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Hello Mozzers,

I am undertaking a site audit and have just noticed that the developer has left the development site up and it has indexed. They 301d from pages on old site to equivalent pages on new site but seem to have allowed the development site to index, and they haven't switched off the development site. So would the best option be to redirect the development site pages to the homepage of the new site (there is no PR on dev site and there are no links incoming to dev site, so nothing much to lose...)? Or should I request equivalent to equivalent page redirection?

Alternatively I can simply ask for the dev site to be switched off and the URLs removed via WMT, I guess...

Thanks in advance for your help!  

Thanks Peter - developer was only redirecting from www. version of pages - when other versions exists, so will ensure he redirects from duplicates too, Luke

Hi Mozzers - I'm working on a site migration from a non-canonicalized site - I am wondering about the best way to deal with that - should I ask them to canonicalize prior to migration? Many thanks.

Hi Peter - sorry yes not that clear! I was asking about Keyword density I suppose - I know many SEOers suggest it's irrelevant, yet I spend much of my time removing penalties from sites and Keyword stuffing is causing issues.

If I see a penalty which I think is stuffing related I check densities and drop to 3% maximum  - that appears to have reversed penalty a couple of times.

Thanks Peter for you useful input, as ever. How do you manage onsite keywords in content these days?

It's incredible how often the 301 redirect thing is overlooked by developers managing migrations - oh the number of times I've been called in after the developer has 301'd everything to the homepage (or not even bothered doing any redirects).

Hi Mozzers  - I am looking at new site (not launched yet) - it contains significantly fewer pages than the previous site - 35 pages rather than 107 before - content on the remaining pages is plentiful but I am worried about the sudden loss of a significant "chunk" of the website - significantly cutting the size of a website must surely increase the risks of post-migration performance problems?

Further info - the site has run an SEO contract with a large SEO firm for several years. They don't appear to have done anything beyond tinkering with homepage content - all the header and description tags are the same across the current website. 90% of site traffic currently arrives on the homepage. Content quality/volume isn't bad across most of the current site.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Not sure but worth investigation - this is link to Hootsuite: https://hootsuite.com/

Thanks for advice Paul - I've edited pages with poor backlink profiles out of redirect and 301'd the rest to relevant pages within the new website, and traffic has spiked up a bit. There were some very powerful links (national newspapers, etc) the new site was missing out on.

Thanks Jorge - Not sure how I'd survive without Screaming Frog - haven't gotten around to Xenu Linksleuth yet, but must give it a go sometime soon! Although I use copyscape to check for external duplication, hadn't realised I could use it to check for duplicate text within a website, so I'm v grateful for that pointer Luke

Thanks James - good advice!

Huge thanks for the advice and that brilliant article Anthony :-)!

Hello again Mozzers! Other than the Moz tool, are there any other tools out there for identifying internal duplicate content? Thanks, Luke

Hello Mozzers - I found a sitemap with loads of URL errors on it (none of the URLs on sitemap actually existed) so I went ahead and updated sitemap - now I'm seeing a spike in "not found" errors in WMT - is this normal / anything to worry about when you significantly change a sitemap. I've never replaced every URL on a sitemap before! L

Hi Peter - you make some good points.

Perhaps something like you have in public relations - perhaps you join an institute (or a new branch of Moz) by paying a fee and signing up to a code of conduct - if a client is unhappy with your conduct, they can lodge a complaint and challenge your position as a member of the said organisation. That would be a great way forward and restore some level of trust in the industry. A kind of self-regulation if you like.

Take a look at this: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/10/preschedule-tweets/ - if not, I think hootsuite enable prescheduling - hope that helps, Luke

Which is the case, unfortunately. Just auditing the backlinks. Gulp. I really do think SEO industry needs to be regulated in some way. There's just so much dubious stuff going on.

Thanks Peter - I note here:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2115729/10-Steps-to-a-Successful-SEO-Migration-Strategy

Here it's suggested that sites keep old URLs in their sitemaps. I've heard others suggest otherwise. Seems to be a fair bit of conflicting advice out there.

In this case I'm seeing titles like this - they're doubled up on the same page:

vacations in Florida | vacations in Florida

No duplication between pages - just the doubling up of keyphrases on each page. Very odd indeed! SEO agency concerned had actually put this in place for client.

Hello Mozzers - just looking at a website which has duplicate keyphrases in its page titles...

So you have [keyphrase 1] | [exact match Keyphrase 1]

Now I happen to know this particular site has suffered a dramatic fall in traffic - the SEO agency working on the site had advised the client to duplicate keyphrases. Hard to believe, huh!

What I'm wondering is whether this extensive exact match keyphrase duplication might've been enough to attract a penalty? Your thoughts would be welcome.

Hello Mozzers,

If you are amending your urls - 301ing to new URLs - when in the process should you update your sitemap to reflect the new urls?

I have heard some suggest you should submit a new sitemap alongside old sitemap to support indexing of new URLs, but I've no idea whether that advice is valid or not.

Thanks in advance, Luke