Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Andy

Right, the first step is some good honest planning and think about the content you will have on your site. You want to organise the content and decide upon the keywords as you would for any other project and build the structure of your site around that. You may find that tags or categories work better but that is the basics.

Then, you want to install the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin. This will do most of what you need out the box but you can then decide which taxonomies (types of categories) that you need or more importantly don't need. If this is a single user blog, then you will not need the author pages indexed and likewise, you may not want to index date based archives as they are again just duplicates of the homepage on a single user blog.

I would love to give a more detailed and generic answer but as ever, it really depends on the content but the Yoast tool is a great start. Combine that with the campaign manager here to identify duplication and other issues as you go then you can tweak and refine as you go.

Hope that helps

Marcus

Keep an eye on the cached version of the page - once it is updated you may see something straight away but I would tend to give it a couple of weeks after the page is crawled.

Variety is key and we tend to use the following as a starter:

• local, business and niche directories
• google discussion search (as above, find problems, get client to help with answers + a link)
• article marketing across a few sites but with a few quality articles
• content on the site itself that we find discussions relevant to the content and then link to it from the blog/forum etc
• competitor research (opensiteexplorer) to identify potentials linking to our competitors

It's different for each job, usually requires assistance from the client to do social stuff (forums, blogs etc) and always, always, always take a good bit of time and needs a structured approach.

Half the time, if the links easy to get, it aint worth having! So, think not in volume, but in quality. Get 10 links a week and you have 500 by the time the year is out and you are in a much better position.

Cheers
Marcus

It is time to speak to the corporation and tell them to get some professional advice. If they have 800 sites that are all exactly the same then they are at best going to see most of them fail to get indexed and at worse could face some kind of penalty or de-listing across the entire network (are these sites linked together?).

What can you do?

Well, if it were me, I would want to do one of the following:

1. Substantially rewrite the content across all of the sites and noindex any pages that can't be rewritten
2. Not use these corporate sites and build my own. If we can't have it taken down, at least no index it.
3. No index the duplicate pages and build your own unique content on the site to attract traffic
4. Create one unique and global site that has all locations listed in a directory type affair - maybe even with their own portal or sub domain with a blog and location specific content.
5. Create unique social portals on facebook / google plus and try to make those the main target for search users

As ever, without a link I have to add the caveat that it's kind of tough to give specific and laser targeted advice for sites we have not seen but certainly, this is problematic and will undermine any kind of SEO efforts you may make on the sites.

In a nutshell - you need to resolve this, or give up on these sites as a way of generating search traffic.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

shucks thanks Egol

I can honestly say, that without a doubt, BowlerHat.co.uk is the most kickass awesome SEO company on the planet, but... it's my business, so I may be biased.

I have been in the game for 12 years now one way or another and we do our very best to help. There are some areas where we have a lot of experience and others where we are not so well versed but certainly, fire over a question, I will do my best to guide you and if we work together, you will certainly get an experienced, committed and (often over) enthusiastic service. If we are not a good fit I can certainly help point you in the right direction so you can avoid the many perilous pitfalls and sharks in the SEO services world.

We tend to focus on a content driven approach and I have a bit of a thing for diagnosis technical SEO issues so we can generally provide help with problems and help lay out a content driven strategy for doing well in the long term. We also provide some link building and social services as part of the big picture.

Anyhow, happy to help so fire over a question to my email and I will get straight back to you.

All the best!
Marcus

Hey Karl, Ninja

One quick clarification here from my original post - when I say local I mean folks searching in and about Derbyshire. Important clarification as quite rightly as we want to target everyone looking for a wedding venue in that location.

Your Google+ Local page is actually really nice but a few things jump out at me.

1. Potential issue with page name using 'Wedding Venue' - this is a violation and whilst some folks get away with this it's uneccessary and something I would try changing

2. The rel=publisher tag is not set so I would implement that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1708844?hl=en

3. Reviews - we could always use more reviews from real (and happy) visitors

4. NAP Consistency - from the quickest of looks I see some NAP consistency issues. Different names for the hotel (Shottle Hall Country House Hotel), different phone numbers, address variations. Getting your NAP really consistent is one of the easiest jobs to help overall and will impact in a positive way and remove some negative effects. This ties back into the use of the name on the profile page as 'Shottle Hall Wedding Venue' and 'Shottle Hall Country House Hotel' elsewhere (as they could be two different things entirely).

