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Although both pages are very similar sans the logo color and some verbiage, if we do the rel canonical from GoCentrix->CallRingTalk.com then CallRingTalk.com will be the preferred site for indexing?

** Yes.

You can also add rel canonical to it self on  CallRingTalk.com.

Lastly, will having had the duplicate content for some time now have any sort of lasting effect on our potential ranking once we implement the canonicalization?

** No, you are more then safe. This rel canonical will only help google understand what is your preferred version and it will display it accordantly.

Overall the only downside of duplicate content is that Google might show in serps the version that is teh secondary as importance in your opinion - but there is no algorithmic or manual filter / penalty for this even if you don't implement rel canonical.

Hope it helps.

No, it is safe.

We've used optimizely.com on very high profile SEO landing pages and there was no effect on the SEO side. Just make sure that during the split test all settings are right.

Whatever you use the best old school approach is to noindex the B version of the split test.

Cheers.

Hi,

On blogs I usually don't use or advice to use the brand or domain name as blog titles are usually long - adding the domain / brand will only make them even longer. If your blog makes a good job as far as branding - no need to put that in your Title.

As far as keywords - that is always a good idea - but again - you should use your main keyword that is targeted with a particular post in your H1 and use the h1 also as the title tag - that can cover the basic setup. Anyway, I would rather not use the keyword in the Title tag / h1 if it dosen't fit and if it's not really readable like Jesse also mention. Also the keyword, to "maximize" the SEO effect should be as much as possibile closer to the beginning of the title.

You can add for some - the hype formula for keywords - Use the "keyword: comment" format.

So if your main keyword is Iphone and your post is actually called "the new model of Iphone" you can move the keyword in front using: "Iphone: the new model" - stupid sample but hope it sends the idea

Hope it helps.

Mike is right - it's a good approach.

Another option will be to use rel canonical cross domain -> it works like a charm. (as long as it make sense and you want to keep both domain "in business")

In this way you can still leverage both domains if needed.

here is a good and clear resource on the subject covering both 301 and rel canonical:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.at/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html

Hope it helps !

Cheers.

In this case you can let those be as they are...

No harm to the website or pages for this "issue" - it is a common think for this type of color / type differences and you should not add rel canonical or redirect it s you need them both in the search pages.

There is no down side of having those like this.

Cheers.

Hi Bram,

For this issue there is an easy fix -> the use of hreflang.

This will take care of all issues you've mention.

See more at: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

Hope it helps.

Cheers !

Hi,

If you are the only one that has the prices displayed I think no matter the position of the prices vs competition you will always be the second choice as far as click.

Visitors will see, check the other results to see the prices there and if yours is cheeper they might get back to you. But this can be, in some cases, a good strategy - again if the prices are "right".

Just my 2c.

Hi,

A lot of higher authority sites (I am not talking about ny times but just, in a particular space, sites that have a higher authority then others) are copying lower authority sites and get credit for it from Google.

In your case -dose your competitor has more visibility and authority in general ? Was the copy session soon after your client released that particular page ? If both answers are yes, then there is a danger there. If not - there is nothing to be concerned of.

Most of the time, like you said, google's algorithm is intuitive enough to figure out where the original content came from but it's not perfect.

Hi,

Since doing the disallow on the IP address sites, they are no longer getting crawled.

** The disavow list won't stop google crawl those domain / pages. Google will just treat those links as no follow - so they won't pass Page Rank.

You will still see  those in Web master tools, the links will still be active.

Hi,

It looks indeed like you have a new low record as far as visibility.

http://screencast.com/t/mR2Uu6saTV

Anyway based on the site, size, look and feel, format and niche coverage

it dosen't look like a manual penalty.  There can be a filter in place though - there is a lot of improvement that can / should be made to the site in order to gain better visibility anyway.

You should do a full assessment and a first thing i would do is to remove from the index the thin ages - the pages that you have in the index but you don't rank or receive any or very low traffic - this can be a good start. (that is if your products are not "unique" - as I've found some on ebay with more or less the same description).

There are also some other areas that you can work on to improve engagement, branding.

Just my opinion - hope it helps.

Hi,

Your robots.txt file is very .. steroid healthy. It has his own universe

Are you 100% sure all of the entries are legit and clean ?

First thing I would do is to check Web M;aster Tools for the mobile subdomain. If you don't have it yet, that will be a good place to start - to verify the m subdomain.

Once in WeB Master Tools - you can debug this in no time.

Cheers.

Hi,

404 pages won't affect your site performance in any way - aslong as you don't heavily link to those pages internally.

Redirecting, in my opinion, is not a very good idea - as long as you don't have some better content that is touching the exact same subject, in a better way, as the old page. if this is not the case - I would't spend any more time on those - Google will clean them up after 3-4 bot visits.

cheers !

Hi,

As far as I know - based on feedback from several people, the Yahoo directory has a low crawl rate from Google bot - that means it can take some time for a link from Yahoo dir to show up.

More then that - OSE only covers a portion of the web and it might skip Yahoo Dir. if it's not in OSE it dosen't mean Google didn't find it though - there are a lot of older Yahoo dir links that are not showing in OSE.

