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If we're understanding the situation correctly, I'd say this sums it up pretty well.

I think it's worth it. I'm not sure what CMS you're using, but it shouldn't take much time to add noindex,follow to the header of all your pages, and then remove the robots.txt directive that's preventing them from being crawled.

Nice.

Hi there, Before I get into the SEO bit, as a user I hate this kind of thing! It always feels like 5 clicks when I really ought to just press 1. Maybe that'll influence the decision - but if not, on to the SEO... I think as long as you have good alt text Google should be able to find your image links just fine. But make sure you also... Use Schema.org's breadcrumb microformatting (http://schema.org/WebPage) Add the pages to an XML Sitemap that is submitted to Google Add the pages to a nice and accessible HTML sitemap Definately go the HTML route over Flash. Cheers Andrew

Maybe 460500 should be 460500

no I don't think so, by the way they can see the images is the same, but this will not be a problem.

Sorry - do you mean sites we have banner/buttons on? i.e. posabilitymagazine.co.uk

We found we actually had 6 links into each individual blog within the blog page.  We corrected this and the 'too many links' in the error report disappeared! YAY We also worked a way around the number of links on our sitemap which also corrected this error. Correcting both issues has had a positive impact on our website.

Interesting question. I don't think Google has every penalized anyone for passing Pagerank to themselves. Technically all paid links should be nofollowed according to Google's policy. Practically speaking, in your case, it's more of a grey area although I seriously can't anticipate too many negative consequences.

You were fairly brief, which makes it difficult to give definitive answers, but here are mine. For the first question: Are any of these new pages going to compete with currently ranking pages? If so, they could limit the traffic to existing pages. Use Google Analytics to identify your top organic keywords and check them against your new pages. Compare any new pages that might compete with existing pages; which ones do you think will win? If the new pages WON'T compete with existing pages, they will only have an effect on the Domain Authority, which should really only be a net gain. You'll have more pages, and more links overall. Last, is there any chance that this new content will trigger a penalty? I only ask this because AndieF is right, search engines don't see much value in directories, and if your site goes from 50% directory pages to 75% directory pages, the entire site may be hurt as a result. And, for your second question, about the effect of existing traffic on the new pages If the new pages are really brand new, they should be indexed faster since they're a part of an established site. To estimate the traffic they'll bring it, identify the keywords they're targeting, get the monthly traffic from Google AdWords Keyword Tool (download the list of keywords for actual previous months' traffic), and find the opportunity traffic based on how well you can reasonably expect to rank: http://geoffkenyon.com/google-serps-click-through-rates/ You mentioned in a comment that these pages are currently living on different domains, and you're moving them over. If you use 301 redirects, you'll only carry over 90 - 95% of Page Authority, but not all of it. If those links are more valuable than the new links you're providing through your site, they won't do as well. If you have some really good links to those old URLs, you may want to contact the webmasters who are sending traffic to your site and ask them to update their links. Also note that pages will take a dip in rankings whenever they get new URLs, so if you get significantly less traffic for the first couple of weeks, just wait it out. TL;DR Check: That the new pages won't compete with old pages That the new pages won't trigger a penalty from Google **The estimated searches/month (from Google AdWords Keyword Tool) for the new keywords you'll be targeting, and the proportion you can reasonably expect to get to your site (based on CTR research for Google) ** The number of links that were pointed to the pages on the old URL that you'll only get a portion of the Authority from Hope this helps! Kristina

had the same, but for a few days. I submitted the site to Google. One or two days later it was indexed. May be coincidence

Thank you Mark! Yes, I knew about that option and helps a big deal! I appreciated your help. Thanks!

I had the same problem and on some pages I still do, as mentioned above try to reduce useless links such as the one in the footer which may not receive much attention. Analyse it with in-page analytics and you will see if it's worth keeping them or not!

Hi Steve, "Thank you! automated here means the API service which we are purchasing (IE: Flight schedule), we also add up more useful information to make it unique, so we strongly believe that the content is not only unique and useful to readers." I found find it VERY difficult for anyone to present a way in which this data above, described, can be unique. Sure, it can provide some value, in the same way that sport scores are updated on lots of websites. But does the content really provide value? Value means adding commentary, editorialism - something more - to what is already standard. If the concept is large enough, you might be able to pull some higher authority links into place, giving the project lift and wheels in organic results, and then strategize on further ways to build. I would be focusing initially on pitching the value of the site to older style websites and ancient directories, locating those through research and competitive back-linking. In fact, you should be prospecting and researching / bucketing this data now. At the same time, start creating stellar new content, publishing often in your blog so that the percentage of "truly" unique content is increasing daily. Hope this helps.

Wow, good to know. I assume  Incognito browsing with chrome is the same deal?

Hi Steve, yeah of course, send me an emails to karlb@deepred55.co.uk and give me some more details, eg website and what has been done on it in the past. thanks, Karl

Thank you for your provided example, that's exactly what I meant. You have the following "default" display: http://www.neworleansrestaurants.com/restaurants/ and the following one which is a "variant" of the first one: http://www.neworleansrestaurants.com/restaurants/?loc=all You are actually showing the "same" listings ordered differently... so, a rel=canonical in my opinion will put you safe: http://www.neworleansrestaurants.com/restaurants/" />

I am confused about the tracking code as well.  If the tracking code are parameters appended to the url, it shouldnt have anything to do with a valid url. Maybe you should carify with an example: Scenario #1 - www.site.com/email is a valid url, and the link from the newsletter is www.site.com/email?utm_source=newsletter, the link should still work.  The tracking parameters have nothing to do with a page not working.  If the page still exists without the tracking parameters in the url, then you have an IIS/IT issue.  I have seen this one time where dynamic parameters (anything after a question mark) did cause issues on the server and it returned a 404 everytime you hit a page and put in parameters into the url string.  Its a systematic fix in the server settings and you would need to look to your host/IT to fix the issue and allow dynamic parameters in url strings. Scenario #2 - www.site.com/email is no longer a vaild page, because it was set up a long time ago for the email campaign, then page is no longer there.  In this case, no matter what the link is (tracking or no tracking), you will need to do a 301 redirect on the root url www.site.com/email and all variation of that url (including tracking urls) will automatically redirect to a specified page. If the 301 redirecting is not working, then you have set it up wrong. It would be worth your time to manually go through and redirect each url to a proper spot, but worst case scenario is to do what Moosa Hemani pointed out and do a great 404 page.

My pleasure!

Hey thanks Keri and how are you?