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I have a lot of thoughts on this subject. If I was to make a blog entry on this topic, it would span multiple pages or have to be broken down into sub-topics.

I do think there is a correlation between good code and search engine rankings. I do not think there is a correlation between a w3c validated page and search engine rankings. The validator is not current enough, nor flexible enough, to accommodate the real world situations which websites encounter.

Example A: HTML 5 is recognized by all major browsers. W3C validation of HTML 5 is still experimental. A specific example that applies to SEO is the canonical tag. According the the W3C validation site, the canonical tag is not currently valid. Take a snippet of HTML5 code which passes validation, add a canonical meta tag to the header, and the code will no longer pass validation. This is a direct conflict between best practices and validation.

Example B:  The world's most popular web page, google.com, does not pass validation. Matt Cutts discussed the topic. In short, they had a choice between providing code which validated, or code which worked. They chose to go with the working code.

Example The standard facebook widget code, youtube video code, and other popular code does not pass validation.

Whenever I design a website, I check the code in the validator to look for errors. Initially, I will find numerous errors related to code outside of my control such as social sharing widgets or youtube videos. Once I remove that code, the page often validates. I have researched the issue and it is possible to modify the facebook code or youtube code so that it still functions and passes validation. Doing so requires extra effort, it provides absolutely zero benefit other then saying "hey, I pass validation", and there are often drawbacks such as having to add extra javascript to your site which can otherwise be viewed as unnecessary code.

The bottom line is if you present an article in a quality manner which reads smoothly, it should be fine. You state the article isn't being written for SEO nor high rankings, so the rankings of this particular article wouldn't matter.

Your concern about the article reflecting the website is valid, but even if this one article is considered "bad", it should not negatively impact the site assuming you have many other pages. If you have a 10 page site and 3 of the pages are "bad" in some manner, that would be a concern as it reflects 30% of the site. If you have a 100+ page site, then a single article is only 1% of the site and would not have a negative impact on the site as a whole.

If the above explanation still leaves you with concerns, you can always add the noindex tag to the page and it wont be considered at all by search engines.

I agree with William and Malachi as well.

WordPress is the world's number one CMS. It is free, offers the most extensions and support, is easy to use and you are familiar with the software. If you ever need work done on your site, there are plenty of experienced developers who can help.

I have reviewed about a dozen CMS solutions and have never heard of Sitefinity. It may be a great solution but even if it was, your selection of themes, extensions, updates, etc. will never be close to what WP offers. If your current developer left you for whatever reason, your list of experienced developers who can work with you would be severely limited.

My solution would be stick with WP unless you are provided with an exceptionally compelling reason to move. If that is offered, also be sure to understand what WP offers that Sitefinity does not. The main reason I would use another CMS rather then WP is because WP is best for blogs and simple sites. If you require more features, my preference is for Joomla.

Solution could therefore be to implement the rel=canonical tag on the intermediary site URL's pointing to the new site URL's

No.

The canonical tag can only be used within a domain.

Since you have determined the URL structure will change, I would recommend finding a logic that would apply to all URLs so you can map from the old site to the new one. Even if each logic piece only applied to 10% of the site, then you can map everything over in a total of 10 redirects.

If your current sites URL is www.oldsite.com/product1 and the new site URL is www.newsite.com/retail/us/stores/items/products/1 you can still use logic to make the conversion IF this same logic can be applied to all, or a worthwhile percentage, of the site.

Hi Mark.

Stolen content is definitely an issue many site owners face. For maximum protection, you can copyright your web pages.

There are several sites which offer copyright searches. One example is: http://www.copyscape.com/

The bottom line, since your content is viewable in a web browser, there is nothing you can do to prevent it from being stolen. What you can do is use badges to help ensure thieves are clearly aware your work is protected and you intend to aggressively protect your work.

After that, your steps are notifying the offending site / host / Google of the theft. After that point, legal action is required.

Hi Mike.

Both approaches have merit. I recall a Matt Cutts video where he shared an experience from his blog where he intentionally varied the title tag from his header tag. I even recall the subject was a firefox printing issue, but I can't find the video at the moment. It wasn't the normal 2-3 minute videos but instead was a 30-60 minute video.

The benefit of aligning your title and header tags would be more focus on your core keyword or phrase. If you had an extremely competitive keyword then I would consider keeping a match. An example would be a "Car Insurance". All of the strength of both your title and header would be 100% focused on the single phrase.

Another valid approach is to add some variation to allow you to rank better for additional search terms. If your title was "PC Software" your header could be "Computer Software". Closer to your example would be "Los Angeles Blue Widgets" and "LA Blue Widgets". Again, Los Angels and LA may be viewed the same so perhaps "Southern California Blue Widgets" would be a better variation.

There is definite research and testing necessary. Some keywords variations are treated the same by Google and PC / Computer may be one of them. I would recommend try a setting for 30 days, measure the results, then try a variation the next month.

Hi Erik.

For an example of the canonical tag, right click on this thread's page, choose View Page Source, and look at the top of the document. About the sixth line down you will see a line of code which reads as: . You will also notice the URL of this page matches exactly with that portion of the URL. The code which adds the http://www.seomoz.org prefix is located elsewhere in the code.

