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Right, that's what I was worried about. Good idea. Thanks!

Thanks!

We ran into this in the past, and one thing that we (think) happened is that the links to the dev site were sent via email to several gmail accounts.  We think this is how Google then indexed the site, as there were no inbound links posted anywhere. I think that the main issue is how it's perceived by the client, and if they are freaking out about it.  In that case, using an access control password to prevent anyone from coming to the site will limit anyone from seeing it. The robot.txt file should flush it out, but yes, it takes a little bit of time.

Thanks for the input. Wanted to make sure I was on the right track and not missing anything. Wish 301 redirects to similar products were possible but we don't carry any version of those products on this site leaving no good redirect page.

Make sure to 301 the current page to the new one - as well as the old archived posts to the new post pages (assuming you are keeping the archived content. Let us know how the switch goes!