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I want to redirect the following 4 pages to the home page:

• http://www.phbalancedpool.com/pool-repair/pool_repair_arizona.html
• http://www.phbalancedpool.com/About%20Pool%20Cleaning%20Arizona/About_Page_Pool_Cleaning_Arizona.html
• http://www.phbalancedpool.com/specials/Pool%20Cleaning%20and%20Pool%20Repair%20Specials.html
• http://www.phbalancedpool.com/service-areas-in-arizona/Chandler_Gilbert_Mesa_Queen%20Creek_San%20Tan%20Valley.html

This is what I am currently using for my Web.config file:

<configuration></configuration>

<match url=".*"></match>

<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^phbalancedpool.com$"></add>

<action type="Redirect" url="http://www.phbalancedpool.com/{R:0}"  <="" span="">redirectType="Permanent" /></action>

<location path="pool-repair/pool_repair_arizona.html"></location>

<location path="About%20Pool%20Cleaning%20Arizona/About_Page_Pool_Cleaning_Arizona.html"></location>

<location path="specials/Pool%20Cleaning%20and%20Pool%20Repair%20Specials.html"></location>

<location path="service-areas-in-arizona/Chandler_Gilbert_Mesa_Queen%20Creek_San%20Tan%20Valley.html"></location>

Only the first one is actually redirecting and I can't figure out why. What do I need to do to fix this?

My guess would be that it is coming from an external site.

I am not sure how to go about finding the broken link but if you want a simple fix you could try adding a 301 redirect so that the 404 error won't happen any more. Do you know how to do that?

I am working on an e-commerce site and on the category pages each of the product listings link to the product page twice. The first is an image link and then the second is the product name. I want to get the anchor text of the second link to count. If I no-follow the image link will that help at all? If not is there a way to do this?

Thanks for the answers, there were good points for all three options (top, side, and bottom). I'll have to think about it now and check out other blogs, then probably take a step back and think about how users will see my site and go from there.

I can't decide how I feel about these kind. A part of me doesn't want the buttons to follow me around the page but it doesn't matter what I like, I just need to figure out what the majority of readers prefer.

I probably should have specified that it was on blog posts, I would have thought that the best place would be right after the content or the side ones that Steve mentioned so that the user wouldn't have scroll back up to the top to share it. Does knowing that I meant blog posts change what you would suggest or would you still say the big centered ones at the top of the page?

Does anyone know of any research on this? Or has anyone tested this out themselves?

Thanks Alan, you are right this site has quite a long way to go. The first crawl was just finished and I notice that the most errors were due to dupe content so I decided I would try and tackle that first. Thank you for all the pointers, I will be taking a look at all those as soon as I can.

SEOmoz has to crawl the links just like Google does so links won't show up in the index immediately. How long has it been?

Yes it is a good idea to redirect the non-www to the www as long as the www has more links, otherwise I would suggest the opposite (www to the non-www). You just have to make a file named ".htaccess" and placing this in the document:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com/ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Then just upload it to the server.

If your server supports .htacess files, this is what I use for redirecting one folder to another.

Redirect 301 /section.php/ http://www.ensorbuilding.com/section/

Aside from adding the +1 button to your sites I doubt it will be that big. Most of Google's attempts at adding social features don't ever take off like they do for Facebook or other sites. I imagine the effect will be similar to that of how Facebook likes affect search engine results. It will help but not too important of a factor.

Between those two I would choose the second, the first one just seems like you are trying too hard to stuff those keywords in the URL.

My guess would be that it is coming from an external site.

One problem that I have seen in the past is that if you are claiming a listing and you change either the address or the phone number before you claim it it can screw with the verification process and sometimes create a duplicate listing. I would claim it without changing either of those and once its verified go back and change that info (if it needs to be changed).

Also, if you pay for any of Google's paid services sometimes you can get support for Google Places and they will manually edit a listing. However we have only been able to pull this off once.

Did you try what Mike suggested? Submitting it as a phone verification and then once it calls your system and fails to reach a person you go to get another pin and then it offers the verify by postcard option.