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URL Removal would not be a good action in this case.  According to Google, when they remove the https version, they will also remove the http version along with it.

How long ago did you implement the robots.txt exclusion for the https pages?  It will take Google some time to pull this from their index.  To help you can add the following on your https pages which will keep the pages from continuing to be cached:

Perhaps the question you should be asking is "what is the best way to host my site?".  Perhaps you should look at cloud hosting via Rackspace or look at Media Temple for decent hosting options.

Hi Andrew-

We were just discussion this earlier today... hope this thread helps you out!

http://www.seomoz.org/q/should-i-use-www-or-not-in-my-main-url

The general consensus is that google doesn't care either way.  It boils down to either aesthetics, personal preference, or in the case of an existing domain whether one of the root links has already developed better rankings.

-John

Theo's on the money here... it makes no difference to the engines.

If you need help deciding, check out which homepage (with or without www) has the higher rank and roll with that one!

You are correct, those sites do show but only when you are searching for those domains.  I'm not seeing a sitemap.xml file, but that would be strongly recommended.  Google does support sitemap indexes, which would be perfect for you in this situation!  You'll need to submit a separate sitemap for each language, and there you can identify the root/home page for each one.

http://www.threebit.com/blog/seo/sitemaps-and-multilingual-websites.html

You need to communicate to Google where your /es and /de are residing.  Having sitemaps in place for each of those roots would be best.  Further, if you are defaulting to English, you should probably have your root domain point to the English site (/en) since the root and the /en are essentially the same page.

And yes, the root domain does have a language code in the head.  

Are you sure about Google Germany?  I just grabbed this screenshot.

Your root domain is showing on the listings for Germany and Spain yet you have this tag in the head:

| http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en"/> |

You will need to get your /es and /de root pages listed on those engines for the language descriptions you are expecting.

gLT6a

Big Bazza is spot on here...

What system are you using?  We might be able to point out a plug to get those friendly URLs that you're looking for

The tag pages will only add duplicate content for you.  It would be a good idea to add a meta tag for robots with the value "noindex,follow".  This will keep the pages out of the index, yet still let the links be followed.  There are plugins available for this sort of thing, Yoast has a good one; I believe All In One SEO is also pretty good too.

Gabriel-

It's no problem for these codes to appear in other sections of the page.  There are many character sets out there, and what may appear great to you (without codes) looks like gibberish to someone else.  The codes help make for a uniform experience for everyone.  For instance, there are no "smart quote" keys on your keyboard, yet some programs (like Word) will automatically insert these for you.  To have these on a web page most systems will convert these to codes for you.  The ampersand, however, falls into this category since it's often an escape character for other characters.

So, the place we're still really most concerned about is the meta title.  I'm not sure why the mb_convert_encoding() function didn't work for you?

If you'd like me to take a closer look feel free to message me.  This is solvable - I've done it before on WP sites.

Gabriel-

Do you have some sort of site caching turned on?

Thanks David... great points about the product descriptions.  You do have to get creative to stand out!

The general idea of the rel attribute is to link authors to content.

Check out How to use rel=author tags for SEO... the article goes on to explain that this is part of a new "AuthorRank" system for determining content legitimacy.

Think of it this way... view the source of the page.  Add the rel="author" where you see links pointing to http://www.ultraseo.com/author/atul/.

rel="author" doesn't go anywhere in the .  It's an attribute added to <a>links.</a>

Sorry, I misunderstood you... I though you were referring to the title tag since you mentioned the head tag.  My bad.

rel="author" is just an attribute added to the author links that you already have in place.

Yes, in your header.php file, replace the <title>tag with the code from above.  The <title> tag must be inside of the <head> tag.  Simplified:</p> <blockquote style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f7f7f7; padding-top: 5px; margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 2px; padding-bottom: 5px; white-space: nowrap; overflow-y: auto; font-family: monospace; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"> <p><head></p> <p><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><title>Your Title</title>

My pleasure!

Bingo!  You got it!

Your Articles page would be a good example of where you could use the rel="author" attribute.  Under your article title it says: "In Articles, by Atul".  Point the "by Atul" link to the rep page using rel="author".

If I understand correctly, in terms of tying all articles together, Google assign their own valuation when all of the rel="author" links are pointed to the same place.

You're in the right place for SEO help... most folks in here really want to be here, so no worries about ego bashing.

What are you planning on using for a platform to develop the site?

Tricky areas to watch out for on e-commerce sites include handling of duplicate content on category (list) type pages vs. actual product pages, particularly if they are nested and search result pages.  You will definitely want to use your rel="canonical" tags.

As for the domain name, it's certainly helpful to include keywords, but it's not the end of the world if you don't.  You're really developing a brand.  Think of ebay or twitter even.  Clearly, no keywords to be found.

If you're talking about the rest of the URL, then yes, make sure you work with a platform that has good SEO support: search-engine friendly URLs, meta title & meta description support, and a place to enter descriptions for your images at the very least.

That's a start... certainly ask if you have other questions!

No, if you look at any of the credit links you have under articles already, you'll see that address.