Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Yes, you should add "Page x" to the title, meta description tag and H1 header tag to avoid duplicate errors.

The way you have to look at it is...

Best-case scenario: write completely original content for every one of your pages, and receive the highest ranking from search engines.

• OR -

Use existing content provided by manufacturers and not receive full potential in the SERP's.  That's just the way it is.

I know exactly what you're saying though, don't get me wrong... writing unique content for 1,000's of pages can be a pain, especially if you're adding new ones on a regular basis.  I just gave you the Pro/Con of your situation.

If you could ever find the time to write unique write-ups for every product, and get that out of the way, and then you're at a point where you're only adding a new product every week or so (even daily isn't that bad in terms of maintaining a website, really), then you'd be laughing and you'll see a massive difference in the SERP's as your content would be 100% unique and people would start scraping your site for theirs.

These sites don't pass the juice that they may have once passed as it become such an easy way for people to pay to get hundreds, even thousands of backlinks in a matter of a couple days without even having to distribute quality content articles.

I can't confirm what amount of juice they might pass as I just don't know, but I'm confident it's not the full amount that you might get if say BBC News picked you up outside of a sponsored article.

Reason being, in my opinion, is that these sites have just become littered with press releases that are not of much quality (not all, but most).  And Google has recognized this and is dealing with it appropriately.  In all honesty, who actually goes to http://ezinearticles.com/ to read the articles?  Not me.  But people just use it to try and get a million backlinks; meanwhile, Google has completely stripped the site of passing any PR externally.  Same as its done with Craigslist and other classifieds websites.

So, in my opinion, don't exert too much energy on these kinds of releases.  They can help get you a wee bit of recognition as it never hurts to get your name out there one way or another, but you're not going to see any significant increase in traffic, if any at all.

Your best to focus that same energy on creating relationships with companies that compliment your site, and vice versa.

Hope that helps.

• Marc

As Alan said, a 301 would not be the best thing to do.

Consider the link from ABC as being a valuable backlink to XYZ for that keyword/niche, and continue with a link-building campaign for both sites.  Since ABC is already ranking well for that keyword, you should not stop optimizing it.

Yes to your first questions.  Here's the process for each (as I see it):

1. Fix/remove the ability for system to generate ?print URL's and implement canonical tags; open beer and wait 'til search engines sort things out.  Nothing more you can do here.

2. No fix to system so we still have ?print URL's.  In this case, setup the 301's in your .htaccess file; however, as long as the system is still generating these ?print URLs, you will have to keep the redirects in the .htaccess in tact, permanently.

Untested:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^([^/]*).html?print$ /$1.html [L,NC,R=301]

As I understand it, they are pretty self-explanatory in that "Page Authority" is the authority of a specific page based on its content.  And "Domain Authority" is the authority of an entire domain/website (ie. CNN.com has a massive domain authority).

Often times you will comes across an article on something and notice that that article itself is a PR6, while the homepage of that same site might only be a PR2-4.  That page has developed a significant Page Authority, whereas the domain has not.

Domain Authority always trumps Page Authority, in my opinion.  For example, getting a backlink to your site off a relevant website with a higher Domain Authority is always going to play better for you than getting a link off a page where the domain doesn't carry much weight.  That's just been my experience.

I see you mid-second page on google.co.uk

Doing a site:masainternational.com shows that you are still indexed.

All looks good to me unless I'm misunderstanding.

I would say that it has an indirect impact on ranking, so-to-speak.

This is because, following a structured schema, like Schema.org, will help ensure you have legible code within your site for the crawlers.  Know what I mean?

Just because you have it on your site, however, does not mean you will automatically go up in rankings.

I am yet to find any harm in these (assuming you don't post to ones that carry bad links, ie. outbound links to gambling sites, xxx sites, etc).

If link directories were so bad, how come some of them are as respected by Google as they are (PR7/8/9's).

Just don't go overboard, and don't expect a whole lot from them.  Get your keywords right, and use approx. 10 different keywords/phrases throughout.  Also throw in your brand name as a set of anchor text.

