Questions
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When to use mod rewrite / canonical / 301 redirect
Hi I would definitely setup a 301 redirect for the case sensitive URLs issue - you may already know how to setup this up but I thought I would include this link - http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/18670/how-to-redirect-any-url-to-lowercase-url For your pagination issue you need to look at if it is possible to change /casestudy to a "view all" page and then place a canonical link to the /casestudy page in the of each page in the paginated set. Another option for your pagination is using rel="next" and rel="prev" and for the filter parameters you could tell Googlebot not to crawl these parameter URLs. Hope this helps
Technical SEO Issues | | Matt-Williamson0 -
New Domain Vs. Existing Domain
I'm going to disagree a bit with the other commenters (respectfully) and say that - it depends. First off, you said it's an algorithmic penalty, and that can really follow a wide range of timelines. Let's say you got hit by a Penguin update - you'd have to wait until the next data update, even if you do everything right, which can take months. I think "weeks" is very situational and may be optimistic. The other big factor to consider - what does your link profile look like outside of this? If you have 1,500 toxic links from a handful of domains, and they're part of a profile with 150,000 natural links from thousands of decent-to-good domains, then definitely don't write this domain off. You've got a ton of assets to lose, and you can't just 301-redirect your way out of this (you'd have to start over). You'd also be losing social, direct traffic, and potentially a lot of other things. On the other hand, let's say you have 1,550 links, and 1,500 of them are toxic. At this point, Google's view of your site may be so dim that, at best, you'll take weeks to get the disavow processed and then effectively be left at zero (or possibly -1). If that's the case, then I think starting over is a much different equation and possibly even faster. It also depends a lot on the strength of your domain and your other branding efforts. Changing names isn't something to take lightly, if you've built a name. On the other hand, if you've slapped up a partial-match domain (no offense intended) and part of your problem is that you've built keyword-loaded anchor text around that PMD, then cutting the domain loose could actually help you. This isn't a decision any of us can or should make for you in Q&A, honestly.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dr-Pete0