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This is always a difficult question when you enter a market that is heavily in to link buying / manipulation.  It's pretty logical to conclude that Google knows this is going on, so you're left wondering if it's the only way, or if everyone else is doing it would I really get penalized for it too?

If your websites in the Ukraine are new, I'd recommend sticking to creating links and signals that are from trusted sources before going down the link buying road. Google also gives positive weight to sites that have more links from other countries so you could link to your Ukrainian sites from Romania and Hungry where applicable. Try spending a few months getting social traction and non-bought links and see if that begins to make you competitive.  At that point you should have a better idea of what to do.

First, I'd spend a little extra time on getting at the value of your leads, if at all possible as this is a key component of answering your own question.  Perhaps you can find that number in generalized industry data, or you can extrapolate from what you currently have.

Next I'd begin breaking the high cost CPC keywords into their own very specific ad groups and/or campaigns so that you have maximum control over the ads running, split testing, and placement.

After that I'd begin lowering bids until I'm in the 2nd or 3rd place slot and then split test ad titles and descriptions to find my sweet spot, as well as continuing to run conversion tests on the landing pages.  At the same time I'd be looking for content placements on highly applicable sites and see if I could find some markets where I'm plugging in to my target demographic but at a lower cost than search.

Finally, lather, rinse, repeat.  Keep working the system to increase current lead/sales volumes while decreasing costs.

But to answer your first question, typically I aim high at the beginning in cost and then work my way down with the price as the data comes in.

I think these changes have the backing of tons of user data--way beyond what we would have access to individually--and a lot of sites are completely in the dark still about mobile usability.  Like the majority of sites on the web are happy with the status quo as long as it's working for them.

People do however look at search traffic, income, etc. When they see a sudden drop in that, they'll come around asking why. In the long view many more sites will become much more user friendly after this change.

Hi Kent. This can vary pretty substantially based on a number of factors, but losing organic traffic for a a couple of months would be on the high end of delays and cause for concern towards the tail end of that time. There's a nice migration guide here from 2012 that's still relevant: http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos.  Mostly it comes down to solid planning and good promotion of the new site address to really help the process along.  Cheers!

Like Hutch says, chances are Screaming Frog is doing a straight read of those pages without factoring in CSS rules for non display of the irrelevant content per device. To double check you could pull up Google's cached version of your pages and see what they're displaying there.  Cheers!

If you made a domain change that could be an even bigger part of it and if so, you'll want to use the Change of Address tool in GWT to help clear that up. Also, did you use 301 redirects to point the old URLs to the new?

My guess is that you did all the steps though and didn't have a domain name change since actual rankings are increasing and you haven't experienced a loss in organic traffic. It's likely old data in GWT.  You might try looking at dates solely from after the relaunch to make sure you're just tracking those new pages.

One last thought is that you can try pinging the new site with a tool like 247pinger.com or bulkping.com. What kind of timeline are you talking about here?

There's a take on this at Quora here: http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-track-Facebook-Connect-signup-goals-in-Google-Analytics where the attribute is getting applied via a query string. In his example "redirect_to root_url(:new_facebook_user => resource.new_facebook_user)" 'resource' would be replaced with 'adwords' or whichever attribute you'd like. Cheers!

Hi Steve. EGOL would be the expert on this question for sure.  And just to clarify it was only a site that triggered removal and not you as an individual or company? Beyond that, here's the official guide on how to get a site reinstated based on appeal:

We're always willing to work with you to resolve any issues you might have. If you feel that this decision was made in error, and if you can maintain in good faith that the invalid activity was not due to the actions or negligence of you or those for whom you are responsible, you may appeal the disabling of your account.

To do so, please contact us only through our appeal form.

Once we receive your appeal, we'll do our best to inform you quickly and will proceed with appropriate action as necessary. Please understand, however, that there is no guarantee that your account will be reinstated.

Once we've reached a decision on your appeal, further appeals may not be considered, and you might not receive any further communication from us.

From: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/57153#q2  Chances are you've already tried this and the appeal was rejected. Did you go over each and every point of their reasoning behind invalid activity? Did you go full kimono? You could try once more but I'd preface that as FINAL appeal and then let it rest and look for different advertisers.

If you do pursue linking the old, banned account to a new one, you'd probably run afoul of, "My account was disabled for being related to another disabled account. Can you tell me more about this relation?" from that same page...  Good luck!

Hi Pete. I wouldn't attack this problem solely through PR measurements, rather I'd try to use as much usability data as I could as well; mainly, how are people interacting with your site?  This can be done via Google Analytics, heat mapping and click tracking software like Crazy Egg or Optimizely, or using actual in-person user testing. (These and other tools here: http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/understanding-your-visitors/) What you're trying to come up with is how much do those 150 links really help or hinder people.  It could very well be that less is more.

1. Always try to fix 404s. A tool like Xenu Link Sleuth can help you locate it quickly.

2. The # character is recognized by search engines as an on-page anchor link and is not a concern. See: https://support.google.com/sites/answer/93718.

3. Email links are fine in either style. I wouldn't remove this one from a usability perspective, and you can try using other styles as well (feel free to nofollow it though).

