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VP went for it.  We are on the hunt for a part timer whom I will personally train.  I am more of an on page guy but I did train with Eric Ward for 10 months (boss flipped the bill for that one!) and I do feel I have a very safe and organic approach.  So if I can instill these methods in to a part timer there is a great chance they will quickly become full time.

Any one know anyone in Jacksonville, Florida looking for a part time job, LOL?!?!

I agree but that has to be it.  You could also try compiling a list of the links you never asked for (the spam sites) and going to Google spam report form and explaining everything in the 'additional information' field just to get this in front of someone on the spam team.  I did that for a client either it helped or it was a huge coincidence but their rankings were back in a little less than two weeks.  No promises, but it seemed to work for us.  The report is here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1&hl=en and I just clicked on 'Paid Links' and then just explained EVERYTHING (I know these arent paid links, my clients weren't either, but it was the only link related choice.

There could be, I am not sure.  The company I work for did some sort of a trial so I could play with it for a few months and give my COO feed back before they entered in to a contract but I don't know if the trial was free or just at a lowered rate.  We use it in an agency setting so we have many slots we can move clients in and out of - if you are just getting it for one website it is probably much more affordable.

I agree about trusting Cutts, however I believe this one to be true

Hello Mozers.  It has been a while

OK - I run an open site explorer report, toggle over to 'Linking Domains' because I am more interested in the number of actual websites that link to my client rather than the number of links my client has (and of course what websites are linking) and although I have been doing this for years there is one little thing I am a bit confused about.

The report shows (from left to right) the 'Linking Root Domain", the "Domain Authority" for the linking domain and then the 'Number of Linking Root Domains" for each 'Linking Root Domain"  My question is (rather stupid, I am sure) is the number of linking root domains for each linking root domain the number of websites linking to them OR the number of websites to which they link?

I have heard many times over the years that Google does not crawl/index secure pages... however, when performing a inURL:https search in Google you will see that this is certainly NOT true; they not only crawl, they index.  So, if it is being crawled and indexed I would say there is a very real chance that it could cause a Dup issue.

I would set up a canonical tag to be safe.

1. I wish I could accurately place this on a scale for you.  In my opinion I would consider this to be white hat.  You have no intent of manipulating search results here - this is completely a usability issue and this is the obvious fix.

2. Yes, I certainly would

3. yes, I certainly would

We use AWR and I highly recommend it.  And yes, the domains and numbers of keywords are unlimited - we have several hundred clients loaded - also, its accuracy is comparable to any software we have used - and we have used a lot over the years.

Hi Michael,

From my experience a sub-domain isn’t going to benefit much from the main site’s authority therefore needing a major link building campaign of its own.  I would say, if this is going to be a one page per franchise project rather than multiple pages of content, you might be better off with the sub-folder. That would allow the page to benefit more from the authority the main site has already gained.

I am not saying you won’t need to build links but I believe the necessary work would be less.

My two cents  Cheers

That makes perfect sense.  Thank you very much

View the source (Ctrl U or right click and select "view source") then hold Ctrl and hit the "F" key to bring up a search box that will search the active document - in this case the source of the web page you were viewing.  Type in<a href="" and="" click="" next="" over="" until="" you="" have="" looked="" at="" every="" link="" that="" makes="" up="" the="" navigation="" or="" possibly="" not="" them="" if="" they="" are="" html.=""  the="" html="" for="" a="" is="" <a="" etc....<="" p=""></a>

<a href="" and="" click="" next="" over="" until="" you="" have="" looked="" at="" every="" link="" that="" makes="" up="" the="" navigation="" or="" possibly="" not="" them="" if="" they="" are="" html.=""  the="" html="" for="" a="" is="" <a="" etc....<="" p="">Does this help you?  I assume you are afraid that the links are JavaScript?  If you are wondering if it is Flash you can just right click on one of the Navigation links on the website and the box that comes up will say "Zoom In, Zoom Out..." etc...</a>

copyscape.com  You will have to do each page individually but it works well.

It could be that SEOMoz hasn't updated their index since you started ranking page one.  I could be incorrect (and please, anyone, correct me if I am) but I believe they work off of their own index that updates periodically rather than using Google's live index.

I completely agree.  I have had very similar projects.  Good luck!

Yes and more than anything, learn from your successes and mistakes but don't get caught up in "well this worked for that client so it will work for this one" things change, different techniques seem to have different levels of effectiveness depending on the client and their market etc...  Nothing will teach you like experience will.

I agree, Alan.  No matter how hard you try it is going to carry some level of dup - you would be better off trying to target all 10 locations on the main services page than trying to re-spin the same 750 words.  Your first suggestion is the approach I would take as well.

Agreed.  IMO the domain should be the Brand.  Sub-domains or directories for different locations makes perfect sense and flows well just be careful with duplicate content.  Don't just copy all of your content over and change the city or state.

Call me crazy but I still find myself using Google Trends to compare different iterations of like phrases.  It also gives related search suggestions...

Is it possible that the 301s actually don't have much to do with it?  Or perhaps that doing this drew algorithmic attention to the website?  In going over your website I, like others before me, couldn't find any reason for you to get knocked back so then I ran your site (the new one) through open site explorer and it seems the majority of your links are blog comments and most of those are on blogs that are in genres unrelated to what you do.  It could just be that Google isn't giving you the credit for these links that they used to.  Just a thought.

A few years back the powers that be (or in this case WERE) here where I work decided that my department would go from 'Internet Marketers' to 'Online Acquisition Marketers'... it was horrible.  No one understood what it meant and we found ourselves explaining our services far more than we ever had to in the past.  Needless to say... it didn't last.  We are back to 'internet marketers'.  It is simple, people already know what it means - or if they don't the meaning is fairly self evident once you hear it.  Just as in all things, simplicity is best.  That was the lesson learned around here.  In my defense... I hated even saying 'online acquisition marketing'... just sounded weird...