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With this info, I would go with Robots.txt because, as you say, it outweighs any potential loss given the use of the pages and the absence of links.

Thanks

Thanks PrestaShop

I have been a member in business organizations where there was a monthly fee and it does seem to weed out the less committed. I will PM you and any others who have an interest and maybe we can get something going. 
Best

Robert

Moz.com is the best forum I have been a part of. There is a local forum I really like but spend less time on (we have staff who live on it.) I am interested in a forum where everyone is agency related. Does anyone know of a good one? If not, would anyone have an interest?

Lisa,

I am going to try and assist you. I will follow up when I have an answer. Give me a day or two. Sorry,

Robert

Aggie,

I see the G Verification meta in the old site as of June 27th, 2014. I would go on the WMT forum and the fifth item down is verification. Ask your question on there and you will likely get what you need. I have done a lot of change of addresses and not run into the problem. 
One question is did you have a preferred domain for the old site (non-www or www)? I noticed that the old site is without WWW and the new is with. If the preferred domain was without, be sure you put the old in as no www and try that.

Let us know what you find if no one here has a good answer.

Best

Good follow up question and I probably should have mentioned it even if GWMT did not. Yes, if you are a local business use that Schema. If you are an organization use that schema. It will help with your geo targeting.

Best

I don't disagree at all and I think AJ Kohn is a rock star. In SEO, I have learned over time that there are rarely absolutes like always do this or never do that. I based my answer on how you posited the question.

If you read AJ's post you will note that the rel=canonical issue comes up with others commenting and not in the body of his post. Yes, if the page is superfluous like a cart page or a contact page, use the robots.txt to block the crawl. But, if you have a page with rank, links, etc. that help your canonical page, how are you helping yourself by forgoing rel=canon?

I think his bigger point was that you want to be aware and to understand that the # of times you are crawled is at least partially governed by PR which is governed by all those other things we discussed. If you understand that and keep the crawl focused on better pages you help yourself.

Does that clarify a bit?
Best

Jesse, I think Ray-pp does you a great service in pointing you to Moz recommended companies because obviously there are a lot of people who will immediately reach out to you as the result of this question. I am going to go an entirely different track for you and I will point to a firm that is not mine and explain why they would be a good choice. I also want to ask that you quit looking for a recommendation and start looking at what companies do.

Everyday, we talk with clients and potential clients about web development. Almost all have a story about the website that took a year or more to build or was never really completed. You have to quit looking at the companies that fail and ask yourself, "Why are they failing?" Those companies that fail will tell you it is because YOU did not get them the content. (Just think about that, "If it weren't for client's, they could be great at business!!")

You not getting them content is so much BS. It would have to be an extremely rare occurrence for content purely to halt the completion of a web dev project. The reason a project (for you, building a new or replacement site) does not go on schedule is because the company doing the project does not have a process for their dev team. Or, if they do have a process, they do not follow it. Understand if you call or walk in and ask, "Do you guys have a process?" they will all say yes. Ask simply, how do you go about building the site for me? How long will it take? Then wait for them to show you a process. Failure to show a process means: They do not have one.

When I started in SEO I never intended to go into web development or integrated marketing. Our company got into web dev out of self defense: I got tired of fighting "webmasters" or overlords over territory when trying to take care of someone's SEO. So, before I started hiring web developers I went to Distilled's website because I respected them, I respected things Will Critchlow had written - because they made sense, etc. I wanted to see what they did given they had to have experienced the same issues I was about to face. As a former critical care RN, I was sold on them. Because they had PROCESS. PROCESS. PROCESS. If a firm has a solid process, they will get the job completed on time. BUT - and this is a big BUT: They will be on you to produce as much as they are on one another. I got it from them, I have used it, and what Distilled does works.

I would ask anyone I was considering engaging a few questions: (First, call the company do not email. Call during business hours. Does a human being get to the phone to talk with you? If so you may ask these questions of them. If no human speaks to you during business hours, IMO they are not interested in your business right now. Sorry if that offends someone.)