If you post the Yahoo dir page where you have the link for sure me or someone else from here can have a more direct " dive " into this...

Hope it helps.

Hi,

The canonical solution should be enough however I would still build some xml sitemaps and submit those via Web master Tools to speed the process. You can also build some html sitemaps with a clear structure and add those in the footer - again, to speed up the proces a little bit.

If you split the content into multiple xml sitemaps you can also track the crawling process.

You should also check your crawling speed in Web Master Tools to see how many pages in avarage the google bot is hitting each day - based on those numbers you can run some prediction on how long it will take more or less for google to re crawl your pages.

If your numbers is "bad" you will need to improve it some how to help with process - it can do wonders...

Hope it helps.

Hi,

First of all Google dosen't have any penalties for duplicate content.  There are some filters that are touching duplicate content but there are no specific filters or penalties from Google for duplicate content.

You won't rank with the duplicate content (one of the versions) but that dosen't mean you are under a penalty. In some cases you might also rank with two pages - 1 and 2 as position if the "space" is not very tough.

So even if you will let this in the format you have it now - you won't get into troubles with both domains- again, with one you might not rank - that's about it.

As far as solution, if the dot es is targeting Spain - you should't 301 redirect to dot com.

You can use rel alternate or rel canonical cross domain in roder to provide the information that the content is the same.

301 redirects will also work if you choose one of the domain as the main content source - it's safer and faster but in my personal opinion you will need to assess the market, the content and take a decision based on that - don't rush into things as , again, you won't get any penalties or filters for this.

Hope it helps.

Can you add the two URLs of the two domain names you've mention ?

Cheers.

Hi,

There is no penalization for duplicate content (internal or external).

There are some filters in place and pages, not domains will rank lower if the content is the same with other pages (again - internal or external).

Panda is also a filter - this time domain wide that can filter down a domain if the content is not very good - but it's a filter, dedicated and not on a duplicate content basis but on a niche basis.

The only negative side of duplicare content is:

• if the duplicate content is within the same domain you might rank with one of the pages that is not your main asset. (google is actually choosing those not based on PR, PA or anything else but by the url format - strange but true)

• if the duplicate content is domain vs domain - google will choose the one that he thinks is most relevant (and not only based on content but based on page and domain authority, google bounce rate - not analytic bounce rate and all the other major signals).

There are some cases when google is ranking better a 100% duplicate page that even links to the source because google decided that the domain is better, more trustworthy and so on.

well, there is such a case and it was online for long time but the bad guys are in top of organic search and it does not seem to bother google at all!

** You might be looking at this the wrong way. Maybe the "bad" guys are actually better.

If you post both domains maybe people here can asess those and give some objective feedback.

Post the domain without mentioning who is the bad guy in your opinion so people here won't take that in consideration when sending you feedback.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

It works very well short term. If you have the target page in a "home page" type of look and feel you won't have any issues with UX either.

I've seen this done but there are a few things that needs to "happen" in order to get the best out of it:

• have high authority on the www.site.com

• the target page is a new page that needs an initial boost

• the target page has the home page look and feel type of approach (navigation, options etc)

• you need to have the ability to roll back when needed

Also like Mike mentioned there are a few other very viabile options:

• optimize the home page for the keyword (my favorite - unless everything is straight forward and there is no risk for filters and penalties - especially the ones that are related with another text / links)

• feature the new page on the home page very well - for both sending out PR and CTR (so once someone will land on the home page, your CTR will be high for this page)

Hope it helps.

Hello,

Yes, with any URL change you will lose rank. There is a golden rule : never change URLS.

I do understand the reason for this change and over medium - long term it might be a very good decision but on a short run you might see some Serps dance.

Now of course you need to 301 redirect each old page to the new page on a 1:1 basis. But even so you will lose some as 301 redirects don't pass all the PR from one page to another.

I had similar cases when some site went from some urls with dot asp to LAMP and they had to change any way .. with 301 redirects and new friendly URLS on short term they lost some rankings but on a long term they gain in rankings. so if you do that fro a client make them cristal clear that they will see some drops in the beginning.

If you can with this change improve other elements that will help blur the drops.

Also a very good idea is to change on stages - base don categories or something - if that is possibile as in this way you can track, monitor and adjust as you move forward and also you won't drop site wide with a full site url change. (but sometimes that's not possibile).

Hope it helps.

Cheers.

Hi,

You should count those at all. If you get stuck in counting and calculating PR and how much PR is passed from one page to another you will lose focus from what it dose matter. This dosen't.

About the 100 links per page -  that was a very old technical limitation from Google's side. There is no longer the case.

See more here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-many-links-per-page/

and a fast 2 and so min video from Matt Cutts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6g5hoBYlf0 

So the bottom line is that you should not count and focus on PR and how much PR is passed -only look at things from a normal user and ask your self: dose t his page make sense ? Dose it make sense to have over 100 links on this page ?

Not sure if this was the answer you are looking for but ... hope it helps.

Cheers.