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I disagree with these two. I have 3 SERPs currently for one keyword in positions 2,3 and 5. The more repetitively you show in the SERPs the higher your CTR will be. I don't believe having two results is preventing you from being on page one. I wouldn't 301 redirect one of them either, since they are both relative to the key term. Obviously the pages are different, or Google would only show one of them and not both.

I don't believe these pages are in competition with each other. My advice would be to take a look at who is on page one and the differences in your metrics. Is it a link thing? Do you need to add a little bit of content? Compare the metrics for the other sites, not the two pages on your site and see if there are few tweaks you can make to get those results on page one.

It isn't unnatural to have a blog on a subdomain. Many sites use subdomains for blogs, support sections, FAQs. Even Google uses subdomains. GWT is google.com/webmasters, but adwords is on a subdomain, adwords.google.com.

I would move the blog back to the /blog address only because you want the quality content on the main domain. If you want to leave the subdomain there, I don't see any direct negative effects, but having it on the domain would be best practice.

Google selects the location for SERPs based on the IP address of the searcher. The only detriment to having your site hosted in another country would be if they are in what could be considered spammy locations. For example, my company is in Wisconsin, my server is hosted in California. No harm no foul. If my server were hosted out of India, it would be considered unnatural and spammy. I think UK to Belgium is reasonable and wouldn't be considered unnatural.

https://www.facebook.com/APElectricandgeneratorsllc

That is our Facebook

No problem. I love social marketing. It isn't about you personally, but your business page. My company is AP Electric and Generators. If you see the page I manage you will see it is a good blend of business and fun. I have a fair amount of engagement. I'm glad I can help!

Hi Lee,

The company I started working on SEO for was a small family owned construction company. They knew nothing about keywords and couldn't even rank for their own name. Pretty scary. The company wanted to grow, they wanted a different advertising outlet since direct marketing door to door didn't work in the Chicago winters. We built a website, I went to SEO boot camp and we began building their "brand". The most important thing I know about SEO 5 years later is that it is a popularity contest. Google is look for the most relevant, authoritative, trustworthy and expert SERP to match a user's query.

After reading your response I would like to just say for the record, not every person you talk to will take your kindness as their main selling point. I have no idea why this lady didn't accept your offer, but I can say that it appears you did everything right.

I have worked for companies with very niche markets and difficult demographics. Currently my target market is males, 60-75 years old in Florida and New York. It doesn't get any less tech savvy than that. I say, keep your social engaging, informative and consistent. That is the important thing. If some sales result from it, great. If not, you are still serving the purpose by creating a trust in the online world.

In my opinion, this is highly unlikely. User reviews are the holy grail of on page content.

I would check GWT to see if you have had a decrease in CTR organically. This can temporarily effect your rankings. What other changes have you made to these pages? It could just take another week or too for the page to be crawled and indexed properly. When is the last time these pages were cached?

Social Signals are important for organic rankings because they are a trust signal. If you have a social presence, with engagement it is more likely that your site will be seen as legit. I do not feel as though social signals are as important now as they were say, a year ago. It is too easy to manipulate. You can buy followers, cheat engagement and build a reputation completely unrelated to your industry. While it isn't quite as important, it is still a ranking factor.

Social media doesn't need to be a complete waste of your time. Use it to stream customer reviews, industry related articles or advertise promotions. The social signals feed off of engagement. How many likes, shares, comments and reviews your business has on social media is what is important. It doesn't require someone to spend countless hours sharing pictures from the Walking Dead or commenting on every selfie. It requires engaging your audience however possible.

Your social media profiles are also reinforcement for your local listings. The name, address and phone number on your profile can be used to confirm you are who you say you are.

To answer your question simply, yes, social is important. Google plus, Twitter and Facebook are probably the most important. You have to prove to the engines you are a legitimate site and can be a trusted source for searchers, social is part of that equation. It isn't just about traffic from social sites.

