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If you paginate an article then you can also use the rel=prev and rel=next to help Google crawl the pages in an article.

I would be careful with UGC.  You may have someone with a list of 100 songs, but then they only comment on 20 of them.  Is it really worth showing all 100?  Seems like you would be ripe with duplicate content with all the repeated titles of songs.  Why not show the top songs with comments or maybe most played with comments?   Put the other 80 on a next page and then canonical link the additional content to the main page.

I would worry less about length and more about quality and originality.

Cheers!

The other point here is that Google has been working on consolidating results from a single domain

http://www.highposition.com/blog/google-domain-crowding-update-may-2013/

You may simply be working against the updated algo.

Other alternatives would be to build out pages on the same KW for a given property, so you would have your you tube video on Classy Green Cars, then a blog post on a subdomain etc.  Then you would avoid the clustering effect.

Another thing to consider is to look at how your site is organized.   Make one main page on Green cars and have a ton of info, then have all the other "Green car" related pages link up to the top page.

Unless the search is really long tail it may be hard to find traffic for your other key words etc.   Find the biggest key word and focus on that then build the variants and link up to it.

Cheers

Agreed.  Plus, the shorter the URL the better.  Helps out in emails etc.  Easier to remember.

The authority of the current domain of 36 is better than the new domain that would be 0 and you can always work to improve the authority of the domain that you already have.

Working on the authority of the current domain is a better use of your time.

Cheers!

You can implement it side wide on all pages, but make sure that you do it correctly.   One other added benefit is that if anyone scrapes your content, if they scrape the code that includes your canonical link, you would get proper attribution.

Also, if you do it site wide, on any pages where you do want the canonical pointing to another page, make sure that you don't overwrite those.  Example, you may have the printer friendly version of a page canonical to the original version of the page - this makes sense and is a good use of canonical.  You would not want to overwrite that canonical with the canonical to self.

Cheers!

Two parts

1) If you link to two different URLs

http://youngepilepsy.org.uk/news-and-events/events

http://youngepilepsy.org.uk/news-and-events/events/

the two above would classify as that (with and without the slash are two different URLs)

and

2) if your server shows a 200 response on both of those URLs and shows the same content for those URLs

Then yes, you have a duplicate issue.

You need to

1) Make sure you keep consistent with how you link to URLs (with or without the slashes).

Decide on a standard, I personally like ending in slashes if this is an index page as this helps with reporting in places like Google Analytics where they are looking at your directory structure for reports.

If you never end in a slash

http://youngepilepsy.org.uk/news-and-events/events

and

http://youngepilepsy.org.uk/news-and-events/events/article-xyz

these two pages would be put into two different "folders" in your report for Google Analytics. I went round and round with the developers on this and had to show them the reports in GA to show why.

I also think we have had the standard that / being the index page for years now and then you have all the pages within it.  I know with modern CMSs there may not be any folders and these are all actually "routes", but as a mental organizational construct (and in the reporting example above) I think most people (who are not programmers) think that way.

That said, I currently help run a site that has no trailing slashes, and I am living with it, again, being consistent is the most important.  You will see many wall known SEO sites go sans slashes, so either way will work.

and

2) Then 301 redirect the "non standard" to the "standard" version (say the non slashed version to the slash version) so that you can clean up any other confusion that may be out there.

Cheers!

Generally speaking, Google will put whatever they think is the most appropriate in the SERPs for your title.  It is annoying but the are doing it to "help" the user experience.

Mark is on the right track with what he is suggesting.  We had a similar issue for a group of pages on our site.  Google was showing the URL slug vs the title we had put in - that was annoying!   We just tweaked the title a bit as it was already within the normal "parameters" of what people suggest as best practices. I think the update of tags make G take another look and our tags were updated an shown appropriately within a few weeks.

It is almost like your old TVs or radios, you need to "kick em" to get them to reset and work.  That seemed to help in this case with us and title tags and SERPs on G.

Cheers!

The link that kosta list relates to the use of the rel=canonical for multi lingual pages.

I would point you to Dr. Pete (below) and I think he has good advice. I also love to eat cannonscicles, but that is another story.  Generally, you can do it, but you need to know what you are doing to make sure that you do not screw something up.

I had an issue on a site where Google was still caching old URLs on our site, even though we had relaunched the URL structure and setup 301 redirects - over two years prior.  An SEO consultant we work with suggested dropping in the self canonicalizing (sp?) links and over a period of a couple of months the old URLs were replaced in the Google SERPs and GWT report pages.

Cheers!

http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions

"(6) Is It OK to Put Rel=Canonical on My Entire Site?

Should you pre-emptively rel=canonical your entire site – even if many of the pages aren’t subject to duplicate content issues? I think this gets very speculative. We have recommended this approach at SEOmoz in the past, and I think it’s generally safe. I do worry that excessive use of rel=canonical could cause search engines to devalue and even ignore those tags, but I can’t point to any clear evidence of this happening. I also worry that people often implement site-wide rel=canonical tags badly, and end up pointing them to the wrong pages.

