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When you hover on the tabs at the top, all those menus that appear count as links. The locations g tab has about 20 alone; all those add up. Since that menu is on every page, that could explain it. How you see things isn't the same as how Google does; we tend to base it on what we see - Google bases it on what they can access (which sometimes you can't directly see, like with the tabs).

My site has the same problem; we resigned ourselves to it because, for us. it's better for the users.

I think there's been some awesome views here and there's so many viable options. If I were the SEO you wanted to hire, here's an issue I'd force: I can't control if you keep your website working properly. I can't control if your back end measurement is accurate.  I would insist that if it came to light that you somehow couldn't properly calculate your sales (and my performance was tied to revenue) there'd be some lump sum or something payment to me anyway.

Why? I worked on a site where leads were the most important thing wanted; the coding to track leads got messed up and for four months there was no accurate way to calculate what leads came through SEO vs other channels. Also, there ended up being major instability issues with the site and it kept crashing, creating major technical issues (that flowed into the need for technical SEO support).

Anything can happen with a website. The SEO can only do so much.

Selfishly, this was a great thread to get involved with. Our domain can't handle a blog so we have to do it similar to how Mike does - and ours hasn't launched yet, so I got some good confirmations to work with so we maximize the opportunity as best possible given our limitations.

So, thanks for asking, Mike. And, thanks for answering, Dr. Pete!

A lot of SEO can be undone/is reversible; the kicker is it's easier to go down faster than it is to get it back up. Changing things doesn't automatically (even when done correctly) mean you won't see a drop before a pick up. Google claims to be moving away from "exact" matches in keywords and more toward understanding content (example: degrees and certifications often have to do with acquiring knowledge and learning).

My advice? Page title is one of the most important things Google looks at; make your count. If you are trying to do multiple things with it (location/keywords/NLP), then you have to wait out to see if Google figures it out.

I have seen cases where pages can still rank even without an exact title/content match, but since you've noticed a decline, reconsider consistency across your optimization and content. BTW, as a user, NLP doesn't tell me what NLP is - only the acronym is used and that's not necessarily a good thing. (Ex: GHS? Greenfield High School or globally harmonized system.) How does Google know if your content is relevant to a searcher if it's not clear what NLP stands for?

Also, check the technical and make sure there's no weird coding or broken somethings that could also be in the way. Good luck!

Ranking don't always increase right away (although it's ironic that they seem to drop fast, eh). Google will need to recrawl and reprocess your information. SEO "stuff" doesn't always make sense - and, while I am sure you did everything correctly, there could be something else going on.

As Stephan posed, if you are willing to share your URL, someone may be able to peak and see if they notice something you haven't.

Deeper pages that rank help lift the authority of the main URL/domain. (Think like a pyramid; the more "voted" content you have on your site, the better.) Obviously for you, links to your main URL (which can often be the easiest to get) should be manageable for you to achieve. Good luck!

Google sometimes will do this if it thinks that the deeper page (in this case) is a more relevant to the search query. And, optimizing is merely a way to indicate to Google what you want them to think a page is about; there's no promise that Google will agree.

Even with a small website, something outside of the homepage will rank - Google will crawl the site and offer up additional pages to searchers if they think there's good content there, regardless if you intentionally optimized said page or not. Trying to block out all the other pages isn't necessarily the best strategy. Rather than look at how your other pages work against you, look at how they can work for you. If you didn't put a no index tag on the page and it's already ranking, that's not a solution that works best for after the fact (but something to keep in mind as the site grows).

Sounds like part of the problem is that even with a few pages you cannibalized by trying to only use one keyword/variation. Even if the content isn't 100% the same, Google can interpret it as similar enough. Dr Pete did an excellent blog that may be able to offer some insight. I'll preface that he wrote about duplicate content, however it goes through when to use things like canonicals (not something that fits your case) so it may be helpful to at least read up and confirm what won't fix it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world (he specifically mentions how canonicalizing your site to one URL can do lots of damage).

I'm working on something similar right now and have a few random thoughts: I'm not a fan of using the same content; aside from duplicate content issues (and nobody wants to deal with those messes), what's the value for end users? Why read the blog if it's going to be on the site? Or, why have a blog if you're going to put the same stuff (even if it's only some of it) on the site? Obvious, but for a successful blog it's critical.

Linking from the blog to the site, etc. makes a lot of sense for SEO/link juice and there's plenty of benefit there.

It's not a one-course-of-action scenerio. I've been building the business case for how we should handle ours since our site technology doesn't allow for hosting a blog. Sometimes it a bit of the lesser of  the evils, but ultimately there's still plenty of good to get from it.

I'm not a Magento expert by any means - I had a similar situation and the first thing my IT asked me was about where the files were stored and how they were layers as that determines how many subfolders down the info is and the path that has to be taken to get the content there. Meaning, I couldn't just rewrite my URLs, we had to look at how our data was stored in folders and where the folders were accessible first.

I think EGOL makes some great points, especially about content vs product/sales. And, given that I work on an incredibly complex site that often poses many SEO challenges, here's how I happen to look at it:

• Low volume words that are highly competitive you hope would mean a more targeted audience. (So, not throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.) One issue: if it's, let's say 100 searches a month, then the best you can hope for is a percentage of that.
• Fact is, not everyone who may be looking for a "lockout tagout custom procedure" may search for that long tail. They may just search for "LOTO" - so, I have selected to build a keyword/SEO strategy that build long tail into short tail/broad terms.
• Also, what I have noticed is that even with the short tail, our bounce rates haven't taken a hit, perhaps because the meta descriptions give enough info away so people can tell before the click if we may be right for them.
• And, our rankings for a section where we did a much better pyramid build with keywords/content/like subjects has steadily improved in visibility - giving me hope that if you can manage the technical with understanding what Google wants (good, relevant content), it works.

Good luck!

Andrea