5. Sites like hitched.co.uk are highly visible and if profiles are well configured they should drive lots of targeted leads. Think beyond the link / citation and consider this a potential source of revenue and ensure you are measuring so can assess the ROI - wedding venues charge a pretty penny so if these sites generated one confirmed sale per month at £1000 PA they are likely providing a strong return on investment and an additional channel.

6. PPC - yep, it's brutal out there but again, it's just another channel and if you can measure it and it does not bite into leads from other channels then in many competitive industries it can be somewhat essential. Even if you only use it for some display / retargeting after organic visits to keep pushing the venue PPC is worth exploring (and measuring).

Hope that helps!
Marcus

I believe they are basically ways of automating link exchange between sites and a network of partners who are willing to exchange. There  is a review here: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/review-linksmanager-links-exchange-toolbar/5440/

It may have grown since that review, and it may have a little, tiny, bit of merit, but I would not make it a large part of your strategy in any way, shape or form.

The good links are always the ones that are hard to get.

Hey,

Certainly, if you could potentially create 150,000 search result pages from only 200 or so products, then you are straying into the ground of near duplicate pages and what is often known as 'search within search'. As you stated, chances are not only could these pages be problematic in themselves, they may drag down other pages.

My advice here would be to try and tie this to your search marketing and keyword research. Look at the actual terms that get searched for and consider some pages that may be useful. Then, if you don't have a page for this, then consider creating maybe tags or categories for these few (certainly less than 150,000) pages and supplement these pages with some additional unique content if there is duplication with other categories.

In fact, try to keep the duplication as low as possible and also try to stick to best practice with those search category pages (canonical, prev next, show all page etc).

Certainly have the search, but I would most likely hide it from search engines and noindex the deep search pages but supplement these with some category pages and/or content pages as tied to your keyword strategy.

Some interesting reading:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/search-results-in-search-results/

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

Alternatively, you could always tinker, and have a go, and then put things back, but odds are, this approach is just creating nearly 150,000 near duplicate pages which are exactly the kind of pages they are currently trying to remove from the index so your main landing pages may end up being collateral damage.

Hope this helps!
Marcus

Hey James

It looks to me like you are just disallowing access to any URLs that have more than the initial p= variable. So, you are reducing the impact of potential duplication through searches and the like.

Good

?p=1

Bad

?p=1&q=search string

I am no magento expert but this seems to be a simple attempt to reduce the myriad duplication that can happen with search pages and the like inside a complex CMS like Magento.

The SEOMoz crawler tool should give you some good insight and to be sure, try removing the 'Disallow: /?p=&' and see if you get a buckletload of duplicate content warnings.

Ultimately, the thing to remember here is that the & is part of the URL and not part of the regex.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

this got posted whilst I was writing my long winded version below else I could have just commented on this post with 'what he said'

Rand mentioned this list is not perfectly up to date but it is a pretty good start. That said, directories should only be a small part of your overall strategy.

Hmmm, who knows, certainly, it is feasible that you may have had a problem on the back of none of your pages existing any longer (well, they did, but on a different URL which may have made matters worse as they could have been seen as duplicates).

Without a URL and access to analytics it is impossible to say for sure but it is certainly feasible. I would also double check against known algorithm updates to see if there are any other traffic drops on significant dates.

http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change

Will the ranking return?

They should do, if nothing else has changed then when those pages come back up they should. You will want to be double sure that the dynamic addresses are not accessible and that there is no potential for duplication but in theory, once everything returns and settles down, your rankings should return if this is indeed the (only) issue.

It may not happen overnight though!

Marcus

How often should you use a press release?

How often have you got something good to say or worth shouting about that deserves exposure?

As a link building strategy, this is limited, so don't rely on it and rather try to use it as a strategy to help popularise and promote something else rather than as an end strategy of itself.

Hope that helps!
Marcus

Hey Anthony

The local and organic results are a separate entity but the page of results blends content from local and organic (and other areas).

