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After reading some Google documentation I set it up like this: <url><loc>http://www.mexpro.com/</loc>   <lastmod>2014-08-25T21:02:47+00:00</lastmod>   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>   <priority>1.00</priority>   <xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"                  hreflang="es-mx"                  href="https://www.mexpro.com/mx/"                  />   <xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"                  hreflang="en"                  href="http://www.mexpro.com/"                  />   <xhtml:link <br="">rel="canonical"                  href="http://www.mexpro.com/mexico/"                  /></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></url> Do I need rel="alternate" and rel="canonical" for the sitemap, or is it better to do a traditional sitemap for English and Spanish?Thank you.

the http URL will not work on an https page. I have changed the URL to https and it works in http and https sites. Thank you.

If an English page doesn't have an equivalent Spanish page, it's best not to include hreflangs. Hreflangs need to be bi-directional, meaning if site.com/en/a.html hreflangs to site.com/es/a.html, then site.com/es/a.html also needs to hreflang to site.com/en/a.html. This can't be done if you refer the homepage. I'd make a note to add them later when pages are translated.

What we're trying to accomplish is to have a non-sequential string for secure applications without a user login (due to business reasons).  The string is a unique identifier for a specific application in our system, and will always point at the same form.

"If you pay for a directory link only to gain position in the SERPs you will most probably not get any ROI" Meaning if you are on the first page there won`t be ROI? I dont think so!

I checked with MailChimp and it is not indexed.

Wordpress is absolutely one of the best blogging cms solutions today. We have a couple of websites too running Wordpress and everybody can maintain and update it.

Thank you. That is a great answer!

Thanks for double checking for me. I appreciate it!

Thanks much!

Getting the publisher markup to work is much more important than HTML validation. One is going to have a bearing on many factors, whereas the other will make no difference at all. -Andy

I'm sorry, I've totally misunderstood the question. Take Michael's advice. If you have any trouble coding your .htaccess file, just let us know. Cheers.

Hi Rox, I think the problem is because of the Doctype of that page. If you select HTML 5 from the doctype dropdown, you won't get any HTML validation errors related the schema. In summary, it's not worth worrying about. I hope this helps, Craig

Search engines and informed individuals are used to ?'s as like Takeshi said "query parameters" or "query variables". For everyone else it might look "questionable" (Sorry just had to say it )

Agree with John.  I would also not 301 the old URLs to the new.  All that would do is pass the negative link equity from the old site to the new and you are right back where you started. Kill the old site with a 410, or even better, you can go into GWT and verify yourself for that sub domain.  Then you can put in a request to have that entire subdomain removed from Google.  You then put up a robot.txt and it is gone.  This will also prevent the old site from being found again by Google for all the links. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663427?hl=en We use load balancers on our servers and once had a subdomain www1 that got indexed and there were even some FB shares etc.   We ended up going this route to get it out and keep it out of the index.

Thank you for the responses! Greatly appreciated. I'm just wondering if someday Google will see this as dup content...as it does written content. Why is it that News sources can syndicate content, but if I put that content on my blog, it's duplicate content?

I'd agree with Irving that NOINDEX will solve the problem (remove the risk), but I think you could cross-domain rel=canonical. This sounds like a syndication type of situation - you're not claiming credit for the content, but you think it has value to your visitors. So, give the credit to the originating site. There was a syndication-source option, but Google has quietly deprecated that, unfortunately.

Don't stack 301s. i.e. Don't redirect to another redirect. Update all your current redirects to point to the final pages. In general, you shouldn't worry about too many redirects. I haven't watched the webinar but if you are currently doing well in rankings, I wouldn't change the permalink structure. I also think that WP automatically sets up redirects when you change the permalink structure (from my experience, would like someone to confirm though).