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I'm back about a month later to report that it finally appears to have worked. Google is now pulling up my metatitle for a variety of queries.

Now I want to get Google to show local landing pages in the SERPS instead of the home page so that the location shows in the title and appears to be more relevant. Always a challenge.  I know the standard tactics, but specific ideas are welcome. Building a silo of local pages around estate planning is hard as the topic is not really local.

Nuances welcome.

I tend to think you're right about the title. That most likely does look like a page title to Google and then you have identical titles on all pages! I replaced it with an image. We were already in the process of putting the first lines on the local pages into h1 tags, so that's done as well. It will be hard to know which one does the trick, but as long as it works I'm happy. This is standard routine SEO that needed to be done anyway.

For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?

Thanks everyone. Since 301 redirects are out of the question, what I've done is found all the directories that really shouldn't be on this site at all and noindexed them. None of those pages are good for rank for anything so it doesn't matter. The client is instructing their 'customers' to get their sites off the doubleknot site and onto their own domains. Once those are moved over there will still be lots of links pointing to doubleknot and fixing them will be a nightmare because there are just too many, but I'm going to see if they can do a sitewide edit and add rel="nofollow" to each link pointing to doubleknot's irrelevent directories and also see if we can do a mass search and replace to point the links to the right domain when necessary. If there is not a pattern, that will no be possible and someone will have to do it by hand. With noindex and nofollow working for us, that might be enough

My client is a team of IT and computer science experts, and they've been advised of the problem. They're looking into ways to put their degrees to work to clean the data.

@Richard, to answer your question, their rank is terrible. That's why they called me. Their website is also not at all optimized so I'm restructuring the architecture and asking them to provide new copy. Then I'll do the standard on-site optimization. It could be that might be enough to turn things around. And then it's linkbuilding time. Time will tell. Thanks again!

I just found out my client can NOT use 301 redirects, something to do with the way their software is setup. I don't get it, but let's assume that is true.

If you do a Google query on site:www.doubleknot.com/event you'll find 64K pages, most of which are no longer in the doubleknot site and have been migrated over to the scout's own url. For example www.doubleknot.com/event/1638783 is in google's index but when you click on it, it goes to http://www.narragansettbsa.org/event/1638783\. It is not using a 301 redirect to do that.

Many of those transferred scout pages retain backlinks pointing to the original page on the doubleknot.com website. So not only are those backlinks irrelevant, they would be broken except for the fact they are being redirected.

I gave them the task of cleaning those up, but now here's another question since a 301 redirect doesn't seem to be an option. I have no idea why those doubleknot.com/event pages are still in the index. Must have something to do with the fact they can't use 301s.  So let's assume they need to stay. I'm considering asking him to noindex the /event/ directory and a few others that have the same problem. Is this a smart move? I'm thinking it will clear out ten of thousands of girl scout and boy scout pages that might be clouding the waters here. If we do that though, we're still left with thousands of boy scout backlinks  pointing to old pages on their root domain unless they somehow manage to clean those all up too.

Thoughts?

Count me in too. I provide content marketing strategy for clients for both SEO and conversion optimization.

My client has thousands of clients for whom they provided websites that used to reside in a subdirectory of their own domain. They moved them to their own domains but there are tens of thousands of backlinks on those sites pointing back to the original domain. Those backlinks are completely irrelevant and are probably hurting them by sending the wrong signals to Google on what this site really is about.

My question is will the 301 redirect be enough to cleanse the relationship between my client and all their clients' sites or should I ask the client to clean up all those backlinks on their clients' sites and remove their domain from the target urls? That's a huge job, obviously.

Thanks, Alan. You confirmed what I thought. Huge problem for them to clean this up, but I don't see anyway around it.

Sorry for the slow response Christy. We never could pinpoint the problem. Since everything looked good, I asked her to give it time. Took about 6 months after the website launch, but she's back on the first page in position 2 and 3 for "LDS poems." She just kept doing everything right - writing poems and posting  in her channels. She also continues to post on Blogspot on the same day she posts on her main site. I advised her not too but it apparently doesn't matter. Google is not showing her blogpspot site in the SERPs. I added the publisher and author tags on this site and connected that to her G+ account, so maybe that helped at the time.

This client sells event management software and puts all their clients on different subdomains of their main domain. Looking in SEO tools like OSE, when I run a backlink analysis, it pulls up all the backlinks to the subdomains as well as those for the main domain. In webmaster tools when I look at queries, impressions and clicks, they get at least 30 times more traffic and impressions on keywords found in their subdomains and very few on their own.

In other words, all these tools are providing a collective analysis of main domain and all subdomains. All the backlinks and keywords recorded for those subdomains are not at all relevent to the keywords they want to rank for. For example, their software supports Boy Scouts, so keywords they rank for according to WT include merit badge, scout camp, etc., but of course, that's on the subdomain. As a result, if you were to take a snapshot of their online presence as these tools do, you would think they were a boy scout website and not a software developer if you include the subdomain, along with its PR, backlinks, keywords, etc.

So the question I have is, does Google connect all these subdomains with the main domain and then water down the main site with irrelevant keywords, content and backlinks? Or does Google see all those subdomains as completely separate and we don't need to worry or move their clients off their subdomain? I'm worried about Google assigning a "boy scout" relevancy to them. Am I wrong?  What would you do?

Mark said: "People looking through the SERPs are searching to rent an RV, while traffic from facebook is coming from RV owners who see a blog post about RVs that interests them."

Let's finish that thought.

