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Bad bad idea!

As others have said, I suspect the theory here is to try to rank higher for when people use speech marks in their Google query.

In my opinion, the idea is bad for 3 reasons:

1. Hardly anyone searches like that these days - I do sometimes but only when the results without "" fail to return the results I need - or when I'm doing specific research (intitle:" " etc). Not many 'normal' users search like this

2. From a user perspective it doesn't make sense. In the body of content it would look very odd and unprofessional (unless you are citing a quote!) - Moreover using " " marks in the title tag is a bad idea - you only get a few characters for your title tag, so take FULL advantage of each character! I don't mean over-optimise keywords here either, but as well as having your primary keyword in there, use the title tag to help turn 'would-be' visitors into visitors - using " " marks in your title tag reduces the space you have to use, making it a bad idea.

3. It's a pretty blatant form of trying to manipulate results - Something that big G would likely not approve of... Ask your client if they want to gamble their online presence on something designed to 'trick' Google If they are promoting a crappy $7 affiliate product I'd maybe understand them being that silly, but if they want a long-term online business... Nah!

Kinda makes me wonder who suggested this to them! Did they enter a time-warp when they went into the meeting, going back to 2001?!

Personally I wouldn't do it. No way. At the end of the day this would be very clearly against Google's terms (not to mention low-quality work), so effectively you'd be placing a bet with your site's reputation on if Google's engineers successfully catch you.

If it's a business that wants to do well in the long term online, I wouldn't take the risk of a bet like that against someone like Google, who have 'one or two' decent engineers actively trying to catch this sort of thing.

Pattern spotting is likely to catch you out and end up with you in hot water, it's just not worth the risk (in my opinion).

As John points out, for a churn & burn website this may work I guess (not something I'd be involved in tbh!), but at the end of the day if you get caught, you're a bit screwed... Plus it'd just be contributing to more crappy content out there on the web - not something any of us need!

Yup, all looks good now - the page has index, follow

I'm going to send you a private message here on Moz with a Screaming Frog crawl export, which I carried out just to check there were no instances of 'noindex' left on any pages... All looks fine from the noindex standpoint.

I have used this site before and the approval wasn't too long: http://www.information-online.com/ - They also allowed an anchored backlink, which is nice, but they appear NOT to be Google news approved.

Then I found this little list for you, but check on Google news approval if you want fast indexing (go to news.google.com, and search using the site: operator, so like: site:web-address-of-pr-sitehere.com

free-press-release.com
bignews.biz
prlog.org
live-<acronym title="Google PageRank">pr</acronym>.com
<acronym title="Google PageRank">pr</acronym>-usa.net
theopenpress.com
information-online.com
freepressrelease.com
freepressindex.com
ideamarketers.com

These guys seem to offer a free service, but maybe not with links (not sure, maybe they do allow links for free!) and they say they are Google enws approved (seem to be): http://www.prfrog.co.uk/free-press-release.html

We do also own a Google news approved PR site ourselves, so I could always do you a freebie with a link back to you if that helps Don't worry, not trying to sell you anything, just let me know if you want one published for free (would have to be well written, by you,  though!).

I am off to sleep now, but will check in tomorrow to see if you want a freebie. If not, have a bash with a couple of the ones from the list above, however these were just found via a quick Google search mainly, so I canot vouch for any of them.

Hope that helps!

You might also want to consider repeat custom. Having a database of repeat customers can be huge for ecommerce. Increasing lifetime value is one of the keys to success here.

A few ideas (I am assuming the CD key selling is legal, of course):

• Loyalty programmes (buy 'x' products and get 1 free, such as buy 'x' CD keys and get a random free one, obviously work your pricing to be sure you're in good profit, the freebie doesn't have to be an expensive one).
• Consider cross-selling at checkout. By offering an additional, related game at a decent discount, you may increase the average basket value considerably.
• Run seasonal promos, check Google Trends and other sources for when hotspots are (Christmas etc) and ramp-up your promotions - mailing out customers in a 'countdown' style fashion to build the PR (but monitor open rates and unsubscribes to make sure you're not annoying them!).
• Just before big game launches, piggy-back on the publicity & PR that the game generates and run discounts or contests - tie these in with you doing a video review of the game and upload to YouTube (you have a branded YouTube channel right?). Mail out to your list with the review of the new/just released game.

