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Looks like it will actually be a "waste of time", per Google's John Mueller.
"Google's John Mueller in a Google+ hangout was asked this at 51:40 mark and answered they will be going away. He said "it is kind of a waste of time" since "soon they will not be shown at all." - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-emoji-waste-of-time-20258.html
Hope this helps.
Mike
You are correct with your approach.
And as Paddy states, once you launch, remove the disallow and the crawlers will find you.
I would also suggest that once you launch that you submit a sitemap to all of the major search engines to be found even quicker and to help ensure that all of your site pages are crawled.
Mike
You shouldn't have to worry about it.
I would reference this article where Matt Cutts explains that if you are professionally translating it for usability... you are good; however, if you use Google translate to spam your content in a bunch of languages... that is bad.
Hope this helps and answers your question.
Mike
I think it could be a lot of different things. One of them is that Google's SERPs are always going to be more up-to-date, hence the Next rankings update: XXXX in the bottom right-hand corner of the Rank Tracker tool page.
Here is some more information from SEOMoz about Rank Tracker:
"Why do the rankings returned by Rank Tracker sometimes differ from what I see when I check the search engine? Don’t worry – it’s perfectly normal. Rankings are constantly in flux and rarely universal. Some factors that may affect rankings include:
Luckily, trend data is quite good, so even if the positions you see vary slightly from what Rank Tracker reports, the gains or losses are indicative of relative performance. Don’t expect to see precise correlation, but do keep an eye on ranking trends over time."
Hope this helps.
Mike
In many cases, most websites will redirect a trailing slash to the non-trailing slash version, but it all depends on your configuration. Here is some info from Google Webmaster Central on the subject.
I think what you are looking for is breadcrumb rich snippets.
Hope this helps.
Mike
You would need to setup Google Analytics with a www version and a non-www version to view traffic information. Same goes for managing your site, you need to setup both version in Google Webmaster Tools if you want to see data for both.
Google views the non-www version and the www version as two separate sites, that is why you need to set it up twice if that is the route you choose to take.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
I guess I would suggest you don't.
Hidden text and links: "Hiding text or links in your content to manipulate Google’s search rankings can be seen as deceptive and is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines."
As far as structure is concerned, having the same layout and navigation will not get you into duplicate content troubles. Have the same content will.
You should set up 301 redirects. Doing this will redirect visitors, as well as link juice, from your old blog posts (linked from social media, blogs, other websites, etc.) to your new blog posts.
If you choose to do 301 redirects, you will not need to worry about searching for, identifying, and changing all of your old social media mentions to reflect your new URL format.
Does that make sense?
Mike
Sorry. I was under the impression that you wanted to more or less shut down the penalized site. That is why I suggested the mass-redirection. It also would allow you to move all of your content from the penalized domain to the new domain and you wouldn't have to worry about rewriting completely new and unique content.
Solid idea about using an image. The only downside would be that users would not be able to copy and paste the URL into the address bar... but it would really be just removing "the"... so I would like to assume they could handle it 
I would probably shy away from popups, because depending on a user's settings, they may be blocking popups or may disregard the popups if they think they are an advertisement.
Mike
You should set up 301 redirects. Doing this will redirect visitors, as well as link juice, from your old blog posts (linked from social media, blogs, other websites, etc.) to your new blog posts.
If you choose to do 301 redirects, you will not need to worry about searching for, identifying, and changing all of your old social media mentions to reflect your new URL format.
Does that make sense?
Mike
Have you looked into URL rewriting?
Jen did a great post on this here.
It more or less allows you to rewrite the URL however you want.
So instead of www.domain.com/blog/post/post-name you could do www.domain.com/blog/article/post-name or www.domain.com/blog/post-name or even www.domain.com/blog-post-name
Depending on your webserver, you should be able to accomplish this in a few lines of code.
Mike
Hi Jack,
According to Rankings - Help
"Why do the rankings in SEOmoz not match what I see in Google? Great question! Although there is never one “right” ranking for any keyword, SEOmoz tries to represent the ranking results that “most” users will see. If you see wildly different results from your search engine compared to your Ranking Report, it could be because of the following reasons:
Personalization – Most search engines will personalize your results based on your search history. Make sure you are logged out when performing a search. For Google, try adding &pws=0 to the end of your query string.
