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thanks for pointing that out

thanks for the info.

Hi Jessi, If I had to pick one of the 3 options, I'd chose the first, simply because it's the shortest. 1. In general, out of all ranking correlations we know of, longer URLs tend to rank slightly lower than shorter ones. It's not a hugely significant factor, but neither is keyword usage in the URL, as recent correlation data has also shown. 2. Many webmasters believe that URLs without numbers tend to receive a higher CTR than URLs with numbers. That's because our eyes tend to glaze over numbers, and they have an auto-generated look and feel to them. Personally, if numbers are necessary, I'd put them as close to the end as possible. 3. Along the same lines, there is some belief in the SEO world that a shorter directory structure (fewer folders and backslashes) tend to perform better in search, as this creates a virtual flat architecture for Google to crawl. That said, the benefit from this is most likely small in relation to other factors. Just my 2 cents. Hope this helps!

If they aren't in the same industry then doing a 301 redirect might make sense if you create a landing page reintroducing yourself to past clients and people who formally did business with you. So in this case the 301 redirect wouldn't be to your main page but to a specific page thanking them for their previous patronage and introducing your new brand. Hey you never know if they might be in the market for your new product or service. You might also consider selling your old domain since it most likely has good domain age and links pointing to it. Depending on the industry and authority of your site you might get a decent offer. Godaddy has an auction service or you can reach out to your previous competitors and offer to sell it to them and they can in turn do a 301 redirect pointing the old domain to theirs. Hope this helps and good luck.

1. Changing the information architecture could cause issues - I'm assuming that you're not doing it lightly and that you're making changes for the best. So long as you're aware of what you're doing then you should be fine. 2. Tons of new content is good- if it's good content. 3 & 4. Sounds exciting!.

The duplicates that were created by the CMS are now all gone. Though didn't get 100% sorted until several days before the recent Panda refresh. There was a line in the code, that said any index.html, display the contents of the homepage. So Google had 56+ pages showing my homepage. Crazy. It maybe that I've solved the issues, but waiting around for month is awful.

My pleasure Gerald. Isn't this a great community for help and answers to our seo problems? Im looking forward to mozcon next month. All the best.

Hi Ben, Thanks for taking the time to reply, The site was on or around the first page for at least 18 months (longer I think) prior to March. Additionally, there were a few other sites moved around a lot around the same time (although we can figure out why these have lost rankings, which makes it more frustrating). I think you may be correct when you say that it's a change in the way that Google renders the SERP's for that keyword. Thanks again, Jason

I always use a 301 redirect. 2K is a lot of pages.  If I can redirect them with a couple lines of htaccess code I would do it.  If I had to code 2K lines and have that huge file scanned for thousands of visitors I might not do it if I am pretty sure that there is very little traffic. I use lots of folders on my site and that makes these problems easy to solve.

fantastic! worked a treat, thankyou

Hi Paul, You got it. Sorry if it was confusing and thanks for your answer. Good questions. Our brand new pages are completely different from the old pages in terms of coding, programing and structure wise. Ty,

#1 A domain has many links to it, but has been 404ed for 4 months. Should I redirect to a page I own and is almost exactly the same content. Will the fact that it was once 404ed be an issue? This sounds like a good idea to me. Make sure the page you are redirecting to is relevant to the original page. There shouldn't be an issue here as fas as I can tell. #2 I have an old domain that has many links but has been stagnant for a long time. Are these links still valuable and I should I redirect them to an important page on a different site? Whether the links are valuable depends on their quality. You should get an indication of their quality from how the site performs in the serps. If it is performing well then it probably does have valuable links. In this case I would be tempted to keep the domain running and add fresh content to the site. You could then link to another relevant site that you own and benefit from the value this provides. Either way, if you have a site that has value and performs well for certain keywords, it would be a shame to just redirect it to another site when you could gain commercial value from it. Adam.

Many thanks , you have been most helpful. Yes, I see your point. I think we will have a look at implementing this on a couple of categories where we can monitor traffic and rankings . Then if it looks good, then will roll it out to the rest of the site. Thank you. Sarah

I agree.  The client has been doing linkbuilding internally and adhoc.  The anchor text is his website name.  That is why he is bringing me into the picture. Paul, Thanks for your input.