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I have error messages in Google Webmaster that state that Googlebot encountered errors while attempting to access the robots.txt.  The last date that this was reported was on December 25, 2012 (Merry Christmas), but the last cache date was November 16, 2012 (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.etundra.com/robots.txt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a).

How could I get this error if the page hasn't been cached since November 16, 2012?

Just to elaborate on the size of the site, we sell about 150,000 products, and many of them can be accessed through multiple categories. Thanks for the responses!

I saw this article, http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/common-ecommerce-technical-seo-problems/, and noticed that Geoff mentioned that product URLs format should be in one of the following ways:

• Product Page: site.com/product-name
• Product Page: site.com/category/sub-category/product-name

However, for SEO, is there a preferred way?

I understand that the top one may be better to prevent duplicate page issues, but I would imagine that the bottom would be better for conversion (maybe the user backtracks to site.com/category/sub-category/ to see other products that he may be interested in).

Also, I'd imagine that the top URL would not be a great way to distribute link juice since everything would be attached to the root, right?

Makes sense.  Thanks again!

Thanks for your reply Takeshi.

Two things I like about this approach over a CSE is that first they are going to rework product names/page titles/URLs to target different from the long tail keywords my products already attract traffic for and second they are going to give me full Analytics access so I can see exactly which keywords are driving traffic/conversions.

I was recently approached by Catch Marketing about a service they provide that uses a product data feed to create hundreds of pages with "unique" (algorithm generated) content on a subdomain of a website targeting long-tail keywords not already driving traffic to the site.

It's an affiliate type setup with a commission-based fee structure.

Admittedly not the most elegant solution to driving long-tail keyword traffic but my company is short on resources and long on revenue goals.

I'm not really interested in hearing about creating awesome unique content written by a human as the better solution here; although I understand and aspire to those ideals the reality is that I have 60,000 products to market and I'm the only one who writes product content - after I tend to my other responsibilities.

Has anyone used or heard of this service?  Your feedback appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback Robert!

So far the people running the affiliate network have been excited because they have beaten the revenue goals they laid out for themselves in the first two months - although we have yet to approach the cost of setting the whole thing up, not to mention the cost of paying one person to manage the whole thing and having it take up about 70% of her time.

I just find it hard to believe some of the revenue numbers I see coming in.  Example: one site has a PA & DA of 1, claims to be an SEO firm based in Arizona, and I can't find where they've ever posted a link to our site, yet they have been credited with $2,800 in sales on our site.

Also, we are not a lead gen site but an ecommerce site - does that change the calculus any in terms of using affiliate aggregators?  Seems to me the Value Per Visitor is much higher for lead gen than it is for ecommerce.

Thanks again for your opinion!

My company decided to start a Link Share affiliate program at the beginning of this year.  I've had serious reservations about the value of the program since the beginning but was overruled.

Here are my concerns:

1. The majority of publishers seem to be coupon scraper sites or borderline link farms

2. I am told the biggest revenue earners in our network are publishing articles about my company with links back to our site but if they are Google Alerts sure isn't finding them and a manual search hasn't turned up anything either.  This makes me think these publishers are using some sort of unsavory way to drive traffic to our site or maybe even cookie traffic that was coming to our site anyway in order to get credit for the sale.

Most of all I'd like to hear from anyone else who has used Link Share in the past.

Secondly I realize there's not a lot of information here but I'm wondering if this passes the smell test for anyone else.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

If you type "hydroponics nutrients" into SEOMoz'a Keyword Difficulty Tool you'll see that this is a pretty competitive keyword.  The only domains to rank in the top 10 results with a DA of less than 40 have an exact or partial match to the keyword in their root domain.

Your DA is 12 which means that you probably should not have been ranking so highly (even on page 2) for such a competitive keyword.  It's possible Google was giving your site a test run higher up in the SERPs because it's a new site and then dropped you back down to where you should have been all along.

You need to continue your link building efforts (with much more focus on premium content and social networking) and wait - probably for a long time - until you build up your link profile and DA.

In the meantime, start going after less competitive long tail keyword terms that still relate to your website and product.  Try researching keywords with 3+ words that get any kind of traffic according to the Exact Match Local column in Google's Keyword Tool.  Write articles and optimize pages on your site targeting these keywords.  If you put enough of them together you'll start driving some significant traffic to your site while you continue to work towards ranking for the big main keywords.

There are far too many factors at play here to really be able to pin any one thing down, but I do have a couple observations for you:

1. I only looked at the two keywords you cited in your screenshots "how to mac" and "imovie" and really, for how competitive these keywords are you had no business ranking for them in the first place with a DA of 13, even with an exact match domain.  Is your site pretty new?  It's possible you were getting a test drive in the SERPs (Dr. Pete talked about this phenomenon here).

2. I didn't look at more than two articles, but the ones I did look at seemed a little thin on content.  Great topics, great images, but I'm guessing there were only about 100 - 150 words in them.  I have no idea if that has anything to do with your ranking troubles, but just from a user value standpoint these articles could be a little more meaty.

