Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Pleasure buddy, hope it helps!

Hey, the basic answer here is with HTTP 301 redirections from the original pages to the new page.

Rather than just knowing the cryptic name it helps to understand what is going on behind the scenes a little and why this works. When a page is requested on your site the web server returns a HTTP status code. For a standard page request this is 200 OK and for missing pages a 400 Page Not Found response is returned. There are many other responses but the one we are interested in is for indicating a permanent redirection from the resource on Site A to a resource on Site B and this is a 301 Permanent Redirection.

This provides a range of benefits for users and the search engines

• a user visiting the old site from a search engine result listing is transported to the new resource
• a search engine visiting the link is informed that this resource has moved to a new location and the new page is given
• the page rank and value from any inbound links is forwarded to the new page (not all but most)

So, in this case the 301 redirect provides a complete solution to your problem. It updates and redirects users without requiring anything from them and it allows the search engine to update their records and start concentrating on your new site.

Note

There are a few things to take into consideration here to make sure this works well

1. You need to manually redirect page A to page B so there maybe a fair bit of work involved for a larger site
2. The redirections may need to be in place for a good while and if you generate a lot of direct traffic - keep an eye on the indexation and web logs for the old site to decide when you can kill it dead

Ultimately, you want the old site to remain in place, redirecting requests until it no longer receives any traffic (or such a low level that it is practical to remove it). If you do get a lot of direct traffic, be sure to update people so they can update their records.

Approach

Which brings us to the technology and approach required. I see you are using .Net aspx pages which is not really my bag but I can give you an overview of the options. You also seem to have wildly different page rules so a cute solution that just dynamically changes the domain but keeps the page the same is not going to work here (sorry).

1. Page Level Redirects: add code to the individual pages to redirect to the new page
2. Add redirection rules to the global.asax config file
3. Create rewrites in the IIS GUI

Beyond the rewrites

An oft overlooked strategy with 301's is to get them done and then really concentrate on the new site. Start building links, try to repoint some of your high quality older links to the new site and start building and promoting new content to get some really high quality links to the new site. All of these strategies will bolster the new site and help it replace the old site  as quickly as possible.

Summary

If you have a big site, manually rewriting all the URL's to the their counterparts on the new site is going to be a bit of a job but one that is worth doing. If you want to prioritise the job look at your most popular pages in your analytics and this gives you a plan of attack. Once you have created specific rules for this you can create a catch all rule to redirect all remaining pages to the sites homepage.

That, pretty much covers it. If we have a windows server / IIS / asp.net guru here who can dive in and fill you in on the specifics of the actual syntax and approach then you should be good to go.

Shout if you have any questions.
Marcus

Hey Andy

There is no real concrete answer to that question so you need to play it by ear. Set up the redirects and watch them over time. Query the to ensure that the additional sites have all disappeared from the search engine result pages. You can also check the web logs on these domains to see if they are picking up traffic from search at all and if so, continue to leave them as long as it takes.

I would be prepared to leave them all for at least 12 months and then review them all and make your decisions.

Additionally, try not to worry about the 301's too much and concentrate on the new main site. Start building up some good links and if possible see if you can get valuable links pointing to the old sites all pointing to the new site. Get some great content on there as well and start promoting that and this will all help the new site supersede the older sites.

As an aside, I have never 301'd fifty sites into one so it would be interesting to hear if anyone else has any experience of combining so many sites into one.

Hope it helps & be prepared for a bit of wait.

Marcus

Good answer from Philip, thumbs up!

That's a great point from Daniel - Thumbs up! When people are paying for those words, you can bet the data is out there.

Scientific data for this kind of thing is tricky though, have you done testing of your own on your own projects? I have seen improvements for clients of around 30% with improved meta tags but it's very much a test, tweak, test, tweak, test, tweak (ad infinitum) process.

You can private message and my email address is on my profile. Cheers. M

Hi Hossam

If you can post your URL I can take a better look for you.

Marcus

Changing the CMS itself will not cause a drop, but any actual changes to the content or structure of the pages may cause changes (good or bad).

As with Craig, I am no big fan of CMS Made Simple, have you thought about maybe migrating to one of the other open CMS platforms? Hard to advise without knowing your site and goals but WordPress can take some beating for most small business websites and Joomla! & Drupal provide options if you need more flexibility.

Hi Hossam

This kind of thing is tricky without a URL but lets quickly examine what you have stated above:

1. not hit during on the specific panda dates
2. lots of duplicate page titles
3. Google Webmaster Reports no major problems

The Google Webmaster Tools & SEOMoz tools do not scan your site for duplicate content problems, it would be a great addition if they could but it would require cross referencing all the pages against each other and then the rest of the internet so I imagine it would be a bit of a challenge to do so (Rand - you guys love a challenge, right? ;)). The offshoot of this is that you can ignore the SEO advice from SEOMoz and the recommendations from GWMT in relation to your problem.

