Cheers for the replies people. There are some points which I will be acting on straight away, some points I don't agree with.
The entire commercial section is blocked from Google so that section of the site should be completely regarded. I did this so I didn't end up with 2 pages targeting the same keyword and there were also some duplicate pages so the easiest option was to block the whole section, rather than re-writing a lot of content. The duplicate content issue with the two pages Palindrome mentioned will be sorted out pronto.
The www vs no-www thing is an issue but as the site is hosted on shared windows hosting without ISAPI we have no option but to live with this (were in the process of sorting out a new host provider). I have made sure that all internal links avoid any canonicalisation issues and we are trying to police the external links to do the same.
I really have no faith in the hidden text argument. How can i change white text on navy to anything less hidden?
There are no links going to these partner sites and they are purely sites which re-sellers refer customers to. They do not need to rank or even be in the index so when they are removed my clients main site will be the only copy of that content in the index. The question is... has the fact that these sites HAVE been indexed, even though they came along at a later date, effected the main site? If it has then we have all found a way to destroy the competition!
A lot of the tips are standard
SEO tips about the alt tags, titles etc but why would that have any influence on the site being in the top pages and then being completely removed from the results for those phrases?
With regards to the sandbox. I am not 100% on my opinioin of it but from my experience the more competitive a site is the less likely it will rank in its early days. You can get a site to rank within 24 hours if you target very low compeition keywords. @SnerdeyWebs - what keywords did the flash site rank for?
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Disappeared where? Search results of this type are localized. Make sure Google knows the firm is in the UK if that is what you want (you can tell them at Webmaster central).
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What do you mean localised? This is a national company and a .co.uk so GWT decided it was UK orientated on it's own.
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Make sure each and every page links back to the main page with the keywords in the anchor text. I didn't see that. "Home" is not your keyword, so why use it as anchor text? SE Spiders are very dumb and mechanical.
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I agree but try explaining to a client that the "home" link should be changed to heat pumps. It doesnt make sense to the user or the client.
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The page isn't returned, two others are, including the root, which is unreferenced in the site itself, not surprising the pages are in non typical order.
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Not sure what you mean here? The root is unreferenced? The root is 301d to the residential home page. Im thinking i might try moving that page to the root/index position and ditching the 301?
Thanks again.