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I imagine this would have to do with social sharing usage. If your posts are getting a lot of attention via Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook, etc within the first few hours, you stand a chance.
How long has the website been around?
Do you have social sharing capabilities embedded in the site?
Scott
I don't think having the bulleted list on every page is a problem. I think if there is enough unique text on each page, that should outweigh the bulleted list.
You might be better off just trying to come up with a few variations of those top reason in your bulleted list... Mix up the words a little, use synonyms, restructure them differently in each page as much as possible, etc.
If you are wondering about images though, try http://wordle.net/ for creating unique images. This probably doesn't apply to your situation right now though.
Does the drop in ranking correlate with an algo update?
Did the site drop rankings for many terms or just that one term?
Are there different results for when you have your browser set to that city versus when it is set to a different city?
From my experience, it can be beneficial to SEO to have a Google Map embedded on the website. In that embed code, there is also a "view larger map" link.
I would recommend always finding the correct, shortest URL. It should contain a CID in the url parameters. Read the end of this blog post to understand how to find the CID of a Google Places listing:
http://www.orionweb.net/2012/03/20/gain-reviews-to-increase-your-google-places-listing-rank/
Scott O.
There is a chance to get some value from footer links, but there is danger too. I would recommend only adding the "Site Created By ___" on the home page, and not on the sub pages. If there are too many site-wide links coming to your site, it might trigger something in the search engine's algo.
Regarding structure, I'd say, make sure to vary your anchor text from site to site. Use your company name sometimes, use partial-match anchor text another, etc. Mix up the title tag too. Try to make it as unique as you can across each site.
Scott O.
smaavie, are you going pick one of these fine answers to mark this Q&A as "Answered"?
It look like the answer you received here might be helpful:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/hSoJMYFsZpo
I think the robots.txt disallow is a good idea.
Scott O.
Please see this thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-any-way-to-move-keywords-from-one-campaign-to-another where I answer that question.
Feel free to mark this question as "answered" if you think it addresses your needs.
Scott O.
That OSE crawl could just be a fluke. Perhaps retry the crawl next month.
Regarding the 'parameters' in webmaster tools, did you tell Google to decide or did you choose ' Let Googlebot decide or did you choose "No: does not affect page content" option?
Are there links to these search query pages from other websites? If not, then you might just need to give it time to realize that you set your parameters to ignore those URL variables.
Another solution might be to add a noindex/nofollow to your search results page template.
Scott O.
You can safely mark them as "fixed" since there is no other website linking to those pages. They aren't actually broken links.
Don't worry about doing a 'change of address' now.
If you feel my answer is appropriate, please select "Good Answer".
Thanks.
Scott O.
is the term you are hoping to rank for a city-specific phrase or does it not have a location in the search query?
Do you have the Google Map embedded on the Contact Us page? Are there other authoritive directories with citations of the exact same physical address / phone / company name?
Do you have the same phone / address in the footer of the site as well? Are you using micro data to markup the address ( http://schema.org/PostalAddress )
Is the company a "Service Area" category of business or do customers come to the company's office? If it is a service company, you might need to hide the street address to comply with Google's ToS?
Scott O.
Adding pages / posts should not dilute your site's authority. Is the new content you added unique/original or is it copy/pasted from another source?
I would recommend interlinking the blog posts to certain key pages on your site where possible and within reason.
There are changes being made to search engine algorithms every day, it's sometimes had to say if a drop or rise can be attributed to something you did or something the search engine did.
Scott
It looks like you've set up your http://villasdiani.com/diani-beach/ page correctly now. What page is currently ranking in the search engines now for a "diani beach" search?
I notice when doing a "site:" search in google this page shows up as a 404 page http://villasdiani.com/category/diani-beach/ ... is that recent?
If you want to rank for 'diani beach', you will probably need much more backlinks from other websites to your beach landing page.
How many years have you been trying to optimize that page?
Honestly, I have not run that report in over a year myself. While it does provide interesting data, I'm interested to know what's the main reason you are running that report? Is it to show to clients to explain the possible difficultly associated with ranking a keyword, or some other reason?
Scott O.
Amelia
When you say: "Google is now looking for all those old Landlords pages under Smartloan." Do you mean in GWT you are seeing broken links reported?
After marking those URLs ask "fixed" in GWT, do they come back again as broken links a week or so later?
Are there any references to the smartloan site from the landlord site that are not supposed to be there?
Did you do a "Change of Address" in GWT or just request to block certain URLs? If you did a Change of Address, you might want to check to see if that is still in your GWT settings and remove it.
Otherwise, I imagine after a few weeks, the GWT will just clear up naturally by itself. It probably is not an issue to be concerned about.
Scott O.
I think listing them on separate landing pages like you mentioned is the best way to do it. Are there cases where some of those sub pages could be placed into a sub-sub category to help clean up the look of the overwhleming listing of pages?
Could you instead provide a search box that might filter / list related pages instead of showing all the pages?
What is your ultimate goal for all that content?
Scott O.
This is an interesting scenario. Do you think they are doing this on purpose to get more exposure in the SERPs, or is it a matter of IYP (Internet Yellow Page) listing overload? Perhaps they don't know how cannibalized their NAP (Name/Address/Phone) listings are, or perhaps they are doing it on purpose to gain visibility.
In the long run, this will hurt them, because the search engines are always going through and confirming listings. If you think it is a real issue, you could try to report a listing as duplicate or "closed".
Let me know if that helps address any of your concerns.
Scott O.
I'm interested on an update on this question too. Scott O.
According to Google's help files: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34648 your solution should be just fine.
Scott O.
