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Thanks.  I was afraid this might be the best way to do it   Unfortunately, I have quite a few categories like this - trophies, medals, etc. that are the same, except for size and / or color.

Thanks riplash, respect the detail you've gone into here , ive got work to do

Yes, a 301 redirect would be the best way to do this.  Here's an article that is written for this scenario: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection .

Yeah, got 5,000 or so. Glad to see this thread because I had a mini heart attack there. The only other time I'd seen 406 come up was related to a phishing/ad/virus filtering so I thought maybe we had an ad-spewing virus or something.

Yes, thanks for the update.

Thank you for helping

i have about 1000 pages that had goog quality links with them and i was thinking of doing a 301 direct in the htaccess file but was worried that this amount would really slow my site down

Excellent advice!  Thank you so much.

Hi! Definitely don't delete what's in the robots.txt file now. Simply add the sitemap lines at the top of the file, one per line - like this example from the WordPress documentation Leave everything is intact below it that is already in your robots.txt file. You probably don't have as much "stuff" as this example, so just add your sitemaps at the top and you should be all set. -Dan

Thanks guys. I was thinking about using the rel canonical tag so I think I will go that way. I would love to be able to write unique content for each blog but I know it's just not realistic with my time constraints. Thanks again for the help.

Taysir, here you are: http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist or nodewords as above here's link to the modules related to seo. http://drupal.org/project/modules?filters=drupal_core%3A87%20bs_project_sandbox%3A0&solrsort=sis_project_release_usage%20desc&text=seo for further info look here: http://drupal.org/documentation

Hi Yvonne, I believe the main reason most franchises go the way you've summarized is manageability. The alternative is to entrust all work to individual franchise owners, including not only their own websites/content, but also all of their Local SEO. Can individual franchise owners be counted on to know what they are doing writing optimized copy and creating violation-free Place Pages? Maybe they can, but more often than not, I'd bet the answer to that would be no. By maintaining control over everything that happens, you control quality. You can do just fine with Local if it's all managed from the top across the board. On the other hand, I empathize with your wish to try it a different way. Good stuff can happen if you decide to be different, but if you see something working for tons of similar business models, reinventing the wheel may not be the safest or most successful route to go.

Hi David, As Bede has mentioned, if you can provide a little more information, it would be helpful. Are you in control of both websites/businesses and their associated Google Place Pages? Please describe more fully what you are in control of and what your goals are. I'll look forward to your reply!

Thanks for your response. Make a way for Google to crawl the 301 pages and they should drop out naturally.

Just wait, things will clear up by themselfs if that was in fact what caused the drop. SE' will want to see stability over a period of time, who knows what that is, but one would think it would involve them crawling you a fair few times to come to the conclusion that you are now stable.

Thanks Steven and Roel, that points me in the right direction and seems a logical way to proceed!

Google considers links from guest posts as "natural" link building, not "unnatural" (read: buying links) and won't count it against you. In fact, by using the rel=author tag and having your profile appear on other sites, not only will your post likely see higher click-through rates, but you're establishing yourself as an trusted authority on the subject and Google's actually more likely to trust your posts.