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I would stick with folders for two main reasons:

• First, yourdomain.com is part of your online brand. If every state's URL is statename.yourdomain.com, I think this takes away from your brand because the first thing people see when they look at the URL bar or in search results is a state name and not your URL
• Next, I second everyone else, subfolders are much more organized, subfolders look better, and subdomains are an old SEO strategy (a little spammy, especially for a new domain)

Hey Charles,

First, I would get in touch with the website owner or whoever you submitted your guest post to and request that they add your link to the article. I would do this very respectfully, and treat it like it might have been a mistake. I wouldn't even mention that you want to the article taken down if they do not add it, since the ultimate goal is to get the link. Also, I would create the code for the link to make it easy on them.

If they decide not the add the back link (bummer), then it is your call if you want to make the effort to get the article taken down. The only reason I would take the time to get the article taken down is if you have another niche website that will publish the content and will add your link. Otherwise, I would just make note of that website and never guest post for them again.

I hope this works out for you. I know how much time it takes to write good guests posts, so I really hope you get the link out of it.

It will be very difficult for one person to serve all of your company's SEO needs.

However, if you are going to tackle this alone, I would try to leverage as many resources internally as possible. I would make sure you are allowed to stay in constant communication with all departments, especially marketing and website development. Also, I would make sure that they are aware that you need to be in the loop to what their departments are doing.

If you website is up to speed with most of the on-page criteria, I would focus my efforts on link building and content creation. The marketing department will have some great assets and resources that you can use to build great links. Also, if y'all work together, you may get them to understand how press and events are great link building tools, which will help your efforts.

I would also make sure that you are involved in all changes/update to the website to make sure all things are done with search engines in mind.

If they are high quality, they will eventually show up on opensiteexplorer.org.

One linkscape update might not be enough time, since the only way links are added to your profile is when they are naturally crawled. Opensiteexplorer.org is a great tool and my favorite back link profile tool, but like anything, it takes time to analyze the entire web. I would give it 1-2 more linkscape updates before I would worry,  but I would not guess there is any issue with your website.

I love this answer Russ. There are no schemes or magical strategies to explore, just work and creativity to get those type of links.

I am piggy backing off of Rand's latest Whiteboard Friday:  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-we-cant-just-be-seos-anymore-whiteboard-friday (It is an awesome post if you haven't checked it out yet.)

I just want to hear some feedback from other industry professionals.

• Have you started defining/communicating your business as more than just, I do SEO?
• If so, what are you calling yourselves now and why?
• How has that been working out for you?

I do not believe 404 pages will result in a penalty, and eventually they will be deindexed by search engines.

Like SanketPatel said, 301 redirects are best used on a one to one basis, where the old page is related to the page it is getting 301 redirected to.

If some of those pages have great links point to them, I would first make an effort to get those links changed to direct to the existing URLs. If that does not work, it might be worth considering creating a relevant page for a page with high page authority to be 301 redirected to.

Was it their Link Acquisition Assistant: http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-finder/index.php?

Hi Peter,

Sebastian makes a good point. Relevant and respected (no spammy) directories are good but only in moderation. However, your primiary link building strategy should not consist of directory submissions.

Regarding receiving credit for a backlink, the link must be organically recognized (crawled) by a search engine, which takes time. The better websites are crawled more fregently, so their backlinks are recognized faster. Also, here is the opensiteexplorer.org linkscape schedule, https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule, which shows you the dates their data will be updated.

Hi Micheal,

What exactly does this rebranding include? A new URL? New keywords? New content? New pages? New design? Time and cost is hard to judge without knowing that.

However, strictly from a 301 redirect perspective, it is normally best to use a 1 to 1 redirect. This means that every old page should 301 redirect to its corresponding page on the new website, instead of redirecting all to the homepage or a basic category landing page. This is time consuming and monotonous, but if there are tons of deep links on your current website, this will help you not losing any traffic, as well as transfer a maximum amount of link juice to your new site.

Thanks for all of the responses. All of the titles sound great and make a lot of sense.

We use "Online Marketing Consultant" basically because we started listening to how our clients introduce us on conference calls, emails, and in meetings. We found that, "This is ____. He/she is our Online Marketing Consultant," was the most frequently used introduction, so we have decided to go with that.

