Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for the insight.  We were also leaning that route.

Just a note: Site B isn't receiving much traffic anymore (maybe 1K visitors a day).  Has been in a steady decline for quite some time simply due to lack of time and effort towards it.

OK - so we currently own two websites that are in the same industry.

Site A is our main site which hosts real estate listings and rentals in Canada and the US.

Site B hosts rentals in Canada only.

We are shutting down site B to concentrate solely on Site A, and will be looking to redirect all traffic from Site B to Site A, ie. user lands on Toronto Rentals page on Site B, we're looking to forward them off to Toronto Rentals page on Site A, and so on.  Site A has all the same locations and property types as Site B.

On to the question:

We are trying to figure out the best method of doing this that will appease both users and the Google machine.  Here's what we've come up with (2 options):

When user hits Site B via Google/bookmark/whatever, do we:

1. Automatically/instantly (301) redirect them to the applicable page on Site A?

2. Present them with a splash page of sorts ("This page has been moved to Site A.  Please click the following link <insert anchor="" text="" rich="" url="" here="">to visit the new page.").</insert>

We're worried that option #1 might confuse some users and are not sure how crawlers might react to thousands of instant redirects like that.

Option #2 would be most beneficial to the end-user (we're thinking) as they're being notified, on page, of what's going on.  Crawlers would still be able to follow the URL that is presented within the splash write-up.

Thoughts?  We've never done this before.  It's basically like one site acquiring another site; however, in this case, we already owned both sites.  We just don't have time to take care of Site B any longer due to the massive growth of Site A.

Thanks for any/all help.

• Marc

This is what I'm really leaning towards.  At the end of the day, and one of the first "tips" I ever read regarding SEO and Google/crawlers, is: "does whatever you're doing look natural?"

SEO has become very, very complex over the years in terms of what you can/can't, should/shouldn't do.  I don't even know what's natural and what's not anymore it seems.

Thanks for the prompt reply!

And we're talking ~100,000 backlinks as that's how many pages on my site that will be using their content.  The content is actually mortgage rates that they offer, and is ultimately an affiliate program.

Their link would be a standard brand name backlink with no targeted, rich anchor text.  Literally, it will be the exact same anchor text/backlink URL on every single page their content is used.

I have looked at how many big players on the net handle this kind of situation, and it appears that they all have nofollow on the backlinks in identical situations, but with other companies.

Pseudo question:

I have a website that has 100K pages.  On about 50K of those pages I have information that is fed to me via an outside 3rd-party website.

Now, I like to give credit where credit is due, so I add a backlink to the website that is feeding me this content.  A simple backlink like so:

Information provided by: Company ABC

Now, this 3rd-party website wants me to remove the nofollow tags from the backlink, but I am very, very skeptical because to me, sending ~50K dofollow backlinks to a single site might make the Google monster upset with me.

This 3rd-party site is being very hard-headed about this, to the point where I am thinking of terminating the relationship all together.  I digress.

Scoured the net before writing this, but couldn't really find anything directly related to my issue.

Thoughts?  Is a nofollow required here?  We're not talking 1 or 2 links here; we're talking tens of thousands (50K is low; it will probably be upwards of 100K when all is said and done as my site has many, many pages).

Thanks in advance.

Google will value the 'trust' factor of a site as a whole.  If you manage to get a backlink on say, newyorktimes.com, on a page that is well buried, that is still considered a good backlink because it's coming from a trusted source.

I have stopped looking at pagerank (toolbar) altogether, and focus on the overall quality of a website now when doing my link building.

I was hesitant to even mention Pagerank; it is beneficial to you if the website is relevant to your niche.  Are you (your website) in the 'business of selling travel'?  If so, then it doesn't matter what the DA and PR are of that site, it's a smart business move.

Not all web crawlers honour the rel="prev" and rel="next" attributes, but I always use them because they cannot harm you and are especially helpful for crawlers that do take them into consideration.

I made the mistake, ages ago, of placing the canonical tag on my pagination pages that pointed to the first page.  I didn't have a firm grasp of the canonical tag at that time, and i paid the price for it.  Now I find that the canonical tag is grossly over/misused as you don't even need to place it on any of the pagination pages.  Google knows what page it's on and will usually just disregard the canonical tag.  It will only take it into consideration if the URL and canonical tag don't match.

Make sure to change up your title/meta tags to accommodate the various pages, ie.

<title>Car Parts - Page 2/3/4/5/6/etc</title>

Adding a page reference to your <h>tags is not necessary as the content of the page is still the same, just another page.</h>

Consider adding the title attribute to your paging links as well as a notifier:

Page 2

There are additional rel attribute values that can be helpful, too: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#type-links

Regardless of the authority, there is no reason that you should not join.  It is relevant to your business, and therefore is always a good idea.

