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Similarly to any link, not just 301: "The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link." So 301s are just fine.

I have found this useful in the past: https://www.ayima.com/guides/conquering-pagination-guide.html

My first reaction was to suggest you go ahead and optimize separate pages for each of the two terms, outdoor advertising and billboard advertising. Then I read your comment "the company only offers billboards". Now I agree with Erika that it makes sense to optimize the home page for the overarching brand offering / message (billboard advertising). It would be misleading to do otherwise and you'd be setting yourself up for high bounce rates, low time on page, and disappointed visitors. You also said your main competitors have not optimized pages specifically for billboard advertising. That might work to your advantage.

Hello Joshua, What you are describing is nothing to be concerned about. It is a completely natural process when content is being created for there to be some form of reciprocal linking. This is especially true in list-pieces such as the one you are describing. There is no real need to avoid linking directly to them, and certainly nothing to worry about with regards to their social media accounts. What Google is trying to get away from is people creating websites to link to each other using the same hosting or from the same webmaster. This is what leads to penalties. From their perspective, you are all (likely) on separate hosting, you all have different webmasters, and you are clearly recognized brands that are completely separate from one another. This is the kind of article they would want to see show up and is unlikely to create any unwelcome attention. The links you receive will have plenty of value, assuming you are not being linked-to extravagantly over and over from the same domain. It's totally normal to see a couple of pages on a single domain link to another, but it gets to be spammy when you begin seeing 10's, 100's or even 1000's of links coming from a single source. What you are describing is normal content creation - something Google has been adamant about for years. I don't think there's anything for you to worry about here. Best of luck with the launch! Rob

**"Some people will argue that Google penalizes keyword domains, but I know that isn't true. " ** I think that a lot of people in the SEO world are confused about this. When the EMD algo first came out I studied a large number of sites that had taken drops. Google confused everyone because they made a big deal of announcing the EMD update and then sneakily pushed out a Panda refresh a couple of days later. A LOT of sites were affected by this Panda refresh. At that time I had asked anyone who thought that they were hit by EMD to share their domain with me. A large number of these ended up being sites that, IMO were hit by Panda. The sites that were affected by the EMD update were ones that truly did not deserve to rank, and only previously ranked well because they were EMDs. There is no penalty for having an EMD. Now, back to the original question. I'm unclear as to whether OP is saying that there is a single EMD that is ranking well, or perhaps you are saying that this company has a whole bunch of service+location EMD's that are ranking well. If this is the case, then whether or not they deserve to rank depend on what kind of unique value they are offering. For example, if this was a plumbing site and every single location had almost the same content on it describing their overall plumbing business then Google wouldn't like that. But, let's say it's a real estate brokerage and the brand has worked really hard to provide helpful, unique content for each city they service. I could see this working. Google still would prefer that a realtor ran just one site, but if these individual sites were helpful enough to users then they still could do well.

I have done a few bits in Magento before and found it relatively easy to develop further and include new elements, pages or blocks. At the end of the day Magento is a hugely customisable and very good e-commerce platform, so I don't think the system is the problem, it would sound like you are being held back by your developers. As per Franciso, I would suggest looking for a few new developers to help you with the system. If you are constantly trying to further optimise your site such as with a/b tests, better UX, UI, SEO and more then I would consider setting up an in-house team that can concentrate on it full time and that way you update as and when required not months down the line.

Hi, Jasmine. Out of all companies you have listed, which one is your favorite and why? (I assume there was a reason to switch from one to another)

Thanks Patrick. I think Google is making it more and more difficult to rank outside of your physical location. Google is smart and recognises that we don't have physical premises in the targeted locations outside of our hometown, so it displays results of local companies in both Google local places and organic results, as it sees the more local companies as a more relevant result and disregards our target location based keywords.

The regions you're talking about our actually in alignment with a project we are doing right now.  If you have a lot of translation needed we could possibly help each other. for keyword research in "UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan & India." I do everything Patrick talked about but in addition I utilize this tool for finding keywords in areas https://kwfinder.com/ What I have found is that data is very tough to get however we have resources that can translate this properly. You may find this interesting as well https://moz.com/blog/estimate-total-volume-value-of-keywords-in-niche-whiteboard-friday I'm interested in what you're doing if you'd like to chat about it let me know Tom

Hi Alan, I totally agree with you about the ease of editing a hand made website if they're build the right way (so the developer knows were to look). My point is mainly about code quality, if it's all spaghetti I think the price quota can be higher then with a CMS system. Just wanted to clear that up.

