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I have a section of a site that I want to remove. It has a main page linked from the nav menu, and a half dozen subpages under that.  The pages get some traffic and have ranks up to PR3, which is what my site's home page is. I'm no longer want to do these pages as they require tremendous upkeep and I'm not interested in keeping them going.

So, I know if I just remove these pages and that's all, I'm going to pay for it somewhere with Google.  What else should I do? I do't really have similar pages to direct them too.

You said, "build a content site with a store, a content site with affiliate links instead of ads" Yes, I'm thinking I'd have many times greater pages with content versus product pages, and the product pages would have long, original content on them. You also said, "affiliate links instead of ads" So, having both ads and affiliate links indicates that I'm not that serious I suppose, since "real" ecommerce sites don't run ads as well? Interesting, this is unrelated to the site I asked the question about, but I have a site now on precious metals, which is high-content, low amount of adsense. I was thinking I might choose one metals broker affiliate link (like a Goldbank or someone) and place it in the sidebar. Would that small change screw up my rankings? And, "a site with a shopping cart operated by the affiliate program" I'm not clear on this. Why is that?

I know Google has slammed affiliate sites hard. But affiliate marketing can be a real business and had an idea for one, but I would like to know if ALL affiliate sites are looked at as evil in Google's eyes, or if it's just those with thin and duplicate content in the product descriptions.

I know they want brands to come up ahead of affiliates of that brand, and that makes sense.  If I sold Acme Widgets products, Acme Widgets itself should come up ahead of my site.  But what if the site sold widgets in general, with the term widgets not a branded keyword? If all product descriptions are unique and well-written content, on a site that is  high quality, would it still be downgraded by Google just because there are affilate links in it?

I guess overall the question could be boiled down to, are affiliate sites hit because they have horrible content or because they have links to affiliate programs in them?

What do you think Google thinks of a site that has redirects in it, I mean overall. Do they perhaps think something shady is going on?  I've got another site that I have to redirect about a dozen pages (and it's not a big site), as I migrate a poorly designed site to a better one.  The redirects will be from URL like .../sample-page.php to .../sample-page.  What will Google think of that?

And if some pages I've redirected don't have links to them, and I'm only concerned with the search engines changing the indexed pages, how long do I need to keep the redirects active?

I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows:

mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets

mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets

mysite.com/directory/widgets-services

The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides"

In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it:

mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets

But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those.

I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course.

My question is:

Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting?  Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?

Assume I may have some pages of my site that don't have a lot of text on them, and I have to keep them on the site. Let's say there are no more than 50 like this out of 400 great pages, and the ratio of great-to-short pages continues to increase.

If I no index the short ones, will Google really ignore them in search? Will they ignore them enough to not downrank my site due to the short, noindexed pages?

I know, theoretically, they are supposed to ignore them, but I don't always trust all the rules.

Good quetions.

"Why are you creating a directory for your blog?"

I already have a hand-made beginning of a directory of sorts--the major majors in some major categories. It is desirable on the site as it is a new industry and not everyone knows all the players. So, I am doing it to serve my readership and of course to then increase backlinks and visits to the site.

"Is the blog an industry specific blog of some type?"

Yes, it's specific, and it's a hot new industry with new vendors almost daily.

"What are you hoping to gain from having the directory?"

Backlinks and traffic. It's not really to get ad clicks on those page, but of course that would be nice. There really is no other good directory for this industry now.

"Is it something they pay for or do you allow them to be on it for free?"

Free. Although in the future I could always make it a profit center with premium placements, section sponsorship and the like.

After thinking about these questions, maybe option #2 with the best. Well, it's the safest and the least amount of work.

Although, I could go with option #1, and when they submit the description part I could tell them that if they want to control exactly as their listing appears they can submit unique content; otherwise we reseve the right to rewrite it in any way we like. And we can give them a Copyscape test for it so they know.

Now, one other thing to consider: While many of the companies are small and not "brands" so much and I have a good chance to rank for them since my site is so strong, many are certainly brands and with Google the way it is now, I likely would not stand a chance to rank for the company names anyway.

My blog site currently has maybe 100 posts and I do about 7-8 new a week. I am creating a directory for an this site, which will end up eventually being a few hundred or more entries eventually.

In the directory browse/search listing, each directory listing will have a title and a short description (one or two lines) and will show about 10-20 per page.  And then the user can click an entry to see more details for the particular directory listing.

This is where I have a choice, and I want to know what is the best for my site, in Google's eyes of course.

Options:

1. The listing detail is displayed on a separate page.

2. The listing detail is displayed below the entry that was clicked, on the same page, by use of jquery to slide down the other content blow it to make room for it. (It actually looks slick, I've tried it).

If I were writing full, unique pages for each listing detail, I'd choose option #1. But the vendors are submitting the content.  It's possible they might just copy and paste their site's About page into it, or they might not even add any more detail other than their address. I can't control it.

So, if going with option #1, let's say a third of the vendors add nice unique content, a third paste in some dup content, and a third just leave it blank (there would still be an address, couple line short description, and a title on the page).  Would this situation be good, not good or neutral for my site?

