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Hey Tom,

I guess this was mostly a regex question. I think I figured it out:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$
RewriteRule ^oldsubdir/([a-zA-Z.]+).aspx$ https://www.newdomain.com/newsubdir/$1 [R=301]

Thanks for the tips.

Thanks, Tom. But 'fruit' was a placeholder for a variable page name that can contain letters or a '.' (sorry if that wasn't clear). for example, 'fruit' could be "abc.def.aspx" and I'd like it to become "ABC.DEF" (strip off the .aspx and uppercase it). Need a regex. The '.' within 'fruit' may or may not be present. But the page will always have the suffix '.aspx' that I want to strip off.

I'd also like to do it with an .htaccess statement instead of VBScript. Running on unix.

I need some help with a regex for htaccess. I want to 301 redirect this:

http://olddomain.com/oldsubdir/fruit.aspx

to this:

https://www.newdomain.com/newsubdir/FRUIT

changes:

• different protocol (http -> https)
• add 'www.'
• different domain (olddomain and newdomain are constants)
• different subdirectory (oldsubdir and newsubdir are constants)
• 'fruit' is a variable (which will contain only letters [a-zA-Z])
• is it possible to make 'fruit' UPPER case on the redirect (so 'fruit' -> 'FRUIT')
• remove '.aspx'

I think it's something like this (placed in the .htaccess file in the root directory of olddomain):

RedirectMatch 301 /oldsubdir/(.*).aspx https://www.newdomain.com/newsubdir/$1

Thanks.

Thanks, everyone! Based on your suggestions, I'm going to try and keep the competitor's site structure (to keep his ranking pages in G's index) and some of his content (don't want to tweak his on-page content too much or those pages might lose their rank). I will add links to each of the competitor's page pointing to the relevant internal page on my site. For smaller pages (that don't rank) I will 301 them to the closest matching page on my site.

I have looked at the 'landing pages' report in Analytics for the competitor's site and will manually adjust (ie explain the merger and add a link to relevant internal page on my site) any landing page that gets more than a little traffic.

His home page is the trickiest and most important. I want to post an announcement about the merger and get people to my site (the acquiring site) asap. I guess I'll do it with an announcement and a link to my site, as opposed to a 301, so that his visitors know what's going on. I will need to leave some of his content on his home page (and his title tag and meta-description tag) so that it still ranks for keywords I care about.

He and I had competing products and I intend to sunset his products after the merger, but keep his ranking content.

Any other suggestions regarding buying a rival, established site, are welcome.

I've purchased a competitor. They rank well organically for keywords that I target, and I want to optimize the way I get value from their current rankings and traffic (and customers -- we will obviously market to their email/customer list). Which is better:

(1) use a 301 redirect for any access to their domain and point it to my home page. I think this would force Google to de-index all of their pages, right?

(2) put up a stub page as their homepage that announces the site has been bought, and have a do-follow link to my home page (which maybe is auto-redirected after 10 seconds or something)? Maybe this is better to keep their home page in Google's index for a while?

As for option (1), I thought I read somewhere recently that 301'ing a domain to the home page of another domain would no longer pass link juice (?). Maybe I should 301 the newly purchased domain to a sub-page on my site that explains the acquisition and asks them to sign up on my site?

Both sites are legit. No spamming happening here; just industry consolidation as one competitor acquires another. Thanks in advance...!

Thanks, Tommy. That confirms what I thought. I wouldn't mind so much if the bigger site didn't nofollow my author tag but since they do then I'm getting little benefit from them other than exposure to their audience. And that is worth something, to be sure.

Maybe I'll post on their site for a day or two and then delete the post on their site (I have that ability) so that I get some exposure there but then the only copy of the article will be on my site after a couple of days.

Thanks, Egol. For my next few postings I will keep them on my own site and see what kind of rankings and traffic they get for a month or so. Then compare that traffic to the traffic I've seen from articles I've posted on the larger site.

Appreciate the input. I do want to build equity for my own site, but it's a trade off with getting more exposure/customers on the bigger site. I am in this for the long haul, though, so I suppose tons of unique content on my own site will be valuable in the future.

I have a small site and write original blog content for my small audience.

There is a much larger, highly relevant site that is willing to accept guest blogs and they don't require original content. It is one of the largest sites within my niche and many potential customers of mine are there.

When I create a new article I first post to my blog, and then share it with G+, twitter, FB, linkedin.

I wait a day. By this time G has seen the links that point to my article and has indexed it.

Then I post a copy of the article on the much larger site. I have a rel=author tag within the article but the larger site adds "nofollow" to that tag. I have tried putting a link rel=canonical tag in the article but the larger site strips that tag out.

So G sees a copy of my content on this larger site. I'm hoping they realize it was posted a day later than the original version on my blog. But if not will my blog get labeled as a scraper?

Second: when I Google the exact blog title I see my article on the larger site shows up as the #1 search result but (1) there is no rich snippet with my author creds (maybe because the author tag was marked nofollow?), and (2) the original version of the article from my blog is not in the results (I'm guessing it was stripped out as duplicate).

There are benefits for my article being on the larger site, since many of my potential customers are there and the article does include a link back to my site (the link is nofollow). But I'm wondering if (1) I can fix things so my original article shows up in the search results, or (2) am I hurting myself with this strategy (having G possibly label me a scraper)? I do rank for other phrases in G, so I know my site hasn't had a wholesale penalty of some kind.

It's not my choice to no follow the author credit; it's a policy on another site where I guest blog. I'm just wondering if they're causing me not to get authorship credit by adding the no follow.

I have seen two forms of rel=author syntax. Are they both valid?

(1)

(2)

Second, does 'no follow' take away authorship? Is there any point in doing rel=author for a link that is rel=no follow? Like this:

I've read that I should only have a rel="publisher" once on my site (on the home page) in a link that points back to the corporate G+ page. Cool.

