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Cool. Maybe I'll contact the people who ordered each of those dragon patches and tell them they're included in the list. I could also add something on the bottom such as, "Want to change this list? Vote for your favorite in the comments."

Thanks for all your great advice!

Do you think the fact that they're getting little to no comments and very few social media shares is a signal to Google that it's low quality content?

OK, I found the answer, and here is the blog post in case anyone else is having this question. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-is-googles-pagerank-good-for-whiteboard-friday

I'm grappling with the same issue, and I just have to keep telling myself that with all the spam-attacking algorithm changes Google has been coming out with lately that those sites will be penalized soon.

You could always help Google along with it.

So here's something interesting. If those PR toolbars are so behind, why is it alreay showing http://www.buildmyrank.com/ to be a PR0 when it was just de-indexed by Google a couple weeks ago?

OK, I want your brain! Thanks for taking all that time to write that! I will try some of that stuff. A couple of those ideas I already had in the works.

I think that's a wonderful idea! I've been trying to market this company for six years; It's nice to have a fresh perspective! Thanks!

I'm not sure if I can help further or not, since I'm certainly not an Apache coding expert. Right off the bat it seems like you may have a dynamic URL redirect already in place, so when you add anther redirect, it's in a sense, putting a double redirect on the URLs.

I wish I could help further, but one thing I will say is that the only way I've found redirects from multiple directories to work is to put the redirects in each corresponding directory's .htaccess file, and not the root. I wish there was an easier way to do it, and if there is, I hope someone will chime in here and enlighten us.

Sorry I couldn't be of further assistance.

Are you putting the code in the .htaccess of the root directory of of the gallery directory? If you're putting it in the root, that is your first mistake. Try putting the following code in the .htaccess of the gallery directory:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RedirectMatch 301 (.*)kaunos-tombs-dalyan-photo.html$ http://www.petersommer.com/gallery/

Replace the .html with .php or whatever the extension of the kaunos-tombs-dalyan-photo file is.

One question, though. Is kaunos-tombs-dalyan-photo a directory or a file? meaning is your URL technically this: http://www.petersommer.com/gallery/?/gallery/kaunos-tombs-dalyan-photo.html or this: http://www.petersommer.com/gallery/?/gallery/kaunos-tombs-dalyan-photo/index.html

Thanks for your suggestions. What I have been doing is featuring various customers on our blog in hopes they'd share and link to the content. It hasn't gone as well as I'd hoped. I guess I need to reach out to other people who have a larger reach. But I just created a page yesterday with guest-posting guidelines, so I'm starting to go that route. Offering a discount for a link is something we've considered too. Thanks for validating my hunches.

I have a PR4 site with good traffic but the blog is not very popular--the posts do not generate any backlinks and hardly get any traffic. Yet, I continue to kick out a new post every week.

Site: http://www.stadriemblems.com/
Blog: http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog/

I keep posting content so that Google keeps crawling the site and viewing it as fresh (and yes, I'm posting for my human visitors' benefit too!), but I'm wondering if eventually this will hurt more than help if Google detects all these new pages are not being linked to, and therefore starts viewing the site as low quality and devalues it.

So should I:

1. Keep posting
2. Stop posting and build links to the posts
3. Try to promote my blog to get more traffic and hope people link to it
4. Something else or some combination of the above

I'm really glad this happened. I have been so disillusioned with Google for awhile. So much crap and spam ranks and continues to rank, and it can be really discouraging. It's nice that they're finally cracking down; it makes me feel safe about my choices and I hope to see my competitors drop in the SERPs soon, since they've been spamming all over the place.

I have had two blogs on the same domain for a while now, and it just occurred to me that no one else seems to do this and maybe it's even weird.

http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog/
http://www.stadriemblems.com/scouting/blog/

One is our main blog, and one is for a very concentrated niche of customers.

What are your opinions on this? Everything from SEO to best practices, to overall unusual-ness?

How have you been trying to get it to rank? With link building? Maybe spend some more time on the page itself. SEOmoz just came out with a blog post today about this.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whats-better-on-page-seo-or-link-building

I used a plugin that shows what the spiders see and it appears that a script you are using is being detected as text, which could be a real problem. You have thousands of lines of jibberish, like this:

Comercial IncomeCommercial LeaseLandMulti FamilyRentals / AllRentals / DetachedRentals / SeasonalRentals / TownhouseResidential / AllResidential / CityBouseBowieBrendaBuckeyeBullhead CityCamp VerdeCane BedsCarefreeCasa GrandeCave CreekChandlerCherryChino ValleyChristopher CreekCircle CityClarkdaleConchoCongressCoolidgeCordes LakesCornvilleCottonwoodCrown KingDatelandDesert HillsDewey GrViVistaCuernavacaCuernavaca SegundoCul-De-Sac LotCustomCustom CommunityCustom HomeCustom HomesCustom HorseCustom Santa Fe

Is it good, but don't overdo it. There is such a thing as over-optimization. Don't bold every single instance of a keyword. Just to it once per keyword per page. And most important, only do it when it seems relevant. Remember, you're designing for humans, not bots. If it bolding a keyword in a certain spot would leave your audience scratching their heads, I'd think twice.

And while you're at it, don't have too many instances of the same keyword on a page. That does more harm than good. Once again, think about your audience and what sounds natural.

Also, it's OK to nofollow links to lower quality sites; it's probably even best. It's really up to your judgement. After reading that SEOmoz post, I think you'll be able to determine when to use nofollow and when not to.

It make take a full crawl or two before it fixes itself. Keep me posted.

I'm not sure by looking at it if it's wrong since I'm not really an Apache coder. But I'm just guessing it's probably wrong since the bots are still detecting both versions of your site. I have it the way I showed you in my .htaccess file and I don't have any problems with bots detecting multiple versions. Maybe try it this way. You can always make a backup of your current file and switch back if it doesn't make a difference.

There was recently a blog post on SEOmoz that actually shows the value out outbound linking in blog posts.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/5-reasons-you-should-link-out-to-others-from-your-website

But contrary to what some may say, it is a good thing. Especially if you are linking to high-quality sites such as Wikipedia, it shows Google that your blog posts are informative and helpful.

Is that code on every page or just the homepage?

I think when people say Google no longer cares about keywords in the domain that that's total crap. One of my sites is #1 for the exact keyword I want, and I do no SEO for it whatsoever. It's only a PR2 and the on-page is a total mess. I never do anything to market or promote it. The sites below it are much better sites, and clearly do a lot of SEO work and link-building. Yet, my site remains #1 and has been for the past five years, all because it's an exact-match keyword, and NOT long-tail.

As far as hyphens in the domain goes, I've heard somewhere that's not the best practice, but I'm sorry to say I can't remember where and can't back that up. Maybe someone else will chime in.