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Anchor text and other link-related text will definitely count toward keywords and overall in content, as it's an item on the page. As to whether or not these would push your page toward being seen as stuffed, depends wholly on three things:

1. Is the rest of your content heavy with that keyword?
2. Do the pages to which they link have content that isn't absolutely related to the topic suggested in the anchor text?
3. Are there a lot of links with anchor text like this?

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes", then you may want to reconsider things a touch. The short answer is, yes, the anchor text for links is counted as part of the content of a page, and therefore will effect all aspects to which content can be hinged.

I'd de-index them, since it's not only likely duplicate content, but it's also content you didn't create. I suggest erring on the side of caution.

I'd probably go with Yahoo, if only because it's a search engine that people do still use. However, another option to consider would be to join Yahoo local business (which is free) and BOTW.

You're very welcome Trent. I'll give you a few more examples you may want to research:

1. Having a higher number of product pages creates a more robust e-commerce experience, while also ensuring customers can find **related products **where they otherwise wouldn't.
2. It generally costs more to host and maintain several websites rather than one (something that a lot of people overlook).
3. If/When you have a blog (and you should), you'll have one centralized website which will hold its influence and SEO benefits.
4. Working with any CMS or back-end development will be much less costly and more efficient.
5. If you have reviews or any other customer interaction, they'll hold more worth in one place than spread across several sites.
6. You can more accurately use analytics, create goals and objectives, and estimate ROI on your efforts.

It seems like something about either your search functions, or the e-commerce functionality, is causing these duplicate pages. Without having access to that information, I can tell you that the best option from my point of view would be to redirect all of the "incorrect" urls to the "correct" ones using 301s. I suggest taking a look at this page on Google Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools) if you're unfamiliar with how that works. No matter what platform your website uses, this should do you good.

3 points you should make to your bosses:

1. There's no such thing as "blocking" another site in that way - and in fact, you're **only blocking your own sites **this way. You're competing with yourself, which is silly to do.
2. The more rich, unique, and well-rounded content you have on a website, the better it'll do. These should absolutely be consolidated into one website. Think of it this way: instead of using 9 smaller sites that are getting 11% of your effort each, making one site that gets 100%, and will absolutely do better in SERPs, is the way to go.
3. You're much more likely to make mistakes, have errors, and duplicate content if everything's across different websites instead of one. That's a huge potential issue.

I can think of dozens of other reasons you should centralize everything into one site, but these are probably the biggest ones.

The only reasons I can think of are:

• the developer might have been unfamiliar with Wordpress back-end editing.
• the developer is rooted mostly in PHP and thus favors that structure.
• there was something specific to the client's website that requires this method.

There are several possible reasons, and I think the only way to proceed safely would be for you or your client to get in contact with the previous developer and ask. Aside from that, looking through the PHP to see if there's a genuine reason is the next safest option.

I'd say this depends entirely on time vs. reward. If you have the time and resources, there's no reason these shouldn't be included - especially if they're still ranking. They may very well continue to do so, even after the new structure you've implemented is recognized in crawls. However, if time is a factor and you need to prioritize only what's truly necessary, I'd suggest figuring out the actual worth of these pages and making a decision. What role they play in your sales / related, how many users and conversions they generate, etc.

If your client is adamantly opposed to having the better of the two consume the other business, then yes - the only other viable option I'd see would be to treat them as completely separate businesses that are only related by owner. Name, address(es), phone number(s), email(s), etc. should all be changed if that's the case. For all intents and purposes, they would have to be treated as two unrelated businesses.

I hope your client will chose the prior solution rather than this, but I imagine either would be better than continuing in their current state. Good luck to you.

I would strongly recommend removing the one that's not doing well locally and adding the content to the structure and content of the other website. Your client should also consider condensing the two businesses into one.

I say that because from what you said, it sounds like he views the two service types as different businesses that only share a name. This is very likely counterproductive, and I'd have to assume means that both websites are competing against one another in SERPs regarding branded keywords.

