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Thanks for the question. Just to add to what the other guys have said, here is a helpful article from Google which explains a bit more about their stance on 404s. In general, you should try to 301 redirect 404 errors to other pages if it makes sense for the user. For example, if a 404 page is an article about belgian beers, you could redirect that to another article about belgian beers so that the user lands on a relevant page. You should definitely try to avoid mass redirecting links to your homepage because Google can treat these as 404s - there is a video here on the topic: http://www.davidsottimano.com/internal-301-homepage-treated-404-google/ If a page 404s and can't be redirected to a relevant page, then it's best to leave it as a 404 and let Google keep crawling it. I also agree with the other guys on creating a custom 404 page which will provide a good user experience if they happen to land on it.

Hi Rox, I think the problem is because of the Doctype of that page. If you select HTML 5 from the doctype dropdown, you won't get any HTML validation errors related the schema. In summary, it's not worth worrying about. I hope this helps, Craig

Pintrest will help to deliver your brand or product to consumers eyes and generate more traffic.  But there link worth is low until you build a large following.

Daniel - No worries… If there hasn't been a manual action (just a big drop in rankings), disavow is a great tool to use. I think on the darker side of SEO, there has certainly been competitors in highly competitive spaces who have tried to create spammy links pointing to competitors as a means to win at this often zero-sum game.  So my hunch is that is why Google realizes that sometimes links show up beyond your control. Best practice, though, is to contact the other website and ask for links to be removed.  But sometimes this can fall on deaf ears…  Thus, Google's disavow tool… If it was my site, I'd try to get some of the bad links removed. And then really focus on a high-quality end user experience…  including site load time, engaging content, etc... Hope this helps guide the decision… Jeff

That might be splitting hairs but if I were to choose, I'd point them at which ever had the stiffest competition--if that were the parent, I'd point the sub pages back to it; if one of the sub pages has the toughest go of it, I'd consider daisy chaining them.  Some of the value of that linking would probably depend on how evenly PR is spread between the pages, the page's locations in the site architecture, where the the links are located on the page, and whether such linking helps or hurts the conversion process, so ultimately, the desired value of such sculpting may be hard to realize. What others have said: http://moz.com/community/q/pagerank-sculpting-best-practices-for-e-commerce-websites http://moz.com/blog/internal-linking-strategies-for-2012-and-beyond http://moz.com/community/q/page-rank-sculpting

If you received an inbound unnatural links penalty then the links going OUT from your blog will not matter.  It's possible for you to also get an outbound unnatural link penalty as well but you would receive notice of that just like you did with the inbound penalty.

I totally misread that one. Need to lobby for better coffee in the Moz offices!

Dear Tim, Here is an example of an article URL the Google recommends: http://www.abc.com/breaking-news-exclusive-story-2314 Here you go for more: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787 and https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/191283 and here: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68297 Hope those help. Best regards, Devanur Rafi

Rich - Google and other search engines will consider each of these pages different and unique: Www.domain.com/services/index.php Www.domain.com/services/ www.domain.com/services … so, you should create a redirect rule for each to go to the new page. Ideally, you should have a rel=canonical tag in place, so you don't get dinged for duplicate content. But if you have an external link pointing to /services/index.php and another link pointing to /services/ and a third link pointing to /services  … then you'll need three 301 redirects.  But redirect them ALL to one page.  Of the three, /services/ is probably the better choice, but that's a personal opinion, and one that's based on what actually shows up on your site. Here's how to redirect all three pages to one common page: Redirect 301 /services/index.php http://www.atlasdentistry.com/services/ Redirect 301 /services/ http://www.atlasdentistry.com/services/ Redirect 301 /services  http://www.atlasdentistry.com/services Hope this helps! -- Jeff

We typically use this model for most of our other event sites and I would agree. Thanks!

Yeah, I'm with Federico - 100 doesn't seem like a ton, unless your total link profile is very small. I'm not clear on what you're trying to accomplish with changing the category in WordPress - is it the category page that's a problem? If the links are all to one page and you can live without that page, you could let it 404. If it's a category page, then yes, I guess you could change the URL. Just don't 301-redirect the old URL to the new one, in this case, because you'd carry the links and any penalty. If this was something like Penguin, you'd still have to wait for a data refresh. If it's a manual penalty, you'd need reconsideration. So, even total removal may not instantly fix the situation.

