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My response to "domain opportunities" is usually, let the domain expire and spend the registration savings on beer. In this situation, I would do as you suggest and simply redirect.   That domain is relevant enough that I would give up the beer. I would not take one moment away from my focus on my main project just to use a domain.  I would only use it if I had a new project and that domain was the perfect fit.

Google explicitly advice to use 302 in case of redirection because of IP/User Agent detection, which is what it always says in others similar cases (i.e.: redirecting from desktop to mobile version of the site).

It's best practice to verify all versions of your site in Webmaster Tools (now called Google Search Console) and submit your disavow file to each of them. Most likely, though, if you only use one version (i.e. if all of your urls are https://www.... and all other versions redirect to this one) then submitting to that version should be enough.  But, there's no harm in being on the safe side and submitting the file to all versions.

Hi Hans, Unfortunately IP addresses are not great on a desktop pc, not always but sometimes our Internet Service Provider seems to play havoc with our actual location. However on mobile it is usually a lot more reliable, so make sure your site is mobile friendly! As long as you have all your data set up and Google+ and the likes linked then your local listings will work correctly,  I wouldn't recommend targeting a popular IP location as it is not your true location. Keeping your town/city in your tagging will help for local searches for those who include there location in their searches. But if your client's ISPs have their IP address located wrongly, I am afraid this is something you cannot compensate for. Kind Regards, Jimmy

rel=canonical is a good alternative to noindex.  Both will prevent the article on your site from going into the index of Google or other search engines who honor rel=canonical.  From what I have seen, noindex works quicker. The advantage of rel=canonical is that much of the link value of the article with the rel=canonical will be transferred to the specified source article.   I have used it on content that I own and have published on two domains.  The copy that receives the benefit of rel=canonical ranks better than expected.

On another side note, the authors often upload PDF's from other sources like government bodies etc. I've told them to set them to nofollow for the PDF's which they're now doing. Is there a quick way to do nofollow on all the PDF's uploaded to the site or will I need to do it manually? They also sometimes repost (copy and paste) articles from their partners. Is there an easy (and free) way to scan the whole site and see which pages are duplicates from another site need canonical URL's? What is the best way to fix the canonical domain issue? Were you refering to the blog (news.nur...) or main site?

Hey Arthur, The need to set up a competitor with or without the www in the url is completely dependent on how they have their website set up, so your other two competitors are getting rankings because they have set up their site to resolve without the www and, therefore, their site ranks without the www in the url. Again, the best way to tell which way you should enter the competitor site is to actually go to their site and see if it resolves with or without the www. I looked into your contact history with out support team and I don't see the advice to create two different campaigns, so I don't have the background on what you were specifically told to track separately, but it looks like it was actually regarding your own site so that you could track the www and support subdomains separately. We can track the main site of a campaign by domain, subdomain, or subfolder but competitors can only be tracked by subdomain so the same advice doesn't always apply to both. The competitors' sites do need to be input independently of how the tracking for your site is set up because our tracking for them is much more limited. In this case, you will definitely need to add the www to the url for this specific competitor in order to get accurate rankings for them. The other two competitors don't need to be changed. Hopefully, that clears things up, but please let me know if you have any other questions about your campaign settings.

Hey thanks for commenting. I know that this is a valid method to code, but I am curious about the SEO effect. This is a new feature in HTML5 and I am curious if anyone has done any research to see whether Google is keeping up with this changing landscape and giving anchor-text-benefit to anything linked by the method in the original post. OR is no anchor text being detected.

Wow...I didn't know this!  Thanks Dirk for putting me in the 5000 Moz points club!

