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:):) well said.

Hi Rich,

I think just this one act of hiding text will not get you in trouble however if you combine this with other black hat techniques or your site exhibits spammy behavior then you're definitely in trouble. If one is able to access all the content in a text only browser then you should be ok. I would still try and educate the client on having a small block of introductory text above the product and category pages that would also help with conversions.

Her's the official link on hidden text by Google.

Jill Whalen's forum addresses this question here 

Here's another  link on this topic

yep, i would stick to a particular subject matter for a site and focus on it.

not necessarily, if you make the page specific to that keyword/topic and provide quality info you stand a chance to rank for it. Sites like about.com , ehow and wikipedia cover different topics and rank quite well . If you do address broad keywords in your blog, depending on the competition , you will have to build links specifically to that page for that specific keyword to rank high.

A downside to this : you might confuse the visitor if they land on that page and find out that your site covers a broad range of other topics that are of no interest for them . They will bounce off your site impacting your conversion rate.

Hi Jorge,

How are your competitors ranking for their approach by using security testing tools directly. If they are doing well then i would adopt the same strategy and try to beat them with quality backlinks and good on site optimization. SEO is not the only thing you have to worry about , you also should keep conversion rates in mind. By first taking the visitors to a security tools page and then your product page you are increasing your conversion funnel and this might impact your conversion rates. At the end of the day , it's all about sales/revenue/leads/ROI so you dont want to do anything to jeopardize your conversions. That one extra step that the visitor has to take might result in fewer conversions.

Hi Pedro,

The "not provided" data might be occurring because they access your site using the secure version of Google. If the users are logged in using any Google product like gmail they automatically default to the secure version and Google hides that data. Even Firefox does the same by using the https for Google. I'm assuming that the 72 out of 148 are showing up in the organic side in analytics. If that is the case, your best bet is to drill down to the landing pages and see if there is a spike in traffic on any one particular landing page on the site.

Did you do any form of paid advertising. That could also be the reason for keywords not showing up.

Good post on this topic here.

My thoughts would be to separate that blog from the main site or only have related content and posts in the blog to your subject matter. If your idea is to rank high for the site related to the Genre that your site is focused on, then that blog content is not helping. You can still blog about different topics as long as they resonate with a single theme for example home improvement, home renovation, home repair etc.

If the intent of the blog is to just engage the community and spread your brand as you mentioned then it's ok but you wont really be getting any SEO benefit from the blog. Your rankings would basically be impacted with the on and off site optimization done for the site related to the keywords. If your competitor has a site ranking well and also a blog related to that topic, he should outrank you in this instance.

You can use Google's keyword suggestion tool , type in fabrication and welding in the keyword list and the website , check the box that says "only show ideas closely related to my search terms" . You should be able to pull a good keyword list using this tool.

In addition to this tool you can also use SEM Rush , type in the client's website and see what keywords they are ranking for that are related to your site. You can also use the keyword analysis tool from SEOMOZ.

good links, thanks Sanket.

Lewis,

I'd suggest putting up this requirement on vworker . Lots of talented and skilled people available on that site. I'm sure you'll get multiple bids on your project.

I'd lean towards option 2. Push all the content over in the main domain and apply the redirects to the other domains. With the recent Google updates there is a lot of discussion about the power of exact match domains and their effect on keyword rankings. I'd suggest redirecting them to the main site.

Citations are essentially sources where your company is mentioned typically with your address.

More info on this Link

You can use the help of companies like Customer Lobby and White Spark to research citations that can be used for your site.

David Mihm in his post here ranks the top factors that influence the local rankings.

Hi Hal,

Try reducing the keyword density of this keyword on your page. You are also using the keyword in your internal links with that keyword as the anchor text. Your site could have suffered from Google's over optimization penalty. Also check your links and report any bad links using the disavow tool.

Damien, you have a redirect to the non www version of your site. Try running the crawl again by eliminating the www in the URL , see if that fixes the issue.  (romancebookstore.com.au)

Max, i'd give it a couple of weeks more. If they are still under review, you're better off deleting them and starting over.

i'd say yes they would get indexed unless you're using the "no index" attribute for that page.

Hi Jay, you might find this post helpful

Matt Cutts confirmed that Google has a "parked domain detector" that filters out parked domains thereby eliminating any SEO benefits. Matt Cutts Video link 

yes by looking at those pages you might be facing the same issue with them. It's tough to estimate which keyword is getting you the penalty but i think it's safe to assume that the keyword you're using the most on a page might be culprit. The backlinks might not be showing up because they might not have indexed this link as yet. The backlink tools like majestic do not report all the links for a site with 100% accuracy.

Having your content syndicated or added on other sites can do no harm as long as those sites are good quality ones. The link value really depends on how those sites handle outbound links (if they use no follow tag or not for external links) . Aside from the link value, you could always benefit from the additional traffic those sites can potentially send your way. More info here