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In the total and in the beginning, you will affect the SEO with the change, but the question becomes how much. 
Another consideration is brand equity and whether you would lose any. If, the only reason for changing is to show that one is under the umbrella of the other, I am not sure of that as a good strategy. Why not just put something on the site that makes that clear?

If however, you are having dupe content issues, want to consolidate staff, want to try and boost one site, etc. then you can 301 A to B. With the tradebriefs having higher authority, I would do as you suggest doing and go to it. So, indiaretail 301's each url to the appropriate url on tradebriefs. Not 301 indiaretail.com to trade briefs.com.

The last two with subdomain and sub directory is not the way to go IMO. The subdomain is its own domain and does not share linking, etc. With the way you are showing a single sub directory, that would kill a ton on your site and you would waste a lot of your linking.

The 301 url to url is the way to go.

Hope that helps,

Robert

Jeff, I do not believe having them place the review from the same IP address will be blocked as long as they are logged in as, for example, me. So, I come in, I like the service you have it available and in some way I am induced to leave a review. I log in as Robert with my Gmail account and leave a review. I think it will post. My concern is this, if there is ever an issue for any reason, I think you will lose all. Ultimately they have the IP address. If an issue arises they will look. If they look well, "...you got some 'splainin to do!" As it stands today, I can typically look at a site that has ten reviews and knock off the ones that are cheating 90-95% of the time. I am not Google so, they are pretty good. Even though you won't be, it could be seen that way. I would decide based on this: "If it works for 6months or a year and I believe the value of that is 100, If Google panics and rips it down in a year and I factor in any loss as the result, where do I come out and is that value worth the effort?" Great question though. Thanks Robert

Ade,

For some reason this must be the beginning of the year of International SEO as there are a ton of questions lately around it. Istvan is correct on Rand's WBF being very good. (Note that some of the thread comments are great as well). A point within this is that the answer is not black and white but more based on client/brand capabilities and resources, is having cc TLDs worth giving up the links for or do you need them combined, etc.

As to having it all be separate, I don't think it is necessarily a rule that cc TLD with server "in country" is best. With the two you mention (and I am a Yank) I do not see any type of French bias. Given that, you are more likely at one site on a lot of levels.

Then use sub directories so that the domain as a whole builds authority. So, if you can get a good gTLD and then have all on one, there may be some economies in time, effort, $, and link power.

I am currently dealing with Africa / South America / US ...... and can't find a way yet to get to one site for the client..........

Robbie,

The 301 redirect would point this "root domain"  (mymicrosite.com) to www.mymaindomain.com/city/XXXXXXX

The key to this redirect is that you want to insure you 301 each url on the micro site to a specific url on the main site. You want to do this in the .htaccess file. You don't redirect the root domain to root domain.

Also you state the "site has no back links, no advance SEO", does it have any DA/PA? If the site has a PA 1, DA of 7 for example, I do not see where it will help you. When you redirect, you are trying to move the links to the main site so that you maintain that link juice to the new site (you will lose a bit 5 to10%). This way, when you change a domain name, sell a business, etc. you do not need to try to go to each site linking to the "old" site and ask them to link to the new.

With "what happens if it doesn't work, can I change back?" While I cannot say I have ever tried to, I can tell you that I have done a few redirects of sites and I always watched the old site to see if it lost value and the other gained.

I have a site we did a full redirect to new site in late August. When we initially did it, the old site home page had a PA 44 and a DA of 39, the new had PA 1 and DA 1. Today 3.5 months later Old site is PA 33 DA 31 and new site is PA 44 DA 33. The big difference is there are only two links showing for the old site now.

Since we handle a lot of Real Estate business, one thing you want to be sure of is that your Google Places and Bing Bus. Portal, Yahoo Local. Have the new site if at all possible. It may be fine for a short run, but you will gain more from having a correct, thorough local presence. Do the same with any citation sites. 
Good Luck.

Yes, it is. I thought you were going to redirect the whole site to a single sub dir.

If you want a really good tutorial, this Best Practice on SEOmoz is really thorough.

I am pretty sure when I looked you were on a LAMP stack with the sites so should not present any probs. 
Best

Of course they can because that is what a proxy server is meant for: the proxy IP address shows and the originating IP does not.

But, that was not the question at all. They are not trying to beat the system; they are trying to maximize it and not be perceived as doing something unacceptable.

