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Hi Greg, Thanks for your reply. So in a nutshell we just need to get back links updated use the new URL's in order to pull back PA we had previously? Regards Craig

Thanks Ben. I didnt try that but I guess is still working! Which service you use to purchase articles? What about text broker? Thanks

You're welcome.  Good luck with finding definitive research though.  There is very little of that around in the world of SEO

For paginated pages, I recommend using the rel=next and rel=prev tags.  Here is more info: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html

In a vacuum, yes.  However hopefully you'll be linking in and out anyway.  Like most things in SEO it is good to understand the principal without being a slave to it. If one area is picking up lots of links then fantastic. You could link back around the site to spread that link equity.  Better still - try to ensure it is your money pages that are getting the incoming links!

Thank you appreciated

So basically you got the answer as it dosen't harm or help as far as rankings BUT there is a way to use it either in your advantage or disadvantage. It can also give away your main keywords to competitors - and that's not good. For high competitive websites (where competitors are following movements and trying to figure things out )  I am using the keywords metatags to channel competitors in a different directions by putting there other keywords (still somehow related) and not the keywords that particular page is targeting. Case study: I have an account and soon after placing some "stupid" keywords in the keyword tag we've notice on page changes in a major competitor for those keywords that are not really good (conversion, volume etc) but probably on the idea that if the #1 is doing it it must be important

Ah I'm sorry I misinterpreted you - so it's essentially about pagination? Rel Next/Rel Previous is probably the best way to go - the first page will be given the equity and the pages won't have to compete with each other for ranking. Google have a pretty comprehensive guide: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744

Having each on a unique IP isnt neccessary. The only real benefit of having your sites on seperate Class IPs is to break the relationship between them. In your case, sorting the duplicate content issue should be enough to sort out the penalty. The only downfall IMO would be the low link juice value from linking between all 3 sites Greg.

Hi Nuroa, You could use rel=Canonical tab, this code help you in telling Google which page to count. You can also use rel="canonical" and "rel=prev/next" together for pagination problem. You can simply use rel=prev/next with the base URLs, and then rel-canonical to the page level. Besides, this post can give you more idea about this issue: http://www.seomoz.org/q/avoiding-duplicate-content-in-e-commerce-product-search-sorting-results I hope this helps

Hi Kristy, Be sure to check your SEOmoz PMs, I sent you some additional information there. Keri

Okay, I took a look at the plugin Ben recommended, and took another look at the SH404SEF one.  The free one Ben recommended (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/sef/1063) looks like it can help out with some duplicate content - but what I recommend doing is getting the SH404SEF here http://anything-digital.com/sh404sef/features.html because it allows for setting up canonical tags and also gives you the option to add the rel=next feature to your paginated pages, which is one of your problem areas. One thing I noticed though is that it specifically states it "automatically adds canonical tags to non-html pages" - so that means it will apply it automatically to Joomla's defaul pdf view, etc.  While this is helpful, it may not solve the full issue of your duplicate pages with the undefined and "/%5C%22/" issue. It does however state that it "removes duplicate URLs" - how it identifies and removes these, I am not sure.  You may want to try it out because it is useful for other optimization tasks - or contact the owner for more information. If the tool doesn't recognize and remove the duplicate pages caused by /undefined/ and "/%5C%22/" then you should disallow crawling of these in your robots.txt file.  While you are in your robots.txt file you should remove the /images/ because you want those to be crawled - Joomla adds that in by default. Because a lot of these pages have already been crawled, you should do a 301 on the duplicate pages to their matching page.  This sounds like it will be a long process - this may be aided by the sh404sef plugin - not sure. I just want to also add that I am in no way affiliated with any of these plugins.

Assuming that you have no options (and I really hate to see anyone rely on iFrames in 2012, especially for the home-page - it's a recipe for problems), I agree with Sanket - you can put a rel-canonical tag on the sub-domain pointing back to the main URL. That should at least help Google consolidate the pages. Unfortunately, it's very likely you're losing ranking value for the content in that frame. There are ways to host content on sub-domains, but mask/rewrite the URLs so that they look like they're part of the main domain. Load-balancing systems (with content across multiple IPs and sub-domains) do it all the time. Obviously, I don't know the details of your situation, but I'd strongly recommend looking for a more permanent solution. The canonical tag will be a bandage here, at best.

I'm not sure how helpful it is, in the sense of being good news, but I did something like this to one of my sites on purpose once, and wrote it up: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization A couple of tips: (1) I think what Oleg is saying, which I agree with is that if Page A had a canonical to Page B, instead of just removing the canonical tag, put in a canonical tag pointing from Page A to Page A. Sometimes, the self-referencing canonical will help over-ride the old/bad canonical. (2) Fetch is a good bet, but I'd also re-submit an XML sitemap with just the "bad" URLs. It's not a cure-all, but it can help nudge Google. Unfortunately, it really can take time to sort out. Make sure your internal links are correct as well. You could temporarily build new internal links (list a few resources on your home-page, for example) to push link-juice temporarily. You could also post the proper URLs on Twitter/FB, etc., to kick them a bit. Of course, that only works for a few pages, not for hundreds.

Thanks, it is a social networking site, much like Twitter

Google won't think it's shady... they recently released a video that says they follow multiple redirects (but if you have too many, it will reflect poorly). Why get rid of a redirect at all? I would set a canonical url as well as keep the 301 redirect.

"I believe people come to the place they get their answers and tell others" Yep, I second that. It's always pretty satisfying when you pick up the phone for a new enquiry and instead of launching into the old sales routine the person has read something on your blog and is already pretty sure they want to work with you. It's also a damn site easier to promote high quality content articles than it is to promote a brochure of services. I think where people fall down on this approach is when they stick a few blog posts up and then don't get suddenly bombarded with links. It takes time, some articles stick, others, sometimes ones you think are great don't.