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A better rule is to make sure it reads well. Don't focus on ratios - that's a huge mistake.

That said, I do recommend that you:

1. Make sure you use the phrase that folks search for. If you sell 'running shoes', don't write about 'athletic footwear'.
2. Make sure your writing is structure and styled so that your key phrase fits in naturally: When you write, you shouldn't have to force the key phrase into the page. It should end up in headings, captions, etc. because it makes sense. If that's not the case, double-check that you're writing the right thing.
3. Check the grade level of your writing. I use http://www.readability-score.com/ most of the time. Grade level can impact bounce rate, which can impact rankings.

Hope this helps

When did you see the change? There were rumors of a Bing algorithm change on May 5th of this year:

http://www.seroundtable.com/bing-search-update-18525.html

On May 19th, Google rolled out the 'Payday loan' Panda update.

Also, what's changed on your site, if anything?

True TTFB is improved by changes to your basic server configuration, not a CDN. A CDN will improve delivery of static and cached files, but may not impact TTFB the way you need it to.

My gut tells me you need to look at:

• Database caching: Is your e-commerce system using it? The first hit on the database is a huge hit on performance.
• Memory vs. disk caching: Memory is faster
• SSL versus non-SSL for non-secure pages. SSL will slow performance and should only be used where security is an issue, like during checkout or on login pages.
• Server configuration: Is your database on the same server as your web server? That's a problem, if true.

Yeah - if your webmaster got hit on the head.

301 redirects are totally doable on Apache, all the time. They're also doable on IIS.

They're set in the configuration file for each domain, or in the master config file, so site templates have nothing to do with the ability/inability to do 301s.

Any chance that 'impossible' means 'we don't have access to our own server'?

I would precisely describe the image. If it's a picture of a doctor taking someone's blood pressure, the ALT should be "doctor taking someone's blood pressure". Don't insert the brand name unless the image contains it, or the person in the image uses the brand and the text below it is their testimonial.

I'd unselect it.

Thinking from a UX perspective: If I want to see an image, I want to see an image. I don't want to get redirected to the post itself.

And Google's imagebot won't be able to (or will refuse to) index the images for that reason.

Normally, on WordPress, I use one of the Lightbox plugins: Someone clicks the image and sees the full-sized version in a DHTML layer, without leaving the post. That lets you display the image on the same page, doesn't seem to hurt image indexation, and gives a good user experience.

One other note - you don't say, but if you aren't, you should create an image sitemap. There are a bunch of good WordPress plugins that can generate the XML for you. That's been a huge help for me.

I think mobilemoxie may not be generating 100% accurate results. When I searched for "ixl.com" on my Android phone, your brand came up #1.

As long as your web site isn't hosted inside the DMZ it shouldn't have any huge effect.

There is one way a DMZ can affect SEO: If you have lots of folks at your office, all using the same shared public IP via a DMZ or other forwarding, and you all use a tool like the SEO Toolbar, you could start seeing CAPTCHA warnings from Google.

Oh, and if you are hosting your site inside a DMZ and haven't tunneled/forwarded it to its own, separate public IP, you should.

I can't say exactly why, but it's an unnecessary level of complexity that just makes my eye twitch a little bit.

I think the update you're concerned about it Penguin, not Panda. Panda dealt with onsite and content issues. Penguin dealt with links.

But, if you have legitimate links of this kind, listen to Dana. You're fine.

I'd need to see the PHP redirect code. But in CURL it all looks OK.

Make 100% sure that your PHP code is set up with the lower case 'header' command, like this:

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.site.com"); ?>

Hope this helps.

No way. Google may care about DNS repoints, but that's something else entirely.

Google barely cares about shared IPs and 'bad neighborhoods' at this point - so I doubt the IP address matters. Plus, we have several clients using hardware load balancers that do exactly what you describe, and it doesn't hurt them.

My gut says put it on every page. From a local SEO standpoint that has to help, since it means more pages with location data on them.

I don't know any best practices though - I doubt there's a specific number of mentions that's better or worse.

On the contact us page itself, do what makes sense. To me, that means having the schema markup attached to both the footer and the 'main' address.

Because it does make sense, and it's not like you're shoehorning the content in there, you should be fine.