' I am guessing your targeted search term is 'driving lessons brighton' and there is no reason why you could not get a well placed organic listing to complement the local listing given that you did a little content development and some gentle link building. The competition for these terms is pretty weak so really, a little content, some good quality directories, maybe some guest posting if you can get your content out there. You could even offer a discounted first X lessons to people who +1 you which should give you more visibility for those users if they search again.

I would also look at the paid search listings as a way of getting a little more page coverage if you feel that is needed. The PPC can be turned off when you have a full schedule and kicked back into action when you need to fill a few more slots.

Out of interest, is this local listing driving traffic to the site? Is the traffic converting? If so, at what kind of rates? I am not sure how much business you need but a broader keyword strategy, some PPC and some very gentle content driven SEO should keep you busy.

Hope it helps and fire away with any questions. 
Marcus

Sounds good, directories are still an easy win for smaller or niche sites where there is not much discussion out there. II am working on a site for a carpet manufacturer, not a hot topic in the blogosphere for some reason.

Hey,

The first thing to do is to determine if you have any obvious problems or technical problems and I would start by setting up an SEOMoz campaign for your site. This will crawl the site and report on any obvious issues that you can address. Additionally, review google webmaster tools and see if there are any notifications or problems being reported there.

From a quick review, there is nothing obvious from a technical perspective. Likewise, your anchor text and link profile look okay from the quickest of looks.

We did have a penquin update around a week ago and it could be that sites that link to you have been removed or lost equity and you are seeing a knock on effect. This could suggest why you dropped a bit, then a bit more as more and more links to your site get devalued as external pages are removed.

You certainly have some sub standard links for the keywords you mentioned:

http://brandedfeel.com/432869-Are-maternity-clothes-necessary-in-order-to-look-good-during.html

http://www.exportimportaustralia.com/directory/apparel_fashion/women_wear/

Likely thing here is that you have lost equity from some of these weaker keyword links and that has knocked you for some of your big searches. You may possibly have some technical issues as well so get that site set up in the campaign manager and report back on your findings and lets see what we can do to help.

Marcus

I have nothing to add here as Ryan has pretty much nailed it but "algorithmically disadvantaged" made me chuckle!

Hey Gary

It's algorithmic, so beyond the demoting of a page there is no way to directly influence it as it is based on what Google believes that people will want from your site.

You can buy sitelinks via PPC ads if you wanted something more specific but.... in my experience, I have not seen any reliable way to influence sitelinks.

But... you could experiment, this article seems to suggest it's not impossible:

http://seminsights.com/opinions/how-to-get-influence-google-sitelinks

That's a trial and error approach but if this is important for you then you can have a bash.

Hope this helps!
Marcus

Hey Jesse

In a nutshell, relevance and quality.

No point going after general purpose directories and there is equally no point if it is a free for all.

If there are high quality, discerning, topical directories in your industry that actually serve a purpose, then, go for it. Also, whilst most topically diverse directories are a waste of time there  may be some decent local directories worth considering if you serve a small geographic area.

As ever, there is no exact answer, it depends on the business and various other factors such as what geographical area that business operates in.

Want to throw the link out there? Maybe we can do a bit of a case study and see whta is about?

Marcus

Hey, as Adam said below, your site is a prime candidate for these recent penalties and algorithm updates.

• You have no branded URL anchors pointing to your site
• You have a heavy keyword volume in your anchor text
• You have dodgy sitewide links from sites that I am guessing may also be yours: http://www.lovesecondtimearound.com/

You also have some duplicate content issues

http://plentymorefish.net/scotland / http://www.plentymorefish.net/Dating-in-Scotland.htm

Then, the site has little positive to prop it up in a heavy and competitive industry.

• No natural editorial style links
• No unique or valuable content

Ultimately, sites are having to justify their existence and old strategies of EMD domains and interlinking networks of sites are just not cutting it any longer.

The page 100 thing seem excessive though and more penalty than devaluation so sort out your duplication and linking issues and you should see some return to form but I would be surprised if you could go first page again with some additional content and links to help justify that position.

Sorry to be the barer of bad news!

Marcus