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Gareth

Without knowing your domain it is a bit of a more difficult question. Assuming you have  not already selected non www as preferred domain in GWMT and done a 301 redirect in .htaccess file already, you need to consider this: If you www has the preponderance of links coming to it, when you make they change you will be giving up a larger amount of juice than if you did it from the other. But, in any case you need a preferred domain and you need to choose one or the other. If you choose www. even if someone puts the non www in it will resolve to the www. So, I would do it based on which had the least link value and make that one link to the one with the most. Then in GWMT select the one with the most link value as preferred.

Best

Ahhh, France. The wine, the art, and, uhhh the French...that is the issue. Rand did a WBF on the cc domains and those French with their "French searcher problem."  (They can be so damn....French sometimes)

This advocates using the .cc domain as the best solution in France. However, when cost isan issue you may have to go with what you've got. The advantage of a subdomain or folder is you are likely to get some of the juice of your domain over time.

Rand actually breaks out the advantages and disadvantages of each option quite well and I do not believe my condensing it will help you as much as that short WBF.

To those who would think I was being condescending to the French in the first paragraph, my favorite city in the world is Paris and my fourteen year old son was born there and is a dual citizen. Favorite movie (ok one of my favorites) Paris je t'aime. 
Bon Jour

V

I tried reading the whole Gblog but got bored. If you look at the SearchEngineLand piece, what it points out from the blog is important:

Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.

So, there is not a "We ain't usin' no stinkin' links no mo!" But, "Hey dudes and dudettes, we are gonna change some portion of the weight we give this around a particular portion of how we look at 'em."

What could be more clear???!!!! Maybe they are giving less weight to root domains linking to a link that links to you. Maybe they are re-evaluating anchor text usage or how it is used, etc. So, as it stands today, we know that there is some weight that is applied based on links. How it is applied or the given weight of the application is not known. As the result, we don't know what changed about what we didn't fully know before.

Is that clear???!!!

Keep building links dude.

Best.

Lauren,

I don't think I would be concerned based solely on the basketball issue. My first guess with the outdoor vs. indoor basketballs or rubber vs. composite is that for whatever reason, there is less competition for the composite search or you have in some way out SEO'd one over the other. For me, the consumer, I like comparisons that are straightforward and abhor lengthy narrative.

Why not have your narrative be about your product for sale and use an ordered list of some type for the comparison. So on left side vertical you would have many pebbles, rougher to touch, indoor, outdoor, both, etc. then have each of them at the top with a column underneath. Simple checkmarks show which is best for what. By having your narrative be about the product you are selling, you don't confuse others or the search engines.

Also, I am assuming you are using product markup for your items?

Hope that is helpful.

Ron,

To me the most terrifying word in SEO is directory. OK, slightly kidding. I would be very careful of any directories on a lot of levels. First, when you say niche, I have to ask what niche? Then, is it yet one more that lists 1000's of sites with no purpose other than listing thousands of sites? Can you give a couple of examples?

At the end of the day, I look at them this way: Is it, for example, a website for an organization that lists its members? To that I say fine, use it. Is it a website that is a directory of businesses with no cogent organization to it or without any type of central theme - I say run. Most of the time, I say run.

We have a client who someone signed up for a directory back in March of 2013, they became our client on 4/1 and we discovered the first set of new links on 4/17 when they went from 4800 links to about 6,000. By mid May, that directory was responsible for having added over 20,000 links to the site. It was a "networking" directory.

Hope this helps a little,

Robert

I will respond to all here and I sincerely appreciate what each of you has shared. 
There is no law that one of our firms is aware of re interns. We do have schools that try to push unpaid interns (I think they are afraid people won't pay) and we just say we only take paid interns. Our interns in high school start at $10 per hour and college start at $12. We do have interns who are given raises fairly soon in the internship because they prove themselves early on.

Interestingly, all must write. (EGOL). We had a computer science major just finishing freshman year at college and this was his first job. He is going to be excellent at Computer Science...he is a brilliant writer and he never knew it. Brilliant. I smile writing about him.

One of our interns walked into our VPs office and he had been given a task of designing wire frame and comp for a client once the KWA and sitemap were finished. I was sitting in the conference room next door when he said to the VP "I can't do this, this is not really my forte." Johnray paused a brief moment and said OK, I need you to understand something, this is business, we do not have an option to tell a client we cannot do something. I would appreciate you going back and finishing, and then he looked down at his work.

