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In general, there are two ways you can block crawlers from indexing your content.
You can add a Disallow entry to your robots.txt file
You can add a meta tag to your pages:
What you are saying in either case is "please do not list this content in your search engine".
In general, you would not want to block your archives. There certainly can be specific cases where you only want the public to see your most current content, in which case you can block it.
Have you seen your robots.txt file?
http://www.miwaterstewardship.org/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /GoogleSiteMap.axd
Allow: /
The two thoughts that come to my mind when thinking of anchor text are:
what word or phrase would encourage readers to click
what word or phrase would work best for search engines? What is a user likely to type into google?
You offered the phrase: "See what Cerritos Nissan customers have to say about their experience at this great Orange County Nissan Dealership.
I would suggest something along the lines of: Read feedback from Cerritos Nissan customers regarding their experience at this great Orange County Nissan dealer.
"Feedback from Ceritos Nissan customers" would be a link to your our-experience.htm page. "Orange County Nissan dealer" would be a link to your home page.
Would you mind sharing the URL so we can take a look?
I have several ideas but rather then guess it would be preferable to take a look then offer specifics.
It truly depends on how it is coded.
This isn't perfect but a pretty good idea is, go to your page, right-click and choose View Source. Can you see your menu list in the code? If you can, then Google can too. If you can't, then Google may or may not be able to see it, depending on how it is coded.
If you can share a URL of your site or another site with the exact same menu system, I can offer more information.
The best information I can find on the subject is 3 years old and from Yahoo.
My understanding is do a 301 if you can, if not do a meta refresh preferably with 0.
Also in 2007, Matt Cutts said this:
Matt Cutts: In general, Google does a relatively good job of following the 301s, and 302s, and even Meta Refreshes and JavaScript. Typically what we don't do would be to follow a chain of redirects that goes through a robots.txt that is itself forbidden.
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml
Based on that discussion it is inferred that value is passed along.
The surf safe information I shared isn't really relevant in this particular case as Mulith shared he operates an adult site. I added it in case others viewed this topic at a later time.
Thank you John.
The solution you offered works if a site is geared for one particular language. The site I am working with has language dedicated forums covering more then a dozen languages. The end solution will need to adjust for all of them.
I will speak to the forum software about your idea and hopefully we can build something off your suggestion. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.
XenForo is the forum software in use.
I was really wondering what type of replacement process would be used?
When Google crawls a russian or korean site, do they convert the characters? If not, is there a way of telling Google "hey, this title is from the Russian forums so please use the Russian alphabet?"
If they do still convert the characters, how do other countries handle this change? The title length would be reduced by two-thirds.
I have a site which provides forum sections for various languages. When foreign characters are used in the post title, each letter is replace by a three character replacement such as %93. This conversion makes the URLs long.
The site's software automatically uses the thread's title in the URL. It is never a problem except in these instances.
Any suggestions on how to handle this issue?
I think the correct thing to do is pretty clear.
301 the pages from the original site to their new URLs directly just as you suggested.
what would I do with the pages that I have not redirected? Let them 404?
The right thing to do is redirect them properly. Why would you leave any pages as a dead end 404?
How much time and resources do you have available for this project. That answer should be balanced with other factors:
Are the existing links worth the effort? Is this an older site with high quality links?
What is your SEO rank worth? Is the site's sales dependent on SERP? Since you are posting here, I would assume the answer is yes.
With only 100 pages involved, I would do whatever it takes to ensure each page is properly redirected to the appropriate page on the new site.
Yes
That exact phrase is mentioned 8 times on the home page. It is mentioned 3 times on every page in the site, once in the header and twice in the footer. You also have very similar phrases in the footer on every page "Filme gratis", "filme online", "Filme online". Most of the pages also have a sidebar with the same phrases as well.
There is a lot of cannibalization on the site, along with keyword stuffing and a 404 error for the Tutoriale tab in your navigation bar.
it would make the most sense to optimize the homepage for 'NYC apartments'
I agree.
If I may ask, why do you desire to rank so well for "Platinum Properties"? If that is your company name, most people who search for you will find your site whether you are the first result or the tenth. I would recommend focusing on the other two pages you suggested.
Home page: NYC apartments and another variation of the phrase such as "apartments New York" or whichever key word phrase you feel would be best.
