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Based on Google's own blog they ignore the revisit-after attribute. I'd still remove it since there's no purpose.

The simple answer is they're using a generic TLD(gTLD) and then a county TLD(ccTLD). Google has long said that it recognizes that the same content on different ccTLDs will not count as duplicate because they understand it's geotargeted

Ets7nHOV1Yo

Let me ask this:

You opened with the statement "But so far I haven't seen the advantages for SEO purposes..."

What are your expectations here? In terms of a SEO-friendly software, I find all have their ins and outs but from an SEO perspective, most perform about the same. It's a bit like saying "I want to drive a car from LA to NY. So what is the best car to drive?" The car is less important than the route and the driver.

Most CMS will do the basics well. You need SEO friendly URLs and that's the largest issue I've seen (and URLs are a minor thing in terms of SEO). Maybe a meta description too. You will be providing the rest of the SEO via content (i.e. H1 tags, etc) and most everything does that well.

Wordpress is not a CMS per se, it's really a blogging software that made a shift to reach a wider audience. I've seen some very impressive sites that use it... and don't use it all that well. Modx looks like a pure CMS.

If your site is already up, I would NOT change. Changing software typically means changing URLs and that means you're gonna take a short term hit (not to mention the fun with 301s). Unless you have some burning need, I always tell people to think twice about changing URLs.

I would assume you're talking about using a JS method to create links in the DOM. The answer here is no, Googlebot will not recognize them. Google has improved their ability to read some JS (like if you use an embedded JS link Googlebot can understand that) but it does not interpret or execute JS that I know of.

If you go this route, I would suggest enumerating your links in a noscript block.

My rule of thumb of URLs is this

• If you're making a new site, put keywords in the URL when possible
• If you already have a site, leave the URLs alone. The small benefit keywords in the URL give is typically not worth the headache of redirecting all your old pages to the new page. You'll lose some SEO steam in the process.

The short answer is you can rank any site for any geolocation.

The longer answer is that you have a ccTLD which, as you've noted, is geotargeted to Spain. That's not an insurmountable problem, but it does tend to tilt the table against you slightly. That having been said, this is about SEO and marketing so if you want to keep your single ccTLD there's no reason you can't. When was the last time you took note of the domain name of a link you were clicking in a search result? As long as it's relevant, do you care?

Build other language sections and segment them using subdirectories (i.e. brand.es/en, /fr, /it, etc) and build your localization in. Advertise locally through Adwords and do what you can to reach out to local links so you can build some broader geotargeting for engine bots to grab onto. Remember, make sure you're doing authentic localization and NOT dumping your content into Google Translate.

All this having been said, if I were you I would see if I can get the ccTLDs for these other countries and do your localization that way (i.e brand.co.uk, brand.fr, etc). This will tilt the table in your favor and allow you to focus on localizing and marketing. It will make advertising easier as well.

The hosting does matter some... The main problem you'll have is that you have 3 different continents so 2 of them will have slower connectivity. That can negatively affect perceptions and crawling but that's about it. As far as rankings, links are a better ranking factor than hosting. Get some UK sites to link to your UK site and you should rank well in the UK.

There's nothing wrong with doing that. ccTLDs can be duplicates of their .com brethren because it's understood that they're localized. As Matt Cutts said, spammers are not using ccTLDs like that and Google is pretty smart at figuring that out.

A dynamic URL usually has something called a query string. In your URL, it's everything after the ? and is typically used to pass data to a programming language.

domain.com/index.php?x=1

domain.com/index.php?y=3

Some sites use mod_rewrite to change them to look less program related

domain.com/x/1

It's important to note that ANY change in the query string will make Google see that page as distinct, even if there's nothing else different. If you have an issue with this type of duplication you should use canonical to narrow down your pages to just those with distinct content.

If you're adding titles (like to a Wordpress blog) it's possible that you're creating pages and your CMS program makes URLs based on titles

domain.com/blog/the-best-blog-topic-ever

Is that what you're referring to?

What certification? I read an article several years ago on "SEO Certification" that made the point that, in order for any SEO cert to have any weight, it would have to be administered by an actual search engine.

How can you certify something that doesn’t have an established right or wrong way to do things? If you are a CPA, or certified public accountant, then there is a right way of doing things, and that right way is often the legal way. The wrong way could land you in financial difficulties, for you or your client (or worst case, prison).

There are definite no-nos in the SEO industry, that’s for sure. There are definite right ways to do things, but even if you happen to agree with other professionals, there are still no guarantees. Every SEO that I speak with has a differing opinion on something that should be done, and it even varies in regards to every search engine.

I don't see any path forward for certification (that would mean something) unless Google decides to start certifying SEOs.

To my knowledge, Google does only "simple" Javascript. For instance

My Link

will be spidered as a link. if you have your click event do something more arcane (like call a function) it won't be. If you want to further obfuscate it from Google, add your click event by using an observer (like JQuery's $().click() function).