4)  You should keep the footer links as well for usability and trust, check within Analytics to see if you're getting much traffic to these pages. You might be surprised that one of them is doing well for search. Also make sure the design on these pages lends itself well to exploring other parts of your site.

Cheers!

Hi Judah. Running the Desktop version through Google's Page Insights returns a score of 27/100. See: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jmac.com%2FKeedex_K_DS_FLX38_p%2Fkeedex-k-ds-flx38.htm&tab=desktop

While the mobile version is at 75/100 for desktop and 66/100 for mobile (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jmac.com%2Fmobile%2FProduct.aspx%3FProductCode%3DKEEDEX-K-DS-FLX38&tab=desktop)

Based on those factors alone, it looks like Google could be returning the mobile site as the 'better' version for users. Another thing you should employ though is 302 redirection based on OS / browser detection so that trying to go to the mobile version with a desktop browser results in seeing the desktop page. See: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/separate-urls?hl=en, while following the rest of the practices on that page. Cheers!

Hi Alex. Today's webinar (http://moz.com/webinars) by Cyrus Shepard is covering this topic very well, although you're going to have to build your own workflow that works best for you.  Since the webinar is going on right now (2015-02-10 10:56 Pacific Time) you'll have to wait for it to become available in the previously recorded webinar list. The title is: SEO Basics: The Fundamental Signals Used to Rank Our Content Higher

This along with the beginners guide is going to cover much of your initial steps in SEO: http://moz.com/learn/seo

As for on-page considerations, this is one of the most canonical resources: http://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors. Cheers!

Short answer, yes. Even more so if your clients are actual brick and mortar businesses that can benefit form walk in traffic.  It's important to remember that Google does a TON of scrubbing of the data it presents to the outside world.  To see this for yourself, take a site you currently run--or where you have access via analytics--and pull some long tail keyword search data from over the course of a year.  Find a few phrases that have brought you 10 or more visits. Plug those in to Google Keyword Tool in a different browser.  Do they have any search volumes?

Dedicating an entire page to an extremely long tail phrase is likely still over kill in a lot of cases, but a quick glance at analytics will give you a solid idea of the search patterns that would help create the content of a great page.

Lastly, part of Google's scrubbing is normalization for a globalized audience.  Only major cities are going to rank in that segment, but would a customer living in a smaller city or neighborhood see a benefit of doing business locally?  Probably.  Always a good idea to make the distance from searcher to sale as short as possible.

Hi Neil. For local searches, localization still carries some weight when found within the URL, see: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors, but I'd try to use a little less repetition than in the example above and focus on the higher valued difference making factors.

Outside of local, per Moz's own 2013 Search Ranking Factors, keywords in the URL are 1/4 of 1 percent of the total picture, and possibly even less than that today. I'd write URLs that are easy to read for people and not repetitively keyword stuffed. Cheers!

I'd definitely consider adding a review section on each page for the quality of the information, something along the lines of what "who called me" sites do. That way you're getting user generated content around how quickly they were able to get a hold of someone and how it helped resolve their issue.  That would be a value add and help differentiate the pages.  Cheers!

If the filters are working via parameters you can go into GWT and add them to the exclusion list.  Robots.txt might be able to apply if you were able to serve filters via a folder through a bit of URL rewriting.  Mostly it's a question of getting Google to ignore the duplicate content so research specific to your clients situation there will be a good start.

GWT very infrequently shows a 100% of pages submitted via sitemap matching pages indexed, but there could be a few very reasonable reasons for this. For example, you could be disallowing a portion of pages in your robots.txt file that are listed in your sitemap.

As for OSE explorer, you're most likely looking at link data from prior to the last update. In that case, any linking and work done won't be recorded by OSE until the next update is made live. Here's the latest on their scheduling: http://moz.com/products/api. Short answer: keep doing what you're doing, and wait a bit on the reporting numbers to update. Cheers!

Looks like you're doing a lot right! If it's an option you could list the "Videos" section within the site links (if he has some). You can also show him that Google displaying videos is largely dependent on what someone is searching for, for example, Search + "video". Overall, I'd try to get him to express his goals with the videos in a way different than rankings or how Google is laid out.

I would fold the deletion of these pages into any other design and content changes you have planned for the site. Also,  301 redirection in place of all the old URLs will minimize any 404s that might have been created otherwise. Spidering software like ScreamingFrog or Xenu can help you spot inbound internal links on the pages.

Ultimately these pages are going to go away, either in terms of design or outright deletion so don't let the rate at which you delete them impede other decisions as you move forward in your work on the site.

I'd be pretty hesitant to redirect that site without disavowing each and every spammy link beforehand. Added to that, if it's currently a very low traffic site, and you can quickly reach those levels by emailing current clients directly announcing the new site, I'd just abandon it all together. Better to start fresh on the right foot than to carry the old baggage along with it.

Hi Dev. It looks to me like payment verification / card processing sites are being counted as referrals when people run a transaction on your site. You'll need to go into your domain referral exclusion list and add your selected payment partners to that list.   See: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2795830  Cheers!