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Based on what I've read, it seems like everyone agrees an IP-based, server side redirect is fine for SEO if you have content that is "geo" in nature. What I don't understand is how to actually do this. It seems like after a bit of research there are 3 options: You can do a 301 which it seems like most sites do, but that basically means if google crawls you in different US areas (which it may or may not) it essentially thinks you have multiple homepages. Does google only crawl from SF-based IPs? 302 passes no juice, so probably don't want to do that. Yelp does a 303 redirect, which it seems like nobody else does, but Yelp is obviously very SEO-savvy. Is this perhaps a better way that solves for the above issues? Thoughts on what is best approach here?

Should I have the conical link state: 1. www.autoinsurancefremontca.com 2. www.autoinsurancefremontca.com/index.html 3. autoinsurancefremontca.com Also do you need a conical link on each page if you have more than one page on your site?

We're working hard on improving our website right now, and would love to get the community's examples of the best eCommerce sites out there, from an SEO and a general customer-centric design perspective...

My website is related to education. We have created sub domains for all major colleges, universities & Entrance exams like Gre, Toefl ETC. for eg:  amityuniversity.abc.com (Amity is Name of University ) Now if have to mention city name in URL as well (college is located in multiple locations) amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com Now my Q is can we use hyphens in sub domains if we have to add city name or shall we create without using any  hyphens. In Directory  structure we can always separate words with hyphens, can we follow same practice in subdomain as well Which is a  best URL for subdomain amity-university-delhi.abc.com
amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
or amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com

Canonical urls stop self competition - from duplicate content. So instead of a 2 pages with a rank of 5 out of 10, it is one page with a rank of 7 out of 10.
However what disadvantages come from using canonical urls. For example am I excluding some products like green widet, blue widget. I have a customer with 2 e-commerce websites(selling different manufacturers of a type jewellery). Both websites have massive duplicate content issues.
It is a hosted CMS system with very little SEO functionality, no plugins etc. The crawling report- comes back with 1000 of pages that are duplicates. It seems that almost every page on the website has a duplicate partner or more. The problem starts in that they have 2 categorys for each product type, instead of one category for each product type.
A wholesale category and a small pack category. So I have considered using a canonical url or de-optimizing the small pack category as I believe it receives less traffic than the whole category. On the original website I tried de- optimizing one of the pages that gets less traffic. I did this by changing the order of the meta title(keyword at the back, not front- by using small to start of with). I also removed content from the page. This helped a bit. Or I was thinking about just using a canonical url on the page that gets less traffic.
However what are the implications of this? What happens if some one searches for "small packs" of the product- will this no longer be indexed as a page. The next problem I have is the other 1000s of pages that are showing as duplicates. These are all the different products within the categories. The CMS does not have a front office that allows for canonical urls to be inserted. Instead it would have to be done going into the html of the pages. This would take ages. Another issue is that these product pages are not actually duplicate, but I think it is because they have such little content- that the rodger(seo moz crawler, and probably googles one too) cant tell the difference.
Also even if I did use the canonical url - what happened if people searched for the product by attributes(the variations of each product type)- like blue widget, black widget, brown widget. Would these all be excluded from Googles index.
On the one hand I want to get rid of the duplicate content, but I also want to have these pages included in the search. Perhaps I am taking too idealistic approach- trying to optimize a website for too many keywords. Should I just focus on the category keywords, and forget about product variations. Perhaps I look into Google Analytics, to determine the top landing pages, and which ones should be applied with a canonical. Also this website(hosted CMS) seems to have more duplicate content issues than I have seen with other e-commerce sites that I have applied SEO MOZ to On final related question. The first website has 2 landing pages- I think this is a techical issue. For example  www.test.com and www.test.com/index. I realise I should use a canonical url on the page that gets less traffic. How do I determine this? (or should I just use the SEO MOZ Page rank tool?)

We installed a WP blog on a website and the below result is just an example. All of them lead to the same content. What's the best way to resolve it? http://www.calmu.edu/blog/
http://www.calmu.edu/blog/calmu-business-spotlight-veev/
http://www.calmu.edu/blog/category/business-buzz/

Hello, I'm having a little bit of a conundrum, and I'm hoping someone will be able to help! We have an ecommerce site, and were trying to figure out what is the most SEO friendly way to handle product titles.  With our ecommerce software, it currently sets the Product title as the H1 tag (which could be changed if needed).  In addition, the product title is what is used as anchor text for any built in links that the ecommerce software builds from the category pages, etc (just like any other ecommerce site).  Here's where I'm stuck.  I'm trying to determine if it makes sense to use the specific keyword we are aiming for as the product title, or to put variations of the title that would be more descriptive.  Here is an example: We have a Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes.  According to all accounts, the best keyword to attack for this would be "dorothy shoes".  However, it loses the more accurate description of "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girl Shoes".  But, my thinking is that the H1 tag and anchor text would make more sense to use the term "Dorothy Shoes". The title tag could go something like this: "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes | Dorothy Shoes" In a situation like this, what do you think would be the "best" way to handle the title tag, product name, H1 tag, and anchor text?  I'm sure there will be many different opinions, so I would like to hear what you think is best - and why.

How do others utilize keywords and preserve branding in the title tag for clients with a REALLY long name?  Two examples. Example 1:  Business name is 38 characters long in the following format: [Firstname] [initial] [Lastname] [Businesstype] Services 38 characters is workable, but  the keywords for what he offers and this industry in general are long too.  He abbreviates to his initials in the domain name  - I don't love doing that as the acronym has a meaning of its own. (We unintentionally acquired at least one very amusing if useless backlink thanks to that.)  Leaving off "Services" saves a few characters. Example 2:  Business name totals 58 characters and references their two related lines of business.  Similar to: Rogers Institute of Robotic Studies and RIRS Robot Repair
or (saves a few characters)
Rogers Institute of Robotic Studies and Robot Repair How would you handle that?  Use the appropriate half of the name on pages related to that particular LOB? Only use the brand on some pages?  Abbreviate more?  I've been using their full name on the more "general" pages of the site and omitting it in favor of keywords on the more specific pages . Suggestions?  Other ideas?