OK, I see what you mean now. I am not sure how they are doing that. You would normally see that if the content of the page was output through an iframe but I couldn't find one in the source code. It's possible it is something OpenCart is doing It's not a great idea from a user experience basis really, but search engines are not going to read the URL in the address bar. They will use the links that are in the pagination links at the bottom. For example, this is page 2: http://www.manhattanfruitier.com/index.php?route=product/category/shopall_Data&osc=0&page=2 So that is what will be indexed. Peter

It can take some time for GWT to pick up on changes like this. As an example Google Webmaster Tools was telling us that there were many thousands of inbound links from a staging domain to our main website. We had to make a large change whereby we added a secure password and noindex tag reference to the staging website in question. I would say that the number of links referenced in GWT only decreased after approx 2 months. Patience can often be the key - I swear doing nothing can often be more beneficial in SEO, rather than making knee-jerk decisions in a blind panic (very tempting mind!)

Hi Eric, I'm glad I could help! Feel free to send me a PM if you need further help.

It sounds like you are mostly concerned about the Panda algorithm.  A site with lots of duplicate content and nothing else of value other than the duplicate content could definitely be affected by Panda.  While it is true that redirecting a Penguin hit site to another will pass on the algorithmic issues to the new site, redirecting a Panda hit site really should not.  With that being said, it doesn't make sense to do a redirect.  If the issue was that you had page after page of non-original content then noindexing that content should do the trick.  The next time Google refreshes Panda (which is usually monthly) then you should be in the good books as far as Panda is concerned.  Putting the same content on a new domain, and noindexing the duplication wouldn't really work any better IMO. However, you have to have good, useful content there in order to rank.  If all you've got is affiliate content that adds no unique value, then you're in trouble. There are things other than Panda that can affect rankings though too.  You may want to look at your analytics data and sort it by Google organic traffic to see if you can pinpoint the day of your decline.  Then, compare that to known Panda/Penguin dates. As mentioned by others, if you have been building links then you should look at the Penguin algorithm as well.

Jen - I agree with Eli.  It's best not to use the TM symbol in a URL string  - it will confuse the end user when it's URL encoded and scrambled.  Rather, put the mark on your pages and in images. If you have gone through the registration process with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office), you should be using the  symbol next to your mark, and not the TM symbol. According to the Trademark FAQs on the USPTO site: http://www.uspto.gov/faq/trademarks.jsp#_Toc275426682 Do federal regulations govern the use of the designations "TM" or "SM" or the symbol? If you claim rights to use a mark, you may use the "TM" (trademark) or "SM" (service mark) designation to alert the public to your claim of a “common-law” mark.  No registration is necessary to use a "TM" or "SM" symbol and you may continue to use these symbols even if the USPTO refuses to register your mark.  Those symbols put people on notice that you claim rights in the mark, although common law doesn't give you all the rights and benefits of federal registration. You may only use the federal registration symbol "" after the USPTO actually registers a mark, not while an application is pending.  And it may only be used on or in connection with the goods/services listed in the federal trademark registration and while the registration is still alive (you may not continue to use it if you don’t maintain the registration or it expires).  Although there are no specific requirements on where the symbol should be placed relative to the mark, most businesses use the symbol in the upper right corner of the mark.  Note: Because several foreign countries use “” to indicate that a mark is registered in that country, use of the symbol by the holder of a foreign registration may be proper. From another section_:  There are no specific requirements on where the “” symbol should be placed relative to the mark, but most businesses use the symbol in the upper right corner of the mark._ Hope this helps! -- Jeff

Hi Donna, were you able to resolve this issue? We'd love an update, thanks! Christy

Yes a toxic domain will infect a new domain if 301 is implemented. I would lean towards cleaning up the existing domain.  Even if you end up disavowing every linking domain the existing domain is likely to have created more trust than starting from scratch. If it is a manual penalty ensure you document all steps to try and clean up so you can detail in the reconsideration request.

Google has been rewriting page titles for years, even on sites like Apple.com. Sometimes it's to better match user intent with the search, and sometimes it's because they think your title tag is spammy. Barry at Search Engine Roundtable has several pieces on this.