So, let's say you found a package to submit to 1,000 directories.  Chop that into 10 different anchor text's (max, and 10 might be pushing it), so you'll now get approx. 100 links to different pages of your site with different anchor texts.  And don't forget to use your brand name for 100 of those.

Like you said, every time I do research on competitor's backlinks, they always, and I means always, have thousands of links in link directories, and are top 3 in the SERP's.  So I have found it hard to believe that it's a bad practice, even though every SEO guru on the planet will try and tell you otherwise.

"Maybe a premature panic then. Maybe a local issue?"

Combination of both We've all been there.

Well, yes and no.  Like I said, it's indirect.

It can have an effect on the algorithm in that using certain elements from Schema.org (and others like it) to create, for example, proper breadcrumbs on your site, which will in turn be picked up by Google and display those breadcrumbs within the SERP's.

For example (and a little shameless plug), here is my site in the #1 position in the SERP's with Schema.org created breadcrumbs: https://www.google.com/search?q=2728+23rdwyandotte#hl=en&sa=X&ei=J_3YTrr8Neb20gGQ0JnSDQ&ved=0CBcQBSgA&q=2728+23rd+wyandotte&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=1ee69a25240f81e5&biw=1920&bih=979

Others you can see will have an image of a video show up, or even an author and such.  Schema.org is more of a way of creating a unified method for crawlers to crawl and properly index ones website based on the usage of the Schema.org schematics.  THey can help draw attention to your listing within the SERP's, but to my knowledge, do not influence your position within the SERP's.

Hope that helps.

Build relationship's with other relevant websites in your niche.  Also, create content that is trustworthy and worth linking to, and the links will roll in, in time.

Always optimize for the user, not for the bots.

What I mean by that is, create titles that are typically phrases that make sense to people as they'll be more willing to click on that result within the SERP's.

The title tag is simply just a one-liner of what the page is about, just in a catchy way.  If it looks/sounds robotic, people will notice, and in turn, crawlers will notice.

To fully answer your question: unique is always better.  Creating custom title tags whenever possible, outside of the template, robotic style, will warrant you better results.

This is what I'm really leaning towards.  At the end of the day, and one of the first "tips" I ever read regarding SEO and Google/crawlers, is: "does whatever you're doing look natural?"

SEO has become very, very complex over the years in terms of what you can/can't, should/shouldn't do.  I don't even know what's natural and what's not anymore it seems.

That's just it.  These kinds of sites are the reason the Panda update was created.

Well, a TLD will carry a certain amount of trust and relevance.

For example, being from Canada, if I'm looking for a product online (shoes, clothing, computer, etc) and I do my typical search in Google, I will visit the .ca pages first simply because they are a registered Canadian business.

However, this doesn't seem to carry well into the US as you really don't see anybody using the .us TLD at all.

.com means ".Commercial", but is grossly overused IMO.

TLD's don't carry any different level of authority in the eyes of googlebot (well, maybe there are some like .cn that are known for housing spam sites, but I cannot confirm that).  People go for .com because it is so widely known, and people are not used to seeing .net's nearly as often as they are typically used for 'net' related activity.

.org would not be a good fit for your site as .org is for organizations, ie. http://www.humanesociety.org/, and are usually for non-profit efforts.

To summarize: .net and .com have no difference in the eyes of crawlers.  It just boils down to the preference of users.  If you create a website that is appealing and looks reputable, you shouldn't have any problems.  However, a .net might be more suitable for a website such as (pseudo): ComputerDiscussionTopics.net

It's a tough one.  Maybe some others will chime in.

"I don't think Google is sophisticated enough to breakup a string into words without hyphens"

I wonder though... they might very well use the same algo that they use when you misspell something in the search box on google.com

Try typing in two conjoined words and it manages to separate them asking, "Did you mean..."

You brought up an interesting point.

Regardless of the authority, there is no reason that you should not join.  It is relevant to your business, and therefore is always a good idea.

I know the pagerank toolbar is not a true indicator of authority, for the most part, however, the site you have listed is a PR7.

Go for it.

I was hesitant to even mention Pagerank; it is beneficial to you if the website is relevant to your niche.  Are you (your website) in the 'business of selling travel'?  If so, then it doesn't matter what the DA and PR are of that site, it's a smart business move.