Other than Lifetime Value increasing:

Have you considered Twitch? Why not run a Twitch giveaway - Try to team-up with a popular streamer (if you're not well known yet, don't go for top-tier streamers at first. Find well known but approachable ones) and get them to do a sponsored CD Key giveaway. You'd need to make sure you get good coverage from the streamer (links from their chat, link from their bio for 'x' weeks, stream uploaded to their YouTube channel too if possible, with a link to your store etc).

What about asking any YouTube game streamers if you can sponsor their channel? Obviously, the likes of PewDiePie would be a bit too expensive, but aim for niche gamers with a decent following, you may be surprised how cheap you can sponsor them (CD keys?!) for links/mentions etc.

Just a few more ideas for you there, hope it helps

In my opinion...

It really depends on the context. Are you worried that the posts you remove the links on will drop rankings, or that the pages/posts they link TO will drop?

What I mean is, are the links from your posts going out to pages that you wish to get to rank? If so, are they ranking?

Or, are you cross-linking, post to post?

As an example, roughly how many links are on each post, and how many (average) words per post?

In general, I don't like to link out too much from posts, as the 'juice' passed by each link will be less, and it can look spammy.

If you pull several outbound internal links from a selection of posts, it may be wise to plan it so that not all the links point to the same pages(s), so that across the board, no single page gets a drastic drop in internal links.

Another possible tactic (taking into account, and agreeing with, what Alan said below), is that you could also pull any links that go out to pages you are not as bothered about, if you have any such outbound links on your posts. Perhaps checking your Analytics reports for the best converting pages will help you decide this (being sure to have first touch attribution installed, of course!).

Without an example though, it is kinda hard to give anything other than generic advice...

I agree fully with what Ryan suggested above, if local is your target. Also consider using the hcard microformat on your address, as that can't hurt either.

Same opinion as everyone else here, it is not just about webmaster tools, you should use a 301 redirect from one versionm to the other too

As for whcih version to use, in my opionion it doesn't matter from an SEO standpoint which you use really, so it's down to a business decision based on what you feel is aesthetically more pleasing, or more useful to you. WITH ONE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION.

If you are in the situation that you have lots and lots of quality links to either version (www or non-www) then I would tend to lean towards that version. Obviously so long as you are putting a 301 redirect (are you on a linux server by the way?) then in time the weight of the links from one version (www or non-www) should be passed to the other version, via the permanently moved header status that Google will find. Even so, to keep things running smoothly, personally, I would go for a balance between what I think looks best, and which version has the most backlinks at present.

Whichever you choose, setup the 301 from the other version, to the version you go with.

It's a micro format of HTML.

You can use it to, for want of a better word, 'tag' your address, so basically it is a way of saying to bots that hey, you know this string of characters that follows, it is an address... there is some conjecture as to its usefulness, but I believe it is best practice to use it, especially with local search focused projects.

More info here: http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard

And a nice tool here: http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator

I hope that helps

No probs Steve, glad I could help

It can take a while for Google to update - how long ago did you do this?

I would look here: http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php

Enter an old URL, and hit 'Submit' - You should then be taken to a results page, and hopefully will see this:

"HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently => "

If you don't, something is wrong

Try that tool, and copy/paste the result here for everyone to take a peek at - we will then help if we can, as we will have more to go on

Hope that helps!

Oh, and also, consider this plugin for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/live-http-headers/

I like to add the 301's myself in the .htaccess file, with the following format:

Redirect 301 /url-goes-here.html http://www.yoursite.com/url-goes-here.html

Be sure to use that structure (eg. NO http://www. on the old page, but have it on the new page)

Maybe try that for 1 URL, and see if it works for you? - I have to say, be sure to not delete any o fthe other stuff in your .htaccess file! - Best to create a backup BEFORE editing

Remember, when doing web design, coding, or on-page SEO, if anything goes wrong, the worse thing that should happen is that you have to revert back to the bacup that you made before you started

Although if you have lots to do, then you can automate it... various ways to do that!

Really it depends on the context of what you want to do.

