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Am I the only one here that finds it hilarious that bsa.org gives companies that pirate software a followed link? Oh man, that is rich. The giggles keep coming.

It's an expensive link, but maybe your company should turn itself in for piracy?

They're only shooting themselves in the foot with the duplicate content.

The site's link profile doesn't look 'shockingly' black hat, though there are some shady spots. It looks like a lot of the newer links were made because the site was scraped. I've found quite a few, at random, that redirect to some Chinese ccTLD. That might be one of the reasons you can't find the link.

Besides, even crap links can possibly prop up a domain for a little while. (Not recommended) But a site may eventually get hit, or it will drop a bit after new low quality links ebb.

Maybe you just don't have the domain age... there's a bunch of things.

Most of my problems have been pretty well documented. When I run into something a little more obscure, it helps that I brew beer with a pretty awesome WP dev. The guy's either going to speak at the next Austin or Portland WordCamp, I'm not sure which atm. I would bug him, but the lucky chump is ramping up on a great new job.

The good news is it appears the site is hosted with Blue Host. Give them a call and they can more than likely roll it back without a fuss. The WP 4.0 update doesn't appear to have anything to do with security. So you definitely have a little breathing room to figure this one out.

I noticed that it looks like your right sidebar is missing, from your screen grab posted in WP Support. It would interest you to know that 4.0 made some pretty significant changes to the editor.

Without knowing what's banging around in /mu-plugins, I would probably look at NextGen Gallery first.

Let's get in an internet argument!!! (That was a serious(ly fun) internet smile right there, bro.)

Social media can result in exposure that can result in lovely links outside of social media.

It's less of a stretch to say that organic links, outside of social media, as a result of social media exposure increase rankings.

The people at KISS Metric weren't incorrect at all. Their measurements aren't doubted. I don't doubt them.

But there are some, pretty critical, things that remain unsaid there.

Meta keywords is pretty much useless, though I've heard it may mildly increase quality score in PPC. I don't do paid advertising, so I can't say for sure.

Meta description is grand.

Open Graph meta helps with sharing on Facebook.

Twitter card markup can be helpful, but mostly if you're hardcore about Twitter.

Cards markup uses Open Graph as well, so if you're not too crazy about stuffing your head with every tag known to man, OG should suffice for social meta.

Moz Local is a good place to start, as they are now the source of the Get Listed tool I've used in the past. Both were/are a little wonky, but you have to use your own discretion with any tool. You can also check out Yahoo. There is also Whitespark.

I'm pretty sure I'm leaving a lot a room for others to comment. I hope I am. : )

You find the rogues, and either delete or claim them. The process will vary wildly from aggregator to aggregator.

It seems like you're asking some things that are covered in two different places. These should help:
Moz Beginners Guide and Google SEO Guide

What really matters is what is readable, interesting and targeted to your page. Yes, you can and should slip a keyword in there. Otherwise, do what feels right.

If you're talking about the theme of a subject, you'll end up ranking for more terms than you think. The amount of people that search for 'video production city' isn't all that great when compared to the number of people that search for thousands of variants. Some may search for 'high quality video production', with or without the city.

The long tail is your friend. Write about the subject as you would naturally, usually the keyword targeting stuff will 'just happen'.

The entire site appears to index fine. As Patrick pointed out, it appears some of the pages in the index aren't https. But I don't know when you made the move, so things may be chugging right along.

The issue is ranking. But I know what you mean.

So what we have is (not all bad, per se - just what I see):

• Previously hacked site
• Timthumb file
• Some very spammy links
• HTTPS implemented on unknown date
• Moved to CDN / WAF
• Redirects

No doubt, you're going to have to disavow the bad links. Take down requests are nice and all, and you should note them in your disavow submission, but you don't have to manually contact each individual link/domain. It's not really a fire-and-forget process. You can submit it more than once.

I would bet a shiny nickle the attack/hack exploited the timthumb file. The site still uses it. Stop using it. Find an alternative. All it does is resize images.

