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SEO Spider from Screaming Frog is a great crawler and a notable alternative to Xenu

The difference between positions 2 and 8 appear to be combined Organic/Google Places results. Perhaps for stability you should work on your Google Places listing. Google will combine the organic and places results if they see good optimisation of both.

There's a good article on that here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-research-local-citations-after-google-removed-them-from-places

Yes, the learning centre on Google gives you enough information to pass the exam and get the qualification. However for your own benefit there's lots to be learned by using AdWords itself.

If you have access to a campaign already then log in and have a play around. If you don't have access, or don't know anyone that does then perhaps start a campaign for yourself. DM me if you don't have access and I'll send you a voucher.

Thanks

Rob

When did you implement the 301 redirect?

I've seen it take a couple of months for some sites to regain its PageRank. As long as you follow the correct procedure (which it seems like you have) then you should be okay.

Another thing you might wish to consider is to change the links from pointing to your old site to link to your new site.

Don't forget that internal anchor text can determine which pages Google shows on a given SERP. If you do overuse a keyword in your internal anchor text it does dilute the keyword across the site. It's perhaps better to reduce the number of times a keyword is used in internal anchor text to focus a keyword, and links from that keyword, onto a particular page.

I don't think it's microformats.

For one of my client sites I have Schema.org implemented on Product Pages but not the Category pages.

One of the category pages ranks for a search and does show a list of products on the SERP

Another of the category pages ranks for a search and does not show a list of products in the SERP.

You can see for yourself here:

Without product list:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=espresso+cups&pws=0

(position 5, espressodeco.com)

With product list:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=espresso+cups+and+saucers&pws=0

(position 4)

It appears Google is just using a list of products from some sites on each SERP.

I currently see you at position 2.

How are you checking your rankings?

Do other sites on the page change positions often?

I'd definitely recommend...both. When I worked for an Agency I did my AdWords exam almost immediately (about 3 years ago) and it quickly taught me everything I needed to know in order to run their and their client's campaigns. My exam coupled with the client spend made the agency a Google Certified Partner which was great in helping them signup new clients.

I've kept renewing the AdWords exam and now manage my own client's campaigns. Every time I re-qualify Google send me 20 £75 AdWords Vouchers which are great for helping to sign up new customers.

I'm taking my Analytics exam in the next couple of months (when I get a moment) due to a specific client's needs.

As long as it offers something significantly different then it will survive. Otherwise they're just too late to the party.

Ooof there are so many and really it depends if you want news, tips or want to learn more about a particular niche. In lieu of a long list I'd recommend SEO Gadget, State of Search and SEO Theory.

If you are relevant in multiple categories I see no harm in trying to get links from all of them, it's quick and easy to submit your site. The category structure in Dmoz isn't perfect so it can be difficult to know which is the most relevant category for your site especially with some being so similar.

Discovering 404s can be useful.

Is the old page deleted? Why not 301 redirect the URL to an appropriate page elsewhere on your site? Tools such as Screaming Frog's SEO Spider can crawl your website and help you discover 404s. By redirecting the page with a permanent redirect search engines will to pass any link juice the previous page had to the new page. Redirecting will also cleanup your pages in the SERPs and help with any broken internal links on your site (though it'd be better to fix those).

There's no need to having a rel=canonical tag on a 404 page (but if you do, ensure the tag is for the page itself and not actual content on your site).

There's also no need for search engines to index your 404 page, so I suggest adding the meta NOINDEX tag to the page.

If the articles are also featured on individual pages I would recommend NOINDEX for 2 of those pages, and a canonical tag for the correct page.

My experience was that Position Preference never really worked well anyway.

Targeting positions 3-6 for a number of keywords the average position was around 2, which was fine for higher quality score ads with lower cpc but annoying for some of the more competitive phrases with a higher average cpc and less chance of a return due to product pricing and competition.

I found it easier to manage ad positions with bid management rather than Position Preference.

£10k to £30k per month

their website doesn't give me enough information. What experience do you have with them?

I'm looking to launch and track campaigns for 3000 products with each ad group focusing on a specific product. I'm used to using AdWords Editor and Excel for Search and Display campaigns in AdWords.

I'd like to hear from someone with experience in Acquisio, Kenshoo, Clickable and any others, the sorts of accounts and benefits.

Thanks

...and what is the SEO benefit of this? This video from Matt Cutts suggests using file extentions, except for a directory.

Google will count links to different pages on your site. This post from David Naylor illustrates the definition of where the First Link counts.

Yeah it's not great and is out of date, has broken links etc, but as with a lot of SEO advice is useful as a guide as to the sort of places you'd benefit from being listed in.