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My actual conclusion then would be to maybe do a guest post for your friend's site talking about how surf school could benefit from considering their marketing and get a valid in-context link rather than just a link in  a footer, which Lee above quite rightly points out could be seen as spammy.

That way you're contributing positively to the development of your friends site and the in-context link appears just on one page (not site-wide) and actually means the page is a relevant, but highly targeted/specialist page which validly links to your site.

Should get you a bit more targeted referrals, rather than you 100% bouncing ones too

Hi there,

Great question! The hardest thing I've had to learn with SEO...and therefore had to teach clients is the value of patience. Doing SEO right is a balance between showing short-term gains (say fixing website errors or correctly doing on page optimisation/content writing), but long-term sustainability (earning links the hard way). As an agency, SEO clients often want quick results - and most quick results in SEO either go against The Guidelines, or simply aren't sustainable.

Patience is also needed when you can see competitors using 'quick fix' methods but know they will get their comeuppance at some point. Just because a competitor is using a tactic that doesn't mean you or your client should. And that's hard for clients to swallow as they see their competitor benefitting from it, at least in the short-term.

This can mean great results taking months to show themselves. If you're doing all the right things and investing the right amount of time and effort, then good results will come to pass - but Google being Google, you can't always know when those results will surface.

Hope this helps!

Martin

I think you need to look beyond Page Rank. Make sure you set you FB page to show info rather than timeline/news feed by default for non-fans.

Look to other stats such as visitors from your FB page and then use your FB wall well to influence your SEO in a natural way

This is looking okay to me - with the only issue being that the +44 and (0) are outside of your Telephone Itemprop. You want to include one or both inside this.

What you're trying to achieve is a good rich snippet and consistency with other places your details are shown - e.g. Google Maps, local directories etc. And the area code is part of your local identity, so in the very least, put the zero inside the telephone itemprop.

The only instances I've come across of Google ignoring a META DESCRIPTION is when it decides that something from the website's content is more relevant than what has been written in the META DESCRIPTION.

I don't know if this is others' experience though?

Review the meta tags and ensure they're not spammy, they are unique across all pages and are a valid summary of the page's content and then wait for re-crawling to see if it makes a difference.

For a start you shouldn't be doing any 'link wheels' as you risk damaging all 7 sites. If the brands are within the same company and are related you could probably 'cross-sell' but that can just look spammy from a customer's perspective.

You'd be better focussing on each brand individually and building up its authority and getting quality links than linking 7 sites on the same IP/C-Block.

Just. Don't. Do. The. Wheel.

The value of a link is a complex thing, to be honest. Your 2m 'no follow' links can have a variety of value depending on

• The number of domains those are placed on
• The position of those links on the linking site
• The value of the page the link is placed on
• The actual anchor text in that link.

Also try not to think of links purely in terms of ranking. At the end of the day, ranking is great, but what you really want is traffic. A 'natural' link profile will have some nofollow links in it (in most cases) and you may find some nofollows are great at driving traffic.

On the flip side you also want a good proportion of followed links as these represent a 'full value vote' for your site, rather than somewhat of a disassociation, which a nofollow can imply.

So get a variety of links from a variety of sources in  a variety of ways but don't ignore a potential linking opportunity just because it may be nofollow as there may be other advantages to be gained that purely ranking.

Heya,

Seems like on the whole you've at least thought through the redesign etc, so well done on that score. Here's my opinion on your questions though:

1. Leaving the XML file on-site for a short while won't do any harm - but make sure you have a new XML files containing the correct website structure going forward. Make sure your new structure has strong canonical tags so that the 301s are also recognised by their new URLs. As far as I know, the XML file doesn't help 'pass the juice', the 301's will.

The other consideration is to ensure you systematically look at external links to old pages and get them changed to point to new pages as the juice value of 301's diminishes over time.

2. You should only see a drop in your rankings if your new page content and titles become less relevant. So ensure your on-page optimisation is done well for your target keywords as soon after that page 'going live' as possible. If you drop in rankings, it may be temporary, or as you say with fresh content it may give it a boost. The issue is not your rankings, but ensuring relevance for your page. If you drop, compare your on-page optimisation to those of your competitors and see what they are doing differently.

