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A number of factors should be kept it mind but firstly keep a focus on the On page SEO and the Site Content Optimization...also choose best CMS like WP as start-up as it is also easy to customize and update...

Thank you

Thanks for the comments. I got onto Hostgator and spoke to them for 2 hrs.   We disabled all plug ins and then enabled them again. They upgraded it to php 5.4, then back to 5.2...then back to 5.4 They said there was no issue....but after all that it seemed ok (!?). It seems to be ok now. Thanks for the input! Chrissy

Yup Sam got it many thanks for your assistance. David

Hi Stephen, That's part of the syntax used to transfer a site URL-by-URL - what the entire snippet of code means is that a browser or search engine will come across www.oldblog.com/post123.html and immediately be taken to blog.newdomaincom/post123.html. If you are not using the same URLs on the new blog, you won't need to or be able to use this particular function in your .htaccess file. You say that "the new blog has a different wordpress theme & categories than the old blog" which makes me think you'll need to redirect category URLs separately at least (I must have missed that line when I read the question at first; apologies). Once you've redirected everything, you will need to keep the old domain. If you let it lapse or sell it, the redirects will no longer work unfortunately.

I don't think you came across as defensive at all. I totally get the house-keeping issue. I know the "Bounty" section is something quasi-new...what about the possibility of just moving unanswered questions over there after they've gone unanswered for a set period of time, provided the person who posted responds to admin emails and indicates the question is still unanswered? Perhaps another option would be for the original poster to reverse the "Answered" status? I don't think Moz's intent at marking questions as "answered" was to effectively shut-down a topic, but, unfortunately, I do think that's what happens. I agree with EGOL, I am not looking to see if someone marked my answer as a "good answer" or not, although I am always thankful if they do. What I do do is go back to questions I've answered to see if the person responded with another question or needs clarification on something and I try to help them if I can. Because I know sometimes people who are newer to Q & A often mark a question as "answered" when they read a response they "like" (but not be a complete answer), I'll often encourage them to continue to solicit answers from more people so they can get more input from the community. It would be interesting to see data on how many threads complete stop getting new comments once they are marked as "answered." I bet it's more than 90%...which, from a UGC viewpoint, could mean Moz is losing out on content they would be getting by leaving more threads marked as "unanswered." Hmmm,

Personally, it used to do great and it wasn't much of a big deal. But with the rest of the world improving, a lot of other easier platforms emerged. I've since moved over all clients to self hosted sites. In terms of SEO, you can edit the meta details of your pages so that's there. I just didn't like the url structure and it feels old to me (more of a personal preference) so I felt it was better to move out early rather than wait longer.

Thank you very much. That is just what I was looking for.

Hi Jane, thanks for the follow up. Every time we see errors showing up in WMT (mainly 404's) we remove the URL's right away and indeed we see the errors going down every 4-5 days (under HTML improvements). I am just surprised, that if we would not use the URL removal tool, how long it takes for Google to actually remove 404's from their index. I know the higher the PR, the more likely they crawl more often and the faster they remove these 404's I guess, but still.

Hi Imedia, Smart questions. Let me explain how to differentiate these two forms of user generated content. Reviews: These should be posted directly by the customer on third party platforms (think Yelp, YP, etc.). You should never post a review on behalf of a customer and should not set up a station in your place of business to collect them from customers. Always let customers post reviews on their own, using their own accounts. Also, never take a review off a third party site and re-publish it on your website. You can link from your website to your review profile on third party sites, but do not re-publish the reviews found there. Further, do not encourage customers to post the same review across multiple sites. Be sure to read the guidelines of each of the major review sites so that you know what is allowed in terms of solicitation. For example, Yelp forbids you to ask customers for reviews. They want it to be completely spontaneous. Google doesn't mind review solicitation, provided you are not specifically asking for positive reviews. All reviews should be unbiased. Here is a super page in our new Moz Local Learning Center that links directly to the review guidelines of top platforms. This should really help you: http://moz.com/learn/local/understanding-review-guidelines Testimonials: These are reviews of your business that you are receiving orally or in writing from your customers and then publishing directly on your own website. Do not ever publish these on third party sites, as if you were the customer. Only publish them on your own website. You can put them on a single testimonials page, or you can seed them on different pages, as appropriate, throughout your website. It's great to earn both reviews on third party sites and testimonials on your own site. Both assets make you stronger! There is a paid tool you might like to know about if you're getting serious about creating a review and testimonial acquisition campaign. Check out getfivestars.com. This is a unique and very powerful little tool that walks your customers through a process of leaving feedback and then being guided to either leave a testimonial or review. It also allows you to intervene with a customer who had a negative experience, lessening the chances of them leaving a negative review. You can, of course, handle review and testimonial acquisition manually, but you might at least like to consider GetFiveStars if you're considering implementing a really polished, concrete campaign. Hope this helps!

Agree with Lesley - there's little to no benefit in stuffing keywords into a URL (which was a "traditional" reason why people added multiple subcategories), and excessive categorisation / siloing shows diminishing returns. I would stick to as flat a structure as possible whilst keeping a sensible hierarchy of information. Cheers, Jane

Hi Jane, A friend in the same industry uses Periscopix so cant use them. Thanks for the recommendation and i will look at the Moz recommendations. Cheers

Any article starting with "according to" is never a great start lacking in facts. I'll believe it if i see it but i high doubt Google plus is going anywhere is far to valuable to Google to let it go. People leave jobs come join new jobs not a reason to start fearing the world is going to collapse.

Google's advice is always to do things with the end user in mind. The search engine wants to act like a person and not like an algorithm. Don't think about "SEO." Think about people. In this context, I would think about the target audience. Would the audience prefer that all of the site's elements be written in the language that they best understand? Of course. So from a user-experience standpoint, I'd highly recommend that everything be translated. Just in case you're not aware of the best practices for multilingual and international SEO, I'll refer you to these resources at Moz, Aleyda Solis, Google and more: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192 http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights http://www.internationalseomap.com/ http://moz.com/blog/40-plus-tools-to-advance-your-international-seo-process http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-web/successful-development/ http://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist http://searchengineland.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-multilingual-and-multiregional-seo-157838 Good luck!

Why bother trying to clean anything up?  If somewhere out there there are links to your domain, and they're 404'ing, just 301 them to new pages on your site!  Capture that link juice, don't let it run out