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Thank you very much, I appreciate all the additional clarifications!

I guess what I'm trying to suss out is if any of the described would create a canonical chain that wouldn't pass link juice etc.

I found this in a Moz article:

(9) Can I Chain Rel=Canonicals (+301s, 302s, etc.)?

What happens if you rel=canonical to a URL with rel=canonical to another URL, or you rel=canonical to a URL that 301-redirects to another URL? It gets complicated. In some cases, it might work and it might even pass PageRank. Generally speaking, though, it’s a bad idea. At best, it’s sloppy. At worst, it might not function at all, or you might lose significant PageRank across the chain. Wherever possible, avoid chains and implement rel=canonical in a single hop.

With what this is saying, it seems that I should take out the canonicals before 301 redirecting to try to avoid a chain situation and to give the page rank the best change of getting passed along rather than lost along the way?

Another example:

URL #1 http://www.geteducated.com/all-careers-articles/11-detail/43-forensic-accountant-and-fraud-examiner
has a page rank of 1 and it's rel-canonical points to
URL #2 http://www.geteducated.com/all-careers-articles/11/43-forensic-accountant-and-fraud-examiner which points to itself and has a page rank of 23.

The SAME article can also be accessed here
URL #3 http://www.geteducated.com/career-center/detail/forensic-accountant-and-fraud-examiner 
which has no rel-canonical and a page rank of 1.

We want to use URL #3 going forward and in a new site URL #1 & #2 won't exist anymore. What's the best practice here? 301 both #1 & #2 into #3 without touching canonicals? Should we add a self-canonical to URL #3?

To clarify -- yes, the ones re pointing to themselves were in error (there was a better choice - more relevant/current) and they should have been 301s from the start. So, just to clarify, for those re pointing to themselves, I do not need to remove the canonicals before 301 redirecting?

Ex:

http://www.geteducated.com/careers rel points to itself and is an outdated landing page for the content and soon, it will no longer exist in our system at all.

It should have been pointed here all along and this will be the only landing page for the content going forward: http://www.geteducated.com/career-center/hottest-careers.

We want to 301 redirect http://www.geteducated.com/careers to http://www.geteducated.com/career-center/hottest-careers but try to make sure the link juice / page rank is passes as much as possible.

And what about when a page that has a rel-canonical tag pointing to itself? Does that need to be removed before 301 redirecting to the updated/current URL?

Hi Matt, thanks so much for your answer!

What about if the rel-canonical is pointing to a different page than where the 301 will point? Does that rel-canonical need to be removed to avoid confusion and general "messiness"?

Hi everyone,

I'd like your opinions on the best way to handle this situation:

One particular site page just got hit with 10,000 no follow spammy backlinks over 10 days time.

I've read that it's pointless to use the disavow tool on no follow links (since it basically does the same thing) but we want Google to be aware that this WAS NOT US and we don't want to be penalized for these spammy links.

Couple of questions:

1. Do we send backlink removal requests to each domain webmaster?

2. Should we skip removal requests and move right to disavow?

3. Should we take other action?

As a site we have NEVER used any black hat SEO tactics over a 15 year history and have many HQ do follow and no follow links to the site and this particular page.

Thanks for any suggestions in advance!!

Linda,

No just some alternatives that are like or better than Google Knols. A list of possible solutions that might be good to look at that people have used before with some success.

EGOL,

You always offer some of the best advice on the forum so I appreciate you taking the time on this one. The point you make is good and I agree about retaining control. We have plenty of great content on our site (we are redoing it at the moment so it will look better alongside improved structure) and want to have solid content elsewhere to improve our footprint of discovery. These are evergreen pieces that offer a gateway into all that we have on our site. We could easily go with any of the three options mentioned already but I am wondering about alternatives the community here might suggest.

We have some Google Knols that have done well but now they have to be moved (Google closing). The popular alternatives are:

1. Annotum (new, based on Wordpress and containing scholarly articles)
2. Wordpress.com
3. Blogger

Although those could work I am seeking out other viable alternatives. Any suggestions? Squidoo is spammy but has anyone had any good things to say about it? Thanks!