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If it is built into the framework - Genesis from StudioPress for example - it should turn itself off when it detects a dedicated SEO plugin - for other SEO plugins I would deactivate them first to prevent conflicts. Yoast's plugin will manage everything you need including a great sitemap generator - which works well where others fail (in heavily modified wordpress installs such as Appthemes Classipress for example.)
Okay. After re-reading the question (with my eyes open this time) I understand that the fact that no link jiuce will be passed to Site A (from Site B) is not an issue, rather you don't want to lose the existing link equity when you switch Site B back on and then 301 redirect Site A to Site B?
So, with that in mind - there is no specified 'acceptable' time limit attached to a 302 redirect, so you should be able to redirect without fear of being penalised, regardless of duration.
This is mentioned elsewhere on SEOMoz here: http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/9994/302-redirect-timeframe
This is an interesting read however: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/007233.html - just to keep things edgy ;o)
use the rel=canonical on the main page/s to show that they are the original/source/master page of the content.
See this helpful guide:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not
Don't forget you can also tell Googlebot to ignore certain URL parameters to prevent them being indexed and treated as duplicate content.
"If your site uses URL parameters, some of the parameters may be unnecessary for page navigation. Asking Google to ignore these parameters can reduce duplicate content in Google's index and make the site more crawlable."
This is done through Google.com/Webmasters - Your Domain - Dashboard - Settings - Parameter Handling.
Don't 302 in this case. Infact, don't 302 if at all possible as it passes ZERO link juice - 301 for this and get 90%+ link juice passed on. It does sound counter intuitive - certainly based on the titles MOVED PERMANENTLY etc but it is the best practice in this instance.
A 301 Redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.
A 302 Redirect is a temporary redirect and passes 0% of link juice (ranking power) and in most cases should not be used. The Internet runs on a protocol called HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which dictates how URLs work. It has two major versions, 1.0 and 1.1. In the first version 302 referred to the status code 'Moved Temporarily'. This was changed in version 1.1 to mean 'Found'.
Extract from
1. Create 301 redirects from any of the old pages to their equivalent new pages - this tells Google that old content has moved from www.abcdomain.com/page1.html to www.abcdomain.com/category1/page1.html for example. Do that for every page. If there isn't an exact match for the old page - redirect it to an equivalent page where possible. (You can get a wordpress plugin to manage your 301 redirects - if you want to manage/monitor them - but modifying the .htaccess file is better.
You might want to create a spreadsheet or list based on an existing sitemap perhaps of the old url structure and the new one and cross reference them and mark each one as redirected as you create your 301 list for the htaccess file.
2. Resubmitting a new xml sitemap in Google.com/Webmasters may help the changes get picked up a little quicker.
3. Advise the client that 301 redirects can take a few weeks to properly kick in in terms of Google giving them back 90% of the authority they had previously - so you are likely to dip in the rankings for a bit - however, the better optimised site will eventually offset that and take it beyond where it was previously.
I second that recommendation Gianluca! All in one has served me well in the past - but not Yoast's Wordpress SEO is my weapon of choice.
Themeforest - Good templates - offten more visually 'cutting edge' support levels can vary though - have used this too and been very pleased with results.
Thesis is, for the most part, an excellent template. It frustrates me that Thesis insists on 'controlling' the SEO parameters, rather than allowing this to be done by a dedicated SEO plugin - like Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin. I have to say the Thesis developer, Chris Pearson, has publicly announced (on twitter) it will be a 'cold day in hell' before he allows a plugin to control the SEO (See: http://yoast.com/themes-plugins-seo/ )
Frankly this 'Jobsian' attitude toward the various preferences/requirements of the Thesis user - drove me away from it...
(There is a compromise of sorts I found here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/thesis-vs-yoast-wordpress-seo-plugin )
Overall Thesis is inded an excellent framework, but this issue is too big to be completely overlooked.
okay - that is rather pants!
