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One you add the canonical tag, those URLs will essentially get deindexed and only the canonical version of the URL will get indexed/cached in Google.

I agree with Jarno. I would only like to add 2 points: 1. Do not over do any one kind of links. Mix them up...over a period of time. Think natural links. 2. Do not do the "exact anchor text". Do variants of it, combined with site name, brand name etc. Slow and steady is what I would recommend and again as Jarno recommended, get active on social media unless you already are.

Canonical Tag is the most obvious/optimal solution to get rid of these kinds of pages getting indexed and causing internal duplicate content issues.

You could, but it would be more difficult to rank sub-domains. Search for keywords like nytimes, apple etc since we know these sites do have certain sub-domains, none of them show-up in Google in Top 10. I would concentrate on the social media only.

Is it possible for the CMS to include the canonical tags ? I would suggest you look into it and have www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html contain the canonical tag to www.mydomain.com which should also take care of this issue for the homepage. That way Google will deindex www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html and only index www.mydomain.com

You are definitely on the right track. I would continue to work on quality/quantity of the content/freshness depending upon the niche. At the same time, do an audit of your link profile and compare it to a couple of the competing URLs who are outranking you and see what you notice as the brand links vs anchor text links and so on. Also, make sure you are not doing too many links of any one kind.

Think of link building as conventional brand building / PR and you will have all your answers. If you/your website gets mentioned by New York Times in an article/blog/news vs a small blogger, which one is more important. Simply put, if the website that is linking to you has links to itself, it's an important link. Your best bet is to look at the Domain Authority Score to get a top level view. As for anchor text, I would avoid overdoing anything. Use your brand name to build up the authority and you can outrank a lot more people in the long run, however in the short run, anchor text might work out better. Depends what your goals are. I hope this helps.

The best way to rank for your brand name with other/more URLs that you control to some extent would be the social media ones. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc.

Just do site:domain.com search in Google to see if pages from this domain are indexed. If you want to check cache, you can do so by doing a search for cache:domain.com or cache:domain.com/pageurl.html

I hope this helps.

If you do a noindex,follow meta tag, that'll essentially do the same thing as canonicalizing them as far as the effect in the SERPS is concerned. These tag pages will be deindexed.

The noindex tag will just de-index them.

The canonical tag will de-index them as well, but will work more like a 301 redirect for the search engines. So if you think you have link juice to these tag pages that you'd like to redirect to a category page, you can canonicalize them other noindex,follow is fine.

The pages will still work as is in either case.

Sounds like your client clearly needs the SEO / Webmaster Best Practices cleared out and taken care of. Help the Search Engines Rank your website. Provide them enough information that they can rank you. Too little or Too much, both can lead to "no benefits".

So yes, I would optimize those page titles to both SEO and User Friendly. If nobody is able to see those 210 characters, why have them. Also work on a SEO and User Friendly Description as well as H tags if and as needed.

I am guessing you are trying to reorder the sequence of HTML or on-page copy / H1 tags or something like that to essentially get the maximum benefit. If that's the case, then it's absolutely not recommended. Anything you are trying to do that only helps your site rank better, unfortunately is a form of cloaking. It's trying to fool the bot.

If however you are trying to help the user, it makes sense, but the way the question sounds, it is unlikely.

Think from a Search Engine's Perspective. Would you like your bot be fooled/manipulated ? The bots get smarter day by day and this form of cloaking is very old and is definitely track-able. Therefore I would suggest you not to do this.

If it's a sitemap for the users and the page appears under 2 different categories, it's okay. Think usability here.

However, if/when it's the XML sitemap, it should only be there once.

As for the intermediary pages, If I were you, if they offer a good purpose (the reason you have those pages in the 1st place), they should then be listed in both the XML and HTML sitemaps if they help the users.

So to answer your question more directly, if your question is:

Is it bad to have same page listed twice in XML sitemap? Yes, it will generate an error/warning in webmaster console.

Is it bad to have same page listed twice in HTML sitemap? No, if that's what is needed for users, it's okay.

I hope that helps.

Do you have a CMS system that lets you control those pages independently or everything is handled via IT ? Are there architecture level changes that you can do that will help the entire site if made to the "template" / include files ?

I completely agree with Ben and EGOL.

In my opinion, wear the hat of an SEO Evangelist within your organization and do a great job on educating after you have a success story or before if you need to do it on a larger scale. Try and get executive buy-in on things you are trying to do.

Again, it depends on what the Business Goals and Needs are and what's the short term and long term SEO Strategy. Think of the low hanging fruits as well as long term goals.

Great responses from Eppie and Anthony. The only thing that I'd like to add (or repeat) is that look at the link profile and the history/age of the site you are getting these links for. If it's a very brand new kind of site (in terms of backlinks), launch the widget still, but promote it slowly and steadily and also continue to work on other kinds of links and lots and lots of great content on the site if possible...as in grow the site from both On-page as well as Off-page at the same time so that there is some sort of a co-relation to new content / new links.

I hope this helps.

I see the page was there on 4th May, 2012. See Google Cache (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tRCWWnSe7AAJ:www.ultimatebasictraining.com/workbook.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a)

However, today, it looks like there's a 302 / Temporary Redirect in Place on http://www.ultimatebasictraining.com/workbook.html

HTTP/1.1 302 Found => Date => Fri, 01 Jun 2012 21:05:18 GMT Server => Apache Location => http://ultimatebasictraining.com Content-Length => 295 Connection => close Content-Type => text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Have your webmaster look at your .htaccess file and find out and remove the redirects or find why they were added in the 1st place.

I hope this helps.

I have been attending Pubcon in Las Vegas every year since 2003. I have only missed 1 or 2. Also, Pubcon is the only conference I have attended.

What I'd say about Pubcon is that I look forward to it every year, year after year. It's a busy 3-4 days conference. Usually 6-10 sessions running concurrently and the topics vary from On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Paid Search, Affiliate, Conversion Optimization, Social Media and so on. There are usually around 100+ sessions in total to choose from.

Overall a great event to attend.

What will you learn ? Well, that's a tough one to answer. Usually I don't go to conferences and expect something to learn other then meet a lot of nice people in different industries. Sometimes you talk to people, hear out speakers and see them talk about specific strategies they use or specially the tools. I love the tools part. There's always something new to learn in the SEO Tools area. Other then that, talking with people and attending sessions kind of gives you a very broad/but in-depth overview of where the industry is moving, whats going on in the world of search.

I also have Mozcon/Distilled/SMX Advanced/SES to the list of conferences I would consider attending based on timing and budget.

I hope this helps.

Great answers by Justin and Aran. One thing that I'd like to add is make sure that guest posting or any other specific kind of link building is not a major portion of your links. A decent mix aka Natural Links. In simple words, don't over do any one kind/technique of links and you should be good. And as Justin and Aran said, the intent behind guest posting should be to get branding and exposure. Getting your brand in front of the readers of that website. As far as the DA/PA and other metrics are concerned, they would come with it. I would look at what brings you more readers, maybe some traffic. You would want to try and engage with the community. So if you look at Guest Posts in terms of exposure instead of PA/DA, you tend to get better results long term in my opinion.

I am a huge fan of ASO - A Small Orange - Their support is awesome. Apart from that Hostgator, HostMonster, JustHost are some decent hosts.

Search for your Brand at Knowem.com

They should be able to show you all kinds of social sites where your brand/username is still available. I recommend it.