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Hi Alexander.

I took a look at your site and have some feedback:

• your site is presently available in both the www and non-www format. This is a big issue and should be promptly fixed.

• I agree with Alan in that the site should be presented in http:// format when possible. Your site will seem faster to users as images from a secure site are not cached, for example.

• your trust symbols in the footer are important but the coloring is very challenging. I couldn't even tell you had SSL from GoDaddy until I moused over and saw the URL.

• your LinkedIn widget is set for the LinkedIn home page rather then your company's page.

• you may want to consider moving your social sharing and trust symbols above the fold.

• I love a good, clear Call To Action but I don't care for the two "Buy Now" buttons on your home page.

• In your "What is Suretegrity" block you use bold for words such as "all" and "only". I would suggest using bold on keywords and not adjectives.

Now that I have seemingly blasted your site, please let me share that I do like your site. I like the name, your BBB involvement, your social engagement, etc. I list the above items as opportunities for improvement.

There are numerous issues which can arise from sharing an IP address. Many of these issues can affect SEO. Some examples:

1. If any website which shares your IP address sends spam e-mail, then your IP can be blocked by various companies. Later when you try to send site-related e-mail to a customer your e-mail will then be blocked. The issue can take weeks to resolve one the root cause is found. This issue can impact SEO since many sites use e-mail to confirm registration, send advertisements or otherwise promote their site.

2. If you share an IP address with a "bad" site, your site's IP can be blocked or served different content.

3. Your site can be blocked by various companies due to sharing an IP with a bad site. For example, many sites have various spam protection where the admin presses a single button to ban a user along with his IP.

I don't believe a search engine would take action against your IP unless they felt most of the sites on that IP were bad. There is precedent for such action but it would need to be quite bad to reach that point.

In short, if you are even remotely serious about providing a quality website then a unique IP should be considered. It is required for SSL, and usually costs only a couple dollars/month otherwise.

What a fantastic response!

I'm sorry but the idea of advising users without expertise to modify their htaccess file is completely reckless. The trial & error approach can easily lead to circumstances where the rule works some of the time but not always. Worse, it can negatively impact other rules and site security causing major problems.

Without knowing the details of the site involved, I tend to make the safe assumption the site is important and there are one or more people who's livelihoods depend on the site. Having worked with clients who have recovered from the damage caused by errors in htaccess files I will firmly share my experience that no one other then a qualified expert should ever touch the file. The potential for damage is very high.

I agree with Gary.

What method did you use to classify these sites as "spammy". JoeAnt is not spammy at all to my knowledge. I grabbed another directory from your list, anthonyparsons.com, and it does not seem even the slightest bit spammy.

You are reviewing the correct options and it is up to you to determine which option should be chosen for any given page.

If you have relevant or similar content on another page, the best option is to perform a 301 redirect to that page. For example if you have a page on "Christmas Deals" then in January you may wish to 301 redirect to your "After Christmas Deals" page. There is a strong likelihood that anyone who was interested in Christmas Deals would be interested in the new page.

On the other hand, if you have a page on a specific topic which is no longer active and there is not another relevant page on your site, offer a 410 response code. This will allow search engines to update their records a bit faster. If you let the page 404, then the search engine will not be sure if the content is temporarily unavailable or not so your listing will be kept for longer.

With either of the last approaches be sure your 404/410 page is helpful. It should contain your site's normal navigation along with a search function. Don't dump people on a page where they need to press the Back button on their browser.

The last confirmed Google update was on Nov 3rd which changed rules related to query "freshness". No announcement has been made related to an update today.

On any given day various sites drop in rankings due to a variety of factors. It could be related to one of the hundreds of unnamed changes Google makes to it's ranking algorithm each year, or it could be due to other reasons.

Removed Internal Rel=NoFollows from power internal page - how long till reflected in Google?

Depending on the page's importance Google can update the page within less then an hour. The two questions i would have are:

• what is the page's PR or PA?

• does the page contain static content? or does the page's content change often?

Either way you can do a search for page in Google and check the cached page. At the top of the cached page is a date/time stamp. When the time stamp is updated you know Google has recrawled the page and had an opportunity to view the changed tags.

Parts of Google's ranking algorithm are a mystery. It may take recrawling both the home page and the internal page before Google updates the PR. I suggest checking the home page cache to see if it has been updated as well.

Once Google has crawled the changes, your pages should immediately benefit from the change. That benefit may or may not actually result in a ranking change. Generally speaking, I would not expect a ranking change because I acquired a single new link. It certainly can happen and depends entirely upon how your web pages compare with your competition.

Assuming those PA metrics are valid (i.e. the links are authentic) then those page values are strong. I would expect them to be updated rather quickly. I know you desire a time frame for "quickly" so I will offer 1 day as an estimate.

My sincerest recommendation is to sit down with the Beginner's Guide to SEO and read it while examining your site. It is a relatively short guide which is exceptionally helpful.

When you are finished, run through your site again this time with Google's Guidelines.

These steps will help your site's rankings improve.