Need to shout and stamp until they fix it! :O)
Having your products physically displayed under the main products link is not an issue. They will still be seen and indexed by the search engines.
if you are using the permalink settings to tidy your urls - be sure to set the permalink structure up so the URLs display a short - tidy URL - by using /%category%/%postname% or just /%postname% and dont place the product links deep down in subcategories www.domain.com/products/product-type/product-sub-type/product-namexyz/
Don't forget to look at the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ - I now consider this essential in every wordress installation (unless I am using Thesis framework - as Thesis will not support it :O(
www.studiopress.com - excellent templates and support is first class!
EDIT: These all support WP 3.0 and are SEO friendly too! (They have modified the SEO functionality)
However, the framework also allows you to run Yoast Wordpress SEO - which is generally considered the best SEO plugin for WP. http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
I had a very similar problem with my own site disappearing from the SERPS, but showing as it should on any other PCs (that I hadn't previously used.)
The problem then related to Google's personalised search. Essentially, I had accidentally deleted my site and prevented it showing up in personalised search - though it still worked in any other browser that wasn't displaying my personalised results. ( See this article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-test-lets-users-vote-add-and-delete-sites-in-serps/6031/ )
To remove personalised search take a look at: http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048
This sounds to be a likely suspect for the issue you are having.
Personalised Search can also provide false results as you are seeing personalised results, based on your search history, activity and preferences, rather than the non-personalised results as they actually appear without personalised bias in the SERPS.
You can see your web history settings here: https://www.google.com/history/
Hope that helps!
Barry's URL for Flagfox is screwy - should be : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flagfox/
My recollection is that you can do this redirect page bu page under IIS Admin (inetmgr) as follows:
1. Browse the website you want to do the redirect for.
2. In the right
pane, right click on the file you want to redirect, and click "Properties"
3. Under the "File" tab, hit the radio selection "A redirection to a URL"
4. Put the target in the "Redirect to" textarea.
5. Make sure "The exact
URL entered above" and "A permanent redirection for this resource"
I don't have IIS installed locally otherwise I would test this for you - but this method is referenced in a few places as above.
Let me know if this helps you!
I have attached a YouTube video below as a visual walkthrough - I am not the creator, just the ermm, locator? ;o)
This might help:
"If you have an ASP.NET web application site, and you place a text file named "app_offline.htm" in the root of the site, all requests to that website will redirect to that app_offline.htm file. Basically, if you need to take an entire ASP.NET site offline, you can place some nice message in that file. Then, any new requests to a URL, any URL, in that website will redirect to that file allowing you to do maintenance to the site, upgrades, or whatever. It is not really a redirect though. ASP.NET essentially shuts down the site, unloads it from the server, and stops processing any requests to that site. That is, until you delete the app_offline.htm file - then things will continue as normal and your ASP.NET site will load up and start serving requests again.
A super-cool side effect of this is that any files that are locked by the site, such as a database or other resources, are freed since the application domain has been unloaded from the server. This allows you to remove the locks from those files and replace them, without the need to do a full IISRESET, taking down other sites on the server. One thing to keep in mind with this file however, make sure you out enough content in it so it is larger than 512 bytes or IE will consider it a 404 and will display the 404 instead of the contents of your app_offline.htm file."
Some quick additional thoughts:
Choose a wordpress theme which works well with the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin - as this is a very powerful and configurable plugin - generally considered to be the best plugin for SEO in Wordpress. Thesis framework for example is one that does NOT work well with Yoast's plugin.
I would look at the studiopress themes as they work well, offer a good degree of flexibility, they are well coded and the support and forums are excellent! http://www.studiopress.com/themes
Navigation elements are indeed very important. Quite simply make the most important pages accessible from the front page. The vast majority of my best ranking sites are created using wordpress along with Yoast's plugin and a great number use the studiopress themes among others, so this is a great start for any project that you wish to see perform well in the SERPS.
Don't fill the footer with hundreds of spammy/poor quality links - if it looks spammy to you - rest assured it will look spammy to Google too! To clarify, add links that assist the user navigate your site to the footer - links such as Terms & Conditions | Sitemap etc that don't need high visibility on the top of the page - also consider a return to the top of the page link if the site has long content pages.
Be sure to add a human readable sitemap (HTML) not just an XML sitemap for the Search Engines.