Google, to my knowledge, has never spidered AJAX. AJAX may not contain any human readable content.

A fantastic place to find out where your links are unnatural is in the same place that told you it was unnatural: Webmaster Tools. Inside the page for your site expand Traffic then click Links to your site. This gives you links based on how Google sees your site. You can easily identify unnatural links (like sitewides) this way.

I don't know that I've ever heard of Matt's spreadsheet idea before. Does Google actually respond to such things? If he is being penalized, it's because of Penguin and Google has been adamant that there's no manual adjustments they can make to fix it (hence why re-inclusion requests don't work).

While they are technically different, most robots (mostly the ones that matter) are smart enough to figure out those are the same URL. I wouldn't worry about the trailing slash, although it doesn't hurt to be consistent.

Your terminology is off, however. The subdomain is what appears before the domain. So www.domain.com is a subdomain of domain.com. The trailing slash is part of the URL structure that denotes a part of the website.

Wordpress is a blog software that went CMS. It's not a terribly large leap but it's important to note that Wordpress is still, by and large, used for blogging first and CMS second.

Joomla is a true CMS so it does more things and it tends to do them better than Wordpress in most cases but it's not as simple to use as Wordpress. It's also not as well supported, due to it not being as widely used. That doesn't make it bad, it's just a caveat.

If all you want is a basic website with a few pages, I'd go Wordpress. If you want something more thorough, go with a true CMS (Joomla, Drupal, etc), but be prepared for a steeper learning curve.

Except for geolocation purposes, your IP has no real effect on your SEO. The only thing I would suggest is making your TTL on your DNS records very low about a day before you move so when you do move you minimize the chance that you're hitting the old IP.

I'd go with phpBB. It's Open Source and has several popular mods, including some for SEO.

Some paid software is also SEO friendly, including software like vBulletin and xenForo.

There's several different kids of SSL but it sounds like you're talking about a single domain. That narrows things down to the two most common kinds: domain validated and extended validation.

Domain validation is the most common kind of certificate. The certification authority will send an email to the administrative contact listed on the WHOIS of the domain. Typically it's a link and you click it and that's all that's involved. These are relatively inexpensive but only work for one domain or subdomain (i.e. the certiciate will be issued for www.domain.com but won't show as valid for domain.com). In this same vein, but more expensive, is the wildcard certificate, which works for all subdomains (*.domain.com).

Extended Validation is only available for corporations and you have to jump through a LOT of hoops to get one (birth certificate of one of your officers, letter of validity from your lawyer or accountant, etc.). They take some time to get but the advantage is that you get the coveted green bar (see PayPal's site for a good example).

It doesn't matter who issues the certificate. Verisign used to be a huge name in this area but not so much in recent years. You'll pay more for their name and "warranty", but I doubt anyone outside the industry itself could tell you who Verisign is, let alone what the difference is. I have two Godaddy certificates and it hasn't slowed us down one bit. Many people simply resell for another authority (i.e. GeoTrust, Comodo, etc)

The encryption itself doesn't differ between certificates. Your Private Key (the piece your server needs to decrypt the traffic) and Certificate Signing Request(CSR) will have to be at least 2048 bits in strength (industry-wide). The actual encryption between your server and your client's browser is something that is negotiated as part of the "handshake" when the connection is first made and is most likely 128 bits (although some browsers and servers can support 256 bits). One thing you will need to note is the difference between SHA1 and SHA2 (Godaddy directly asks you which you want and I'm sure the others do as well). When you look at a certificate's details in your browser you'll see who issued a certificate. If it says G2, they're using SHA2. SHA1 has some weaknesses and is being phased out. The only people who will notice the difference are people running Windows XP SP2 or earlier (running any browser, even Chrome or Firefox) and they'll get an invalid certificate warning.

Be sure that your host has plugged the Heartbleed bug or you'll expose your private keys (anyone with your private key can decrypt your traffic).

Yeah, your options involving DNS are severely limited. Really, you have to have a web server send the proper codes (in your host's case they're using their own). So point them to your server and have it return the 301s you need.

Your options are

1. De-index the duplicate pages yourself and save yourself the crawl budget
2. 301 the duplicates to the pages you want to keep (preferred)
3. Canonical the duplicate pages, which lets you pick which page remains in the index. The duplicate pages will still be crawled, however.

Subdomains are a bank shot at best. Google can determine their relationship to the root domain, but you're relying on Google to make that connection. A subfolder, however, has an implicit connection to the root domain (because it's under said domain). Just understand that a subdomain (for the purposes of SEO) should be treated like it is its own site. That means each one gets its own marketing campaign.

Should you consolidate? Possibly. How related are the franchisees? I mean, if we're talking restaurants that's a no-brainer to consolidate, but if we're talking about, say, carpet cleaning you could make a case for subdomains focusing the local aspects better. Additionally, a subdomain would afford them their own site so they could do distinct advertising/promos.