So, are you stating that he should consider a proxy server? If so, it does not change his equation at all unless he is using rotating proxy servers which show varying IP addresses. Another thing he would need to consider is making sure that if the business is local, the proxied IP addresses are not all in different areas as that would be a red flag.

I just don't see how any of that assists him in what he is trying to achieve.

Ryan,

I am assuming you have gone into Bing Webmaster Tools, but in case you have not, here is info re determining if a penalty exists:

Bing says:To determine if a penalty has completely blocked your site from the Bing index, log in to Bing Webmaster Tools, and review the messages to the webmaster on the Home tab. If no messages about penalties are found, select the registered site in question from the SITES list, and then review the Index Summary chart on the Dashboard tab. If the number of pages indexed has dropped down to zero, then your site has a severe index penalty levied against it. Note that Bing Webmaster Tools does not currently display the status of lesser index penalties. (NOTE: Italics above are mine)

On the chance you have been penalized, here is the link to reconsideration; Bing Support Re Reconsideration

I have not suffered a penalty on Bing and called a few friends and none have experience. Sorry I could not be more help.

Due to the scope of the Internet it takes a search engines bandwidth to be able to crawl the entire web. SEO moz hits about the top twenty five percent of links. If links are more recent, there is a chance they won't show up for 4 to 7 weeks due to the data having to be processed after the crawl and the sites crawled only once a month (you can see the dates on the site).

Majestic SEO offers a decent free service for your own sites, and the monthly if you handle a lot is small medium level is about $50 per month. Even with the free you will see a lot more links and it shows some additional data as well. For the paid, you get historic, etc.

Speaking of Heaven and Earth, you know you and I worship at the same alter. It is about user experience, content, etc. It's either what's my score, rank, etc. or it's name that uber huge parameter... EMD, Anchor text with keywords, etc. I find that it is easier to be fully holistic in the approach and not worry about that really, really, really important one item that will take me to the promised land! (wow, that promise land part came to me right at the end. I mean, dude, like, uhhh, you know).

PS - I really do think the thing Sergey was saying about the triple hypen link will bring true redemption to the web. (Couldn't help myself.)

Miriam,

I really do appreciate this insight you provide continuously.

Best,

Robert

inhouseseo

I have looked at several of our sites and see no change in results for site:

You stated: **Things I have changed: **

I have added canonical URL links in the header, all have www in the URL.

I believe what is happening (assuming you changed the canonical URL prior to the change in results of site:) is the change is the result of the canonical application you have added. However, I am not sure how you could still have an aggregate of 48K pages, are you sure this is accurate?

If, you are showing 12K of www, and 36K of non www, I would guess that the 12K were duplicated within the 36K. Therefore, you would have only 36K pages on your site.

Typically, when we encounter a site that has both www and non-www we select a preferred domain in WMT and do the 301 redirect in .htaccess file. Once this is done, over a short period, we will have only what we have chosen as the preferred domain www or non www.

So, if we started with 1,000 pages of www and 2,000 of non www, then if preferred choice is non www. We will end up with 2,000 pages total.

My suggestion would be to go into WMT and select a preferred domain and do the 301 redirect in the .htaccess file. Once that is done, I believe your problem will be resolved. rel=canon will not accomplish this in and of itself. Give it a few weeks and check your results.

Best

When you made the change back to original, did you resubmit the xml sitemap? I would give that a quick try. Also, to see if it is showing, Do a Site:exacturlofchangedpage  on Google. This should show if the page is there but not ranking for some reason.

Stephane,

Typically I don't respond to these type questions because they are a two-edged sword, but it's late and maybe no one will see it. 
First, I like the layout of the site and the fact you appear to be striving toward a reference type site for hosting questions (this is a practice we use with certain clients we have but not for ads per se.) Your content is fresh, original, and well written with the caveat I did a reasonable but cursory check. 
The UI/UX is good for a reference site on the whole, but you might rethink the menu structure toward making it a bit more "problem tabs" versus Home, About, Services, Archives, etc. (Again, partially a bias by me and partially looking at if I came here to find info on a hosting issue, I would want to get to that.)
Your link profile first scared me when I saw the big jump, but saw they were all no followed from your .ca. The anchor text seems reasonable as well. You could do with a bit better meta descriptions in some areas and your title tags follow the convention of branding first one time then branding last the next which is just not something I like to see. Understand that by doing the onpage when it is created, you help yourself out.