My client had 17,500 links pointing to his site from Yellowpages.com and it caused a algorithm penalty to there local search results.  Here is a sample of the links. Now notice that each link contains a different city. My client city is Tacoma WA. We are positive this destroyed there NAP because they went from first place in the Google 3 Pac to not being the Google 3 pack at all, but for the same keyword they are number 3 in organics. When you go to Bing they still maintain there local search rankings. <a class="sort">Links</a> http://reliance.yellowpages.com/tacoma-wa/mip/phils-auto-care-8439833?lid=1001611723702[image: url_icon.png] http://solarus.yellowpages.com/tacoma-wa/mip/phils-auto-care-8439833?lid=1001612521758[image: url_icon.png] http://www.yellowpages.com/algona-wa/truck-service-repair[image: url_icon.png] http://www.yellowpages.com/arlington-wa/engine-rebuilding-exchange[image: url_icon.png] http://www.yellowpages.com/arlington-wa/mip/integrity-auto-care-480010482[image: url_icon.png] http://www.yellowpages.com/arlington-wa/mission-motors[image: url_icon.png] http://www.yellowpages.com/arlington-wa/semi-truck-repair[image: url_icon.png]

These are normal 404 errors - the :443 after the url just indicates that it's using the https port (you can add the 443 after each of your https urls - they redirect to the normal ones); Don't know why wordpress is adding the :443 Check your site if you have internal links to these 404 pages (try Screaming Frog or another crawltool. These pages seem to have existed in the past: check this example http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_M5jZnMoFmcJ:https://www.compleetverkleed.nl/hoed-al-capone-panter-8713647758068-2/+&cd=2&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl If no internal / external links to these pages exist - this problem should disappear after a while. rgds, Dirk

There are companies that can get rankings that quickly in competitive verticals.  But to do so they'll need to use techniques that are not within Google's guidelines such as using private blog networks or injecting links via hacking other people's sites. If this is a site that you can walk away from should it get penalized, then hiring them might make sense.  I'd want to ask how they are getting links and to make sure that they are not doing anything illegal or anything that involves hacking other websites.  Getting links from a private blog network (if that's what they are doing) is not illegal or immoral, but if Google catches on and the site gets penalized then you may never be able to recover it. If this is a site that you plan to keep for the long run, then it makes more sense to hire an agency that will improve your search presence gradually.  Good SEO usually takes a lot of time. I have been building back-links manually over the last 3-4 months. Be careful. I'm seeing links that Google will likely see as unnatural such as: http://www.linkaddurl.com/Arts___Humanities/Performing_Arts/Business/Real_Estate/?p=6 http://cqycxzfwzx.com/sell-my-house-fast-for-cash-your-request-fulfilled/ You're in a competitive space.  I am betting that those sites above you with spammy links will drop out of site the next time Penguin hits.  If they don't then it's because they're using private blog networks that Google hasn't been able to detect algorithmically and they're prime targets for a manual penalty. My advice for hiring an SEO company would be to ask them exactly what they will do for your site.  Are they going to improve your on page SEO?  If so, how? Are they able to get you links? If so, how? If they tell you that the process is proprietary then it's probably not above board.  If they give you marketing speak like, "We'll leverage your blah blah blah and produce stellar content marketing blah blah blah" without actually giving you a concrete idea of what they'll do then that's not good.  I'd also ask for references.  If they hide behind an NDA that's not good.  Good SEO companies will have people lined up to give them a reference.

You're welcome, Vernon. I completely relate to what you're saying. Google entered Local with a brick-and-mortar mindset, which has left SABs a bit on the periphery all these years. I know it can be tough. Good luck in the work ahead!

Christy: I think that the answers have been helpful, but the jury is still out.  I'm taking advice from both Patrick and Toby's input, and I'll update this space as soon as I see some changes. The one question that I don't see answered is: are these 404s definitely harming the website's SEO, assuming that they are NOT being visited by users?  I'd love to know what people think on that.

Hi guys, I appreciate your responses! ThompsonPaul, can you show me an example of correct code of how to make such a redirect? Thank you!

Hi James, In a video from Matt Cutts in 2013, he stated that you will experience a small loss in PageRank, of an equal proportion to the loss experienced by a hyperlink. The consensus seems to be that it will pass between 90-99% of the PageRank. My suggestion is not to stress about it. If you've implemented a 301 redirect from the "www" version to the "non www" version you should be just fine. Just my two cents.

Thanks for the in depth answer Patrick