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Choose a domain and stick with it, then build pages out from there. Redirect the non-www to the www (if this is what you choose to go with) and forget about the rest... redirect site-wide.

Admittedly I'm simplifying it for two reasons: 1.) I'm not quite sure I get it, this is rather confusing and 2.) it is that simple.

You want a domain and then you want pages and subdirectories targeting your keywords. That's it that's all. I would not build links for the non-www if you are going to redirect for the www. Build links for the domain you settle on.

I'm not sure I'm helping but hope so!

I don't know why you'd want your homepage to rank for such a specific keyword like that, but in any case I don't see that keyword (vinyl) used much on there. Here's your H1 tag, for example:

Discount Banner Printing the UK's No1 printing company

Looks to me like you're trying to rank for UK banner printing...

You'll have an easier time (as you've seen) getting internal pages to rank for specific keywords like that for several reasons. I'd say the stickers page is getting the rank because the url has the word "vinyl" and "banner" in it whereas your homepage URL does not. That's part of it anyway.

How long ago did you make these changes?

They're offering it to some users but it's still in beta. I've been using it and it's pretty great although some of the features I want most still aren't functional. (just tried logging in and it's not working at all currently for me.. so still a bit buggy)

Not sure on timeline but I know attendees of MozCon became the early adopters.

Couple things here-

First off, why are you worried about SERPs from people Googling your physical address? If they are looking up a map of your shop, they are already sold on coming in to your shop. People don't just Google random addresses..

Secondly, their SERPs will be different than yours based on their set location, just as you said. If they are in Irvine, the results will display for Irvine. If they aren't, they will type in Irvine. That's how people use Maps...

I think this is a non-issue.

i have no idea as far as pay rates but i just wanted to say:

if I were looking for an SEO guy I would want more social media and writing skills and less HTML/web design skills.. I'd be looking for someone who can write great content and attract viewers. Design can be left to others.

Just saying... in case you were wondering what skills this person should work to improve.

anyway, interesting topic. thanks

Tom nailed it.

You won't be Penguined by this practice necessarily.

Maybe if you went out and got a whole bunch at once from low authority sites with the same exact match anchor text... Then maybe. But chances are if you're doing this it is not relevant or beneficial for the potential reader.

When in doubt always ask yourself, "will the reader ever need this?"

You could maybe do a little better although that's pretty good.

In an effort to answer both of the above questions without re-typing everything I already typed on the subject, please refer to this thread for great de-personalization tips: http://moz.com/community/q/moz-keyword-ranking-report

"Over exposure of PPC" is not a thing.. Google will never penalize you for spending too much

So that's not your problem. You have a lot of bots disallowed in your robots but I don't see google bot out.. Ahrefs is out but they're still reporting you have the vast majority of anchor text phrases being the exact term you're looking to rank for... That's dangerous, and just the type of thing the Penguin algorithm looks for. I'd work on a wider array of branded anchor phrases and less keyword-rich like that one.

You might just be in tough competition also. But since you so suddenly disappeared something tells me there's more to the story.

If it were me, I'd start picking away at that anchor phrase issue but focus on getting some content created. Put a blog on your domain and start coming up with awesome articles and insight... Something people will find interesting and want to share.

Sorry my advice is non-specific.. Full-disclosure I'm totally distracted by the World Cup Final at the moment

Addendum - When I search for the name of your business, the Map it gives me is for the Irvine location and is correct. You should not be concerned about this.

Totally agree. The thing is you have to just keep up with it. Blogs, forums, twitter, and mozinars are the best way to do it. Daily.

It could be spammy, but I like to think that Google doesn't punish infographics as severely as say trash-written articles by English-as-a-second-language "SEOs." Reason being is it makes sense for infographics to sit in many places as some people want to share infographics that may not be entirely relevant to their niche/site/whatever.

That said I'd still be skeptical and if it were me I'd skip the distribution part and handle that on my own. If you want them to create your infographic, that's one thing.. but there are also tons of great ways you can create your own if you have your own facts/data to present. infogr.am, visua.ly, infoactive.co, easel.ly - - check all these out first.

Good luck!

