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When Ever I create URLs I only care about few things that are as follows!

-          The URL should not contain any special characters so anything that contain “?” “&” or similar stuff should not be your choice!

-          I prefer to add the keywords in it but having a complete key phrases in not necessary!

-          What I really prefer is that the keyword length should be short

In your case ideally you should choose a URL that is contain no special string, should have keyword in it (it’s not necessary to have a exact match key phrase) and URL length should ne as short as possible.

Mike, my advice is to 301 all pages from old domain to the new domain and make sure there is no problem with in (usually this shift causes problem which result in bad ranking fluctuations). If everything goes fine… give it a week or two to get things in order!

You will see your old domain will be out of index and new one will started ranking accordingly…

Will it rank no. 1?

Not sure but 301ing the URLs always cause a loss in link juice so I it always depends upon the competition you are chasing!! I believe you also should do some content marketing or awareness program to let your audience know about the new domain… if that will get you some quick links, you might regain your rankings in search engines.

Hope this helps!

Whenever I stuck with such a situation on my client’s side I usually prefer to make changes in order to make website design a more responsive and user friendly because in the longer run Google and other search engines are actually working on tracking the HQ website that should be loved by users...

But before implementing the final changes makes a website promotional plan in terms of social and getting more quality links to the website... this way if you lose the first spot chances are that will be for temporary period only and you will regain your position within days and weeks!

Hope this helps!

In my opinion, I don’t think there is a problem and you should let them link to you but always make sure that they mostly target your brand name instead of a keyword because if they started to target any keyword across different website it will give Google a negative signal about the reputation of your website but having a link with a logo or brand name anchor text is fine and you can allow your manufacturers to link to you!

Dana, I have been through this situation and it was very easy for me to make then no follow the paid links that are pointing back to my client’s website.

Obviously Paid Links are against the Google terms and you know you cannot take that easy so you have to go with adding no follow attribute.

When I was facing this issue, I tried to setup a physical meeting (may be a dinner and a coffee) and then slowly tell him how Google is reacting these days and how business should take care of small details that ideally they shouldn’t. Plot the problem and let him know the solution… If he is not technical enough just offer him your technical services for free and if he/she is really in a good connection with you, he probably will say yes to it (keep your services free)!

And you are done!

Not really sure about this but try to get more citations from different quality locations under the HQ address and keywords and add links that points to your HQ address listing, thin might help!

Now when you say failed micro sites, does that means failed in terms of content or converting users in to customers or failed because they have spammy links on their profile and because they get a hit from panda or penguin?

If they get a hit from panda or penguin then it is the worst idea to redirect the micro site to main site as they will pass their link juices to the main site (which makes the situation go worst)!

In-case they are failed it terms of gaining SERP rankings and converting users in to customers in that case you can redirect it to main site...

If redirection is the only option you have then in that case try to clean their link profile by sending link removal emails and using a link disavow tool and then move towards redirection.

Hope this helps!

Not sure about CCL but good web hosting defiantly impact the SERP rankings. The problem with bad web hosting is the downtime and if Google crawl your website in the downtime, you probably will witness a dip in rankings.

Hope this helps!

In my personal opinion, crawler crawl through URLs so if the URL is not changing upon price change then in that case crawler will crawl the prices that are available as default. Adding different URLs for wholesalers will get you in to the duplicate content issues (in-case you do not create completely separate content).

As far as I know price change might not help with rankings but content does so let the retail page ranking and focus on helping wholesalers to find their area through user friendly visit experience.

Hope this helps!

The best idea is to 301 to removed product’s category page or a custom page that explains why the page does not exist anymore what are the ideal paces on the website to go and find similar products....

My quick advice here is to install GWT and Bing Webmaster tool to see where is the problem with regards to crawling and indexing. Mostly when the website’s overall structure is not SEO friendly, indexing becomes a problem for search engines.

XML sitemap helps Google while crawling the site, whereas HTML sitemaps are usually used to help the visitors to have a better and easier site experience.

In my opinion having a XML sitemap is great as it will help Google while crawling and indexing the site in to search engine but there is no technical use of HTML sitemap. If you think that your visitors need one, than go for it but otherwise having XML sitemap for a website is enough!

Hope this helps!

Guest posting is not the only option... infect guest blogging for link only is a bad idea... I would advise you to focus on broken link building, ego baits and infographics as by this you can get quick and better results in less time!

Technically 301 redirection means that you are shifting users as well as search engines to the new version of the URL so technically there is no need of including the new version of URL in the webmaster tools but I believe including them will not hurt either.

Hope this helps!

If you see the new bar in your Google+ account that asks you to claim your custom URL then do that and if not here is the URL to get started with Google+ custom URL https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2676340?rd=1.

In my opinion Google is already pretty good in catching up links that looks completely spammy! Kind of links you have discussed in your post exactly comes under the umbrella of SPAM. These are similar kind of links that good don’t like if they are the part of your back link profile.

If you are ranking for keywords, probably their life is not too long because Google will eventually find them and then they might got penalized for this.

Hope this helps!

The Now URLs are the one you probably want ideally so it should be before to now!!

Ron, honestly speaking SEO is more than just link and Google in order to give rankings use tons of different signals… I mean, if we talk about co occurrence you don’t not need a link, just a brand mention will work!

1. Google do crawl and index links from PDF files as well so there just because it’s a PDF you should not write for them is not really a good idea!
2. Not all no-follow links are waste… Wikipedia passes a no follow link but I have witnessed people’s ranking goes up after they get a link from Wikipedia.
3. Traffic is coming to the website and you can use that traffic ad encourage them to link back to you (somehow!)

So no link that offers quality traffic is a waste! If you think you are getting valuable traffic from that website just keep writing for that magazine.

Hope this helps!

My suggestion would be to go with the basic idea of what Image Alt tags are and go with it and you will find the right path yourself. In my personal opinion Alt tag images are use to describe and hint search engine about what the image is all about so if your keyword justify an image go with it but if not then try to avoid that... using similar image alt tag on all images will take you to the red zone of Google and they might consider you a spammer for adding keyword stuffing within the content.

Try not to get in to the red area of Google and play safe!

Hope this helps!

My advice would be to include a fresh sitemap and upload it Google Webmaster tool. Not sure about time but I will second Donna, this will take time for the pages to get out of the Google Index.

There is one hack that I used for one page on my website but not sure if it will work for 1000+ pages.

I actually removed a page on my website using Google’s temporary removal request. It kicked the page out of the index for 90 days and in the mean time I added the link in the robots.txt file so it gone quickly and never returned back in the Google listing.

Hope this helps.