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If they have no traffic and no links, I would not move them. I would only re-purpose them if you think that by combining/editing them they would have value, but in a situation like this, that usually isn't the case. (Unless we are talking about a significantly large percentage of your website becoming 404--in that case some rewriting/repurposing would be in order.)

Thanks guys! Part of the problem is we cut the ties with our previous webmaster... I have taken over the account but he left me kinda high and dry, and everybody else here doesn't know anything about our website. So I'm just trying to figure out what's best practice/easiest/better in the long run. We are in the middle of a complete overhaul of our website so I decided we would buy a cert and make our entire site secure. We do some insurance verifications and we can afford it. Might as well. Thanks again!

We use both Adwords and Adroll.  My preference is always to do everything myself, and Adwords gives me complete control.  With Adroll, you'll have reps who are generally very responsive and good, but you still need them to help manage and optimize your campaigns.  So I'd second what Ray-pp is saying.  Use Adroll when you're ready to expand your reach outside of the Google Display Network, once you're already running (very) profitable retargeting campaigns in Adwords. In your comment below, it sounds like you're comparing your search clicks with display clicks.  Search clicks are always more expensive since there's implied intent in the fact the user is searching for something.  With $700 CPCs, retargeting is probably really important for you to try and recapture that user once you got them to your site.  You could try some retargeting through YouTube as well if display ads are working. If you have Adwords reps, I'd strongly recommend trying to get into the SCM beta, which is what the industry generally calls "search retargeting".  This would allow you to target users searching for those expensive queries (on Google, Bing, & Yahoo) after that fact via display ads.  It's in beta, but I think it's a fairly open beta at this point so if you have reps, you can probably get into it.  I couldn't find a good Google article about it, but this sums it up nicely.

Oh that is pretty great! Do you know if there is any impact from using either? They don't directly answer that in the article. The site I am working with is offering video which would be behind a paywall. My thought is lock down the video, but make the text free, especially since google can't read videos anyway!

Yes. Using OSE you can research the link profile of the URL and see if it has ALL followed links (which would appear unnatural) or if it has a good mix of both followed and no-follow links (appearing a bit more natural). You can always look further into the inbound links of course (using OSE) to see just how "natural" they are (or aren't). But you will have to use your judgement on that end. We use linkdetox.com to dive further into link value but I'm sure there are other great tools out there too.

I would say Yes, if you make sure you're redirecting the right pages to the working URLS on the other site you should be fine. Also make sure that sitemaps are updated as Google won't like redirects within a sitemap.

Invalid code does not equate to slow code. Google used to purposely not close html and body tags to save bandwidth and loading time. I took the question as meaning w3c valid code.

If those pages are getting traffic or have good links/referrals, then sure, redirect to the appropriate page. What 'good' means really depends upon the vertical, but you know what pages get traffic and which are chaff. Check your various link sources and site analytics. Whatever doesn't make your cut, 410. Whatever makes the cut, 301 to a page with content relevant to the old page. Don't do a blanket (all old pages redirect to evananas.com) redirect. It's also a very good idea to consider responsive design, now that GWT is getting angry about improper mobile redirects.

Yea, I cleaned all that stuff up! This website was a mess. Anyway, back to the .htaccess, I have no idea what they are being used for.... but we are actually in luck! I was doing a little research and I came across something interesting.... Not only is that the original file that our old webmaster pulled from, but that's the updated version with 2 sets of entries commented out. Seems like a good place to start? Thanks! Here is the link, because it seems to not want to display properly. http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-super-cache-force-to-https

I hear ya. Why don't you register a free account for the website owner, verify the domain and use that one for now?

Damn..... that is a HOT idea. I feel like a detective!!!!!!!!!!

That was my thought! Just double checking. And yea that occurred to me this morning. Especially since I am using a CMS there are so extra domains from the tags!!!

Well, that is good news!

