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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
Hi Chad,
I think you are asking if it is problematic for all of the pages on your website to be using the same meta keywords and meta description tags.
These tags look like this:
The "content" of these tags, and actually your title tags as well, is duplicated across all of the pages on your website (I am referring to the website listed in your profile - Auben Realty).
The title tag is extremely important and provides search engines with a quick glimpse of what a page is about prior to even viewing the page. These should be unique to each page on your website as they are a page ranking factor.
The meta description tag is not important for search engines, but it is for visitors. This is the description visitors will see when your web pages appear in a search engine's results page. Although this tag is not part of a ranking factor, it is good marketing to have these descriptions be unique to each page.
The meta keywords tag can be removed from all of your website's pages. This tag is not used in any way with Google. I have read that Bing uses this tag to look for basic keyword stuffing. And while other search engines may use the keywords tag for some ranking factor - more than likely you are not getting traffic from those search engines, because they are not used nearly as much.
If you check out the SEOmoz Guide to SEO, you will find additional information on these tags and a bunch of general SEO tips.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Name.
Address.
Phone Number.
Just make sure that your website is matching your Google Places page and any other business directories you list in. The consistency helps ensure that you are the specified business.
Makes sense?
Mike
You are correct in saying that you would have to divide your link building efforts if you have multiple sites. If you use subdomains, you would get some of the value of linking across all of your sites; however, I don't think that would be good necessarily for your example.
I would suggest that you have landing pages specific to each category of law, then subpages under each landing page that are pertinent to that specific category.
For instance, you could have a Family Law page, which would then have subpages of Divorce, Child Custody, Child Support, Adoption, etc. You could still very well rank well for each of your categories and subcategories.
I would think that your clients would think you were experts in each of your category pages, but I am not too familiar with lawyering 
Hope this helps.
Mike
According to SEOmoz Help:
"So, in sum, the On-Page Tool only automatically runs reports on pages that are already ranking in the top 50 for one or more of your keywords. Thus, your On-Page Rankings Reports update after your rankings update each week. If you have no pages ranking in the top 50, then you'll have no automatically generated On-Page Reports. If you have 30 pages ranking in the top fifty, then you should have 30 On-Page reports."
So, only 5 of your pages are ranking in the top 50 for your selected keywords.
Hope this helps.
Mike
If you 301 redirect the old category page that had the bad backlinks, you will be indirectly pointing those bad backlinks from the old category page to the new one.
If it shows as 404 in webmaster tools and you are no longer using that page, that means it is displaying the correct error. It should eventually be removed from Google's index if it is still in there or you could remove it from Google's index in WMT if you wanted to.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Hi Darcy,
For assessing your competitors, I have heard that SEMRush.com is the way to go. I have only used the trial of it (which I found simply OK); however, I have been assured by some SEO authorities that the paid for version gives you A LOT more information.
As far as if you wanted to check the organic searches that your website is receiving or keywords that your site "may" rank high for, you can use Google Webmaster Tools > Search Queries will give you the information for your own site.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Hi John,
I would actually suggest trying to put St. Charles, MO in your title tag like the competitor that is ranking above you.
That will help with ranking higher for the keywords "St Charles Lawn Care" AND is way easier than creating additional pages AND your homepage already has very good rankings.
If you haven't already, make sure you are listed in all of the local business directories at GetListed.org to further increase your local presence.
Good luck.
Mike
No. Google will not index your page differently; however, it can potentially slow your pages down, because you will have additional code.
Here is what Google has to say on the matter, "Where possible, use absolute rather than relative links. (For instance, when linking to another page in your site, link to www.example.com/mypage.html rather than simply mypage.html)."
There are a few reasons behind this thought process: 1) crawlers cannot get confused when crawling your pages, because the complete path is available 2) should your site content be scrapped, the links would point back to your own page 3) if you have poor site structure, this can increase errors (for instance if you switch to HTTPS for a signin page and you continue to use relative pathing for navigation, you could then have links to the HTTPS version of your website and the HTTP version).
Also, just for reference, when you are looking at using relative or absolute for canonical pages, Google states, "rel="canonical" can be used with relative or absolute links, but we
recommend using absolute links to minimize potential confusion or difficulties."
Hope this answers your question.
Mike
Hi Scott,
I would not worry about that being considered duplicate content. Is it duplicate? Yes - however you are listing your mission in business directories, so some duplicate content is assumed.
When Google indexes, it can easily determine where the duplicate content originated and gives complete credit to that source... in this case, your homepage.
You can even Google: "seomoz is the world's most popular provider of seo software" and see that this same paragraph is listed on LinkedIn, CrunchBase, VendorStack, StartupGenome, etc.
These business directories are all reputable, so I would not worry about it. If you do see random webpages or your own webpages duplicating your content, then you should be more concerned about fixing that.
Hope this helps.
Mike
According to Google's, Ways to correct my local business listing to correct your business name, "If your business name isn't showing up correctly, edit the listing in your Google Places account. Verifying your listing allows you to personalize your business’s Place Page with custom fields, photos & videos, posts, and more."
Depending on whether you have already verified the listing saying you are the business owner or if you just edited it for a local business the instructions may vary slightly.
Hope this helps.
Mike