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Definitely try rewriting the content (this will also keep it fresh and up to date). If it is good, valuable content then it would be a shame for you to have to remove it from search engines as they could potentially drive a lot of traffic to your site.
I would think that Google does still crawl these sites (or have just blacklisted them). Therefore, they would still have a negative effect on your client's website.
I would recommend taking a look into Google's new disavow tool - you will be able remove the association with bad links.
Dr Pete recently wrote a great article on the disavow tool - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-disavow-tool-take-a-deep-breath
You should also grow your social media activity. Sites like Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Facebook and others will often have a higher authority than review sites. If you build your community up then these sites will often appear high on the results page when branded searches are performed. This will in turn push the negative reviews down.
Plus, it will help build up your online brand. Win-Win, right?
That's a great point about social media. Often, social media sites will have a much greater authority than the review sites. If you build up a strong online presence on even the basics:
Then you will be pushing the bad reviews further and further down the results. Even better than that, you will be showcasing the solid community that you have built up. People will go on these social sites and learn more about you and if you are communicating well then they will surely like you. It will give you a great competitive advantage.
Bad reviews are a common issue with SEO as the sites that host these reviews often have high authority. The only way you can really remove these from the results page is to create better, valuable content that will eventually outrank the reviews and push them further down the results page.
Not at all. Good links from around the world will be of huge value to you.
You will end up fostering a worldwide community. Many people that read your blog and use your information will not be from New Zealand - although your core customers will be. This is often the case with online companies - your community will reach further than your core location.
That is a good recommendation but ultimately search engines will make a final decision on crawl frequency. Take a look at your 'Crawl Stats' on GWTs and this will give you an idea of how often your site is crawled.
No, do not pay for links - you will be penalised. Start a blog and create content that will help people who may use your service. Think of things like 'How mobile is effecting ecommerce' or 'How to use social media to build loyal customers'.
Once you have a blog and are creating your content then you will begin to see a quick rise in search traffic on your analytics package. Take a look at some of the keywords people are searching to find you and you will see that just having 3 is too low. You will need to constantly update your list of keywords.
There is no harm in paying people for help, as long as you find the right vendor for you. SEOmoz have a great list of recommended companies.
You will probably need to wait a little longer - it depends how often your site usually gets crawled and indexed.
However, robots.txt does not always stop search engines from indexing your pages. It will stop them crawling a page on your site but it tells them that they can still index that page. If they find links from external sites then the URL may still appear in the SERP.
This really shows the endless possibilities we all have for link building. I'd have never thought a bank like Barclays would put lots of hidden links on their website just by talking at one of their events.
Pretty amazing stuff!
Some links actually provide 'business services' that you would expect Barclays to have a relationship with but of the other links seem very suspicious - like the food websites.
Even though they're well know brands, the Innocent drinks and Eat Natural links should not really be in a 'Business services' section. It's very unlikely that a visitor would see these links so it must be purely for SEO reasons - even though these websites have a much lower authority than Barclays (I doubt it is for their benefit).
Not quite sure how a site like http://www.kiboshpiperepair.com/ have got on there either! It is very very interesting
Completely. Its a great investment to own the .com version as well - you never know if the client wants to expand in the future. It also insures you against people buying (and using) the .com version.
Hope this has helped you.
If the content will be duplicated then yes, you should 301 redirect to the preferred domain.
It really does depend on which domain you think best for the client. If they are a local, UK only company then it may be worth while using the .co.uk version as this will aid local searches and helps brand them as a UK company. However, .com is considered to have more 'power' - although this is becoming less important in ranking factors.
Which version currently ranks on Google when you perform a branded search? .co.uk or .com? And which version has the most backlinks? This will help in your decision.
Google Analytics - You will need to set the tracking code to "Multiple top-level domains". This can be done by going to Admin >> Tracking Code >> Multiple top-level domains.
Google Webmaster Tools - I am not too sure that you can combine two separate top-level domains. I may be wrong though?
That is a good start but it is important to not just jump into these channels without thinking about the audience - this checklist may sound good for SEO but it is may not be the best for your potential audience.
Explore their communities - for example, if you were targetting SEOs then you would hang out on SEOmoz, share content on inbound.org, comment on searchengineland.com, tweet the industry leaders on Twitter etc. By joining your niche communities you will build up connections and awareness which will help you gain links at a later date.
Before you publish content I would suggest joining in the conversation. That way, when you begin publishing your content you will have a basic following to be able to market to.
There is no secret but to be honest most people on here are very open and willing to share their expertise. I hope this question gains more of a discussion!
What kind of industry is your content targeting? Or is this a general checklist that can be applied to any industry?
Faster than your competitors!!
I'd say 2 to 3 seconds is 'acceptable' but for SEO you really need to look at your SERP competitors to see how fast they're performing - then aim for faster!
I use Pingdom - http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ - as it gives you a great deal of insights and grades your page so you can see how well it performs against others.
