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Hi Gary,

You'll want to verify Pinterest just as the instructions say.  Google doesn't actually use the Pinterest verification for anything - verifying just allows you to link to your domain from your Pinterest profile - google's gonna crawl and index it either way.
So google will know the link is there, but honestly, don't count on social profile links like this making much of a difference for SEO.  However, if you're active and connected on that network, pinterest can sure drive some referral traffic to your site. Hope that helps!

Yea you want to run a "self-hosted wordpress" to get the real SEO value out of it.  It's totally different than wordpress.com

http://wpmu.org/wordpress-org-vs-wordpress-com/

The benefit of wordpress is you won't have to be programmer to fix duplicate url issues and a lot of the technical stuff.  It's not that a wordpress site "ranks better" or something...it's just easier to keep technical issues from holding you back in my opinion.

You don't have to set up wordpress on a subdomain.  And I probably wouldn't unless you're just looking to add a blog to your an existing site.

My opinion is that wordpress is hands down the most SEO-friendly CMS out there, and much less time-consuming to optimize than anything else.  You can create clean permalinks in 2 clicks, it basically handles the .htaccess stuff for you.  Also, the wordpress SEO plugin from Yoast makes it real easy optimize.

There was a good Wordpress SEO mozinar the other day that you might find helpful also.

http://moz.com/webinars/hands-on-answers-to-the-most-asked-wordpress-qestions

Hi Larry,

I don't think you'll find any "plugins" on Moz.  This site is one helluva of a bootstrap based custom solution.

But if you're looking for a nice social plugin for wordpress - I like simple social icons.

Yea it definitely depends on crawl rates.  Usually a couple weeks or less, as long as the site's not brand new and has a few incoming links already.

But just to clarify...you're saying that the new URL isn't appearing in search results yet, right?  Not that the link in Google literally isn't redirecting to the new URL.

...because if it's not redirecting yet, something's wrong- check that you 301'd both www and non-www versions.  Hope that helps!

When you say "people," are you saying your own web team duplicates content to make their job easier? Or am I missing something?...

If that's the case, you really should create unique URL's with unique page titles, product info, etc.  That's the correct way to avoid getting hit for duplicate content - don't create it.  It seems like what you're doing now is more of a band-aid solution to the problem.

I'd consider that even though creating unique content in situations like this can seem daunting and/or be more expensive, there's probably huge long-term gains to made if you do it right.

I've actually seen this happen quite a bit.  I work with a lot of service area businesses who take this same strategy.

I think the pigeon-holing comes into play because of the off-site signals (maybe a bunch of listings with a Dallas address and link to your homepage?)  ...I don't think hcard, schema, etc. do much to keep it from happening.

So what I wind up doing most of the time is optimizing the home-page for their primary high-traffic city, or headquarters.  Unless they're actually trying to rank nationally and it seems possible, it's the way to go.  I've seen huge advantages doing it this way - especially if you have the off-site signals to go with it (which I would guess you do).

So if you had "Dallas, TX Widgets" somewhere in your home-page title, you may wind up ranking well for just "widgets" when searched in the Dallas area.

In my opinion, optimize that homepage for Dallas, then watch and see.  To me, Google already kind of preferring that page is a good sign.

I actually looked at the competitors ranking #3 and #4 for the phrase "download sheet music" since your ranking 5th.  Either way, its not a matter of too much or too little.  It's how much of the link profile is authentic vs how much is made up of stuff like this....

http://www.dionneco.com/2011/02/love-is-a-parallax/

that's what I meant by fake links.

I think what you may be missing is how complex the situation really is.  There's a lot more to be considered than a number in Open Site Explorer - which is actually only a portions of what's really out there.

You may also want to look at changes you can make on-site.  I'm a firm believer that proper HTML, accessibility, UX and all that really matter.

Can't say I've been in that situation, but search engines seem to interpret that tag as an on/off situation.   and I think you probably know that your problems aren't related to or able to be solved by robots meta tags.

You need less fake links.  OSE finds well over half a million links from 3K root domains to your site.  Look at your competitors - a few thousand links from  a handful of domains.

It's a shame because it seems like the internet wanted to make you the authority naturally - You've got a handful of really solid links coming in.  If you could shed the spam somehow you'd be doing a lot better.

So yea, stating the obvious, I know.  best of luck to you and hope the site recovers!

I wouldn't say you've "stuffed keywords" because there's really not enough written copy for them to be stuffed into.I would get a little more detail in those product descriptions. Give them crawlers a little something to sink their teeth into.

The page grader is useful but it's really more of a guideline.  especially when you're optimizing for long-tail phrases like that. Dont' feel like you need an 'A' for that page to do well in search.

