Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Jeff, I had the same issue with a client last year. In a nut shell a soft 404 error is when the page looks like a regular 404 error web page but the http response header returns 200 OK. So search engines think that the page is okay (a regular webpage) but there is no content on that page etc. Your webteam will need to identify how they are producing the soft 404 error pages (with 200OK header responses) and change that set-up in the CMS. Or, if these are old pages that are no longer required and are no longer driving traffic then archive/delete them. Good luck, Davinia

Are they two truly different stores, as in two different companies?  If so, a redirect would seem odd to users.  If they are shopping on one site, they would expect the products listed on the site to be sold there and when they click on a link to a product they expect to stay on that site.  Breaking those expectations by listing products that that site doesn't offer and/or redirecting people to a different site would be confusing and possibly cause them to leave. I like Schwaab's alternative suggestion.  At first put a message on the product pages indicating that the product is no longer available through that site, but that the product can be purchased on your sister site.  After while, for the sake of visitor usability/experience, I would still remove the product pages (and internal links to them) entirely from the one site that does not offer the products anymore. Kurt Steinbrueck OurChurch.Com

Hi Jeff, Some interesting points I found instantly whilst checking out the link profile. I'll give my initial findings now and then examine them afterwards to summarize soon. You have 569 links (out of a total of 2399 links that I checked to your site, this is a huge portion of your link profile) using the anchor text "twin prams". Every single one comes from the same domain (babyandco.com). You do not rank for this term in Google. You have a fair few links using the anchor text "quinny prams". This time, they are from various domains and not one domain. You do not rank for this term in Google. You have a fair few links using the anchor text "pushchair" again from various domains. You do not rank for this term. The above also applies for Prams, Pram Systems, Baby Car Seats & Baby Buggies. I would hazard a guess that your Google analytics shows drops in visitors coming on to your site from searching these terms. How do you feel about letting me have a look? I think your link profile, while not terribly horrific, certainly isn't anywhere near natural or clean. I think that there could also be other issues playing a part. If I can access your analytics I can check out visitor drop dates and cross reference against Penguin and Panda algo updates to see if there could also be a content issue. Here are a few links pointing to you site which are pretty toxic links (either deindexed from Google or have horrific trust signals): EDIT: Removed the backlinks. I'm sure Moz don't want to be linking to these sites! http://abdulmohideen.fastpage.name/litesun http://bargainbabygear.info/otherresources/browse/73/quinnypushchair.html http://pram-stroller.com/choosing-baby-car-seats-bytrevor-hobbs/ http://www.stufftobuyforbaby.co.uk/cheap-baby-stuff/cheap-prams-and-pushchairs-uk/ http://nursing-australia.com/baby-lo-nursing-chair/ I can give you a full list if you like. I would not submit these to Google Disavow unless you have received a warning though. Instead, you should use it to contact the owners of the sites to get them to remove the links. In total,  Link Research Tools shows that you have 7% of incoming links being toxic. A few questions/notes: Has the site got any sister sites, old owned sites, micro sites, niche sites etc 301 redirected to it that you know of? (other than the .com version I mention below) Did you receive an unnatural link message from Google? Can you give me a list of maybe 5 competitors so I can check out their backlink profile please. Perhaps most worrying is that babys-mart.com redirects to the .co.uk version. The .com version has been deindexed by Google. This could be causing problems and is a big issue. It will pass on some very bad trust signals.

Yes, that's very likely to draw a Penguin penalty, presuming that the links go directly to your domain, and not to an intermediate (like Commission Junction or Shareasale etc., for tracking...those kinds of affiliate programs are understood by Google and handled for you, so no problem if you're using those). I would ask the affiliate to add a rel=nofollow; if they won't, then I'd disavow their domain.

If you are trying to find active and influential people on twitter and other social media. You could try to follow those that have a high ranking and have certain keywords in their BIO. This way you can follow people more easy. Socialbro has this feature. and some of the other follow people on twitter services

Depending on the site they may be valuable. Soundcloud for example has nofollow attributes on links so there's no direct link equity passed through those links.