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Hi Carl

It sounds like you have 2 live homepages there. If so, I'd suggest Redirecting the duplicate index.php one to the root (as in www.mydomain.com) either through a Rewrite or a 301 Redirect depending upon your server configuration.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Ok.  If a page has totally different content to any other page on the website, then a Canonical tag won't be appropriate. In this situation, use a NoIndex tag on the page and/or disallow it in the robots.txt file (only if you don't want any visitors to find it through search that is).

Or alternatively don't do anything, it sounds like the pages have some unique useful content on them  

Hi Brian

This is an easy question to answer; "absolutely not". Please don't copy them, you'll end up regretting it.

How you've described your competitors' links makes them fall into the 'worthless spam' category; their efforts would have been for little gain, especially any long term gain, plus they've risked getting penalised for link spamming.

Links from blog posts are usually nofollow so will hold zero SEO value, there is only a small percentage of decent blogs out there.

To acquire some links that will actually be of benefit to your website, create some unique relevant interesting valuable Content for your visitors and Distribute this well. In turn, you'll likely be rewarded with some great natural links. Infographics with a text link built in can really help.

I hope this has been of some help to you.

Regards

Simon

Hi there,

With regards to the Canonical tag, pages don't need to be identical, just similar. Therefore Google usually follows the Canonical request whenever the two pages concerned are 'similar enough', with enough not really being known exactly however likely to be over 50% the same.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Link Exchanges are a high risk strategy, Google actively seek out and penalise sites that participate in some of them. ~ A nofollow link is usually worthless from an SEO perspective as the spiders will usually not follow the link. So poor quality links (which links from exchanges usually are) that are also nofollow are rather pointless. ~ A few good quality links will be of much more benefit than many many links from a link exchange.

Hi Noah, (Apologies for the lack of paragraphing here, doesn't work on an iPad). ~ Recipricol Links aren't that beneficial anyway, one-way free followed relevant inbound links with good anchor text from reputable websites is the way to go. Gaming sites often find it tough in search as there is so much dodgy link work going on. 'My advice is to Only Link Out to another website if it's a valuable link for your visitors to follow'. If not, don't link out. There are plenty of great websites around that do provide Follow links, often within different though related industries (Gaming is leisure, so non-gaming leisure sites will often be good sites to get a link from). Try producing some great new content, an idea could be an Infographic on the History of Gaming, include a text link in the infographic. Distribute this well, other sites would love to be able to provide their visitors with this type of content. In return, you'll get some great PR and likely a number of good inbound links. Hope that helps, Regards, Simon

Hi there, the Site: command doesn't give a full representation of a website's Indexed pages. Better to have a check within Google Webmaster Tools to see how many pages have actually been Indexed, which isn't always 100% accurate though is more so than the Site: command. Hope that helps, Regards, Simon

Hi SEOCM, (apologies for the lack of paragraphing here, doesn't work on an iPad). Note: Keri added paragraph marks, and the iPad issue is in our bug queue. (Thank you)

Q1) and Q2) If the redirect was done correctly (a 301 permanent redirect in effect) then Most of the previous website's strength will be applied to your new website, there is some loss though, usually varies between a 5% and 20% loss. A 301 redirect tells the search engines that the move is permanent, so Google after a fairly short while, recognises this new site as the new home of the previous site.

Q3) Keywords in Domains are believed to now not have as much ranking weight as they used to. Most of the old website's overall strength will be applied to the new website rather than say an individual keyword in the previous domain.

So don't worry, so long as the migration from the old site to the new one was done correctly, you'll likely get the maximum benefit that you can.

Regards, Simon

Hi Monique, well done, you already know the answer Use a Canonical Tag for all the duplicate pages, to point back to your main login page http://www.quicklearn.com/maven/login.aspx (adding a couple of unique sentences may not make the pages unique enough to not be classed as duplicate, as duplicate includes very similar pages). Regards, Simon ~ (PS. sorry for the lack of paragraphing here, doesn't work on an iPad)

Indeed it will unfortunately. Am sure the clever folk at Google will deal with them search wise, these spammy comments will still be visible all over though.

Hi Mohd, sounds like you're getting there, have been some good answers & advice for you on here. You can target more than 1 keyword on the Homepage, is just more difficult than 1 and risks diluting the emphasis of the existing 1 keyword. Can certainly be done though I'd suggest sticking to just 1 H1 tag, focus that on the 1 main keyword and make use of H2 tags for the others. The Title and Description can of course contain all 3, depending on length of course. Clear sections of content related to all 3 is important, plus absolutely inbound links with varied anchor text covering all 3. Hope that helps.

