanks.

Yes, the pages are the same topic but completely different content.

Thank you.

The answer is "technically" 50,000.

However, the size for sitemap matters too (no bigger than 50MB).

If you have more than these numbers allow for in Google's Guidelines then you break them up and have multiple sitemaps on your site.

Here is Google's Guidelines on Sitemaps:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=183668

I've never come across this and haven't been able to really find anything that explains it very well.  I want to get opinions before we make a definitive decision.

Here's the scenario...

I am working on a site that was built in HTML/PHP and some of the pages are ranking pretty well. (some page 1, but not number 1)

We are going to start using the Wordpress platform by year's end.

The pages that were built in html have been built a little spammy but they still rank.  I just think they are keyword stuffed a little and not very "reader friendly"  (I think the last person was spinning content).

So, we've built completely new content on our new pages and we've commissioned really good content writers for them.  I will be handling the on-page SEO going forward so I know what to do there.  My questions are this....

1. Should I 301 the old pages to the new pages with the better content? (old pages have the .html or .php extensions so www.example.com/keyword.php will become www.example.com/keyword-keyword

2. Is there any negative side to doing this since the content will be completely different then the old pages that are being 301 from.  (Keywords are pretty much staying the same with the exception of minor variations. ie, www.example.com/red-cashmere-sweater.php to www.example.com/cashmere-sweater)

I ask this because I've moved sites before where I've just changed the location of the same content.  I've never done it where the content is changing and so is the URL extension.

Thank you in advance for your help and guidance.

Have you rel=canonical each post?

This is a really great question!  Here is a Mozinar on Reputation Managment to get you started.

Depending on the name, the group might be actively SEOing for the name.  I think setting up a site, Google+ (with photo you want to use), using structured data on your site and actively SEO a blog with rel=author is a great start.

There was a great article about optimizing for the Google Knowledge Graph back in June by Aleysa from site pro news.  http://www.sitepronews.com/2012/06/17/how-your-website-can-show-up-on-googles-knowledge-graph-a-spn-exclusive/

I would start here and I hope other people reply.  I'm interested in other opinions.  Again, Great Question!!

There has been a known issue with keyword tracking with SEOmoz and Google.  I think the campaign rankigns are working but not the rank tracker tool.

That being said, can you give us a keyword and site to see if we can have same results.

Do you have any personalization set on your search? What browser? (Are you signed in or have you added a location?)

Make sure you are using the non personalization search string when you do your search.

For keyword phrases:

http://www.google.com/search?q=_keyword1_+_keyword2_+_keyword3_&pws=0

For single keywords:

http://www.google.com/search?q=_keyword_&pws=0

Take a look at these two videos from Google for reconsideration

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35843

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA5I3HHApYk

These talk about the reconsideration process and some best practices.

I read today that the rankings are updated when your campaign comes out but not on the rank tracker tool.  You'll be able to get your rankings weekly instead of on the spot.  Hope that helps.  Seomoz is very good about taking care of known issues.  Shouldn't be much longer for Rank Tracker to be up and running.

Make sure you get someone who is willing to work on a performance based structure.  For example, we get a standard fee for the site which includes design and SEO but we also get a piece when we sell the site and bonuses based on time  (he faster we sell it the bigger the percentage) and lead generation.  It's worked well and everyone makes money.  You'll be able to find someone that will do this too I'm sure.

That's "technically" true but you there is no way Google will consider it that way.  They generally penalize people for who use a site that primarily does this for revenue.  I doubt your nonprofit will ever get penalized for this.  Just don't make the link reciprocal and you'll be fine.  Also, I wouldn't make this a normal practice.  Every now and again is okay especially for a cause you believe in.  I don't think there is anything in Google's algo that will penalize you for this.  I get nonprofit links all the time when I used to give speeches.  I never got penalized for it.

Useful is relevant.

Useful (in Google's eye) means that the page answers the intent of the query.  If someone is looking for a deb dress style guide then your pages ARE useful.  Since there isn't anyone else competing for that keyword, then all the results are, in fact, useful for the given query.

Here is Google's FAQ on Schema.org.  They also have videos on rich snippets (from schema.org)

Take some time to go through all of these.  There are multiple types of microdata and "news articles" is one of them.  Unfortunately, I can't answer your question about how schema works because that is like asking someone how SEO works.  It's a learning process.

This is what one of my clients does for a living.  They invest roughly 6 months into a site and rank it for multiple areas and then sell to the competition usually for a $50 to $75 price tag.  They have larger sites that are regional and the last one sold for $210k.

I think this is a great way to add extra revenue to your company.  Even if the sites don't sell, you can sell the leads from them.  Some service industry leads they have sell for $50 a lead.  It's a win win either way.

Here is Matt Cutts on PageRank

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Jup5R1MGY

Matt Cutts talked about this a few years back....let me find it.

Here it is.

Basically where your server is (minus county specific) doesn't matter to Google.

Google understands that people share servers and it's not that important in the scheme of things.  What does matter is server up time.

I didn't do an entire site audit (obviously) but it looks like the links coming to your site are primarily directories.  Your domain authority is 24 and your page authority is 34 for the home page.  (I used SEOmoz's ToolBar for this)  Remember, PR is a link analysis.

I would start a real quality linkbuilding campaign.  Try to guest blog on some high ranking, high authority sites about any particular topic in the muscle building world.  You can link back to your site from there.  It takes time to earn that right but it is well worth it.

Can you provide URL so we can take a closer look?

What pages are page rank 0? Are all of them?  If you have 45k urls then it sounds like your internal link structure may be weak.  If you can post your URL we can go through it and take a look.

I would go into Google Places and make sure that your address is optimized

Address on one line and suite number on second line.  If it isn't this way, I would re-verify the listing.

Heres a link to the Google Places Quality Guidelines.

Make sure you comply with all of these items.  It's only a page long so not a lot to do but definitely make sure you are in high compliance with them.