I've seen this problem rear its ugly head in a number of instances that cause various, interesting problems. For example, there are two major Audio Video brands: Allen & Heath and K & M Stands that both feature ampersands in their branding. The problem we've had with it is from a database perspective. Ampersands just cause all kinds of problems. Still, these brands have been around a long time.

Think "M&Ms" - no one really searches "M and M" [unless it's "Eminem" ]  - So, I think it's a matter of choosing one for branding purposes and sticking to it. In your case, with a law firm, searchers are really searching proper names (I'm thinking). So if I were to search for a string of last names, I might be more likely to use "and" instead of "&" - Until the "&" becomes part of the branding, I think Google is probably going to defer to the "and" version. Even if the law firm was huge, I'm not sure it would ever reach that level of brand recognition. Some successful brands with ampersands [Just for fun!]:

H&M, A&W Rootbeer, A&P Grocers, Proctor & Gamble, B&H Photo, Bang & Olufson, AT&T, Ben&Jerry's, Arm&Hammer, Boys&Girls Clubs of America, A&M Records, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Johnson & Johnson, H&R Block, Ernst&Young, Fod&Wine, Black&Decker

(Thanks to Sporcle, but they left M&Ms off their list! How can that be?) Thanks for the fun question

Hi! I thought I recognized this thread Yes, I am the culprit of the "hub page" suggestion.

I call a page a "hub page" if it functions like the center of a wheel with a bunch of spokes attached to it. Okay, so for example, you have a store selling sweaters. All of your seaters have a specific part number based on size, color and style. You have some choices. You could create a separate page for every part number. However, this quickly becomes a daunting task for you, and an impossible site to navigate for your customers because you could have 200 separate product pages all for the same sweater, with the only difference being size and color.

Instead, you could create a "parent" page that is just for this one particular style of sweater. You create "children" pages for all the possible sizes and colors. You then allow your customer to select size and color either via dropdown menus, charts or whatever seems best for a particular product. You set all these product pages as either "children" of the parent product or attach their part number to specific options, so that when that option is chosen that part number goes in the cart. The customer never actually sees an individual product page for that color and size of sweater, it simply exists in the back end as a means of allowing your customer to pick specific items from your inventory.

So, you see, because you created (technically) separate product pages, you technically have a whole bunch of URLs but all circling around or connected to the parent page. The individual part number "pages" are like spokes on a wheel connected to a parent "hub" page.

Now, all that being said...a hub page on a content site can follow the same principle, however for completely different reasons. This even happens in e-commerce. For example, say you sell clothing. On your site, you also have size charts. From every clothing page you link to your size chart page. In that case your size chart page becomes a "hub." Hub pages tend to outrank other pages because you are pointing to them with lots of your pages, indicating to both visitors and search engines that they are somehow especially significant.

So, on the one hand a hub page can be used for online merchandising, on the other it can be used as an important reference point for visitors. The simplest version of a hub page would probably be a main category page on a Website.

This is really my own viewpoint. I have had extremely good results ranking well for hub pages. I am interested to know what others think and how they explain the concept.

Hi Kenji, First and foremost, congrats on getting the interview!

As far as link building for a larger company, the first thing I would tell them is that you want to do a complete audit of existing inbound links, you versus competitors. From this, you will be able to identify some missed opportunities (i.e. low-hanging fruit that you could immediately harvest). You'll also be able to identify opportunities based on who's linking to competitors. For example, we had a competitor who had an inbound link from Columbia University. When I researched the link I found out it was from a professor who linked to our competitor (and several others) as a resource for his students. My company really belonged on that list. I wrote to the professor and told him that I thought we would make a good addition to his resource list and, simple as that, he added us and we got and inbound link from Columbia University.

In your interview, I would say that you will make an organized effort to be connected to the activities being performed by other departments that might result in linking opportunities. An example might be, if a department is reaching out into the community and mentoring a group of students, reaching out to them and asking when and where their work might be published online and just politely request an link back as a courtesy...They will say yes.  The same goes for charity involvement. A company of 5,000 employees without question probably does a whole lot of #RCS. Find out where they are involved in the community and look for possible linking opportunities (i.e. donor pages on charity websites).

I bet you will cover so many existing "missed" opportunities that you'll be busy for a long time chasing them all down.

I hope this helps and GOOD LUCK!

Dana

If you haven't seen it already, watch his full MozCon 2012 video here for free: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/2012-mozcon-videos-are-here  It's the second big image link on the page. It's priceless.

Fun idea Jesse...although to be perfectly modern SEOs shouldn't we call it #possem ?

I understand why blog comments might be "nofollow" - because it preserves the page authority of the post. However, I don't understand why one would want to "noindex" blog comments. It seems to me that all that UGC, if indexed, would just make the page it resides on far more valuable.

Is my view of that skewed? Am I missing something? Thanks! (and sorry to answer your question with a question)

If it were me I would nofollow the comments but index the content of the comments.

I know that the number of 301-redirects can sometimes raise concerns about site speed. However, 1,000 is really not that many. Large e-commerce sites can have 10,000 301s, or even more. Depending on how the 301 files is handled even this large number can be handled in ways that have very little impact on site speed or page load times.

I think the number in your vase is nothing to worry about.

I do think that deleting and 301 redirects is the best way to go for anything that's remotely relevant. For those that aren't, create a custom 404 page and let them 404. Eventually they will drop out of the index. If they don't, you could still file a remove URL request in Google Webmaster Tools.

Hope this helps and good luck!

I agree with Jesse for the most part. I think the key is: what kind of content we are talking about? Adding tons of low-value, thin content pages to a site all at once (or even gradually) is probably going to diminish the authority of existing content. I do think that adding thousands of pages that have no page authority to a site that contains pages with a decent amount of authority could, theoretically, dilute the authority of the existing pages depending on site architecture, internal linking and the ratio of existing pages versus new pages. However, I would expect this to be only temporary, and if the new content is great quality, should be nothing to worry about long term.