Can I ask, how many pages do you want to 301 redirect?

Hi, I am not Gianluca, but hope you don't mind my input here!

From our own experience, this is what happens:

1) Implement a 301

2. TEST to ensure you get the correct header status (301 permanently moved)

3. Google eventually crawls the old page, and finds the 301 redirect

4. After some time, Google replaces the old URL with the new URL.

Now, as for speeding things up, in my opinion (born out by testing), counter to your idea of adding the new URL to webmaster tools, it is better to get Google to find the actual 301 redirect, before the new url (this way, Google won't see the new URL as a duplicate, before it finds the old, now 301 redirected, URL, which in theory 'could' happen if both pages had the same content/title tag, etc - Although with just 1 or 2 redirects, it is quite unlikely, and should resolve itself pretty quick).

So what I like to do, is try to get Googlebot to the old (301'd) page as soon as possible once it has been implemented (and tested!).

To do this, consider pinging the URL, or pinging your RSS feed (if your site has them)  - Tweet about the fact you did a redirect, and link from twitter to the old URL, or even, if you have done some website redesign, write a press release about it, and within the PR, link to the old page... Basically, anything to get google old Googlebot to crawl the old URL< and find the 301 redirect

Others may disagree, but this does appear to work well for us!

Hope that helps,

Mike.

In addition to the excellent response by Robert Fisher, below, you do not actually NEED to do this, but you CAN do it automatically if you choose to.

Google News needs...

EITHER a unique 3 digit code in the URL...

OR

A Google news specific sitemap.

So, your options are to either change your WP (I checked, your site is Wordpress based, yes?) Permalinks settings, to include post id, OR use a google news sitemap plugin.

You can always put a number in front of the post id, so use something like:

/%postname%/1%post_id%

So, adding a numerical '1' befor %post_id% in your permalinks.

If you are worried about lots of 404 errors due to changing your URL structure, then how about using deans permalinks migration (install it BEFORE changing your permalink settings!) - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/permalinks-migration-plugin-for-wordpress/

As for a Google News sitemap... For wordpress, I recommend this one: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gn-xml-sitemap/

If you go down the sitemap route, do be sure that ONLY news posts are included... E.G. NOT your static, non-news content pages!

IN TERMS OF SEO -

I don't feel it will effect things too much, so long as everything else is good as regards your on-page SEO etc.

Hope that helps!

Personally, if you're 100% that you don't want the Wordpress install, I'd:

• Delete all files in the myblog subfolder, except the .htaccess file
• Edit the .htaccess file (or create a new one if you deleted it)
• 301 Redirect any good posts (had rankings, traffic or links) to a specific, related page on your main site
• Add a redirect rule to 301 all remaining pages to / (main site's homepage)

This may sound odd, but I'd then submit a sitemap with the pages that caused the 500 and 404 errors, aiming to get Google to recrawl the error pages & find the new 301 rules.

If you need a hand with this, I'm busy today but I can make the .htaccess entry for you tomorrow morning *UK time) and ping over to you.

EDIT: I'll be out for the next few hrs, but will keep an eye for a response when I can. If you want to drop me an email, check my Moz profile page, look under 'Mike Gracia's Blog:' and email me at that domain (my email is mike@).

Just to say I'll be sorting the htaccess for you later this afternoon

I'll ping you a private message on Moz when done and will include my contact details in case you need a hand or run into any problems.

Tricky one to answer without knowing more details really to be honest, but here's some things to consider:

• Do you have many backlinks from decent, Spanish websites? If not, I'd have a think about how to get some (don't go for low quality of course!).
• You say you're not a bricks & mortar business, but do you have a Spanish address & phone at all? If so, do you have any citations? Are there (again, decent/quality) sites you can get the site listed on?
• How's your international SEO set-up? For example, geographical targeting in Search Console for the domain or subfolder/subdomain (/es set to Spain, unless Spain is the default, in which case Spain set as the target for the entire domain), hreflang settings...
• How well is your Spanish SERP snippet (title & description) optimised for CTR? Can you make any changes (without negatively affecting SEO) to increase your click through rate from the search results? (Think good, enticing wording in your < title > tag, a decent meta description that pulls-in folk's interest).

Just a few thoughts