For example, if you searched for “SEO” the URL in Google would look like google.com/search?q=SEO. To turn off personalization, append &pws=0 to the end, so it would look like google.com/search?q=SEO&pws=0.
Geographic Bias – Search engines also customize results based on location. This means users in one city often see very different results than users in another location.
Latency – Rankings can change between the time we retrieve them and the day when they are viewed.
“www” vs. non-“www” Subdomains – The Web App is subdomain specific, meaning it only tracks rankings for the specific subdomain you track. So if you enter “example.com” as your subdomain, but “www.subdomain.com” is what ranks in the search results, this ranking won’t appear in your rankings report. This also might indicate a problem with canonicalization or duplicate content.
If you set your campaign up on the wrong subdomain, the only way to correct it is to start a new campaign. You can either archive or delete your old campaign, or choose to keep it running if you have enough campaign slots available."
And WorldofMoulding.com is coming up at #40 for me when I search "crown moulding" (see screenshot below).
Hope this helps.
Mike
If you scan with Screaming Frog, you can easily find missing meta tags, titles, broken links and more.
It is what we used prior to going live with our website and it was a life/time saver!
And here is a guide done by SEER Interactive that illustrates all of the different things you can accomplish with this tool.
Mike
Hi Ben,
"Unlike other SEO metrics, Domain Authority is difficult to directly influence. This is because it is made up of an aggregate of metrics (mozRank, mozTrust, link profile, etc...) that each have an impact on this score. This was done intentionally because this metric is meant to approximate how competitive a given site is in Google.com. Since, Google.com takes into account a lot of factors, a metric that tries to calculate it must incorporate a lot of factors as well.
This means the best way to influence this metric is to improve your overall SEO. Particularly you should focus on your link profile (which influences mozRank and mozTrust) by getting more links from other well linked to pages."
Hope this helps.
Mike
SEOmoz uses https://www.speechpad.com/ for Whiteboard Friday transcription.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the transcription text you will see the SpeechPad URL, as well as http://blog.speechpad.com/video-transcription/ for the actual service.
Mike
Hi Shawn,
Google does not look at page content the same way humans do. Google is more concerned about you providing a good experience for your users. I believe that using tabs, if coded correctly, is one way of providing good experience and additional information.
If you view this text only version of the dell.com page you referenced, you will see how Google is viewing that page - there are no tabs, simply text and hyperlinks.
As far as SEO is concerned, it used to be the goal to put all of your important content, above the fold; however, that is not as important as it once was.
If you Google: site:www.dell.com Native HD 1.0 MP webcam with dual digital array microphone, you can see that the Inspiron 15z Ultrabook appears in one of results. This text is on the Tech Specs tab and is still being indexed by Google.
Long story short - Google "should" (depending on the way you set up your tabs) be able to crawl, index, and rank your page when you use content on tabs.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
Hi Matt,
Matt Cutts actually suggests that you should use the disavow link tool with caution and only in certain circumstances.
Also, there is an article on Search Engine Land regarding things to think about prior to using the disavow tool, which states, "If you haven’t actually been penalized and you start disavowing your links, you’re essentially outing yourself to Google that you manipulated the system. Make sure that you equivocally know you were penalized and it’s not just some random fluctuation in rankings, a sitemap or indexing problem, or an accidentally no-indexed page."
Google Webmaster Tools calls out the following, "This is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."
I am not saying that you shouldn't use the disavow tool - simply suggesting that you use caution.
Mike
Hi David,
Read the Beginners Guide to SEO.
That will should answer 97% of your questions.
Then read the SEOMoz Help for 2% more.
And finally ask very specific questions here for the final 1%.
Good luck.
Mike
I personally think this may confuse users. For instance, if they click on your company logo from another page and are directed to www.site.com/super-awesome-best-thing-ever stead of www.site.com... that might appear kind of strange to them.
Why don't you either:
optimize your homepage for super-awesome-best-thing-ever
create a landing page for super-awesome-best-thing-ever
If you are trying really hard to rank for super-awesome-best-thing-ever, I would try the above 2 options first. If you still aren't getting the results you want, then maybe try the homepage redirect; however, I think that is somewhat odd functionality for the user.
In most cases, the super-awesome-best-thing-ever is going to be more specific. For instance, if bestbuy.com redirected to bestbuy.com/electronics-retailer that would confuse me... A LOT.
Have you tried other options first?
Mike