The intern nailed wire frame and design with little intervention, but he wanted to quit. This was not his area of expertise. Of course we look over all and our clients are protected with NDA and non competes, etc. But it's amazing to watch as the people realize they can do more than they ever dreamed. It is truly fulfilling.

To each of you I say Kudos. I would love a world that was open source, open education, and where interns were brought in to learn and thrive in an organization. We now have two interns in good positions who are no longer interns. One in web dev and the other in writing and social media.

Thanks to all of you,

Robert

Utah Tiger

I am assuming you are UtahTiger.net and you have a quality competitor who is UtahTiger.com and you are trying to insure people know the difference and equate you with the .net.

If so, then I would go about it this way in terms of your on page. I would not put it in the title tag. I would see that from a customer point of view as odd. I would caution against trying to overdo it and have it on every page as well because it looks spammy. I would use an About Us or and About UtahTiger (title tag) with a brief who we are paragraph and then use an H1: There Is a Difference with UtahTiger.net or similar. for the content after the H1 I would tell the .net story. You could even then use an H2 that was: When you think of UtahTiger... Don't Forget the NET!

Anything catchy will work for branding imprint in a customer's mind. That is what you want. If your domain really was UtahTiger.net, man, that would be easy: We're the Tiger you caught in the NET!

That would be my approach. As to the SEO you hired, I would simply ask his rationale for the title tag and see if he has anything further for the strategy.

Best,

Jasarrow

I am going to try and hit this from a broad brush vs. a dissertation on internationalization. Also, I understand the limitations you face with the all too important "prospective client" issue. So, (Are they using a gTLD? = .com, .net., .euro, .asia?)

First: Your toolkit for internationalization is GWMT. The knowledge here is good and on the whole understandable.

Next, you can use geotargeting in GWMT for sub domains. Same place.

there is a blog for internationalization questions: Google WMT Intl. 

Your English language problem is first in that if the main domain is US English and they want a sub domain from the UK to outrank it even though it is in US English: I am assuming by subdomains they are using uk.theirsite.com? de.theirsite.com?

If you set the geotargeting for the uk.theirsite.com to UK, leave the (assumption is .com) .com as US, but set the geotargeting as US as I am also assuming the server is UK based. If server is US set location anyway given that you are trying to "tell" Google what is what. (server location is an inference of country)

In the query you say subdomain for language as opposed to sub domain for country and even GWMT says this can be confusing. If they are using sub domains, I would suggest for country not language - especially for those who are users of the sites. Beyond the English problem, you have the French: Canada, France, etc.

Lastly, with your UK problem I would go one step at a time. I abhor multiple corrections to single problems as they leave you with unanswered questions. The easiest first fix is the geo targeting in GWMT. Then if you are still having issues, you may need to consider utilizing rel="alternate" hreflang link element. (From GWMT -Many websites serve users from around the world, with content that's translated, or targeted to users in a certain region. The rel="alternate" hreflang="x"_ annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers._)

So, you have some work to do, but I  hope this helps provide some direction, Good Luck with Prospective Client,

Robert

Jean

The "tree" (and I actually like that term), is called site links. You cannot ask Google to provide, that is done at their discretion based on what they think is relevant to the query. A new site won't have these for a bit, usually.

You can ask Google to take off the site links if they are for any reason misleading a query, etc.

One question you raise for me is is your first search in Google.ca? Is SEOmoz in same?

Hope it helps

Very Good Examples Ron10

The first one I absolutely hate with a passion. (there is no rhyme or reason other than listing something)

The second one I love and think you should. It is more than a directory and that is the point. There is a reason for it to exist.

A friend of mine, Rom Ryan, has a band called Moodafaruka that does quite well on the indie scene. The music is a mix, but likely pigeon holed as alternative. If you do a search on the band (or on the band and add one of their songs like Man Without Hat), then look at all the results, you will have an excellent list of places to use instead of directories and they are exactly where your band should be. (Check out the music as it is really good.) They have done quite well selling their music online and at their venues.

So, what's the genre you prefer? What's your instrument?

Hope this helps,

Robert

EGOL,

You never cease to impress; I love that action on DonorsChoose.org! Our code camp is 9th to 12th and we have both high school and college interns. We have asked the one school to let us start with the middle school kids so that we help them earlier. Public school is the next task and you are right about the teachers. The ones that are writing a proposal on DonorsChoose are going above and beyond. Rock on!

