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Hello everyone, Thanks for sharing your experience and your answers, it's greatly appreciated. The website is build in order to avoid cookie cutter pages : each page will have unique content from classifieds (unique because classifieds won't be indexed in the first place, to avoid having too much pages). The linking is as well though in order for each page to have permanents internal links in a logical way. I understand from your answers that it is better to take time and to index the site step by step : mostly according to the number and the quality of classifieds (and thus the content) for each jobs/locality. It's not worth to index pages without any classifieds (and thus unique content) as they will be cut off by Google in a near future.

Thank you both for the answers. We do not have a manual penalty. I filled another reconsideration and within a week I got the response that even though there was a manual penalty, it has already been revoked. I was also hoping (based on some articles I read) that it might cause them to re crawl my site and see that many changes were made but I see no such effect (also in the GWMT). For example, the titles of our pages that are in the SERPS are still the ones from before the changes we did. NOT KNOWING is unbearable. I'm at the stage I don't mind a new domain but if it is simply a matter of waiting two more months then obviously we'll wait.

Hi wooz, You're absolutely correct - implement 301 redirects from your old URLs to their equivalent URLs on your new domain, and then declare your "Change of Address" in Google Webmaster Tools. There's quite a bit more detail covered here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105 Matt Cutts has said that there's no loss or leakage of link juice through 301 redirects: http://searchengineland.com/google-pagerank-dilution-through-a-301-redirect-is-a-myth-149656 The main issues that I've seen with sites losing traffic due to domain migrations are usually due to one or both of the following factors: 301 redirects are not properly set up.  Only a small portion of URLs from the old domain are correctly 301 redirected to their equivalents on the main domain.  As a result, old URLs that have incoming links go 404, and the link equity is not transferred to the new domain. The new site has vastly different information architecture than the old site.  It is larger, structurally different, or targets new keyword spaces.  As a result, there is not a 1:1 correlation between the old site and the new site, and the new domain can't compete as effectively in the new keyword spaces as the old domain could compete in the previous keyword spaces. Google is generally quite quick at picking up the Change of Address notification and applying it to your new domain.  There shouldn't be any "lag time" where your old domain has disappeared from the SERPs, and has not been replaced by your new domain. Hope that helps!

you should connect on twitter and G+ via my profile page on here... in case you need more guidance

Yes, I agree with you Todd, thank you for your reply!

Hi Larry, I know it is a daunting task and it would be great if there was some tool or software to help but unfortunately I don't think you will get the results you are after using any software (let alone one that has the word spinner in its name!). Check out a recent wbf video on this subject here: http://moz.com/blog/how-unique-does-content-need-to-be-to-perform-well-in-search-engines-whiteboard-friday Long and short of it, there is no magical % number that will get you below the duplicate content bar. Even though it is daunting, realistically your only sure fire way to ensure your content is original is to make it original! I would suggest starting with your best selling/most popular products and work your way down. Probably not what you were hoping to hear!

Thank you. I've corrected that mistake straight away and will speak to my friend in Dubai to see if she can get together a list of possible local links.

If you no index a page, link juice will flow to that page still. if you no follow it, it will still flow but will not flow out of it again. you should always add noindex,follow if you want the link juice to return to your index pages. Even then some link juice will be lost that stays on that noindex page I tried also could not find it. but here is a quote from Matt Cutts "Eric Enge:  Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank? Matt Cutts:  A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page. Eric Enge:  So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank. Matt Cutts:  Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won't be showing in our Index.  So, I wouldn't make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end.  You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages. For example you might want to have a master Sitemap page and for whatever reason NoIndex that, but then have links to all your sub Sitemaps. Eric Enge:  Another example is if you have pages on a site with content that from a user point of view you recognize that it's valuable to have the page, but you feel that is too duplicative of content on another page on the site That page might still get links, but you don't want it in the Index and you want the crawler to follow the paths into the rest of the site. Matt Cutts:  That's right.  Another good example is, maybe you have a login page, and everybody ends up linking to that login page.  That provides very little content value, so you could NoIndex that page, but then the outgoing links would still have PageRank. Now, if you want to you can also add a NoFollow metatag, and that will say don't show this page at all in Google's Index, and don't follow any outgoing links, and no PageRank flows from that page.  We really think of these things as trying to provide as many opportunities as possible to sculpt where you want your PageRank to flow, or where you want Googlebot to spend more time and attention." http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml

A major on-page problem for this website, check out these two URLs: http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/tri-tronics-g3-g2-exp-collar-receiver-strap-5621150-blue/ http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/tri-tronics-g3-g2-exp-collar-receiver-strap-5621140-red/ According to the Copyscape Compare tool, they're 98% similar, so Google will certainly see them as duplicate content. Even worse, there are two more like it, for the yellow and green versions. This problem is present with other product options, like pack quantity: http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/2-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/ http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/4-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/ http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/6-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/ http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/10-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/ You've got two solutions: use a single rel=canonical for the pages that contain the same product so that they all point to a single version of this product (easier) use a single page for the product and allow users to see colors/size/etc. on the page either via a "Colors"/"Pack size" radio panel or dropdown, with optional JavaScript to change the photos if needed (more complicated). Hope this helps, good luck!

