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MonicaOConnor

Above everything, Google looks for your user experience. If you have a ton of 302 redirects you will have duplicate content errors, If you start changing 301 redirects you will eventually create a spider web that is hard to navigate. If you set up your 301 redirects and have to change a few, you should be ok. If you set up 5000 redirects and end up changing 4500 of them or creating duplicate 301 redirects you will eventually have really slow page speeds and bad user experience which Google will recognize and not like.

302 redirects are not common or best practice. I would avoid them all together.

MonicaOConnor

I agree with everyone here. But I do have some separate thoughts.

Bulk redirects aren't negative if they are done correctly. For example, I just moved a website that had about 1000 discontinued products. As opposed to losing those valuable pages, we redirected them to the corresponding category pages or to the replacement products. The 600 or so links that had to be redirected to a category aren't going to hurt my site. It will help my customers who are looking for those products, however. A client would probably rather land on a page that says "this product is no longer available, here are the replacements" than a 404 error page.

In the case of a blog, it is a lot better to redirect each blog to its new home. For blogs that no longer exist, I would redirect them to the corresponding category. No one likes to hit a 404 page, and if there is a chance that someone could land on a page that no longer exists, it is better to have them get to somewhere on your site.

As far as your blog's home page, is that a separate category on your site or is your entire site a blog? If your page was just a landing page where your blogs were listed, then you should redirect to the corresponding page on the new site, like Jonathan suggested.

MonicaOConnor

Wherever you have duplicate content you should try to minimize the effects, usually with canonical tags.

I would shy away from your strategy only because showing viewers one thing and bots another is frowned upon. What's wrong with PPC visitors landing on your SEO pages?

MonicaOConnor

I would definitely add it to both as Google sees these as two different sites.

MonicaOConnor

I understand that tablets are mobile devices, all I am saying is that Google sees them differently. The reporting in Analytics, AdWords, and GWT separates Tablets and Mobile. I don't understand it either, but that is the way the cookie crumbles. I am not saying I understand it or that it makes sense, but there is a small separation for some reason.

MonicaOConnor

Using your blog would be a really great way to build organic links. Make sure you share you blogs on social sites, it will help drive traffic and send relevant social signals.

I think about the EHarmony commercials and how they are always using scientific facts and then they use like common sense Q&As. If you could write some guest blogs to e-magazines or industry related forums with that kind of content it could be a great linking strategy. I would just make sure that you are staying within your industry. You might accidentally have links from less than reputable sites if you aren't careful.

MonicaOConnor

No, that is not realistic. You will implement 301 redirects which will help you keep some traffic and link juice, but your DA and PA will not be transferred seamlessly. You will have to build the DA and PA of your metro-manhattan.com site the organic way with quality links and great content.

The 301 redirects might cause a boost in DA, but it will not be equal to what you have now.

MonicaOConnor

That is a really good point. The - in a domain name is usually not a good thing.

Just to be clear, I wasn't saying it isn't impossible to regain rankings over time. It just won't happen instantaneously. It is possible over time to actually grow more and be better than the old domain, but that will take work.

MonicaOConnor

In my opinion yes. Since disavowing the links doesn't necessarily remove them, I am a little more cautious on what I disavow from Bing. It is tough to have two different sets of standards for search engines, but unfortunately I have found this to still be the case.

Everything else though, like on page SEO and Social Sharing, still holds true that what is good for Google is also good for Bing and Yahoo. So far the only piece of the puzzle that doesn't fit is the links.

MonicaOConnor

DA is mainly influenced by link activity. I don't think that it would be any easier to build DA and PA on your metro-manhattan domain as it would any other domain. It will take time to build links effectively and organically. I also agree with EGOL. I believe you should look into metromanhattan.com instead of having a hyphenated domain.

MonicaOConnor

I guess it depends on what kind of links you want to build. You can buy thousands of links all at once but that will only hurt you in the long run. The rule I follow is to stay within 10-15% of your existing links. That is just a metric I use to help explain to clients what "natural" link building should really look like.

You will be passing some link juice to your new domain, but it isn't a fluid transfer, meaning you will not reach the DA of 23 simply by redirecting the old domain. You will get a higher domain authority by building reputable, quality links. I wouldn't do anymore than 20 a month, since there are only 100 links to the metro-manhattan.com domain.

MonicaOConnor

Don't worry, it happens to the best of us!

My thoughts, you need some quality backlinks and more content. Your URLs are not optimized very well, meaning you don't really target your key terms in them, and the site is small. I would say getting a blog and adding fresh content, having a social media presence, building some quality backlinks and adding more content to your pages will help you. The design of the site is beautiful, though! Good Job!