Welcome to the Q&A Forum

If you are 301 redirecting these sites eventually the older URLs will no longer be indexed, leaving only the one site with it's unique content. You don't have to worry about duplicate content in this instance.

My first thought is that rewriting your product descriptions will not be as effective as getting user generated content, like product reviews, on your site. Even if you rewrite the content, it will still be the same context and it won't offer anything uniquely valuable to the searchers. You need uniquely valuable content, not just uniquely written content.

My second though is that flattening the URLs is not the best way to do that. Your category and subcategory names should be structured to help you get as much information into your URL as possible. You don't want to stuff them with keywords, but you want them to be progressively descriptive.

For example,

Category = Women's Pants / Subcategory = Boot Cut Denim / Product Name = Riders by Lee Women's Dark Wash Boot Cut Jeans

URL - www.mystore.com/womens-pants/bootcut-denim/riders-by-lee-womens-dark-wash-boot-cut-jeans.cfm

as opposed to

www.,mystore.com/riders-by-lee-womens-dark-wash-boot-cut-jeans.cfm

The first example would be the best possible URL format. Taking out the categories would only reduce your ability to target keywords effectively.

I think what makes this different is that the feed will be direct and live. I don't necessarily believe the links created in Twitter will be a good source of backlinks as they will continue to be no follow links. I do however see the face that Twitter posts can rank on the first page of Google as an extremely useful conversion tool.

If I can tweet a link to my site advertising a promotion, and that can feed to the first page of Google faster than my meta description can be recrawled and updated, that will still bring valuable traffic to my site. I am excited to see what kind of benefit this can have to SEO and marketing as a whole. I doubt it will really affect link building at its core. The value is going to come from traffic increase and the ability to get your content in front of searchers faster.

I do however, think that the way results are displayed will be heavily modified in the coming weeks. I think that the massive amount of data filtered through Twitter daily will have to be filtered and funneled for user experience. If the first page of Google becomes infiltrated with Tweets, it will probably only cause searchers to have to go to page 2 and 3 to find the results they are looking for.

In my industry, 5 of the 8 manufacturers Twitter profiles and tweets have already pushed my competition off of page one for branded searches. While I am not off page 1 yet, I fear that it could happen. I definitely foresee a lot more fine tuning ahead.

That all depends on what you are using it for. If you are in a market where your service or product can be found anywhere, than something that sets you apart from your competition should be highlighted in as many places as you possibly can. Best practice would be to incorporate this on an about us page, or add a tab to the top nav bar that would allow your customers to see it and then go to a page for the details. I do not like the idea of duplicate content on every page. I don't believe it increases the user experience and it definitely loses its SEO value.

For the purposes of standing apart from the competition, I would create a page highlighting what separates you from your competitors and then add it to your top nav bar. Call it "Why Choose Us" or "About Us", or even "What Makes Us Different". Something to catch the Users eye and give them an idea of what separates your company from everyone else selling your product or service.

Panda and Penguin, every SEOs best buddies...

I work with a company called Orion Group LLC. They are a great firm for off page optimization. I myself am not a great link builder, mainly because I am not a good sales person. I technically know the aspects of it, but have never been great at implementing it. I would give them a call.

I would say that if you want to decipher between Panda and Penguin you will have to go down the list of Content Vs. Links to really lay it on the line. If you have not seen a manual penalty then you have a chance to get things in order before the next update.

For Penguin:

1. Do you have links that don't generate traffic or have really keyword dense anchor text? Anchor text that is so repetitive you are basically keyword stuffing your link profile?

2. Do you have links to Payday loan stores, tobacco sites, porn sites or any other website with a low online reputation?

3. Do you have a lot of links that return 404 errors?

4. Do you have enough reputable links to outweigh any negative link juice? For example, a link to a DA of 100 (Pinterest, Youtube) compared to 10 links to sites with a DA of 10.

5. Is your link profile diverse? Do you have links in content, footers,blogs, links to industry related sites, links that send social signals (FaceBook likes and shares, Google +1s, twitter retweets)?

