Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey, I am guessing this is a wordpress site?

You could solve this a couple of ways

1. 301 redirect the duplicate page - not recommended as it is a valid page but it may work
2. canonical link on both pages showing the main version of this content
3. noindex the tag page

Alternatively, you can use options 2 & 3 and it will resolve it.

If it's wordpress, happy to take a look at the actual page if it helps? I spend a lot of time tinkering with wordpress so there  maybe another way & this answer is based on some assumption without real links.

Marcus

Hey Catherine

The basic instructions for  adding a new theme manually are here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes#Adding_New_Themes

From reading the above, it sounds like you need to unzip the theme so:

1. Create a new directory under themes /themes/new/
2. upload (or move) your zip file there
3. unzip all the files

Then go back into your WordPress admin and the theme should be available to preview or activate in the normal way.

So, it sounds like you just need to create a sub directory, move the zip there and unzip it and you will be good to go but please let me know how you get on.

Cheers
Marcus

Hey, the WordPress one looks pretty solid anyhow and like you say, better than spending $$$ (or £££).

I can almost smell the weekend!

Cheers

Marcus

This post covers all the different types of duplicate content in some detail:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content

I have never read anything else that is as informative and clearly explained as that post.

Read it and be enlightened!

Cheers
Marcus

Hmm, it sounds very fishy eh. They won't build equity into your site, they want to build a site they control, they are spreading disinformation about ranking tools.

To me, this is a just a small step away from:

Give me your lunch money or I will beat you up!

Not cool.

Marcus

Hey Javier

It sounds like a standard verification to ensure you are not spamming the index. Probably one you have to wait out unfortunately.

Historically, when I have solved issues with google places uploads the pending message has given me a clue with regards to the problem but in this instance, 'needs verification' seems to mean that it just  needs verification from google places staff.

Probably your only option is to upload them individually from different accounts local to the countries in question or wait it out. Sorry buddy, it's just a patience game.

Cheers
Marcus

Hey, sorry, it's just your directory structure you have a problem with:

/themes/new/ubiquity/*.

Should be

/themes/ubiquity/*.

It was not crystal clear but new was the name for the new theme.

Do that, and it should show up in your admin, if not, let me have your details and ill check it out for you, 2 minute fix.

Marcus

And of course, the person looking for a 'one night stand' would be somewhat disappointed with a night stand ..

Hey Phil

I have had a quick look but to make life easier could you possibly supply a few pages with the keywords you would expect them to rank for? We can then provide some direct feedback rather than generic advice which hopefully you can take and put into action across the site.

Cheers
Marcus

Hey

As Tom mentioned, if it was the 22nd then it is likely a Panda issue. Without a link we can only speculate but the obvious starting point would be to review his site content to assess how unique it is. If he has a site full of manufacturers product descriptions then he needs to audit his site and identify any internal and external duplication.

My advice would be to sign up with copyscape.com and do a full site audit to determine what content is duplicated, weak etc.

Also, it would make sense to understand what is going on with the robots.txt problems. This may be intentional but it is certainly something to cross of the list.

On a positive note, this is the easiest of the penalties to work with as you simply have to remove all the duplication and improve the site to earn it's place in the results. Try to use this as an exercise to focus on creating a solid and informative site and adding real value through the content.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey, it's always pretty tough to gauge these things without a link but it does seem a bit unusual for so many comments to include an outbound link. That said, I would say google is a bit more savvy at detecting areas of UGC and spotting the link condom used here but still, it seems a bit funny, like an unmoderated comment feed which could be an indication of low content.

The point of nofollow is to say that you don't trust the author or the destination of the link, so, to have 300 nofollowed links in UGC seems a little fishy.

As ever, it maybe perfectly right in this case, and I believe that for this to be a problem it would need to be combined with other signals before they would take action.

Out of interest, can you give some indication of why there are so many outbound links? Is it across all articles or just one or two where you have asked for links or some such?

