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I read back over what Rand posted over 5 years ago!  I have moved several sites and what Rand said is still best practice.  Google indexing is nothing to play with.  Taking down content and then trying to get it to rank again can look very spammy to Google.

This could be a very interesting thread.  Thanks for asking this Eliathah!  I've tried to reach you to webmasters before but without much success so I really can't speak to a solution or with experience.  Hopefully someone will share their experiences.

Here are some questions I would ask myself:

**How long it had been on the top of the rankings?  **

• Based on this answer you may be looking at the natural flow of Google's algorithm and not a "penalty".  Your page just didn't have the authority to stay in the top spots.

**What links were pointing to the page?  **

• Smaller sites usually are not penalized, they just lose the authority of a once powerful link and therefore begin dropping.  The fix is just to gain better quality links and create more authentic authority.

Was there a big shift in the SERP or does it seem as if your site was the only one that moved?
  - If there was a big shift (or even a small one), you may be looking at a change int he way Google renders the SERPs for that market.  I have a client that sells "medical equipment" and that SERP all of the sudden went local.  That changed the entire results.

Hope those help.  There are a ton of variables with this kind of stuff but I wanted to share what I would be thinking.  Hopefully it's just a "big" SERP dance and you end back up on the top again.

I would love to hear what decision you went with and how it turned out in the data.  I moved a large ecommerce site at the beginning of the year and didn't touch any image url's and they never showed up in 404 errors either.  I'm guessing the links to our site were not to product images but rather to product pages.

Even though I did it this way, I would love to hear how your's came out.

Thanks!

A recent article on Youmoz blog that has some great general ideas on this topic --> http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/identifying-link-penalties-in-2012

I know it doesn't go into many specific ways of rectifying the situation but it does have a lot of valuable information.

I don't know why I didn't think of this before but in the Community section of SEOmoz there is a Recommended Companies page. That would be a great resource to start with.  Many of those guys have written awesome article and spoken at events or in webinars so you know they are good.

(note: I don't know your budget so I'm assuming you are in the same boat as me, as far as pricing goes)

I would say the budgets needed to get some of their services (talking implementation not just consulting) are going to start around $5000 a month.  They are well worth it!  If you are even considering a really quality company I would give them a call and they will probably have some recommended companies or freelancers that they recommend that may fit into your budget.

I'd been dabbling in SEO since 2007 when I finally buckled down about 2 years and jumped in head first.  The biggest influence on me was the Beginner's Guide To SEO that SEOmoz just updated.  Then I went through every White Board Friday and Pro Webinar I could.

Followed key people on Twitter and asked some of the dumbest questions.  SEO's (at least good ones) are so incredible helpful and willing to help you out.  I can remember getting my first big client and I called just to get more acquainted with the Pro Tools here.  Actually got to talk to Cyrus, before I knew who he was.

So basically: read, follow, and ask.  With every change in the SEOsphere you become that much more of an expert.

I have yet to find a good company for a price within my budget.  I head up the SEO for an ecommerce site as well and am about to embark on a link building campaign.  I'm excited about the recent updates in Google because I think it will allow us to stay competitive by gaining a few great links more naturally than unnatural useless links.

I know there are some incredibly creative link building companies out there, I just haven't found one that works in my small budget.

I would have to say that in my experience the same principles that make a page able to rank for really competitive keywords would hold true for long tail as well.

Here is a cool thread from another Q&A  on SEOmoz --> http://www.seomoz.org/q/need-some-advice-on-long-tail-keyword-research-and-general-seo-methods

My vote goes to WPEngine as well. Great people there.

I was on a different hosting service and my sites slowed to a crawl when I began to grow my company. I moved to a hostgator reseller and have had great success but have heard of the situations where even they will kill your sites if they get too much traffic. Either way you go, always have a backup and a plan B. From my experience a really good hosting service runs anywhere from $20/month and up. A great Wordpress hosting service is WPEngine, but only if you have the budget and traffic to constitute the price. I love them, great group of people there.