Hi Jason,

Check out how the skirmish site's incoming links are anchored.  The majority use the exact keyword "paintball nottingham"....  A natural link profile most of the time that means your anchors are your brand name or actual URL - with just a dash of the keyword related phrases.

and do you know about these? - http://www.skirmish-site.co.uk/venue/paintball-chesterfield/wsdindex.html

Hope that helps

I've seen a lot of un-optimized competitor sites get pushed back to page 2 and taken over by listings in the past couple months.  But, the sites I take care of that don't have dupe content issues, mass spam links, and silly keyword stuffing are doing great!

I don't think engines are favoring anyone....I just think things are evolving, and local business websites need work!  They tend to be crippled with technical issues,  and have over-optimized copy and no real backlinks.  And a lot of businesses are linking to their own Yelp or directory profile from the homepage of their website, sometimes anchored with the keywords they want to rank for.  Lot's of issues going on here.

Hey Tyler, I deal with this same type of thing quite often.  and I'm with you, I wish companies like dex would leave my clients alone.  IMO you are absolutely right,  and I always recommend having 1 single domain - unless there's a darn good reason to do otherwise.

It will hurt traffic/rank to the main domain, or in a best case scenario just be absolutely pointless.  Your client's a local biz - which site will they link to from all their listings, social profiles, and all that?  Let's say someone writes an article about them in a local blog - which site should they link to?  Multiple domains for this type of business will either dilute your SEO efforts or be a waste of resources.  Not to mention be confusing for visitors and install a lack of trust like you were saying.

A website is not inherently an owned asset...you have to own the domain name, the content, etc. for it to actually be valuable to a business.  So you're definitely advising correctly

and yea, that link they sent you has nothing to do with organic search.

If possible, find someone who will meet with you in person and/or speak to you on the phone on a regular basis.  Poor communication and low-quality work seem to go hand in hand.  Some SEO companies have email-only communication policies.  Stuff like that - RED FLAG.  I'd also look out for anyone who stresses the need for "link building" without doing any research into your site/market/competitors.

A lot of people on the SEOmoz recommended list are proven industry-leader types.  No question you'll get the high quality work you're looking for and more.

Hey Bo, just thought I'd chime in here.  I had a client's site get some kind of nasty code injection - pharma stuff like you're talking about.  Happened a month or so ago.  He was #1 for his keyphrase also, but as soon as the site was compromised, he dropped to page 4-5.  Soon as I re-did the site and got it live his rankings came back.

Sooo...bad news and good news.  I highly doubt your site is actually de-indexed (good news).  The bad news is the amount of work you'll have to do.  I completely wiped the root folder, deleted the DB, and re-built the wordpress site from scratch on a different theme/framework.

Yikes!, I don't even wanna know what the exact role of fiverr was here, can't be pretty.

and you're right the fear of penguin/fear of losing revenue is what's needed. Cause business owners want to make money obviously, they see a competitor with a gazillion automated spam links ranking better, and it's like - "let's do that!"

If you can effectively explain the long-term risk that poses to the bottom line, they pull a complete 180.  To "do that" would mean to invest in the exact "strategies" google is trying to devalue, risk being deindexed and losing you're only owned digital asset, and negatively represent your business across the web, all for a fractional temporary gain.

Nice Work!  and really neat what you guys are offering to the food-truck niche.  Smart.

I wouldn't worry about consistency with unstructured citations (loose mentions of your company), because it can be hard to ensure anyway.  You want to make sure your "structured citations" are consistent.  So your directory listings basically - places, yahoo, etc.  This is what you definitely want to match up with your NAP.and I would def use the correct schema.org markup. which makes it easier for crawlers to understand your structured data. Hope this helps you out!

I'm sure there's a ton of people in this community running Wordpress, any Genesis developers/users out there?

For anybody who doesn't know, Genesis is a parent framework for building wordpress child themes.  It saves a ton of time for people that aren't too handy w/ php (like me).

I'm working on a few sites locally with it right now, and it's really impressive.  I'm seriously never planning on using another WP framework.  It also integrates perfectly with Yoast SEO, which is something not all frameworks do.

So I thought I'd try to get some input from the community here, anybody have another framework they like? Or have an opinion on the SEO benefit of genesis?  Would love to hear...

Hi Houses, and your GA code is probably fine.  It's javascript, so nothing wrong with it being before closing body.  I actually don't even think it matters as much with the asynchronous tracking codes.

and my first reaction to this read was the same as EGOL's.  Permalinks changed, old ones didn't get redirected. This is essentially like starting over (for those pages, not entire domain), if it's a new url, it's a new page to search engines.

and just so you know, most CMS' make it darn easy to implement redirects, or usually your hosting account will have some kind 301 tool.  It's literally as easy as typing the old url, the one that replaced it, then clicking "ok".