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About to go through a server migration. My intitial thought is that a change in servers shouldn't really change my rankings. But I've heard rumors...

Can a server migration change rankings? Why?

I've not used any of these services. I have an account at myblogguest.com but found it difficult to make pest control relevant to the types of posts people were requesting. As with any SEO endeavor, you want to make sure that the links you get look relevant and natural. If the sites that have joined those networks are quality then I think it would be a plus. But I would be leery with the recent penguin update to have links from blog networks. Sooo.... it would all depend. (classic SEO answer).

Are you getting the results you want from myblogguest.com?

Google is finding text URLs on sites with limited characters. It's a google crawl problem.

SiteX refers to your article: http://yourdomain.com/blog/austin/steve-rides-to-the-alamo but they hit a charater limit of say 40 characters so they print the URL as "http://yourdomain.com/blog/austin/steve" but link it correctly. Even with a correct link, google will read the text and crawl it the way the text is printed, not linked. Or this happens if it's not linked at all and just a shortened text URL.

To sum it up... Google's got a problem and scrapper sites that chop up URLs are feeding the bots crap. If however the linking domain is a good one and you'd like to take advantage of this little error, then you create a redirect rule on your website for the 404 page.

One page.

But you could use multiple pages to keep it a consistent theme on the website. If you want to rank for Shoes, then you create one page for shoes. Then create other pages more specific to say running shoes, or dress shoes, but link them back to your shoes page.

In a perfect SEO world...

Shoes.com

sub pages = Running Shoes | Dress Shoes | Snow Shoes

All linking back to the Shoes.com homepage, optimized for Shoes.

I would have stopped at "Website tonight".

You can check Google itself to see if they are indexing both. Just search for both pages.

I believe that website tonight would allow you to add meta tags, so you could try using a canonical tag.

Overall this is probably a minor SEO error. Build all your links to one of the two and Google will figure it out.

And GET AWAY FROM WEBSITE TONIGHT!

You should certainly fix this. You don't want google having to guess what you are trying to tell them. For the most part they will probably get it right, especially in your case with the 404s. But if this is occurring too frequently then they may begin to ignore your canonicals all together. Or worse, you may loose some google trust.

I'd put this on my fix it list.

Adding in the canonical tag for each page should solve this problem. We use query strings as well for tracking sources and referrers. Canonicals are a solid solution for what you described.

But the fact that Google is finding that URL is another problem. If Google continues to find the URL after your canonical insertion then you may want to 301 redirect that particular string.

I ran my site with an incomplete site map for years and didn't seem to have a negative effect. I feel that any site map is better than no sitemap. Sitemaps are such a small part of the SEO equation. What they are most useful for is telling Google what to crawl. Beyond that, I don't believe they have much relevance in passing authority.

I've got a separate blog site. There are benefits to both scenarios. The reason I have chosen to keep them separate is so that I can post content from other bloggers and contributors and not worry about the content being officially endorsed by Bulwark.

If you do move it over to your main site, you can easily export the wordpress site and all it's content to a sub-folder and then do a 301 redirect rule from your old blog. It is probably ideal to have them all on one site so long as the company wants to take claim for all the content written there.

I wouldn't advise a canonical. That's not really the purpose of canonical tags. If the page isn't ranking or has no real value then a no-index isn't going to hurt you. What you really need to decide is if the old page is still relevant and useful. If it isn't relevant or useful any longer than you should 301 redirect it. If the content is similar and still relevant, but you don't want it to compete with the new content then you no index it. If the content is relevant and significantly different then you may want to leave it live and link to the new page.

Without seeing the content this is hard to determine, but guessing where you are trying to go with this I'd say a 301 sounds most appropriate.

Thanks Ben. Very annoying how Google does that.

Thanks. It is likely #2 with a combination of more external links going to that page.

So if you had to pick just one or the other you'd prefer the non-map result...

If that's the case then change the URL in your local listing to different page. You may lose your map. It may come back. But at least you get your preferred listing.

I have a blog post I created and added a canonical to that page, yet the blog post is the one showing in Google's results and not the canonical version. Why is this?

Interesting test and question.

I've noted for a long time that Google will typically put the same URL either in the maps or on the page, but rarely both.Since the maps are part of the mixed results, the mix only allows the URL to appear once. You can however rank two separate URLs.

Part of the ranking factors within local are SEO related, so creating a microsite may not allow you to rank in the maps. Honestly, I don't think microsites are a best practice here. Plus, linking back to your main site with a bunch of microsites may appear to google as a "network". That could be bad for both micro and main site.

Proceed with caution if you must proceed. Trying to "over optimize" could cause you to loose all your first page rankings. I am a bit curious why you feel you need both. Has your traffic changed since being in the map section?

The canonical isn't really for feeding google URLs in the a preferred format, it's more for cleaning up duplicate content issues.

Let's say I could track traffic and conversions on my website by adding a source code to a link. So I create a link on SEOmoz. You can reach my page www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php with the url string http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php?src=seomoz and that link is now indexed by Google. Well now I have duplicate content and google must decide which page get's placed into their index. Adding a canonical to the main page

<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.bulwarkpestcontrol.com/pest-control.php" />

, tells google which page they should place in their index and it helps me avoid splitting my links.

This also applies heavily to shopping carts where the parameters in a URL determine the content, and products that overlap in categories can cause duplicate content issues. Creating canonicals will help avoid indexing issues.

So the point to canonicals is to determine what URL gets indexed and gets the juice for links when there are duplicate content issues created by varying URL stings that lead to the same content.

If you are simply trying to fill in a canonical for a URL to get a "A grade" on a SEO checklist then you will just create the canonical for each page using the exact URL for that page.

Great concept. Never thought of trying this through Wordpress. I have a  few set site templates that I teach beginners how to use. Makes the layout consistent and the content clean. But again, never tried this with wordpress.But I have found that Yola works well for this.

I am guessing you wanted a little more than just a "Yes". So let me assume you are only asking about back links from FB/Twitter profiles.

There is certainly worth in the backlinks, what that worth is varies. But you can check your linkscape to find that twitter links are very trusted. Facebook on the other hand may not give you the same SEO benefit. But in regards to  facebook, if you have followers then taking the 20 seconds to fill in the link info is worth the 20 seconds of labor. For no other reason than if people search for you on facebook you can lead them to your website.

Hope that helps.