The https migration (redirects... etc.) is just a confounding factor.

After you've removed the timthumb file, request a security review. Also consider the site may still have issues from the hack. So fetch as google from Webmaster Tools. If you see anything different than the real page, you still have a problem.

Read a little more about recovering from a hacked site here. I think that's more than likely the core of the problem right now.

Google+ is a social medium. The largest recorded changes came from Google+ at that time. A few months later, Matt Cutts announced that it may penalize Google+ for passing PR and gathering too much PR. So the most impressive parts of the KISS Metrics study were correct.

I hate to be a 'Cuttlet' or speak in terms of Page Rank, but there we have it. A social media platform could influence Page Rank at one time. It still may do so to a limited degree.

There's no doubt that the affect of a social post can bring about the effect of organic rankings, via links outside of typical social media.

People just have to care, to some degree - for some reason.

Knowing this is why I can afford the fine Chunky Soup for lunch. XD

Ah, you've found forthepeople.com. Yeah, I don't envy your task. They're a pretty big deal and more than likely spend to get the results they have. I've watched them 'grow up' over the last five years.

Notice how they're very careful not to cannibalize Orlando Personal Injury Attorney? The domain was created in 1996. There's been steady improvement in ranking/traffic over the last five years. The last three years have been the most effective. Though there was a pretty good dip around the last Penguin update. They appear to have more or less recovered.

Your client may be a little newer. Your client may not have a domain of that age. Your client may not have the same budget right now. Morgan and Morgan has the budget and they've been around forever.

There's hardly anything in the PI space that isn't competitive. Specialization, differentiation and branding will be invaluable when faced with entrenched competition. What does the attorney or firm particularly specialize in?

• Wrongful Death
• Premise Liability (Slip & Fall)
• Workers Comp

You can focus on bolt holes within the personal injury niche, especially if the client doesn't have the budget of a larger firm. From there, you can set out milestones and spend. The Morgan & Morgan site wasn't built overnight. Notice how they kept tweaking it and adding to the site?

So no, don't go after every page under the sun just because a successful competitor has X amount of pages about X amount of topics. That's the road to disappointment.

"If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. You see, we build to that." - Jack Handy

Yext is fast, but it tends to create duplicates and inconsistent citations. Plus Yext is obviously one of the most expensive options. Moz is obviously slower, but it's definitely less expensive. Moz Local hits the high notes and I've noticed that I've had less issues with duplicates.

There's also a feature in Moz Local where you can nuke a duplicate with one button. With either one, you should probably still supplement your local campaigns with something like Bright Local or Whitespark.

I've used both Yext and Moz Local, but never the two in conjunction. There are also many listings that would become locked if you used Yext which could be counterproductive, and at least redundant, if you used Moz Local as well. I tend to look at it this way; "Do you want it done fast, or do you want it done right?"  If you quit subscribing to Yext, a lot of listings disappear and content added via Yext tends to revert (for anything they lock).

When it comes to alt tags, I always err on the side of descriptive. The alt is used when the image link is broken, or if a plain text browser/screen reader is in use. I tend to think about it as a usability/accessibility issue.

I would go with something like "brand-color-dresses". Say "gap-pink-dresses". If you're not doing a dictionary attack on the alt tags, you should be okay.

That's a very broad question. Generally I don't recommend more than a couple keywords per page. It would be ideal if the keyword(s) work well and make for an attractive title.

I'm not trying to be insulting, but if you want the page to do well for puppies - you should talk about puppies. If you want the page to do well for kittens, you should talk about kittens. If you want to go for kittens vs. puppies, you should go after that.

If you're concerned about keyword density, that's a myth. Saying something X amount of times per word guarantees nothing. Hopefully no one told you keyword density matters.

As William said, it's definitely niche dependent. You have to be mindful of other citation sources. However, your generic citation list is pretty close to what you need at the beginning of a campaign.

