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I guess in order to transfer the link juice of one particular page to another particular page page level redirect is a good idea! redirecting images URL is not really a good idea unless you have insanely great links on your image URL page and you really want to transfer the URLs link juice to the same image on other website (not really a case of the real world!) If Link Juice is something you don't care about, go for a domain level redirect as i am getting a feeling that both website have similar structure and if you want to properly transfer the link juice from one URL to the similar URl of another website, try page level redirect! Remember, Try to reduce the number of 301 redirection as this might increase the page load time which has a negative impact on SERP rankings.

hi, just looking into why one of the authors has all the content going there, very strange and very bad for my rankings. for some reason it seems the person who upgraded the site has got all the content going onto author pages, never had this before so i need to get to the bottom of this

thank you for that, great advice. I have had to do a lot of work since the upgrade with getting the site back to normal so all this help is great.

Hi Paul If you're using the disavow tool, you can file a reconsideration request at the same time you submit the disavow file.  There's no need to wait there.  Not only will the manual reviewer spot the file in there, it will take a few days for someone to even start processing the manual reconsideration, so the disavow file will definitely have been processed by then.

I read it already. Thanks a lot for your help, I will look at it again and see if I can find  a solution. Cheers Oscar

Thanks very much for your help!

if you think you think you can add more to the topic, then just update it. If the content is very good and has been driving consistent traffic for a long time, i would make it to a static page (same permalinks) then make sure it's very visible throughout the site.

Gail, That makes sense.  I looked again and the developer did add a custom plug in for the web site as a whole.  My guess is that he went in and fixed this problem with this custom plug in and that is why it works.  I would ask him for more detail but he is off line for a week in the backwoods of Montana. If this is not resolved before the 28th ping me and I will ask him for more detail. These are both solid plug ins. It is crazy they do not work together natively.

I think you will find that the URL´s in Google´s index are either: indexed prior to putting in the robots.txt disallow in place - check in the google serp and click on "in cache" to see the date. Heavily linked to by other external domains. Both of the above. @cleverphd has a great solution. Follow that.

Hi Antoine, Since this is a really big project, you may want to consider outsourcing it.  The biggest part of the project is creating a database (or spreadsheet) of all the old page URLs and their new corresponding page URLs.  That work doesn't require much skill.  So, you may be able to save tons of time hiring a contractor through odesk (or some other site) and it wouldn't have to cost a lot. Kurt Steinbrueck OurChurch.Com

I don't think your javascript usage is helping you. I am not sure as to why you would nofollow something you sought to improve for SEO. As to speed, you have more issues than your provider's server. Download Google Insights and run the page speed tool. You will see what I mean. Best,

Authority or No of pages or all other factors are secondary. What is more important is assessment of our goals. Why do our website exist? How rich content we are building? Are we sounding like subject matter expert? Answers for these questions are more important than one page or many page?  Page rank, Page authority, Domain Authority these all are metrics as far as we are thinking about google ranking. Ultimately one page or many pages we are building website for human being. First purpose and then analysis. Reverse is not possible. SAMEER

It seems the general consensus is to launch the "good enough" site without blocking Google, and to fix the SEO issues as soon as possible. However, I'd say that it really all depends on what those SEO issues are. For example, if you think you're going to be releasing thousands of non-canonical URLs into the SERPs without using any "fixes" it could be a long time before you get those out of the index once they're "fixed", especially on a new site with no deep external links. If waiting a couple of weeks before allowing the site to be indexed could save me from having to do thousands of individual redirects (as in those not handled easily by regular expressions), and could keep my site from launching with thousands of pages of thin and near duplicate content (why not start off in Google's good graces? Why start off on the wrong foot?) I would seriously consider blocking everything but the home page in the robots.txt file. You would want the home page to be indexed no matter what because the launch will likely coincide with lots of press, advertising, etc... and people will be searching for your domain and/or brand. This would allow the "domain" to be indexed, which would take care of the date of indexation ranking factor discussed above (though in the grand scheme of things a few weeks is not going to matter), and would allow you to show up for a large proportion of searches (i.e. brand and navigational queries) since you would be unlikely to rank for many big non-brand searches out of the box anyway. Then again, if you are just concerned with some small SEO issues, such as adding alt attributes or improving internal linking, I'd go ahead and launch.

I tried many different htaccess file codings (such as recommended here), but they didn't work. Had to succumb to using the outdated Meta Robots plugin by Yoast, which can add the "noindex" code to the http header of /feed/ URLs. But, at least it's a solution: http://wordpress.org/plugins/robots-meta/. Hopefully this helps someone else.

Just found this today and after a year and a few months it is still helpful, thanks Dr Pete!

Glad it was helpful! If you are going to have a true blog then that is enough in order to segment it out. Having the date in there can be helpful to compare the hits you are getting to old blogs vs newer blogs (i.e. how long your content is staying relevant). If you are going to have other types of content such as shopping guides / product comparisons / etc that are more "timeless" pieces of content then you might want to think about the kinds of articles you are going to write and create prefixes that match those types of articles. You could definitely do product guides and product comparisons in a blog but it can be harder to segment out if it is just "blog". Hope that helps. Cheers!

Thanks Highland, none of the original URLs have inbound links. I agree it would be better to have a 301 so thanks for the fix. Though I still think it would be even better to get some content on the original URLs and do away with the need for any redirect, but from what you say perhaps keep the 'About' pages too so nothing is moved? The About pages contain copy that describes what the client does in that area, but only after the general 'about' info. This copy could be moved to the original URL to better sell the service they offer. Then the About page really is just extra information for those who want it. Thanks again.

Hi Rachel, If you're planning to put an About Us description with relevant links, with the aim of driving visitors to your product pages, I would recommend you putting it somewhere above the fold instead of putting it in the footer. The footer is the last thing the user will see when visiting your website, and is probably a better place to put links which are less important. An exception to this I can think of is if you are running a blog where the latest posts play a more important role. In that case, putting an About Us description in the footer (e.g. Copyblogger) will be wise.

Some help please?

I think the same