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I wouldn't recommend using AW express because you lose most control over the account. There's no telling where your ads will show up because you don't control the bids, can't effectively manage keywords, and can't modify the settings appropriately on campaigns to really focus on ads. I've always said AW express is like playing blackjack, but letting the dealer decide your hand for your. Adwords is the primary revenue stream for Google's business, so they're not in it to make you the best ROI but to keep you happy enough to keep spending money with them. Increasing the monthly spend won't help your ads move up, the only way to do that is optimize the campaign. It's not just if you bid more you'll show higher. It all depends on quality score for the keywords used. If they're broad match with low quality score, then a competitor can theoretically bid lower than you to achieve a higher position if their keyword has a better QS. You will really never know what's going wrong or how to fix your campaign if you use AW express.

My advice is to ditch AW express and actually manage your campaigns. If you don't have the time to learn, then hire someone who already knows it.

So to clarify when you say "menu" are you talking about faceted navigation or are you talking about actual page navigation (near header/footer)? If it's faceted, then you should canonical back to the main page so you're not competing with other pages on your site (/mens-shoes or /womens-shoes). If you canonical the men's or women's page back to the main /shoes/ page then you will lose the benefit of those pages.

Does the site only work off of parameters, or do you have separate pages for different genders?

I can't see the images you're referencing (maybe the links aren't working?), but it's possible that Google hasn't visited those pages in a while or not as frequently as the cached pages. Load time was slow for the homepage (10.37s on pingdom), so it's possible Google isn't crawling or caching the site as often. If it's a smaller site that's changed less frequently, that might be a cause. As long as the site is indexed properly I wouldn't worry too much about the caching though.

I'd recommend setting up a sitemap, and double checking all the important pages are indexed.

What's the thought on using a 410 server response (Gone) for products that won't be in stock on the site anymore? I've seen that strategy work to get pages out of the index. Does anyone have opposition to using that strategy? That would be assuming the page isn't linked to on the site (or other sites for that matter). I've seen that work OK for product pages buried a littler further in the site architecture.

PPC will not effect SEO efforts. The biggest reason I would suggest sending someone to the actual domain is because the user would be more likely to return and convert later. It usually takes a few visits to convert (PPC > Organic > Direct, or some mix of those), so that would be a good reason to try to keep it within the same domain.

However... If these landing pages cannot be imported to the current website CMS, and the external landing pages are converting, then it would be negligent to cut those out of PPC. You could really hurt the business if they stop getting leads. I would first try to see if the landing pages can be created on the client's domain, and A/B test. PPC does not affect SEO, and SEO does not affect PPC. It's all based on bidding, and quality score of the ads. If the client is getting business out of the current PPC work, don't kill it without testing and being absolutely sure you have a solid game plan. You don't want to get caught in a scenario where you could be fired if the client stops seeing leads.

I think BOTW is a good citation source, but if you can't get it for free the best thing to do is test. If you're thinking that site will be a valuable piece to your marketing (and deserve a piece of the budget), then test with the first location to see how much traffic it drives. Set up a special segment or filter in Google Analytics to track referrals from BOTW. If you're seeing some decent traffic for what you're paying (and possible conversions), then it's definitely worth expanding to. If you're just paying for the citation source then you might be better off sinking that monthly fee into paid search or somewhere else. I agree BOTW is a good local citation to have, but that's what I would do to try and justify spending money on it.

If the previous site was penalized in any way and you're trying to start with a new domain, then you don't want to redirect or note a change of domain. This is going to help them update their index to reflect the new domain for your pages. I don't know enough about the penalty, but if it was a manual action then you really should fix the penalized domain before doing this. If you're too far into the penalty box, then you almost need to start fresh.

Can you offer any more insight on your current situation? Without knowing much more, my instinct is to say to not note a change of address if you're trying to move forward from a penalized domain.

