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Hi Margaret 301 redirects! I have just gone through the same process as you will be. You may find this blog post of use, Its simple and quick. http://blog.search-mojo.com/2010/10/14/301-redirects-formatting-bulk-redirects-in-4-quick-steps/ Also checkout http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ which will help you also.

If you have mod_rewrite enabled on your server you could try something like this in your .htaccess file: RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.).htm$ RewriteRule ^(.) /$1.php [R=301,L]

Good question. In your situation I've seen lots of people set up an "Outlet" store on eBay. I think you're right about the duplicate content risk, it would pose an issue. You might want to consider noindex'ing those empty products but that would mean they wouldn't be discoverable on Google itself. Alternatively perhaps if it's a refurbished item you could add a canonical link to the main product's page, and on that main product page link to the empty page so that people can discover it that way.

When you say "people," are you saying your own web team duplicates content to make their job easier? Or am I missing something?... If that's the case, you really should create unique URL's with unique page titles, product info, etc.  That's the correct way to avoid getting hit for duplicate content - don't create it.  It seems like what you're doing now is more of a band-aid solution to the problem. I'd consider that even though creating unique content in situations like this can seem daunting and/or be more expensive, there's probably huge long-term gains to made if you do it right.

Hi Margaret, Here is a link to Lisa's slides from search love 2012. I think you'll find just about everything you need there. http://www.vervesearch.com/blog/presentations/international-seo-my-slides-from-search-love-london/ The correct markup really makes a difference. I would certainly suggest keeping it on the same domain. Rgds Kyle

Good question. Let's say that if the .ca domain was free, and your intention was to target exclusively the Canadian market, then that domain would be better, because of its strong (and automatic) geo-targeting. Said that, having a generic name domain - especially a .com - is not bad at all. At the end you can always set up the geo-targeting of the site in the setting panel of GWT, work on a great localization of the content in order to answer for real to the buying culture and specific "version" of the Canadian English, and earning links especially from Canadian sites. Doing that, the .com domain name won't have any problem in ranking in Google.ca. More over, on the long term, when hopefully the eCommerce will have success, you may also think about expanding your business to the USA market (or other countries). In that case, the .com domain name will be an advantage, because you will be able to set up country targeting subfolder (i.e.: /en-us/) and geo-target the subfolder in GWT, something you are not allow to do with subfolders of a country level domain name.

Definitely use a tool like OSE or Majestic to take a look at their link profile. Where are their high authority links coming from? Are they hard to duplicate links, or something you could get yourself? Are they links that could be removed once the site is sold? Are there any spammy or blackhat links? Make sure you do a thorough analysis of the site's backlinks to make sure you're not getting a lemon. Also, PageRank can sometimes drop when a site is sold to a new owner, so be aware of that possibility, especially if you are going to be changing the site's content a lot.

301 redirecting shouldn't be hurting you much unless you are getting 3 or more 301 redirects on the same URL.  When you string together a bunch of 301's you stand the chance that Google will refuse to follow it after about 3 so in that case you would be in trouble. Other than that you should be OK and once Google reads the 301's they will eventually deindex the old pages and your 301 ratio should go down. I agree with the earlier response though that you should be mindful about changing product titles too many .

Google has now changed their algorithm so it will PROMOTE SAFER SITES, thus using any form of SSL, SSL EV or similar will help SEO, however, you have an existing domain with a lot of ranking keywords/pages and inbound links, you have to do a "Domain forward", so the SEO might take a little hit initially, but from what I gather, the net benefit will be that adding an SSL will help SEO. It for sure helps with conversion rates anyway.

The solution in the implementation of the rel="alternate" hreflang, as explained by Google here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

Still use the hreflang attribute. US site: http://example.com/" /> CA site: http://example.ca/" /> In addition, I would set country targeting via GWT.

Hi Margaret, It's showing in lowercase for me here in the UK when searching for either your keyphrases or the domain name directly.

Since panda and penguin is actually very common see article below http://www.seroundtable.com/google-same-result-same-page-15287.html

Thanks Shane, That was exactly what I was looking for!

Yes you can use a 301 redirects to concentrate the link authority of multiple pages into one page (assuming that each page has some inbound links). This may give you a rankings boost to get you over the hump. 301 redirects can be difficult to implement (http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection) so you might be better off trying to get earn more links and social media shares to your most powerful page.

No problem at all. Thanks a lot for the tips!

Yah we've been starting to focus more on that, also upped our Facebook campaign for "likes". We were historically hovering right around 5 than boom down to 15ish. So you're probably right it was Penguin, thanks for the tips.

Hi, the actual page is "www.absoluteautomation.com/driveway-alarm.html" we've adjusted our keyword density (decreased), removed some incoming links which may have been considered spammy (unlikely but just to be sure) and that's about it for page specific SEO work, as a site we've stepped up our Facebook and Google + campaigns.

Well this penalty actually occurred back in February and I think we did add a paragraph or two of descriptive text at the time which may have been slightly over optimized but has also been fixed. The specific page is "http://www.absoluteautomation.com/driveway-alarm.html" <-- it's been penalized for the phrase "driveway alarm" it's still doing alright for driveway alarms,driveway sensors, etc.