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I realize your focus is fixing your .htm issue, but I would like to make one suggestion. Start using friendly URLs which don't show an extension. It should be a win for your site.

Reconsideration requests are for when Google removes a site from it's index for spam or other reasons. There would not be any reason to use one in this instance.

First and foremost, fix the setting. Then verify the noindex tag is removed by visiting a few of your site's pages. Right-click, choose View Page Source and ensure the tag is gone.

Next, as John suggested create a fresh site map and submit it to Google. Log into Google WMT to ensure they have received the updated map. Since this is a new site and you seem anxious to fix this issue, take a moment and check your robots.txt file from Google WMT to ensure there are not any issues.

If your site is large, it may take time for all your pages to re-appear. If your site is small, you will see results faster.

If there is any 1 or 2 articles you feel are critically important to be indexed fast, then I would suggest tweeting a link for the page to help increase it's visibility to Google. I have no knowledge of this working but I even heard of a person tweeting a link to their site map to get indexed faster. I have no idea if it worked but I love the creativity.

Good luck.

There are too many factors involved to offer the analysis you seek while on a general level. Can you offer us your site URL along with the keywords involved?

By looking at your site, the keywords, and the sites who are outranking you we can have a chance to get some ideas as to why these sites are outperforming you.

Some key factors to examine:

• the keywords and phrases involved, how competitive are they?

• the sites involved, how strong are their root domains?

• how strong are your links versus your competitor's links?

• how well is your site optimized for SEO vs your competitors?

Is there any form of standardization? I can't imagine 18k pages which were independently developed.

There should be a templating system or some logic which controls code common to all pages. Most pages should share the same header, footer and sidebar, along with standards for things like a canonicalization tag, title and meta description.

If that is not the case, the EGOL's comment should be considered. It is not reasonable to maintain a site which lacks standards.

It works the same way.

In the upper right corner you should see "Adminstrate Comments". Are you logged into the same facebook account used for your site? Are you an admin for the facebook app? As long as the answer to both questions is yes, you will be able to moderate the comments.

What kind of site is it?

With 18k+ pages I will take a guess that it is a forum site. Definitely check with your forum software provider. There should be some form of "page container" which is used as a template for all the site's pages. If you can determine the logic you want to use, such as go with the post title or H1 tag, then you can modify the template according to your logic and take care of your entire site quickly and easily.

Hi Dunamis.

I understand your confusion. Facebook cleverly hides the icon for deleting comments.

To delete a comment you must be logged into Facebook and on your site's page. Go to your WALL, find the comment you wish to delete, then move your mouse to the upper right corner of the comment. The area will appear blank until you hover your mouse in the corner. Then a snowflake like icon will appear.

Clicking that icon will offer you the option of removing the comment, hiding the comment, and banning the user from your page.

Alan, can you share why it is important to link to the source at the opening of the article as opposed to the end?

There are several approaches you can take and you are free to decide which option would be best for your site.

• You can add a Like button for your Facebook page. In general, I would recommend adding this button once per site on your home page. This is enough to make visitors aware you have a facebook page. I like to also provide a link to the facebook page as well. I use a block which shows visitors 8 - 12 images of their facebook users who have liked the website.

• You can add a Like button for a particular page. Pressing this button will post a link to the page on the visitor's facebook wall and let their friends know they like your site.

• You can add a Like button to areas within a page. For example, a forum can add a Like button to every post. An eCommerce site like yours can add a Like button next to individual products.

Social sharing is very impulsive. My best recommendation would be to place the sharing buttons close to where a visitor might see something they wish to share.

Also, I would definitely include Twitter in your social sharing solution. Lastly, Google +1 is something that I have included and view quite positively. The SEO community seems a bit split as whether or not to embrace Google's +1.

There is some discussion on this same topic you can take a look at: http://www.seomoz.org/q/few-high-quality-links-or-a-plethora-of-mediocre-links

Most SEO experts will share the same thought "you want to build your site over time with high quality links". I completely agree but many sites would like a boost to get started. Others have good content but due to heavy competition or other factors desire to perform better in SERP.

It is my understanding having a lot of low quality links can help a site, and cannot harm a site. For those who feel otherwise, I would appreciate the opportunity to further discuss the topic. I would love to see any information from Google or Matt Cutts on the topic.

The term "penalty" often used to describe these links or the site which receives them usually refers to the loss of link juice from the bad link. I am not aware of any negative effects outside of discounting the bad link.

The Pandora effect, or any drop of ranking, is due to the loss of juice from the offending links, not a penalty from Google. The site still benefited. For a time, they had higher rankings and more exposure to the public. During that period the site could have earned additional sales or picked up readers who otherwise may have not seen the site. Those additional customers and readers can directly lead to the site ranking higher then it would of if it never received the "bad" link.

Jsoc, can you please clarify your statements regarding penalties?

To the best of my knowledge the only "penalty" that Google imposes is to remove value from the link. Have you ever heard Matt Cutts or any Google authority share that a site can receive a penalty due to receiving a bad link?

We can all agree that we want high quality links for our sites. If I was approached by a guy who said "Hey, I would like to give you 1000 low quality links for free. Do you accept?" then my answer would be, YES, of course. Why? Because it is my understanding there is no direct harm possible from the link.

The only harm I can think of possible from a link is positioning or public perception. If I was to make a statement "here is a list of a bad sites" and my site was on the list, then that link would not be worth the negative public perception. Also links which show a product in a way the site doesn't wish to be seen. For example a company named it's ED spray "DieHard" and then linked to Sears. That is undesirable and can negatively affect a brand.

