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It looks like I have done it correctly with the rel canonical.  Open Site Explorer shows it as two different pages.  I suppose that is just the way OSE works. This line: is in the header of both www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.asp.

Yes, I was specifically referring to Penguin.  I am seeing uplift in rankings for specific keyword phrases that dropped last October.  These keywords had backlinks disavowed in March 2013.

Hi I've got the same problem. Theres got to be an easier way to do this? Our subdomain is a banking product which doesnt allow for external access (for some silly reason). Any assistance or advice would be fantastic as a long term strategy would probably annoy a few customers. Cheers

It sounds like you should be able to go into GWT and go to Configuration > URL Parameters and tell Google which URL parameters you don't want to be crawled. They have a quick guide to doing this correctly at https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687. Definitely read through that before you do anything, to make sure you don't accidentally deindex more than you planned on...

I would highly recommend against doing this....the model that Facebook wants multiple location businesses is have a Facebook Place account (which allows checkins) for each brick and mortar location and then a Facebook Page for the actual brand. Even though it may seem appealing to get all those users and combine them, I would petition them on each of the individual Places pages to 'Like' THE Official Facebook page. Perhaps even incentivize them to do so with a fan gate or something like that. If you do decide combine the stores into one page there are some downsides: Not adhering to Facebook best practices for businesses which who knows what this could mean down the road but it's pretty clear that FB is serious about people following BP especially with regard to businesses. Facebook has the ability to create local deals based on checkins, you obviously will lose this and the ability to do this going forward. If you lump your locations together and someone tries to check in on their iPhone, they won't see your business but they'll have the ability to 'Add' it so they can check in. So basically the location you just merged will now exist again only you won't have control over it.

Well, rel=canonical will technically work fine, however in this case if you are migrating the entire site (presuming you have all pages on the old domain, going somewhere on the new domain, I would essentially setup 301 redirects from the old domain to the new domain. I don't think you should do anything in the webmaster console. Just remove all the pages from the old domain and setup 301s from old domain to new domain. Google Webmaster Console Site migration IMO is for scenarios like you have yourdomain.net and you acquire the domain yourdomain.com and want to migrate the domain from .com to .net or if you change the brand name to yourbrandname.net or so on. Does that make sense ? I hope that helps.

A follow up and update to my adwords adventure. I the end, it seems capitalization did not matter.  The quality score of our keyword settled over those first few days at 3/10.  In trying to figure out more about quality score I found two incredible resources which answered many questions. First was this blog post http://www.epiphanysearch.co.uk/blog/decoding-the-quality-score-2/ This has a graph for each QS and charts position vs CTR.   This data gave me bench marks to understand what I needed to achieve with CTR.   "Broadbeach Media" replied to this post and reinforced the idea that CTR was the leading indicator of relevance. I also read all of the blog posts at http://www.clickequations.com/blog/ This was an invaluable resource.    So many time I spend hours doing searches look for answers to questions; Then I find a gem like this blog that answers so many questions it kept me up at night reading. I didn't give up on my keyword.  I kept my bid high.   MY CPC was at 450% of where I started.   I split test my add like a madman.  Originally couldn't imagine a better ad than I had.   I made 6 different versions of my ad title.   I used a statistical significance spreadsheet (wish I could tell you where I got it, but the author didn't provide that information on the spreadsheet.  There are several of these available online). As I gain significance each day, I was able to eliminate ads.  Just with title change, my best performer was able to get a 5.6% CTR (from 4.5% before).  Through out this process I watched the average position to make sure I had comparable data.  (I manipulated my bid to maintain a constant average position.)  Then I started testing a few change in the body of the ad copy.  Goldmine!  My best performer was now hitting 7.9%.  QS was increasing slowly over the 3 weeks. (QS is now where I was pre-test QS=7).  A few days ago, I let loose on the bid.  My average CPC is now the same as it was pre-test.  My average position is now 1.2 (from 2.7).  CTR is between 8% and 10%.   If my QS goes up again, I will be paying less per click than originally.  total clicks for PPC have just about doubled!

Here is another way you could handle it, in a separate program that detects a smartphone. For a phone that can handle it, you do a redirect and for one that doesn't, you do something else (obviously, I haven't tested this, but this way also has the upside that it tracks the clicks. If your site uses this style of URL Call 555 555 5555 Or this if you handle URLs this way Call 555 555 5555

Hey Eugene! Yeah that is a common problem with Retargeting campaigns...it can be tricky to set them up properly so that you are removing people from your cookie pool once they convert. I'd say only about half of all advertisers do this correctly so that is why you continue to see ads even after you convert. With keeping that in mind, I still believe that the benefits of retargeting far outweigh the negatives. I can tell you that the majority of the people who sign up for free trials with us every week have at least been exposed to one of our retargeting banners. Not all of them will directly convert off of the banner but the brand impression has a value that shouldn't be underestimated. -Justin

I'm personally really picky where I would allow my link juice to go from my strongest page (Home Page).  I would make sure to pass my link juice to the most important pages, and not waste it on any page that won't benefit the search engines or user right away. When practiced, this would look like a menu bar with no drop downs, only links pointing to my important pages within content and only important links in the footer.  This not only funnels your visitors the way you want, but it also spreads the link juice the way you want. Another reason to do what I had described is usability.  Although people manage to function well on most sites, it has been shown that fewer options leads to better results.  You don't want your visitors to have to debate on what's the best way to go, you just want them to click forward. Anyway, here is my favorite navigation example: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ I like how the refinement is under the menu, but this is just my own personal preference with no data/examples or anything backing it up.

Thanks for your insight.  I find it interesting that people who follow companies will follow them across multiple platforms and desire unique info from each. I thought that people choose their favorite method of getting information and want to be able to get it all using that method.  The idea that I need to watch a company through all the different social platforms to get a full spread of content is annoying to me.

Thank you.  I was concerned I might have split my juice between two versions. "OSE will also calculate redirected metrics into calculating scores such as MozRank and Domain Authority, and I believe there are plans (if they haven't been implemented already) of including canonical metrics into these calculations." This is interesting.  If I understand this correctly, this tells me that when you have inbound links with affiliate codes and such attached to the URL that MozRank is not calculated correctly; it is split between two "versions" of the same page.

I work on a big ecommerce client which purchased another ecommerce website, the strategy they eneded up going with was running both websites still as they had such a good name in the market and both had decent ranks. (Option 1) We can also aim for SERP domination on specific keywords, yet I understand the clients request to take one site down. I think if you implement cross site 301's and move content to the main site it is evident that their will be a loss in rankings seen.  (options 3)

that seemed to work.  Thanks

I think a lot of people fear making changes to Meta descriptions and page titles especially once they have established rankings for fear of rocking the boat! Whilst with PPC you're able to continually adjust and monitor, doing the same with organic listings is probably seen as a bit of a risk to many? Having said that, I think it's probably a very under utilized method of conversion rate optimisation at a very early stage, so if you can effectively track it & get the mix of good CTR whilst holding/improving on rankings, then you're on to a very good thing IMO

You can give them the code like I have done here http://www.associatemelody.com/link.html You would use html code similar to this: Hope this helps, Melody

Hi Maxwell! Great insight -- One question: Is there any benefit in aggregating/cleaning up outbound links on your site? Recently, I have discovered that Moz recommended 'cleaning up' outbound links on one of my sites in my campaigns. I wasn't aware there was a way to do this. Do you have any insight? Perhaps there is an FAQ on Moz even?

I figure they can find related sites in several ways.  How can you tell if they have made this determination?