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Hi Mozzers,

I'm looking for recommendations for well known, reputable agencies, who have a strong background in Local SEO. I have a US based client I want to refer.

Awesome, thanks Jennifer.

Got asked this today, and I don't know the answer, so throwing it out there to all your mozzers!

If I 301 redirect a page that has built up a lot of tweets, likes, shares, even +1's, does that social data get transferred over to the new page in as far as social strength/ authority is concerned?

Would Google still be able to see the previous version of this page had x amount of tweets etc, and take this into consideration when ranking the new page?

There's actually about 20 categories that would ideally have a new slug and the number of posts in each category varies between about 10 in each to around 50.

Is there a limit on the number of posts in a category before we start running into issues?

Hi Greg

Cool, thanks. I probably didn't ask the question as clearly as I should. I realise there are plugins out there than can do this, but I really wanted to know whether this had any SEO implications. I've never considered redirecting by category, only by page, so wanted to know what other SEO's thought on this.

Hi Greg

The content will remain the same and remain in the same category, the only thing that'll change is the name and slug of the category itself.

Hi Guys

It is possible (and best practice) to 301 a category as a whole rather than every page within the category.

I was asked this by a developer the other day, and it was something I'd not considered before as I've always done it by page.

It seems there's some wordpress plugins out there that do it.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks Ryan, that's the kind of info I'm looking for. I have a lot of faith in the developers in this project and they are suggesting Joomla is a better option for them to achieve what they want, but very aware of the SEO aspects and want to ensure I'm happy. Appreciate your thoughts.

Great feedback so far guys. As I said, I have little experience with Joomla. The content I've found online seems to focus on issues such as duplicate content issues being a bit of an issue. I've found a few plugins that seems to be able to fix such issues. Is there any major drawbacks on Joomla that I should be aware of though? Any limitations?

Hi All

I'm about to start on a new project where I've been having lots of discussions with the developers involved on the merits of both wordpress and joomla. I'm experienced with wordpress but haven't really done too much with Joomla. I've found some general info on Joomla online, most issues seems to be around duplicate content, but can't seem to find too much else.

Therefore I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion as I'd love to hear from those of you who have used both CMS's and the drawbacks/ pitfalls or plus points in both.

The project is based around a non transactional site, offering a service, but no product. There's lots of thought leadership type content planned, either through interviews, surveys, articles, video etc, and some linkbait etc. Lot of content will also be newsworthy so keep Google news etc in the back of your mind too. Lots of social integration too...

Looking forward to hearing what you might have to say Mozzers.

Hi Miriam

Thanks for your thoughts,  its much appreciated.

Unfortunately Places does limit me in this instance, so you're right that other avenues of traffic generation would be a good route to head down.

All the best

thanks for the feedback guys. Any suggestions about how I may be able to overcome the issue though?

Hi Guys

I'm looking for some clarity of what I can and can't add to the custom attribute fields in a Google Places listing. From my understanding, you can add additional information about your services, but not what those services are.

The issue I'm trying to resolve is that a client of mine offers far more than the 5 services/ category options Places allow. They are a home services company, covering all sorts from plumbing, painting and decorating, through to extensions etc. They have about 25 different services.

At the moment I'm restricted to just getting rankings for 5 services (correlated to the categories in Places), when I'd like to rank locally for them all.

As Google is showing local results for most search queries related to their services whether those searches are geographically modified or not, I'm in a position where even if I am ranking top 5 organically for the terms, I'm still on bottom of page 1, or top of page 2.

Would it be wise to add these additional services to the custom attributes section of the Places listing, or would this set off the potential for a listing suspension?

Any ideas how to combat this problem would be very welcome.

Thanks Richard. I figured, but wanted to double check. thanks again

Hi All.

Just wanted to double check something with you folks. I've always been under the impression that you should complete the first category option in Places with a default category from Google's list of options, followed by 4 categories of your choice.

However, does the 1st category need to be a default option or can it be any one of the 5? Also, do you think anything is gained in the rankings by adding a category of your own choice as the 1st category?

There's nothing in the Quality guidelines that suggests the 1st category needs to be a default option, so I thought I'd throw this out there...

http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?answer=107528

have you tried buzzstream? It's a fantastic tool. http://www.buzzstream.com/

Great feedback all. Thank you.

Cool, nice idea about the H1.