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In WordPress, go to the Yoast plugin and locate the sitemap URL / settings. Plug the sitemap URL into your browser and make sure that it renders properly.

Once you have that exact URL, drop it into Google Webmaster Tools and let it process. Google will let you know if they found any errors that need correcting. Once submitted, you just need to wait for Google to update its index and reflect your site's meta description.

Yoast has a great blog that goes in depth about its sitemap features: https://yoast.com/xml-sitemap-in-the-wordpress-seo-plugin/

Yoast sets up a pretty efficient sitemap. Make sure the sitemap URL settings are correct, load it up in the browser to confirm, and submit your sitemap through GWT - that will help get a new crawl of the site and hopefully an update to their index so your meta descriptions begins to show in the SERPs.

Ha, that's exactly what I did.

I'm not showing any restrictions in your robots.txt file and the meta tag is assigned appropriately.

Have you tried to fetch the site with the Webmaster Tools 'fetch as googlebot' tool? If there is an issue, it should be apparent there. Doing this may also help get your page re-crawled more quickly and the index updated.

If everything is as it should be and you're only waiting on a re-index, that usually takes no longer than two weeks (for very infrequently indexed websites). Fetching with the Google bot may speed things up and getting an external link on a higher trafficked page could help as well.

Have you tried resubmitting a sitemap through GWT as well? That could be another trick to getting the page re-crawled more quickly.

What was the exact search term you used to bring up those SERPs?

When i search 'atlastpartners' and 'atlastpartners.com' it brings up your site with a meta description.

Many times, WordPress users (and similar CMS') noindex their media categories to prevent duplicate content. I suggest noindexing the media category if you have a main page for the videos.

Unfortunately, Google Analytics does not provide a 'What's Changed' report, but you can somewhat easily make that report by exporting your Keyword information and traffic details to excel, then comparing your top terms over time.

I wouldn't suggest looking at all 1600 keywords. Instead, identify the keywords that sent 80% of your traffic and see what's changed among those. Was there a few specific keywords that sent huge amounts of traffic and no longer do so? Or can you identify a general decrease across all keywords (maybe signalling a seasonal change?).

Content that adds value to the user experience is never bad - more content, more reasons to rank, better information for the user to take action.

Ecommerce websites are more difficult to handle though - the goal is usually to convert to a sale and sometimes content can get in the way of that happening. If you've A/B tested and found that conversions are greater without it, then good for you! You've identified a barrier to your visitors and eliminated it for better conversions.

What needs to be weighed is the amount of conversions - does the content bring in more, new traffic and eventually converts? I.e. is the conversion volume greater with the content than without it. If no, then stick with the A/B test results.

Putting content down the page may help you rank, but is it helping your visitors? You don't want to shove content onto a page just because you think it belongs there - is it beneficial to the user? If no, can you put that content somewhere else where it is beneficial to the user?

Amazon is common SERP to beat, let's take a look at one of their category pages: http://www.amazon.com/Outlet/b/ref=sv_gb_3?ie=UTF8&node=517808

We see that they do include a small snippet of text at the top, to describe the category. Then they give the user what is expected, a lot of products to view; and at the bottom they have a longer category description (sometimes reviews and related category information). This is a common way to structure category pages. But, your market may be different so it may be worthwhile to brainstorm how your page structure would most benefit your users.

if you'd like to instruct Google not to crawl the URLs with that parameter, select 'No URLs' in the Google Webmaster Tools > URL Parameters section.

Still, this is a guide for Google to follow and they do not always follow the rules set. Going the robots.txt method ensures that Google will not crawl those URLs.

Are the pages useful to the user? Do you expect users to actively use these pages on your site? Do you want users to be able to find these pages when they search for their issues through Google?

If you've answered 'yes' to any of these questions, I wouldn't suggest removing them from Google. Instead, take your time and set a schedule to optimize each of these pages.

If these pages are: Not valuable to the user, unnecessary to be indexed by Google, locked behind a membership gate, duplicate pages, thin content - then these would be good reasons to noindex them from all search engines.

Given your scenario, there could me many areas to check and see what is has changed to effect your rankings. Have you done a 'what's changed' analysis to see exactly where your traffic dropped?

Month-to-month look at the keywords that were sending you traffic and identify which keywords have reduced their visits. Then track those keywords in Moz, see where you can improve on-page, and see what your competitors have done to outrank you.

Once you know why the change has happened, you can adjust to get that traffic back that you've lost.

No, generally a 301 redirect will transfer 99%+ of the authority to the new link. I would anticipate waiting about 2 weeks before noticing the new URLs rank as high as the old URLs.

If you change the URLs back to the old structure, those rankings should return more quickly. However, if you new structure is more user friendly, it may be a good idea to make the change now rather than later, when the URLs gain even more authority.

AFAIK there is no efficient # of files to include in a folder directory for maximum crawl effectiveness. If you folder legitimately warrants 5k html pages in a directory, then Google will crawl all the pages. Make sure to create value-added pages with high quality content - Google will recognize them and crawl them as appropriate.

If you have the options, use your Google Webmaster Tools account to adjust crawl settings. Once your site is a specific size, Google will take-over crawl rate settings for you.

Make sure to 301 the old URLs to the new URLs - this will pass along 99% of the authority and you should see an increase in the SERPs for your new URLs.

Only add a backlink if it adds value to the user / article. Do not add a bunch of comment backlinks thinking it will help you rank in the SERPs.

For example, you find an article that helped you do X. Write an article expanding on X to XYZ. Then link back to your new article from the old articles comments about how you were inspired by the original article and added more to X.

Hopefully, your new content adds enough value that the original article author uses it as a source and/or the original article readers find your new article and maybe link to that from their blogs too.

I wouldn't worry about the location of the IP too much. What's most important is that you're getting quality, value-added links to your website for your niche.

This is conjecture on my part, but I say it would be more important to receive a link from a .es domain than from a website with an IP in Spain (for specifically ranking in the .es SERPs). However, unless the terms you're trying to rank for are very competitive, I would concentrate on just receiving quality links, regardless of location. I'm not sure that there would be that much incremental benefit from the IP address location.

Hi vijayvasu,

Maintaining a healthy link profile is necessary; and being proactive, like your question implies, is a great skill to exercise.

Start by using Moz's link analysis tool. Export the links to an excel, remove duplicate domains, then identify from that list the domains that may be spammy (low DA/PA).

You'll need to visit the site to know how spammy it is and whether or not your should proactively shun that link. Use Google's disavow tool to remove them from your link profile.

I'd love some tips for helping them rank better without building out an entire site.

All you can do then is ensure that all on-page SEO is optimized and try to create word-of-mouth traction for external links.

However, if any competitor comes into your niche and does 'build out' the website, they will have an easy time outranking you.

If the domain is a known spam property or you feel that the entire domain adds little to no value, then go ahead and disavow the entire domain.

Hi alrockn,

If you feel that these sites are in fact spam related and do not provide any value to the user, then I suggest getting proactive and disavowing those properties before any penalty happens.

I would be concerned, but not too much - use the disavow tool and you're website will be fine.

If you give me a few of your direct competitors I will do a search to see if they have any inbound affiliate links to their website.