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Thanks Alan, I stopped to think because of the canonical tag that everybody now seems to be using for everything everywhere. I like the 301 because I have total control and the operation happens on my server.  (I don't have to worry about search engines getting flaky or treating the canonical differently at some date in the future.)   So my gut and brain said use the 301... but I was ready for someone to argue for the canonical.

BTW Optify just released a new study on CTR: http://www.optify.net/guides/organic-click-through-rate-curve

If you do alot of prweb like us you can get a package from vocus the parent company at a discount pm me if you want my contact at vocus. I think packages start at 12 releases a year

Thanks itr Yes, sitename will be the same, just a host provider change. I realize there are other issues related to the switch, but needed confirmation on the back-linking. My intuition (but lack of years of experience) told me all will be well, I needed someone else to settle me down! Thanks so much itr.

Thanks Louis, I appreciate the time you spent to answer my question. I feel better and more educated now!

And a user's money still spends the same on the site, whether or not they came through a link that is or is not followed. Sure, would be great to have it followed, but I'd much rather have the link there and it be nofollowed than to have no link at all.

You might get a small boost in keyword specific SERPS, but i would word it differently perhaps, is your target audience searching for exactly that "official bob marley merch" ?  Maybe it would be better to start the link out with "bob marley merch ..." as the order of the keywords makes a difference, you want to rank well for bob marley more than you want to rank well for official.

Thanks Lewis ... these two sites are in the same city! Nothing illegal here, I just have to work hard to compete. Thanks for your time.

Invite the public to submit questions and vote on them. Everyone wants a crack at asking a celeb a question...

If you focus on SEO, i suggest WooCommerce. It is a plugin of WordPress. It is undeniable that WooCommerce + WordPress support friendly SEO. However, Magento is better choice with full powerful e-commerce platforms. Let's read e-commerce market in 2016 at http://blog.litextension.com/the-best-ecommerce-platform-of-2016/ Magento migration tool supports users to transfer store data from old cart to Magento.