I do think that a pre-emptive rel=canonical on your home-page is generally a good ideas, as home pages are prone to URL variations. In a perfect world, I’d say to use rel=canonical on the home-page, known duplicates, and any pages with parameters that could drive duplicate content, and leave the rest alone. However, that’s often a very difficult procedure. In some cases, site-wide rel=canonical implementation is better than no index control."

Thanks EGOL.

That makes sense, I would still make a counter point that if done correctly and in the right ratio of how much you spend time on guest blogging vs  blogging on your own site, it could still work to your advantage.

If you could also get me a Shiner Bock when you head over to the bar I would appreciate that as well.

Cheers!

As Frankenstein always says "Thin, duplicate content bad!"

As Matt Cutts says "Comprehensive, unique content good!"

You need to configure the catalog with unique titles and descriptions for each product page and make sure that each product page is information rich - great descriptions, pictures, reviews etc.  You will need to spend some time on this.  Possibly pay an intern or someone on oDesk to work in this for you.  Also, the navigation through the product pages in the catalog needs to be clear, a single path through it for bots so that they do not get in an infinite loop of search results and filters to thin search result pages.  If you have any search/ resort/filter options for search results you need to nofollow links to those pages and noindex those result pages.

If you already have an online catalog and this new one is duplicating the old one, you need to consolidate the two and get as much unique helpful and easily accessible content as you can on the site.

View this video on pagination and it can lead you down a good path of how to setup

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html

Cheers

I think there is a balance here.

EGOL - I was surprised by your comments as - you are one of the top posters on Moz in the QnA and on the Moz Blog! You have over 12K Moz points!  There seems to be a little pot calling the kettle black going on.  If you do not want to give away "content" then why do you post so much content here?

Alan - I think the reason that someone like EGOL does make such an impressive contribution here.  There is a huge amount of value and networking by interacting and posting here on Moz.  If you can find a site that it is worth it and you there is an opportunity there, go for it. If you are a new website and don't have any traffic, you may need to do a little blogging to get stuff back to your site.  Building on Tom's comment - Create a shorter version of a post that points back to your main post on your site.  Consolidate a couple articles and then point back.   For sure, you need to balance the amount of time you spend on this, but I think to dismiss it out of hand would not be the way to go.

Cheers!

P.S. EGOL - I have always appreciated your input and think you are a great contributor to this community.  My comments are not made out of disrespect, but simply to make a point.

One other thing to think about - do you have another method for your the bots to find/crawl your content?

We robot.txt all of our /search result pages - I agree with Everett's post they are thin content and ripe for duplication issues.

We list all content pages in sitemap.xml and have a single section to "browse content" that is paginated.  We use re="next" and "prev" to help the bots walk through each page.

References

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744

Personally, I think Maile's video is really great and you get to see some of the cool artwork in her house.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html

Important to note that if you do setup pagination, if you add any other filters or sort options in that pagination, no follow those links and noindex those result pages as you want to have only one route through your pagination for Goog to travel through. Also, make sure each page has a unique title and description, I just add Page N to the standard blurb for each page and that usually takes care of it.

If you close one door on your search pages, you can open another one using pagination!

Cheers!

I just put on my pair of Google Glass and it overlays the numbers on top of any page I am viewing.  I also get to see any snarky comments that Matt Cutts or any other members of the Google web spam team has made on a given page from the Google private intranet.  Evidently, they like black text on white backgrounds - go figure.

Sorry - could not resist.  Mike's comment is right on.

Cheers!

Other things to consider.

I would first segment your Analytics to look at where the traffic is coming from. Organic, paid, direct?  Get an idea of what kind of traffic is converting better or worse, what kind of traffic is bouncing or not.  You need to understand your users better to then get into their heads and know how to improve the page.   Another thing to look at is what are the key words that are driving that traffic.   What browsers do your users view the page in, is your design compatible with those browsers.  You may want to consider services like usertesting.com - get some folks to look at the page, give them assignments and they can help find some obvious issues. Check out the 5 second test they let you preview.  Also, there are those services that are free like http://www.iperceptions.com/en/plans-and-pricing/free  - asks some key questions from your customers to figure out why they are coming to your site and corroborate the data above.

All of that said, and assuming this is important to your customers, credibility is a big thing with ecommerce sites.  No offense, but when I look at your site, it looks pretty 2002 to me in the design.  Does not feel like a modern site and so if I am buying, I am just not as confident that I am purchasing from a top notch "credible" company. Remember, I know at some point I have to give you my credit card and if I feel funny about doing that, I am not buying.  That is just a 5 second impression mind you.   I went to your home page and see that you have some big name customers - that was impressive, maybe you are the kings/queens of the plastic bin space!  I might bring that information to this page as maybe people cannot tell right off if you are legit enough to purchase from.   That is just my opinion, but I think you take the steps above to find out more about your customers and you can see if what I am saying is worth a darn.

Good luck!

If you are creating a new website with a new URL structure, you should 301 redirect all the old URLs to the new URLs.  Google with then know where the old site moved to.  The duplicate points are moo as Google will delete your old website out of the index and replace it with the new one.

