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I think we will see a lot more about this soon but in the mean time I would have to ask, "Why take the chance?".

Just 301 to the https site. 301s allegedly don't pass all the link juice and you are potentially using two 301s when you could just use one. If it were me I would want to redirect to the https site and be building new links and even updating old ones to https.

As always definitive and worth a lot more than two cents!

Take a look at this recent thread.

http://moz.com/community/q/should-my-website-needs-to-be-disavowed-or-not

Marie and Sha are very knowledgeable in this area. And both have websites you should check out for help and great tools.

I can tell you my own experience after being hit by Penguin. I went through the same agony of wondering if filing a disavow would make Google notice me and penalize me. The fact was they already had noticed me and penalized me for spammy anchor text links. And if you have spammy links and have seen rankings and traffic drop, they know about you too (or will). From what I have read many SEOs proactively disavow bad links and periodically review backlink profiles to stay "clean" and update their disavow files. The big mistake appears to not disavow thoroughly enough. I believe the expression was "use a machete not a scalpel".

While some believe Google is aware of scrapers like cybo and will not penalize for them, it doesn't hurt. I don't take the chance. And it took 6-8 months but my site did recover. Of course you need to build more good links as well. (I need to do that part!).

So I think the answer is to go for it. Especially since you qualified the question and are aware some of those links could be helping your site. But instead of wondering build new good links and move forward. My 2 cents.

Best of luck!

GWT = Google Webmaster Tools. In there you can tell Google your preferred website and now you can add the https version as the preferred site. I'm not real clear on the format so hopefully someone will jump in here and MOZ will have more info soon. It is another way to avoid Google seeing the http and https as duplicate content and penalizing you.

Sorry I can't answer more directly!

Take a look at this thread a few days ago:

http://moz.com/community/q/seo-best-practice-http-to-https

I think Moosa hit it when he mentioned the need for 301s. Also have you set up GWT for your now preferred https site?

If you are concerned about "link juice" following to the new pages, you will need to set up 301 redirects.  I  don't know much about web.com but some of these services don't have a way to 301. It looks like some of your pages have different urls now but Google still has the index from the old site. The pages that have exactly the same names will be OK.

If there is no "link juice" to worry about, you may be all right just waiting for Google to figure it out. They will eventually re-index the new site.

You might also consider a different solution for your site using a CMS like wordpress and self hosting. That may give you more flexibility in the long run and a blog on your site would be good as well. Do a little reading here as there is a great deal of good advice. Congratulations on finding MOZ!

Marie is expert in this area and gives great advice here. She has helped many of us in this predicament.

I just wanted to follow up on her tip to disavow at the domain level. This is very important if the link location changes now or in the future. Note format for your GWT disavow file:

domain:spamsite.com

Just from my own experience having also been through an "algorithmic" Google penalty, it took 6-8 months after uploading a disavow file to see any recovery. But good news is it does work. I agree with the responses from William and LJD but wanted to mention Google does not remove the links you disavow. That will have to be done by submitting requests to the website webmasters. Actually Google wants you to do this first before disavow, but it doesn't seem to hurt not to or do them at the same time.

I used RMOOV as a tool to do this. Great tool and very helpful folks who will talk to you on the phone! Although disavow may get you there with Google, I think it is worth the effort to remove as many bad links as possible since it just looks bad and other search engines will not know about the Google disavow. It is a lengthy process but tools like RMOOV and Detox can help.

So no reconsideration request is required unless you have a manual action. Going forward I keep looking at my link profile using OSE, GWT and Majestic and when I see something I don't like, I update the disavow file. Important to "append" that file so as to keep all the original links and just add on the new ones.

Agree with all Tim said. Make sure you are using your browser "incognito" or private and even so Google will see your ip location so you can click on the "search tools" tab and change your location to something like "united states".

This will remove the personalized skewing of Google and results can be very different.

The problem you must be aware of is Duplicate Content. This can hurt your rankings and result in a Google penalty.

Creating one page with the variants and options is generally preferred and safer. If you want more content and that's a great idea, consider a Blog to give your users a better experience on your site and help establish you as an expert in your field. Sure it's more work, but it can really differentiate your site.

Do a search here for "Duplicate Content" as this is a common question for eCommerce sites.

Best of Luck!

One strategy I have seen recommended over and over is to look at your competitor's back links and see if any could be relevant for your site and worth pursuing. My question is how do I evaluate a link and not end up pursuing some penalized site? I would guess checking for Google index is a good idea since some of the webmasters may not be aware they are penalized.

Is it DA and whether they are indexed alone? Many sites I have seen have DA in the teens but are legitimate in our industry. Should they not be considered due to low DA?

Also I see links from directories on many competitor sites. Seems a controversial subject, but assuming the directory is industry specific, is it OK?

Thanks in advance!

It should be checked. I did notice my site took a little while to actually generate the sitemaps after installing Yoast.

You have checked the box "to enable XML sitemap functionality" ? In the Yoast SEO XML Sitemap settings.

Yes they do sound good and I got excited by the hype. I am concerned that there is not more info available on them other than on their site as you state. I did purchase the SEO plugin and played with it a bit. Seemed to work quite well and very feature rich especially for the og stuff and all the social integration. Also got along with Yoast "WP SEO" from what I could see on my test site. The schema markup for "product" was not visible on the page and reading Google's guide line, that appears to be a bad idea. I asked the plugin developer why and got a note back assuring me it was OK to do and followed Google's own guidelines. I asked for a link to verify that citation (3 times) and never received a response again. The silence from support on this to a verified paid user is a deal breaker for me. Too bad , 'cause it does look cool.

Thanks for your response!

"unless the old subdomain was something like reviews.newdomain.com and now you moving them to newdomain.com/reviews."

That is the case. Was "Store.domain.com" and now is "domain.com". Was previously two sites and the one I am dumping was the subdomain.

Thanks for hanging in there and answering this thing!

Just to be clear, it is now a sub-domain.

Does that matter?

Hi William,

Yes I am pretty sure I can. It is provided by Core Commerce and I will be shutting it down at some point. I thought the 301 redirects should be placed in the new site's htaccess?

Once the old site is shut down there would be no page to tag canonically, I think?

Using Raven Schema Creator plugin but interested in other recommendations as well.

Thanks

We recently changed our Website to Word Press and I would like to move the old reviews to the new site.

I am concerned Google might not understand the reviews showing up all of a sudden. The old reviews were on a sub-domain (store.domain.com). I will be able to match the dates and text as well as names.

Any advice or Best Practice on this?

Thanks!

Well I've done a bit more research and while impressed with the social options in the "SEO Booster" plugin, I am somewhat put off by the fact that the schema mark up on the product pages is not visible. This seems to be a violation of what Google recommends.

I think I'll stick with the Raven Schema Creator for now.

Still would be interested in anyone's experiences.

Thanks