If you do everything systematically/methodically and do it well then you should be fine.

I have yet to come across an Analytics campaign where the traffic report doesn't show some traffic from the site we're analysing. The reason is that people visit the home page from the other pages so it's basically an 'internal referral'. What you want to use is the landing page analysis instead, or just use the filters to exclude example.com referrals.

If you're redirecting all variants of the home page to root and your canonical is going to root, then you should be fine.

Check using a site:example.com search in Google and if you only have root and no /default.asp /index.asp etc then it's fine and you don't have an actual canonical problem - which is what I suspect.

I think it's just ensuring you look at the right analytics reports now and don't get confused in the myriad reports it lets you have.

Hi Martin,

Firstly, rather than keyword density, be more concerned about keyword frequency compared to your other content.

My view would be to do one of two things

• Add more content - maybe an intro paragraph to that section of e-commerce site or maybe include customer reviews - something helpful and relevant to give your page more meat.
• Vary your product descriptions

I know it's harder in e-commerce when you have similar products, we have a couple of large e-commerce clients and on-page optimisation, potential for accidental 'keyword stuffing' and cannibalization exists because products are so similar, all the best with it and hope this helped.

Hi Doug,

And I did not presume you could or couldn't do those things, but I didn't word my post in a way that was condescending...explaining things step by step is not always appropriate because I would rather presume knowledge on a forum like SEOmoz than presume ignorance.

So, I hope you were not too offended by my presumption of knowledge.

That being said would you like me to explain what to do to achieve the above points? I am more than happy to do so, by the way.

• On the volume of links - if it is a large-scale issue then another solution would be to have a non-SSL version home page, but on login they are taken to a different SSL 'member welcome' or 'dashboard' sort of page. That way you can retain the link value to the non-SSL version while providing the necessary security over the logged-in functionality.
• On the question of non-SSL links to SSL page ... any extra 'diversion' required between a link and its target has, in my experience, the propensity to reduce that link's effectiveness. even the effects of 301's diminish over time because the presumption is that the page you are 301-ing to is the correct 'new' one and is therefore more relevant, which is why I initially suggested getting links 'fixed'. As your initial post did not suggest the scale of links I could not have replied in a more precise way.

So I do suggest you consider implementing the first bullet point above as a good compromise and will retain the value of your links but permits the SSL implementation as well.

Let me know if I can help further or if you need more things explaining so that you know how to go about doing some of the things suggested. Thanks.

Hi Stephane,

All the below assumes you feel there is some value in keeping the original website live at all.

My first reaction would be to do a full review of all your old content and carefully consider which ones may have been hit by Panda - is there keyword stuffing, content duplicated from other sites, thin content...etc? Then either fix or completely rewrite those.

After that you should avoid publishing duplicated content so my view would be
1. Remove the rewritten/fixed articles completely from the old site
2. Don't implement the 301 so you don't get any redirected bad Penguin vibe
3. Put a block on those URLs using robots.txt
4. Remove the URLs from Google's index in Webmaster Tools

Then you are free to publish your new, Panda-friendly content to your new website.

Not sure what other mozzers would say, but that's my view. This is not about 'spinning content' but removing poor content and republishing great content. Hope it makes sense.

It sounds to me as though most of the content from old site is staying but that 3 enigmatic 'tools' are being moved to a new domain.

In which case I would want to be sure that the functionality being moved wasn't the cause of the previously lifted penalty, especially from a Panda perspective (given that the tools on the new domain presumably won't have any links pointing to it, Penguin shouldn't be an issue) - as a penalty would be re-applied if the tools are not Panda-friendly.

So:

• if you want to have the tools on both sites, I'm with Pete - noindex the tools on the old site.
• if you are permanently moving the tools, review them for Panda-friendliness and then noindex the old site's URLs, probably worth blocking the old URL in robots.txt as well.
• If your previous penalty was nothing to do with the tools at all, and the link profile of those pages is good (or if there aren't any links) then 301 the old URLs to the new.

That's if between Pete and myself we've understood correctly what you're trying to achieve.

Good Luck!

