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Hey Frank, In general, here are the 10 tips how to choose a domain. If you provide the complete list, I'd try to help you in more particular way. Cheers, Martin

Hi Frank. Here are a couple posts on this: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/, an update of: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/.  That should clarify it for you. There are pros and cons obviously, but that should give you the full scope.

Hi Frank, Thanks for the additional info on this and for clarifying that the business models are local and well-acquainted with the role citations play in Local Search Marketing. What follows is just my opinion, based on what I've seen over the years. I've honestly never been a fan of any paid local directory, though some people swear by them. You shouldn't be having to pay for a BOTW listing. Unless I've totally missed something, I'm pretty sure those are still free (https://secure.botw.org/secure/Signup.aspx?type=jumpstart&directory=local). I'm not familiar with the benefits of Business.com and have never submitted a client to them, so I'm afraid I can't speak to that. If my clients were in the hospitality industry, I'd make sure I'd covered their citations in as many of the free generic local directories as possible and then be sure they were enrolled in any industry specific directories that do drive traffic/bookings to hotels, even if these were paid ones. Beyond this, I'd devote resources to content development and social outreach rather than paid generic directories. I'd predict a better return from that kind of effort.

Heads up on this thread > the descriptor has just been given the axe: http://moz.com/community/q/heads-up-on-new-google-local-guidelines

Hi Frank A 301 would take care of the problem very well, but where that may not be possible, using a canonical tag would do the trick.  If you can make sure that the page, in either http or https form uses a consistent canonical (one version for both), that will protect you from any duplicate issues as well. For more information on canonicals you can read the Moz guide on them. Hope this helps.

Does your client have that much content to regularly update a tumblr and a custom on-site blog? I would actually go with the on-site blog. What's your customer's reasoning behind the change?

Edit: I apologize, because I was not nearly clear enough here. The Star Hotels site will have 5 pages dedicated to The Michelangelo Hotel. The content will sit solely on that server as those 5 pages. Those 5 pages will each be indexed as 2 URLs. www.michelangelohotel.com <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/ www.michelangelohotel.com/accommodations <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/accommodations And so on.

Hi there, Unfortunately the site seems to be down right now, so I can't have a look (I'm getting a 500 unavailable error), but I would say that while copy is important to give Google an idea about the page's topic, copy for copy's sake is not necessary. In other words, as long as the page says enough to get the message across about what it's meant to convey, you don't need to add another 200 words for no reason. That said, each page should contain a good paragraph or so of unique text in most cases. I don't love putting minimums on the number of words that should be used, but keep in mind that text presented as images, etc. should use a technique like CSS image replacement in order to show that text in a search engine readable format, i.e. HTML. I would not be confident that this has caused your 30% drop in traffic unless the pages are now extremely void of unique content and could be seem as "duplicates" or near-dupes of each other as a result, or simply as not very useful. On the other hand, if there are SEO errors with the site already, a big drop in content will certainly not help. Get that 500 error checked out!

Thank you, gentlemen, for your responses.

Hi Guys, I agree with Takeshi and Michael. As a city specific directory creator I think that you have to look at value here and yahoo and BOTW just are not offering that value anymore. I know that for us, the changes have forced us to look at value of content (which thankfully has always been a key to our success), user engagement and social interaction. Unfortunately not all directories can do this because they are so broad. When looking for a directory, I would be looking for niche and trying to find the opportunity to leverage knowledge for link. We now accept high quality unique articles and interviews in exchange for links. I know my take is outside the box, but google wants socially engaging user friendly content, give them socially engaging user friendly content Jeremy

Yep, all of my future URLs will be nice and tidy and have SEO value. Just not changing them.  Good thing I am the boss here. 

For local results they can be worth the effort.  However, in my opinion, you would be better off investing the time and money into content or usability testing.

I pick up what you are putting down... thanks for the clarification Frank. Here is how I think things would play out... If you are creating /super-awesome-best-thing-ever as a new page that does not exist yet on your site, it will have very little rank. It if you redirect site.com to site.com/super-awesome-best-thing-ever you will have a partial drop in page rank due to the 301 redirect. Just because you are redirecting your homepage to the /super-awesome-bet-thing-ever does not mean it will get the full power of your old homepage, site.com. You would also need to change all of your internal links to point to site.com/super-awesome-best-thing-ever instead of site.com, because you'd lose some of your link juice flow if you also used the redirect internally. And if you use a 301 redirect, you are telling Google that this change is permanent - inferring that you are no longer going to use your domain of site.com. Does that mean Google would remove the URL site.com from the index... I don't know. I do know that SEOmoz places keyword usage in the URL under the "moderately important" section of its on page analysis - that said, I wouldn't go to trouble of this. I think you are better off optimizing your homepage for the keyword or creating a /super-awesome-best-thing-ever landing page. Hope this helps. Mike