Paid traffic does not directly affect organic ranking. Those two elements are mutually exclusive when it comes to search. Click patterns will affect personalized results for the individual, but not as a whole. You're looking at this at a micro level, but I think (correct me if i'm wrong) Kevin is looking at this from a macro perspective to see how the two directly influence each other.

If you're suggesting that pointing an Adwords destination URL to any particular domain will positively impact organic ranking, then i'd like to see the proof. Making a blanket statement to say Paid does influence organic is sending an incorrect message. If you have evidence to support that claim then I'm sure this and many other communities would love to see it, but I stand by Google's official position that those two mediums do not directly influence each other.

Google's most likely removing this feature. See this great thread in the local search forum to learn more. To summarize our assumptions, it's because the only people that really used this feature were SEO's to check ranking. Normal searchers either modified the query or did nothing, since most people probably never knew that feature existed.

You don't need to. Just let Google crawl at will. The only reason you would want to limit the crawl rate is if you're having performance issues from the server you're on (too much traffic at once). If you're not having any issues, then allow Google to crawl as many pages as they can.

Unless the business locations are franchises and independently run, I'll say keep it all under one domain. Build location landing pages out for the different locations with unique content. Splitting them to separate domains will create more work for you (and the company) to maintain and build the authority. If you use location page silos, then you can keep content and links under one domain and consolidate your efforts. The divide and conquer approach won't work well if you don't have a pretty sizable staff (and budget) to work on both sites simultaneously.

If you keep it all under one powerful domain you can have a setup like:

Homepage > Location 1 (general) > Specialized services for location 1

Homepage > location 2 (general) > specialized services for location 2

That way you're able to capture traffic using each unique location page and more specific traffic for the services. All are sharing a benefit from the homepage authority, and you'd be able to internally link to the other locations so customers can easily find all the business offices. It's a little cleaner than replicating another site on a new domain... plus you need to think about creating all unique content for the other site, and making sure it's optimized... That would be a lot of extra (not needed) work.

Keep it simple - one primary domain, and local landing pages for the new locations.

Consistency matters for citations, and this is definitely a case I haven't dealt with before. Since the name is so unique and many sites won't allow for special characters I would pick one format to use across local citations. I guess the big question is how sites see the special character. If they see "No1" as "NO-1" that might work against you from a branding/dupe listing standpoint. If the rest of the information is the same across the citation sources, then it's possible the name variations could get aggregated together. In that case No1 and N°1 could become synonymous and acknowledged as one and the same.

I see a lot of sites are respecting the special character, so the best advice is to try and make it as consistent as possible. If you have a minority not respecting the character I wouldn't worry too much about it. You're playing a numbers game, so the more sites (quality sites) that have the special character will help you. The ones without may count for slightly less, but might not hurt you too much.

I'll assume these are going to a different secure subdomain, so don't worry too much about it. Like Thomas posted, you aren't going to get the shopping cart to rank (and don't want it to) so there's no real concern. A 302 is essentially stopping "link juice" from going to the cart page, so as far as domain authority goes it seems like you should leave it how it's set up now. You're keeping the authority on your pages while sending users to the correct place to complete the purchase. As long as these aren't internal links to other product pages or family pages, you should be good.

@Peter basically nails it. None of these tools will be completely accurate to what Google determines is a "bad" link, so it will be very subjective. You really should use a variety of tools (even link detox is a good one) to get a list of sites linking to you. The reason being is that all these tools have very different indexes, so you'll get a more comprehensive view of your profile... however that will be a little more expensive since you would need multiple subscriptions.

Like Peter said, you'd then want to download all the links into excel, dedupe, and review. I usually look at aHref Rank below a certain threshold and Trust Flow below a certain threshold (you need to either use a VLOOKUP or an INDEX/MATCH formula to combine the lists from all sources). After that you review those links manually, and add the "bad" ones to a disavow file. The "bad" ones are those that you would agree violates the Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines that fit into a link scheme definition. Once again, this is a subjective process so you'll really need to review the guidelines.

