Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I use Wordpress and recommend it to clients. As well as the advantages already listed you will find it very easy to set up author/contributor accounts for your regular writers in order to streamline the publishing process.

You need to comply with UK consumer law - the main laws which apply are the Sale of Goods Act and Distance Selling Regulations. This page has links to guidance on both issues http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/advice/advice-business.cfm

Local Trading Standards offices, who deal with customer complaints in their areas, can be very helpful in making sure your Terms & Conditions comply with UK law. As our business developed we liaised with our local Trading Standards team on these issues, but I'm not sure who you would deal with if you don't have a UK office.

VAT is at a flat rate with the exception of some offshore areas where there is no VAT, and a lower rate applies to certain products/situations. I'm no expert on this but some of our customers have mentioned lower VAT on heating appliances for newbuild properties. You're best off going direct to the UK tax office for information on VAT - http://www.uk-tax-office.co.uk/

Also the European law on cookies is just coming into force, so you need to make sure you're okay on this front as well http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies.aspx

If you take the premise that the most valuable links are acquired by forming real relationships with people the strategy you propose seems short-sighted as you would be building relationships on a basis of deception.

As you haven't provided a URL I can't make any evaluation of how off-puttingly commercial your site appears. However, there is an alternate approach open to you, albeit one which requires more work.

My instinctive response to this problem would be to look for a way to make my site more attractive to the non-profits rather than hoping to get away with deceiving them. Perhaps this could be accomplished by dedicating part of the site to provision of free resources. Perhaps there are ways you could help the non-profits, or natural ways to show that you are about more than just the bottom line. There are many ways you can get what you want by giving people what they want - the non-profits may have a different agenda to you but there are probably ways to foster relationships by serving their needs http://www.seomoz.org/blog/99-ways-to-build-links-by-giving-stuff-away-and-improve-your-brand-too-14029

Suppose you use your "neutral" page to get links and it works. What happens when a potential customer clicks through to your neutral page? You miss the opportunity to convert engagement with your free resource into awareness of your product offering. It's like inviting people to the opening of a store with the offer of a free buffet then covering up all the products.

Although this strategy could bring some link juice to your root domain, it would be directed to a page you really don't want to rank or even for normal visitors to see. Seems like a waste to me! Personally I would be reluctant to devalue a linkbait page by "neutralising" it or to employ deceptive practices to promote a website. People don't like deception, search engines don't like deception, and if linking sites realise you've deceived them you are likely to lose the links.

I went through a phase of getting really frustrated about seeing competitors succeeding with dodgy link tactics. Then I decided to focus on differentiating our sites from competitors with great content, great usability and outreach into relevant communities. This wasn't just some random mission - I analysed site performance before and after SEO  began (we were late adopters of SEO) and realised that we are now converting and generating revenue much more effectively even though we don't yet dominate the SERPs quite to our heart's desire! With 13 retail sites to look after I simply don't have time to start a crusade against competitors employing dubious tactics.

Black hat SEO can help a site to achieve high rankings, but it can't make visitors buy. If you are selling any product you still have to make shopping a comfortable experience, present your products well and most of all gain the trust of your visitors so they will take the plunge and complete an order.

By all means report as you go along if you come across something Google might take seriously, but stay focused on developing and promoting your own site.

I found this really helpful for getting started with link building http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011

Other than the general issue that it can take weeks for the changes you make on site to have an effect on rankings, I've found with Wordpress that a large batch of tweaks seems to have a negative effect for a couple of weeks (trial and error is such fun!). Wordpress is really good about pinging the search engines, so more than a handful of tweaks at any one time can look like ping spam even if you're actually improving your site.

You don't say anything about off-site work. If you are being beaten by competitors with better link networks then the on-site tweaks simply won't be enough. If you haven't already done some competitive analysis for your most important keywords I would do that next to see where your weaknesses are.

People won't be able to access the data using the link you gave - it's within your secure user account.

How to fix the problems (and even whether they are fixable) varies depending what platform you are using. Also, multiple issues can cause the same warning or error. You have to look at the pages generating the errors and warnings to work out what the problem is and choose the right solution.

You're more likely to get the help you need if you focus a single question on a single type of warning or error and make sure you mention what platform you are using as well as giving a couple of URLs for affected pages. That way people can help you go through the problems one at a time and give you answers relevant to your situation.

For judging site quality I find it helpful to look at domain level metrics such as mozRank, mozTrust and domain authority, and I also use Alexa to check traffic levels. I also physically look at sites to see if they seem professional/trustworthy/usable.

