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Google has never been 100% clear on how to address this specific issue since serving up different versions of a site depending on where the user is located is considered grey hat, but obviously it makes sense from a user's perspective to provide the most relevant content to them as possible. As you stated, the site crawler/search engines will only access the version of the site accessible to them depending on the IP address they are using at the time so that explains why only the US version of the site was crawled. If you changed the IP to one in the UK, then it would likely crawl that version of the site.

Anyways, I think the best route would be to set up a new sitemap for each version of the site and submit them in Google Webmaster Tools. I came across this blog post which did exactly this and it seemed to resolve their problems - http://www.stateofsearch.com/how-to-use-multiple-sitemaps-on-one-domain-for-geo-targeting/. Hope that helps!

If both cases display the same exact content via different URLs, then you don't want to return 200 status codes for both versions. A 301 redirect might work but since they are for the same exact page, it's possible you might run into an infinite redirect loop and make your pages completely inaccessible. As a result, I would recommend using the rel="canonical" tag to designate which URL is the correct one for the search engines to index.

Hmm, this is the first time I've ever noticed it since I rarely view the web based version of Twitter. I did some searching and came across this thread which says that it is not yet available to the general public - https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/6139. Turns out other Verified Accounts like https://twitter.com/CocaCola and https://twitter.com/McDonalds have this banner as well.

So my guess is that it has to do with SEOmoz being a Verified Account and that us commonfolk will eventually have this feature available to us sometime down the road.

If you don't have similar pages to redirect to, I would do one of the following -

1. Keep the pages up but add some text that says "This is an archive so some of this content may be outdated" and then possibly link to other authoritative sites which do have updated content. This way your pages will likely still rank well in the search engines and the users will find what they are looking for, either in your archive or on the external sites.

2. Simply 301 redirect these pages to the homepage to preserve any link juice/link equity. You will likely see a drop in organic traffic for any terms these pages are currently receiving but it's a much better option than simply removing the pages and serving 404 errors, which is bad for both search engines and users alike.

Just curious, are you purposely intending to target "personnal" rather than "personal" which is the correct spelling of the word? Either way, I am assuming your target market is likely confined to a specific geographical area, so I would suggest using a city name in the URL such as -

personaltrainingdallas.com

personaltrainersnyc.com

miamipersonaltrainer.com

There's several possible ways the search engines could have come across both versions of that page. If I had to guess, it's because somewhere on the web or even on your own website there are links to both URLs. It's a pretty common issue but one that is easily resolved with the rel="canonical" tag.

Simply put the following code in the header of that page -

This tells the search engines to use your designated URL anytime they access that page.

SEMRush.com is exactly the tool you are looking for. One of my favorites.

I absolutely agree with WordPress. Wouldn't use anything else if given the choice.

I get this question all the time from my clients and my answer is - Absolutely, you should bid on your brand name in PPC even if you are number 1 organically. Here are 5 reasons from a blog post I wrote about this very subject - http://streamlinemetrics.com/blog/top-5-reasons-why-you-should-bid-on-your-company-name-or-brand-name-in-google-adwords.php

**1. You will be able to control more space on the screen and more importantly, space that is above the fold. **Even if you rank number one for your brand name, having a sponsored pay-per-click listing above it ensures that anyone searching for you has to scroll a lot further to find someone who isn’t you. Getting your name to dominate like this should mean that you’re not just paying for clicks that would have been free; you’re actually increasing the number of clicks overall. This is especially important for ecommerce websites for well-known brands since their products are available on other major retail websites such as Amazon, Walmart and Target who all rank very highly in the organic rankings.

2. Your competitors can bid on your brand name anytime. If your company was not bidding on your brand name, those clicks and potential sales would go to the other major competitors that I listed above along with smaller direct competitors trying to take advantage of your brand name for pennies on the dollar.
3. It’s extremely cheap. Often less than a dime or even a nickel per click. Meaning you could get 1,000 highly targeted clicks a month for $50.
4. You can gain invaluable insights for keyword research. It’s impossible to predict every single different misspelling or variation of a brand name related keyword phrase that users search for, so by bidding on the company name we can look at the data to see all of the keywords the ad was displayed for and make changes as necessary.

**5. It gives you more control over your message. **With organic search results, Google usually picks up your meta description or the first bit of text on your page – but not always. With pay-per-click ads, you get to craft a bit of copy specially designed to increase click-through rates. Also, with pay-per-click ads, you have the flexibility of constantly testing new ad copy and seasonal promotions without worrying about losing your organic rankings.

Here are a few quick words of advice for starting a brand new AdWords campaign -

1. Select only "Search Network" and don't bother with the "Display Network" for the time being.

2. Only use Exact Match keywords, meaning your ad will only show up if the exact phrase you are bidding on is searched by the user. You can designate Exact Match keywords by putting [brackets] around the keyword.

3. Start out with a small budget, like 5-10 bucks a day and keep a close eye on the performance. Gradually increase the budget once you get an idea for which keywords are performing well.

Here are some of my favorite PPC resources -

Google AdWords Help Center - http://support.google.com/adwords/?hl=en

Inside AdWords blog - http://adwords.blogspot.com/

PPC Hero - http://www.ppchero.com

I use Long Tail Pro for keyword research. You enter in 5 keywords and it uses the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to generate literally thousands of related keyword phrases which you can filter and analyze by search volume and organic competitiveness. Click on a keyword phrase and you get an in-depth analysis of the top 10 organic competitors so you can determine how easy or difficult it would be to make it on the first page of Google. It's by far my favorite keyword research tool, especially for finding great long tail phrases to target with blog posts.