A 1000 random chinese directory links to my site though, I'll take them gladly. Is there anyone who feels otherwise?

The worst thing you can do is nothing.

www.mysite.com

www.mysite.com/

mysite.com

mystic.com/

www.mysite.com/index.html

Above is 5 examples of URLs which COULD all lead to the same page. There are numerous other possibilities as well. If you don't let Google know which version of the page is correct, then you will suffer the consequences of duplicate content.

What happens is Google doesn't know which page is correct. They will pick one of the non-www versions because that is what your Google WMT is set up to do. Meanwhile other versions of the pages are being used.

You are sending your link juice to a page, but it is a complete waste as it is not being considered by Google for SERP. You MUST resolve this issue if you care about SEO at all.

You are welcome to do so. Go to Google WMT, change your current option to the www, then adjust your .htaccess file as Steven suggested.

Also, canonicalize your pages to help ensure this issue can't happen again. Your .htaccess changes will work as long as the file is there, but things happen so it's better to be covered.

More details are needed to offer a proper reply.

• Does your video page offer only videos by themselves? Or is it more similar to YouTube where you can write a description and viewers can leave comments?

• Are these locally hosted videos? Or do you embed YouTube or similar videos into your site?

• If these are local videos, do you use a CDN to deliver these videos faster to viewers?

• What format are these videos? Are they HD?

• What is the average length of these videos? Are they short music videos? Or are they feature length movies?

• Do these videos contain commercials?

You need to make a decision. Do you want your site address to be seen with or without the www?

Try to assess which version of your URL would require the least number of re-directs. You mentioned the links you built mostly include the www. Take a look at all of your links. You may have a higher number of organic links without the www. Evaluate all the links, then make a decision.

Once you make a decision, stick with it. Canonicalize all your pages with the correct version of the URL. Search your site for all internal links and standardize them.

While you are on this project standardize whether you use a "/" on the end of your url as well. www.mysite.com is not the same as www.mysite.com/. I make this suggestion because if you will go through the painful process of standardizing your site for the www issue, you should resolve all issues at once.

Will getting rid of the news page will hurt our rank.

Not if you make the change correctly.

If you simply take down your news category and lose any links and traffic generated by that feature of your site, then yes it would hurt your rank.

If you move your news content to your blog and 301 users to those pages, then no it would not hurt your ranking. You are just re-arranging existing content. There would be a minor loss of link juice from the 301, but if your new videos add any value to your site, then you should end up well on the positive side.

The only issue is public perception. If there were users going to your site because they liked your news section, then they see it is gone, they could stop visiting. As long as the transition is handled smoothly you can retain that traffic and not have any negative effects.

Does this type of link building work well?

Absolutely

** Is 15 links a month from PR 2-5 blogs (writing on my subject matter) enough to help out?**

Yes.

Paid blogging exists because it works. With that said, Google is getting better at adjusting for low quality content and the blog farms. Usually a paid blogger posts in perfect English, with the right post title, the right keyword usage, etc. They are trained to write for SEO. The problem is the actual quality of the content they write is usually low. They don't know nor understand the topics they are writing about.

On the other hand, many experts will write about topics, but they are not always proficient with English. Also they don't understand SEO mechanics so while they share great information, it is often not presented optimally from a SEO perspective. So when Google balances things out, a paid blog article can rank higher then an article written from an expert on the topic. There are many factors involved of course, but these are some of them.

I am sure there will be others who will disagree with the perspective I am sharing. Of course all sites should strive to create great content. The internet has too many paid bloggers and others who just fill the internet with fluff making it harder for users to get the real content they need. Google still rewards sites for using paid bloggers with higher rankings. As long as that is the case, they will still be used by those without the resources to create the content on their own.

With respect to the amount of links, it is all relative. How many links does your site have presently? Are these articles linking to your home page? Or are they linking to deeper pages? Are the links from 15 different blogs with different root domains? Are they blogging from a general wordpress domain or from a topic specific blog? There are many factors used to evaluate the value of a link. Without seeing your site I would suggest that 15 links/month is enough to help most small to medium sites quite nicely.

Google adds pages based on following links. If your site offers a link to the page, or even if any other site offers a link, then it can be crawled and potentially indexed.

If you do not wish the page to be listed you have a few options. You can canonicalize the page to point to the non-secure version. For example let's assume you have the page http://www.mysite.com/info.html. Let us also assume you have a secure version of the page. On both pages I would recommend adding the following code:

That code tells Google the http:// version of the page is the preferred version, and the other page is a duplication.

If you do not have a duplicate page issue and you simply don't wish a page to be listed in SERP, then add the "noindex" tag to the page.

What is the easiest way to nail down why Google is using the https version?

Google will list any pages it finds. That's their role. Unless you specifically provide a reason for them not to index a page, such as the canonical tag, a noindex tag, or block them with robots.txt, they will list a page. They have no way of knowing you wanted the http:// version listed unless you tell them.

To fix the issue, you can add the canonical and the next time they check the page they will update their data. It may take a bit of time depending on the size of your site.

Can we just use the top style dropdown like www.adventurefinder.com has?

Yes.

If you are ever unsure, any easy test is to right-click on the page and View Page Source. Search for the text used in the navigation menu. If you can read the text in the page's source code, then Google can definitely read it as well.

Even if you can't read it, Google MAY be able to still pull the data. It's one of those things where if you can see it then you are fine, but if you can't see it you may still be fine as well.

Google Analytics offers that information. If you are not already signed up, you should do such.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/external-links