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That probably means they just have less html code, since it's a ratio (text/code).

Text to code ratio has no impact on SEO, and I'm surprised some SEOs still obsess over it. If you have an incredibly code heavy page, Google may have trouble crawling it, but that's more about the sheer amount of code vs any kind of ratio.

That being said, you should try to keep your html code to a minimum, as excess code will increase the file size of your page, leading to a longer load time which is a poor user experience and can have a negative impact on rankings.

If this is an existing site, I would not change the URL structure just to include some keywords in there. The benefits of having a few keywords in the URL are outweighed by the risks. Even for a new site, shorter is typically better, like you said.

If you have a really large site with distinct categories, then having subdirectories makes sense. I would use dashes instead of underscores:

• evananas.com/organic-bananas/recipes
• evananas.com/non-organic-bananas/recipes
• evananas.com/plantains/recipes

Otherwise, just include the keywords in the page itself rather than creating a subdirectory just so your can have keywords in there:

• evananas.com/organic-banana-recipes
• evananas.com/organic-banana-benefits

Hey Samantha, having text in rollovers should not  be an issue unless you are deliberately being spammy or trying to trick Google about what your page is about.

Modern web design incorporates many design elements that are hidden until the user interacts with them, such as: drop down menus, sliders, contextual help, slideshows, etc. Google understands that these are legitimate ways of presenting content to users, and not a blackhat tactic to spam keywords.

There's always the chance that hiding text could inadvertently trip Google's spam filters, but many of the most popular websites incorporate these design features, and the risk should be minimal.

The blog you left a comment on is nofollow, which means it has little to no SEO value.

Honestly, comment links may have some value, but it's almost never worth your time if you are just doing it for link building purposes. There are dozens of link building tactics you could be using that will have a much bigger impact on your rankings. Here is a good list of ideas:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

Starting over from scratch makes sense if you've dug yourself in so deep a hole (say tens of thousands of spammy links) that it would be easier to rebuild your link profile from scratch, rather than going through the effort of deleting/disavowing all your bad links. If you do start over from scratch, then you're not going to want to use any 301s, or the bad reputation from your old site is just going to follow along to your new one.

Again, you don't want to nofollow your internal links. Nofollowing your links has no positive impact, and just prevents any link value from flowing to your internal pages.

If you have a particularly large category structure, one thing you may want to try is limiting the links in your drop-downs to the top subcategories. Even if you have 10 different menus with 20 different subcategories each, chances are 80% of your users are only selecting 20% of the links (or less). Install a site tracker such as CrazyEgg or Clciktale to figure out which links your users actually use, and eliminate the ones that don't get many clicks.

So your navigation would look something like this:

Automobiles

Tires
Oil
Batteries
Accessories
More Auto Products

There is no problem with standardizing meta tags, titles, h1s, etc. This is standard practice for large sites.

What can be problematic is if ALL the content on your pages is just templatized/madlibs. Having some randomized content is obviously better than nothing, but it's not going to do well if that's all the content you have on those pages. Having some standardized paragraphs with words filled in is fine, but make sure you have unique content on all of those pages as well.

If you have user reviews, that can be one good way to get some free UGC onto your pages. 700 pages also isn't terribly many, you can get some decent unique content written for that amount for under $10k. If that's out of your budget, start by focusing on the highest value pages, and calculate how many pages it makes sense to write unique content for based on ROI.

Press release sites don't pass a lot of link value, so don't spend too many resources on them. There probably are not 50 PR sites worth submitting to.

If you're simply trying to get link value from the press releases, I would concentrate on the highest domain authority ones, and write a unique release for each so that you have the best chance of the release being indexed and passing you link value.

Of course, the most effective use of press releases is to get actual press coverage from the news media, in which case contacting reporters directly, responding to requests on HARO, and sending in write-ups to newspaper tip lines will often work better than submitting an online press release.

Are people still linking to you at your old .htm pages?  Then you should keep the 301s in place.  There's no need to "clean up" your .htaccess.

If you decide to remove the 301s anyway and start seeing a lot of 404s in Webmaster Tools, that's a good indication you should put the 301s back in place.

Not all of the tactics you mentioned are necessarily "bad". The only one you want to avoid is direct paid links, where it's obvious that you paid for your link. Beyond that, links from guest blogging & directories can be helpful, you just want to make sure to target high quality blogs & directories, and avoid being spammy.

The best links are:

• Editorially given (someone else had to put them there, it's not a site where you can just place your link)
• From a relevant site
• From a high authority site (pagerank/mozrank is a good proxy for authority)
• Embedded within relevant content
• Uses relevant anchor text, but not to an overwhelming degree

If you're looking for specific link building strategies, here is a great list: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

There is nothing wrong with EMD domains, as long as you're not being spammy. Having your keywords also helps with link building, since people will link to you using your keywords as anchor text.