1. Is your development team in-house or do you outsource? IMO - you cannot have the quality control with outside developers that you can when they are integral to the team that includes SEO's, PPC pros, copywriters, other marketing pros, Local experts, etc. That is a strong IMO. You must have an in house dev or dev team.
2. Do you have clocks? Yes, I am serious. A firm that is not tracking where every project is (projects on the clock) doesn't know when there is a failure. We are all going to have failures (including Distilled), the great company is going to know of it before the client does and they are going to practice something else I learned here from the Moz team - TAGFEE. In other words if they have a failure, they will report it to you before you discover it and they will have a plan of action to correct it and keep it from happening again in the future.
3. Are you active on any forums and if so, which? How active is active? - In other words are they learning every single day? EVERY DAY? If their team members are not on Webmaster World, Moz, SearchEngineLand, Linda Buquet's Local forum, etc. and ad infinitum, then they are not going to be up to date. That will cause failures and my guess is... they will not know it.
4. Who will run the project? (This is a trick question; do not tell others about it please!) - if they say you, I would take a pass. You are not a web development expert; why in the hell would they want you to run the project? why would you want to? You want input at every step (Distilled can show you a great input process at every step); they should want your approval at every step (I guarantee you Distilled will want your approval or they are going to let you know that your project is in some way sidelined). And that wanting your input and that wanting your approval will be the reason the project is done on time. Trust me please on this. When you get a sitemap or wire frame and you do not give approval, you are going to get an email that says, essentially, that your project is not moving forward until you either give approval or submit changes. If you submit changes, they will then ask again for approvals of their new sitemap, wireframe, comp, copy, etc.

So, that is what it should look like and that is a better answer for you than anyone telling you who can. Yes, I still believe that Distilled is a great choice, but now you can go out wherever and ask the questions that will allow you to choose even with no recommendation. Make sure you are all over them about process. Make sure there will be someone who you are going to be talking with all the time who is managing your project - ten people cannot manage a project.

I have to add this last part. IMO if you are wanting someone to beat a price or give you a lowball estimate, etc. that company that wins won't get it done for you. A good developer(s) costs money. You cannot build cheap great websites.

I hope this helps you out,

Robert

Yair

I think that the canonical is the better option. I am unsure as to your use of the term "crawl budget," in that there is no fixed number of times a page or a site will be crawled versus a second similar site for example. I have a huge reference site that is crawled every couple of days and I have small sites of ten pages that are crawled weekly or less. It is dependent on the traffic and behaviors of that traffic (which would include number of inbound links, etc.) and on things like you re-submitting sitemap, etc. 
The canonical tag was created to provide the clarification to the search engine as to what you considered to be the relevant page. Go ahead and use it.

Best

Robert

It is really quite a simple answer. In WMT, Google gives you the answers for targeting a specific country. Frankly, Google did not require your server to be in the country you were targeting in 2012... Remember, Google is not saying any of these is the end all or be all of geo targeting. They state clearly each is a signal and each signal has a given weight.

The first indicator if you base it off of what Google says (and your question seems to be anchored by the search behemoth)... ccTLD is the first indicator they mention. Google further states it is a STRONG signal. Next is geo targeting. The fact that there is an option to tell them where you want to target and that it is second would seem to indicate that server location was less relevant than you waving a flag and screaming: Hey Google! Hook me up in Russia please! 
The third (But not last) signal is... server location, but they are very clear about this being not as strong a signal when they state, "Some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so it is not a definitive signal."

And, finally, there are other on page signals that Google can use to determine where you are targeting like phone and addresses on the pages, language, etc. (If your server is in the US, your site is a generic TLD, you have not geo targeted in WMT, and the entire site is written in Urdu, it is likely not going to rank well in Lithuania, but would have the ability to rank in Pakistan or Bangladesh).

Now the winner is ... sorry, YOUR PARTNER. Please by him a nice 5 button, 2000 vintage, Tokaji as a compliment to his SEO prowess...this time.

Best,

Robert

I think if you simply do the 301s and then resubmit your sitemap you will be fine. Don't worry over the short duration of the change. I am open to others opinions, but I did this for a large site we manage (not a product but a reference site) with over 1200 pages. No probs.

Best

James,

It seems that simplified your question is this: If I have searchers looking for the singular and the plural of the same term, can I have a meta description that is singular or plural instead of having two pages with separate meta descriptions. You are trying to avoid duplicate content, additional work, etc.

