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I believe that having something new on the homepage when returning visitors arrive will make them come back more often.

To accomplish that we have a script that rotates content through a few of the blocks on our homepage.  The script runs every hour so if a person returns later in the day they will see different items.  We have enough content in this rotation that the typical visitor could make many visits before seeing the same item a second time.

Also, on most pages of our site we have links to our ten most recent blog posts that match the category of the page.  These update every hour as we make up to ten blog posts per day.  We also have lists of "related articles" that rotate hourly.

All of this keeps almost every page of our site constantly changing.  I don't know what google thinks of it but adding these rotating content features has increased the visitor engagement level of our site.

I think that this will strengthen as we get to know and respect one another.

I agree... "Barrier to entry" was smart smart move.  500 mozpoints and paying members are serious people who don't want a forum full of noise.

The spammers and bottomfeeder SEOs have burned me out on another forum where I have posted for a long time.

I agree.  This is a good format.  I started participating a few days ago and enjoy it.

Looking forward to more.

Thanks for this info.  I did an experiment on an image in google books and  you are right!

The domain will remain the same.The plan is to create exactly the same pages in the new CMS, as what we have today. And to use the same URLs for each page. Content will remain the same in step one. We will only apply a new layout and design.

This sounds like a fairly safe plan.  The only cautions I can think of are...

1. Be sure to maintain the same title tags, meta descriptions and on-page markup.

2. Changing the navigation structure (the persistent links in your design that repeat on every page... and any other significant internal linking) could divert or strengthen your flow of link juice.

Its good that you are working carefully to defend your current rankings but is there anything else that you might do such as bread crumbs, improved internal navigation, related content promotion, in-paragraph text links, etc. that will IMPROVE your rankings.  When you make a big design change the goal should be to improve rather than to simply maintain.

Go for it and good luck.

Thank you, Alan.  Thumbs up!

The text in those image-laden files is not searchable.   If the creator completed the properties form there could be a few useful words there - but if they are using images they probably have no clue about "properties".

huh?

A you  asking..... "If people use the backbutton to go back into the SERPs, will that reduce your rankings?"   My bet is YES.  But I have not heard clear statements from Google about that.

Anybody know where we can read or watch what Matt Cutts or another inside person has to say about that?

PDF documents are crawled, cached and indexed by Google.  They can be optimized and will rank well in the SERPs.  Text in those documents can be found by searching.

Does Google consider them in their search for duplicate content?  Probably.... because .pdf documents can be find in a search for duplicate content in quotes when you encounter this....

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 42 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

=======================

More about pdf documents in google here...

http://www.seomoz.org/q/will-a-pdf-pass-pagerank

Links from social media sites are very often nofollowed so participating there for the "links" is probably not a good use of your time.

However, Google is probably using the social media profile of websites and their content to influence rankings.  In last week's Whiteboard Friday Rand looked at the correlation between social media activity and rankings (correlation is not always cause and effect).  Check it out... http://www.seomoz.org/blog/correlation-data-for-seo-and-social-media-analysis-part-1-whiteboard-friday

The real value of social media is something that you didn't ask about.  That is the ability to rapidly spread the word about content, people and services.  To make that happen powerfully you need kickass content, people or services that are worthy of people's "like" or "tweet" or "recommend" or whatever.

Success at social media is not something that can be achieved mechanically.  It is achieved by having value or interest that merits the social share.

Does anybody have any tips or tricks to achieving quality back links in a short amount of time?

Linkbuilding is the most challenging part of SEO for most people. Getting quality links fast is extra challenging.

If you have fantastic, best-on-the-web content you can often just submit it to sites such as Reddit and Slashdot and Stumbleupon... if it really is great content that will be like throwing gasoline on a fire.

If you don't have that type of content then you can buy backlinks... but bought links can be risky and you run the risk that they will be devalued.  I don't recommend it.

You could also hire someone who knows what they are doing to build the links for you or teach you.

We have about 15 clients who we need to do link building for but I am at a loss on how to even begin.

There is a lot of good linkbuilding information and ideas posted here at SEOMoz and elsewhere on the web.  You could dedicate the next few weeks to study and learning the basics.  Then you will need to spend a lot of time still, figuring out how to do it and the challenge is different for each client.

If you are not up to that you can again, consider hiring someone who knows what they are doing.

I would place the blog at storename.com/blog/ instead of blog.storename.com.

Why?  Google seems to treat subdomains as separate websites and links that hit your blog will not empower the main site as strongly.   If the blog is on the main site then all of the links that hit the blog will transfer trust, authority and linkjuice into your main website.

I recently did a 301 redirect (page-by-page) of a subdomain to a folder on the main site and my rankings are now up nicely everywhere.

I would use the blog on a retail site to review products, give product use information and provide supplemental information about what I am selling.  All of these posts can be linked to your product pages to pass some power to them.

And, if you have product information, reviews, usage tips, etc. you might be able to get links from the manufacturer's blog, consumer websites and how-to-do-it sites.

The more content you can put on the blog the better - as long as it is high quality and linkworthy.

We have temporary content and evergreen content.

When a page of temporary content is created it is filed in a folder according to its "expiration date".  On that date the folder is 301 redirected to an appropriate destination.  However, before the redirect is done we run analytics on the folder to see if any files are pulling traffic from SERPs or links from other websites.  We then try to create evergreen content on the same topic that will capture that traffic and redirect the specific files to the new evergreen content.

Today (April 27) I see them down at #51 for "dresses".  It will be interesting to see how long Google keeps them in the tank.  They made a lot of money during the Christmas season that other rule-abiding retailers would like to have earned.

I think that they should be in the tank at least until the end of the 2011 Christmas season.

If I bought 100,000 links I bet my site would be out of the SERPs.

I think that I would use the homepage to promote my most profitable, most brandable and most linkable content.  After adopting that philosophy I would increase/decrease the number of links on my homepage to see what produces the most visitor engagement and conversions.

But, getting to your original question... if you are getting your butt kicked in the SERPs you need to go out after links and likes and produce more of the content that attracts them.  SEO is a battle of resources and those resources are linkable content and links/likes, etc.

I think that you will do better hiring English majors who can research and write best-on-the-web quality content then hiring employees who will try to get links into existing content.  If you can get them creating content that attracts links automatically then all of the work that used to be spent on linkbuilding will go straight to content that pulls both links and traffic.

Could your homepage be filtered because of duplicate content?

Try some of the sentences from the page in quotes in Google search.

Do you have a million anchor text links from low-quality sites pointing to it with your main keyword?

(This is a tough question to answer from the dark... could be many things... what content was on the homepage before you acquired the domain?)

The most likely consequence of this is that the link will have zero value.

Google is probably not going to penalize or ban  a site that has one single link from a naughty domain - otherwise weasels would buy links to competitor sites to get them nuked from the SERPS.

So, avoid having more links like this in your profile or doing anything naughty  and you will probably be OK.

We make our links very obvious.  I would not try to hide them because I want them clicked (it is hard to monetize a .pdf but easy to monetize an .html page - so I want the visitor to get onto my .html pages).

You can lock .pdf documents so that they can not be edited.  Then other webmasters are free to post them on their own domain and give me backlinks.  Of, course they could rewrite their own just as any other content can be spun or rewritten.

I am often amazed at the rankings that can be obtained from only a few good links.