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It's OK to have his name, just add more to it to differentiate the photos.

I wouldn't attribute this to a page layout penalty.

Make sure to keep track of your rankings, so you can check to see if there was a dip in ranks that correlates with the dip in traffic. Keep in mind the ranks do fluctuate, especially if someone else is actively focuses on the terms.

This could very well be other people gaining ranks above you, or search volume being a little low for a bit. The data isn't large enough to determine trends. A few dozen impressions here and there could be anything. Take larger time-spans of data to determine trends to figure out why things are happening, but this isn't a display penalty in my opinion.

Hello,

There is some good news and bad news here:

The bad news news? That old site, cheaptubesinc.com is not 301'd. Notice how to URL doesn't direct to the new one when you type it in. You have two identical sites going on due to a botched 301. In order to help with that,  more information on how you attempted the redirect is needed..

The good news? It is probably an relatively simple fix. Once you fix that 301, things may settle in.

Hope this helps.

The Googler said it didn't matter as long as it was consistent, but I think Vadim has some good points below.

This is really a case-by-case basis, and a lot of different factors should be taken into consideration:

• I think the first things to consider is: why? Why do you want to consolidate the sites? If they are all somewhat different, all get traffic, and are doing their jobs, why change it? Is it broken? If not, why fix it?

- Does the brand of the strongest domain make sense as an umbrella to the other websites? Don't try to force domains together that don't make sense for the visitor.

• If it is strong enough, are the sites similar enough to where you could fold them into a single domain and brand (subfolders instead of subdomains)? I would recommend subfolders to subdomains if it still makes sense for the website.

Trying to consolidate multiple established domains into one domain, or a domain and it's subdomains, is possible but risky. Ask yourself if it's worth the risk to do all this, or if this is just one person's whim to organize domains without knowing what could happen.

In my experience, 301ing one domain to another (if done properly), should take about 2-4 weeks to recover the majority of organic traffic. Rarely have I seen a domain recover 100% of their organic traffic after a 301, but you will recover the majority of your ranks. So, if you are 301ing multiple domains, that would mean you are losing a sliver a traffic on each of them, and that doesn't count the downtime during the 301 transition.

And of course, the above is assuming all 301s are done properly, which could be a pretty big undertaking from the sound of it.

Sounds like the site is big enough that you have the luxury taking a nice little chunk of pages, doing your tests, seeing what happens, and then deciding whether to make the change site-wide. Take a good sample of pages across you site to test on, make sure you know their baseline ranks and traffic to those pages, make the changes, monitor, test some more, etc. This way, no guess work

It sounds like it's time to get aggressive with your hosting company. Tell them they botched it. Tell them it's effecting your business. Also ask them how they attempted it in the first place. If you don't know what they did, you can't fix it efficiently. Discovering what they did without their help could possibly take a lot of digging and technical knowledge, but it's possible.

Are you in control of the Yahoo listings? If so, you would've been notified when such drastic changes took places on them. If you didn't claim them, then it is possible someone else did and changed the information. The listings places are getting better about verification methods, but it's still possible for competitors to claim unverified listings.

I would suggest creating a Yahoo Small Business account, and then contacting Yahoo about the situation. They should either give you ownership, change the URL, or delete the listing and have you create a new one.  If Yahoo is being too slow, create a new listing in the meantime, and once you get in contact with Yahoo they should be able to merge the two listings.

Yahoo is the slowest of the three in getting back to you (in my experience), so don't be afraid to get a little aggressive if it starts taking a while. Contact them through multiple channels, flag the listing, etc.

I have seen competitors take over listings in the real estate market before, and the insurance industry would seem like another clear target, since the business/agent structure can be similar.

If consolidating the domains into subdomains is inevitable, then 301s are going to be the way to go. Just be careful to redirect everything to where it should go in the subdomain, and do it one chunk if you can. You don't want to 301 some stuff, then re-301 or do a second round later.

Be as clear as you can to Google. once you are ready to move the site, do it all at once, so Google can clearly see that everything from the domain is now at the new domain. So yeah, wholesale switch, just make sure the client understands what he's getting himself into.

There is no exact number with regards to traffic loss, chance of recovery, risk of things not going smoothly, etc. Make sure they are aware of all the risks and how to best lower the possibility of something bad happening.