But, if I want to have a link to the corporate G+ page in the footer of every other page on the site then I assume it's okay as long as I omit the rel="publisher" part, correct?

Second question: For blog postings, I assume it's good to include a rel="author" tag in the link to the author's G+ page, right? Even though there is a link to the corporate G+ page in the footer of the same page.

Thanks, Tom. Just what I was looking for.

Another question, kind of related: On my company's home page is it better to have a +1 button (so users can +1 the page) or a G+ button (so users can follow our company). Not sure which is a stronger signal -- lots of +1s or lots of followers? Thanks...

I work for a company that has a corporate G+ page. I have a personal G+ page. When I write articles for the company blog there are 2 questions that come up:

(1) for the rel="author" tag within the blog posting on the company's blog, should I reference my personal G+ page, or the company's G+ page as the author?

(2) which G+ page, mine or my company's, should share the link to the blog posting on the company's site? Or should both share it?

My goal is to build up author rank for either me or the company I work for (don't care which) so that after a while the Google organic search listing will include the author thumbnail if the article ranks for the search query. I don't care if the thumbnail is me or my company; just trying to figure out how to best link everything to maximize the chance of getting an author thumbnail in the search rankings.

Thanks!

I'd also like a suggested vendor or tool for a smaller account, $1K-$2K/month ad spend. I'm willing to put in the time, but I just want a tool where I can manage multiple search engines (+ maybe FB, but that's optional) in one place. If I change an ad's text, or the max bid for an ad, I'd like it to automatically update Google, Bing, and Yahoo all at once. Need a central place for a do-it-yourself PPC person (me). Thanks!

Ok. Thanks.

Kind of related feature request: For off-page factors, like backlink profile, it would be nice if OSE grouped the anchor text of backlinks into categories to give you a rough % of these:

• exact match
• variations of exact match
• brand
• variations of brand
• url + variations of url
• random (click here, visit, etc)

So we could see at a glance (for a given keyword) if a page had an unnatural looking (over optimized) backlink profile.

You could also integrate this with your Report Card feature... in addition to giving a grade for on-page factors, it would be cool if it could give you a grade for off-page factors. If that's too hard then just put the functionality into OSE.... Thanks.

Given all the recent talk about over optimization, when was the last time SEOMoz updated the on-page report card tool?

Rand wrote an excellent piece on Perfect On-Page Optimization (which is great, and thanks) in summer 2009. Is that still best practice 3 years later (and post-Penguin/Panda)? If not, has the SEOMoz on-page report card tool been updated to reflect current thinking for on-page best-practices?

I know the higher level concept is "write for humans, not for bots" but if you can do both (and not create an unreadable seo-frankenpage) then why not? Does getting an "A" grade wreak of over optimization now? Should I use the key phrase at the start of the title, h1, and strong (or bold) elements on a page? Should have an image with file name and alt text equal to (or containing at the start) the key phrase?

I have an image that represents 'widgets'. The image works for more than one kind of widget.

I have two pages, one optimized for 'blue widgets' and one optimized for 'red widgets'.

I would like to use the same 'widgets' image on both pages but change the alt text to be 'blue widgets' or 'red widgets' depending on the page it is used on.

Should I:

(1) use the same image on different pages with different alt text.

(2) duplicate the image file and have two copies 'red_widgets.jpg' and 'blue_widgets.jpg' and then use each copy on the page optimized for the corresponding phrase.

(3) create distinct, unique image files (where the pixels are different, not just the file names) for each kind of widget.

This is a simplified example of a larger SEO problem where I have 1 image that can be useful on 20 pages that are each optimized for 20 different phrases. Should I use the same image with 20 different alt tags, or create 20 identical (but renamed) copies of the image, or create 20 slightly different image files (with different pixels in each image)?

Thanks.

'blue widgets' ranks #3

'blue widgets small' ranks #6 (for the same page)

But 'blue widgets small' is a better description of what we're offering and I think we could rank #1 or #2 if we made a dedicated page for it. However, it's more of a long-tail phrase because it gets 1/10th the number of global monthly searches compared to the broader phrase 'blue widgets'

I was thinking of making a dedicated 'blue widgets small' page as a landing page to describe how we offer 'blue widgets small', and then have that page point to the 'blue widgets' page to show how our product offers a broader solution (we do 'small' but we also do other types of 'blue widgets').

Really appreciate your help and thoughts...

We have a page optimized for 'blue widgets'. We rank in organic spot #3 or 4 for that (moves around from week to week). Fairly happy with that.

We have another derivative term 'blue widgets small' (example, but it's same format: <original phrase="">+ <single word="">) where we currently rank #6 organic in Google when people search on the 3 word phrase.</single></original>

We'd like to rank higher than #6 for the 3 word phrase. Should we:

(1) Build a bunch of links with anchor text equal to the 3 word phrase and point to the existing page (which is optimized on-page for the first 2 of the 3 words)

or

(2) Make a new page optimized for the 3 word phrase and then start building links to it with anchor text equal to the 3 words (and non-cannibalizing variants of the 3 words)?

The 2 word phrase is pretty competitive and it has taken us months to get that page to be #3 or 4 organic for that phrase. The 3 word phrase is much less competitive and we don't think it would take that long to make a dedicated page rank higher than #6 for the 3 words.

Suggestions? Thanks.

I'm curious how people use the OpenSiteExplorer Advanced Reports tab. It seems very powerful. What do you use it for?

In particular, I see that it has choices for 'same C block' and 'different C block'. Those seem useful to find C blocks that my competitors have links from that I do not, but I'm not totally clear on how to construct the query. Any help or best practices would be appreciated. Thanks!