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Having disappeared, the homepage appeared immediately when I resubmitted it, then fell back in SERPs a little and is now achieving better SERPs than when it disappeared. I can't see any probs with the code / sitemap or anything. All in all rather confusing but (thankfully) resolved in a couple of minutes. Thanks for your brilliant feedback Thomas and for your help as well Marcus. Thanks to you, I'm well prepared should this problem hit one of my clients again

I'm too busy as well but happy to take a quick look and give you some feedback to help.

A website I provide content for has just suffered a de-indexed homepage in Google (not in any of the other search engines) - all the other pages remained indexed as usual. Client asked me what might be the problem and I just couldn't figure it out - no linkbuilding has ever been carried out so clean backlink profile, etc. I just resubmitted it and it's back in its usual place, and has maintained the rankings (and PR) it had before it disappeared a few days ago. I checked WMT and no warnings or issues there. Any idea why this might've happened?

Thanks Chris for the useful feedback - much appreciated

Hello, I'm migrating from an old site to a new site, and 301 forwarding many of the pages...

My key problem is this I'm seeing www.website.com/ indexed in SE and www.website.com/default.aspx in showing as URL when I'm on homepage - should I simply 301 forward both of these?

Then for several internal pages there are 2/3 versions of each page indexed. Canonicalization issues. Again, I'm wondering whether I should 301 forward each URL even if there are several different indexed URLs for the same page?

Your advice will be welcome! Thanks in advance - Luke

Yes, shape the news release for a niche of journos/writers and pitch your news to them, or just target one individual at a time. Build media lists and build up long-term links with the journos/writers. There are lots of resources on the web about how to write the perfect news release. One of the best PR books out there is PR Power by Amanda Barry.

Hi Sida. I'm a PR bloke. Why would you want to publish PR content on 7,000 websites in a week? There could be a problem If there are backlinks to your client from those websites, especially if they're spammy, low-quality websites.

Good PR is about sending newsworthy stories through to journos and other writers, who will pick up on the stories and publish them. It isn't about placing news releases on thousands of websites.

I meant merging yes, sorry! Thanks for those useful links there Amber - they look brilliant L

Hi Linda - for some reason it copied one line of address twice but I couldn't find any dupes. It just looks like a strange printing error, or something. I'm not going to verify anyway for now. It's a little confusing. Do you know when Google will roll out once click conversion option in the UK? Have they indicated dates? Many thanks for your useful advice.

Thanks guys, much appreciated and very useful. I just found Rand's whiteboard on domains and found it quite useful too - see 3: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name

and this on hyphenated domains: http://www.highposition.com/blog/hyphenated-domains-google/ - but it's hard to know. Might set up some of my own tests.

Hi Sida - it's this process but there's a fair amount of caution out there from SEOs http://www.topdraw.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-google-places-google-plus/

RE: "In order to maximize the direct traffic to a domain, it is advised that webmasters should only buy a domain if the .com version is available. "

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

• I am working for a client who's had a domain live for 5 years or so without a .com version of the domain (just .co.uk) - the domain is also hyphenated (which doesn't look like a great idea).

So, just wondering what research has been done into probs caused by lack of .com domain and by using hyphenated domain. I'm trying to figure out whether it would be worth advising client to switch to a new domain.

Your thoughts would be welcome

Hi, I'm just moving a business listing from Google Places to Google+

I have a couple of problems. (1) The verification postcard has turned up with the wrong address on it (different to the address on Google Places!) - can I alter this once I've verified Google+ page or would I need to go through postcard verification again?

(2) I see the categories in Google+ are far less flexible (and appropriate) for the business I work for, so I'm thinking that may cause problems. Has anybody else experienced this same problem?

Thanks in advance for your help

This might be helpful: http://www.wordwaiter.com/blog/about/how-to-use-newswires/ - imho there are far better ways to manage PR campaigns.

Is there any issue re: SEO?

I usually go for a local and international domain just to protect brand but these guys only protected local .co.uk domain. I'm thinking there aren't any specific SEO implications, but please let me know if there are any...

Thanks Tom - thanks for nudging me in the right direction and Somerset is just brilliant. Haven't actually been there before but... wow. Drinking a nice glass of organic Somerset Cider as I type (slurp!).

You want a content focused agency like the one I work for. Don't focus on building links - focus on building brilliant content instead. Use an agency full of PR experts, writers and other creatives, rather than just techies, as you'll need a good balance of skills to succeed these days.

Hi Mozzers,

I'm wondering whether to put placename in URL or not. This is for a hotel so it's very focused on the county.

I have loads of sub pages along the lines of www.hotelname.com/short-breaks-somerset  www.hotelname.com/eat-out-somerset and so on but I was wondering whether that placename element would help or hinder.

For example, may want to rank for short breaks in other searches (not just those seeking short breaks in Somerset) and was wondering whether the somerset bit may actually hinder this in the future.

Also noticed Somerset is mentioned in nearly all of the page urls through the site. Perhaps this is a bit spammy and just not neccesary. I can include the address of the hotel on every page anyway.

What do you think? Thanks in advance for your help Luke

Thanks for your useful response. Yes, I'm thinking it's a numbers game. If a company goes very aggressively after ad links or directory links (and even less obvious types of  link - too much blogger outreach, for example) I guess they're asking for trouble.

To be honest, I don't even tell people what back-linking anchor text I want either, from journalists or bloggers for example. I just let everything flow naturally. I feel far more comfortable that way.

Why? Is this just a tactic to dominate the SERPs or do they have 3 distinct offerings?