Are the products discontinued or out of stock? In my opinion, the 404 errors are only detrimental to your SEO when they are in an overabundance. Relevant 404 errors are important, not just for Google, but for the searcher as well. They need to know that a product has been discontinued. If a product is just out of stock, I wouldn't 404 it at all.

This is a video by Matt Cutts on how Google handles 404 errors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oya9Pl7ukNo

Hi there,

I work for a rather large supply company as well. When we have large items go out of stock we repurpose existing pages to advertise new pages. If it is a small product, like a part or something, we 404 the page.

This is an example of a repurposed page: http://www.apelectric.com/6241-Generac-Guardian-Series-14kW-p/6241.htm

404 errors are not a negative thing per say. Of course you don't want hundreds of them because it creates a negative user experience. If a product is truly discontinued, it is better to let the searcher and the engine know that. No following the pages isn't the best idea because it can prevent traffic from getting to your site. We have about 87 404 pages and they have not influenced our organic rankings. I don't recommend 301 redirecting product pages because it can be misleading to the searcher. For example, we rank really well for the Generac 6241. I wanted to 301 that URL to the replacement model, but if someone types in Generac 6241 and lands on Generac 6461, they are probably going to bounce right off the page. That is not good either. One thing I have done in the past is redirect the product page to a related category page. So, the Generac 6241 could have been redirected to the Air Cooled Generators page. I think this was the better way to do it however.

If a page has value, and can be used as a way to direct traffic to another source that is my favorite way to handle discontinued products. At the end of the day, a $15 part doesn't justify the amount of time it will take me to redesign the page, so I let it become a 404 error.

This is a video from Matt Cutts at Google on how they handle 404 pages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oya9Pl7ukNo

IfByPhone actually owns Mongoose Metrics now. I manage a fairly large amount of AdWords campaigns. I truly believe that the free conversion tool that AdWords provides outranks any other service for the simple fact that there is no cost and you get the same amount of information. I wish there was a better way to tie revenue to keywords.

David, I still believe that is only half of the equation. Actually tracking the conversions back to the campaigns to include the revenue is not possible just by using the dynamic numbers. Google Conversion Tracking uses the dynamic numbers as well. There are a host of call tracking softwares out there, my favorite being IfByPhone. They all lack the ability to accurately track the revenue back to the call. Most are only approximations.

In my experience, the date created referred to the page itself as opposed to the entire site. I have migrated about 20 sites and this has not created an issue at all. As long as your domain doesn't change you should be ok. Part of the domain age is when it was first registered, how long it is registered for and whether or not it is an active site. New pages get added to sites all the time. The "date created" is another tag for Google to be able to use to know that there has been an update and there is new content to crawl.

I have a couple of thoughts on this:

First, I would definitely track any overlapping keywords. That means they are performing well in two categories, making them valuable.

Second, I would track the key terms with the highest search volume and competition. If you are already ranking well on terms that aren't bringing traffic or revenue, then they aren't converting terms for your client. I would look at the terms bringing traffic to your site and determine if they are ranking well. If not, then those are the words that need the targeting. I would double check the lists for redundant terms like "pink dog collar" and "pink dog collars".

"But how about keywords with high volume and high difficulty, related to the website, and low ranking?" These are the key terms that I would focus my attention on.

I really wish there was a way to record phone revenue from AdWords. I am using their goal conversions to track phone calls as well. I have 127 campaigns and over 5000 products so manually calculating the revenue is impossible. I spoke with a company a few months ago called Invoca, they monitor calls and manually record conversions for you. So, if someone calls from AdWords, they can screen the call and record the revenue for you. That is the only thing I have come close to as far as being able to tie conversions to AdWords.

I would suggest moving your h2 tag to something else. The engines pull what they feel is the most relevant item from your page. Your h2 tag is "Awesome, you're signed up" so the engines think this is the second most relevant item on the page.

http://www.onradpad.com/ask-radpad/can-i-pay-rent-with-a-credit-card/ - This is the page that surfaces with weird language when you search "pay with radpad". This is because of the text on the page that is linked elsewhere. If you look in the second paragraph, the phrase is underlined and taller than the other text, telling the search engine it is more relevant. It is a link to your payment page, which is why there is weird text attached to it in the SERP.