Touting all of his services as one business would have a lot of different benefits; but is there any reason he's treated them as separate businesses? If so, my advice may not be prudent - but it seems unlikely that there's a good reason to do so.

I've checked the source of that page, and your tag is in the body of the page rather than the head. Specifically, the tag is on line 937 at the start of a paragraph, while your head ends at line 107. I suggest reading this article to learn a little more about the syntax of this particular tag and it's uses. It can be a little tricky, but that article should point you in the right direction.

So long as you set your 301 redirect up correctly, it's not an issue. A 301 tells Google that Page-A should permanently direct to Page-B. Because this is often done to replace or update a page, Google and others will know that the similarity / duplicitous nature of the pages is likely due to that very same thing.

If by "switch around daily" you mean you'll be using the same 10 items, but changing the order in which they appear, I wouldn't worry all that much about the SEO effect of it.

If you mean that you'll be changing the 10 products that show, my concern would be less with SEO and more with UX. If I come to a website and see Items A-J are the "top 10", seeing items K-T as the "top 10" the next day or any other time would lead me to believe that "top" doesn't actually mean anything.

When a page is a continuation of content, or a "set" of content - so to speak - the best practice is to use tags that signify it being this way. The most common occurrence of this is search results.

The way that's done is through elements like rel="prev" or rel="next" or similar - and as such, relays to search engines that the pages with these elements marked are within that content set. Because of this, it's likely beneficial for titles and meta-descriptions to be similar if not the same.

I would add that there's is no text on any of those three pages - any "text" one would see there is actually just embedded in an image - which is a huge issue for a number of reasons:

1. Search engines see that there's no text - a big no-no.
2. You're getting practically no SEO value from the content that would be there, even if there isn't much.
3. It's heavier this way - which makes load times slower.

I want to clarify that there are many, bigger issues with these pages - but as your question concerns only duplicate content, I'll leave all of that out for the time being. To summarize, Google, Yahoo, and Bing are just seeing some duplicate banners, sidebars, etc. and then some images in the body of your pages. Hence, duplicate content.

That really depends on what your analytics say. If the trade-off between the volume you do get for "yard care" would remove a lot of traffic, or your site is well-ranked for that, changing to "lawn care" may hinder you more than hurt. Again, this depends on your rankings, keyword goals, and how much a difference the switch might make. All that said, from what you're saying it sounds like the switch to "lawn care" may benefit you in the long run.

Another important note: if you're going to change the branding/name from "yard care" to "lawn care", make sure you do it everywhere. In every directory you're active on, all social media, and other branding. It's important that those things be universal.

One last note: While changing your keyword focus, I'd suggest still having content for "yard care" as a keyword so that you don't lose as much of the work as you may have put into it.

What tools are at your disposal depends strongly on how your site was built and what you and your team have access to. I've not used any tools that automate titles, so I wouldn't want to recommend anything in particular, but searching such a topic in the Moz forums would likely lead you in a good direction.

Unfortunately, I don't have any on hand - just experience running something similar with one of my clients. Yes, you'll lose juice for search terms like the one you've mentioned, but if you optimize your pages in a way that uses a lot of good, service-oriented content, it may not have as much an effect as you might expect. I can't give you any hard data or examples on that, however.

Pretty big. Duplicate content is a no-no and certainly has a sizable impact on your rankings. Title elements aren't necessarily as big a deal - however, usually, longer titles means they were never keyword-optimized to begin with. You can semi-automate that process, but no matter what you do, make sure you don't have duplicate titles.

All of that sounds very good and ambitious! While you cover a lot of bases, I think putting a lot of your energy into your audit will prove to be worthwhile. Making sure your site is mobile-optimized, your content isn't lacking or overstuffed with keywords, no duplicate entries, nor errors, light code, etc. There are always small improvements that can be made, and while they may not do much on their own, collectively it can mean a lot. Blogging and social are always a great asset, but care starts at home, so to speak.