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link farm - I do not think this means what you think this means

The 100 link thing is a bit out of date - here and here - but it's good that it makes you stop and think about what you're doing.

As dignan99 said you need to think about your internal link structure. There are a few pages on SEOmoz that should help - 1 2 3 - indeed you should be very able to work out what to do from those.

Basically having a whole bunch of links isn't a huge problem, but there may be a better way if you sit down and think about it

A lot of what Mark said, but it definitely depends where it's coming from.

A big part of the social web has nofollow links in profiles (quite correctly as they can't control what people are linking to), but I'm pretty sure the big search engines are looking at SM sites in order to determine part of a domains authority.

Nofollows don't hurt and there is always the advertising value of them. Though if these are editorial links it's got to be worth talking to the site owners to see if you can get the nofollow removed.

I think it's a good idea and may open up some content syndication options that were discounted before (as per Dunamis' post) however I've not see the rel tag do much for me.

Tagging links to SM sites as rel="me" has not helped those pages get into the SERPs for my brand (though I've not been super consistent with doing it), rel="nofollow" obviously had the rug pulled from under it a while ago and I even once got carried away and tried linking language sites together with rel="alternate" lang="CC" but didn't get the uplift in other language version sites I hoped (though it was a bit of a long shot to begin with).

I'm just wondering how much value this is going to have. I still like it in principal and will attempt to use it where I can.

I don't know. I very much like the idea and to couple it with HTML5 elements, like

<header>and

<footer>, but (although I've not read everything extensively) it doesn't seen to cover every kind of website (specifically the gambling ones I work on).

There is a casino tag, but that's for a location rather than a site. I could mark up the promos as an offer, but that's not really what it's for. I could mark them up as articles, but again it's not a great fit either. And again same with product.

I really only think it'll be useful for categorizing pages which may be shown on differing SERPs pages. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be a particularly good idea to use it as a big ranking factor when not all sites can use it.

Certain elements like 'mainContentOfPage' and 'mainImageOfPage' and 'signifcantLinks' may count (and are the sort of thing all sites can impliment) but for every tag to carry a weight... I'm not sure.

Of course I may just be trying to convince myself of this as implimenting these tags on dozens of sites is not going to be fun.

</footer>

</header>

Theoretically, yes. The 301 should tell search engines that the site is moved, so all factors previously attributed to Site A should now instead be attributed to Site B (with a minor loss).

Although already done, you could double check that you followed the best practise for moving a site laid out here, but if you're waiting to see toolbar PR, then you'll be waiting a while to see any updates (probably).

Is the site ranking for anything the old site used to? If so, you shoudl be fine, if not, double check the link and see if there's anything else you can do.

The Google Keyword Tool data isn't really worth the paper it's printed on for a LOT of search terms.

While I do use it for some things, it's often grossly inflated and the only real data you should use are those from your own analytics (certainly by the time you're in a top position).

That said, are you sure that you're actually ranking 1/2/3 (would seem strange) and that it's not just your personalised search?

None of my sites would overly benefit from the rewrite necessary to impliment the suggestions, however I will be looking at using it on some new sites.

You are correct in that anything users can manipulate can be abused, however it would be a reasonable effort to use the tags properly across a whole site and an extra step that's not really necessary for spammers, so while I don't think it'll be abused too much I also don't think it will be given any weight but instead simply used to sort data.

One advantage may be that you can get into other verticals with your site (as in, if there's a way to show 'events' in the SERPs) but I'm not sure if or when that would be implimented/useful.

I would certainly assume it would be too early to show any changes to a site for those that have implimented it (and if they have they're ninjas) but I would also be interested to see who is using it.

But by asking here, how will you know who is giving you the right advice on which advice to follow! [brain asplode]

I think you should just use advice here as starting points and verify yourself that what they're saying is, as best as you can tell, correct.

Using sites linked in profiles isn't necessarily a sign that they know what the're doing (my linked sites aren't sites I work on, though I should really update them with decent ones) but even if they were awesome I have on occasion given 'bad' advice, or at least been lazy with my analysis of the problem, so assuming you took that into account it's still not guaranteed to be good advice every time.

There's obviously the good answers and endorsements on their Q&A profile, but then again, not everybody uses the Q&A much or can just blanket answer every question and pick up a number of Good Answers.