Since the engines pull the information they feel is most relevant to exactly what it typed in by the searcher, you kind of have to make sure that the h tags and text on the page are targeting exactly what you think will be searched. I would move the h2 tag and make the text on your link look the same as the text on the page, it should help you get your meta description showing instead of content. You can also add the key terms here to your meta description. That will also help avoid content out ranking the description.

The most important thing about a good link building strategy is making sure the links look natural and relevant. Keep your link building consistent and moderate. Find the best quality linking sources over the higher quantity link sources (like link farms). Build a strong social strategy and make sure you are sending valuable social signals. That means engaging your audience.

Link farms and other "paid for links" are the sources that do nothing but build quantities and quantities of link regardless of the root domains or the DA of the sources. This is bad because you don't know what or where these links will be. any kind of link building strategy that involves too much of one thing will look unnatural.

When you work on your strategy you have to make the decision of what kind of website you want Google to think of you as. Your link profile is the path that connects you to other sources and tells Google what kind of crowd you belong too. When you think of it like that, you can make the decision that points you to a better strategy. You don't want Google to think you are fast and loose, because then you aren't trustworthy. If you build high quality links, to related, reputable websites you will look like an authoritative member of your industry that can be trusted. Write good content that will make others want to link to you, send valuable social signals and strive for the best quality links, not the highest quantity of links.

Are you sure this was Penguin and not Panda? Did you actually get a penalty? I would really make sure you are dealing with a penalty before you put all of this work into something that it doesn't necessarily need.

If you are experiencing a loss in traffic and impressions and keyword rankings without an actual penalty I would run a new SERP analysis and find out what kind of competition is kicking you out of your top spots. With two major updates just rolling out in Sept/Oct there is a chance that your site was not penalized but being outranked by better sites. With the way that Penguin works, you can be suffering from another sites Penguin 2.0 recovery.

Do you update your content regularly? Is what you have on the site truly unique and informative? You said you are going through a disavow right now, that could definitely effect the rankings and search traffic.

Before you decide to completely abandon ship and jump on a whole new site, make sure you are truly dealing with a Penguin penalty and not just mediocre on page SEO coupled with a weak link profile.

If you truly feel moving domains is the solution, then I would select a domain completely unrelated and unattached to any webmaster property that might have a Penguin penalty. Select a domain with some age and that is clear of any nefarious link profiles. Use OSE or Ahrefs to investigate before you buy. Keeping things unrelated will be the best way to ensure you have no negative link juice following you around.

Is it possible that one of your link sources suffered a Penguin Penalty? That could really effect your rankings. 3.0 really targeted link neighborhoods. You could have back links that have terrible link profiles and are now causing you grief. Use OSE or Ahrefs to kind of check your link profiles back links. I would start here if you have no actual penalty.

Searchers need content. Ask for product reviews and get them on page. This will help your content issue. If you add product reviews make sure you use an aggregate app that actually puts the reviews on page so that they can be crawled. This is great unique content.

For the competition of the key terms you are trying to rank for, I don't believe you have a strong enough link profile. I also think some great content would improve your rankings.

Penguin 3.0 targeted "link neighborhoods". There is a chance you are suffering for someone else's bad link profile. You can check your linking root domains in Open Site Explorer.

Panda 4.1 is still technically rolling out. You can be hit with Panda effects still, even though the update rolled out 9/25. There are also small algo updates that happen all the time. Do you have any messages in GWT? If you don't then I wouldn't necessarily jump on blaming algo updates for the traffic and rankings loss.

There is a a possibility that when Penguin 3.0 rolled out it gave other sites with better link profiles a boost over your site. A site with a stronger link profile and better content will out rank you even if their DA is lower.