Hard to give much better help or opinion without context.

Cheers
Marcus

Changing the CMS itself will not cause a drop, but any actual changes to the content or structure of the pages may cause changes (good or bad).

As with Craig, I am no big fan of CMS Made Simple, have you thought about maybe migrating to one of the other open CMS platforms? Hard to advise without knowing your site and goals but WordPress can take some beating for most small business websites and Joomla! & Drupal provide options if you need more flexibility.

Both FlowPlayer and JW Player will do that - they are both very nice, well used, robust players. Check out the sites, they have demos showing you what you can get.

Hey

If you already have category pages with these products on and then individual product pages  then really, this is just thin, duplicate content so the best approach is likely to just no index these pages or canonical them to something else more relevant.

Give this a read:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/fat-pandas-and-thin-content

See what content type you have and act accordingly.

Hope it helps.
Marcus

Hey, I have been working like this for years and my own site uses this approach. However, I have come across a few premium themes and a smaller amount of plugins when it can cause a few problems, usually these are things you can easily hack in the source but it may break things when you update your theme and you have to hack again (yoothemes always have this bug).

So, I tend to keep sites in the root now if possible just to simplify things as much as possible.

Moving the site to a different URL / Directory is a pretty simple process:

1. Move all of the relevant files

2. Run the following queries in PHPMyAdmin (or whatever DB tool you use)

**UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'OLDSITE', 'NEWSITE') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = replace(guid, 'OLDSITE','NEWSITE');

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'OLDSITE', 'NEWSITE');

UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value, 'OLDSITE', 'NEWSITE');**

• URLs are full paths without a trailing slash so

OLDSITE = http://www.url.com/subdir

NEWSITE = http://www.url.com

---

Obviously, back up the DB and test the water first but I have used this SQL a bunch of times (even in the last week) to move sites from one server to another (testing to live) or to even move sites from a sub directory to the root. Or, even to move sites from a sub directory on a testing server to the root on the live space.

So, it is not an essential change by any means but in the spirit of keeping things as simple and straightforward as possible, the root tends to work a little better in my experience.

Hope that helps! 
Marcus

Hey, this will be fine. If you consider how a blog works, even the blog here, it shows a sample of the content and a read more link. This is fairly standard and is not true duplicate content where you have something from one page (or site) repeated unnecessarily on another.

Hope it helps. 
Marcus

Yeah, this is just scraping by the sounds of it. At least they are referencing you. Don't worry about this at all. If you are still concerned you could always submit a DMCA request to google for the offending pages: http://www.google.co.uk/dmca.html

Cheers
Marcus

Hey Felicity

If moving the blog is a huge problem, then keep the existing one, and just start blogging and concentrating on your main site. There really is no good reason to maintain two sites and all you are doing is doubling your work.

Concentrate on making one site that is a great resource for your visitors and don't worry about cross linking, linking out and all of this other business as long as what you are doing is intended to create a great experience for your site visitors.

Hope it helps
Marcus

Hey Jason,

Page Rank does not get you customers buddy and it is also horribly out of date if you are worrying about toolbar page rank. You are not even moving the page to another domain so this really should be a light weight move that will be well handled by a 301 redirect.

It may be worth doing an inventory of your links to the pages in open site explorer and updating any that you see as valuable and any others you can easily change but you should not have a major problem with this kind of change.

All the best

Marcus

Hey, I think Simon pretty much nailed this here. Responsive is ideal and the stated preference from Google HQ but with the caveat that you should first consider what is best for the users.

I tend to prefer simplified mobile sites (on the same URL) with some of the content pared back to responsive sites for some of the gaming blogs I read as they are just so image heavy and it provides a simpler, faster and ultimately better experience whilst I am in areas with a less than stellar mobile data connection.

So, responsive if that is suitable but always consider the end user first and tailor your approach to suit.

Hope that helps!
Marcus