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Just to add to Ryan's already stellar answer, the temporary page should actually (probably; not privy to all details of your situation) have a canonical tag referencing one of the other more permanent pages with similar content.

If the link is not the destination URL the user lands on (in some cases), then yes, it's not the optimal situation for the maximum amount of authority being passed. But that's also dependent upon how the user is being redirected...

Ha, no worries. Somehow it happens all the time! Good luck in solving your SERP title issue!

If both the www. and non-www. URLs were being indexed - creating duplicates for nearly every page on your website - then the significant drop in number of pages indexed makes sense.

I think that - adding the new URL while keeping the old ones in XML sitemap for a bit - is your best idea. You can manually add your new URL to index using GWT tools, as well, but I think it's best practice to wait for your site to be crawled again before removing old links from XML sitemap.

Barry?

Unfortunately that's probably a question better answered by somebody else. I'm not well versed in Twitter when you start talking about different languages/countries, etc. I'd say that's okay, but you may save time by just trying out your content/social strategy in one language first.

There's a lot going on there (customs, cultural differences) these audiences could be vastly different as far as what makes them tick and what makes them likely to engage. Like I said, you're probably better off having someone else chime in on that.

Sorry! Good luck, though.

A natural backlink profile has diversity - get ready for it - naturally. While in a perfect world, you want a strong variation in the number of domains linking to your pages, however if the same site chooses to link to your page(s) on their own, without your or any other outside influence, I don't see an issue with this.

There's a lot here, but I'd like to address the overall strategy here. Just know and keep in mind the new Twitter/Google agreement is nice, but it's an incredibly small slice of the SEO pie, if you will.

Building a twitter following by delivering legitimate content to a relevant audience is great - and yes, could be featured prominently in SERPs - but don't hop on twitter for that. It won't work. I'd develop a larger social media, content marketing, and branding strategy first to solve the problem of getting the brand/company name out there and building followers.

The impact you're looking for will come naturally then. But it's a long term strategy that takes discipline and time. There's no quick win here. Just my two cents.

In my experiences, any time there's a dash in the SERP title, it means Google re-wrote it to some extent. Whether they've shortened it, changed it to something completely unique, it always re-writes with a dash and not a colon, or some other separator.

What Google is essentially saying is, "we think this title better describes your page." The first obvious places to look are length and keyword placement/usage: if the title is too long, shorten it. If the main keywords in your title aren't prominently displayed on the page (H1, H2s, body copy, other internal pages using that anchor text, etc.) then I'd try and make those types of changes.

Don't go overboard with keyword stuffing or anything like that, of course. It's usually not too hard to get these changed back, just do a little digging, keyword research, and make some of the changes I've recommended. I bet you'll see the title change to what you've suggested after optimizing and another crawl or two.

You really shouldn't be creating duplicate content of any kind for multiple clients. Even on different domains for businesses in different countries, this is not the best SEO strategy for you or the businesses. Work hard to create valuable, unique content ideas that the customer of the business may actually want to read, digest, and share.

If there's really no content for the business or industry, don't have a blog. Find other ways to include great content on the main pages to ensure there's robust, strong content for users to see and search engines to crawl and index appropriately.

Yes, the canonical included with the rel next and prev is fine.

I'm just not sure the gallery of images is an appropriate use of real next/prev. Are all these images on one page? If so, I'm not sure those html elements are necessary.

You may want to double check that. I'm not a Yoast specialist, per se, but I've never had that plugin not solve this type of problem. And from what you've described, I'm sure Yoast can help with that. It's a little complex, maybe take a second look-through with a developer.

If the alternative is just de-indexing those duplicate pages on one website, then I'd definitely recommend the cross-domain canonicals, yes.

Download the Yoast SEO plugin. It'll help you solve nearly all problems. Hands down the best WP plugin for SEO.

I've done this at times at pretty large volume (100s of outreach emails), and typically I've gotten about a 10% response rate. Keep in mind that didn't necessarily mean we got a link, but some type of relationship was formed, potential for the business to earn more work (better than links, btw), or something else productive. Even if it was just a citation we consider that a "win."

But some advice, do not employ this tactic at large scale unless you are in a web-saavy, tech-based industry. Online marketing, design, and photography businesses, for example, are far more likely to earn links via broken link building than a manufacturing plant. In my experience, there are just some industries this tactic is a complete and utter waste of time.

If you find success in this tactic early-on though, there are some great social tools that help you automate some of this email work. I've heard very good things about BuzzStream.

Oh, and make sure it's not your only link earning/building tactic.

Yes, if /page/gallery/1/, /page/gallery/2/ are exact duplicates just place a canonical tag on the /page/gallery (and the duplicates) referencing /page/gallery.

Another recommendation to avoid duplicate/confusion by search engines: apply rel="next" and rel="prev" to the series of gallery pages. Once you get enough images, I'm guessing the URL structure will become /page/gallery/page_2, 3, 4, etc. (or something like that).

The next/prev elements let the search engine know they are a series of a type of content (in this case, images) and are associated.

That type of content can be real headaches for us SEOs! Good luck.

First of all, these are great questions.

My first question would be are the sites hosted on the same server or near-same IP address? If they are, and given much of the content is duplicate, chances are Google/search engines already understand these websites are somehow related. This is just something to consider...

Answer #1: If you de-index a group of products on one website, chances are, yes the other site would see some improvement just based on there being one less competitor. But I would do some extensive competitive research first to see if how the other sites are ranking next to your two sites.

Ultimately, I would side with a cross-domain canonical over de-indexing that way you're passing some value from one site to the other. I would do this on a product by product basis however, making sure the product niche you keep indexed matches with the site's overall niche theme and not vis versa.

Answer #2: My second paragraph sort of addresses your second question. Think from a semantic and topical understanding perspective here: if it's a healthcare product, make sure the site with the healthcare niche is the one being indexed, not just the general merchandise website. Even simply from a branding and general marketing perspective that makes more sense, IMO.

Answer #3: It sounds like, if there's duplicate descriptions (I'm guessing images, headers, and other content pieces) the canonicals likely would be honored. Even across domains, duplicate content can be a concern (especially if they're hosted together). Remember though, canonical tags are just a mere suggestion, so it could take some time for Google to honor it, but from the information you've given, I think that's your best shot.

Another thing to take into consideration when using canonical tag: make sure you're placing the canonical tag on the page/website that's performing worse of the two. There may be exceptions based on the niche and from a semantic perspective, but in general, you don't want to hurt your own performance by referencing the less authoritative page.

Good luck! Hope my advice helps.

I believe it rolled out internationally this past month (December). Check out SERoundtable for updates. Barry's great with that stuff.

Regardless of CMS, all pages will have the follow, index tags. This just means search engines will crawl and index the pages appropriately, as well as "follow" any links on the pages (to other internal pages and external website pages). This is standard.

While e-commerce websites can have some complicated issues in terms of duplicate content, in general it's smart to have self-referencing canonical tags applied to pages you create. This will also help keep things in order and when duplicate content gets created (in e-commerce it's inevitable).

It'll be easier to change the self-referencing tags to the appropriate URL you want indexed in favor of it.