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Hi Dan,

Yes, for sure. Assuming that the content of the news pages is unique and valuable.

Having same title gives Google Bot mixed signals which has side effects. Check this post by Rand, I think you'll understand everything:

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization

Hello,

It could be penguin 2.0 update on May 22. This update had more focus on local search results from what I understood. You could do some timing checks using http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change . First look in Analytics when the traffic dropped, then see if there was an algorithmic update in that proximity.

There could also be other reasons like loss of some important links.

Hi Michael, very good question.

For some unknown reason the contact and report pages for Google Plus are not easy to find. I had some friends who wanted to contact them as well and, after long hours of search they came up with this email:

profiles-support@google.com

They basically saw it in some discussions posted by people on the web.

I think you should give it a try and report them, you got nothing to loose!

Yes. If your website has clear and interesting titles, more people will click on them (as compared to same repeating brand stuff). So, as more people engage with your website, the chance that they talk about your website or link to it increases.

So, this is an additional bonus you get besides the bonus you got when Google Bot understood your content better.

Hi  Bongani,

Here are some extra resources that could help you understand better what happens when you do layout / website changes. This is a video by Matt Cutts posted a wile ago, it also includes some other things but it also mentions things related to the layout:

Will changing the code and layout of my pages while moving to new URLs affect their rankings?

Also, besides what EGOL said I would also add another thing:

8. Be very careful about the Wordpress theme you are going to use. It's a good thing you already mentioned that you want it high quality. Just to be sure - I would check for any embeded / hidden links. I had some unpleasent experiences even with "high quality ones".