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Great idea there - thumbs up for you. We've launched new sites in the past where we've placed a 'holding site' on them for at least a few months prior to launch. My recommendations for this would be to not make it spammy and ensure the first few links are very high authority links (not directories, blog comments etc). But the idea above is far better than just a plain holding site. Go with that.

If your existing subdomain is ranking and earning well, it is a risk to move that to a new domain, because not all authority/history/etc. is transferred and you have to be very careful about not changing anything else and still have to hope that all works out as expected. Building links and authority to the new domain and then linking to the existing subdomain has basically no risk to your current business. Only problem is that you will have to create unique content and get new links, but at least there is no chance of hurting your existing rankings and the real possibility that after the 301 the subdomain is stronger. But the above is short term thinking, for long term it could very well be wiser to bite the bullet and 301 the old to the new. But that all depends on what you want for the future. ***** Extra info: In the past 8 months I have acquired 10 EMD and 301'd old domains to those new EMD's. 5 websites gained ranking, 3 more or less stayed the same and 2 disappeared to 200+, from top 10. All this was done to websites 4 years old with stable rankings for 2 years and no SEO/link building done for 2 years. So for me it really was what I felt the luck of the draw what happened with 301's. Later I found that it is not only luck, it also has to do with why the old website was ranking in the first place, content or links was most significant. This of course besides the fact that you should leave everything and I mean everything the same when 301'ing.

If you really would want to do something about it, I would say that you will be better off returning 404's, as it is less likely for those bad links to carry any (bad) weight if they point to non-existing pages then it is to establish a relationship between websites by 301'ing. This assumes that you will 301 the old pages to a website not owned by you, as I don't think you would want bad links to one of your other websites. And because if you 301 the old pages to a domain not owned by you, in effect you are establishing a relationship with a total stranger who may do any number of bad things on its own, which in effect could harm you later. But if it was up to me, I wouldn't do anything about those bad links. Just try to get new links of better quality and they will very soon outweigh the bad ones. Also, it is quite natural for any kind of website to have low quality links, so IMHO there really is no need to do anything about those old ones, just build better new ones.

Logos are usually Trademarked and do require permission to use. Most sites, won't mind you posting their logo (free advertisement) but they will likely check your site / validity. Recently, I had to ask Sony Online Entertainment to use their logo, they said no problem. That said, I have seen hundreds of sites post logos for all sorts off stuff they are no way affiliated to or with. Depending on your market it you may have also noticed this. I say that to say, personally a logo means nothing to me when I evaluate whether or not I want to trust said site. I have nothing to add about the Panda question, but I hope that helps with the first question.

There's actually about 20 categories that would ideally have a new slug and the number of posts in each category varies between about 10 in each to around 50. Is there a limit on the number of posts in a category before we start running into issues?

A thumbs up for Martin! I'd do what he suggests Christian and get rid of the footer links and replace them with a link from a relevant page, preferably within the body content. There may already be a relevant page on the site that can pass a little authority, but if not follows Martin's advice again and get writing! Enjoy the weekend guys! Lee.

Some browsers might hide the www and htttp part from the url . Just to make sure pop your sites url in there ( http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php ) and see if there is a redirect. Rel canonical : does NOT redirect the pages .. its just there for search engine bots. Think of it this way You would want to use rel canonical where you need to show the duplicate pages for users .. eg : on a shopping website sort by A-Z , by Price , Z-A, etc could all display the same things in different order BUT users benefits from having those so use a rel canonical there to tell the spider its all the same version of your " original page " . There is no redirects here users can see all the multiple versions of the page. If they are redirected what is the use of sorting those results ? I would also like to know why OSE does that ( some one from the staff could possibly answer that ) In regards to your question : Should my non WWW be redirecting to my WWW ? You should only allow one version it can either be non WWW or WWW. In your case stick with the one that has more authority and do a 301 redirect for the other one. In regards to your question : Why am I getting two different domain authority and backlink counts ? For Google  www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com are 2 different sites on the same domain. Hope that made things more clear for you

Glad you sorted it out.Thumbs up for posting your solution here

Try this - http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ Another great free tool is the Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Hope this helps!

Thank you so much, that is a great help!

Thanks Brett - we'll do that

This could turn into merely a debate of opinion. For example, in my opinion, multiple pages are more user-friendly. My advice would be to find some research data that indicates which format is more preferred by the majority of users and do it that way. User experience before search engines always.

I don't know a lot about Joomla but I'm thinking the rel="canonical" will do it. Give it a try. It certainly won't mess anything up. It's a good practice to have those tags in place regardless.

I don't recall why, but I don't think you can use a full (absolute) path for the first part of a "Redirect 301" statement Could you try just: "Redirect 301 /index.html http://www.abc.com" Typically, the rewrite command (with flag of "R=301") is much more flexible. The "Redirect 301" syntax has some limitations - it's easier to use, but it only covers a few, simple situations.

Sorry for the short response I was eating lunch. But now down to busnazzz. Which site do you want the rank when you search? When you do a nofollow I believe the site is still indexed just not fully, meaning it won't grab the meta data. But I searched both your adword and adcenter pages and they don't come up in my SERP. When I google the organic site, it comes up with all the right links to your site. So for now I don't see a problem, it might be your cookies/cache or logins. Use another browser. The only time i see the ...../oxygen is within the AdWords section.

Depends on what type of sites those "not so great sites" are.  If they are viewed as spammy, no they won't help.

I suggest using that. Would give you better rankings for that topic and then some juice can go to your threads.

Thank you for the tips and encouragement! I feel a lot more confident about this project now, but if you could address one final question, I am still a little concerned about transfer of domain authority since one of the microsites gets top listings and nearly rivals the main site. I realize domain authorities will by no means be combined, but I'm hoping the new inside pages don't lose so much page authority that they drop in the serps and, more importantly, that a significant impact can be made to the domain authority of the main site. Basically, the main site is optimized and listing for our most valuable keywords and I'm hoping that the transfer of the microsite pages can provide a boost at the domain level. Any insight would be much appreciated!