Hi C,

Thanks for posting - broadening your keyword scope to break into a local area as well is something you need to carefully manage. Here's some pointers

• If your business is US-wide, then not limiting the appeal of your home page is a good idea
• Therefore a dedicated page is definitely the way forward.
• On your Phoenix page you want to be talking about the area and what makes you great as a local web design agency - maybe special offers, for example. Maybe you want to tell people of local events you plan on attending so people can meet you face-to-face. In short, creating new content that is not anywhere else on your website that appeals to your local audience.
• Make sure your Google Maps/Google+ Business page (!) lists your new targeted page for the local area, because people who are searching locally want to see local content. So don't just put your homepage in, put your Phoenix page in.
• Get people to review your business on Google Places and publish reviews from local customers on your new local page - this encouraged new potential locals that you are not only local but you are meeting the local market.
• Consider using microformats on your web page with your business address (which will obviously be the same as your Google Places address).
• Submit a geositemap.xml through Google Webmaster Tools.
• Get your new page out onto social media and publicise any local offer to encourage visitors/referrals.
• And finally when looking at link building, look for local resources or sites that promote local businesses, or blogs that write about things to do with Phoenix and get in on the action. And ensure any links you get point directly to your new Phoenix page... again visitors from a local website want to land on a page that is local, so is the most relevant page for them.

That's a lot - I forget sometimes how many aspects to local SEO there can be! Any questions, just yell and good luck with it!

From previous experience, I don't think it's going to make much of a difference to the ranking of that page whether it's a page or a post. Although unless it's core to what your blog stands for, rather than just a topical subject that relates to the blog, then I'd be inclined to say 'make a post'.

Focus on it being relevant and interesting for your readers and do the keyword research before writing and on-page optimisation straight after publishing. That will leave you free to get on with promoting your great new content via social and links.

Enjoy whatever your 'chocolate' blog is actually about!

The main problem with outsourcing your link building is lack of control and oversight. Unless you go to a  reputable SEO Company who you trust (and preferably have met) be very careful about who you get to do your link building.

As it's a new site you want to get it off on the right footing so with any company you take on you want to be asking about their link building processes and even, maybe, for a while ask them for a sample of places they have requested links from.

My understanding of the changeover Google is enforcing of Google Places -> Google+ pages is that they are automatically switching them over, but over a period of time.

You're right to not create a business 'person' account in Google+ because that goes against their guidelines. So for now, work with the two solutions and if it hasn't changed over in a week or two, maybe contact the Places Team directly.

Oh and Google historically have not made anything straightforward on the Google Places side of things, so I would just say have a bit of patience marrying up your Google services

Your problem started with 50-60 domains with duplicate content - why do this? If you are working in different geographical regions then honour those places by giving them some unique content to justify your presence in the local search results.

I'd either nofollow or remove the link to your main websites as you have essentially 50-60 identical websites linking to your website - so, from Google's perspective, why should they improve your rankings?

Do a search across the Q&A's as there are loads of threads on Penguin recovery but in short it's about doing positive things

• Un-spammify any of your pages - so any on-page/site issues must be resolved (In your case, this means changing your unique content problem)
• Do positive link building
• Ensure a natural anchor text profile
• Don't seek any quick fixes.

Unfortunately for you that may mean changing 60 sites, but as that's where your problem started, that's where your clean-up starts.

The more I've worked with search engines, the more you get used to the occasional 'blip' in your rankings. The Bing/Yahoo algorithm seems to yield particular inconsistent rankings as well.

I would suggest that if you were out the top 50 before and now, ignore the sudden great rankings and work on your on-page and off-page optimisation.

Bear in mind Yahoo & Bing share data and Bing (as with Google) uses social signals, so up your social media game and interaction (in a non-spammy way).

No easy route to the top I'm afraid, just hard work, but work done in the right direction

Is the snippet Google is using less relevant than what you've provided in the META DESCRIPTION or is it still okay? As description isn't used for rankings it won't harm your SEO, but could impact your click-through if Google's choice is not as hot for encouraging clicks. They don't always make the best decisions.

The only other thing is to make sure you have only one meta description per page. I'm hoping that sounds obvious, but it occurred to me that I have seen a site with more than one, so Google makes its own mind up.