Hello Joshua, Well, I think your Facebook Ads campaigns need probably a deep study to understand what is working or not (I mean, maybe what you think is not working is not the main issue).Some quick questions in the air: What's the goal of your Facebook Ads campaigns? How much is your monthly/daily budget for this? What's your product? In London you have 37% of the population from out of the UK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London). To be honest, I guess a lot of people in London speak both English and a foreign language (and have set this in Facebook settings), so your segmentation is wide and is including all these people. If you really want to exclude these users try this solution: Create an audience (Aud1) to target all the people you DON'T want: people who speak Polish, Romanian, Russian, etc.). Create a second audience and exclude the previous audience (Aud2) from your Facebook Ads campaigns. Good luck !

Hi Matt, This answers my question perfectly. Everything we sell is 'designer goods' including tables, wardrobes, sideboards etc you name it. My only concern was to have the word 'designer' too many times in the URL as it would look a little spammy, but as you described we can just keep the word 'designer' for the parent page and leave it out for the sub-categories. We used SEM Rush and noticed a competitor doing really well in the SERPs and they have all their category path URLs removed so I was just curious if this had an impact on SEO, as the URLs looks short and user friendly. Josh

I tend to agree with Patrick. While an the exact theme may not be achievable, I would strive to make it as close as possible.

I'm sorry to reply to you so late and  I have used both WordPress and HubSpot beginning in 2006. Everett I respect your opinion this is how I feel about it. HubSpot is a excellent blog however is had some recent restrictions on the amount of traffic you can receive without having to go up to a higher plan. With that said their blog is spectacular. There CMS designed for people that would use WordPress however it cooperates a lot of search tools and marketing Information e.g. landing pages, social media, spectacular analytics, keyword research, you will know if you're doing something wrong on HubSpot it will tell you. I would not say WordPress and HubSpot are apples and oranges but I can see how someone would feel that way. HubSpot and WordPress far much more than your average blog. I would have to say that WordPress has more in common with HubSpot than it does with Ghost ( a pure blogging only system) I think hub spot offers a lot of value and who rule their ROI-you will agree.  They  coined "inbound marketing" and make fantastic additions to websites as well as great websites themselves. The best way to learn about it is to do a 30 day free trial NO credit card needed http://offers.hubspot.com/free-trial-blogging-tool http://www.hubspot.com will show you what is possible in their CMS. Sorry for the delayed response I hope this helps, Tom

Thanks Chad that really helps, I came across the experiment tool previously but wasn't aware this was for A/B testing. Cheers

OK, what is your goal for the different articles? i.e. social sharing, ranking for particular keywords, attracting links, or something else? Once you know the goal of particular articles you can think about how to write them to achieve those goals (noting you may want to do all the goals suggested above, just focus on one goal per article). So lets go through some suggested titles: Social sharing:  10 Pieces of Furniture you couldn't do without.  No. 7 will blow your mind! Keyword ranking (more natural traffic)  - How to clean red wine off your settee. Links - More detailed articles that go in more depth than the other articles, often helpful but could involve ideas from the other articles so something like - "How to know you are paying the right price for your furniture" Whatever you do when ranking for keywords, is check out the competition and make sure your article is better, so looks nice, contains better information, and is more helpful.  For more ideas, just check out what your competition is writing about, and take some ideas and just make the articles 10 times better bringing in more \ different concepts and information so it is totally original.

Thanks for the advice, we will certainly implement this into our site.

Thanks Ryan. It seems the results are already starting to reappear which is quicker than I expected. Our web development company should have definitely consulted us before making this change but at least there's no major issue now. Thanks again.

I looked at Magneto many years ago and I think it was one that was kind of spun off of oscommerce. If that is true there is a plug-in called easy populate that lets you do just as Monica suggested. Even if not Magneto is so widely used now there has to be a plugin for it. Easy populate allowed you to download or upload files via CSV files which can be easily made in Excel or OpenOffice. Hope it helps, Don

Ha! I had no idea. Thanks Hutch. You teach me something new everyday!