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Thanks for all the response.  I implemented the switch yesterday, so as of this morning the whole site is for https.  We already had an SSL certificate for our payment area, so luckily it was not a cost issue.  My concern is primarily the slowdown issue as AltecDesigh mentioned (we only have a mid-range server) and any drop in SERP, since essentially from what I have been reading this is like 301'ing to a new domain. Here are the steps I went through.  Not sure if they are the best option, but there were no step by step instructions yet on google so hopefully this will help people who are planning to implement it themselves. 1) Added the SSL certificate (in case people have not done this yet). 2) Implemented a site wide switch through my .htaccess file using this code: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] 3) Went through the site, page by page with the Google Chrome developers console open.  That help me find any errors.  The most common ones were including images or external files through their "http" address.  Tedious, but easily fixable by simply doing a Replace All on the files and replacing them with a "https". **4) **Reported the domain change in GWT (which to me seems like an odd thing to have to do) 5) That was it.  It took me one day to implement across our site with about 2000 pages.  If it even helps a bit, that will be a worthwhile use of my time. I also had to add a plugin to our wordpress blog since for some reason the .htaccess changes were not working for our blog in a subfolder.  I will try to come back and update the results in a few weeks so other mozzers can see if this worked for me, or if they should avoid it. Thanks again for all the feedback, it helped us make the decision.  In general I actually like this move of Google (unlike many of the others they have done).  Let's see if it makes any difference.

Hi there, Realistically, the tag should be used for duplicates, yes. How "duplicated" a page is, is subjective: a page with 50% of the same content as another page is probably going to count as duplicated as far as Google goes... where that line of duplication acceptability goes isn't something any of us really know. For pages where the content is totally different besides the header and footer, you technically shouldn't use canonicalisation. However, experiments have shown that Google honours the tag, even if the pages aren't duplicates. Dr. Pete did an experiment when the tag came out (admittedly a few years ago) where he showed that you could radically reduce the number of pages Google had indexed for a site by canonicalising everything to the home page. I personally had a client do this by accident a couple of years ago, and sure enough, their number of indexed pages dropped very quickly, along with all the rankings those pages had. As an ecommerce site that was ranking for clothing terms, this was very very bad. It took about six weeks to get those rankings back again after we fixed the tags, and the tags were fixed within about five days (should have been quicker but our urgent request went into a dev queue). So the answer would be that Google seems to honour the tag no matter the content of the pages, but I am pretty sure that if you asked a Googler, they'd tell you that it should only be used for dupes or near-dupes.

Hi Raymond, Either canonicalisation to page 1 or noindexing would do the trick here if the content has been duplicated. If you noindex, use noindex, follow so links in and out of that page benefit the website. Cheers, Jane

What you're referring to are parameters. You can handle this in a few ways: Block the ones you don't want indexed in Webmasters Tools to prevent duplicate content. Block the ones you don't want indexed in your robots.txt file using Disallow: /*? Allow it to all be indexed and not worry about Google. This isn't as good for your SEO but if you're worried about "terms" then no, it's fine.  Just better for indexing if you do 1 or 2 above.

Thanks Takeshi and CleverPhd.  This is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.  Hiding the blank pages until there is content is actually pretty easy in this system so I will just go ahead and do that. Thanks again.

'Links to your Site' feature shows who is linking and how they are linking to your site. 'How is your data is linked' gives an overview on anchor text distribution within your link profile from both types of links.  You can see a basic overview here. Chances are, you'll rely on a Open Site Explorer to get a better, more in-depth overview on how your anchor text breakdown looks.

Links in PDF do pass link equity. Be sure though that the PDF are correctly saved as text not image. I warmly suggest you to read this great guide about SEO for PDF by Lunametrics.

I can say that I've "claimed", maybe, a couple dozen businesses for clients over the years using my account--just as anyone else can.  The Google Places for Business is just a dashboard where you can claim and request updates for a business record and and a place where Google can keep the person who requested the changes informed of the status of that change. When you "claim" a business, what you're really doing is telling google that you claim you're authorized to make changes and that when google sends the PIN by phone or mail to the company's phone number or address, that someone at the company is going to share that PIN with you so that you can enter it in the dashboard and make the changes take effect. If you did accomplished all that, then the next day, you got fired, someone else (or the business owner) would simply be able to go their own dashboard add the business, make any changes were needed, and wait for the validation PIN to be sent by phone or mail, enter the PIN into their dashboard, and then what ever changes they made would take effect. Business pages don't belong to accounts, they're tied directly to the name address and phone number of the business itself.

Hi Raymond, Good discussion going on here. In my opinion, first step with a client with a NAP consistency issue like this is to be sure that they do have at least one legit physical address and phone number. Not a P.O. Box or virtual address or what have you. Whatever the legit address is...that's the one to go with on all platforms. Then be sure that address is consistently implemented everywhere and clean up all citations that do not match. This can take some doing! Hang in there and hopefully you can put in the work to get this client to the primary goal of having a clean, consistent record. Good luck!

Perfect. Thank you!!!

Hi Ray, unfortunately there's no clear science on how to avoid any possible issue on your migration however I understand your strategy. You would like to create a landing page which reflects the old sites name so google would still match backlinks branded anchors with what it finds in your site. You may try to put a couple of mentions of the old brand so you'll achieve the same: Google will see link pointing to brand X and finds correlation with the old page and the new one since there are mentions of the brand X in the new one too. Hope this helps, I'd like to know your achievements on this!

I'm sorry, Raymond. When I replied the last sentence I saw of your post was "Or does it only matter that all the citations are as similar as possible to one another?" and did not see your examples. Thanks for the post, though! This is an area I will be looking forward to learn more about. Best, Amber

Just look at the kind of keywords people use to hit your internal / deep pages from Search. Specially your brand keywords and you could target some of those. Just make sure you are not doing too many of the same kinds of links. You could also do: "My Brand Name" + Red Red + "My Brand Name" Red Widgets at My Brand Name Red Widgets by My Brand Name My Brand Name Red Widgets Red Widgets Partial Brand and so on.

For long tail queries I don't worry about junk sites beating me.  Because I know that I will get them over time.

Hi Raymond, Merging a large number of sites can be tricky. If Google sees a large number of new 301s all pointing to your homepage, this could throw up some flags. This is especially the case if the homepage in question doesn't already have a strong link profile. That said, there's no guarantees that it will hurt, either. I'd go slow and try to build up natural links to your homepage outside the 301 redirects. If and when you do de-commission a site, make sure it has a clean backlink profile before redirecting, Try to redirect individual pages to individual pages (not everything to the homepage) and itrogers said, make sure to file a change of address in Google Webmaster Tools. Best of luck!

No, I have not seen this happen to any pages as of yet.  I will however keep an eye out.  Congratulations on your semi recovery,  I am sure there are many out there who would like to be in your shoes right now!! Cheers

I am going to open a help ticket. Since it looks like a bug.

They have local chapters. I believe you can order over the phone, but here's their online form: http://www.la.bbb.org/Apply.aspx Make sure to make yourself sound SMALL, okay? Because the larger your company is, the more they charge.

Hi Raymond, try one 301 a week. I don't think you should get penalized. As long as you adhere to Google's rules everything should be fine. Also make sure you have a diverse and balanced link profile of your main site. Slava