Panda questions:

1. Is my content uniquely valuable wherever it can be?

2. Do I have any User Generated Content?

3. Do I have any ads above the fold?

4. Is there any engagement on the pages that I am targeting keywords with?

5. Is my site easy to navigate and understand? Am I conveying my message clearly?

6. Do I have a ton of links in my content, whether internal or external?

7. Is my overall user experience pleasant?

I hope that helps you try to narrow down the pesky P named animal that is causing you trouble. I am sure with a Big Commerce template your UX is doing well. I hope that you figure this out soon!

The only other thing I would look at is mobile search traffic to see if that is having an effect. As well as the overall seasonality of your business. Is it possible that this is just a slow time of year?

Sounds like someone doing off page optimization created a subdomain for the purposes of increasing domain authority by posting a ridiculous amount of social posts through a subdomain. This is extremely black hat and that is why it is on a subdomain, to protect your root. I have come across this issue on blackhatworld.com.

I recommend you shut down the subdomain immediately and ask whoever is handling your off page optimization what in the world they were doing. I doubt it is an older subdomain because this is a fairly recent practice. I would recommend getting rid of it fairly quickly and making sure that there are not many links between the sub and the root domain.

I would add to Rob's suggestions that you need to make sure you have user generated content on these pages. If you do not add reviews to your pages you will have a very difficult time ranking. You will have to make sure that you have something uniquely valuable to offer your customers, something they can't find on any other site, and that is why user generated content is so important on product pages. You can only rewrite a product description so many ways. Chances are, your static content will not provide anything to a customer they can't find elsewhere. With a low DA in a competitive market, UGC is your best friend.

I would also add that it helps to have a video or two on your product pages. Add a video on how the product works or record an in house review of the product. It will really help your rankings and user experience.

I would just add that no tool is perfect. Discrepancies happen. Keyword tools are meant to give you competitive analysis and show your progress over time. Location can be making differences, as well as the time of day the queries are happening. The snapshot you are given isn't necessarily inaccurate. There are so many factors that change the SERPs, it is hard to always have the perfect result.

These extensions look like they are attachments. Go into GWT, click on the 404 link, then a box with pop up, click on the  "Linked From" tab.. Go to the page and Ctrl U to see the source code. Do a CTRL F and search for the broken link. When you find it in your source code you should be able to figure out what's triggering that response. If you can't find the URLs in your source code, mark them as fixed and it should take care of the problem. Especially if they are older. It looks like it could be a shipment status, a product out of stock message, and a PDF of train schedules.

I would check the linked from pages and make sure that there isn't some erroneous code that is creating a page when it doesn't need to.

I just moved a Volusion site to Big Commerce. I think that you should implement the SEO friendly short URLS. This will give you back the URL structure you lost moving from Zen Cart.

I think that you might be suffering from the Penguin update because it targeted the link neighborhoods. You link profile shows links to sites that have extremely spammy link profiles. A lot of people were guilty by association with the 10/17 Penguin update. Although you lost some of the impressions, you can get them back with new, fresh, authoritative links. What is your current linking strategy?

I don't think that the URL structure could be 100% responsible for a loss in impressions. I think that you will have to look a little deeper, just make sure that your 301 redirects are accurate.

When I moved to BigCommerce I found that I had to do a lot of manual 301 redirects as well. Our site in Volusion was extremely sloppy as far as 301 redirects and category structure. It could be possible that there were some pages on the site that didn't get redirected correctly.

Other traffic usually includes traffic that Google can't pinpoint, like referral clicks from no follow links, some clicks from Bing PPC, things of that sort. It is not usual for it to include traffic from AdWords. Google wants you to be able to analyze that data because they don't want to discourage you from spending.

If you want to be sure, make sure that your analytics code is correct, and maybe implement some of the conversion tracking tools in AdWords. Here is some detail on that.

I see the points that each of these people are making.

The general rule of thumb is that if there is any chance that link will be clicked on you should redirect it. Redirecting the page won't hurt you, but it could hurt you not to redirect it. Do you know if the page ranks at all?

I don't see the harm in redirecting it, it is better to be safe than sorry.

Google plus reviews are great, so are reviews on BizRate, YotPo or any other 3rd party site where reviews can be left. Have you thought about getting involved with Google Trusted Stores? That is an awesome review system.