I would recommend every page of your site have a canonical tag added. It goes in between the tags of your page's HTML code.

The idea is that there are multiple ways to get to the same page. For example, you can reach this page by typing in "http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-canonical-tag" or "http://seomoz.org/q/help-with-canonical-tag" into your browser. Which page is the correct URL? The www version? or the version without the www?

By adding a canonical to your page, you are telling search engines which version you prefer for your site.

Website security is a very deep topic. I will jump to the end and share if someone wants to break into your website they can do so and there is nothing you can do about it. There is a balance between accessibility (all your site's users need to access the site) and security (keeping the bad guys out).

The largest companies in the world such as Sony have experienced break-ins. The official websites of various countries experience security issues. If a hacker wakes up one day and decides to focus your site and is willing to focus on doing such as a full-time job, he will likely succeed.

With the above understood, there are many steps you can take to maximize your security:

• ensure you always use the latest version of your CMS software

• when a new software update is released ensure your site is promptly updated. Waiting 60+ days to update your software is too long.

• the same applies to any extensions used on your site. Any extension is a possible security issue.

• have your htaccess file professionally reviewed by a security expert. There are numerous modifications which can be made to the file which prevents various types of security holes.

• have your server setup reviewed by a security expert. There are literally hundreds of possible security holes which can be left open due to various settings.

WordPress is the #1 blog software in the world. It is a big step down to #2 in terms of popularity. If you change software you will be making sacrifices.

There are tools like McAfee which scan your site daily for a very wide range of issues, and alerts you to vulnerabilities. Otherwise you can Google "Website security testing" and begin learning more about your site's vulnerabilities.

Hi Matt.

Perhaps I misunderstood the question but I believe Toren only wishes to prevent the subdomain from being indexed. If you restrict subdomain access by IP it would prevent visitors from accessing the content which I don't believe is the goal.

Thank you William. Somehow I missed it during my review of the source code.

Hi Carl,

There are many things I like about your site. Your name is a bit catchy, you have social engagement with facebook and twitter, and you offer a very clear purpose statement at the top of the home page "Shop all the UK's leading Tights and Leggings websites at once with Bright Tights. Find the latest fashions for less!!".

There are a ton of opportunities to improve the site. Too many to list out in a Q&A. Some suggestions:

• Pick up the Beginner's Guide to SEO and review it while examining your site. The Guide is a very fast, easy read and offers great advice.

• Take a close look at competing sites. Don't just look at affiliate sites. Check out Macy's, Nordstrom's and other retailers. Look at what things you like about their sites and try to incorporate them into your site.

• Offer more. The basis for affiliate marketing might be the simple product feed but if you want to stand out from the crowd of hundreds of other sites which are doing the exact same thing as you are, you must offer strong reasons for users to visit your website. Offer larger, more detailed images. Offer videos. Gather user feedback (comments). Write detailed articles of how each product compares to competitors, what famous people are wearing the product, etc.

You are presently offered a very "canned" site. It doesn't stand out. Therefore, your SEO results are not standing out either. If you can treat this site as your main focus, as if this was your one and only website, then you can build the brand and site into something special. Otherwise, you wont compete against others who have only one website and give it their all, or others who may have multiple sites but they hire SEOs and developers to make their site's stand out.

CMS is not really good for seo, wordpress IMO is one of the worse.

@Alan, this statement you shared is just awful. Sorry but there is no way I can sugar coat it.

Some of the most successful sites in the word are run on CMS platforms. The WhiteHouse.org is run on Drupal. TechCrunch is run on WordPress. CNN and Time magazine run on WordPress. TED, UPS, BoingBoing.com, NBC Sports, Tiffany Jewelers, Dow Jones, LA Times, InStyle magazine, the NFL, the list is endless. Millions of sites are run on WordPress and many of them lead competitive fields and rank at the top of search engines.

CMS software is OUTSTANDING for SEO. Many of the world's most popular sites, which also rank at the top of SERPs, run on WordPress. If a small to medium business owner wants to open a basic site for their business, WordPress or a similar CMS is very likely the best business decision for time, money and SEO.

As a post-note, I am not a "word press guy". I have worked with an incredibly wide variety of software solutions and WP is not my personal preference. But the statement that WordPress is bad for SEO, that is simply wrong. Any software can have good or bad SEO results depending upon it's implementation. A properly set up WP site can earn top rankings in SERPs. In fact, it will likely perform better then many other platforms with an equivalent cost to build the site.

Toren, I would not recommend that solution. There is nothing to prevent Googlebot from crawling your site via almost any IP. If you found 100 IPs used by the crawler and blocked them all, there is nothing to stop the crawler from using IP #101 next month. Once the subdomain's content is located and indexed, it will be a headache fixing the issue.

The best solution is always going to be a noindex meta tag on the pages you do not wish to be indexed. If that method is too much work or otherwise undesirable, you can use the robots.txt solution. There is no circumstance I can imagine where you would modify your htaccess file to block googlebot.

Daniel is correct. You just need to be more patient.