Page1: NYC Apartment Rentals and another variation of that phrase
Page2: NYC Apartment Sales and another variation of that phrase
For the title tag, any change can affect your current ranking. You can make no change and your ranking can move up or down based on a variety of factors ranging from Google changes to how your competitor's rankings change.
Have you considering moving your company name to the end of your title tag? You would want to improve the first half but a fast example would be
<title>NYC Apartments Rentals and Sales | Platinum Properties</title>
Google is fine with swear words. Your ranking will not be affected.
On the other hand AdSense has rules against excessive profanity. If you are dependent on AdSense income you should take that into consideration.
Also be aware that "surf safe" settings can cause your site to be filtered. Since you have an adult site you would already be filtered so the swear words would not impact you.
If you know now that you will optimize 30 pages then make your plan now. Determine which pages will focus which key words or phrases. This will help you avoid cannibalization within your own site. You can also start now with building anchor links between each page as you optimize them.
As you build links or otherwise improve your first few pages, you may encounter an opportunity for another page. You can then either take notes so you can easily backtrack later, or you can stretch and include the extra page while it is convenient. An example is you may have a site which sells insurance. You might contact an auto dealer and obtain a link on their site referring car buyers to your site. At the same time perhaps you might think about the health or life insurance needs of the car dealer's employees and find an opportunity there as well.
One last thought. Once you feel your first 5 pages are optimized, I would not recommend waiting for them to rank well. Go ahead and jump into the next 5. It takes time for SEO to work. There is no benefit to waiting. Get started now.
Would you mind sharing the source of this information?
I would like to read it in full context, and also check the date. I don't believe that statement has ever been true but I haven't been involved with SEO long enough to be certain.
The statement is inaccurate.
There are over 100 factors involved with determining a page's placement in SERP. The URL is one factor. It is not even a top factor. In my opinion you are over-emphasizing it's value, and what you are considering would be a mistake.
I will presume your keyword is a two word phrase since you are using "widget-widget" as an example. There are numerous ways to optimize your SERP for the term, but since you are focusing on the URL I would recommend using your page name instead of the domain name, i.e. www.mysite.com/widget-widget.
This method offers a couple advantages:
you can acquire a decent .com name without any dashes.
you can hit your exact keyword phrase
your keyword match would be deeper in the URL. The deeper your keyword, the higher it is scored by Google.
Bottom line, you cannot make data available online without offering a means for a user to grab that data.
You said you "don't wish to make it easy" so I will share some ideas:
EGOL's suggestion is good and not that hard to implement. I am not sure if your site requires registration but you can set it up so guests can view a maximum of ?20 member pages or whatever amount you deem to be a reasonable number.
There are more complicated methods by which you can establish a script that will block any IP or user who pulls too many pages too quickly.
The real challenge is your sitemap. If all that is required is the company's name, your sitemap is all someone needs. In this case there is simply nothing I can think of you can do.
If the sitemap isn't a challenge, another idea is to present the data in a method that is not easy to read. You can leave the description information in HTML but present the company name in Flash, for example.
Bottom line, if you want to rank well, the site has to be easy to crawl. If the crawl data offers enough information for others to steal, there is simply no reasonable method that can be used to prevent automated tools from grabbing it.
With respect to blogs, you can use those comments along with forum posts for link value. However, you should check after the first time you use this method. Many blogs have their comments set up to automatically apply the nofollow attribute.
For link directories, I would recommend using the free directories. ODP is great but takes a very long time to get into. Many other directories wish to exchange links which isn't the best idea for many sites. The links shouldn't hurt but I would suggest not paying for a listing in the directory unless you have a high value site and the directory is of high value as well such as Yahoo's.
Would you mind sharing a link the page? It would be much easier to talk specifics if we could look at the page.
In general terms, you want to examine the page and your site for the desired keyword. The two questions I would ask are:
Is your page optimized for the "x1" keyword or phrase?
Earlier today someone asked what he could do to improve his ranking for "Las Vegas vet". An examination of the site's home page showed that phrase was not used a single time on the page. You need to ensure you offer solid content with appropriate usage of the term, without stuffing the page.
Is your site canibalizing your SERP?
When you search for the keyword, do other pages from your site appear? If so, try to figure out why. Google apparently believes the page offered is a better match for "x1". You can help by modifying the page a bit and replacing "x1" with a different keyword designed for that particular page. You can also use anchor links for x1 throughout your site. These links would help users find the desired page and let Google know you are focusing that keyword to a particular page.