Hi Daniel,

If you have a penalty for "workwear", most likely many of the links that have the anchor text "workwear" were built unnaturally. I would anaylize all of your links with this anchor text and remove the ones that are unnatural or spammy.

Google implemented this penalty to find unnatural link building tactics from bad sites, and one easy way to spot unnatural link building is if an anchor text is repeated. Google uses this measure because that is not how a quality website link to another website. Quality links do not have a standard anchor text, and the anchor text often includes the brand name.

The links that are worth keeping are the links from sites with a high domain and page authority and were not built automatically.

As a rule, the links that matter now and in the future are built by communicating with people and doing "link worthy things" not by pressing a submit button.

Link directories and the web 2.0 backlinks to backlinks strategy is not very effective anymore. Blog commenting is typically marked with a nofollow link, so that will not do much for you. Many of the other

Several of the elements on your list are still very important for SEO, but knowing this is only the start, especially regarding off-page. Knowing where to get the links is good, but the more important factors is knowing how to get the links, which is best done through out reach and creating things for your link targets that merit a link.

Also, your off-page list is missing one very effective link building tool which is guest posting. This is a great way to acquire quality links.

Hi William,

First, you are absolutely doing the right thing by creating a subpage dedicated to each location. You should try to add unique content to avoid a duplicate content issue, as well as a map "Google Maps is always good," a local phone number, and the geo-location should be optimized in the content and meta data.

One more piece of advice that I picked up at a recent SEO conference, when you create or edit Google+ Local pages, use the subpage for that specific city as that location's website. It will help you rank in the Google+ local rankings.

For the 301 redirects, each local website's homepage should probably 301 redirect to that locations subpage on the new website. I normally recommend 1 to 1 redirects, but if there are page on the old website's with links that you do not want to lose and they make sense to redirect tot he new subpage, I would do it. If there are pages that do not make sense to redirect (meaning the subpage on the new website is not what a use would expect to see) and they do not have any links, I would consider using a good 404 page.

Since the disavow tool basically tells Google to nofollow the links, I would recommend first focusing on the bad dofollow links in your back link profile.

Also, as a fist measure, I would not use the Google disavow tool. Instead, I would reach out to all of the websites containing bad dofollow links and request them to be removed. I would give each link at least three attempts before considering the disavow tool.

I suggest manual attempts before using the disavow tool because using the disavow tool is basically like telling on yourself. Your are turning your website into Google for having a spamming back link profile. I do realize that the disavow tool is a much better option then getting hit with a penalty,  but I am a fan of at least trying to take care of it yourself before turning a website over to the mercy of Google.

Hi Terry,

It is important to include exact match keywords and related keywords in each page's meta data, headers, and content. As for an exact keyword density, we do not use this as an on-page factor anymore. Just make sure you use the keywords you want to show up for in the meta data, headers, and content, while keeping the content user focused.

Every page/post on your website should have a unique title tag. Title tags of a specific post should relate to the post's header tags and content and should target long-tailed keywords. It is great way to get ranked for a large variety of search terms.

Category title tags should also be unique, but they might not be as important because people typically want to read and link to an individual post.

Great point Ryan, the WHOIS lookup is a perfect tool to start your manual removal process.

Ryan, here is a link to GoDaddy's WHOIS search:  http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx

Great question. We have dealt with this several times since the rel="author" was released, and our belief is that the  rel="author" is best used when the page, website or post should be associated with a person.

A businesses that offers a personalized service like attorneys, doctors, dentists, web designers, etc. are perfect for the author tag because it gives a face to the service, and of course, like you said, blog posts are a great use for the author tag.

Even though we have seen an increase in the click though rate for the sites that we have implemented the author tag, we do not not use it for product websites or pages, just because we feel an author tag does not give a good representation of the actual page/product.

The only exception I can think of is if the product is closely associated and sold by a person like "The George Forman Grill," but we haven't come across a client like that yet.

I hope this help and would love to hear what other people think.

If you have links pointing to both, then a 301 redirect will help your website's domain and page authority, which will help your rankings.

Any reputable US hosting company should be fine.