Welcome to the Q&A Forum

If there are links on your site going to sites that are penalized, you generally need to remove those links on your site.

Whenever you move, here's what we typically recommend:

• crawl site, make note of URLs
• set up redirect of old URLs to new URLs
• test to make sure they're a proper 301 redirect
• verify all versions of the site in Google Search Console (old site and new site, http and http://www versions as well as https versions)
• Use the Google Change of Address Tool

There is generally no reason that you need to redirect old images if the new site design no longer uses them. However, you might just keep them on the server in the same location.

Here is one: http://www.crimeflare.com/cfs.html there are others out there if you search for them

There are tools that allow you to find out the "real" IP address of a server that's using Cloudflare. I just looked up a few using some of these tools, and they still work--so I'm assuming that Google will have the same access or ability to see these, as well.

So, your theory of using Cloudflare to not have to worry about class C blocks anymore when linking is good, but I wouldn't count on it.

When it comes to the actual type of certificate, I do not believe the actual type of certificate matters. Look at the Google official blog post (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html) and see what they're recommending:

"Here are some basic tips to get started:

• Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
• Use 2048-bit key certificates
• Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
• Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
• Check out our Site move article for more guidelines on how to change your website’s address
• Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
• Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the noindex robots meta tag."

Jarred, typically when you set up a 301 permanent redirect from one page to another, Google is going to keep the old pages in their index for up to a year (sometimes longer). I've done a LOT of site migrations from one domain to another, and this is the case--that's just what Google does.

Most likely you can only find those pages indexed with the exact search that you're doing (the site:revolve.com (designer name)). Those revolve pages won't be displayed for 'normal' keyword search queries.

At this point, since you've set up the 301 redirects, there's really nothing to worry about.

Any article that has release date prior to 1st-June-2012 should return a custom 410 page with "noindex" metatag, instead of the actual content of the article.

The error returned should be a "410 gone" and not just a 404. That way Google will treat it differently, and may remove it from the index faster than just returning a 404. Also, you can use the Google removal tool, as well. Don't forget the robots.txt file, as well, there may be directories with the content that you need to disallow.

But overall, using a 410 is going to be better and most likely faster.

Overall, it's not going to have a huge impact on SEO one way or the other--but keep in mind that the links generated are going to typically be 301 Permanent Redirects. Whenever you have a 301 redirect you may lose some overall link value. So, for example, if your site's blog post is shared on another site, there will be a link to your blog post--and the link will be a 301 redirect. You'll lose some link value. How much link value is lost is debatable, but there will be some lost.

When we share links we typically want to share the full URL, and not a shortened URL that is a redirect.

When you say "many" domains, I'm not sure how many you're talking about. Generally speaking, if it's over about 50 domains then you may run into issues with Google, as I've seen penalties for redirecting too many domains.

Also, keep in mind that redirecting a domain won't magically make that page rank any better or help it at all. If the keyword domain has previous history and links, then it could potentially help--but otherwise it won't. When it comes to domains, you're going to be better off actually setting up a site on that domain than just redirecting it to an internal page. There may still be some type-in traffic, but most likely not with the examples you've given.

The best thing to do is, in fact, to redirect it to the most appropriate page on your site--but don't expect it to help any when it comes to rankings. And, if you redirect too many, it may actually hurt your site.

Tymen, there are different types of SSL certificates, and I understand that they can, in fact, be optimized so it will load quickly. You might point your web host/developers to the Google help topic(s) here for more information: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/module/https_support#load_from_file

Also, make sure that you're using a Content Deliver Network (CDN) when you can, and use caching, as well.

Your best bet is to look at the Moz list of reputable consultants: https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/

As with any professional that you're hiring, you need to do your due diligence and ask them questions and ask for referrals.

Jonathan, I'm not sure why you're saying that Screaming Frog isn't the right tool--we use it with great success to check the internal links on the site. There are other tools that you can use, such as Integrity (on a Mac), or Xenu, which is an older link checker but still works.

It does look like you have link issues and your site has been hit by Google Penguin. I would review all the links--pull them from OSE, GSC, Ahrefs, and Majestic.com, combine them, and consider running them through Link Research Tools' Link Detox report. That will give you a good idea of which links you need to disavow right away.

We don't know when the next Penguin is coming out (when it will be updated), so cleaning up those links is a must right away.

Sounds as if you shouldn't be adding all of those--there could potentially be severe consequences if you don't deal with them properly. That severe consequence could be that you are hit by a Google Panda penalty, and lost a huge majority of your site's traffic from organic search.

You really do need to deal with this in some way--either don't add them like you're doing or use the canonical tag.

Whenever you use a subdomain, it's pretty much seen as a separate site. So, while the main domain's Domain Authority will help the subdomain a bit, it's going to be more "powerful" if that content is in a folder or directory on the main domain.

Also, if the content is currently in a directory on the domain currently (rather than being on a subdomain), I would generally not move it to a subdomain.

When you're setting up a URL structure, we recommend setting up the URLs (folders/directories, etc.) so that it matches the hierarchy of the site. In the example you gave: www.domain.com/Christmas/Decor you would typically have a Christmas section of your site and then a Decor section.

But, if you have a Decor section (some that is not Christmas decor but maybe includes other types of decor), then the decor section as listed above wouldn't fit in properly. It could be like this: www.domain.com/Decor/Christmas-Decor/ and then you could actually also have a Christmas section, as well. It's possible that your Christmas products might list all of your Christmas products and the Christmas/decor/ section would then include the Christmas decor section.

Look at what sections of your site that you've created--and then the URLs should closely match those sections and that site hierarchy.

What you'll want to do is crawl the other site--and make note of all of the URLs. Then, 301 redirecting each page to the most appropriate page on the main site.

We usually recommend using a spreadsheet and making a list of the old URLs in one column and then listing the page it will redirect to next to it, in another column. That will make it easy to set up the 301 redirects in the .htaccess file on the site or put them into a redirect plugin.

There will be pages that you can't find another equivalent page on the new site--so you should 301 redirect those to the site's home page.

When you launched the new version of the site, did you set up the 301 Permanent Redirects so that all of the old pages are mapped/redirected to the most appropriate page on the new version of the site?

It sounds so me like you might not have set up the 301 redirects properly.

One thing you can do, though, is look at your Google Search Console crawl errors and pay attention to the most important ones--and fix those first.

This can definitely be a problem, and it needs to be fixed.

It sounds as if there may be two websites with the same content showing up on the .com URL and the .COM.AU URL. What we typically recommend is that you verify your site in Google Search Console and tell Google which version you prefer--you'll need to verify both versions of your site.

Also, you can use the hreflang tags on your site to tell Google that the .COM.AU site is meant for Australia, and the .COM site is meant for the USA.