EMDs can still be brandable if you're smart about it.  Look at searchengineland.com for example, or seotools.net.  A domain name should say what the site is about, and sometimes that means having and EMD.

Generally links from other sites won't harm you, unless you're getting them on a massive scale with spammy anchor text.

If you're evaluating a link building prospect, rather than looking at DA make sure a) the site isn't spammy, b) the site isn't penalized by Google, c) the site is relevant to your niche, d) you're not being spammy with anchor text.

It's perfectly normal for big sites to accumulate lots of low quality links naturally, just from other sites scraping them. Again, it's not something I would worry about too much unless you're seeing warning messages in GWT, in which case it may be worth disavowing some of your spammy links.

I would go with the 301 then. That way if anyone lands on your old site (say through a link) they'll be redirected to your blog, where you want them to be.

I would say in general links from within a post/article carry more weight than sidebar links. Sidebar links have been devalued quite a bit by Google, and with Penguin you could even potentially be penalized for a sidebar link on a site with thousands of pages. With that being said, I would not turn down a sidebar link from a high authority site if offered one.

PR can be deceptive because it hasn't been updated in nearly a year. So a site can still be high quality even if the toolbar PR shows a 0. It's always nice to get links from sites that are already ranking for your keyword, but make sure to do a thorough backlink analysis first to make sure they aren't spamming their way to the top. If the #1 result is using black hat tactics, it could take your site down with them when they inevitably get penalized down the line.

Hey Diane, my advice:

First of all, if you are just trying to optimize the homepage for "lifestyle magazine", I would take out all the extra keywords from your title:

"Lifestyle Magazine | In2town".

The reason I would include the brand name is because Google is increasingly looking at identifying brands as a ranking signal. I would also include your brand name in all the titles in your site, so "Article Name | In2town". You want Google to see you as the definitive brand for this category.

Secondly, I notice that your site is only PR3. When I search for "lifestyle magazine", all the top sites are PR4-6. This is a fairly competitive keyword. You need to get higher authority links if you want Google to see you as an authority.

Thirdly, do everything you can to make your site the best in its category. Is your site really the best lifestyle magazine out there? If not, why should Google rank you #1? Increasingly it is becoming more difficult to "game" Google because they look at things like social shares, user metrics, etc. The best way to attain these metrics is to have an awesome site that users will rave about and generate these signals.

Finally, while it can feel good to rank for head terms like "lifestyle magazine", you will probably find that people searching for the term may not be your highest converting traffic. The traffic is not even that high. It's probably a better strategy to rank for hundreds of terms related to having a great lifestyle than ranking for the broad "lifestyle magazine" term.

Directory links don't pass much link value, but it can still be useful to be listed in the top directories for local citations. Yext can automate the process if you're short on time & resources, but you can also submit to the directories manually for full control of the process.

They even provide a list of all the directories they submit to:

http://www.yext.com/blog/tag/business-directories/

No backlink checker is perfect, unfortunately. Nobody has the resource of Google to crawl the entire web (even Google only crawls a section of it). In my experience Majestic & AHREFs have the largest backlink counts, and Moz can show some of your newer links through their "Recently Discovered" tab. If you can afford them all, it's best to combine data from all sources and de-dupe them.

Bing Webmaster Tools can provide some additional backlink data as well.

I work for a site in the ecommerce space, here are some link building tactics I can give away

1. Competitor analysis. Where are your competitors getting links from? That can be a good place to start.
2. Start a blog if you don't already have one.
3. Giveaways. This one is huge. Either hold contests where you give away free stuff or give free stuff to prominent bloggers and have them review it for you. The former can get you a lot of traffic and social media buzz, the latter gets you a solid link.
4. Charities and student groups. Find groups that have pages set up for their sponsors, and become one of their sponsors.
5. Get in the news. Hold a local event and then get it covered by local media.
6. Job postings websites, internships, job pages for universities.
7. Microsites. Tumblr meme sites are my favorite.

That should get you started. If you want more, check out this link and see which ones fit your business:

http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

There are a bunch of sites that offer this service such as Alexa, Compete, Google Trends, etc. but none of them are close to accurate. But they can provide very rough ballpark figures as well as relative popularity:

http://moz.com/blog/testing-accuracy-visitor-data-alexa-compete-google-trends-quantcast

Another option, which is more time consuming but potentially more accurate, is to do some research on the site, and identify their top keywords. The Google Keyword Planner can help you with this, just pop in the URL and it will show you the keywords that the site is optimized for.

Then run the keywords through a rank checker and combine that data with estimated click through rates and the search volume for the keywords to estimate how much traffic they are getting. Multiply that number by 10 to account for long tail variations, and that will give you an estimate of their total traffic. Paid tools such as Linkdex can help with this.