JQuery can work well for menus, but do remember that for the search engines to be able to index your website the link structure must be easily accessible without javascript or CSS via semantic HTML.
I might also consider re-creating the contents of any PDFs as web pages in their own right - and have the PDF version available as a download option - if this is feasible - as you gain another opportunity to show relevance within the content of your pages. Search Engines can read PDFs to a degree, but they are not as readable as regular HTML content.
Host in your own country where possible (and practical) as server response time and server location are SEO factors - though not hugely weighted.
However, as .Coms are considered global hosting the US AND UK site on the same US server wouldn't be of huge detriment (in terms of server response time again.) - if you only want to run one site and split the visitors between /US and /UK subfolders. Remember, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to create Geographic targeting for each sub folder (One for the US sub folder/sub directory and one for the UK for example.)
In a perfect world however I would want to see the sites hosted in the appropriate country as this does help to indicate your target audience (and the obvious server response times I keep mentioning.) Google does allow for those that host out of their own country, hence the geographic targeting option in google webmaster tools.
I think UK users do like to see .Co.Uk at the end of the domain - because they know that generally means they will sell (and ship) to UK users - but we also use global .com stores if re-directed to them (Ebuyer.com for instance.)
In terms of the ecommerce software, I would (and did) opt for another ecommerce solution altogether:
Interspire Shopping Cart is very good in terms of SEO (The URL structure, H1 tags, meta title, meta description etc are dealt with very well. We rank number one for a variety of terms using this as the ecommerce solution. (Note this is self hosting) There is a hosted version that interspire are beginning to favour - see www.Bigcommerce.com
Hope that helps!
This question has been raised here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/title-tag-on-sitemap-xml
You don't want a link to an XML sitemap - rather a HTML sitemap (as Ryan states)
You can use a tool like http://www.xml-sitemaps.com to generates sitemaps in both xml and html formats. HTML being the one to display on your website and the XML installed into the root directory www.skycandle.co.uk/sitemap.xml
I have generated one for you here for you to see - of course generate another if you want to change the parameters.
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/details-www.skycandle.co.uk.html
Don't worry about the XML sitemap too much as these aren't essential on smaller sites if all the pages of your site are indexing OK - as they should be picked up without the need to direct Search Engines them if the site has a clearly navigable structure.
Take a look at these articles for additional info http://www.seomoz.org/blog/xml-sitemaps-guidelines-on-their-use
and
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/expert-advice-on-google-sitemaps-verify-but-dont-submit
Of course the HTML sitemap is a useful tool for quick naviagation of your site and will improve your visitors experience on your site.
The following searches bring up a few interesting results to get you started:
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=page+layout+and+seo
and
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=page+design+and+seo
with this specific article being favoured quite well - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-seo-side-of-design
Hope that helps
Hi Shirle,
Could you provide more information on the error?
I'm assuming that this is appearing when you look at a Crawl Diagnostic Summary?
If so, is it an ERROR, WARNING or NOTICE?
Clicking down through the error messages and then on an example of the error usually provides you with a short summary of the nature of the problem. i suspect may not be a technical issue i.e. something being 'broken' rather an issue related to the links generated by the trackback...
Trackback (taken from Wordpress site)
"Trackback helps you to notify another author that you wrote something related to what he had written on his blog, even if you don't have an explicit link to his article. This improves the chances of the other author sitting up and noticing that you gave him credit for something, or that you improved upon something he wrote, or something similar. With pingback and trackback, blogs are interconnected. Think of them as the equivalents of acknowledgements and references at the end of an academic paper, or a chapter in a textbook."
Here is another clear summary of what a trackback is:
http://www.optiniche.com/blog/117/wordpress-trackback-tutorial/
A trackback isn't bad for SEO if it generates a link to a genuine article on an above board site. However, spammers will try and exploit this to generate additional inbound links to their spammy site and of course you don't want to tarnish your own sites reputation by linking to spammy sites.
If someone links to your blog post and you allow a trackback, by publishing it, you are giving a link back to that particular site. Google doesn’t reward excessive link exchanges and may lead to a site being penalised for this practice.
You can of course turn off trackbacks in Wordpress if you can't see any benefit to them (or don't need them).