Google updated their guidelines a while ago, and no longer suggests the 100 or less links per page. Now the guideline simply states, "Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number," which is subjective.  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en

With a site like yours, full of different kinds of forms and such, it's logical to consider having 100+ links per page. There are other options for you as well, if you believe these links are hurting, but according to Google they likely are not.

If you wanted to try something different, you could think about building out detailed category pages for each sections of things you offer on the site, and make those the pages that rank for your terms. This way, the number of links on your main page is dramatically reduced, and the user experience might improve, since things aren't quite as condensed.

Thanks for posting the follow up. I'm really glad I could help.

I hear bluehost is okay. I've tried a lot of hosting companies over the years, and the majority have that arrogant attitude. Charging $60 per 301 is insane though. If you decide to move your site, I recommend having a professional do it, or it could go very wrong.

Happy to see your ranks recover

From what I've heard when I talk to these citation places, there are two different kinds.

1. A company that collection citations and then hands them off to large databases that are controlled by others, and then those people will distribute the citations through there affiliates. This is the much longer, much cheaper, kind of citation company. Moz Local does this.

2. A company that has it's own direct relationships with the citation sites, and doesn't use third-party databases or companies as a middle-man. This is more expensive (10x or so), but faster. Yext falls into this category.

So, you are correct. There is nothing you can do to speed it up, the citations are most likely in the hands of those large databases who are distributing to affiliates.

They do. The Yoast plugin has a lot of great features, but sometimes struggles with finding keywords in content if it isn't regular text. No need to worry on this front.

You'll never get a straight answer from Google, but here's what I've witnessed:

• Paid directory links CAN be beneficial if they are human-moderated and/or reputable. Something like BOTW has been a good historical example. There are also niche-specific reputable paid directories.

• Be INSANELY CAREFUL. If you're skeptical about a specific directory site, don't do it. It should be a well-known brand in the niche, for example, Martindale-Hubbell for Law.

• Think of it more as citation building than link building. There is SEO-value, but don't rely on directory link juice.

• If you're careful, rely on the directory site's authority and reputation, and do a little research, you should have no issue having some paid directory links in your link profile with no penalties.

Matt is correct. Keyword density is no longer a thing that helps positively with ranks, in my opinion. It can hurt you if it is overused though.

If you're worried about content being naturally over-stuffed, that's a valid concern. If your client is in the pizza industry, how do you not use the word "pizza" all the time? The answer is: creatively. It'll be different with every industry, like with pizza, focus on toppings, dough, cheese, sauce, etc. to dilute the density.

Don't force it in, make it look natural, keep it in the H1, title, URL, and other best practices, but try to mention it only when required in the content to reduce mentions. Anything above one mention in the body isn't required, but sometimes quality of content requires it to be mentioned more.

In my experience, yes. I'm currently doing some further testing on it, but initial results and experience say Google absolutely prefers the address be shown, which is counter intuitive and frustrating, I know.

Also remember that this is only one little factor in a massive scope for local listings, there may be other areas to focus on as a better use of time that would make this point moot.

Apache reads the .htaccess from top to bottom, so it's good to keep that in mind.

If I had to guess, I'd say you have more 301s than just those in your .htaccess. A rule above that is likely conflicting with that specific redirect.

If you have a rule redirecting everything from that subdirectory without the French URL parameter, and it's before the rule in question, then this rule will never catch anything.

The directory appears to be in good standing with Google. Decent PR, lots of indexed pages, etc. You're safe creating a profile here, and if you're noticing competitors use it who are performing better than you in this space, it seems like it's something that's worth spending some time on.

The difference in the ranking strength of those two URLs is negligible. Your decision should probably be made by deciding whether or not you're going to build out those directories and have the content to do so.

Having /properties/new-york/rental suggests you having multiple properties in New York, some of which are rentals. If a visitor went to /properties/new-york, would they see a page with multiple New York properties, some for sale and some for rent? If the visitor just went to /properties, would there be multiple regions for people to browse through?

If you have the content and ability to do that, then build it out with the subdirectories. If you don't, then focus on that single page with the keyword as the slug.

You need to have the name of the person who wrote the content on the web page. Google is trying to find the name of the author, but can't, they are only seeing the company name. Putting the name of the author on the page and making it a link to his/her G+ profile can help define the author. There is also the rel=author tag, and a URL parameter you can use, but usually one will do.