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I am getting 403 errors on almost all the pages on www.suretybond.com/store/  this would be a good place to start looking at the pages to make sure internal links are correct.

If the domain name is a solid one that has the ability to stick in your clients head then it might make sense to buy the domain and spend a few months rehabbing the quality of links. If you have the financial ability then I would buy it, use google webmasters to identify the bad links, reach out to the site owners and request they remove the links, send a report to google showing the work you've done. Then I would work on getting positive links for your site by getting mentions in online news sites, edu sites and others. You can accomplish this by hosting a small charity event. Also have your customers write reviews on Yelp and similar sites. Yahoo Directory link and BBB link. Time heals all wounds including bad links.

All word press sites i have crawled have many problems, duplicat content link juie leaks, Orcahrd has less problems, but as i said its not perfect it has its own problems, but all over it is more seo friendly. The main problem i have foudn it that it places more than one h1 tag on a page, i have written a url-rewrite outbound rule for iis to fix this problem. It is more friendly to a deveoper that wants to rewrite it also, you can use Microsoft Live Writer to to creat and publish your bogs or even Microsoft Word. http://www.orchardproject.net/

I'd agree that the main domain would be ideal but if there are too many business reasons (or financial burdens), you would probably be okay with a subdomain. A subdomain does get some benefit from the root domain. Certainly, if you do go with a subdomain route you'll want to make sure that you do all the right things around that subdomain (links, optimization, social, etc.) so that Google/Bing see indicators not just to the root domain but the subdomain as well. Along with that, you'll want to have plenty of internal linking between the main site and the subdomain site. One other thought is, is it possible to do this as a sub-directory (suretybond.com/storefront)? A sub-directory would be considerably more beneficial from an SEO standpoint since you don't have to worry about how much link juice/trust/authority is passed from the root domain to the subdomain. I realize technically that isn't always possible given the way things are configured. Also, there was a good blog post about this on SEOmoz from 2009 that you might want to check out. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

Hyphens work without problem and are not considered spammy, as long as other spam signals are low. I just ranked a domain with two hyphens, from nowhere in the search engine positions, to positions 5 on page 2 in 6 days with as little as a dozen backlinks and 30 pages of good content, for a search volume of 100 000.That's on google.fr but it applies to google.com as well imho. Check a simple search such as "Investment Banking" and see for yourself : how many domains on 1st page have hyphens ? I see "careers-in-finance.com" as #5. Matt Cutts once said "hyphens are treated as separators". I would also suggest you to watch this video : Matt Cutts about branding versus keyword laden URLs : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAWFv43qubI&feature=related However in the example, I would go for taxbond.net because it is simpler. And of course buy tax-bond and redirect. I would not buy the pluralized search though, as Google would always prefer the simpler version, all things equal.

Hey Alexander, Your first two URLs are more relevant for those keywords in their meta description and title tags from the page source. You could try to position the exact phrase "Georgia Mortgage Lender Bond" into the title tag and meta description of the URLs which need a boost.  Another thing to try would be to expand on your unique content a little bit for each URL by writing a bit more. Jared

2011 eanking factors survey finds acorrelation: those sites that contain outbound links are tending to rank better: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-5. It further more states somewhere (maybe in the video, I could not find) that linkig to Microsoft may bring better results, while linking to some other big company (exact company name is there you can look for it) triggered a fallback in rankings. So linking to quality content by itself may should not cause a fallback.

Thanks for the reply Alan. We'll wait for them to crawl the site again.

Thanks Ryan. I fully understand what you are saying and will be careful while making the change.

Thanks Alex, I had a feeling I'd read something about people trying to use multiple-snippets in a single meta-description to try and get relevant descriptions into the serps depending on the keywords used. A bit too dependant on the whims of google for my liking, and if we're talking about an e-commerce site, then it's enough work generating a single quality description for each product let along multiple ones.

When it comes to video production, you generally get what you pay for. You could have someone you know throw together a powerpoint and narrate over the top of it, but it won't be nearly as professional as someone who might charge more. I think your best bet is to check your local craigslist or try doing a google search for video production in your area. I'll leave the quality vs price issue in your court though.

Hi Alexander. I took a look at your site and have some feedback: your site is presently available in both the www and non-www format. This is a big issue and should be promptly fixed. I agree with Alan in that the site should be presented in http:// format when possible. Your site will seem faster to users as images from a secure site are not cached, for example. your trust symbols in the footer are important but the coloring is very challenging. I couldn't even tell you had SSL from GoDaddy until I moused over and saw the URL. your LinkedIn widget is set for the LinkedIn home page rather then your company's page. you may want to consider moving your social sharing and trust symbols above the fold. I love a good, clear Call To Action but I don't care for the two "Buy Now" buttons on your home page. In your "What is Suretegrity" block you use bold for words such as "all" and "only". I would suggest using bold on keywords and not adjectives. Now that I have seemingly blasted your site, please let me share that I do like your site. I like the name, your BBB involvement, your social engagement, etc. I list the above items as opportunities for improvement.

Just to add to Ryan's comments - if you had massive 500 issues, then you might theoretically argue that 301'ing would keep Google from crawling so many errors. At best, though, it's a band-aid, and maybe even a poor-fitting one. The better question is - why are those 500s occurring. Ultimately, they should be fixed, not patched. Usually, Google isn't going to penalize a one-time 500 error or a short-term server problem. The only time I could see 301'ing is if you knew you had a major problem and couldn't fix it for a few days. The 301 (or possibly 302, in this case) could buffer you from crawl problems while you made the fixes. Obviously, that wouldn't be an ideal situation.

Thanks everyone. This was very helpful. I will NOT include the state abbreviation. Ryan - I have an uppercase letter in every word. I will go ahead and format everything so that only lowercase letters are used. Thanks!

disnmiss what he said, its if it makes senmce, this rule only applies to H1, and even that is in doubt.

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After putting myself in the user's shoes, I would imagine that I would want to go to the Distrubutor Specific landing page. That's what I figured but I'm in the process of trying to get some quality links to my core domain and I am struggling. These are solid links but oh well...i'll just send them to the new landing page. Thanks!