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I think it could be down to your link profile which appears to be very anchor text heavy when I ran your site through opensiteexplorer.org. Since Penguin has come about link profiles are under more scrutiny than ever and heavy use of anchor text is getting picked out as manipulation for rankings purpose (see - http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172839/Google-Penguin-Update-Impact-of-Anchor-Text-Diversity-Link-Relevancy.

On the 21st Nov there was another update (Panda #22) to Google that affected a small percentage of websites - http://www.seroundtable.com/category/google-updates.

Have you had any warnings through Google Webmaster Tools?

With Googles Algorithm ever changing I think you would find this very recent whiteboard friday helpful - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/prediction-anchor-text-is-dying-and-will-be-replaced-by-cocitation-whiteboard-friday

Very interesting response Robert, with some very good and valid points - though I think you would want a expert in order to carry out that change, although that might not be the right place to find them - a very nice example of why hyphens, in the right situation, are very valid.

When you have worked with hyphens and domains what is the largest number of hyphens on an EMD you have worked on?

This has set off an interesting discussion in the office with the feeling that a domain with multiple hyphens is less trusted by the majority here when they appear in the serps, therefore receiving less click-throughs.

In general do you think users have been educated to be suspicious of domains that appear long and and exact match with hyphens and that is why it is believed to be spammy by some?

The most I have worked on in regards to EMDs with hyphens is one and this dominated the SERPs for the targeted terms.

Do you think EMDs with multiple hyphens possibly set off alarm bells with Google in regard to over-optimization rather than efficient labelling of a resource online, in particular since Penguin?

Hi Ruud - a 302 redirect is a temporary redirect whereas a 301 is permanent, so yes you would be better using the 301 redirect as this measure isn't a temporary one from what you have written. Therefore you want search engines to know that the page you are redirecting to is the new location of the one you are directing from.

For more information on redirecting here is the SEOMoz Best Practice link on redirection - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

The guide highlights how important using the correct redirect is in terms of whether link juice is passed - which we all know is important. 302 redirect doesn't pass any juice but 301 does!

Hi Jay,

You need to add quality content but make sure that this content receives exposure through channels such as social media. To add authority to your site you need to build your link profile up, but you must be very careful when doing this in a post penguin world as link profiles are under more scrutiny than ever. Make sure you focus on quality over quantity and definitely be careful you don't build too many links that have exact match anchor text. You need to focus on drawing people to your site and wanting to read your content to become an authority. I would really work hard at building a strong following on social media channels and I would work hard at building relationships and interaction between you and social influencers/authorities related to your niche. Once you establish such relationships you can then expose them to your content and then this will help gain exposure for your content, as they will hopefully talk about your content, starting discussions related to it and also making their followers aware of it through retweets for example. This will lead to people more people linking to your content and in turn increasing your sites authority.

N.B I also think creating a blog for your site and encouraging guest posts from relevant social influencers is a great way to build links and authority for your site as they bring an audience/following with them.

Hope this helps give you some ideas for building your sites authority. I would suggest looking at link building Q&As for more excellent ideas from the community. You might also like to consider content curation...

Hi Caroline, links that are no followed don't directly pass any value in the form of link juice which has a direct impact on SEO and search rankings. However they are still very valuable as they can be linked to by countless people (on their own websites and guest posts meaning potentially followed links) that become aware of your links through social exposure on twitter and similar.

I did a bit of digging as I knew there was a decent Q and A on this here you go - http://www.seomoz.org/q/value-of-twitter-links

EGOL,

I think humorous video would be a good idea for spreading the brand and I would expect it to work on a subconscious level (as with most marketing the psychology behind it is important)  - if people need a pest control company and a decent viral video campaign has made an impression on them then they should remember the brand. When remembering the brand rather than the term this should hopefully influence their search i.e for the specific company rather than the generic term - do you agree with my thought on this?

I completely agree with the fact that those of us that do this everyday aren't the best to ask in regards to this, though our office is a mixed bunch, not all marketeers.

In general I have noticed that more and more users that I have come across are becoming more aware of what they are clicking on in the SERPs. They are filtering results based on their own judgments, not just trusting the search engines as they may have done in the past. Though as you say with the growth of the last five years there is probably one hell of a lot of people that trust in the SERPs whatever they serve for a query. In relation to this suspicion; I think page titles and descriptions influence this more than EMDs.

It would be an interesting study to see the impact of hyphens(the amount) in EMDs and their click through rates from the SERPs.

As we have both attested, though, we have had success with EMD with hyphens, though this is obviously down to many factors in relation to SEO strategy we have employed, not just a good domain.

Thanks for your input it is very valuable.

Here is to the day that we don't have to make a domain registrar rich!

Hi - here is what Matt Cutts has to say on the subject -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU

And in regards to international SEO I think this whiteboard friday should help:

- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Fairytale of New York - The Pogues for me - though Mariah Carey - All I want for Christmas is You! has a certain charm about it haha

I think you are right Egol - link profiles are under more scrutiny than ever and that is where the biggest risk of gaining a penalty lays.

Spend time and create decent content rather than spammy keyword laden pages - I have seen you push this point many times on here and elsewhere.

