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Hi Sarah If you can’t create unique content yourself have you thought about ways in which you could have unique content created quickly and easily so it doesn’t take years? How about encouraging customers to review the service that they have got and their experience in the location they hired from? You could do this by opening up a discount on your next hire or probably more practically a free entry into a prize draw for something that will tempt them to create a review? This is a tricky one if you want to keep ranking for all your locations but I think it is possible and something that is worth giving time to in order to experience results you have previously...

Hi Shehzad, This is really tricky, as there can be legitimate reasons to have duplicate content. Your example of Hotel reviews is a good one: Those reviews can be useful to the end user (and help conversions) whether they are unique or not. However, as we all know, Google really isn't a fan of duplicate content. A lot of people would scream "dupe" and tell you to instantly remove it all. Generally that isn't bad advice, but it's worth some thought first: I think that the first call is to decide how useful they are if you completely ignore search. Knowing that they are not going to help with rankings do they still warrant a place on that page? If you think (or better still; have tested and know) that they contribute to the business in a meaningful way outside of search then you may well want to keep them. This should be fairly easy to split test I would imagine - you can look for affect on conversions, likelihood that they will return, avg commissions etc. If you imagine that the duplicate content might actually negatively effect your rankings (we'll come to that), is it now worth keeping it? If you think that the answer is yes then you need to ensure that there is enough that is unique on your pages that they deserve to rank with or without that duplicate content.  Plenty of good sites do contain duplicate content and they don't always have more authority than others using the same. However they will sandwich it between useful new content that deserves to rank anyway. Getting unique content for 200,000 pages isn't going to be easy, but can be done. However you can prioritise and start building it up working from where it is likely to have the most benefit. I'd imagine user generated content would play a very substantial part unless you have a lot of budget - so start thinking about creative ways to get the public to write for you.

I see you posted this question quite awhile ago and still no responses :(. I haven't used these guys at all myself.  Looking at their site though, it is a beauty!  Looks like a highly converting site! Their seo work speaks for itself imo: http://www.boostability.com/showcase/case-studies Their overview dispels any thoughts of black hattery (but really... they had us with that beautiful design): http://www.boostability.com/seo-services Their testimonials are fully fleshed out and verifiable: http://www.boostability.com/showcase/testimonials If ever I need small business SEO... I'd probably give these guys a shot!

Wow - that package reads like a step-by-step recipe for how to get your site and rankings HAMMERED by algorithmic penalties.

i'm sorry but i don't understand what you mean, i need to have concrete answer in order to solve my problem...so, what shall i do? sorry if i'm too direct, but i'm a bit tired to read generic question that dosen't help me.. thanks, guido

OK what if I no index my old site, port content to new site, no 301. Lose link juice. Will I face duplicate content issues?

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-updowner-ignored-15369.html Looks like Google is on top of these guys so at least their links won't get you Penguinized.

Thanks so much Brent . Really appreciate your time. Will get onto this

Such site must still exist in the google cache to maintain pr. In order to complete the process -  rebuild the old site with the entire content from the cache . And you should be ok.

Hi Cornel Thanks for replying, here are the answers to your questions... 1. How long before doing the SEO optimization was the website live. The website has been live since September 2007 but we've had two redesigns, one in December 2010 and one on 19th April 2012 but the domain name remained the same. We started our SEO campaign after 19th April. The website was nowhere in the SERPS prior to April 2012. 2. What was you position on the SERP The website was on page 6 for 'copywriting' in April and May but jumped to page 3 (position 34) in June 3. CTR on that position? We were on page 3 from around 4th June until yesterday and we had 285 unique visitors during this 3 week period. For the 3 weeks prior to this, we had 264 unique visitors but I think this number is skewed as on one day (26th May) we had 165 unique visitors and a huge bounce rate. 4. Have you guest posted in any news websites? Not news websites but magazines and blogs. 5. Have you measured your position in the SERP with SEOmoz Tools? According to the SERP tool the website is in position 36 but I believe this is updated every Thursday? Many thanks

I agree with Marcus, it depends on what kind of links your website does have.  It generally sounds like to me, that you over optimized your website.  If you do have plenty of good links, it would simply be an issue of getting rid of the "crappy links" however if you do have a ton of these now non-indexed links, it might be best to start with a new page.

You are the man

Not really sure why the IP address would be of any importance. It doesn't really matter if you will or will not link from the old to the new, or that you will link sitewide or not, IP address is still of no concern. However, I would not recommend a sitewide link, if you want to do that then a better approach would be to create a page on your old website. Which is probably a better solution anyway, if at least your old domain has high authority and you can create any kind of landing page anyway, doesn't matter if it is on the new or old domain. As for black/white/grey/purple/blue/pink/blond/brunette, if such a thing exists in the first place, that has to do with your execution of the plan, not the plan itself.

I do not see any violation of Google or Bing guidelines with that URL setup. I would not necessarily recommend doing it, but if your client did it would not be a violation as stated. Based on your question, it seems the site is penalized. There is a lot more details required to diagnose the penalty. Some initial ideas can be generated from a few basic questions: on what date was the site penalized? how was the site penalized? Was the entire site removed from the index? Or certain pages / keywords? was there any notice received in WMT? are there any known violations of the guidelines? poor content? manipulative links? other issues?