I know the pagerank toolbar is not a true indicator of authority, for the most part, however, the site you have listed is a PR7.

Go for it.

For the record, I do not get an adsense ad.  I only see internal Monster ads.

Once you become a big boy adsense publisher, like Monster.com, you get the doors opened for you into a world of many different types of adsense units for your website.  You get much greater control over the units (can set target to new window, colours, sizes, and more).

Well, a TLD will carry a certain amount of trust and relevance.

For example, being from Canada, if I'm looking for a product online (shoes, clothing, computer, etc) and I do my typical search in Google, I will visit the .ca pages first simply because they are a registered Canadian business.

However, this doesn't seem to carry well into the US as you really don't see anybody using the .us TLD at all.

.com means ".Commercial", but is grossly overused IMO.

TLD's don't carry any different level of authority in the eyes of googlebot (well, maybe there are some like .cn that are known for housing spam sites, but I cannot confirm that).  People go for .com because it is so widely known, and people are not used to seeing .net's nearly as often as they are typically used for 'net' related activity.

.org would not be a good fit for your site as .org is for organizations, ie. http://www.humanesociety.org/, and are usually for non-profit efforts.

To summarize: .net and .com have no difference in the eyes of crawlers.  It just boils down to the preference of users.  If you create a website that is appealing and looks reputable, you shouldn't have any problems.  However, a .net might be more suitable for a website such as (pseudo): ComputerDiscussionTopics.net

It's a tough one.  Maybe some others will chime in.

"The only time you should use a no-follow is when you are linking to a external site that has a bad reputation, suchas a porn site or spam site, that you do not want to be associated with."

In which case, you shouldn't be linking to those sites anyway.

the 'nofollow' attribute was created many years ago to be used within comment systems, and not within a website link structure.

In my opinion, I fail to see any time in which you feel you should be adding nofollow to any external link.  If you are linking to an external site, it should ONLY be to a site that is relevant to your site and of a reputable nature.  Adding nofollow to that seems redundant.

If you add nofollow to all your outgoing links, I could only imagine that Googlebot starts thinking, "why are these guys adding all these links to sites they don't trust?"

"other than possibly bringing you some traffic"

Which is something a lot of people never consider when trying to land backlinks.

If your website has backlinks that bring an endless amount of traffic, you can avoid any hiccups due to Google algo changes.

"Tell me I am wrong, tell me how to get ranked".

"The only thing I haven't tried is buying links, maybe I should try that?"

"Or maybe since my domain was parked before I bought it google is penalizing me?"

"Or maybe I am in the supplemental index?"

You're the "expert", you should be telling us!

Writing 500 articles and submitting your website to hundreds, even thousands, of directories can actually kill the rep of your site.

"Google is giving precedence to companies who have been around for a long time and naturally deserve the highest rankings.  There is no way for a new or small company to compete with that."

To try and compete with these sites is foolish.  Would you try and compete with Walmart by opening up your own discount chain?  Compete with McDonald's by opening a lousy fast-food burger chain?  No.  People compete with larger, well-established companies such as McDonald's by creating a better product.  By being innovative.  You need to offer people something that is new and unique.  Sure, it's frustrating as hell at times, but that should only spark new ideas.  You can't just throw up an identical product and hope that it picks up and takes off right off the bat.  That's why company's throw millions, even billions each year in brand recognition so that when any given consumer thinks of the word "car", they think Toyota (or whatever).  You can't just build your own Toyota and hope it competes.  You need to go above and beyond what the big boys already have to make your name in any business.

I don't consider myself to be even close to an SEO expert, but I'm quite confident I have a much better understanding than you.  Bypass all the directories and article submissions, and focus your efforts on contacting and obtaining backlinks from reputable, relatable websites to yours within the same niche.

How to beat the algo updates is to get your name out there onto high-trafficked websites that can send you a ton of traffic.  That way, you don't have to count on the SERP's day in, day out.

I wouldn't bother changing the URL's.  The difference in terms of SEO is rather negligible.

Of course there are points to be made on both sides, most of which have already been pointed out; however, you are bound to miss some 301's (it's natural), and in my opinion, is just not worth the hassle.  Google is perfectly capable of crawling/indexing parameter-filled URL's like yours.  You're basically looking to re-write the site and give it back to Google.

Any/all backlinks pointing to the existing URL's will forever lose their full power (as long as the backlink URL on the external continues to point to your old URL structure).

If you must do it, take notes from most of what has been said already.  You must be very meticulous in your 301's, and even ask some of the websites that have your link up to change it to the new URL to decrease the overall permanent hit you will be taking.