I also think people can take a big clue as to the quality of their content from their bounce rates and time on page stats - pages ranking for keywords but having a relatively high bounce rate and a low time on page.

Hi Garen,

If I were you I would stay away from this type of practice and actually concentrate on building genuine relationships with social influencers/ authorities and getting genuine links from social impact.  A retweet by an authority in your niche will put your content/site in front of an audience that is actually interested in what you are doing, so you will gain so much more from this. I always work by the fact that if something is worth having then it is likely to take time and effort - I think this is so true in the case of links and social exposure. If it looks to good to be true it usually is, as they say. If you think it looks spammy then you shouldn't be comfortable exposing your self and your sites to it. Like we all know Google is cracking down all the time and I wouldn't take the risk myself.

I would personally go for the domain.com/lawn-mowing.html structure, less clicks to get to your information and easier from a crawl perspective, the extra category page seems like you would be having a page for a pages sake and you would just be burying your important content deeper in the site. Having a menu that has these ten services at the top level is much more efficient site architecture in my opinion. Obviously if it starts getting to much you would have to think about categories.

Remember you always want the minimal amount of links between the homepage and any other page on the site. For a small site you can have one level on your menu and provide relevant anchor text in the navigation on each page to the corresponding page. Obviously for any bigger site you would want to implement a pyramid structure to order the information efficiently.

Hi John,

Penguin is the over-optimization update which is looking for sites that are engaging in tactics purely to rank highly in Google. Google are always looking at ways that they can improve the quality of their search results to keep them ahead of the game and penguin has been designed to look for webspam or those that are overtly SEOing their websites to rank better, tactics include keyword stuffing, link schemes, doorway pages and more. In relation to link profiles they are under more scrutiny than ever and link schemes can be creating link networks to boost your site, using low quality link tactics such as forum and blog comments and having a high concentration of links with exact match anchor text. Also link profiles with lots of links from sites that aren't in their niche as this is clearly unnatural.

SEOs need to concentrate on building quality sites which serve the purpose they are intended for and have excellent usability. Here is Googles take on Penguin in their own words - http://insidesearch.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html

Also for more details on Penguin and the specific tactics it is looking at in relation to SEO and over-optimization take a look here - http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-update-targeting-webspam-in-search-results-119295

I hope this helps answer your question - concentrate on building great content with relevant on page optimization clearly using best practice and not keyword stuffing, then make sure you are getting this content exposure using tactics such as social media, but not dodgy tactics to gains links such as forum, blog comments and anywhere else that allows people to create any link for a links sake and you will be fine, in my opinion. A few reciprocal links are fine and natural but don't engage in a practice where you are reciprocal linking to unrelated sites which giving a link to won't enrich the users browsing experience.

I agree with Richard, I would look at having my content hub (blog) on my own domain, helping to enhance the site as an information resource and directly benefiting from any links that it earns with the posts that you create.Lots of interlinking between your site and your separate blog on blogspot or wordpress.com isn't great either.

Hi Peter,

I have two websites that are in the same niche on different hosts, but under the same Google Account for Analytics and Webmaster Tools which have links to each other. The links are branded and not keyword anchored and I haven't found this to cause any negative impact in the SERPs.

In my opinion, as you mentioned, it is natural for the two to link and the most important thing about link profiles is that they look natural and not manipulated especially post penguin! Hope this helps!

You need to work out ways you can get this large audience to engage with you and your content. Tweeting links to decent content with something that will grab their attention and get them to visit your site for this content will help gain retweets. Through such exposure you are likely to get more interaction and links.

You might want to think about incentivising your followers to retweet and interact with your site.

As you are probably aware

great content + exposure = links

• links help increase ranking.

Social media is a great platform to build an audience and interact with them to form relationships, so that when you have great content you can put it in front of them and gain this exposure!

This Youmoz post today is a very good example of getting people to engage with your brand using such methods

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/case-study-a-b2b-tackles-their-biggest-seo-challenge-with-a-unique-campaign

Just to be clear that when you decide which version you want to be your main url structure you need to make sure that all your internal should point at the preferred format.

So if you are putting preference on the trailing slash as in your 301 redirect is from none trailing slash to trailing slash then your internal link structure should match.

Hi Mohamed,

Vahe gives a great answer to your question and you shouldn't just rely on the SEOMoz tool for your keyword monitoring, although I think the tool is great at giving an overview and I use it constantly.

You might want to consider using filters and advanced segments in Google Analytics, as it will identify keywords that are sending traffic to your site and what position they are, making it easy to do what you want. I did this after Bryan Casson produced this excellent, easy to follow post on here -

 http://www.seomoz.org/blog/show-keyword-position-using-filters-and-advanced-segments

I hope this helps and adds to Vahe already good answer

You are diluting your homepage strength as you could have some links to one version of the page and some to another. I would create a 301 redirect from the /index to the plane .com version. In Googles eyes you have two pages with the same content, this is a common mistake with a lot of websites and their homepage.

For more info read:

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work

Link profiles are all about looking natural and that is what Google is looking for especially after Penguin. If it is natural and beneficial to your visitors to link back to the big company then do so, as this will help your link profile in the eyes of the search engines.

Check this whiteboard friday out by Cyrus Shepard - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-friday