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This is all to do with the technical handling of non ASCII characters and how they have to be presented in the URL.  If the browser is set to UTF-8 then it should be able to read the percent encoding. Take a read of these:

http://www.jamesburton.net/url-design-for-international-seo/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3907995/how-to-support-utf8-japanese-arabic-spanish-urls-in-php

The client does not want to change the HTTPS structure and insists all URLs must be HTTPS.  So I am back to square one.

I want the homepage to be HTTP (when a user is not logged in) but I am hitting a brick wall with the client. So at present we have good links coming in to the HTTP url but the indexed is HTTPS and the internal redirect in DNN is a 302 to HTTPS.

I would try and map each URL of each community site to a corresponding URL within the regional site where possible, rather than pass all link juice to just the homepage.

Something like:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.communityx.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/some-directory/$ http://www.regionaly.com/new-directory{ [R=301,L]

This is a very useful article which I hope you find of help - http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/what-is-a-c-block-ip-address

I agree with CleverPhD to segment out suspect pages and review in analytics to see if there any patterns. Re robots perhaps there are newly generated URLs within /my-url(/)?

I'm dealing with a growing number of sites that seem to be failing in organic traffic for two distinct reasons -

On-site SEO is not tight, traffic has been good but not as good as it could have been and is now being highlighted by indirect residue fallout from Panda and Penguin which has had a negative effect on the link profile - everything starts to tail away.

I wouldn't concentrate on just robots this stage, rather do a complete audit on-site and on the link profile with an open mind.  Screaming Frog and of course the tools on here are a good place to start analysing.  Your drop in indexed pages may mean you have a tighter site which is the direction you want to go in - currently working on a site that had 900+k pages indexed in WT at one point now down to 15k and organic traffic is up 50%

If they are internal links you can have and do what you like.  However the key is user experience.  Have you taken a look at you analytics to see how popular the links are and the visitor behaviour with them?  At a guess, if they look keyword engineered they can be off-putting.

that's great thanks.  NoFollow in Chrome is not picking up.

but the rel attribute "nofollow" is assigned to an 'a' element?

I just wanted to quickly run this past someone.  I have some footer links I want set to nofollow:

<map <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">name</map>="Map"><area <span="" class="webkit-html-tag">shape="rect" coords="10,39,73,101" href="URL" target="_blank" alt="some text">

should this be

<map <span class="webkit-html-tag">name</map <span>="Map"><area <span class="webkit-html-tag">shape</area <span>="rect" coords="10,39,73,101 <a <span class="webkit-html-tag">href="URL" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" alt="some text"></a <span>

Want to check before I advise. If this is not the way how can I fix?

I don't know what the image is but I would imagine it is likely to be promoting the site somehow. If that's the case it must be no-follow.

"Also, the bounce rate on these referrals was over 50%, compared to a site average of around 20%, so the web visitors didn't enjoy it either."

That's a good point - how do visitor view the links.

Actually some of the content isn't too bad.  Yes my example came from the nabcep-entry-level-training/ page.  The key is writing for your audience.  It seems a paradox but forget the keyword when writing your content, write around and expand on that keyword, or get a specialist copywriter to do the content for you.  Get the keyword in there 3-4 times and the rest of content if well written will semantically back-up the keyword.

9% is high, but don't sweat on precise percentages, rather a well written page with mention of the keyword.

If you are using Wordpress install and use Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin as one of the pass or fail criteria is keyword density.

Did you follow through to this - http://moz.com/blog/googles-multi-week-algorithm-update

May be of help?

I completely agree with Sheldon.  I've been in the position to pre-empt a potential slap by requesting removals (repeatedly) then Disavow.  I am no expert but in my opinion as long as there are removal requests as backup and to put in Sheldon's words the pruning is for health and diseased reasons rather than purely ornamental it shows good intent.

Unless you can be sure that you have been actually hit by a penalty (manual or algorithmic) I would also take time to look at:

1. Google update collateral damage - your link profile could be full of devalued links which takes time to filter through.

2. on-page SEO is weak - page load speed, chained 301's, possibly indexed duplicate tag/query string pages etc etc (i've had over 50% improvement on organic traffic ensuring this area is spotless and as optimised as possible)

Generally speaking if you have site-wide do-follow  links (typically footer) I would switch to no-follow immediately. If you are purely inter linking your portfolio Google is likely to spot those links are there trying to game the system.

Even if those links are offering real value to the visitor I would set to no-follow, but the way you describe that does not appear to be their primary purpose.  What context and how do they appear on the page?

Also you say that you have been hit.  Was this a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty?  So you are fighting the right fight have you compared your analytics with the algorithm history dates?

Both EGOL and Ron are offering excellent advice.

I would just like to add from a conversion perspective.  e-commerce is all about (should be about) trust, knowledge, first class service, good value, excellent customer service, transparent delivery process, personable communication and on....

So if I go to a site that sends me elsewhere to buy as a visitor I am savvy enough to know that it is a purely affiliate site and the only real value is earning a little from my potential purchase and that site would have to really go that extra mile for me to understand the value for me.  Without what Ron and EGOL suggests I feel none of the qualities I mentioned will be there.

At this stage the only role SEO can play is to get big numbers to the site so enough stick, but without that great content that's not going to happen (ignoring the other aspects of SEO).  So personally I would take Ron's last comment and look at CRO going back to basics and ask why would someone 'buy' from you.  What is your USP, are you a shop, are you a review site, how can you differ and offer special value.  You can then start working on strategies for CRO built around those core values.

You are there but further down in the results.  I would be astounded if you started a site and consistently ranked at the top from go.  You might get some rogue results and then settle down.

What you do need to do is to develop your link profile which will take time but help your rankings.  The domain could be considered an exact match domain (EMD) http://moz.com/pages/search_results?q=EMD without some solid content on there, and that content should not be spammy and chock full of keyword stuffing which yours seems to be.  Have natural content that adds value for the user rather than words wrapped around your keywords.

Google is looking for quality and value for your visitors and links coming back to your site from trustworthy and authoritative sources.

Note: keyword spammy on page I looked at

It will take a lot of effort in time and money for negative SEO to have an impact.  I would suggest contacting the site and request the link/s be removed if the site is not relevant and spammy.  At the same time to negate any negative linking you should be continually developing your link profile so any single instances like this are watered down by an excellent profile.

Even if the 'design' part was not flash the textual content is pretty much identical.  There is no benefit for it to be indexed so canonical to the main directory URL would make sense.  Then add some good text to those main pages.

Personally I would only use H1 for user experience rather than keywordy as they don't carry much weight.