How about changing all of your links from relative to absolute in the HTML? If they're truly only getting there from navigation internally after visiting the shopping cart, this would solve that, yes? Just a thought.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking if your on-site optimization is okay? If so.. then yes, from what you've said it sounds decent enough. Hopefully it doesn't look or read too spammy as I'm afraid it might if this has been your focus.

Why aren't there any links pointing in? That's what you need.. Sorta. What you really need is awesome original content.

What you are describing is just a small little piece of the SEO/SEM pie. You need a marketing campaign: brand development, content generation, social presence, etc. Do some more research on what it means to be an SEO in today's markets. You can find a TON of information on this site. Read some blogs, search through the Q&A forums for topics that strike your fancy, read read read!

mid-May, eh? That's an obvious sign of Penguin penalties, just as EGOL is saying. Sounds to me like you built some icky links somewhere along the way and didn't spread your anchor text out enough. DA isn't everything and Google doesn't technically pay any attention to those numbers... keep that in mind.

The best thing you can do is build content. I feel like a stuck record, but it's true. The better the content, the more links you will build organically which will then come from relevant sites. Look into backlink profiles and do some research on what they should look like then compare that to yours. Use OSE and ahrefs.com to do this.. check out nike.com, forbes.com, and especially your competitor's sites that are outranking you as well as whatever big name brands you can think of. I bet you will see a lot of keyword-heavy anchor text in yours and not so much in theirs..

And as always, check your webmaster tools account to ensure you haven't received a manual penalty notification from Google's Webspam team. If you have... good luck.

Actually, good luck either way! These forums will help you throughout the process. And as I always say, providing actual URLs will help folk here provide you with less speculative answers and more solid fact.

Onwards through the SEM jungles my friend!

Interesting. I've never seen PRWeb work well for anything post "GET ME A LINK NAO!" era. Can you elaborate on how the 4 PRs per day in the financial sector get good results? What benefit do you gain from them and how do you  measure the results of press release distribution? Reposts, conversions, etc?

Thanks.

I am against this whole keyword-rich domain name thing you seem to be  pushing here. I would want the domain name to be branded as the company. Your SEO campaign should be more than enough to get the brand ranking for whatever keywords you are targeting.

That being said, whatever you redirect to, be sure you are building links to the final domain (aka the domain you are redirecting TO.)

Reason for this is as 301s do pass link juice, there is a slight degeneration there. Even if it's less than 1%, what would the point be of losing that juice?

Not to mention the fact that if you are correctly building links and the anchor text reads www.keyword-domain.com and then the user who clicks it lands on www.branded-domain.com they will be ultimately confused. This is unnecessary and somewhat deceitful. You should focus on building initial trust with your users, and this is a bad first step in doing so.

That's my two-cents on the subject. Good luck!

EGOL said it best. Nobody could possibly tell you this based on the limited information provided.

Sharing your domain and other details (link building schemes/efforts, what you do to market, etc) would help us get closer to helping you. But EGOL's resource is awesome and he's absolutely right. Take the quiz, be honest, discover where you went wrong. If it's not manual, this can still be resolved. If it's that bad, expect a manual penalty to come next.

G'luck.

Yeah or clear your cache or restart or something.

This is a non-issue. It's only happening to you, I'm afraid.

Well the "best practice" now states to nofollow any paid links, PR or otherwise. How much that's being enforced by the Cutts team is up for debate..

The keyword in your domain won't really add much because of the anchor text itself, if that's what you're inferring. The link's placement and relevance is the more important factor, always.

Even if they did, the last thing you want is a keyword-heavy anchor text profile... That's the short version of the way I see it.

Anyway I guess I still don't understand what you're asking in this topic. In the original post you mentioned that the "franchisor will not allow the keyword-domain.com to be their primary domain." But then you said people will be landing on keyword-domain.com?

So is it the other way around? the franchise-name.com will be redirecting to keyword-domain.com? If this is the case, have at it! I guess what I'm saying is I advise against building links to the domain that's being redirected and instead all links should be built to the final destination.

But it sounds like that's what you are doing. Forgive my confusion here, I've had a stuffed head all week!

Yeah I don't love exact match domains and I can all but guarantee their effectiveness will be going away. Google has addressed this multiple times publicly and made no effort to conceal the fact.. Nonetheless I think the most important factor is the quality of the site's content and the authority/relevance of the links coming in.

I wish you luck!