When I do a search on Google why are videos showing up on page 1 now, and more importantly why isn't my YouTube video showing up? Is there some way to improve my chances of being found on YouTube and Google for videos I upload?

I have a wordpress blog that was using categories in the url structure like this:

/category_name/post_name/

Then I had read somewhere that if you change it to just /post_name/ that it will automatically redirect the old to the new.

It does that, however, somehow Google Webmaster Tools is reporting both and giving us warnings about duplicate title tags, etc.

Do you have a solution for that?

We changed our website recently and also changed the menus on it so some of our pages have a different path now. For about 2-3 weeks after the switch we noticed our Google Analytics fell off, then we checked mypagerank.net and out page ranks had gone from 3, 4, or 5 to 0 on some of the pages. Our web designer is being somewhat cryptic about why this happened. Can you explain what would cause this and if our page rank will go back up or do we need to do something?

Thanks for your earlier blog entry about how to verify my account with Google Webmaster Tools! Now I want to add an additional site to my Webmaster Tools account. Can you step me through that, please?

My online business has recently started receiving unsolicited orders from clients in a couple of foreign countries, so I've decided to create translated websites for each of those countries to see what the demand is like. The problem is, I'm not sure exactly how I should optimize these sites properly so they'll rank in the foreign language search engines, especially since I don't speak either language! Any advice?

Did you ever notice how when you do certain types of searches on Google that the results include cool and useful things above and beyond just pages that match? The one I use a lot is math equations. Try it by searching for "(300*0.75)/2" or similar. Neat, eh?

Turns out that not only does Google have quite a few of those tricks up its proverbial sleeve (try searching for a FedEx tracking number or movie title) but it turns out that those customized search results are part of a program Google calls "Subscribed Links"...

I write for other sites and a friend told me that I should use article spinning software so that I can have a bunch of versions to distribute, rather than write on a one-by-one basis. Sounds interesting, but what is it?

I have a question about back links. How do you get relavent back links without getting on link farms? I have been using twitter for a while and just started facebook. I was told to get a tinyurl and add a small fishing report on twitter and it would count as a backlink? I have written 5 articles on ezine but find that time consuming and did not help much.

I can't seem to get a straight answer when it comes to how a site is coded/built and the affects that this has on SEO. After having taken a few web courses (design to SEO related courses) it seems to me that the "best practice" with regard to building a site that is search engine "friendly" is with CSS, utilizing as few tables as possible. I've been told by numerous instructors that tables can adversely affect SEO rankings and they don't recommend constructing with tables (they consider this an outdated approach).

However, I work with a couple of web developers that swear this isn't true and refuse to move away from building sites with tables. Can you solve this mystery for me once and for all? And, if CSS is the way to go, should I go to the expense of having sites developed with tables converted to CSS in order to improve SEO??

I've been using Movable Type almost as long as you have, Dave, and just noticed that the way you name your blog entry archives is pretty different to how Movable Type 4 does it by default. I'm setting up a new blog for my sister and would like to see if I can mirror your archive filename format. My question is: how do you change the template file naming scheme in MT4?

What can I do to improve the placement of my photographs and graphics in Google Image Search?

I am talking to a search engine marketing company that guarantees I will be placed in the top 3 sponsored positions on search engines. This sounds like a pretty good deal -- should I go for it?

Hi Dave. I'm working on some publicity for my little company and have just learned about the importance of search engine optimization. My Mom tells me, however, that visibility comes through press releases, but I have a sense she's hopelessly old school. What's your take on this?

I've been learning about how to write Web pages with HTML and recently had a friend ask me if I was paying attention to sculpting pagerank once my site went online. I have no idea what that means. Help!

I have been diligently applying all the search engine optimization techniques you talk about, Dave, but I'm still unclear on one key technique: how do I have more people link to me?

I've been talking to various people about improving my Web site and they keep talking about SEO. I've figured out that SEO = Search Engine Optimization, but I don't really understand what it means to improve my site on a search engine?

Hi Dave. I've been trying to build an online business for almost a year now and still don't seem to earn more than pocket change each month. I've tried various approaches, from a drop-shipping e-commerce store to an information-based site with advertising to a course on search engine optimization. None of 'em have worked. So, tell me honestly, how do I really make money online?

Dave, I have a client who is considering using Kontera to insert keyword ad links. Our recommendation to them was to create internal linking, not keyword ads in the text. I remember you discussing removing the keyword ads. Was there a reason for this in regards to SERPs, or was that purely due to expert credibility?

I keep thinking that Google would hide this, but is there any way to figure out the last time that the Google search engine spider (Googlebot) visited a specific Web page? That'd be particularly useful for competitive research...

This is a rather geeky SEO question, but I have heard that Google considers internal site links as relevant as external links and that it's smart to "nofollow" links that go to pages you don't want or need ranked in the search engine. Is that true? More importantly, is it safe?