What page are you looking at? I checked the backlinks in OSE and found several anchor text links for "tactical gear" which appear to be paid links - http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.patriotoutfitters.com. I'm assuming that the links were once on those sites but have since been removed and Google has yet to update the backlink profile accordingly.

I would normally say "Alexa doesn't matter so don't worry about it" but it turns out a lot of advertisers and domain name buyers do consider it when determining the value of a site so there are definitely some benefits to having a decent Alexa ranking.

Anyways, to answer your question, in order to improve your Alexa ranking (without blatantly cheating), you basically need to increase the number of visitors to your website that have the Alexa toolbar installed. Here are some suggestions -

1. Most anti-spyware programs nowadays flag the Alexa toolbar as malware and remove it from the computer, so this means most Alexa toolbar users are not as computer savvy and don't even know how they got the toolbar installed in the first place, let alone how to remove it. Take this into consideration when creating content/targeting keywords specifically for this kind of audience (ie, likely the older generation).

2. Do keyword research to see what kind of searches are being made for "Alexa" related keywords such as "Alexa toolbar uninstall" or "remove Alexa toolbar." This is a dead giveaway that these users have the toolbar installed and are looking to remove it. You can get them to your site by ranking organically for those phrases or if you want these visitors quickly, start up an AdWords campaign and bid on "Alexa toolbar removal" related keywords. Sit back and watch your Alexa ranking take off.

3. My final suggestion is my least favorite since it's essentially peddling spyware to your user base but it's still effective. Offer your users the option to download and install the Alexa toolbar from your website in exchange for some kind of reward. Again, I wouldn't suggest going this route since you risk the chance that your users will abandon your site forever but nonetheless it's still an option.

You say that your solution works 80% of the time - how do you know that? Do you have any ideas for why it wouldn't work for the other 20% of the time? Here are some of my thoughts -

1. Not all of your leads will likely be generated by Google (organic or paid). Are you taking into account that visitors who come from a link on another website and fill out the form should not be tracked as Organic or PPC? It looks like your script is determining every visitor who doesn't come from AdWords should be counted as Organic, and that may be what is causing the discrepancies in your data.

2. What about visitors who come from a search on Yahoo or Bing? Are they being tracked as Organic in your script?

3. It's possible that some of your visitors have cookies and/or Google Analytics disabled so I can see that messing up your data if you are checking the GA cookie.

I can definitely understand the value in passing the source info along through your form, but it looks like your script might need a little finetuning to track more accurately. I have actually ran into similar issues before with trying to pass the source of the lead through the end of the sales funnel so I can determine which traffic sources/keywords generated conversions that resulted in sales without needing a full blown CRM and developed a free tool called Convertable which does exactly what I was looking for. If you are still having problems with your script, feel free to give it a try.

Hi Adam,

I am a big fan of Long Tail Pro for keyword competition research. It allows you to add as many of your own keyword phrases and check the competitiveness, but I find it more useful by putting in 5-10 keyword phrases and then it will use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to come up with literally thousands of related phrases to analyze by competition and search volume. Click on an individual keyword phrase and you will get a more detailed competitive analysis of the top 10 results in Google. I'm pretty sure there is a free trial but I found it to be one of the most useful SEO tools I have come across in years so it is money well spent.

Here is their site - http://www.longtailpro.com/long-tail-pro-software/

Short answer, yes. Search engines are still not as good at crawling and indexing them as well as they are with HTML pages, but they have definitely made strides in recent years. Do a Google search for "filetype:pdf" and you will see all of the PDFs that are indexed in Google.

That being said, they are still not ideal for SEO so I recommend not using them whenever possible. I wrote a couple of blog posts about this issue - http://streamlinemetrics.com/blog/seo-for-pdfs-optimizing-pdf-files-for-search-engines.php and http://streamlinemetrics.com/blog/how-to-redirect-pdf-files-with-php-asp-or-htaccess-for-seo-seo-for-pdfs-part-2.php.

Hi,

I ran into this same issue on several of my sites. We could track overall conversions with Google Analytics and Google AdWords but once a form was submitted, we were no longer able to keep track of the leads which resulted in sales or determine how they got there. So I went ahead and started working on my own tool which automatically tracks where each specific lead came from, including keywords for both organic and PPC campaigns. It's still a work in progress but feel free to check it out at http://convertable.com and please let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

Hi Bryce,

I had the exact same question and couldn't find any simple solutions so I went ahead and created a free tool that does exactly this. It captures information submitted through a lead form along with where they came from and if they came from a search engine, it automatically tracks the exact keyword phrase they searched for. Then all of the lead information is sent to you in an email as well as stored in a very basic database for you to manage them. It's still a work in progress but it accomplishes what I want it to do for the time being.

Feel free to check it out at http://convertable.com and please let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

I buy most of my expired domains through GoDaddy Auctions. Once you win an auction, it typically takes 4-5 days before the domain name is transferred to your account.

Also, I use www.registercompass.com to evaluate expired domain names.

We use several tools to track our backlinks:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org

http://ahrefs.com

http://www.majesticseo.com