Hi Mohd, Welcome to the world of SEO. (apologies for the lack of paragraphing here, doesn't work on an iPad). The answer really depends on your business objectives, website objectives and what it is you have to sell or provide. ~ Often, the homepage is a shop window leading to different departments within the store (product categories and such like), with the Homepage targeted and ranking for Brand terms such as the business name and related, with the deeper internal pages ranking for keywords and phrases related to what each page is there for, such as a product, service, topic offering. One way to help start the process is to figure out how you'd like the website to be structured, as in getting the URL structure aligned to what it is the website provides. Always try and cater for Usability and User Experience which are at least as important as the SEO of the site. Hope that helps, Regards, Simon

Hi Gareth,

You're welcome. Unique Content for each website; yes, absolutely. Unique, relevant, useful, interesting content can make for excellent link bait, makes the link building efforts much easier and more successful.

As for linking tips, use the SEOmoz link analysis tool and the competitor analysis tool to help identify existing links that can be improved (eg. find existing links with poor anchor text and try and get it changed to include keywords) plus to identify good quality sites that link to the competitors which would be ideally suited to have a link from. Online PR can also help to gain some valuable links, as can creating and distributing different types of content such as Infographics. Hope that helps

Hi Gaz

There probably are, though I find it difficult to make such a recommendation when it's my strong belief that Link Building should be a part of an integrated search & content campaign rather than outsourced as a standalone task.

The best links are almost always free (natural) links obtained as a part of producing some really valuable content and distributing it well. This can often be done in-house easily (resource dependent of course). Though it does take time to seed, distribute and promote content, which is where an agency can come in handy by assisting with this as a part of a bigger search & content campaign (an on-going campaign that is).

If you really are intent on outsourcing link building specifically though, or even as a part of a larger project, I'd suggest searching for an agency that is in fairly close proximity (within acceptable travelling distance that is), by searching initially to draw up a short-list of contenders, then evaluate them from checking out their clients' sites, rankings etc and asking for authentic testominials from the shortened short-list. That's in addition to all the usual evaluation criteria of course.

Regards

Simon

Hi James, you're welcome, am glad to have helped. I agree it's important to maintain your current US rankings as your target audience are initially in the US (before they travel over here on vacation). ~ To cater for local search in London on your existing website, I'd suggest creating a Local page for 'London Tours' or similar. Within this page, include some local content, such as a local address of a booking office if you have one, a local telephone number, some content based around the location of these tours, such as the West End, Westminster... Make sure that this page can be easily navigated to from the homepage. Inbound links from other local businesses, review sites etc will help the page to get noticed and recognised as an authoritative page for London tours. If you can include this new local page as a listing in Google Places that will likely help, you should be able to as the business really does operate from the location of London, those local details will be essential for this. ~ Hope some of that may help you further. Regards, Simon

That is frustrating for sure, seeing as no other changes have been made. There's usually a reason or two as to why such drops in rankings would occur. It's worth starting with an on-page analysis (SEOmoz's tool is great) to see if any serious errors or such like are identified. Perhaps the site is now over-optimized which can happen.

Perhaps something has happened that you don't know about, such as your client purchasing links without you knowing, or some issues with the hosting provider. Is good to rule out as many possible reasons as you can.

Hi there

It could be that the new relevant keywords that you have replaced the 'fluff' words with within the Titles and Descriptions are more competitive than those previous words, resulting in a drop in rankings.

If you're now fully targeting the site towards more competitive keywords than before, it's justifiable to expect a drop in rankings.

Additional supportive content (still unique, relevant, valuable content) plus some good distribution and PR should attract some new inbound links, hopefully on relevant anchor text.

So you may well have a justifiable reason there, plus an action plan to remedy the situation, which a client will likely be appreciative of.

Regards

Simon

Hi Kevin

That is a risk, you could end up blocking search engines from indexing your entire website. Usually, both www and non-www point to the same location, so one robots.txt file can apply to both (unless you've configured your site differently).

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

I'd suggest removing that Disallow command within your robots.txt file and do the following:

Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to 'Site configuration' 'Settings' ~ from there you can set how you'd like your pages to be displayed in Google's search results, either with or without the www. (or can leave Google to decide).

Regards

Simon

Hi James

The short answer is 'yes and no'.

Solely Local SEO doesn't usually affect International SEO at face value, as local is local and international is everywhere, as I think you already know from your question description (though read on below...)

However, just about any aspect of SEO can affect the SEO of a webpage and a website from the overall bigger perspective. There are lots of common factors between local and international SEO, as well as some differences. For one website that is trying to cater for both, there will be compromises to be made in some instances, plus some advanced SEO to take care of too.

You'll find  http://searchengineland.com/local-seo-international-seo-have-lots-in-common-47937  an interesting and helpful read on this topic.

An example, an IP Address can have a different effect on local SEO efforts than International efforts (i.e. location of where the website is hosted).

There are language differences, user behaviour differences...

I'd suggest reading that article and then figure out who you're targeting, where and how.  The answer could end up in needing more than 1 website, subdomains for different geo-locations, a site/cms language translator...

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Lol, can't argue with that answer, No says all that needs to be said