To do this analysis to the full extent that you'd want... I don't think there are free tools that will give you any meaningful data. Remember they need to maintain bots and their own software to expand their indexes, so the free trials will be very limited data (usually with no way to export). I'll also say this is a very tedious process and depending on the size of the site I would allocate anywhere between 5 (small site) and 40 hours (larger site) to tackle this process. Buffer in a little more if this is the first run, since there will be a learning curve for the tools and it will take time to put together a professional looking report.

What you need to do is flag each image that isn't applicable to your business, then Google will take them down. When you click into each image there is a link at the bottom right hand corner of the screen that says "Report a Problem" which will take you to another screen. In that screen you'll see radio buttons next to "Why are you reporting this photo?" where you can select, "This photo is irrelevant to this business." You'll need to put in your email address and enter a reCAPTCHA code, but in time it should get taken down. It's not automatic, and it may take a little back and forth with a Google rep but that's your first step. If that really doesn't work, then you could try and contact Google Places Support but I think they'll tell you to do exactly what I just described above.

If you're still being impacted by a penalty (algorithmic) then I wouldn't 301 any URLs, since that would carry the penalty over. Did you get a manual warning in webmaster tools? Do you have specific dates of traffic drops that would line up with known algorithm updates? Kind of hard to diagnose without knowing the site or understanding traffic fluctuations, but if this is the last resort then you might want to think about starting a new site as a fall back. If you've bounced back from 7 to 2, there still could be hope you could make it to page 1 again but it will take some work. Do your competitors have better onsite optimization? Do they have higher quality links? If this is a local business, are you optimized on and off site?

There are still a lot of factors to consider before jumping to a new domain. Keep in mind that a new domain would be starting from scratch, and it will take just as long (if not longer) to see page one in a competitive market. I would only move domains if that is your absolute last resort.

Did you move the conversion points on the site? For example if you moved the phone number from the top of the page to a side bar element (widget), that could be enough to see a drop in leads. Not sure what the site is or what it looked liked pre and post redesign, but moving conversion points on the site even a little can cause a rise or drop in leads. Feel free to PM the URL or post it in the thread, and we could give more specific feedback.

There aren't any rules how the description should be formatted in Google's Guidelines - https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en - however it's worth noting that the description you list in your dashboard may not show up for customers searching for your service/company. Google made the shift a little while back to show a limited amount of information (NAP, website, hours of operation, reviews) which doesn't normally include the description. I haven't seen anything to suggest adding more keywords in the description will boost ranking, especially since it's a hidden element for that page.

Local SEO Guide did a great study on Local SEO ranking factors - http://www.localseoguide.com/guides/2016-local-seo-ranking-factors/ 

Read through that to get an idea what to test & try to get your page ranking better.

If the only option is to disallow via the robots.txt, then I would agree with your setup - disallow the slugs specific to the tags you don't want indexed. I've heard shopify is a little rough to work with sometimes because of the limitations, so whatever you can do I think is better than nothing. Remember that the robots exclusion is treated as a suggestion and not a command, so if it's possible to assign a no-index meta tag to those URL types that would be best case.

Looks like you're on the right track with the post below:

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The one suggestion I would make is that you use noindex,follow so the content will still be crawled, but the duplicate tag won't get indexed. That would create multiple paths to the content on your site, but not create an index bloat issue with multiple tags.

The interesting part about your question is that the old pages never ranked, and the new pages aren't ranking either. Are you trying to rank for a keyword that's too difficult? Does your site have a manual or algorithmic penalty? Are other pages ranking on your site for different terms? You could have technical errors that are preventing the site from moving forward, or the keyword you're trying to rank for may be too difficult given the authority of your site vs the competition.

Can you share more details about this situation? Without knowing the site and the target it's pretty hard to give any real recommendation. Every site with relevant content to the target keyword phrase and tuned up onsite should at least hit page 5 as long as the keyword isn't overly competitive.

Would you be able to share more about this situation?