It wouldn't be related to your removing nofollow from an internal page. Look to other changes you made with your site over the past month.

Hi Kevin,

I responded to this question here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/trailing-slashes-in-url-use-canonical-url-or-301-redirect#post-53208

In short, you have taken all the proper action. You have done everything possible to ensure users properly link to your site by using a consistent URL format. You have also properly redirected those users who do not use the proper format, which is much better then many sites which simply generate a 404 error.

If you set up your site properly from day 1, the result should be over 90% of the links to your site are valid, and a small percentage require a single redirect. It's the best result you can hope for. You cannot achieve 100% efficiency as links from other sites are outside your control.

In your situation I would recommend one of two approaches:

1. Submit the sitemap daily via automation.

2. Submit the sitemap any time a new product or article is added to the site.

Hi Atul,

Different languages is NOT seen as duplicate content. If you take the same article and present it in both English and Spanish, that would be considered two unique articles.

Security and Accessibility are always at odds. The easier information is to access, the less secure it is and vice versa.

You can place your site behind a login which would require all users to register. Google will then have a lot less information about your site and any visitor activity. The problem will then be your pages will no longer be listed in Google's index.

Any additional security really needs to come from the end of the person surfing your site. They could visit your site through a proxy server, clear cache, clear cookies, etc. You can help users by educating them on these steps. There are numerous counter-balances as well. If you are attempting to improve user security, the above can help but it is far from perfect. A pc can have tracking software installed, a router can trace activity, etc.

Will there be any issues associated with moving them all to a reseller account with a single ip address?

From a ranking perspective, the primary issue would be if the sites link to each other. Links to sites which share an IP are devalued since they are likely under the control of the same party. Search engines have numerous methods to relate sites beyond the IP so if you own a group of sites which link to each other, it is likely search engines may have already devalued any links you created to your other sites.

Another concern of shared IPs is your "neighborhood". If you share an IP with porn sites, gambling sites, hacker sites, etc. it's possible some e-mail systems and companies have banned the IP on their networks which can restrict visitors from accessing your site or cause e-mail to be rejected.

is there ever a possibility they will change our ips without notice or for any reason at all that will change and or fluctuate our rankings?

Your web host owns the IPs assigned to your server so it is possible they could change the IP, but it is not normally done. If it does happen, an IP change should not have any effect on your rankings.

Do you have any ideas on the problem with the site ranking for 1 word.

While T Shirts is clearly a focus for the site, it is also an ultra competitive keyword. While the site has a respectable PA of 53 for the home page, there is only one result in the top 20 sites with a PA that low and it belongs to Zappos (PA 47) but that site has a much higher DA (93 vs 43).

The overall quality of the home page is not great. There are no trust symbols and the page seems to be written for search engines more then for people. The page seems stuffed with keywords and links.

The title is focusing multiple keywords which is also a concern.

In my opinion the site's home page should not appear on the 2nd page of SERPs so I can't speak as to why it may have appeared there in the past. There could have been changes made to the site, the page or it's links. I think the site can do well in SERPs but it definitely requires SEO attention.

I can't speak for EGOL. Perhaps you can ask him directly. The challenge I find is a large percentage of people keep everything confidential.

Most of my work in the past has been either for other SEO companies or for private companies involved with a penalty or other specific work where I am immediately presented with a NDA. Unfortunately those circumstances prevent me from sharing my work. I have the impression EGOL is in a similar circumstance in that he isn't freely able to share.

What I can suggest regarding content is after it is created, every article should ideally be reviewed by 4 people:

• An English teacher (or whichever language is appropriate) to check for grammatical and spelling errors along with overall presentation and reading level.

• A marketing professional to ensure the message is clear and will connect with users

• An expert from the field which the article covers. A doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. Check for accuracy, qualified quotes, etc.

• A SEO to check for all other relevant factors such as URL, header tags, title, linking, etc.

Usually there are not 4 separate people involved to perform those functions in which case I recommend at least two people: the SEO and an expert. The SEO can use tools for English checking, and then can focus the other factors.

You can also ask others to review the final article. When I refer to "others" I mean people who would otherwise read the article. It is helpful to have a small group of people (bloggers, etc) who read advanced copies. They can offer valuable feedback and also help promote the article. At worst, grab anyone you can...a receptionist, a student, etc....to review the article and share honest feedback.

Some of the SEOmoz articles from Dr. Pete, Cyrus, Rand and others are good examples.

It really depends on how closely you wish to integrate the reviews compared to your core social networking function. There are pros and cons to each approach. A great article on this topic:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

My main concern is the size of the new site and limits on the number of pages Google will crawl.

That should not be a concern. Google has the ability to crawl sites regardless of size. There are sites with millions of web pages. The largest forum site, http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/index.php, has over 2 billion posts. I am not sure on the page count, but it's a lot.

Google will make whatever adjustments necessary to crawl quality content. The question is...do all of the pages on your site represent quality content? If your pages offer quality content, earn links, get tweeted / liked / +1'd, then Google will crawl them.