I have had the exact same question. I work primarily with franchise companies that have multiple locations that offer the same services, so this question has been on my mind for a while.

I currently use the same photos for the most part on each of the franchise location's G+ listings, Yelp, CitySearch, etc., without changing the image file names. I have been doing it this way for years and haven't ever seen a negative impact, but would be curious to know if there is potential upside to using unique file names for each image in each location.

Would love to hear what others' opinions are on this topic.

I have read a lot about how it is important to keep URLs as short as possible, but I have also seen first-hand how longer, descriptive URLs have performed really well.

You'll probably get different answers from different people, and I don't know that either is right or wrong. In my opinion the longer URL would be more beneficial, assuming that trail of URLs isn't going to continue on and get too long - /anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses/red/bouquet - you get the idea.

My reasoning behind going with the longer URL structure is because you get the benefit of having both potential keyword search terms, anniversary flowers & dozen roses, in the page URL. Hope that helps!

Dana - thanks for the response! That is very helpful. We're going through the site now to make sure that none of the site's pages are still linking to or calling those deleted images, so I'm sure that will help as well.

Do you think it is worth replacing any of those images with another image that has the exact same URL, or just deleting the links and html for them if/when we do find references to them on the site?

We're working with a site that has gone through a lot of changes over the years - ownership, complete site redesigns, different platforms, etc. - and we are finding that there are both a lot of pages and individual images that are returning 404 error codes in the Moz crawls. We're doing 301 redirects for the pages, but what would the best course of action be for the images? The images obviously don't exist on the site anymore and are therefore returning the 404 error codes.

Should we do a 301 redirect to another similar image that is on the site now or redirect the images to an actual page? Or is there another solution that I'm not considering (besides doing nothing)?

We'll go through the site to make sure that there aren't any pages within the site that are still linking to those images, which is probably where the 404 errors are coming from. Based on feedback below it sounds like once we do that, leaving them alone is a good option.

I've been doing SEO for a little over 4 years. I've never used sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, etc. either personally or on behalf of my clients. This past week I had a discussion with another SEO who asked what I'm doing for my clients with regard to social bookmarking. I responded that I'm really not doing anything and they were shocked. I took a pretty good verbal beating over it. She was borderline offended.

I have always been able to deliver solid results for my clients without any type of social bookmarking, so I struggle to see the need, but am surprised at how shocked this other SEO was that I don't do it. How beneficial is it and am I really missing out?

Tim,

I'm glad you raised that issue. I'm in a very similar situation to you and have had the same question. I have also had calls from random companies that saw my business name in the footer of a site and ended up calling for info. I would hate to have missed out on those new clients, or at the very least the branding opportunity, by not having the footer links on my clients' sites.

In my opinion I think you're spot-on with the no-follow option. I haven't implemented that yet, but will likely put that on the to-do list.

I have had the exact same question. I work primarily with franchise companies that have multiple locations that offer the same services, so this question has been on my mind for a while.

I currently use the same photos for the most part on each of the franchise location's G+ listings, Yelp, CitySearch, etc., without changing the image file names. I have been doing it this way for years and haven't ever seen a negative impact, but would be curious to know if there is potential upside to using unique file names for each image in each location.

Would love to hear what others' opinions are on this topic.

I have read a lot about how it is important to keep URLs as short as possible, but I have also seen first-hand how longer, descriptive URLs have performed really well.

You'll probably get different answers from different people, and I don't know that either is right or wrong. In my opinion the longer URL would be more beneficial, assuming that trail of URLs isn't going to continue on and get too long - /anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses/red/bouquet - you get the idea.

My reasoning behind going with the longer URL structure is because you get the benefit of having both potential keyword search terms, anniversary flowers & dozen roses, in the page URL. Hope that helps!