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Thanks Lewis ... these two sites are in the same city! Nothing illegal here, I just have to work hard to compete. Thanks for your time.

Richard - most likely, you're correct. PA, however, is an amalgamation of a lot of metrics combined via machine learning against Google's SERPs to produce the highest correlated metric with rankings. Thus, it could well be the case that this move doesn't boost PA (and PA itself recalculates/calibrates with each index). However, I wouldn't be too worried about PA - I would be worried about potential rankings and traffic, and it sounds like your solution should help with that (if you're combining like/duplicate content).

Hi Alan, Thanks for that. We do want to boost the rank on one domain compared to other domains, so i think this is the way to go. Cheers

Certainly possibly that it was a small algo shift, but unless lots of other sites fell in the rankings, too, I'd say the fresh boost/loss is the more likely culprit in this case. BTW - you might want to check out this slide deck for some ideas on growing content/links/inbound marketing: http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/inbound-marketing-for-startups-in-2011

Then you should be safe no matter what  - if the price is right All other advantages like is currently listed so no penalization and current back links are just a bonus. At least this is how I see it

Thank you!! I appreciate the direction! Lynn

Thanks Russ, that's just the kind of information I need to know If I raise the value of the micro site will it not increase the value of the link? Or again do you not see it being worth the effort? I do not mind being too overt with the link as it has become such a good resource that competitors are linking to it even knowing we are behind it. Another reason to maintain the site is it generates a lot of good click through traffic. A second related question as I dig into this deeper. As I mentioned, we received a lot of links from some high value sites to individual sub pages on the micro site. After 6 months, could I look at adding a 301 from those pages to my main site? Maybe a with a duplicate of the original content being linked to... And lastly, a lot of my showcase content is getting copied and pulled into "Best 50..." posts with no link backs.  I have emailed and asked with moderate success to get links back.  Has anyone a strategy for increasing back links in a situation like this? Maybe hidden or overt watermarks? (Not too overt or it will lower the value to current visitors). Or perhaps I should be looking at a more radical option of moving the entire micro site into a sub domain or sub directory of my main site... Sorry for the stream of questions. New to the more technical aspects of SEO and trying to put a strategy around what started on a whim.

Update: I used ISAPI_Rewrite from http://www.helicontech.com/ to handle domain alias redirects and it uses proper 301 redirects to the primary domain. Also I found an article in the Google Analytics Forum Archive http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help-basics/browse_thread/thread/380a839ebd9a7f6a which answered my other question on finding the count of referrals to the primary domain from the alias domains. Apparently it's very simple and their is no setup needed. Just go to Visitors -> Network Properties -> Hostnames for your site's profile in GA.

dont use 301 redirect except if you are changing page location permanently.

Hi, everyone: problem solved. Here is what I did: I created a seperate sitemap-xml and linked to all the new pdfs. I updated the general sitemap.xml and linked to the new sitemap as well. I (re)submitted both sitempas via the Webmaster Tools. Within a few hours, most of pdfs got indexed and the overall quality of search has improved dramatically. Thanks for all your help.

Hi Damien, On this project, I'm not making  the changes, I just make recommendations.  I just want to make sure my recommendation is accurate. Thanks for your guidance. Eric

I have a few questions Andrew. You want to target download.xml as a keyword and you do, but currently rank on page 2. Therefore you want to increase this rank to page 1. Why do you need to set up another page? Why is the current page not suitable for your needs, and can it be optimized better for this keyword? What is your intent for the new page? Why do you see a need to have a second page to target this keyword? You say you want to rewrite the URL. Are you saying you want to re-code the URL or do a re-write rule on the URL in the .htaccess file? With the information you have provided, I see no reason to create a new page, but simply optimize further the page that is already ranking for this term. Perhaps running it through the on-page report  card and building some inbound links with exact anchor text.

Hi sorry for not replying earlier. I have finally sorted it. It appears that the wordpress PHP include tag at the top of a static pages cause 404 errors on HTTP header requests...I changed a bit of code and it sorted itself out. thank you for taking the time to reply. Best Haydyn

Hi Nick, I use sometimes GSiteCrawler (http://gsitecrawler.com/) After Crawling, you can dissect your sitemap the way you want and export them