Good question (and one I was hoping James would ask so I could start working on him to let me blog for them ; )

Just a few ideas off the top of my head:

1. English Premiere League coverage  - EPL games are getting more and more popular in the U.S. - they even show some games on NFL Sunday!
2. Local Colorado coverage - I also live in Colorado and am a referee here and there are many competitive leagues around the Denver area.  Become the gazette for these local teams and earn tons of local links.
3. MLS coverage - the Colorado Rapids won the MLS cup last year and went to the playoffs (despite many injuries) this year - cover the local team for local links and the league in general as there are few MLS sources outside of the league's own news reporting.
4. U.S. National Team coverage - do you have any idea how hard it is to follow the U.S. Men's National Team???  The only place for regular updates is the U.S. Soccer website.

I didn't even get to equipment and product updates, etc... this is just a start - and plenty more where that came from...

I do not think blog networks are necessarily bad but they won't make your blog the most popular on the web either.

Definitely do the subdirectory as you mentioned, and use WordPress.  There are other platforms out there that are just as good but I personally prefer WordPress and you can't go wrong with them.

Continue the engagement with other soccer blogs you mentioned and start asking for guest posts with links back to your blog.

But, above all, write the best content there is to write about soccer!  I just so happen to be a huge soccer fan living in the U.S. and I can tell you that there is definitely a lack of quality content on the web for U.S. soccer fans.

I am assuming that you target the U.S. market, and if so, then you have an awesome opportunity to make your blog the best thing out there for the U.S. fan.

Good content isn't enough to move the SEO needle for your site.  Premium content is a must.  It's a lot of work, but if you do it right then you'll see huge benefits.  Don't think you can just plop a few posts down a week and see a difference.  You need to become the central source for all things concerning soccer, and that will require a concerted effort by an entire team of people.

Oh OK that makes sense - it will be a worthy investment!

As far as copying over content, here are my thoughts:

1. Are these reviews on competitor websites?  If so they would probably take a dim view of you using their reviews.  I would make sure I got permission to republish reviews originally posted somewhere else.
2. It's still technically duplicate content, but it does add value for your customer, and as long as you have a good amount of other copy on the page (original product description, accompanying how-to article or buying guide) then you're probably OK - in my humble opinion at least.

The main issue is getting permission to pull those reviews from somewhere else.  And if the review is the only (or majority) content on these product pages then it's probably not a good idea.

Good question - I have a similar situation on my site and I also get the duplicate page title warning in SEOMoz campaigns.  Up until this point I have not worried too much about the warnings because I do have the canonical tag in place and Google is indexing the correct page and leaving the copies out.

I would like to hear what others have to say about this though.

Why are customers reviewing your products somewhere besides your website in the first place?

I would strongly encourage you to set up a system that allows customers to review your products on your web pages.  That way you don't have to go to all the work of finding and copying reviews out on the web and you get a bunch of unique content for your product pages.

I don't know what your budget is like but my company uses BazaarVoice and we have enjoyed using their platform for customer reviews.  There are several good User Generated Content services out there that you can plug directly into your website.

Good luck in your search.

Just wanted to point out that if someone guarantees you first page results in major search engines just by building links without getting any additional information about your site or your target keywords then a red flag should go up in your head about the validity of their tactics.

You might want to expand and define your criteria a little more - what is the state of on-page optimization? content creation? conversion metrics? user engagement metrics? long tail keyword optimization?

Unfortunately, SEO is rarely as linear as build links = 1st page results, and if someone is willing to hire on for a job with those success metrics then they are revealing just how little they understand about SEO.

And for you - do 1st page results for a set of target keywords automatically meet your business goals?  Is your website set up to convert the traffic those results will bring?  Are you targeting the right keywords? Do you have the content and community built to engage your new visitors and turn them into lifelong customers?

All things to consider before dropping a bunch of money on a link builder with the goal of 1st page results in the SERPs.

Because a well written meta description can be much more compelling and generate better click through from the SERPs than a random snippet of copy from the page.

Use everything you already know about writing good calls-to-action and apply them to your meta tags and see if CTR improves.  If it does (and I bet it will) then you'll know exactly why it's worth it to write a good meta description.

Those are some good resources Keith!

Wow, what a fascinating product you work with and a very interesting website.

I took the liberty of checking out your site and found it pretty impressive.  Some effort has already clearly been taken to optimize this site and provide real value to your customer, so kudos to whoever is responsible for that effort.

At a very high level - so take this with a grain of salt because I only spent a few minutes - you have great domain authority and a lot of really strong content, but it appears that you are not ranking for keywords associated with your product that you clearly should be ranking for.

I went to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and typed in "cablevey tubular drag conveyors" (the first keyword in the page title of your home page) and got a long list of great keywords associated with your industry.  I went through a couple of the higher traffic ones in SEOMoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool and there's no reason why you shouldn't be ranking for these keywords based on your Domain Authority alone.  It very well could be that you just haven't optimized the proper page on your site for these keywords yet, and it is possible that a little on-page optimization is all you need to start ranking well because your DA is so strong.

I am willing to go more in-depth if you want - just shoot me a private message and we can exchange contact information.

As far as a referral goes... there are many good SEO companies and individuals in the SEOMoz community who would be able to provide quality help.  My recommendation would be to instantly tune out anyone who says you need link building and content - not that you don't need those things but I don't think they are your priority right now.

when I could get someone internally to do this.

Sounds like you answered your own question, and I agree.  Thank them for their list of companies and hand it over to someone on your team.