Welcome to the Q&A Forum

i'd agree with Klarke, the first choice should be .com because people just assume that extension with domain names so you might miss out on traffic  If the domain is not available, then you can choose either the .net or .org .

Xml Sitemaps is a very good tool. If you want to have a collaborative process discussing the sitemap with the rest of the team i also recommend http://writemaps.com/tour/

Have you tried the new disavow links tool introduced by Google. Try submitting all the links you think are impacting your site in that tool . http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2012/10/a-new-tool-to-disavow-links.html

If you want to get more attention, you could try posting or commenting on related posts on Matt Cutt's blog.

i agree with Edward as well. With Google cracking down on exact match domains , you would be better off focusing your efforts on building all the keyword related content on one portal related to that industry. You can have a resources section on the site and write good content on the different topics and over time establish your site as a credible repository of information.

Go into Google Webmaster tools and choose the way you want google to index the site. Choose either the www or the non www version of the domain name. This should fix it.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231

It is not recommended to add the no follow attribute on those pages because it might be treated as scupting and harm the site. Typically only have pages behind an admin login not indexed using the "no follow" for obvious reasons. (you dont want those URL's Indexed by google and the info pubicly available without logging in.

More details in the posts below:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-internet-marketing-discussion-forum/416493-no-follow-about-us-contact-us.html

David, you might have received an over optimization penalty by Google. They have been penalizing a lot of sites for excessive optimization of on site elements like title tags, header tags etc.

Rand did a really good whiteboard session on this topic

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday

Barry also covered it in a good post along with a couple of presentations on this topic

http://searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google’s-working-on-an-“over-optimization”-penalty-for-that-115627

I suggest removing the excessive optimization on the pages and waiting for Google to reindex the pages. You should be able to recover your rankings over time.

Hi Joseph,

Some mentions below of tools:

http://www.sysomos.com/products/facebook-page-central/

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/insights/ ( the facebook insights tool provides good info on user engagement levels and audience demographic)

www.sproutsocial.com ( popular facebook analytics tool)

http://webtrends.com/products/analytics/social/

http://pagelever.com/

www.crowdbooster.com (did a webinar with Ricky Yean , the cofounder and CEO of this tool . Have been using this tool regularly for clients)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/facebook/

http://simplymeasured.com/tour/facebook-fan-page-analytics/

http://www.quintly.com/

http://www.socialdon.com/

http://www.wisemetrics.com/

http://www.unilyzer.com

Be smart about it, as long as it is relevant for the user and genuinely gives them related information to other subject matter on the site. Having said that , it is mentioned that Google can index upto a 100 links on a page. More info on this link: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/an-internal-link-juice-tool-14969

Take a look at this site that does quite a lot of internal linking and is ranking at the top for all "office space for rent" and "office space for lease" geo targeted keywords  (www.loopnet.com)

To answer point 2 , if you have a 400 word article having 1 to 2 internal links in that sounds like a good balance.

lol , that's always fun , all the best..

Kristian,

Dr. Pete has a really good post discussing your exact question:essentially if you have a keyword rich domain name you are not going to be penalized just because you have a keyword rich (exact match) domain unless you go aggressive with the exact match anchor text backlinks. Link to the post below:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/are-exact-match-domains-in-decline

Barry had an interesting post on this topic basically stating that paid ads do influence organic ranks .Link

(http://www.seroundtable.com/google-organic-paid-study-14942.html)

i do see the site ranking # 1 in Google.de , not for google.com and google.ca. It's definitely ranking at the top because of the exact match in the URL as well as keyword stuffing on the actual page itself. Google may not have rolled out the updates as aggressively for the international sites as they did for .com. I agree with eyepaq its only a matter of time before another high quality site knocks it off the top position.

i would recommend Next Gen, we have had positive experiences using it:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

Other good sliders include:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easyrotator-for-wordpress/

http://soliloquywp.com/

Yes in my opinion directory submission is a very valid SEO practice however  there are ethical ways to do directory link building and the unethical/borderline black hat methods. Adding your client in sites like local and national directories related to the client's subject matter expertise is a recommended method for link building. A good list is the one recommended by SEOMOZ below:

www.seomoz.org/directories

Kurtis did a great post on this topic that you can read here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-directory-submission-danger

you can add sproutsocial , crowdbooster and kred.com to the list.

in addition to Google Analytics, i would also recommend piwik , it's a free software like google and provides good info. Link below:

http://piwik.org/

There are a lot of very powerful paid analytics software solutions like omniture and webtrends that provide terrific insight into visitor info.

Dont have specific thoughts on the company, however i would stay away from article marketing / spinning of articles especially right now with all of Google's updates taking place. You should try blogging on industry related sites specific to the client and trying to submit content to authority sites.

Joanna has covered this topic quite extensively in the posts below:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/comparing-the-top-4-retargeting-companies

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/retargeting-basics-what-it-is-how-to-use-it

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/leveraging-your-seo-for-search-retargeting

We personally do a lot of retargeting with Google Adwords (they call it remarketing) with a lot of success for our clients.

just to add to that , please refer to the post below for best practices:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls