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The simple answer is, no. From a SEO perspective, you can host your site on any hardware or software and it doesn't matter.

There are tons of corner cases. Just a few examples:

• Is your new server equal to or better then the old server? Most server changes are upgrades but if there are major speed issues with the new server, that can be an issue.

• Is your new server a bad neighborhood? If you share hosting with "bad" sites, there can be issues.

• Is your entire site being moved? Sometimes a single file missing such as .htaccess or robots.txt can cause major issues.

Overall, a server change in and of itself goes smoothly as long as no mistakes are made and it is an upgrade.

If that is the case and the same product is listed in more then 1 category and sub-category then will that product have 2 unique urls and as a result be treated as 2 different product pages by google?   And then since it is the same product in two places on the site won't google treat those 2 pages as having duplicate content?

Correct. You should decide which category is the most popular and then use the canonical tag so all other versions of the page point to the main page.

SO is it best to not have the category and sub-category names in the URL of a product page?

Using the canonical tag is one option. Using the same product page for both categories is another option.

And lastly, is there a preferred character limit for a URL to be less than in size?

Technically speaking URLs can be over 2000 characters. Practically speaking, the shorter the better for user readability and other factors. Dr Pete covers this topic well: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo

Sites are penalized if pages load very slowly.

There are many tools which allow you to check what hosts are hosted on a server. One example: http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/

I like Screaming Frog

A 302 is designed as a TEMPORARY redirect.

How temporary? I like to think of it in terms of hours. That makes it a lot clearer when thinking "how long is too long". For the most part, 302's should not be used. There are some corner cases where a 302 is the best solution, but in my experience most of the times 302s are implemented inappropriately and should not be used.

A 302 is harmful to your rankings as it prevents your PR from flowing naturally throughout your site. If you are using a 302 for internal linking, you are definitely damaging your SEO. For external links, a 301 is used when the content has been permanently moved to a new location. I am a bit confused regarding your implementation of a 301 for a "buy now" button. That sounds more like a direct link, and I am not clear why a redirect is being used.

A final point. Affiliates pointing to their master site should use nofollow links to be compliant with Google's policies.

I agree with most of your plan.

I am not clear if by "advanced report" you are referring to an Open Site Explorer advanced report. If so, I would not recommend that approach. Instead, use a crawler to update your sitemap, then use the sitemap as the most complete list of URLs.

Also, I differ with Rebekah on the point of only redirecting the URLs with the most traffic. When possible I would recommend redirecting every URL to the appropriate page on your new site. Many people might bookmark a page, send an e-mail with a link, etc. You never know who has saved a URL to a page on your site. Also, you did not mention your market. Sometimes a single client is worth thousands of dollars. I would hate to risk losing a potential sale by saving the relatively small amount of time it takes to perform a redirect.

However you choose to proceed there are two additional suggestions. First, ensure your 404 page is friendly and helpful. It should offer your site's navigation, a search box, etc. Second, review your 404 errors DAILY after the site move until your error count drops down to very low numbers.

Good luck.

Hi Jamie.

It is common for internal pages and home pages to share some content which can lead to competition for keywords or phrases. A typical example might be the home page of a web design company may have an internal page /web-design.

The suggestion I would offer is to choose one keyword or phrase for your home page and stick to it. All other keywords and phrases will be focused on internal pages. The keyword for your home page is often your brand name. If you owned AcmeWebDesign.com then your home page would focus phrases such as "Acme Web" and "Acme Web Design" whereas the phrase "website design" and "web design" would be focused upon your /web-design page.

To help support this direction, all the SEO signals for your home page and inner pages would need to be in alignment:

Home page: Title "Acme Web Design", H1 tag "Acme Website Design", etc.

Inner page: Title: "Web Design", H1 tag "Website Design", etc.

The last piece is internal linking. From your home page you can offer some content such as "Acme web specializes is high quality web design...." where "web design" would be anchor text linking to the /web-design page. This link sends a strong signal to Google that your /web-design page should be listed in search results for that term. Combined with the other signals sent by your header and H1 tags the correct page should be listed in search results.

My preference would always be to use the htaccess file for redirects. There are some situations where the site owner cannot modify their htaccess file due to various restrictions, in which case you would need to use a CMS-based solution or extension.

I completely understand how it appears. I still stand by the original reply. Perhaps I offered too much information. The shorter response:

Should the link building be done with forward slash after my .com?

I recommend matching the format used on your site.

Being dropped from Google search results is an indication your site has been penalized. I performed a search for your site and it is technically still indexed but your site has also clearly been penalized since you do not even show in results for exact text from your home page.

A quick review of your site's backlinks shows many manipulative links. It appears you or someone working for you has built many links to your site in an apparent effort to manipulative Google search results. Google likely discovered this issue and have viewed it as a violation of Google Guidelines.

http://www.pagesinventory.com/directory/-united-states/other/other/

http://www.information-online.com/node/537542

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/general-iphone-discussions/149930-jailbreak-question.html

You need to stop creating these types of links to your site. Next, you need to find and remove every link you created to your site. Those are the first two steps of resolving this issue.

Greenman,

As I suspected many of the dates of the bad URLs are old, some even being from 2010. I took a look at your home page specifically checking for the URL you highlighted in red on the 4th image. It is not present.

My belief is your issue has been resolved by the changes you made. I recommend you continue to monitor WMT for any NEW errors. If you see any fresh dates with 404, that would be a concern which should be investigated. Otherwise the problem appears to be resolved.

I also very much support Sha's reply above.

It would be helpful to understand the exact circumstances involved. For example, if your SEO advised you to nofollow links to your site's login page, I can understand that approach. If you were advised to nofollow a link to a page which is part of your navigation, I would ask for an explanation.

Greenman,

I have a simple rule I learned over time. NEVER EVER EVER EVER use robots.txt unless there is absolutely no other method possible to achieve the required result. It is simply bad SEO and will cause problems. The best robots.txt file is a blank one.

When you use CMS software like WP, then it is required for some areas but it's use should be minimized.

How can I add a 301 redirect to a page that doesn't exit?

You have presented 404 errors. Those errors are links TO pages which don't exist, correct? If so, I believe Sha was recommending you can create a 301 redirect from the page which does not exist, to the most relevant page that does exist.

It's a bit of semantics but if you chose to do such, you can create 301s from or to pages that don't exist.

**On a purely apples to apples comparison of sites from Static HTML vs CMS does HTML still have an advantage? **

Yes and No. It depends on what kind of advantages you refer to. Do you mean cleaner code? Faster updates? Costs to manage? Time? Ranking?

A CMS outputs HTML code. Whether you use Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, .NET or one of the dozens of other CMS, HTML code is being output. The code that is output will always be conformed to specific standards based on the CMS.

The good - the code can always be adjusted.

The bad - you may have to alter core files which would need to be reviewed after every CMS update.

An example: when Google introduces a new feature (authorship, canonical urls, etc) if you have a static html site you simply add the new code and you are done. With a CMS the changes are more complex. With that said, you can usually wait a short bit and someone will create an extension, or update an existing extension, which will offer that functionality.

If we move from theoretical to practical, most CMS-based websites are not professionally developed or maintained. Accordingly, there are tons of coding issues which cause a variety of problems.

Are you asking about a dynamic (i.e. database driven) site vs a static site? If so, a database driven site would have advantages of being able to offer a local search widget whereas a static site would not be able to offer that feature. That is just one example.

What should be a proper SEO plan for a new website ?  Got any Plan PDF or Buleprint, which you can send me ?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seo-checklist-for-new-sites-whiteboard-friday?

For the client website , he is ranking on 4-7th pages for his 4 keywords. Whats should be the correct way or plan to start doing SEO for them and get them to the first page ?

Everyone will answer this question differently as there are many factors involved. My preference is to focus 100% of my efforts on onpage SEO until the site is solid. Off page SEO, namely link building, never ends. Onsite SEO can be completed to a point and then you move on.

Otherwise there is a need for keyword analysis. The point is not only to get the site to the 1st page, but to the top 3 results. Research shows the overwhelming majority of traffic is acquired by the top 3 results. Lower results still have value, especially on keywords with a lot of traffic, but you really want to focus on getting in the top 3.

I feel like, doing competitive analysis is lacking with us and we are not good at evaluating that step. Whats the bet way to do competitive analysis ?

The first step is visiting your top 3 competitor's sites. Examine every detail from the navigation to their content to their overall design and layout. Try to determine where your competitors are doing a better job then you are and catch up or beat them. Once the onsite analysis is complete, it is time to examine links.

We are looking to build more and more links to the website . Whats the best way to make links ?

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links

http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011

If you have similar questions, try a quick SEARCH using the box in the upper-right corner. The SEOmoz internal search results are quite excellent. I am not sure how they sort, but the first few results will usually cover your needs.

Your site is a textbook example of a site that Penguin is designed to affect. It is highly likely your site has either incurred a manual penalty for manipulative links or has been slapped by Penguin. In either case, you have a hard road ahead of you.

The footer link from your web developer needs to go:

http://www.perrovista.com/

The footer link from your SEO company, almost all of your directory links (keep Dmoz of course), and the other spammy links you have acquired over the years all need to be deleted. This is a long hard process which begins by pulling a comprehensive report of all backlinks to your site, then identifying the manipulative links and removing them.

Example pages linking to you:

http://www.spicecompanyofvermont.com/

http://www.freewebsitedirectory.com/detail/link-432907.html

http://ssl.urlshack.com/Shopping/page-28.html

That response indicates there is no manual action being taken by Google. That means your site is receiving an algorithmic penalty. Your site's re-appearance had nothing to do with your reconsideration request being filed.

I think Gianluca shares a good assessment as to why your site may have issues. Try to present your page for users, not search engines. Someone has clearly spent a lot of time stuffing the title, meta tags and page with a lot of unappealing content which appears to exist to manipulate search engine rankings. Try following Gianluca's advice and your rankings should stabilize.

2569 links is far too many, and is likely a very big problem both for your users and SEO. You have more links then the New York Times.

Ask yourself this question....if you had to reduce your total number of links to less then 100, what would you do?

You can likely use category pages for your products and only link to the category pages from the navigation.

Hello.

You have left your site open in a manner which is not recommended. Please take a look at the following URL: http://www.lampslightingandmore.com/images/. On a properly secured server, you should receive a 404 Page Not Found or Access Denied type of error. Since the folder is left open, a Google crawler found it and you are seeing the results.

The means to secure your site varies based on your software configuration. If you are on an Apache web server (the most common setup) then these settings are controlled by your htaccess file. I am not an htaccess expert but I believe adding the following code to your .htaccess file at the top will fix the issue:

Options -Indexes

**The client can not provide any access details for their existing site. **

Can you elaborate further?

If the client lost all usernames and passwords, they should still be able to contact their web host, obtain their user name and reset the password.

Even if the site is no longer hosted, as long as they own the domain they can add details to the registration record so they can access the Google WMT account.