I think you just have to try to get a feel for what is more or less natural then take a common sense approach. For example

• A link which you don't control looks more natural than a link you do control (such as a directory with a non-refundable review charge vs a directory which charges for inclusion)
• An editorial link from a blog which links to many sites looks more natural than an editorial link from a blog that only links to your site
• A moderate selection of comment links on relevant blogs looks more natural than a huge amount of comment links on random blogs
• A moderate selection of links from quality directories looks more natural than a huge amount of links from spammier directories
• A link from a relevant site looks more natural than a link from an irrelevant site
• A link given in an editorial context looks more natural than a link originating from a links page
• A link from a relevant professional organisation looks more natural than a link from a random club
• A link profile with a broad mixture of link types looks more natural than one heavily skewed towards one link type

I'm importing traffic data for several websites from a single Analytics account which contains most of our profiles. I just followed the normal procedure for setting up Analytics access then selected the correct profile within the Analytics account.

If you're working with existing short descriptions which contain the keywords the category page is targeting you don't want the short descriptions to link to the product - this is like putting up signposts telling Google that the product pages are all more relevant to the keyword than the category page. The trouble is this raises a usability issue because your site users may like clicking on the short description.

I'm just wondering if there's another way round this - would using "noindex,follow" on the short description links neutralise the cannibalisation issue while retaining usability? My hands on work is more with the content side of things than the technical, so I'm not certain how well this would work.

Can it cause cannibalism? It depends on the words you use.

We don't currently use short descriptions but it's a proposal that's on the table. I think that when it's done well it can add real value to site users, with potential to improve click-through from category pages. If we go ahead I won't be keyword stuffing those short descriptions - I'll be using them to differentiate different (but similar) products within a category and trying to work in references to the benefits and advantages of products. It's like the poster campaign for a movie - ideally you want a good image, a memorable title and a catchy strapline that gets you interested in finding out more.

When I comment on blogs I try to contribute to the conversation and look at it as an opportunity to make contact with potential customers as well as expanding our link profile. I would feel really uncomfortable entering anything other than a name - depending on circumstances either the brand name or a personal id - in the name field as I think this would be repellent to the people I want to connect with.

In terms of link acquisition, blog comments are a low effort, low value option. I don't see why people would expect using exact match anchor text to give a huge boost to the value of the link - of course the search engines are aware that user generated content is a magnet for spammers and I'm sure they have ways of discounting those links.

I think the best approach to blog commenting is contribute to a community and form real relationships. That way you have the immediate benefits of engaging with your market, with the added bonus that people who trust you and value your contribution are more likely to link to you. I've spent too much time deleting comment spam on our blogs to think much of anyone using that tactic - it's a good way to guarantee I won't check your site out!

We have different websites for our different brands. It's a lot more work, but gives each brand its own separate internet presence. From a search viewpoint each website can be tailored to different groups of customers, and links between our sites are well travelled with good conversion rates.

While it is a lot more hassle to run multiple websites, remember that trying to address multiple markets from one domain presents its own set of challenges. You have to think about the impression you make on both suppliers and customers (are you a kitchen specialist, or a furniture retailer dabbling in kitchens?), as well as whether your brand is easy for customers to remember.

People expect different levels of retailer expertise for different products, and I think your customers would need more help with kitchens than with furniture. While you could demonstrate your kitchen expertise in a sub-folder of a single domain through great content, a separate domain more specific to the kitchen market would send a powerful message that you are a kitchen specialist (thereby implying that you are a kitchen expert before they even click your link).

I think the answer is to do what's best for the brand. It seems to me that you have a great name already with Love Furniture, and developing a separate Love Kitchens brand could work very well.

Just for the record, my personal preference is for single domains where possible.

I see leaving comments relating to the content on relevant blogs as being a valid part of a link building plan - this is a natural way of connecting and engaging with your target audience. As such it improves your chances of getting qualified traffic and organic links, and adds to your link diversity regardless of whether the link is no follow.

I think it would be unwise to focus too much on this approach as an excess of this type of link would look unnatural, and would steer clear of anything approaching comment spam. The test I use when leaving a blog comment is

• Do I have something to contribute to this conversation?
• Can a link to my website add value to this page?

Thanks for your suggestion, that seems like a very straightforward approach.

We produced a Movember poster to use at our showroom to encourage customers to donate, and I published it on some of our blogs as to raise the profile of our campaign. We've been getting loads of hits from people searching for "Movember poster", but as it has our branding on it won't be much good to them. It's a good image which has been making people laugh, so I think it's worth publishing an unbranded version which people can use freely so long as they link back to us if they use it on a website.

Obviously I can publish the unbranded version of the poster on our own websites, but I think it might be worth publishing it on free image sites as well. I've got no experience dealing with image publication, so just wondered if anyone can give me any suggestions about the best way to go about it.

There are different viewpoints on outbound links. Reliance on link exchange is outdated, and Google is known to frown on anything resembling a link farm. However, I have seen people cite Matt Cutts (sorry, don't have any links to back this up) as saying it is beneficial to have some outbound links to reputable sites.

To be honest I recommend you focus on site performance rather than PR - are you ranking/getting traffic/converting? PR may slightly increase the likelihood of you ranking but it doesn't guarantee it and it doesn't put money in the bank. I recommend this Whiteboard Friday from August to help you put PR into perspective http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-googles-pagerank-good-for-whiteboard-friday