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If i turn an application off displaying a 503 error will that get my site unindexed from search engines?

Thank you again for your help, i did some more research and digging and found this: https://bitly.com/pages/help#i_0_1

Thank you for the response Ryan. So you don't see any issue (specifically with link juice) with using these shortener services to make longer URLs more manageable in off site press releases and articles?

Sorry, i accidentally posted this question three times somehow? As i mentioned on the other response, I use Google UTM link tracking to measure how successful articles and press releases are on other websites (linking back to my pages). Sometime these query based URLs get quite long and my client suggested trying bit.ly.

So i was trying to see if anyone had experience with using bit.ly and if they have seen the links pass link juice.

Thank you for your response. I don't plan on using this for twitter. To track how successful certain articles & press releases are I use Google's UTM link tracking. At times these URLs get quite long and my client asked about using Bit.ly URL shortener. I just wasn't sure if they acted as 301's or not.

Have you done this in the past and found that you still got credit for the links? or have you only used it with social media that are normally no follow's anyway?

Do URL shortener services like bit.ly act as 301 redirects? I was thinking about utilizing one for longer query based URLs and didn't want to risk losing link juice. Thanks for the insight!

Regards - Kyle

Are URL shorteners like Bit.ly considered 301 redirects? I was thinking about using them for some longer URL's in press releases but i didn't want to loose any link juice through the service.

Thanks for the info! - Kyle

There are many possible reasons. Try resubmitting a new xml sitemap to Google Webmaster tools and that should speed up the process.

The short answer for your question, yes it normally takes a week to two weeks to get sites fully re-indexed in Google. Of course there are special occasions when it turns around faster, but generally speaking 1-2 weeks. The easiest way to check if they have been reindexed, is to search for branded keywords and see your new titles/meta descriptions are in the SERPs or if it is still the older ones.

As for optimizing your pages, shoot for an A in the term target tool (http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/on-page-keyword-optimization/new).

Part One:

If the only reason you would spend $1000 on a domain is because of its age then i think it is a bad idea. Focus on a domain name that makes sense for the company and its mission, don't make ALL your decisions in the name of SEO. If it happens to have a targeted keyword in the domain or some old backlinks, then bonus.

Part Two:

Do you have to have a .com to rank well, of course not. However a few things to think about if you go with what you are thinking in part two...

1. Is this client a direct competitor of the person who owns the .com? 
   If so, procede with caution, especially if it is a copyrighted or trade-marked term.
2. Is the .com targeting the same keywords as you? 
   If so, then you may be hurting yourself by confusing customers and end users.

Personally, without knowing any other details on the project, i would keep looking. Find a .com domain if that is what you truly want. Keep wordsmithing different variations and utilize Google's keyword tool to give suggestions. You'll find a winner eventually.

Good luck - Kyle

Welcome!

The best area to look at as a beginner/intermediate is the seo guide: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Do you have any specific aspects you are looking for strategy in: on page, link building, etc?

I agree social media is a most... depending on the niche. My normal suggestion for people trying to ease into social media is to use social bookmarking (add this, share this, etc). With social bookmarking you can see what channels your users prefer and based on your analytics you can make educated steps with your social media plan.

This question seems to be popping up a lot today on the forums lol.

Diane, i fully agree with Simon on this one. Focus on your user first and stick to one domain if possible.

This happened to me in the past. My client's site had a custom 404 that redirect all missing pages to the homepage. When roger bot (seomoz crawler) searched for the robots.txt page (that was non-existent) it continually got redirect to the homepage.

So on that note, check if you have a robots.txt file. If not, add one and see if it solves the problem.

Sorry i may have worded that oddly in my reply. They would certainly count as a direct match if they are in subdomains. What i was trying to stress is that Google doesn't value direct match domains as much as they use too. However, Bing and Yahoo still do.

So my suggestion was to direct your focus to other important aspects of SEO. Go with a keyword match in your URL off your base domain, focus on those back links with great anchor text, and spend plenty of time on your on-page aspects.

With all of that you will out rank any exact match domain.

For every 301 redirect you do, you lose a little link juice.

Also, from my experiences with direct match domains... in google it barely helps. However yahoo and bing still place a lot of value in it. I would focus on building relevant links and on page optimizations for your site rather than trying to get keyword matches in your domain.

I would go after backlinks with the anchor text of "car rentals" back to www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals. It will increase your domain authority and page authority without the risk of splitting your links across domains.

In my experiences with on page optimizations never choose more than 1-2 keywords to target on a page. You should have one short tail and one long tail keyword at most. For instance, your homepage should be targeted to "Boston Cosmetic Dentist," after that you shouldn't have it focused on any other pages for risk of keyword cannibalization. Then for your teeth whitening page. Have your short tail keyword be "Teeth Whitening" and your long tail be "Boston Teeth Whitening."

It is important to cater your website to the user not the search engine. Simply adding dentist three times in your title and h1 tag will do no more for you thank listing it once in your title and h1.

Good luck!

Cufon is a font sifr used to emulate non-web safe fonts on the web. All of these classes and span wrapped around the H1 are being added on page load. If you actually review the source code you can see that is not what the search engines would see when crawling the page.

In regards to stuffing content into the H1, i wouldn't stress over it to much. As long as your targeted keywords show up in the title/meta and a few times on the page you will be all set. Cater your site to the user not the search engines.

Good luck!