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I agree. You will need to add the https version of your site to GWT. Google sees these URLs as two different URLs, so you will want to add the HTTPS version of your site.

If you can keep the majority of the URLs the same, that is beneficial. What you want to make sure of, is that on any page that the URL does change (You will probably have a few) make sure you redirect them.

For example if your URL is abc.com/blue-widgets.php and it changes to abc.com/blue-widgets.htm, you will have to redirect the .php to the .htm. If that part of the URL structure doesn't change, and you change nothing else, then you should be ok.

So your footer links, top nav bar, are only visible in code? But can you see them on the page?

To elaborate on my answer, I feel that schema markups for links in the footer, sidebar and top nav are irrelevant and not worth exhausting the effort. What benefit does the markup have to the user? The markups should highlight the most important parts of your site for the benefit of the searcher, not the search engine. Therefore my answer is really that same, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher. Is there something in those links worth highlighting that could possibly increase your CTR? My guess is that there probably isn't. Without seeing your site, I couldn't really assume otherwise.

The benefit is not to the engine as these markups are for user experience alone. Highlighting the data won't help you rank better if it is irrelevant to the searcher.

That is tough to say. I think there is more likely the sites themselves can be punished for having poor quality content, but, that being said Penguin is becoming ever more advanced and you can be penalized for being in a bad neighborhood. So far that refers specifically to link profiles, but I don't put it passed Google to start including content in that evaluation as well. My rule of thumb is always go with your gut, because your instinct is usually spot on. If you get bad vibes then do whatever you can to make sure you are satisfied with the end result.

Yes, you are not incorrect. As I said, this is not necessarily bad, but it isn't necessarily good. The tactic isn't bad, but the implementation is bad. If you can rewrite the content, that would be my recommendation. Before you disavow, ask the webmaster of the other sites to remove the links if you feel that is what you want to do.

If the current company you are working with published these articles, you should remind them of Hummingbird, Panda and Penguin. I am not saying these links are best practice, but there are alternatives to disavowing them. Without knowing what the rest of your link profile is I cannot say that removing them would be my first jump. I would first try to fix the content and anchor text, second I would ask whichever webmaster has links you can't salvage to remove them, and my last resort would be to disavow them.

Did you recently have your site in maintenance mode? That is usually what the 503 code represents.

These all look like directory listings and guest blog posts. I don't believe they are toxic, but I also don't think they are the best kind of links either. I would have a chat with your seo company and give them the clear understanding of exactly what you want your content to sound like and where you want it to be.

Guest blogging is not an unacceptable form of backlinking. In my opinion it is just not 100% best practice anymore. You want high authority natural links.

Use the tool in GWT, Go to Google Index > Remove URLs

In this instance, I would remove the URLs from the index. You can do that in GWT. The alternative is to leave them as a 404, but that isn't my preferred method. You don't want to redirect them because they are spammy pages that could potentially negatively affect other pages.

There is no "penalty" per say for duplicate content. But, if you have the same page in two places they will be competing for a spot in the SERPs. The best way to handle that is a cross domain canonical tag.

I agree with Doug however. I think that there is more value having this information on your current site. Is there a particular reason you want them separate?

It depends on how the redirects are done. If you do them in the htaccess file and they are dynamic, not manual, you can have thousands. What Kevin is referring to is how many times can you redirect the same page. You can't redirect page 1 to page 2 to page 3 to page 4 then to page 5. But you can redirect multiple pages on you site.

I understand from your previous post you are talking about your blog. You will be fine redirecting these URLs to static URLs. Do them through the HTAccess file. After about 6 months the old URLs should have fallen off and been removed from the index so you can move the 301 redirects. If anything gets missed you will find it in your GWT 404 errors.

That is correct

If all you can see in the source code is the widget, then that is all that the bots will see. If this widget is helpful for your searchers, then that will be the benefit. Google will only see that there is a widget on your site. It will not see any content that isn't in the source code. If you want the content to be seen, an RSS feed might be a better option.

I believe the Schema markups are better for user experience, which is why they are important to SEO. What is the point of having a completely optimized site and great content if you can't get anyone to click on your SERP? This is especially true for ECommerce stores. Those markups give the customers the first glimpse of a price and the quality of a product, and, can often drastically increase CTR.

You should add Schema markups to the things that are important on your site, prices, brands, reviews; the things that are more important to the searcher. What is good for the searcher is good for the search engine. Highlight the things that you have over your competition. Highlight the things you want to be recognized for, like promotions or guarantees. The benefit of the markups should be thought of as what is good for the searcher, not the bots.

You are correct in keeping information the same. You have to redirect the URLs if they change. If you don't do that you will be starting at 0 with ranking power. I am not sure that you will be able to move with out changing URLs completely. The set up could be different, there could be a different protocol (PHP, HTM, etc). Make sure any 301 redirects are done properly.

I am not sure how to handle the second part of your question as I have 0 experience in that area.

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.

The way that I tracked mobile performance (before my site became responsive) was in GWT. If you go to Search Traffic > Search Queries, at the top of the page select filters, Search > Mobile. This will give you a pretty broad scope of where some of your key terms fall. Here is what you should see. 

I look at the URL. I don't know if it is because I am trained to, or because I copy and paste a lot. Using Dynamic URLs means setting parameters in GWT, it means constantly watching for 404 errors. In my opinion it isn't worth the time and effort where a static URL is implemented once, and you move on with the rest of your page.

Do you have more than 1 canonical tag on any of these pages? If you do, Google will ignore any tag.

Have you set the preferred version of your site? Is it possible that Google sees both the www and non www versions of your site?

Adding product options is usually best practice, like Hutch said.

Using canonical tags would be the next best thing. If you have Product A that has 6 colors and subsequently you have 6 pages for product A, I would create one page with a product description and product reviews. I would make that the canonical page. For the 6 subsequent pages I would create them to mirror the first page, but only have details specific to the color on that page. Then, add the Rel = Canonical tags to those 6 pages. All of the link juice and page authority will be pointed to the main product page.

The second thing I would do is add links to the specific pages with different colors to the content on the main page. This will help users find it easier and help with overall user experience.

So, it would look something like this:

Product A - Description, Reviews, Links to all versions of product A. Fully optimized page for Product A

Product A Colors 1 - 6, Add REL=Canonical tags with Product A as the Canonical. Include descriptions specific to the individual colors.  Using the canonical tags will tell the engines that your preferred page is Product A, which will help you control the negative effects of the duplicate content.