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Hi Konstantin, A rel=canonical in the head section of a html page will not redirect users to another site. The canonical link tag tells google (or other search engines) where the 'original' version of a page can be found and what the preferrred url is. This canonical version is most likely to show up in search engines (although search engines do not always follow the rel=canonical). If you want users to end up at site2.com/page1 when they type site1.com/page1 in their browser, you need to use a 301 redirect. Kind regards, Sven Witteveen Expand Online

Happy to help!

It's early in my observation/research of Google Product optimization, but it seems to me that Google leans to branded keyword optimization. You'll appear in Google products for both branded and non branded keywords but results suggest to me (without enough hard data) that branded terms are favored (perhaps because branded terms tend to be long tail). Hopefully, we get some more comments here that have more data-backed experiences.

Hi David, We have always had better results doing it the first way. We still do use categorical directory structures - and use these for list views or category sectional pages - For example: domain.com/online-desserts/cheesecakes/chocolate-cheesecakes.html could list all the Chocolate Cheesecakes that the eCommerce store has on offer. Say you have five of these tasty products - they would all then have links to their individual product detail pages from this list view category page. domain.com/online-desserts/gifts/mothers-day-dessert-gifts.html could list all the dessert ideas grouped together for Mothers Day for the same store. But one product that was on both would then link to: domain.com/online-desserts/store/mothers-day-choc-surprise-cheesecake.html or domain.com/online-desserts/store/mothers-day-choc-surprise-cheesecake-xxxx.html depending on how you have your cart system setup. We try to do implementations where it doesn't need  a variable at all int he url - but that the individual product urls can be given by the admin and must be unique obviously. I think your second option would work - just giving our opinion based on past projects in terms of what has worked best for us.  I think the second route may have more challenges also. Which would you make the canonical ref?  Would this then also have to be done each time by the admin. Would be automated or manual ? If manual using the back office on the product level - it may require the admin having more knowledge of SEO - so if it was you being the administrator then it may be ok.... but if you are building it for a client and for them to administer it - I think it will require more knowledge on their part. Let me know David if this helps at all or if I didnt understand your question correctly. Thanks, Carlos

Thank you very much. A bit of what I expected, but very nice to have it confirmed

Thanks! Is it better to change to HTML5? (SEO value?) If I choose only the 200 good content and create 100 much better new optmized content? What do you think if I broaden my link profile? Now I am SEO optimized to ecommerce webdesign. (Now just ecommerce and I make the : online marketing + webdesign + blog design + seo...) The Penguin make me 2. and i was 4-5. before, that is why I am afraid of the changes now Thanks! Best regards, Misi

Yeah, unfortunately somebody bought paid links, which was probably were you were getting most of your traffic from for awhile, until it stopped working. To be honest, attracta doesn't seem like the type of company to do that, but you never know. I'd like to say that by removing those links your rankings will automatically recover, but that may not be the case. At best, it may lead to partial recovery. In cases like these, some webmasters are even walking away from their URLs entirely and starting over with the same site at another address. Regardless, the only way to really remove the links is to write each of the webmasters in question, and ask for removal. Sometimes this has to be repeated over and over again and even then you only see about a 20% success rate. Over time, some of these links will disappear by themselves. Really, the best thing you can do now is start building new links. In many ways you're starting from the beginning, since your previous success was built on something that wouldn't last. (that said, if you do have major errors in your SEOmoz PRO campaign, I highly advise you to fix them)

Hi Force7 Unfortunately, it looks like Google threw a little bit of everything at you, so untangling the mess may be a little tricky. Thanks for including the exact dates of the traffic drops. From these we can clearly see you were hit with two different penalties. March 23 - Panda April 24 - Penguin http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Panda - This is a tricky one to pin down, but you may be going in the right direction by fixing the duplicate content. I don't quiet understand what you mean by the "php Link Directory" but if you can get it fixed, I highly encourage you to do so. Recently however, we've seen instances of Panda targeting link profiles, and if you've been double hit by penguin as well, that's probably a good place to look. Looking at your backlink profile, it's obvious there's a lot of low-quality directory and article type links in your profile. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?no_redirect=1&page=1&site=www.translationsoftware4u.com%2F This could easily explain both penalties, and when we look at your site's distribution of anchor text terms, there is large proportion of optimized terms http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?page=1&site=www.translationsoftware4u.com%2F&sort=domains_linking_page&source=term&target=domain Which helps explain the Panda penalty. Have you received any messages in Google Webmaster Tools? So what can you do? Unfortunately, cleaning up a large link profile is hard work, and so is rebuilding it with clean, high quality links. I highly recommend reading Dr. Pete's article on the subject. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo No easy answers. It's okay to have a few spammy backlinks in your profile, but you want to look at the entire balance of your links, and make sure you're earning the majority of your links in a natural looking manner from high quality sites. Regardless, hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Thanks for your reply.  This seems to be what I'm looking for. I have entered it after our 301 redirects.  Hope this is best place in the .htaccess file. Will let you know

Try http://www.liquidweb.com/ they have all manner of hosting packages.  My dedicated server is there and I host a number of wordpress sites with no issues.  Their service is top notch and 24X7.  You will not be disappointed.

Thank you, Francisco!!!  I wish I thought of that (-:  Have a great day... Neil.

The minimize url length is always better. Keep it minimized, IE allowed maximum of 2000 characters which is too long. Less then 100 is good and less is even better. B option is good, going into sub-categories make it lengthy.

Will have a look thanks. I wonder if the control panel on the server also makes a difference. I guess I need to weigh up fast indexing against not being hosted in the country where my customers live.

Redirect the old URLs to similar themed pages or home page to preserve some of the link equity. Think about a user's experience also if they clicked one of the links from those sources.. better to serve them something if it's in your control to keep them happy

You could create a structure like this: http://site.com/iphone (generic content about the iphone) http://site.com/iphone/4s-sprint (specific information about this version) http://site.com/iphone/4s-verizon (specific information about this version) http://site.com/iphone/4s-at-t (specific information about this version) This is just one approach but it depends on your site structure. One constant remains, however... create unique & compelling content

A quick way to check is reverse IP lookup.  I routinely use the "You Get Signal" free checker. Just from domain names you can sometimes see right away if there's a lot of garbage.  You can then just click through to sites on that server and see what they look like. That's only possible if you know the IP your site is going to be on though, and doesn't show you all the sites on a shared server, or within a C-block. Consider the host as well.  Some hosts blatantly tout their SEO value beyond typical hosting provider marketing spin for SEO as a minor service. So for example just do a search for SEO Host.  You can pretty much just stay away from every site in that search result. If you go with a top tier well known hosting provider, you should be fine. But if you do, as soon as the hosting is set up, run the reverse IP lookup. If things look suspicious, immediately contact them and request a change to a different server or C-block in their system.

You don't need a 301 redirect for this - unless you've got some really strong links pointed to it. If it's search you're worried about, just do as Mark suggests above and remove the page from your sitemap. If you have a link to that page that's actually sending traffic, then you could 301 it to the most relevant page that does exist. It's worth putting in the effort to create a customised 404 page with some links to other content, that way if people do end up on your 404 page you've got a much better chance of keeping them on the site.

Thanks Oliver - I'm going to go ahead and mark this question as answered.  If you have any more questions feel free to reach out!