By all means move the old content to a "archive" sub domain, but if you want to redirect to the new content you should ensure that the "archive" subdomain is set to noindex, nofllow. A 301 redirect is the best method to ensure indexing factors get passed to the new URL but should only be used if the old pages have been removed form the index, so as well as making the old pages noindex, nofllow make sure you use the URL removeal tool in WMT or update your sitemap. "Also for the active events, is there any difference between: _redirecting the old page to the archive page and then forwarding to the equivalent on the new page _ and redirecting the old page directly to the new page" What is best for user? Presumably the new pages have new content, if so you should redirect to them. N

Michael is correct as it pertains to multiple links going to different pages, but in terms of multiple links going to the same page I'm pretty sure only the first one will count. I think this is true whether the links are internal or external. See references below... http://moz.com/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts Moz Experiment Results by Rand http://www.seo-scientist.com/first-link-counted-rebunked.html "OK, so to me this is a pretty solid data supporting Michael’s and Rand’s claims. The fact that the SERPs reacted to my changes in the order of links back and forth is kind of hard to debunk." http://www.addictedtoseo.com/exceptions-from-the-first-link-counts-rule.html I like this post because, like with the SEO Scientist test above, it highlights the fact that nofollowing will not help. This is why internal pagerank sculpting with nofollow links doesn't work. I'm not sure if it still works, but you used to be able to get around this by linking with hash tags that jump to named anchors on the same page. So www.mysite.com/url1 and www.mysite.com/url1#top would be considered two links and would both pass some pagerank.

Why don't you choose one (e.g. A) and use the rel canonical tag on the others so the A page benefits from any links going into them? This would take care of your duplicate content and duplicate title tag issues at the same time. While "technically speaking" the "B" page isn't really a non-canonical version of the "A" page, I think the tag would work well in this situation since nearly ALL of the content is duplicated.

Good to know!

Yes but make them noindex,follow -  not noindex,nofolllow

Rexjoec, It is considered duplicate content and the same holds true for www and non-www.  You can 301 forward the non-www to www and use rel=canonical to avoid the duplicate content issue with between http and https.

http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects Have you ever redirected a page hoping to see a boost in rankings, but nothing happened? Or worse, traffic actually went down? When done right, 301 redirects have awesome power to clean up messy architecture, solve outdated content problems and improve user experience — all while preserving link equity and your ranking power. When done wrong, the results can be disastrous. In the past year, because Google cracked down hard on low quality links, the potential damage from 301 mistakes increased dramatically. There's also evidence that Google has slightly changed how they handle non-relevant redirects, which makes proper implementation more important than ever. <center> [image: 51be0e7b259228.02082021.jpg] From Dr. Pete's post - An SEO's Guide to HTTP Status Codes </center> Semantic relevance 101: anatomy of a "perfect" redirect A perfect 301 redirect works as a simple “change of address” for your content. Ideally, this means everything about the page except the URL stays the same including content, title tag, images, and layout. When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity. The new page doesn’t have to be a perfect match for the 301 to pass equity, but problems arise when webmasters use the 301 to redirect visitors to non-relevant pages. The further away you get from semantically relevant content, the less likely your redirect will pass maximum link juice. For example, if you have a page about “labrador,” then redirecting to a page about “dogs” makes sense, but redirecting to a page about “tacos” does not. <center>[image: 51bf5625760dd2.79169863.jpg]</center> 301 redirecting everything to the home page Savvy SEOs have known for a long time that redirecting a huge number of pages to a home page isn’t the best policy, even when using a 301. Recent statements by Google representatives suggest that Google may go a step further and treat bulk redirects to the home page of a website as 404s, or soft 404s at best. This means that instead of passing link equity through the 301, Google may simply drop the old URLs from its index without passing any link equity at all. While it’s difficult to prove exactly how search engines handle mass home page redirects, it’s fair to say that any time you 301 a large number of pages to a single questionably relevant URL, you shouldn’t expect those redirects to significantly boost your SEO efforts. <center>[image: 51bf60b374cce0.16766635.jpg]</center> **Better alternative: **When necessary, redirect relevant pages to closely related URLs. Category pages are better than a general homepage. If the page is no longer relevant, receives little traffic, and a better page does not exist, it’s often perfectly okay to serve a 404 or 410 status code.

Hi Mike, Thank you very much for your answer! We already have landing pages for wallets, bags etc. I was thinking if we move this specific group of products to new domain it will be much easier to target and optimize whole site because then we can focus on related group of products. Also I think it's easier for linkbuilding and content creation (we will probably have blog on new domain). What do you think? Regards, Nenad

Moz most definitively need a "give a beer" feature!! Thanks for the in-depth response. We'll also work on building "local" links as you suggest. We've since changed the structure of the site to : USA/Canada: www.site.com Europe EN: www.site.com/en_gb/ Europe FR: www.site.com/fr_fr/ Canada FR: www.site.com/fr/ That way we can use hreflang and avoid duplicate content. In your experience, will Google serve www.site.com/fr_fr/ instead of www.site.com/fr/ to Belgium and Switzerland? Will UK and Ireland see www.site.com or www.site.com/en_gb/ ? Thanks a lot for the answer!

I think that actually, SEO is still far too cheap. Many companies are willing to spend thousands on PR agencies who will put in far less hours and have less technical specialisms than good SEOs; who I feel often don't get a reasonable share of the overall budget available. While, obviously, small business owners will not be able to afford this level of consulting; they equally won't be able to afford PR/Creative and I don't think SEO should be seen as any less valuable than those services. Good SEO should be really expensive, because if it's not, then people won't value it.

I agree with Dana. By far the best solution here is to include the transcript in the HTML.