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m.example.com is definitely better but if you have responsive design, you can also adjust based on user agent detection and I am seeing a lot more success with that. However, if you do decide to go m.example.com, don't forget to Deny Google Mobile access to your Main Website and Only Allow Googlebot-Mobile access to your mobile site. That way you won't run into duplicate content issues between your main website and mobile site.

XYZ Sandals is definitely better. You might also want to consider doing something even more descriptive and doing XYZ Sandals for Women ABC Leather Shoes for Men XYZ Evening Shoes There are ton's of brand searches followed by type/category of shoes.

I think some people/client's over react. It's also easier for me to say, because I am not the client in this case. Maybe the client got penalized in the SERPS and their SEO said the bulk of links coming from your directory are causing the problem. I think this is the nature of the web and it's a natural link profile to have all kinds of links and I don't think this should/would affect the client's site. Again, I am not the client or their SEO. And the problem is SEO does not have a standard recipe or published guidelines. And if your client's site is penalized, he/she is probably going through all sorts of SEO On-page and Off-page audit. I think your nofollow is a good solution and if possible I would actually give the control to the users in their profile whether or not they want their links to be followed or nofollowed. That might be a good idea. But either way, follow or nofollow, industry links from niche directories are always good links. And they help a lot towards Local SEO. Even if it was not a link, it would still help as being a citation. An actual dofollow link is always better, but others help as well (presuming the directory is very strong which it sounds like it is).

If you want to rank multiple domains for the same content, in that case canonical tag won't do it. Also, keep in mind that with your current structure you are risking everything including the main-website. I am sure you read what EGOL mentioned. Its not worth the risk. I would concentrate on the main-website first and do whatever it takes to separate it from the rest of the websites. If you still really really have to do the other domains/websites, I would do the following: 1. Change the Product Names, Descriptions, Image file-names etc as much as you can. Make them unique. Honestly, there's no shortcut to this. 2. Separate the sites in terms of domains and hosting and do not interlink the sites to each other. 3. As much as possible, use a completely different CMS/URL structure.

Would you essentially have the same set of products with exact same product categories, product names, product descriptions ? If yes, this could lead to duplicate content issues. Also, since your "microsites" will be powered by the shopping cart on the main site, I am guessing all these microsites will have to be hosted on the same server ? In my opinion, there's definitely "some" value in trying to do this with this approach. It just depends on how big scale are we talking. I mean are you talking about 5 microsites or 50 ? It would be worth if you could build a wedding or a baseball related niche site with lots of good, unique content that is only on the microsite along with the products from the main site but having a different unique description that is different then your main-site. I would also start thinking about how would you build the domain authority / links to the microsites ? IMO this is a bigger discussion that you need to spend some time on.

CTR, Bounce Rate, Time spent on a page/website, site speed etc they all add up. As Google and other Search Engines mention that they have 200+ ranking signals, these things are definitely part of those. Also, these influence your Site Score/Quality Score which might also affect how you rank in PPC. If you have a higher CTR, therefore a better site-score, Google Adwords might show you ad at #1 even though the site at #2 is paying more per click.

I would look at the pages and ask myself the question: Does this page really have more then 1 "Primary" heading ? Can you do 1 primary heading and then sub-headings ? If all such options are exhausted and the only way to address the structure and layout of the page is by having multiple H1 Tags...do it. But I would do it as a last resort or when it's absolutely necessary and it makes sense from a user perspective.

Donnie, I agree. However, we had the same problem on a website and here's what we did the canonical tag:

Over a period of 3-4 weeks, all those print pages disappeared from the SERP. Now if I take a print URL and do a cache: for that page, it shows me the web version of that page.

So yes, I agree the question was about blocking the pages from getting indexed. There's no real recipe here, it's about getting the right solution. Before canonical tag, robots.txt was the only solution. But now with canonical there (provided one has the time and resources available to implement it vs adding one line of text to robots.txt), you can technically 301 the pages and not have to stop/restrict the spiders from crawling them.

Absolutely no offence to your solution in any way. Both are indeed workable solutions. The best part is that your robots.txt solution takes 30 seconds to implement since you provided the actually disallow code :), so it's better.

I agree with Egol's comment. That's the way to go. Optimized Filename, Anchor Text and any surrounding text...think of trying to describe the image in 3-4 words. It works wonders. And if people share your image or the page the image sits on, it helps. Also, I have not seen a clear evidence of Images XML Sitemap helping or not helping, but it can't hurt to do an XML Sitemap of Images/URLs along with their captions/titles if you can.

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" <="" span="">xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">
  
    <loc>http://example.com/sample.html</loc>
    image:image</image:image>
        image:lochttp://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc></urlset>

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/adding-images-to-your-sitemaps.html

Yes, it's strongly recommended. It should be fairly simple to populate this tag with the "full" URL of the article based on the article ID. This approach will not only help you get rid of the duplicate content issue, but a canonical tag essentially works like a 301 redirect. So from all search engine perspective you are 301'ing your print pages to the real web urls without redirecting the actual user's who are browsing the print pages if they need to.

