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Correct; on google.co.uk it came up on the first page.

I'm also seeing it rank  for Isles of Scilly (now, that's for google.co.uk vs google.com)

Going back may not solve anything, given that enough time may have passed that enough content has been indexed and the "damage is done" so to speak.

The 301 redirect is a good step - search engines don't penalize, the issue is just that you essentially confused things and you have to now untangle, like with the duplicate pages and content.

You #3 - I'm not sure I am following, so getting back to the redirect, if you were previously "www" and now are without, then the "www" pages should redirect to the without URLs. It sounds like there may be a risk of a redirect tangle going on that needs to be fixed?

Once the redirect situation is taken care of, pull together a site map for the "www" (if you can) and upload it to Webmaster so Google knows to index those pages and then can make the association that you changed domains.

Mike's suggestion is a great one. SF gives some great data that's easy to play with in Excel. The free version only crawls 500 pages, so if you have a small site, you'll probably get what you need. (I got 30k+ pages, so I use the paid version that's only about $160/yr.)

Whenever you have crawl issues, the SEOMoz help team is the place to go. They're the only ones who can look into your account to see if there's an issue or such. (And they are really nice and quick to respond.)

The best source for topical information is your customers, trade groups and general trends. First , are you noticing an uptick in a certain service or are you getting the same question over and over? These would mean people want to know about that topic.

Next, look at seasonality - March is home improvement time so what can people do to kick off their lawn care? Summer: if it's extra dry, what considerations should people think through to manage their lawn care? Or, if it's overly wet, what might they need to know? Fall: what should people do to prep their yard for winter? (Depending if you are in an area with more traditional four seasons.)

From industry trade shows - are there certain plants or trees that are a hot trend and being pushed? Is there a fear of any type of bug or insect infestation people need to counter?

What about best practices or care tips? "Tips from the pros." Your industry has plenty of information there - it's just a matter of you looking at it from a different perspective.

Google Trends is one way to see what people are searching for, and same with the Adwords keyword tool to gauge what type of searches people are conducting - not to mention any analytic data you see that drives traffic.

Think less like a business person and more like a reporter - address the topical relevance (timeliness - there's a reason why tax articles are more popular starting in January because it's when people start preparing, not in September), the problems (what problems do customers have and how can I solve them?) and the share. (Who, what, where, why, how?)

Don't let it kill you - there's too many factors that influence ranking above-and-beyond just content. They're doing something right if they are ranking well so they are making it happen without, in your opinion, making it all about content. Which is also why I also find it questionable when anyone tries to make it just about content. Their domain rank may be high, they may have a better inbound link portfolio, older domain age, etc.

There's a lot of things companies do with their websites that are bad ideas and paid links are a big one.

And there's less back end to manage, which can be a huge obstacle to SEO if you don't manage it well.

Yes, headers are needed for SEO. I'd suggest reading up more on the various sections (page title, h1, h2, content, etc.) for on page optimization to better understand how a search engine uses that data.

As for not showing it on a page, I don't understand why a header would ever be cloaked - if anything, Google could give you a smack down for having it but not showing it on a page since that's black hat.

As for Wordpress, I don't think of it as an editor at all and see it as CMS. I like that it's open source because I can use plugins to create different functions. I'd suggest also reading up more on how the system works to help guide what plugins or hosts you may want to go with.

Good luck.

I think that if you can't naturally get likes and have to ask for them, then there's bigger business issues to address. But given that they can't make a value proposition as to why I should like their page, I don't expect these people to be smart marketers.

Ah, the fun stuff! Page title, also called page name, is what appears in the tab of a page. So, when you click on a page, there's text that appears in the browser window.

Page header  (also called an H1) is essentially like a headline - it's separated from the body text. This graphic may help a bit to explain: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization

I can't speak to your question about Intuit; I can say I've worked with Wordpress and had good results with their help. I also find it easy to find experts who will answer questions. It's a very popular platform which makes for plenty of opportunity to have discussions.

Please do let me know - that linked seemed to have a nice, succinct way to do this so rather than reinvent the wheel...

I agree about the forum - I'm a better professional because of the conversations and learnings I've experienced

Hi Gareth,

Alt image text, a smart file name (keyword rich), a good (re: fast loadable) file size and captions are all solid starts. That data helps to tell Google as much as possible about the image.

Here's a way you can try: http://scalablesocialmedia.com/2013/02/recover-facebook-page/

Agreed. My domain name is our brand name and doesn't touch on our products however that doesn't hurt us. Over optimization is usually just trying too hard to force keywords in where they aren't needed; like name dropping.

I agree about the "just make great content and people will find you" mentality. Really, it's that easy? No, it's not. Because people have to find you and links can help.

That said, there's a lot of different ways to get links. Good directories are fine enough. But I also think that's just a small piece of the pie. There's media coverage from online outlets, as another example. A lot of people I know don't just post to directories and call it a day, they actively go out and approach other sites and ask for links. That could be how your competitor(s) are doing it.

Fact is, whether you want to call it link building or whatnot, you have to market your site so people know it's there and can find it. Then if you have good content, and built it well, people can find it.

I agree - I think it's important to do more than just the home page. I don't agree there's a specific science / ratio to it for a few reasons: if it was that specific, everyone would do it and we know Google wouldn't let it be that obvious because people would game the system.

There's relative factors to consider: some pages on your site may be way more competitive to rank for than others. If your overall domain authority is a little lower, you have to compensate for that. On my site, I can get some pages to rank well pretty much just with on page optimization because it's not a competitive term. There's others that are taking tons of links, strong keyword hierarchy and such to even get into the top 20.

The best strategy for you will (I'd assume) be based on evaluating how competitive your field is and what pages you want to rank for the best user experience to drive conversions. Will just your homepage do that? Do you need other pages w/in your site to offer a better experience?

Again, it's really hard to hypothesize without knowing the specific site because there could be a ton of other things at play you may just not be seeing.

Videos are content so if they have a lot of videos, then they don't have 0 content. Especially if they have a transcript or CC file attached to it that can be crawled. And, if they have a video sitemap and how their hosting is set up all factor in to some degree.

Even with the changes to Google's algo, links are still powerful, especially links from .gov or .edu - just a few of those can mean more than tons of links from regular .com sites.

Videos are absolutely content - and hot content at that. Videos have grown in popularity among Web users. If you mean ads above the fold on a Google search results page, no, that has nothing at all to do with search rankings. If you mean you have ads on your website that are above the fold, I wouldn't recommend that. Unless your goal is to just make money through ads.

Text should go with videos, for numerous reasons. I'd suggest reading up on the overall topic so you can build a strong video SEO strategy: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/video-seo-basics-whiteboard-friday-11080.