Redirecting the old URLs with 301s is the best way to carry over SEO value. You will transfer most of your link juice and help get traffic to your new pages.

As far as the PHP vs HTM, I don't believe it matters that much, I will say that your new URL structure is probably a little better than your current structure. The more information you can fit naturally into your URL is important, so having the product and the name is better than having just the name.

I understand why you would think disavowing links would be time better spent, but any professional would tell you that anytime you add a disavow file to your site, you are essentially raising a red flag and giving Google the in to really inspect your profile. That can be extremely detrimental in most cases.

Links have age, just like domains. Fresh, new links will carry more weight than older spam links, especially if they are driving traffic to your site. I would spend my time building new links and not disavowing any links unless I am trying to remove a penalty. As I understand it, you have already been cleared of a Penguin penalty, so I don't think your time is best spent on disavow actions. However, there might be people in the community who disagree with that theory.

As far as the EMD goes, there are over 200 ranking factors. Although it might be easy to point to their domain and say that is why they out rank you, you can't really do that. As far as evening the field, you will want to get ahead of them, not just get on their level. I wouldn't go through the redirect process unless it was my last option or hope. Just because the other domain has been registered for the same amount of time, doesn't give it the same value of the domain you are using. There has been no traffic to that domain, nor has it been crawled in that time, unless you have two operating sites. The domain that has been registered and in use is the more valuable domain. Is it worth building up your domain authority from scratch?

The URL structure is not doubt important, but the focus should be on what follows the .com. Some other factors you should consider before you decide to 301 or disavow is general site structure and user generated content. Do you have a responsive design? How about any uniquely valuable content like customer reviews or comments? These are the easiest things to work on in order to build your domain authority and your trust signals.

By no means do I want to discredit your theory, however, I would encourage you to seek further research to really understand the cons of all of the disavow files and starting with a new domain.

This is a tough situation to be in.

First, I would suggest adding some quality follow links before you disavow anymore of the no follow links. While these links are plentiful, they are no follow and serve only one purpose because of that, to bring traffic to your site. If these links are bringing traffic, it isn't worth getting rid if them. Often times there are negative consequences of having several disavow files with Google. I understand the initial appeal of disavowing those links, but in the long run, you won't have the outcome you are looking for. If at all possible, reach out to webmasters first, and ask them to remove links before you go through the disavow process.

The best thing you can do is get some quality, authoritative links to sites that have high DA. Youtube, Pinterest, Google Plus... Those are all reputable sites. You have to be careful with YouTube now though, make sure you embed videos with Http, not Https.

You also want to diversify your link profile to include links in related content. It is the harder way to build links, but it is worth it in the end. What you are suffering from now is the "easy come, easy go" link building strategy that flourished 5-6 years ago and has left many sites in limbo. The best way to even out your link profile is to build better links. Getting rid of all of the no follow links will not be as helpful as building fresh, quality links.

301 redirecting  your site to a new domain will not help you because you will be redirecting all of your link juice, spammy links included. EMDs do not have the value they used to, your brand is far more important than your key terms nowadays. Plus, there is value in the age of your domain. Older domains carry higher authority. There is more value in the age of your domain than an EMD. I would put money on that

Whatever you decide to do, make sure that your next step is earning some fresh, quality links and start sending some social signals. Good luck!

I would say you should do whichever is better for the user. Whatever will make their experience on your site a good one. I am a fan of getting as much information on one page as I can, however, there are some users who might want the highlights with the freedom to dig deeper if they need or want.

Content heavy pages are always a good thing, but the UX is ultimately the most important thing.

I ran into a similar problem with the keyword limit. I started breaking up my research into groups. I would do 400 a day in Moz, then I would double check them in other tools like keywordtool.io, AdWords keyword planner and just plain old fashion google searches. The Zen Agency has a good suggestion with adding the Moz Bar. It will give you DA, PA and link information right in the SERPs.

I didn't realize you were using the same content on all of the pages as well. I don't see a reason to change them then. If your content and topics are the same, then it might be worth it to leave the H tags the same also.

I definitely recommend changing the H tags on each of the pages. This information should be unique and describe what is on each page specifically. If you keep them the same, then it appears to the engines and searchers that all of the pages have the same information and topic.