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I second ScreamingFrog.  Nothing else comes close.

I'm sorry for my late reply, i've been off the radar these past days, work and bug.

Well, 2 shared the same address, with the third at a different address which is not directly owned and the closest to the brand.  Actually the 3rd domain is a plural.

We've got hold of the singular, which was available (can't believe they didn't have that amongst all the variations they've got kicking around!). It's a bit difficult to explain exactly what I mean but I don't want to post the URLS.  The EMD is to be moved to this new domain, with acme-niche(dot)com redirected to it (or just shut down).

So now we will have one good core domain that is the brand with another domain out there with a different NAP but using the same logo (and to all intents and purposes appearing to be the same business).  So I think we are working on trying to get this other site to change the logo and distance itself.

Does this sound reasonable?

I have a bit of a tricky situation with a client where there is some history with old domains.  But this is the current situation which I need to stick to:

Business name (all made up) is Acme Print

• 2 live websites - acme-niche(dot)com  and productsandservices(dot)com
• Third website acmeprint(dot)com is live and owned by an old partner, different NAP.

acme-niche(dot)com  and productsandservices(dot)com share the same NAP.  Not much traffic and a bit of a poor domain profile for acme-niche(dot)com, so suggest just using productsandservices(dot)com.  Also acme-niche(dot)com would be a bit misleading for use for the whole business in any case.

However, all content for productsandservices(dot)com refers to Acme Print.  Because of all the confusion should we keep the productsandservices(dot)com referring to Acme Print throughout, or update with new productsandservices(dot)com logo, mention that it is a trading name of Acme Print and refer to the trading domain name throughout the content.

I want to know the best option for listings and citations - the trading name which is a domain name or Acme Print?  I've not worked with a local site where domain name and business name and a separate business with domain are mixed up.

Yes I absolutely agree with EGOL. If the domain/page authority is good I would rather have a do-follow link.  But on the other hand if that is not possible and the brand/domain is mentioned in context then I would be happy that is a signal for Google.  Maybe small but still part of the mix.

The only time I could imagine staging is if the existing site is in a mess and there are spurious redirect chains already going on.  So it might be worth working out the true 'original' URLs, remove the existing redirects, implement the new redirects, test and then mop up anything left over.  But as I say I can only imagine in that kind of scenario.

You could legitimately have hidden content in terms of category/URLs - maybe only made available if you sign up as an example.  The guidelines are referring to manipulating on page content so there are elements within that page that are hidden and by default manipulating.

A Wordpress site has a footer widget for facebook with some images, all of which are served within an iframe.  The FB CDN robots is blocking the images from being crawled so Webmaster Tools rendering tool is reporting these 8 or so images as blocked.  Should I be concerned?

Andy is spot on.

Stripping it back to the bone the basic rule is that you violate Google terms by purchasing links.  It is not an instant Google hit if you do, but you kind of move into death row and take your chance.

Because you don't always instantly suffer a penalty doesn't mean that you should follow any advice that seems like a quick fix.  I would stick to here or the other main marketing sites to get a concrete base of what is ethical, what works and what doesn't.  That's not to suggest you shouldn't implement your own strategies but they should be built on that concrete base.

I think it really depends on your blog, the market and what you want to achieve.  A tight niche could be very lucrative if you become the authority.

Say a keyword has approx 100 searches per month and you rank well and achieve a sale/signup/commitment per month from that.  Then there are 30 other search terms with similar volumes you can rank for.  Is this valuable to you?

If you are selling 'blue widgets' at £1 per widget and a typical customer only ever buys one or two then your niche blog may not be worth your efforts.  But if they are repeat purchasers then again that changes the landscape.

You could use something like URL Profiler along with an API key from here or your preferred tool.

Yes, that is the key - what has happened to the pages on the server?  You would hope that they still exist and you can revert.  If the site is in tact you can just remove any 301 or 302 redirects and restore.  It may be that Google has removed the URLs from the index but these would be crawled again once the redirects are sorted.

It depends on how you work and your relationship with the client.  I guess the first step is identifying issues and then finding the right person to fix.

If you look around you'll find plenty of (free) plugins that can help you if the platform is Wordpress.

That list is not complete just some main points that usually do some good, and it is in no particular order.

This is a must - https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

Secondary to John's response I would be meticulous in squeezing the very best in:

• all aspects of page speed
• ensuring only the URLs you want are indexed (no tags, query strings etc)
• no redirect chains
• reduce/remove 404s
• reduce/remove 301s
• sitemap is accurate and weighted correctly
• check the cached URLs (text only) are showing the text and not swamped by other stuff on the page.

There is other stuff but these sometimes throw open other issues to look at.

I'd also add https://www.responsetap.com/ to that list.

Thanks guys.  My feeling is also that it has been hooked onto from the organic side and not directly relevant.  I'm not getting any feedback that is going to make me want to test!  I'm in the process of getting a client to update their pages as the privacy policy is too thin deep within a T&C link and the question came up.

Does anyone have direct experience regarding the impact on quality score by ensuring there is a privacy policy in place on the landing page?

I am aware of the legal requirement but I have heard anecdotal evidence there could be an impact on quality score if one is missing.

Webmaster Tools is not a current accurate reflection of what is actually indexed.

A search in Google for site:yourdomain.com will show the accurate information.

Any URL that you want to remove from a particular TLD needs to be done in the specific TLD Webmaster Tools property.

If the page ia a 404 not found it will sometime soon disappear from the index.  You can force this immediately by going into Webmaster Tools >> Google Index >> Remove URLs >> enter URL >> select 'Remove page....'