Traffic coming from Facebook are RV owners who see a blog post about RVs. But they land on a site that rents RVs so they don't need anything. Is that true? Don't RV rental businesses also sell RVs? And don't they sell equipment? You've brought them in on a topic of interest (RVs), now you can acquaint them with your store. You already know they are your target market. That's a good thing. Your job now is to make sure your presentation is inviting. Assume they are owners (or renters). Can you put an offer on that page, perhaps a download of the best RV spots in your state, or maybe a link to a blog post that lists "10 things no RV should be without" for the owners and those happen to be the things you sell.

We're doing a lot of blogging now for an attorney client, and traffic has nearly doubled as a result. Like you, I see traffic come and go, but that is normal for blogs given the reasons mentioned in other comments here. But I'm also seeing that a percentage of those coming from Facebook are repeat visitors and that some of those visitors go to the home page, then the about page, then our main service page. That's exactly what I want. And because I'm boosting those posts in my client's local area, I'm happy because those might be his clients one day. We're building brand awareness so that when the time comes that any one of those or any one of their friends need an attorney, hopefully they'll know who to call or refer. I like to think we're priming the pump.

I think it's hard for anyone to answer without more information. My thought would be that from your subject line it appears you put a lot of weight on backlinks getting you to rank. But what kind of backlinks are they and how do they compare to the competition? If your blog post ranks and that page doesn't, maybe the backlinks you have are sending mixed signals and weakening rather than strengthening your page. And maybe your blog post is better quality content. Without more information it's hard to say.

I see that page ranking for both "student loan forgiveness" and "loan forgiveness." So it looks like you accomplished your goal but may have in the process gotten the wrong page to rank now for "loan forgiveness." Can you give us an update? What did you do? Of did Google change its mind?

Perhaps this page is cannibalizing off of the one you want: http://www.marquess-dental.co.uk/tooth-whitening-marquess-dental/ They share essential the same title tag.

also in looking at your competition, they have a very strong architecture. Search on site:www.thecosmeticdentistry.co.uk "teeth whitening" and you can see all the pages in that "directory."

This is a tough one  because you don't even have the word whitening on your home page! It's as if Google is saying, I know you're relevant but I don't know what page to show so I'll just show the home page instead. Makes no sense, but most of these home page cannibalizations make no sense either. Sure hope someone can crack this nut.

I see you on page 2 so at least you're moving up.

Here's what I would suggest. Take out clothes drying rack out of your meta title and save that for the other page. That shouldn't be there anyway. You sell "laundry equipment that is handsome and strong," and your home page supports that with wringer washers, clotheslines, clothespins, etc., and not just drying racks.

Also it appears to me that you are focusing on drying racks on your home page. Your reviews are about drying racks and you say "We are very proud of our laundry drying rack and other products." Why not just say "we are proud of our laundry equipment." If you're afraid of losing the rank you have, I wouldn't. You are on page 2 behind Target, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Amazon, etc., etc. What do you have to lose? At least test it. You can always put it back.

BTW: There is a typo in one of your reviews: "clothes frying rack." I'm not sure as it stands it's a good review.

I see this all the time with home pages cannibalizing subpages and have my own discussion going at http://moz.com/community/q/home-page-cannibal. The solution to yours seems a little more obvious than mine. Let's hope!

I was wondering if others had the same problem I have. It appears Google loves that home page too much and I'm having a difficult time getting it to rank the page I really want. And that happens if a keyword I want to rank for only appears on the home page one time with a keyword density of .1%. Take vanillaqueen.com for example. The home page ranks on the first page for "bulk vanilla beans" and not http://vanillaqueen.com/shop/category/vanilla-beans/ or http://vanillaqueen.com/five-reasons-why-buying-bulk-vanilla-makes-good-sense/

And I'll add another one that I recently took on. This is a personal injury attorney in a large city so there is a ton of competition who have been doing SEO for a very long time. (Fortunately he also does business and civil litigation law to keep the business going). Last month, according to webmaster tools, he got a couple of clicks (hey, it's something!) on "personal injury attorney [his city]" on page 2 in the SERPS, but it was his home page. http://bit.ly/1Gvumlm

**In this case I don't mind people landing on the home page, but does the fact that another page that is much better optimized for those keywords indicate a penalty on that page? And is his rank lower because the better page is not ranking and Google has to find the next best thing in the home page? **

Has anyone else experienced that and what have you done to get Google to not go home?

P.S. The law site is a huge challenge because of the competition. Any help you pros out there can offer to get this underdog out of hiding will be much appreciated. We're starting a smart, strategic content marketing plan now that I'm very excited about.

Run an OSE report on www.schoolmatters.com/ca/san-diego/personal-injury-lawyer/. OSE redirects to brandingwithseo.com. Why? And if you go to brandingwithseo.com in your browser, it redirects to seocompany.org. Why is OSE redirecting? It appears the links that come up are a combination of links for the seo company and for schoolmatters.com.

Follow up here on how to edit White Pages. I emailed them. There response was:

Option 1:

Add all your listings with Yext: http://www.yext.com/pl/whitepages/index.html

With a Yext Powerlisting your business info will be added on WhitePages and other Yext partners such as Yelp, CitySearch, Yahoo!, MapQuest and Superpages.

Yext features:

• Enhanced photos 
• videos & special offers 
• insights into how many people view or click on your listing
• self-service implementation.

Option 2:

Contact InfoGroup

So there you go. Go through the data aggregators. Moz/Local tool is good for this.

Thanks everyone. All great advice and exactly what I'm doing and have planned. So the advice I hear here is, be patient, and tell them they need to be too!

I'm curious what you all think about this page:
http://www.beverlys.com/fabric.html The word fabric is there 71 times. I know "density" isn't supposed to matter, but over optimization does. Could that be construed as such even though there is a valid reason for those to be there?

Their top 3 competitors' fabric pages are different: 
http://www.joann.com/fabric/ 48 times
https://www.fabric.com/ 29 times
http://www.hancockfabrics.com/ 30 times