Welcome to the Q&A Forum

If the images are coded into the website using "http://example.com/image.jpg" instead of "/image.jpg" then the images will always pull from example.com, instead if your test site. If they were coded with "/image.jpg" then the code would pull from example.com when the page was there, and example.yoursite.com when you moved it over for testing.

I support Jane's advice here to make a custom 404 that is as beneficial as possible for the user. I would only worry about 301 redirecting old property pages to their city/neighborhood subcategory if the page shows up in Google Webmaster Tools 404 section and shows an external link pointing at it that is worth saving. A process you could do about once per month or quarter.

OK I think I understand what you did "The old site, which has many backlinks to the new site, is still in Google's index" So you are pointing links from a penalized site to your new clean site, hope you are using nofollows? hmmm. Not a good idea if not! I would not 301 redirect either. As this will simply assign all the bad stuff over to your new domain as well. The blog is internal which is a good thing now, but the low quality will effect the whole site eventually. Low quality content must be addressed or Google will hit the site hard with the Panda Algorithm. That low quality then links to your internal pages, not a good idea either. If the blog offers no real value and you are unable to maintain it then remove it for now completely and focus on creating a well rounded good quality site first. A few good blog posts is better than a hundred terrible ones.

Hi Kimberly, Sorry for the delayed response! You're mixing two fields here: "last modified" fields in the .htaccess file are not references for search engines; "last modified" in meta data in the HTML or in the XML sitemap may be. Beyond that, webmasters have tried to manipulate "last modified" dates so much, Google's fairly wary of them. So, I wouldn't worry about using a last modified field in your .htaccess file. Hope this helps! Kristina

Just to follow up on your last question about 404s, Kim... No, having a bunch of 404s like that will be no more work for the server than if they were landing on actual blog pages - in fact somewhat less work as the 404 page generally has less content and far fewer database calls. Also, a page timing out due to server load (server working too hard) doesn't generally result in a 500 error, it just returns a timed-out error. 500 errors are delivered when something actually breaks the server's ability to deliver the correct page content. Paul

It's been a while since I used Dreamweaver but I remember the standard link format being relative. Is it possible if I change the relative urls throughout the 50 pages on the site, that the site administrator (not me) will accidentally revert everything if he updates the site? Wondering how to explain this as being more important than his ease of maintaining the site...

Hi Kimberly, Sorry this question has gone so long without a reply: I've just been directed to it. If the internal links to /default.asp (relative links) result in a 301 redirect, taking people to www.site.com/, there is technically no problem with that set-up. It would be better if the links pointed directly to www.site.com/ as a small amount of authority is lost in a 301 redirect, but is not disastrous by any means. I am not sure that updating internal links to point to www.site.com/page.asp instead of /page.asp is the solution to the home page will solve this problem though - did you manually update the relative links to absolute links that have been fixed?

Looks like you found the solution below. Nice work!

It certainly does confuse my understanding. Thanks for your help at clarifying things:)

Here I am (partially) answering my own question... i just this minute checked a fresh crawl report from Moz which shows that the no-index/follow I implemented in Wordpress SEO for pagination is very much to blame. (Though perhaps not entirely) I just checked Google Analytics for a parallel pattern in traffic, but I don't see one. I did seem stagnant compared to last month a few days ago, but it's up a little now. Being proactive was my motivation. I would definitely still love some insight to my questions, as I am sure I am nowhere out of the woods on this site. I hope my acronym isn't keeping anyone at bay

Very informative - thank you! It seems when I think I have a relatively firm grip on SEO, I stumble upon something new - like the dangerous potential for an infinite loop in a 301 redirect in IIS. (That was Chinese to me two days ago;)) Your response solved my concerns - hopefully it will help somebody else when they face the same problem.

I realized the question was a bit wordy and disorganized so I reworded it and posted it here. http://moz.com/community/q/what-s-my-best-strategy-for-duplicate-content-if-only-www-pages-are-indexed Totally answered!

Kim, Thanks for the update.  Most people just do what ever they decide to do and never report back.  So, thanks! I'm glad you were able to get the penalty removed.  I actually was just helping someone out who got a penalty and saw something similar, a bunch of blog sites that were nondescript with a ridiculously wide range of topics and even languages, which screams private link network to me.  The client said they weren't responsible.  It seems that negative SEO is something being done more often. Thanks again. Kurt Steinbrueck OurChurch.Com