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Hi Marike,

unfortunately I personally would answer both questions with "yes".

To sum it up: a change of domain names is not the best thing from SEO perspectives. But of course there are many situations in which this can`t be avoided and where SEO has to stand back.

The change/merge of a domain has always a certain impact on the rankings which have been established by the old one. I highly recommend you to use a 301 redirect or several if neccessary - they pass the PageRank for example.

Furthermore you should use the change of address tool in the GWMT - it`s used to tell Google that the address of your site has changed.

If youve done the work youll have to be patient. It might take some time until you get back all of your old rankings. In general this doesnt take soo much time but Ive experienced that there is a big chance that you wont get all your old rankings back and that those positions arent written in stone... well this aspect is also valid for well established domains.

Best regards, Marc

I am actually experiencing how those URL parameters work - what I can tell you from this point is that you have to name those parameters more exactly - if you want to exclude the attribute "pgid", "CategoryName" etc. then that`s it what you have to use.

You cant use "+", "-", "/" etc. because Google ignores that... an example: if somebody is running an ecommerce store with intershop then the system generates attributes like ";pgid" ... Google cant work with ";" so you can`t exclude this attribute using GWMT

As far as I know, Google just can handle the parameter "?"...

So whatever comes after your "+" take the next word, to try to exclude those URL`s anyway...

You have to be patient: this will take some time to see the effect (if it works!)

Hi nightwing,

in such a case I would always recommend a 301 redirect to avoid any loss of linkjuice, DA or whatever you prefer to name it. We`ve have made good experiences with that in the past...

In general Google doesn`t differentiate between them - if you get the chance or better take the chance to get in a dialog or direct contact with Google (f.ex. using the reconsideration request) they can get this information. But I doubt that they care about that. Unfortunately you have to do the same work in both cases: clean up the mess.

Its imaginable that your chances to recover are much better if youve been a victim than an ex-black hat (website)

This is tricky thing - you have to give an answer to the question if this is unnatural linkbuilding first?

If a website gets 5000 links over night this is often an very unnatural behaviour and you make yourself suspicious. Making yourself suspicious for Google means that you risk a penalty (manually or automatically) ... furthermore if Google can verify that you own both websites this is just a confirmation for the black hat technique of unnatural link building.

Be careful and start with a slight amount of links... if both shops have the same or lets say similar content then google will allow a natural linkbuilding between them (e.g. we have several subdomains which profit from a lot of crosslinks but they all have been built up over a long periode of time)

SIMPLE: NO

A permanent redirect (301) is a common and absolutely normal thing... I can`t see any negative effect in such a case

Why do you think that this will "hurt" you?

I mean you provide a very useful tool for other webmasters and their visitors.

The only thing you have to keep in mind is that you might need a lot of ressources to keep the system running. If your tool is embedded and needs to work with the original source, you need a powerful server to handle all those requests...

nothing is more annoying than a helpful tool which doesn`t work

Absolutely right - I agree with you!

Officially it is said that the CC of a TLD makes no difference for the ranking if you do your SEO homework right...

I would agree with that in general BUT inofficially the CC of your domain matters in your case - .re is not comparable to  a .com domain! Take a look at the serach results: there are only a very few examples that a .re is ranking on high position outside it`s dedicated country.

If a CCtld spells the name of your project it has no real influence or relevanve for the googlebot... it`s just a nice thing for yourself, marketing and maybe the visitors of your site.

You dont need to buy the .com domain but if you can do so, I would always prefer this solution. This is always a question of money and if its worth it for you.

My opinion is based on long-term experiences.

If you rename your project it`s easy to transfer linkjuice, authority etc. by using a 301 redirection...

I see, well this is not very elegant so far and not really "perfect" regarding SEO aspects BUT all the things (advertisements that might generate a link to henry.com etc.) that my help building up DA, Pagerank, linkjuice etc. will be passed through to the other domain... you won`t loose anything of that by using a 301

this might not be the most perfect solution what your client prefers but it`s not uncommon

I cant see any significant advantages if you would do that. Its not wrong to set up a few links to that site from your articles but not that much.

You have to imagine that your site has a certain amount of linkjuice. Everytime you set a link to a different site without the nofollow attribut you pass a little bit of your link juice. So if you do excessive linking from your site to others this makes no sense. Dont get me wrong - you should not use "nofollow" with all your links... its a question of: to which site and how much of your linkjuice you should/want to pass through...

Furthermore I took a closer look on your text at your main page and as far as I can see you don`t mention the term "Diani beach" there.

This is not the only and especially not a reliable criteria to rank for your keyword but it would be helpful to use your keyword in your text exactly as you name it. Your term is "Diani beach" not "Diani" or "Beach" ...

You have a very strong and healthy social media background thats great! Yout texts are good and nice to read... youve done a good job there. Your text (on the main page) is unique... continue things like that.

What I would recommend you is to build more links. According to the opensitexplorer you don´t have much external links. Try to promote your site with the aim to get linked by sites with similar content.

The whole thing is a very, very big topic. It`s controversial and there are many, many opinions out there on what might be important to do that your rankings will improve.

There is not enough time to mention all the aspects but maybe other mozzers will add some helpful infos for you as well?! I hope I could make a useful contribution?!

I am not 100% (in general) sure but this recommendation in your screenshot f.ex. is closely connected with the activities of Barnes & Nobles and their listings in Google Shopping... furthermore this depends on the markup structure of the website/URL/page ... if there are good reviews Google will "link" to them...

I would recommend you to work safe ... just changing one paragraph doesnt help to create you unique content. But this is what you should do... so better safe than sorry, use the canonical url... this is also not the best option but if you dont have another one...

You are welcome!

Maybe one more little thing:

there is a useful tool for free. Its a german website but you dont need to know the language.

Just take a look at this keyword density tool (it`s browser based):

http://keyworddensity.online-marketing-solutions.com

Paste your text in there and press "Prüfung starten"... what you get is an very good hint about which keywords you`ve focused on (with intent or unintended) - you should reach the green colored percentage. 4% usage of your keyword(s) is a good amount but this is also controversial

Maybe there is a similar tool in english but I don`t know that... wish you all the best!

The chances that this might have a negative effect are not bad... dont use content (in the meaning of text in your case) twice... even not partially. Its not that complicated to rewrite a text so that it`s not duplicate content. AVOID DC by all means!

You shouldn`t take those numbers too serious although they are not really wrong... just see this info as a recommendation. There is a unwritten rule which recommends that the keyword density should be between 2 and 4 percent but you should focus on writing a good text in general.

Of course you can keep in mind to use your keyword in a propriate way but what you do is: you write for humans not for machines...

Its undeniable that your text wont rank for a keyword if you do not mention it (this might change in the future) but as I said: don`t focus too much on that.

Write a good text (everybody has a different opinion about the definition "good" by the way) and review it... think of using your keyword so that your text will still be a good one...