I'm not sure if adding additional pages, maybe half to two-thirds of which could be somewhat duped or of minimal word length would be bad or neutral for my site overall.  As for my existing and ongoing blog pages--they are all unique, long and Google seems to love them.

I wish to add a "News" section to a highly-read, highly ranked blog I have. The News pieces will not be in the same flow as my regular posts.  I'm contemplating what the best way to do this is, and would like some advice, please. I see these options:

Option 1. Pay textbroker type people to rewrite news releases and post them into the news flow. Pro: indexable content. Con: expense.

Option 2: Have a Submit News form on the site for vendors to submit their news stories. I would have to ask them to rewrite their stories to avoid dup content. Pros: Easy for me, no cost. Cons: Will still get dup content I bet, a lot of companies won't take the time to do it, and I will have no control over quality. (I really doubt this option will work).

Option 3: Post news releases from companies in their raw format, and mark them as no index (even if I don't noindex, they won't move up the SERPs anyway, so why not just noindex them). Pros: very easy, all the news I want. Cons: not creating any indexable content.

Bonus question: If I do Option #3, and I place an adsense ad on the page, will it work the same as if it was an indexed, non-duplicate content page?

Your thoughts?

Now that is interesting, I'd never heard that. I thought dofollow or no follow only had to do with passing link juice.

Anyone else concur with this?

I understand Google likes long content, and I make all my pages at least 500 words of unique and good content. But there is something I am curious about. Do they also count comments as content?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm considering creating a Q&A site, where I'd control the questions, making sure they would be good ones and not duplicates, and then have people add answers. In reality, I'd be populating most the questions as first, and most definitely supplying a very good and long answer to questions.  The answers would likely be in the form of comments, with highest ranked answers at top.  So, I'm wondering what Google would think of a 100 word question, with a several hundred word answer in a comment, often followed by some other comments after that. Would it be a 100 word page or a 500+ word page?

I have a couple sites that deal with broadband internet access, and I'm looking to monetize beyond adsense. I'd like to sign up for some affiliate programs from internet service providers like Charter, CenturyLink, Comcast, etc.

I found a couple affiliate programs but I am having no luck at all figuring out the programs that so many other websites are involved with.  In about every case, the user is able to enter in their address and then a search is performed, returning programs available at their location.  The programs I've found just do the traditional ad click-throughs for a possible commission.

Can anyone enlighten me what kind of programs they are using?

DaringFireball.net must have very low time on site numbers though. There's nothing to read on that blog, and links take the user away from the site.  It's just a weird example that he chose.

Yes, that's the difference, but how does Google know unless they takes the time to read each site?

In a blog of mine, I'm taking care to rewrite my own take on various stories that appear on other sites, only sometimes even pasting in an excerpt.  I discriminate in my selections. So, instead, is Matt Cutts saying that I could just save a ton of time by just making a sentence of commentary and then paste in an excerpt? I guess so. (Yes, I know my blog is better for readers if I do it as I am now, that's not the issue).

Still, he's contradicting himself on duplicate content.  And I still think it's hilarious (and confusing) that Cutts used DaringFireball as an example of how to curate. I'd at least think he should have pulled a site as an example that maybe writes a couple paragraphs, then some excerpt and then maybe a closing paragraph.

Okay, I read an interview somewhere this week where Matt Cutts said he didn't care much for curated content.  Today I searched on that subject and came up with the following video of his:

http://youtu.be/zZU7O1BHfyo

So, in the video he is going along and saying not to just grab content and repost it.  And then at around minute 3:15 he says that, on the other hand, you can have a blog like DaringFireball.net and that's a good thing, because the blogger takes the time to pick and choose what he is posting.

I went to Daring Fireball to take a look, and I saw that he writes maybe one line of commentary, and then pastes in a big chunk of the curated content along with a link to the source.

This shocked me. How could Matt like that blog -- he keeps telling that he likes original not duplicate, curated content.  So, the difference is that a blog can get away with this if they exercise discretion in what they choose to copy and paste?  How the hell would the Google algorithm know what the intention of the blogger is?

And here I've been wasting my time writing up paragraphs and paragraphs to precede any excerpts I paste in, in fear of getting hit by Google.

I'd like to hear your comments on this.

Interesting that in DuckDuckGo.com and StartPage.com it is showing with the new title wording, and in increased position (#3 on DuckDuckGo.com).  Still not up there in google.

Any idea if this means anything?

"it would not drop off the index"

My apologies, I did say that but I meant it dropped off the rankings, not even in top 1000 now) I edited my question now to be more accurate.

1. Has the site lost rankings for other pages?

I don't think so.

2. Has anything else been done that might have an impact on rankings (i.e adding links, removing links)?

Nothing else has been changed.

3. When you paste the URL in Google, does it come up as the first search result? If so, it was not dropped from the index.

Yes.

4. Is the keywords still at the beginning of the title tag?

Yes.

5. Is there another page on the site that now ranks for the site? You may have more than one page on the site targeting the same keyword.

No