Cesar,

I do not believe the way you list will matter in terms of the way the bot reads the page. Assuming all are in the body, the bot goes left to right and top to bottom. So, unless there is a specific trigger that says terms with links separated by a comma are a negative, I do not see a problem. I assume your links are internal or if not are going to something explaining the term.

But, as a dictionary site, I would be driven by what works for the reader.

So, with Scrabble players looking for words with a Q, a Z, a J, an X and three A's, how would they find it? (Please hurry as I need to make a play!)

Hope this helps a bit.

Ian,

Assuming you are hosting in Europe on a generic TLD, and you want to rank in Houston for Auto Body Repair, you will need to go into GWMT and set your location. You will need to set language as en-us.

On your pages you will need to insure that you show a Houston address and make the content Houston relevant.

A suggestion is to include Google Map code showing location of Houston business.

Also, it is imperative for local ranking to have your Google + for business verified.

I hope this helps,

Robert

Agency,

In-house is so... boring

Back at ya Cesar

Most excellent Chris.

Thank you.

Christy,

OK fine, knock my title (taken from a truly great movie... A Knight's Tale!!!)

Just kidding. I may try that, thanks.

Best

Robert

PS I hate that so many are able to spend more time on Moz on the weekdays! I get yelled at if I am on Moz.

Simon,

I would personally go with two pages. Knowing you have two distinct types searching for this in two distinct ways, look at traffic for each query and you will likely see enough traffic going to each to warrant strengthening by dividing. 
Do note that you really need to look at better on page SEO as well. That way, you improve your odds of someone finding you and when searching someone coming to your site (no meta description means the search engines are coming up with those for you. By not having H1, H2 , etc. you are missing opportunities to improve your ranking).

Hope this helps,

Robert

Edward,

On the whole this is ok, but there are newer things to consider like the change for targeting multiple languages using hreflang: From GWMT.

The best for Folders/subdomains/ccTLD's is the chart (near end of page) with pros and cons in GWMT here

I think you will find both up to date and exceedingly helpful.

Best to you,

Robert

Charles,

You raise an interesting question here for me, but not the one you posited. I will also supply an answer to what you have here, but first:

I have no way of knowing how you came to work for the company you are with, but since I run an agency, I want to suggest that if you are taking on clients that could be going to your agency, whether or not you believe they are a good fit, you need get approval from the agency. You state:

"I'm looking to take on a few more clients and have built a nice local reputation so I have a few different people approaching me, **right here, my question is, how did you come by this reputation? Before you went to work for the firm you are with or while with them? **normally I'd pass them on to my boss but there are a few clients I would rather keep to myself as I don't think they'd be a good fit for my agencies model." **When you do this work, do you use any of the agencies tools? Say they have software licenses that you have access to, are you using that software to assist in what you are doing? **

To me, this is not even a gray area, but black and white. You are performing services it appears your agency performs or close enough that you make the statement they are not a good fit for an agency model.

To me, this is the bigger issue than fees. Short of that, how you charge is very nuanced to individual situations. For me, we started out several years ago much lower than I wish we had. Today, we are much more expensive because we have learned that nothing is as easy as it seems or as the client lays it out to be. My favorite example of this is the ecommerce site we took over and rebuilt. The only thing that had been left out of the original equation was that they had never had a sale. Yes, I wish I had charged more now. But, for link building, content, etc. you need to set reasonable expectations and charge to achieve them. We charge between US $75 and $200 per page depending on the content type and amount. For link building, a complex site will be thousands of dollars per month and we try to be very clear about expectations.

Lastly, I have allowed our people to occasionally take on a freelance gig. On one or two occasions, I sent prospective clients to one of our people to handle as I knew they could not afford us. One of them is now a client since that individual did a good job. When they needed a site, they came to us.

I hope all of this was helpful,

Robert

John,

This type of "sidebar" link creates a sitewide link typically and that is the problem with it. If it is recent, and you know the blog owner, contact them. But, remember, this link in and of itself is not "bad": it is more about the overall link profile of your site. Are there a lot of these and a lot that are on blog comments, etc.? that is not good. 
Look at your link profile before you worry too much over this.

Robert