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If they are truly gone, then a 410 would be the best option for you. Since they are indexed even if there are no links pointing at them, people can still find them besed upon what they are searching for. You never know when your link will show up, because you dont know how long google is going to take to get rid of the links. http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E410.html  "The 410 error is primarily intended to assist the task of Web maintenance by notifying the client system that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the Web server wants remote links to the URL to be removed. Such an event is common for URLs which are effectively dead i.e. were deliberately time-limited or simply orphaned. The Web server has complete discretion as to how long it provides the 410 error before switching to another error such as 404" We did this for a client that needed old defunct pages removed. Once you set the pages to return a 410, and use Google url removal tool, you should see them dropping off really quick. (all of ours were gone within a month) Having that many pages return a 404 may be hurting the experience of your users as when they see a 404, they go right for the back button.

I can't say that I have seen any negative effects from it so far. I have done this with ecommerce sites and they havent been affected. Maybe others can share their experiences.

Hello, First deactivate the Sitemap functions, clear cache and then reactivate the Sitemap functions & voilá the error 404 is gone! if not, add this to the .htaccess file: <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 [L]</ifmodule> cheers! Arnold

Thanks guys for your advice. Am I best to no follow individual links or do it in the meta tag? If I no follow all links on a page will it stop internal link flow around my site. I have some pointers to relevant pages on my site in the bod of the text.

Just look at Google webmaster tools to be sure there are no external incoming links. Then go ahead and move it.

Yea I found a folder and in it was not just the towns from that county but folders for each county which were also up a folder level (where they should be). I don't use PPC for the Top 10 site listed in my profile. I use it for the site I've had the issue with here (a separate site not listed in my my profile). It's a white label site but I'm struggling to make the PPC profitable to be honest. Any tips appreciated!

I would suggest checking your permalink structure. Go to Settings>>permalinks. I typically use the custom structure and just add /%postname%/ . If you are using a custom structure make sure it is correct. That being said, After visiting your site I don't even see a "bands page" so you might want to also go through your source code and and see if there is an old link that didn't get removed. I found one today on a clients site. It was in a slider. So i just removed the link from the slider itself. Good luck hope that helps

If you are using SEO by Yoast to create your site map there are settings under the SEO -- XML Sitemap. --  then choices on what to exclude.  I would try exclude some of these. If that is the case and you make the change in Yoast, check your robots.txt file to see if the change in reflected there also. If you check some other websites robots.txt file you can get an idea of how it should be set up.

I would suggest you implement the plugin SEO by Yoast and then follow all the configuration steps. It will help you solve all your permalink options while providing information on which will be the best option. Hope that helps!

Sam, my friend...please never think along those lines like how and why someone doing spam or blackhat tactics and still be able to rank high in search engines. Even if someone from Google guarantees me in written that there won't be anything happening to my site  if I go the blackhat way, I will still stay away from those as I am here to stay forever and I never ever think of doing anything that the search engines frown upon. Please don't bother about those who do blackhat and still get away with it. Thinking along those lines itself is incorrect. Let them do and they will repent one fine day. Today, there are thousands if not lakhs of sites that do not follow the guidelines of search engines and are still ranking high. Just because they are doing good despite their shady tactics, we should not follow them or even bother or worry about them. Its obvious that they are not doing the right thing and we just have to laugh when we see them. They won't last long. Here is the deal, if you want to be here forever, then stay clean.Only quality content and quality links can secure you a lasting high rank in Google. However, you can report those spammy websites here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreportform?hl=en and here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport You need to login to your Google webmaster tools account to be able to access the URLs above. So don't worry my friend. I know how does it feel when you see worthless sites ranking high in search engines. We are here to play a fair game and not to manipulate the search results to rank high in search engines and please do not even think about those who try to out-smart the search engines and their algorithms. Wish you all the very best. Regards, Devanur Rafi

Hi Samuel, I understand why it makes sense from a user experience perspective, although I'd be a little concerned that it would be a bit weird, especially if the domains are branded differently. I'd probably start by avoiding an automatic redirect. The simplest option is probably to include a prominent CTA on the desktop version that says 'view mobile version at www.otherdomain.com'. If you want to get a bit fancier, you could display a message when a mobile user agent is detected, saying something like 'it looks like you're on a mobile device. Would you like to view a mobile-friendly version of this page?'.  If you do this, make sure that a) the page is still accessible to a crawler with a mobile user agent (in other words, don't require input from the mobile user in order to view the desktop version, just include it as an option) b) use a cookie to avoid asking your mobile users to answer the question again every time they visit. If you really want to do the redirect, start by testing on just a couple pages to check for any negative impact before rolling it out further.

Hi, Here's a link to the error I'm getting. Thanks. 7usM1tz.png

Thanks for the replies guys. I have Moz Pro and all my pages are grade A for on site seo. Therefore I'm really looking for perspectives from industry professionals as to how the one site SEO could be further improved outside of Moz tools suggestions.

you can use a sitemap validator to check: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/index.php?op=validate-xml-sitemap&go=1&sitemapurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.local-sex-search.com%2Fsitemap.xml&submit=Validate Or just submit into webmaster tools and see if it bounces back any errors.

Hi Samuel, If your campaign is setup for a root domain then any new subdomain you add will automatically be tracked. Hope that helps and let me know if you have any questions

Samuel, I'd like to start over fresh in answering your question because there are too many thoughts going on here at once. Let's start with the obvious: Can you provide a link so we can have a look at the content you wrote? It is possible that you have crossed some sort of content overoptimization threshold if it seems to be keyword-stuffed. Regarding timing, Google has a lot of databases and they don't all update simultaneously. It isn't uncommon for the title tag to update in the SERPs before the page content updates in the cached snapshot. Furthermore, algorithmic calculations, including whether or not to apply a filter or penalty, do not always happen at the same speed that indexation happens. All of this is to say that just because a drop in traffic happened after you updated content doesn't mean the content was the cause of that drop. Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) is a logical fallacy. But there does seem to be a strong temporal correlation so it is the obvious place to start ---> Can you share a link to the content?

Try to stick with a /blog/ subfolder instead. Subdomains are treated separately from the rest of the domain in most instances, as mentioned in Mike's answer below.

Hello Samuel, I assume you mean http://blog.mysite.com instead of www.blog.mysite.com. You will need to verify that subdomain in Google webmaster tools and upload a separate sitemap just as if it were a different site. Yes you can have more than one sitemap on the same domain. However, a subdomain is considered a separate domain.

Hi there, First of all, penalties are eventually passed along with redirects, so you won't do yourself any favors by setting up a new domain and redirecting the old site. Second, I highly highly doubt that categories are your problem here. It's far more likely that one of the following occurred: You lost some good, authoritative links Google devalued some of the links you had Penguin update Panda update Low-quality EMD update Take a look at the date that traffic dropped and see if it coincides with one of the updates we know about. It looks like the link profile could justify Penguin, but my guess would be Panda/EMD, both of which are referred to as "page quality' updates. If I'm right, you need to keep people from bouncing back to Google.

it could be clashing with another plugin