Links to 'official' answers are often the best knowledge the industry as a whole has, beyond experimenting themselves (you may or may not be surprised at what Google would like you to think they can do versus what they can actually do).

So, realistically, you can't. You can just see what looks right and verify to the best of your abilities. Ultimately anything you do is going to come down on your head, so, test or find something 'official' that backs up what's said.

Contrary to Theo I'd say: A. Positive

Pretty sure Google has been following js open links for many years now. I'd be reasonably confident of saying even if you did something tricky like href="javascript:CleverFunction('http://example.com')" and CleverFunction was designed to add nofollow/ open in new window, that Google would still be able to follow it from the url within the href.

You could quite easily set up a test for a page that only has a link like this pointing to it and see if it gets indexed.

The only thing I might not be totally sure of is if it passes juice, but I think as of mid 2009 it does (as I'm sure Google no longer endorsed js links as a method for preserving link juice).

Setting up keywords to track versus a specific page is pretty easy to do through SEOmoz' campaign tracker (other SERPs tracking software is available).

However if you already have webmaster tools set up you can go into 'Your site on the web > Search queries' and there will be an 'avg. position' for where Google thinks you rank. It's not super accurate though.

Put the whole root domain in

RedirectMatch 301 (.*).htm http://www.example.com/

Works for me

Use the WYSIWIG.

Highlight the anchor text, click the link button, drop the URI, hit insert

Because if somebody instead links to 'http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps?utm_medium=email' then the search engines are aware it's the same page.

The canonicals are not for the correct URI (per se), but all the other URIs that can access the same content, including parameters.

Well, I certainly wouldn't recommend you set up seo-proxies or get into any sort of google-scraper.squabbel ¬_¬

I assume you're looking for one that would query their SERPs?

No longer exists The old SOAP API doesn't allow you to sign up and there's nothing to replace it.

I looked for the same thing recently and was a bit disappointed there was nothing.

Nope, but WMT has a diagnostic section that would tell you if Google thought you had anything bad on your site or maybe give you a little clue as to why you were excluded.

I assume your reluctance stems from some other Google Account infraction that you've not mentioned?

Firstly let me congratulate you on choosing such an excellent poker room to promote Our promos are a bit out of date though you'll want to get the Summer Gifts up as players generally like it and can usually get something from it

Task in hand though... Hard to tell, you're obviously not indexed, but couldn't tell you why just by looking.

Add webmaster tools to your site as it will often tell you why you have received a penalty.

It could be you'll just have to keep submitting reinclusion requests until you get someone sympathetic. You don't seem to be doing anything wrong (no adsense on the site, nothing dodgy in the code... that I can see). If you had malware on your old host it could be getting held against you, but unless Google tells you what's wrong...

Maybe they just don't like you using Piwik's analytics over theirs!

Well you can, theoretically, but it can get very technical or be a bit imprecise.

You are correct that you can't really guarantee a set number of leads (what if everybody's plumbing is working perfectly in London this month) but you should be able to track your contributions.

If you use a second phone number on Google Local and the meta description, then anybody coming through that is a SEO lead.

Also, while a bit wishy washy, you should be able to see in your analytics what percentage of people are coming through on unbranded search and then attribute a percentage of web completions to that.

You get more precise by setting up a tracking system, but it'd be a very bespoke set up.

To drive leads via SEO basically means that you need to have the site put in front of people making relevant searches who then go on to use the service (plumbing in this case).

For this (and assuming you're working on getting certain areas of London to use your plumbing services) you can do several things.

First, read this beginners guide to SEO from SEOmoz. Then re-read it. Then read it again. Now you have a basic grasp of what you need to do in order to get in front of people that might use your service. Effective site structure and good content help.

The other big part of your SEO efforts will be around local search (which isn't something I have a huge amount of experience with).

Again, watch this Whiteboard Friday on local search, you're going to focus on becoming listed and getting reviews on relevant sites.

In order to quantify what leads are coming from SEO I would recommend a web only phone number (involves setting up a second line) and you can maybe try data capture on the site asking people if they would like to be contacted about a quote.

Good luck

Hah! Well, yeah, effectively.

As I say the linkscape crawl isn't as effective/deep as Google's so you'll need a couple of higher profile links to get picked up.

Certainly getting more good links can't hurt