Is it a relevant website?  Or would your link just be in amongst a bunch of other irrelevant websites hoping to reap some PR?

The name of the game is relevance.  When approaching a site for a backlink, check their backlinks too to see where they are coming from.

Ages ago, before I really knew what I was doing (and I'm still learning after all these years), I managed to get my website a link on a homepage that was a PR9.  I was pumped.  However, the site had absolutely, and I mean absolutely nothing to do with the niche of my site.  All-in-all, that link did nothing for me.

After learning from that mistake, I only seek out sites that are in my niche, and have have links pointing to them that are also in my niche.  Keeps it in a nice trusted grouping of complete relevancy.

Hey, leave my mama outta this

What I'm saying in regards to that, and I thought I was being quite clear, is that Google would stand a much better chance of dominating the social networking niche if they re-adjusted their priorities, and lost the boner they have for conquering Facebook.  Unless they can figure out a legitimate way of allowing people to copy their entire FB profile over in one click, they won't ever be able to grab the entire, existing, FB user-base.  It just won't happen.  People have invested waaaaay too much time uploading thousands of photos and videos, engaging in countless conversations/emails/messages, and creating their network of friends and family.  I'm just saying that their initial thought process of trying to convert people was hopeless from the get-go.

I don't disagree that they might be on to something in terms of the future of social networking; however, for every new idea they add to G+, FB can easily integrate the same idea to their site and they're back to being even.  The same way Google does to every little competitive company that is even but a spec of dust on Google's radar.  Google leaves no room for competition, so why should Facebook?

For the record, I could care less either way.  My days of being over-actively involved in my own personal Social media have come and gone.  And I offer both solutions to any clients that inquire.

Oh, and, I do quite well in the SERP's, actually.  Google, Bing, and so on.  I've seen a ~500% increase in traffic over the last 2 months to several of my websites, so let's not go there.

Come on now... Google has been caught a handful of times doing the very things they penalize websites for.  Case in point (and these blackhat tactics are as recent as this past week!):

http://www.seobook.com/post-sponsored-google

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223135/Google_downgrades_Chrome_ranking_after_paid_link_monkey_business

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-caught-for-paid-links-14539.html

I could post many more resources/articles to other's they've done in the past, but they're be no fun in that

Their shady tactics don't stop there, however:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/07/25/google.street.view.now.known.to.have.seen.devices/

http://www.4u-2.com/computers/computers-networks/computers-networks-wireless-networks/google-caught-stealing-personal-data-from-wireless-networks/

Just because I don't use Google+ personally, doesn't mean it's not offered to any clients of mine.  But the reaction of theirs is overwhelmingly the same: "Ugh, another social network?  When is it going to stop!?" in reference to FB, Twitter, G+, LinkedIn, and so on.  'Cause you can't just replicate your content over them all to be successful, so that's where the "Ugh" comes into play.

A step in the right direction for whom, Google?  Of course.  But not necessarily for the end-user by any stretch of the imagination.

To be honest, my care for Google, it's products, it's advice on SEO, and so on, have completely sizzled over the last year or so as they continue to practice the very black-hat techniques that us webmasters get in sh*t for.  Sorry Goog's, but I won't use your second-tier G+ anytime soon, that's for sure.

Even Google's search has lost its relevance for me as they're opting to give more SERP real estate to big name brands (which is just a nice way of saying that they're giving more SERP real estate to companies that spend millions in AdWords, let's not kid ourselves here).  Just because a company has a recognizable brand name, and spends millions on advertising, doesn't necessarily make their product any more relevant, or of better quality, than the little guys.

To the original post... of course G+ directly influences the SERP's.  Do you think for a second that Google would have it any other way?  Like I said, they are desperate to get people using their Social network, and this is one way to at least get webmasters involved.

Side boob: Google should re-focus their Google+ into a business oriented social network.  Their reach does not extend to half of FB's user-base in that your typical, non web savvy (ie. my Mother) is not ever going to use Google Plus, so why market it to them.  They're lucky if they have a FB account, and that's as far as they'll go because their entire family is already setup on it.  These are the people that actually click on the adwords sponsored ads at the top of the SERP's, even thoughm the majority of the sites in adwords are irrelevant to the search term in question (at least their landing page is).

Watch for more Google (in)direct user-influence tactics coming soon... too bad for them it's race they lost the day Mr. Zuckerberg bought the Facebook.com domain name.

"Google SERP changes run ahead of what they actually show us in site: or cache updates"

Precisely.  Those tools are not real-time by any means, and are to be used as a guide, at best.

Not a silly question.

Yahoo is now being run completely off of Bing's algorithm and is displaying the same organic results as one another.  Optimize for Bing and you're also optimized for Yahoo.