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Hey You can use the URL removal tool to expedite this and it is one of the few times that Google actually recommends you do so: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1269119?hl=en. Likewise, the URLs will eventually fall away but it can take some time. The most important thing here is to ensure the site is 100% protected going forwards and does not get reinfected. The pharma hack often has three backdoors in WP itself, a plugin and often the database. These can go for months without being called and suddenly, the site is reinfected again and they are getting better all the time at making this harder and harder to clean up. This is worth a read: http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/07/understanding-and-cleaning-the-pharma-hack-on-wordpress.html We often also see a second degree payload with some black hat SEO and outbound links on the site so even when you get rid of the main problem, you may have a few small residual problems. I would suggest an SEO audit, some pro active security and at very least review the outbound links from the site to make sure they are all legit (Screaming Frog is your friend here and it will show external links + linking page). Hope that helps! Marcus

Thanks Andy, Appreciate your feedback.

The quantity of links isn't as important as the quality of those links. If there are several links to and from low quality websites it is only a matter of time before your competitors get smacked with an algo update. Sure, blog back links take time to build, but they also appear natural, and more importantly, related to the content on your site. That means that theoretically they are good for searchers. This is the best strategy. Link building should really consist of high authority directory listings, competitive link analysis, branded comment backlinks, social bookmarking, and guest blogging. You should never allow more than 10% of your existing link profile to be added at a time. Doing any more than 10% looks unnatural, and unnatural link building is not the way to go.  Buying links is kind of an SEO death wish.

That's all you need to do, is remove it via dns

Thanks for your response Marie, That is very helpful!

"there is no penalty for have duplicates of your own content" Alan, I must respectfully disagree with this statement. Perhaps google will not penalize you directly, but it is easy to self-canabalize key terms if one has many facets that only differ slightly. I have seen this on a site where they don't rank on the first page, but they have 3-4 pages on the second page or SERPs. This is the exact issue that I am trying to resolve. Evan ps. sorry I hit the wrong button, but you got a good answer out of it

Hey Erin, Thanks for the further explanation and clarification. I really appreciate it!

Hey Samuel, I feel like this confirms some of the thoughts that I had. The different terms are, searched, so I think it will be best to leave them as individuals. Thanks for your contribution!

Hey James, Thanks for the feedback. Testing was the conclusion that I came to as well. I will try to remember to follow up with the results. Cheers, Evan

I like EGOL's idea of partnering with US websites that do not ship to Canada and arranging a referral scheme. This is one way to take advantage of US sites taking up real estate in Canadian results. I agree that "canada" is likely a common modifier - if the product is niche enough or bought in small enough quantities, large-scale keyword research tools might not be of much use. Consider other modifiers, such as "ca" as well. Don't go overboard on the keyword usage though: stuffing "Canada" into every title is unnecessary and will start to look unnatural. Make sure you've taken advantage of localisation tools and techniques such as geo-targeting and the rel="alternative" tag for language, i.e. specifying en-ca as English language, for Canada (or French as well, if that's part of your market!). Unfortunately if your competition, albeit irrelevant US sites, are incredibly strong, you'll need to compete with them on standard metrics such as the rate of link acquisition and the quality of the links you both build. Don't worry yourself with building the same number of links Petco has outright, but you may need to look at figuring out their rate of link building and look at their social / content activity, and devise a plan to match that as best you can in the future. You don't need to build the same historical numbers as these huge sites have, but your competitiveness needs to rise to match or better the sites you want to keep up with / pass.