You're going to have to think very long term. Don't expect 1-2 weeks of work to do you any good at all.

Plan out a six-month content campaign, with topics, folks you want to contact about each new piece of content, etc.

At the same time, look to your onsite SEO. Make sure you're 100% within best practices.

This will take a sustained effort. The entire reason Google's doing things like Penguin is that they want sites to offer value to searchers. So make sure your site offers lots of value, in the form of content.

Oh, I'm concerned. But if you have spammy links incoming from other sites, you have to clean it up. Otherwise, eventually, you're going to get hit.

1. Compress images.
2. Clean up your HTML code, removing inline javascript and CSS blocks that are more than 5 lines to external .js and .css files.
3. Install caching for whatever platform your own - WordPress, etc.
4. Get your site up and running on a CDN. It's easy, and it makes a huge difference.
5. Turn on GZIP compression on your server or on the CDN.
6. Set up expires headers in the far future for 'static' files, so that browsers cache stuff.
7. Optimize the way your site (assuming it uses e-commerce or some kind of CMS) accesses the database. Preferably, use some form of disk caching.
8. Set up code caching, as well: Most languages have a way to cache compiled versions of the scripts executed on the site. For example, in php you can use the PHP accelerator.
9. Make sure the database and site are on separate servers.
10. Make sure you've got a good outgoing 'pipe'.

If you have a list of the linking pages from which your SEO firm requested removal (and you should) you can use ScreamingFrog to crawl that list, with a custom filter set to look for your URL. It'll spit back a list of pages that still have your links on them.

Hi Ausaf,

I wouldn't have the home page be the 404 page. Create a separate page. The odds of something getting mixed up are far too high.

Remove any links that are even remotely spammy. That includes all the links you have with 'classic radiator cabinets' as the link text - you're far too optimized to that term and Google's bound to pick up on it, if they haven't already.

Hi Joshua,

It looks like you're redirecting from the 'www' version to the non 'www' version. The 301 redirect is set up just fine.

2 things to check first:

• In Google Webmaster Tools, do you have the preferred domain set to the 'www' version? That might cause this confusion.
• In robots.txt, you're blocking Google Image Bot from crawling that folder. Once, I saw an instance where that screwed up Googlebot as well, and removing the disallow fixed the problem.

Ian

If you're going to redirect it, then take it down and set up a 301 redirect in its place. I may have misunderstood but that's what it sounded like you were planning to do.

Hi Alan,

First, a few things to consider:

1. Did your site actually get hit with a penalty? You talk about removing unnatural links. Was that just to be safe, or something else?
2. If your 1st site revision changed site urls and generated a lot of 404s, without proper redirection, you'd get the exact result you're describing.
3. Did you get new copy written for your 1st site revision? If so, and you didn't write it, take a few sentences from different pages and search for them, in quotes, on Google. Make sure they weren't plagiarized, because that would explain a drop in traffic, too.

All of that said, here's what I'd do:

1. **Definitely **work to improve engagement. Engagement is good for your business anyway, so even if it had zero effect on visits, you'd make existing visitors happier. And, Google at least rewards you because of the secondary effects of a great UX: More attention and citation, more positive reviews, fewer bounce backs, etc. And yes, there's some evidence Google rewards great UX, whether deliberately or as a side effect.

2. Look for lost links and repair them. Use OpenSiteExplorer and get the Top Pages report. Look for all pages that respond with a 404. Put those pages back (if you had that page before), build a page at that location (if you never had that page) or do a 301 redirect from the page URL to a 'real' page (the easiest fix).

3. Check site performance. Did site load speed take a huge hit with the new design?

4. Look at your log files. Go all the way back to before the 1st site relaunch. Compare Googlebot activity on your site from that period to now. What's changed? Is Googlebot getting trapped somewhere? Has crawl traffic dropped?

5. Finally, I wouldn't engage in old-fashioned link building. It's a terrible idea for a site with a low DA. If you want to acquire citations, you're going to have to do it by making customers really happy, offering great information and content, and generally offering a great experience.

I hope this helps. There's no easy answer here. You're going to need to take a very strategic approach, rather than focus on a single tactic, if you're going to make this work.

Ian