The duplicate issue only comes up if you have two sites running concurrently.  Not sure why you would want to do that., but if you had two sites, Google will not be able to tell if the images are the same per se. It can do things like look at the alt tag, but it can look at the file name, the image size, the image dimensions etc etc.

You will probably be ok re-using the images as you mention, but I would focus more on getting the old site moved to the new one with 301s.  If you are creating a new site as the old one got penalized, I would re-use as little as possible from the old site (for obvious reasons).

It depends on your business plan.   Why are you building a second site?  Is it for insurance in case the first site gets taken out due to penalty?  I would think that focusing on #RCS and using best practices would make sure that would not happen.   Are you trying to dominate the SERPS so that you can rank #2 and #3 and #N for a given key word?   Maintaining another site is a lot of work.  Seems simpler to build up a YouTube Channel to rank or some other social profile.  Are you wanting to rank for a second set of key words?  Seems simpler just to build up an additional section of content on your current site.

Just sounds like you are doing a lot of work on a second website in the same competitive niche, where it may make more sense to just focus on the site you have, make sure it is super wicked awesome and just continue to focus on that.

Agreed with Takeshi.  We do this all day long.  Great way to have content on your site and build up your YouTube Channel.  Keep it up!

Well there you go.

If you have a page (Page A) that was ranking poorly due to over optmization, then you 301 Page A to a new page (Page B), the 301 passes pretty much all the negative link equity from Page A to Page B.  Therefore, Page B is going down the toilet now.

You just kicked the can further down the street, vs fixing the initial issue.  aka  You just kicked yourself in the pants.  (you can insert what ever kicking analogy you like here for emphasis and/or humor, but don't beat yourself up over it).

That is why I mentioned above, the 301 is really not a solution in this case and you need to noindex the page or 404 it.

I am of the group that I try and minimize 404s as much as possible.  There is only one page to 404 here, so is really a non issue.

Ok, if you think there is a problem, see steps 1-4, but you have to ask yourself, is this really a problem?  See end of this post.

Steps to consider

1. Look at the link profile and determine if you can see where are these links generated.

We had one case  where we determined that the issue was a competing agency that was building negative links to properties that we managed for a client vs the web properties that they managed for the same clients!  We tactfully made courtesy calls to the clients to help them by describing the negative link patterns and inquiring if they used anyone else for web marketing etc and suggesting that they contact the other agency as the other agency may not be aware that this is going on.

We were able to not only stop getting the links being built, but we looked good to our clients.  This may or may not apply to you, but just throwing it out there that you need to look at this at a higher level to help with a) stopping additional links from being built or b) getting links removed.

2. I saw this in a tweet by @dr_pete the other day and I retweeted it as I thought it was a good article

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/the-latest-5-tools-ive-added-to-my-seo-toolbox/

There is a tool rmoov that is mentioned

http://www.rmoov.com/index.php

There is a free version and so this may work.  Note, I have not used this tool, but it looks interesting enough that I would try it.  May be worth asking the group here - have they used it and what do they think of the tool.

3. Redirect or 404.  If you 301, then all you are doing is redirecting the negative link equity to other pages on your site, or externally.  Probably not what you want to do as then you are just spreading the negative link "juice".

You can either 404 the page and let it die.  Or, if you want to leave up a simple page with no other links to other pages on your site and then add a noindex tag so that it gets removed from Googles index

4. The Disavow tool.  This would be only for extreme examples and if you had proof that these links were negatively impacting this page and/or had a penalty notice from Google.  I only mention to be complete, but this is probably not appropriate for you.

All of that said, let's just ignore everything I mentioned above.  If the only issue here that you have 95% exact match anchor text.  While that can be a symptom of a "bad link" profile, is it really impacting this page?  Are you seeing a decrease in rankings for that page for those key terms?  More importantly, are you seeing decreased traffic to that page (as rankings are relative).  Are you assuming there is a problem, when there is not one?  So you have a page with a "too perfect" of an anchor link profile.  Then just stop doing it on future pages and move on.  You may not have hit a threshold that triggers a penalty  just yet.  Have to consider where you are spending your time.  May may more sense to work on building value, vs correcting things that may or may not be negatively impacting you.

My 2 cents plus a dime.

I would Rx Screaming Frog - it does good work and will tell you what the Spider sees.

As far as what it follows - that depends on what page you start on.  You can watch "live" in the ScreamingFrog spider as it runs through the sites and finds pages.

Overall, you just want to make sure it can find all your pages via a crawl and then focus on any errors found such as 404s or even 301s.

It all depends.

If you want a freshness indicator on the page, just have the page show the most recent reviews and then update automatically.

If constantly refreshing reviews shows a bunch of junk reviews that do not help the page, rank or get clicks to purchase then revert back to the original content.

You will need to test a bit and see what works for rank, clicks, etc.

Either way, I would link back to the review that the product was based around so that users can click and purchase and also Google can make sense of the where the original review came from to clear up any "duplicate content" type questions.