I can tell you that we rarely (there are no absolutes to this) have a singular and a plural page. Whether products like electronic cigarette or services like plumbers, electricians, etc. This arrangement works fine for us.

Now, you added German to the mix and that is wholly a different topic. It has been years and years since Herr Knipper was teaching me Deutsch and throwing erasers at me daily. You have to be very careful and you may (if you are not fluent) want to employ a search firm that has that specific expertise. I would not take on a site in German, Swedish, Spanish, etc. unless I had that expertise on board or through a consultant. Yes, we do international sites.

Hope this helps,

Robert

I mostly disagree with "People don't use Google/Yahoo/Bing for one or 2 word searches anymore..."

I think it is very dependent on the search and can show data to prove it. Take a term like plumber or smithville plumber; people do not search for toilet clogged plumber in Smithville. They do search for the plumber, plumber smithville, or smithville plumber. NOTE: we are talking not every single human in Smithville but 80% plus.

Also, I do not think it really addresses the plurals issue.

Best

Put in the new 301 and go forward. You should be fine. Best.

Robert

Quick edit for clarification. Don't 301 from the new page to the newest page. Take out the old 301's and put in the new. Keep it simple.

Amway,

Your question needs quite a bit of clarification. Google's geo preference works a bit differently than just .com vs. .us for the same /similar content. 
So, if you use a .US outside of the US you are stating you want to target US customers. A .com is not country specific so it won't necessarily exclude any region, but if you are outside the US, with server outside the US and with no geo targeting input, and your customer is in the US, I would use a .US. 
A .com is generally better for the US than a .us for the US customer, but for a different reason than Google. 
If a US customer sees .US for one result and a similar result (different site) with .com, I believe that 8 times out of 10 they will take the .com because they are more comfortable with it.

I hope that helps. 
Remember, if you are using the same or very similar content, be very careful with canonicalization, etc. when trying to use both.

Best,

Robert

Eric,

I understand how it feels to get that first great link. Don't reindex or resubmit sitemap. Here is a little trick...

Go into webmaster tools and the 3rd or 4th button on the left going down is CRAWL. Click that and the third item on the dropdown is Fetch as Google. (You are going to use it for getting the page crawled, but that is not the original intent for this tool.) 
Click Fetch as Google and put the URL of the page in. IF the page is your home page, leave blank and then hit fetch. That should get it crawled fairly quickly. 
Note. This does not mean it will show up in links to your site in the next few days or even weeks. I have seen it take two months to get a link to show in GWMT.

Hope this helps, good luck as you go forward.

Edit: Sorry click Fetch and Render then click Index. Forgot about this.

Robert

Even though you believe the urls are going to be the same, I would suggest running screaming frog before and after just to be sure. If the site is smaller this is less critical, but for a larger site, where you can lose valuable rankings, etc. I would check it. 
I would make sure you are indexing after change and resubmit sitemap as soon as change takes place.

Best

The problem is beyond the site being unavailable for 12 hours. That is a small issue. YOu are stating that you lost URL's during this time, how? If the url was a ranked page, it won't rank if it doesn't exist.

There are a hundred variables that affect when and where you rank so there is no way to know when your page will finally "settle" into a given rank. Since we deal with client sites and have to stay focused at times on given pages, I can tell you that there are times when a page bounces around for days, weeks, and months depending on a ton of factors. 
Sorry, there is just know fixed answer.

Marshall_Motors

You have a question of would it be a good idea? To which I would say, yes it would. I would caution not trying to go overboard and I would caution that if you are already ranking well (that is subjective to you) to be very careful. Make sure any url change takes into accounts links, etc.

But, you also state:  A "...by putting my main keywords right there in the URL, I would imagine that..." B "... I could get moved up in the SERPs."" Am I wrong?"  For this you are drawing a huge conclusion that A would equal B. IMO this is one of the biggest mistakes we make in SEO - we attribute too much to one factor. KW's in a URL are a factor in SEO ranking. What is the value of that factor? 1%? 10%? or .0001%

All you can do is test it out for your site in your vertical and see what happens. We like to tell our clients that SEO is a 100% game and we never attain that 100% which would be perfect SEO. There are many reasons and often they are business reasons that overshadow the SEO reasons. What we try to do is get as close to the holy grail of 100% as possible for a given page.

Hope this helps,

Robert