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"two pages that I've managed to get ranking have ranked between 20 and 23 for the specific term. However, today on the email one of the pages for one search term has bombed out of the top 50 while the other page has remained unaffected." Sometimes, if you have two pages that are ranking for the same search query it's not uncommon for Google to decide that only one of the pages needs to be presented to the user. If both are serving the same user intent then essentially Google may consider it (semantically) duplicate content, despite the fact that both pages may be worded differently, etc. From my experience of having multiple pages ranking for the same keyword, the pages will keep battling it out in the SERPs bouncing up and down. One week, there'll be a cluster of 3 ranking terribly. The next week one will shoot up, while the other is nowhere to be seen. Personally I've found that Google seems to prefer it if there's only one page ranking for the term (it's an easier decision for Google to make and it won't get so confused which one to rank as more relevant to the query). By merging similar pages, I find that it ends up being stronger in Google as it's not having to compete in the SERPs with similar pages on your website. I hope that helps at all, even if it's only from anecdotal evidence.

Thanks Rand! I don't know many, well any, people in America so I couldn't work out whether G+ was a runaway success over there compared to here in the UK. But what you say makes total sense in regards to the communities that are heavily used.

I'll look in to confirming ownership of the redirected domains just to make sure everything's above board!

Totally agree, will keep that all in mind thanks

The Yoast SEO plugin does the same thing. Both it and Moz are intended as a guide only. You have to overlay it with your best judgement.

Removing 404 urls from Google indexes is a never ending job and often requires multiple submissions until they go away. But when should you submitt them for removal? If Moz finds them but Google is not reporting them yet in wemaster tools or Analytics... should you be proactive and submit them to google for removal? OR Wait until the show up as an error by Google?

Hi Patrick, Thank you for your answer. You make complete sense. There is the risk it ranks higher than the actual blog post, but I think as long as it links to the original location I should be fine. Thanks!