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Since going to a wordpress platform in November,  I have seen many 501 server errors in the crawl report.

When I click on the link in the report however, the link shows the actual page with no errors.

I reviewed all the Q&A but didn't see anything related to this issue. Does anyone have an idea as to why the actual link works when I click on it but the SEOMOZ crawl bot is showing a 5XX error.

Thanks for any ideas or feedback you may have.

Thanks for all the feedback. After some serious review, I am convinced that Google somehow began indexing our HTTPS pages and dropped all our HTTP pages.  As this is a .net website with a web.config file,  what would you all recommend I do to make the google bot read the http pages instead of the https pages.

Would you add robot.txt file to the web.config file or handle it another way.

Again, thanks for all the assistance.

Nothing "naughty".  I have done some guest articles on various blogs related to the industry over the past 4 months but they are all legit unique articles and on sites with a domain authority or 30 or higher so that should not have been the issue.  Also, they were not paid articles, they were free articles.

Our chief competitors have been actively promoting theire sites and increasing the sizes of their websites. We have been limited. We also do not do any PPC, but all our top competitors are doing PPC. That should not be an issue, but maybe things are changing. I am not sure on that point.

Thanks for the feedback.

I have only been with this company since July 2011, but I believe they were hit by the Penguin update of March 2011. Since then it has been steady. During that update, they lost their local listings but retained there national rankings. Since that time, the rankings have remained in the top 5 for our major keywords.

I have had a 10 page website(registered in 1999) rank for my top keywords(top 5) for over 4 years.  No changes have been made to the website. (Static website).

July 11, 2012, most of the keywords, and all the major keywords were dropped from Google. They remain steady in Bing and Yahoo.

I saw that some people referred to a Panda 3.9 refresh on that day, but also saw that Google(Matt Cutts) denied the refresh.

Given the simplicity of the website and the strong backlinks, which remain, what are other reasons I could see a drastic drop in 1 day.

Any ideas on where to target my search for solving this very serious issue?  Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  Although I have been on the vendor side of the equation for over 7 years doing SEO, SEM & Consulting, I am now on the client side and making these decisions take on a whole new importance.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

We are located at a physical address and people can come through the door and work with us one to one, however that is not the preferred method.

My bigger issue is that if we only have one physical address and register it with Google Places, will it affect the rankings we are receiving in other areas of the country.

For example, in some cities, we are on the first page under the term "city"+keyword, but if I register our corporate address with Google Places, will it affect the other local SERPS?

OK, Here is a question which I can't find but think people have thought about. I would like to know others opinion.

I have had a site that ranks well under generic national keyword terms. (not geographically specific)  Its a small website, only 10 pages.

We get 85% of our business from online applications.  These applications come from all over the united states.Our SERP rankings generate 70% of all our traffic.

My question is this: we operate in a state where we don't do business.  We are a virtual business.  Should I sign up for google places? Will It hurt my national SERP rankings?

I have 300 URL specific websites that rank well in Yahoo and Bing.  Unfortunately I don't have access to the websites due to a previous marketing agreement (before my time).

I do have access to the application that is i-framed into the websites.  I was thinking about adding a paragraph below the application with a link to the primary website.

How does google look at these links. If I add the link, there will be an additional 300 links showing up at the same time. Not what they want to see from my personal knowledge base. At the same time, its not black hat SEO, I am just trying to link to the other websites which I own which are related.

What are people thoughts.

I have thought about that but what criteria would you use to decide if it is worth the $8 bucks for the renewal.

I own a couple hundred domains and am also trying to also figure out whether I should stop renewing them and let them expire or 301 them to one of my industry related websites.  I understand that seasoned URL's that are keyword specific can add small bit of value, but how much value.... $8 worth per year?

It only gets about 500 unique visitors per month so given that statistic,  it would only make maybe .60 cents per year.  Thanks for the reply however.

I have a domain with a domain authority rank of 16 and 0 inbound links.  I have owned the domain for over 6 years and no longer have any use for it. Additionally, it has no good keywords in the domain. It has been a one page website for about 4 years.

The broad question is what criteria do people using in deciding whether or not to renew a domain name? I have a bunch coming due and am interested if I should take the time to try and sell on SEDO or just let them expire.

Whould love to hear how people handle this situation.

Well, after careful consideration, I passed on the idea for many of the reasons you mentioned, although the primary reason was the cost benefit analysis.

The idea if others want to use it and provide me a link for the idea, it is below.

The idea is based on the "The Day in the Life of America" project done in the 1980's where they had 500 photographers take pictures on one single day and then they created a book. (There was no internet or digital photographers back then)

Anyway, the idea was going to be called "Triple Eleven" for 11/11/11. The idea was to launch a site which allowed people to upload photos taken on 11/11/11, input their location, time and a description. Then after the 11th, let the public vote and choose the best picture.

I thought this could have very real viral implications if promoted correctly and by offering a great prize.

Thanks again for the input.

I have come up with a very creative way to get some great back links using white hat methods. The problem is that the back links to the site would be to an interior page or external promotional website which then have links back to the main website. What kind of value for the main domain would this potentially achieve. What are peopLes thoughts on this idea?

That is what I thought. Thanks for the reply.  Now I need to find time to return the favor to the board.....pay it forward.

In regards to the onsite optimization, I am still trying to slowly fix some of the issues. It is an old site not built well and done in tables.  Once I get a bit more money, I plan to rebuild the website in wordpress.

A follow on question from above. Although you say the long term strategy is a single site with local city pages,  which process would see quicker results? city specific domains + keyword or  state.website.com/city + keyword.html ?

Just curious what you think. thanks.

We are a virtual company doing business in 30 states nationwide. All our business is done via the phone, fax, email and express mail.

Back in 2008 I optimized our small 8 page website for our key terms and was able to rank the site #1 nationally for our main keywords.  (I did a 6 month consulting gig for the company). The site remained #1 in Google until last year when some serious competitors entered the space and knocked us down to the middle of page one.

Then with the Panda update #1 &  #2 we have seen our traffic drop 50% mostly due to not receiving the City + Keywords rankings any more.

I have now been hired full time to bring us back but my question is this

• Do I need to build out city specific pages on the existing website?
• Do I need to buy keyword specific domains and create microsites?
• Do a combination of both?

I would love to do both but I have to prioritize my efforts.

Any thoughts would be great.