You state that you have lots of duplicate URLs yet you claim this is not the problem yet I would beg to differ. If there are duplicate URLs is there other weak or duplicate content? Do you have product descriptions that are used on other sites or on multiple pages across the site? Do you have lots of content that is repeated on multiple pages across the site?

The kind of loss of traffic and ranking whilst still maintaining visibility for brand queries smacks of one of the more aggressive duplicate content filters that I have seen at least two cases of recently. These tend to kick in once the site has been crawled so do not stick to any specific date and the result is that you are buried for popular search terms but can still rank for terms with no competition and brand related queries.

Link devaluation was mentioned above but if the drop has been sudden and severe I would suspect a penalty is far more likely rather than a slow slide over x weeks, months into the doldrums.

Without a URL we can only theorise up to a point. To do some more in depth analysis and hang some meat on this theory we need to see your web address but from instinct and the information currently supplied,  it sounds like you have a duplication penalty.

This could be remedied by the following measures:

1. canonical urls for any internal page duplication
2. remove thin or weak content pages from the site (delete or noindex)
3. remove or replace any content that is not unique to your site alone (generic product descriptions etc)
4. identify any other sites that have stolen your content and request that it is removed & follow that up with DMCA request for any sites that will not play ball

Generally, review the quality of your site and it's content specifically with an eye to make sure your content is unique, not repeated internally, there are not duplicate URLs and that your content has not been stolen by other sites (google sentences from your site in double quotes for a simple check, use copyscape for something more indepth).

Happy to take another look if you can supply a URL.

Regards, 
Marcus

Solid point - I was assuming it was a new one and everyone knows, assumption is the mother of all f**k ups!

<thread hijack="">Hey Aran, you UK? On twitter?</thread>

Rand mentioned this list is not perfectly up to date but it is a pretty good start. That said, directories should only be a small part of your overall strategy.

Hey, sorry, it's just your directory structure you have a problem with:

/themes/new/ubiquity/*.

Should be

/themes/ubiquity/*.

It was not crystal clear but new was the name for the new theme.

Do that, and it should show up in your admin, if not, let me have your details and ill check it out for you, 2 minute fix.

Marcus

Hey

They are two different domains but google does a pretty good job of knowing which is which usually but that is no reason to run the gauntlet of risk as it's so easy to put this straight. It makes no odds which one you use but www. is the convention for a standard website so... that's my preference.

1. update the primary one in google webmaster tools
   Webmaster Tools > Domain > Site Configuration > Settings

2. Create a 301 redirect to direct all visitors to the primary domain
   more details here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection 

That pretty much covers it. The redirection is done in a .htaccess file for apache and the specifics are on the link above and this is also a great resource for the basics: http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet/

If you are working with a windows server (spits at the floor - sorry) then this will walk you through it:
http://www.hpseo.co.uk/301-redirect-tutorial-iis/

Hope it helps and shout if any questions.
Marcus

Hey Catherine

The basic instructions for  adding a new theme manually are here:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes#Adding_New_Themes

From reading the above, it sounds like you need to unzip the theme so:

1. Create a new directory under themes /themes/new/
2. upload (or move) your zip file there
3. unzip all the files

Then go back into your WordPress admin and the theme should be available to preview or activate in the normal way.

So, it sounds like you just need to create a sub directory, move the zip there and unzip it and you will be good to go but please let me know how you get on.

Cheers
Marcus

Hey Javier

It sounds like a standard verification to ensure you are not spamming the index. Probably one you have to wait out unfortunately.

Historically, when I have solved issues with google places uploads the pending message has given me a clue with regards to the problem but in this instance, 'needs verification' seems to mean that it just  needs verification from google places staff.

Probably your only option is to upload them individually from different accounts local to the countries in question or wait it out. Sorry buddy, it's just a patience game.

Cheers
Marcus

Yep, I agree, I think we need the following - email nag - on screen nag - auto close thirty days after last response That should do it I reckon.

Hey,

I don't believe that the search engines can penalise based on this at the moment and I am sure I have heard Matt Cutts from Google talk about this at some point so I would not worry about it too much. It's the content that is important rather than the tools used to put that content online.

That said, with the current push towards 'quality sites' tables are a very old hat way of doing things and are not exactly mobile friendly. If you are looking at building something from the ground up then try to avoid HTML tables if you can with an eye towards the future.

Cheers
Marcucs

Hey, yeah, I think that's a good idea but maybe a combination of emails with links to the posts, on screen nags, points & auto closures on real old questions would help keep it tidy.

Hey, I am guessing this is a wordpress site?

You could solve this a couple of ways

1. 301 redirect the duplicate page - not recommended as it is a valid page but it may work
2. canonical link on both pages showing the main version of this content
3. noindex the tag page

Alternatively, you can use options 2 & 3 and it will resolve it.

If it's wordpress, happy to take a look at the actual page if it helps? I spend a lot of time tinkering with wordpress so there  maybe another way & this answer is based on some assumption without real links.

Marcus