If you can have another website link you from somewhere on the web, that could also help speed up the indexing, getting you a deeper crawl.

Think of the following:

1. Press Release containing an active clickable hyperlink to your website
2. Leave a testimonial or something on a service provider's website with an active link
3. Find niche directories and try to get a listing

These links will not only help you short term in getting you a deep index, but also help long term towards your link profile (Off-page Optimization).

I actually remember Lore from a while ago. It's an interesting, easy to use FAQ CMS.

Anyways, I would also recommend implementing Canonical Tags for any possible duplicate content issues. So whether it's the print or the web version, each one of them will contain a canonical tag pointing to the web url of that article in the section of your website.

Are you talking about a Wordpress Blog ? What are you trying to do by exporting site content/meta data into an XML File ? Are you trying to use it as a backup or what ?

You can become an RSP with Tucows/OpenSRS and then Domain Privacy is available for free by default on all domains under that RSP. You can then transfer all your domains there. RSP is like a reseller account (Registration Service Provider). It all depends on how many domains you own.

Yeah, but since Tumblr.com is not a domain you control, you can't 301 them to your pages. They don't give you the ability to do that...yet.

As far as the followers, now that's some value there. Maybe you should consider doing these. Get rid of all content from Tumblr.com, do some teaser posts with new descriptions/introductions/excerpts on tumblr.com with the full story link pointing to your main blog. And yes, you could then start doing the same for the future posts. As I said, if you have the time and resources available, you could do teaser posts for all your posts on Tumblr.com or just the most popular/high traffic ones. Whatever makes sense from your time perspective.

But yes, you are on the right track and this will certainly work.  Good idea BTW, Nice niche :).

As Francisco and Ryan said, they will for sure be counted. This is not an anchor text link, but it will still help you towards domain authority as well as page authority. If this domain/IP subnet has never linked to you before, it will also add towards your link profile in all those areas. It also looks like a natural link, a mix is always good and "natural". I would recommend having these as a part of a link building strategy. Too many anchor text/good/value passing links is always "not natural".

Everything adds up

William, you can't 301 or anything else like that to 100redflags.tumblr.com /* pages.

The best option would be to stop the crawl. Another option that I would recommend is that:

Once you have confirmed all your actual content has migrated to your own blog with no dependency on Tumblr.com, why not get rid of the entire content from Tumblr.com and on the homepage/404 page, do a post that tells that 100redflags.tumblr.com is now moved to 100redflags.com and provide an active hyperlink so users can reach there.

At the same time, do the deindex. Just the deindex would help, but it could also hurt in the long run. It definitely won't help you in any way having the content site at 2 places, would it ?

Great questions. Let me try and answer them in the sequence you asked.

1. Don't worry about the PR. Consider PR for entertainment. Although PR does give you a "brief" idea on the quality of the directory, as to how many quality links does this directory have to itself. Again, don't look at just the PR.

2. Yes, all links are good links. It does not matter if it's unranked, because it might be indexed tomorrow. That's fine. If this is the case, I would look for PR on the homepage and PR on some inner-pages (atleast).

3. Look for how strong the directory is in terms of backlinks to itself. Are very related sites listed in the directory ?

4. That actually depends on your current backlink profile ? Do you have atleast 500 non-directory links to your website already ? Are a majority of those from Blog Comments/Article Directories/PR Submissions etc kind of link techniques ? If yes, I would not do the Directory submissions and concentrate on some natural link building techniques ? Can you create some content that could go viral ? If you decide to do that, don't expect success in the 1st try. Just keep doing it.

Overall, whether to do directory links or not, depends on how your existing link profile looks like. If it's mostly natural links, do a bunch of directory links every once in a while.

Also, I would recommend finding niche directories pertaining to your industry and see if you can get yourself listed there before the "general" internet directories. I hope this helps.

The descriptions you see in the SERPS are tweaked, changed and snippets of text from your page are used and what gets displayed depends on the user's query. Lets say your page is ranking for two keywords. Red Widgets and Blue Widgets. If Google thinks your Meta description is related to Red Widget's, they will use it. For Blue Widgets, if they find something else on the page that might be better, they'll use that.

I agree with Bail and Keri. The takeaway is that the phrase is always important but so is surrounding text. Mix and match and do it what makes sense for a user, not for a Search Engine. It will always work out better in the long-run and you won't have to worry about over optimization kind of penalties.

Design your website for the user as well as the Search Engines, not just the Search Engines. Search Engines like what the user's like. As it leads to more users engaging with your content, website, therefore improving your site-score, helping you not only in SEO but PPC if at all you do PPC.