You would get a 404 if you didn't employ the proper URL rewrites at the server level. Unless search engines have become smart enough to understand common extensions of a URL and attribute any possible link equity to the proper URL - then yes - you may likely need a 301 instead of rewrites.

Full disclosure: I've gone extensionless for years. I have never studied this particular case.

Hi Nathan,

I second Richard's statement. It's a very good idea to build out individual landing pages with contact information. It's even better to include Schema markup, at least for the NAP. And lucky you! There's markup that relates directly to a furniture store as a local business.

To get started with the markup, you'll want to look at the code examples at the bottom of the local business page. That should give you a solid idea how you should structure the markup. Then you can see if your markup checks prior to pushing live via the Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Here's another reference via Moz in regard to on-site local considerations.

I'll go through these in order.

#1-#4 Not unless you're advertising a different domain name via collateral or other channels.

In regard to #3 specifically, that should be an easy SQL find and replace (e.g. Find smithjonespllc.com and replace with smithjonesdoepllc.com) if you have to change the name. Then get ready for a ton of NAP cleanup.

#5 This may be an interesting opportunity to measure your offline efforts. Perhaps a clone of the site could be blocked via robots.txt and meta robots. Though you're better off spending most of your efforts online anyway. It's just a thought.

#6 I've worked with a number of firms and partners come and go. So it's a question of permanence/vanity in many instances. Though it's entirely possible to make a page for the partner and run a local campaign for each partner. You'll more than likely get more mileage that way, and have less NAP cleanup issues.

My aunt is the President of her firm, though all of the properties only have the founding partner's names. The firm is over 100 years old and they're doing fine.

Have you looked at his disavow file? There might be a problem with it and the disavow never actually went through. I know it seems pretty basic, but I've solved a lot of problems by asking a prospect if they've checked their robots.txt configuration. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about.

Perhaps you're right, perhaps enough bad links weren't removed. Though I've heard of recoveries taking up to one year, without new links earned or more old links removed, even though the disavow was thorough. Draw on multiple link sources and check again. I've manually plowed through thousands of links in a few days. Sometimes you just have to dig in, but it would be wiser to see if the disavow was properly formatted and submitted first.

If it was properly formatted and submitted, then you have to make a decision based on the client's business. At what point does time and money intersect at $0? Can you rebuild that traffic/profit faster than that by starting over? It's risky either way, but if you can find something went wrong in the first round there's still a fighting chance.

Dang it, the WYSIWYG stripped out the code. That feature is wonky... so... here goes....

Example: Filled Out

Guyette Roofing and Construction
   
     1849 Upper Wetumpka Rd
     Montgomery,
     AL
     36107
   
   Phone: 334-279-8326
   URL of Map

Example: Blankish

,
     
     
   
   Phone:
   <a href="" itemprop="maps">URL of Map</a>

Keyword density is a myth. Though if you want a page to show better for the term 'something', at least as far as on-page is concerned, 'something' should show in:

• First in the title tag
• Within the first 50 to 100 words
• In heading(s)
• In the meta description (for CTR)
• Exact match and variants throughout (but only naturally)
• Close with 'something'

While The Googles will sometimes rewrite your titles & meta and include text from a banner or sidebar, they claim to value the part of the page below the banner and next to the sidebar the most. So I wouldn't worry too much about where 'something' is mentioned, unless it's really overdone.

Attorney City - Into INFINITY (or beyond what one may view as tasteful/helpful) - That would be bad.

When it comes to people, '3' is easier for them to process than 'three'. You may even get a minor speed boost when the CMS queries the DB, but I haven't tested that. It may only apply to example.com/2014/08/28/sample-post and example.com/?p=123. Basically, the numeric version is easier for machines to process as well.

However, Michael Gray at Gray Wolf SEO has one good reason why you might want to avoid using the numeric equivalent. He definitely has a point. So keep the number in the title and avoid using it in the URL, unless the information in the post - or the post itself - will never change.

There are plenty of other effective ways to increase page load speed, and that wasn't your concern anyway.