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Are you hoping to just make it easier on yourself by sending all old pages to the root rather than mapping them to the most relevant pages?  If you have a large site I understand but I would strongly suggest, at the VERY LEAST, mapping the more important pages to the new site's counterpart pages that are the most relevant and then you can send the remaining pages to the home page or a sitemap.htm page.  I don't know that pointing them all to the root would be 'bad', per-say, but I feel you would be missing an opportunity to help boost new internal pages that you need ranking asap.

Here you go:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35624

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I checked the source of your site and the description tag is empty...

Do you need to publish your changes?

Thanks for clearing that up.  It has been years since we changed our domain etc... and our wait was about 6 weeks rather than months, but so much has changed...  anyway, it looks as though you have set everything up correctly, sorry I couldn't be any help.  Good luck my friend - I would say 'build links etc...' while you wait but I have no doubt you already know what to do  Cheers

"however old existing content wont move"

You mean that the old page is still indexed?  Sorry I am just trying to understand the problem better.  First of all, thank you for the link to your old question.  Your URLs were there so I took the liberty of checking them and you are, of course, correct.  All 301s appear perfect.  Also, you state that your ranking is ok?  Is that correct?  Again, I apologize, I'm just trying to get the full picture.  In one paragraph you state that you can't find yourself if you search your content but in another you say that you are indexed and rank easily.

You know, all of the sudden our tracking code added to our pages started counting as separate URLs on our SEOMOZ report.  So, I wonder if they made some update... anyway, I just went and added canonical tags to all of our pages (I should have done that anyway to be honest).  If you are using WordPress than I would suggest the Yoast plug in...

http://yoast.com/wordpress/canonical/

Give it a couple of weeks, that's about how long it took for my client.  Good luck!  The other ways are not nearly as easy...

Give it a couple of weeks, that's about how long it took for my client.  Good luck!  The other ways are not nearly as easy...

Sometimes a rebuild is the only way but that isn't always the case.  I would start by cleaning up your titles etc... you can hold off on the dup content - if yours was there first it may not be affecting you, it could just be affecting those who stole your content (that is what is supposed to happen...)

I should honestly hope not.  Start with the spam sites and go from there.  I will be surprised if this isn't it.

If it is a directory I don't think I will ever get actual traffic FROM the directory then I don't bother with it.  If the site or domain says anything about SEO or Links then I don't bother with it.  If I can't easily find in in Google when searching for niche directories that relate to it then I don't bother with it.

I agree but that has to be it.  You could also try compiling a list of the links you never asked for (the spam sites) and going to Google spam report form and explaining everything in the 'additional information' field just to get this in front of someone on the spam team.  I did that for a client either it helped or it was a huge coincidence but their rankings were back in a little less than two weeks.  No promises, but it seemed to work for us.  The report is here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/paidlinks?pli=1&hl=en and I just clicked on 'Paid Links' and then just explained EVERYTHING (I know these arent paid links, my clients weren't either, but it was the only link related choice.

You have a link from http://www.slantmodels.com/marcelperes/ and it is FILLED with hidden content.  There are probably others but that is just the one I found.  Don't just look at your link report, look at the pages that link to you and make sure there is nothing shady going on.

Good luck - that's a long report to go through.  I jumped to the last page and found this one.

If, as Collin says, you are not in to deep you could change them and 301 the old to the new and then going forward you could just use the new format.

NP

Would it be possible to just add the new property to the old page without removing the old property?  Just add the new one above?

Sorry if this sounds stupid but the old page will already have trust etc...

Awesome - Good Luck!

Hi Cyril,

As an SEO that specializes in hotels, and has for years, I thought I would share a bit of experience with you.  I can not stress the importance of On Page SEO in our industry.  Links are, of course, important, but On Page can not be ignored.  I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of quickly going through your site and I have some suggestions that I believe will help you to achieve the rankings you are looking for.  Each page of your website should have a clear and definite focus i.e. the focus for the hotels page should obviously be French Quarter Hotels etc... the page's focus needs to be reflected in each page's Title, Description, alt text, H1 and all through out the content.  No pages should have the same title or description (they all appear to be the same right now).  Unless you are using the keyword tags for internal reporting (we do) you should drop them.  If you do use them clean them up (right now the terms in them are far too broad and there are far to many).  Internal linking should be structured to flow for the user etc... just basic stuff.  With your current link profile and the age of your site a good on page clean up should be all you need.

Good Luck!

In going over your site really quickly I would have to say that you are a victim of Panda.  I would suggest tightening up your page focus and not being so broad in your titles.  Also, you do have some duplicate content issues that Google may take as an attempt to manipulate the search results.  here's an example: - http://copyscape.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shuttlefinder.net%2F

I would suggest an on-page overhaul.  I am not, in any way, saying anything bad about your site, it just needs a Panda compliant clean up

Good Luck!

Hi Steve.  Yes, SEOMOZ offers OpenSiteExplorer, it is actually the tool we use here at Vizergy to track our link building efforts.  If you click in to the Research Tools section you will find it in there.  With that said, you certainly want to watch your link builder's progress to make sure he or she is not doing any link building that will hurt your rankings (bad directories, buying links etc...).

Good Luck!

I totally agree.  Going a bit deeper, each page should have its own clear focus and the Titles should reflect each page's focus.  For the home page, however, location and service is the way to go.  Good answer, Matt.