Websites are crawled in pieces. The crawler can grab 10% of your site each day. It depends upon the popularity of your site, the popularity of the content within your site, how well your site is linked, along with other factors.

You have done all you can for now. You will see your pages start disappearing from search results.

Alan, it is great you are generous with your time and offer your assistance to others. In your course of doing so, you are "selling" some very unpopular ideas which lacks reputable support.

We all have our own experiences and knowledge to share from. I often have opinions on topics which I am reluctant to share because frankly I lack substantiating evidence. If I do share such beliefs I clearly indicate they are my beliefs and not necessarily accepted by the SEO community. I would suggest you may wish to do the same, especially in this regard.

I made the statement Wordpress is OUTSTANDING for SEO. It is a correct and accurate statement, and it is supported by industry experts and results! I went to the effort and obtained relevant and exact quotes from someone you have quoted repeatedly in an effort to support those statements, and you simply disregard them. Now you claim Matt Cutts is biased? Do you sincerely believe Matt would have made any of those statements if he did not 100% believe them to be true? Matt seems like a role model for credibility.

I suggest caution. You are sharing inaccurate statements. You are a .NET programmer and seem to have an extreme bias towards everything Microsoft related. You have numerous responses where you praise .NET and bash competitors. You praise Bing and bash Google. By doing such you risk losing credibility with a lot of good people.

I should add when I perform a search in Google.com for "website valdiation" there are 10 very relevant results returned. When I perform a similar search for "website violation", not one of the top 10 results is relevant to Bing violations. This indicates you are using a very unpopular term which you, as a .NET specialist might be aware of, but the rest of the world isn't.

A final note. I have no problem with this conversation and I hope you do not either. If everyone agrees then the world quickly becomes a boring place. I learn a lot more from passionate discussions of opposing viewpoints then I do with the many "I agree" discussions. I hope you feel the same way.

Hi Diane.

I was curious so I took a look at the site.

Basic package - the only service they provide is to submit your sitemap 12x per month. Very simple and cheap sitemap software will do this for you free as many times as you want. No value at all. Not really worth mentioning but they submit to 100 search engines. Since Bing+Yahoo+Google = 98% of traffic, and Ask = 1%, the rest really don't matter.

I looked at their remaining packages and I see nothing of any tangible benefit to a SEOmoz PRO member.

Looking at their reviews, 25 of 49 reviews offer a 1 out of 5 star rating. http://www.ciao.co.uk/Reviews/123_reg_co_uk__5111134

Is This Service a Waste Of Money

I haven't used the service but everything I looked at seems to indicate it is worth purchasing.

Easy fix.

Log into Google WMT. From your dashboard choose > Site Configuration > Settings > Preferred Domain. Check the Display URLs as mopupduty.com and you will be all set.

John, I understand your pain. Unfortunately most producers of quality content will have some work stolen at some point. In some cases, the content is taken exactly word-for-word. In other cases, the content is altered a bit. Either way, it is a form of theft.

There are various steps you can take to increase your protection against such theft.

1. You can add a Copyright to your page. I noticed your original page does not display any copyright at all. Without any copyright notice at all on the page, you are really leaving yourself wide open for theft.

2. You can improve upon a basic copyright notice by displaying a Creative Commons copyright notice: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/. A Creative Commons notice allows you to easily inform readers what level of copyright permissions you wish to grant.

3. You can pay to formally register your web page as copyrighted material. The cost is around $35.

4. At the highest levels, you can pay other companies to handle your copyright affairs. This process gets quite a bit more expensive. The company will register your copyright, ensure the proper license is in place, add various tags to your content, and perform monthly searches and scans of web content looking for any sites which may have violated your copyright. If any violations are found, the company will pursue the violators.

In most cases, you can successfully have the content removed. In some cases, it is very difficult as the site may be hosted in another country with lax copyright laws. In these cases you can contact Google or Bing directly and report the violation.

Hi Sally.

Without looking at the page it is hard to offer specific advise. If you can share an example product and blog URL, we can gain a better understanding of your implementation.

Using a generic example, let's say you are selling Cheerios.Your primary product page might be titled "Cheerios" and offer all the basic information about Cheerios such as it's ingredients, nutritional facts information, how many ounces are in the box, etc.

If you wrote a blog article, you would not want to duplicate your product page content. It can be very helpful to address topics such as "Cheerios and a Healthy Heart Diet".

Each page on your site should focus one or two keywords or phrases. Internal anchor text links are very helpful in helping avoid cannibalization issues and ensure the correct page is indexed for a given term. The important piece is your blog articles need to have a different focus then your product page.

The verification process should be instant if you did it correctly.

You will download a file from Google, upload it to your web server, confirm you see the file, then click Verify. At that point your site is verified and you can manage it.

Let me first clarify copyright laws vary by country.

For the US, a copyright is in place whether or not a page offers a copyright notice. On the other hand, the more steps you take to protect your rights, the more able you will be to defend those rights when the need arises.

"It is not necessary to have a notice of copyright (i.e.: 1997 Jane Doe) for material to be copyright protected in the U.S.  Once something tangible is produced, text, graphics, music, video, etc., it is automatically copyrighted."

http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/copyright-internet.htm