I understand you are selling other hosting services from the site and that seems to negate having more info on selling the hosting yourself. So, on the whole I think it is a good beginning for you.

Going after the WP community is a good idea.

Best,

Robert

ConversionTactics

You are going to use a 301 redirect of old to new. Be sure this is done correctly based on what environment you are working in (.net, LAMP, etc.) Here is a link for all from WebConfs that is also on moz.

Be aware, you really need to do this url to url and, if you are going from http to https, you have to be careful with how you go and make sure you check each to insure they are all resolving. This is usually fixed by limiting what is https, etc.

If you do this correctly, most say you will lose up to 10 % of your link juice. Given that we have done a few, I would say that I would be surprised to see you lose even 2%. One suggestion i would give just from a learning point of view is to run the site and get a list of all your links, PA, etc. as it is today. Then do the 301 and run both domains every week. It is interesting to watch and gives you an understanding of what is happening. IMO.

Best

Vijay,

You will find two schools of thought here and rather than giving any reasons (more readable, versus Google doesn't like them, etc) for this, I will tell you that domains with hyphens are fine. We use them with client sites regularly and they rank just as well as those without.

Good Luck.

Nicole,

Since you are using WP, I think it would be easiest and do not know of an SEO loss with WP media gallery. With that, all images are at your fingertips for any editing you may wish to do whenever you wish to do it.

Make sure you have given each img a good alt text description of up to about 140 characters. (Do not try to keyword stuff, etc. - imagine you are blind "seeing the image" by description). Do not over edit the image when you upload it as once you have compressed, cropped, etc. that image you cannot reverse it. Or save two in the media gallery and title one edited and one unedit in case you wish to make a later change.

You have the option of titles and captions and I would create my own on both in order to accurately portray my message about the image. (I believe both are important in SEO. Captions do help the reader.)

Best

We use Ahrefs.com as that shows links much earlier than GWMT. I will pm you a couple of screen shots. But an example is that on April 15 your .ca showed up with 500+ links all nofollowed.

You do have a few poor sites linking to you but I do not think they will necessarily hurt you in aggregate. Some are already 404 on the link to you.

Hope that helps,

Robert

OK Mark, Who put you up to this

Just kidding, one of my favorite topics. IMO they are not worth it on a lot of levels, but I think they still think they are. According to Matt Cutts the links should be nofollowed and/or Google doesn't let them pass value, etc.  The other issue is one of how they charge, etc. To me, I can produce much better content cheaper, send it to a few people who know I am not bombarding the world, and occasionally get a valued link.

The bigger issue is that most who use these sites are using them as a mechanism for linking which is not the real purpose. Of course, Google says they should be used for real news, others pick it up, you get those links, etc. But, most want link juice and that drives that business. To me, I hate them due to the constant trash on the web. A classic is within Law. Someone discovers that fingernail polish X causes you to become a unicorn. For so long as there is a remote chance someone could be affected, every lawyer gets the PR thing, announces their firm is handling, and releases the same news So, there is no real "news" value any longer IMO.

Good Luck

Well, I think in many cases change is good. I understand your concern though.

I think redirecting the current url will be fine and you won't lose traffic. They are still clicking on the old url, and landing on the new. I don't think that will be too off putting for anyone based on experience.  We do 301's from totally different sites and still have the traffic when they land on a page. As well as that, you won't lose any link juice to speak of as the 301 will transfer 90% plus.

I would use the OurDomain.com/keyword or keyword-phrase as opposed to having the .html extension after it. And, dashes as opposed to underscores.

Best

Edit: Forgot your last paragraph. Be careful with adding pages of similar keywords like:

Purple Monkeys to Big Purple Monkeys, etc. You don't want to be so close that you impact one keyword while thinking you will move the other up. Remember that not every search is exact match. 
Look at where you are failing in conversions: Is it the ranking not bringing you traffic or is it you are getting impressions without click through (meta description maybe?) or is your traffic bouncing because your landing page sucks or is not answering their query.

Best

I think if the page is "slow" it will have a negative effect if for no other reason than some people will not wait for it to load. The question is, what is slow? For me, I like a page to load within two seconds or less. This is certainly not fast, but I don't think it is slow in terms of the engines.

The biggest issues we see that effect page load speed are failure to use expires headers, too many http requests, etc. We use Yslow on any site to check for things we can speed up. It will tell you where the site is slow (Cause and solution) which makes it easy for anyone. YSlow is a free download and works on Chrome and FireFox for sure.