I don't know of another way in GWT but you can do it in CSV format in SEOmoz tools.  I know that SEOmoz 404's is different than what you probably see in GWT but you can run a on-page report and then download the CSV report. Sort the report to show all the 404 errors and in the last column you have the referrer.

For top level categories we are trying to make very unique content.  For similar subcategories there may be a little overlap in product description on the category page but we try to make sure they are atleast 70% unique. It's a subjective call, not a perfected science with that.

Taking the best sellers first is definitely the way to go about doing it.

I don't monitor page authority as much but our rankings have increased and stuck for rather competitive SERPs.  There are a ton of other variables that went into our increased rankings so to say that adding unique content to a page "caused" a ranking increase would have to be tested out.  I know it helped, just not sure to tell you how much.

You look more authentic to Google and Bing if you have unique quality content.

From the sounds of your explanation you are the business.  You may be "doing business as" a name but your customers and future customers are purchasing your services because of you.  I have seen a lot of people claiming their Google+ business page and using it in a tactical way but very personal as well.  It's going to be a different strategy but can still be very personal.

I don't know Google personally but... (a little joke there) I can only assume with the new rel="author" and rel="me" tags and all the connecting of Google's infrastructure that it understands people are becoming the face of their companies.

I would recommend claiming your social network identity for "branding" and creating a strategy around it.  Begin posting strictly business news to Google+ page and only referencing it.  Same thing with Facebook and Twitter.  Claim your brand identity, use the networks intentionally but keep your own personal pages so that you become the authority of your market AND your brand.

At least that's what I'm trying to do.

Exactly what basjereon said but I thought I would get you a few screenshots.

Choose the error by clicking on it --> http://www.screencast.com/t/ijsJlcdGW

Choose "Linked From" tab --> http://www.screencast.com/t/uxRVQmpgo

That will show you where Google picked up the 404 link.

I have been working on an ecommerce site with probably 10% of the categories you have but I have seen incredible value from taking the time (no matter how much it it) in adding unique content to the pages.  This will not only help you rank well but it will (as I have seen) give your product pages and sub category pages much more credibility.

My advice after having taken the time and still taking the time to do the (non glorious) work of a ton of on page optimization is to keep at it. Just grab yourself a big cup of coffee, a pair of good headphones and get to work.  After a while you'll get a system down and be able to go through it much faster or you can outsource it to someone who can then follow your system.

Most of all with ecommerce, keep at it.  Just plow through the incredibly monotonous tasks that it requires.  Set up the system/method you need to go through for each on page area and then teach someone to do it.

Spend the time doing this --> http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit

Set up actionable methods and clear expectations on reporting not results.  I go over "expected" results but I never say we "will be at this level" or something.

If funding allows it, get a consultation from a well established company like SEERinteractive or Distilled in order to get started on the right track with such a competitive market.

Most importantly, set expectations and do work. Keep at it and you will see some awesome results.

That would be my assumption.  I'm sure there is some value placed on the links you place from your Facebook page timeline as well but not as much.  I would consider this type of stuff to be "signals" not direct brand ranking factors that Google would see.  Signals are the first step though and seem to be having a big impact on my client's brand recognition.

As far as I can tell, social is a big part of the authentication process and filter of Google for Brand signals.  If you establish solid (not spam) social accounts with your brand identity then, yes, I am saying that will help with branding.

A good way to test is by searching your "brand" in google and see what shows up.

I've had similar experiences after migrating sites over to a new CMS.  The links are being picked up from somewhere so the best thing to do is create a 301 redirect if there is a valuable similar page to the 404.  The only other option is to lose possible link juice from where ever the link is coming from.  It's always better to have a pure link (no 301) but if you can't contact the original link then there is nothing you can do.

I'm curious as to where the links come from as well.  Maybe someone will be able to speak to that.