Thanks guys. That was where I was leaning. Social media is tough. I don't want to give up on it because it's such a huge pool of data that there has to be SOMETHING there. At the same time, I personally would NEVER go to facebook/twitter/instagram to look for rehab. If I was drunk or hungover that's the last thing I would do. However, it's just too big to be ignored. It does provide a nice place to expand our community with professionals and potential referrals, which in the long run, does help. Thanks

So I spoke with our host. Basically he has been adjusting the port flood settings because of a DDoS attack we had roughly 9 months ago. We have roughly 1000 domains on the same server, all with wordpress. I went through and changed the nameserver on around 800 of them to bring us down. In the long run, I want to bring us to 1 website. There is no reason for us to have 200, or 5 for that matter. They are redundant websites that were build simply to bolster our main website by blackhat tactics. Our host stated that the only way to keep things kosher would be to switch all 1,000 domains to a new server every 2 years because once the "hackers" find out that there is a cluster of 1,000 domains in the same place, they will blast it. Anyway, I'm working on cutting the domains in the safest way possible, and switching servers as soon as possible!

Don't forget too that most of us who reply to questions also enable the ability to be notified by email anytime another reply is added. So even months later, if you update the question with a new response, most of the original participants will get a heads-up about your addition. Paul

I think that it would be nice to see more.... "This was my problem, and here is how I fixed it" posts on YouMoz. Keep up the great work!

No worries.  I haven't labeled you as a blackhat.  In fact, my apologies, but I didn't remember that I had answered a question for you previously. So, your questions are mostly ones that can't be answered in a general sense.  They'd require someone to know the intimate details of your penalty/algorithm demotion/technical on site issues/etc etc etc.  There's no black and white answer to any of these questions. Google doesn't often just completely deindex a site.  Most penalties cause ranking demotions.  If you get affected by an algorithm (ie Penguin for unnatural links) then your site won't rank well until the links are cleaned up AND Penguin refreshes again.  But for algorithms your site won't get deindexed. Google does not give warnings to say that you are going to be hit soon. Google says that any site can recover from a penalty or algorithm change provided you fix the issues.  But you've got to have good stuff there in order to recover.  In other words, if you got a penalty or an algorithmic demotion because of unnatural links and once you've removed those links there are no natural ones there then don't expect recovery. I've written some articles on Moz that probably answer your questions: http://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird http://moz.com/blog/after-penalty-removed-will-traffic-increase http://moz.com/blog/the-difference-between-penguin-and-an-unnatural-links-penalty-and-some-info-on-panda-too

I guess the better question would be to look at if they are actually converting. You answered your own question, sort of! Are then worth tracking just because they are sending traffic? No! A keyword is not worth tracking just because it is sending traffic. If the traffic is of too low quality, then incurring a cost to track it is probably not efficient. However, those low quality, high traffic keywords are great to identify to know how to adjust from that point. I.e. should you create a new landing page targeted towards the keyword that is sending a lot of traffic? Are people who are looking for Ice Cream upset when then end up at a place that doesn't sell Ice Cream. That depends. 'Ice Cream' is a very generic keyword and a portion of the traffic searching for that term and landing at a website that doesn't sell ice cream would be upset. However, you'd want to look at the long-tail terms for that keyword and really identify what the traffic is trying to accomplish and why they came to your website. I add keywords from the keyword opportunities list if they achieve the following: Is unique enough from my current list of keywords to warrant tracking (because every keyword tracked through Moz cost me some $) Does it work towards completing one of my goals (i.e. does the keyword drive sales, leads, any valuable traffic) Are my competitors bidding or trying to rank for the term and I should be as well Do I have the room in my Moz account to track the keyword That last one is important because I tend to max out my keyword quota and every new keyword that I add I need to remove other keywords to make room.

Who cares to admit complete defeat? Practically no one, of course. Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness. I have come to terms with the fact that I am going to need help on this one. I am trying to make a case to my boss for a "second opinion". UPDATE As this window was open my boss called me in for our meeting. I explained the circumstance and basically his answer was: "Give me a timeline of everything that needs to happen. We can't cut anything until we build anything (unfortunately I fear he may have stolen my sentence from my interview when I said "don't burn a bridge before you build a bridge")." So we will go from there. I do think he is beginning to understand the severity. He made an analogy to the Corleone's going 'legit' in the Godfather but wasn't comfortable doing so until we had a plan to go 'legit.' Thanks again everybody! You have all been a tremendous help!