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I think the keyword "sales" is so ultracompetitive that unless someone is looking for fashions basic sales, it wouldn't even matter much. I used the same structure you did with all my products, and since Penguin it may not be the best, but I doubt that you will get a penalty or benefit from it.  I would continue to use the same pattern for the rest of the site if already implemented...

Check our portfolio of sites and haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. Have my fingers crossed...

Yes, it's pretty fast and multithreaded. It's old--but the job is pretty simple (multi threaded is the key, running many crawlers). At 2 million pages, probably will be incredible slow--but can do a site w/10,000+ pages pretty fast.

The domain name is just a one factor in many that determine a success of the site.  Most likely, the lack of performance is mostly related related to the other factors. I would do an analysis of the other factors before deciding on what to do with the domain name.

Good luck!

A typical directory has categorization and outbound links to many websites. Based on these characteristics Google can understand if a website is a directory or not. However, Google's goal is to deliver relevant, valuable and unique content. If they perceive (through mostly their algo) that the content fits this criteria, and adheres to their guidelines, they may get high organic rankings.

Why do you say that directories are taking over the serps? Also, what do you mean by backroom deals?

Did you take a look at the inbound links to each of these pages? Was the content on the spec page original? I also assume that the product spec pages was live prior to the bundles page. Is this correct?

Overall, just focus on the whiteboard fridays, this blog, webmasterworld  and anything from Matt Cutts.  There are a ton more, but IMHO these are the best resources.

To expand on Mike's post, another layer of complexity arises if there are multiple conversion types (phone, form live chat & etc.).

Yes, indeed. As you know, Google wants to filter out pages that generally have the same content. By helping them, it will ultimately help everyone.

For us, we have separate parameters for tracking purposes. The pages are all the same (except for a tracking phone#) and we update the .htaccess file, as well as webmaster tools to not index these extra pages.

Don had a great answer on this. I focus on directories that have some sort of value to the end-user and any site just can't get listed (for the company I work for is industrial B2B). If it doesn't meet these two criteria, it's most likely spammy and not worth getting listed in. I wouldn't get hung up on a set number or a specific pagerank.

I think you hit the nail on the head -- the anchor text is a branded term with not much competition.  Also, the sites that you design probably do not have that many outbound links (much less spammy outbound links). Because of those 2 reasons, I think that you will continue to be fine (you could always put a no follow attribute on the link).

One thing to also consider is if  all the sites are on one IP block, it may be considered a link-farm and could hurt.

Would be interested in hearing other's opinion on this.

IMHO, there were so many "scammy seo" companies that many companies believe it's a vodoo type business nowadays and ruined it for many legitimate SEO companies (this is mostly true for small-mid size companies).

It seems like more and more companies look for a good web design/developement company (for either a new site or routine maintenance) and this leads into the SEO work (agree w/Brad).

We have a Q & A site and used this wordpress template. Don't believe they have login integration as you mentioned, but has the rest of the functionality you mentioned. PM if you want to take a look.

Have some worthy of linking back (Link Bait). If the site sells shoes, you could be a page with conversion charts between US/UK shoes sizes, a guide for taken care of leather on shoes, different ways to tie shoelaces and etc. Once created get the word out on your social media and hopes of getting some inbound links.

We are an industrial manufacturer and although it probably does not help us directly, it still helps.

An example of this is for branding purposes. If someone is doing research on us, the content that we generate and distribute in social media may help them to chose us (we may be a "subject matter expert" in something they are looking for).

When you look at the source, do you see the GA snippet?

A few things I would change: 1.) I would change "Self Employed" to "Consultant". 2.) I would take this out: Note that these aren’t very optimized for the search engines. 3.) Move education up

Good luck!

Another tool is using the Auction Insights Report inside AdWords. However, it will not show total spend but will show you impression share, average position and etc. and help you in estimate competitor's spend.

Yes, but you will most definitely get higher organic positions for the keyword string of "luxury towels uk" than the other two since there will be less competition.

If all things being equal between two sites, if one firm has social media, they will probably outrank the ones that doesn't.  This creates a domino effect where more firms will adopt social media marketing  to keep up. So as time increases, I can see it becoming more and more difficult to get ranked high for competitive keywords w/out social media.

For long-tails, I think you can rank high organically for many years/decades to come.