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Hello!

1. I'll quote Matt Cutts on this "...just make sure that you have the words that you want to have on the page, make sure that they read naturally and you should be in pretty good shape." So, this tells us that there are no precise rules to stick to, only rough guidelines.

However, it's still better to have more than 100 words per page, especially on content pages (e.g. about page, features, blog posts, etc.), where it is wise to have a minimum of 300 words, but remember, only if it makes sense.

Here's a video by Matt Cutts on this topic...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk4qgQdp2UA

2. Yes, search engines do ignore certain words, these are so-called "stop-words."

You can read about them here...

http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-stop-words.html

30% is quite a big drop, but e-commerce sites are more vulnerable to such fluctuations. Obviously, if it stays this way, then it wasn't a fluctuation. Also, yes, they do inform you of issues with duplicate content.

Here's a post on link penalties...

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012

Apparently, you need to submit your site as a news source to them.

http://help.yahoo.com/l/sg/yahoo/news_global/submitsource.html?from_url=&last_url=

In-house for my own sites and freelance for local firms.

Hey,

I think Squidoo would be the better choice, because of the community and easy of use. I don't think the user-base of HubPages will be very receptive to any promotional efforts from you, because that's simply not their thing. HubPages is more formal and professional, whereas Squidoo is the opposite and thus, in my opinion, would be a better choice for you.

Here's an example of a relevant Squidoo lens...

http://www.squidoo.com/bubble-guppies-toys-dolls-and-figures

Cheers,

Marko

It's important to keep in mind that you can't host (certain) videos intended for commercial use on Vimeo, unless you get the PRO membership for ca. $200 a year and it complies with the PRO guidelines.

You can read all about it here:

https://vimeo.com/help/guidelines

Just keep it as it is, the change isn't worth the decrease in usability. Plus, things like this usually don't have any significant impact on SEO. However, you should really work on improving the homepage, it's too cluttered and doesn't look very good either.

I recommend that you take the time to regularly read about the developments in SEO, otherwise you'll be months behind, as you currently are.

Use common sense rather than metrics to decide which links will be good for you. If it's not relevant and from a credible source, then there's little use.

Here's a great video from Wil Reynolds about good link-building strategies...

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/2012-mozcon-videos-are-here

It's generally recommended to have your blog on your own domain, you can do this easily by installing WordPress into a "/blog" directory on your website, which would result in something like this...

www.website.com/blog/

No, because Google isn't that stupid about stop-words, they're special for a reason. Google knows that when you search for "builders manchester" you actually are looking for builders IN manchester and not the dude that snagged the exact-match domain (e.g. "www.manchesterbuilders.co.uk" -- in most meaningful cases).

However, it's possible to have something like "manchester builders" on your page and rank high for "builders manchester" -- understanding how people search can be very profitable.

I hope this clarifies everything... if not, SEOmoz has some great blog posts about keyword research.

Well, if something's wonky, you will receive an internal notification (in Google Webmaster Tools). If you want to receive email notifications, you can enable that in the settings and you can choose to receive all kinds of notifications or only critical ones.

It's under settings in the left navigation menu. It's pretty easy to set-up.

You're welcome!