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I wouldn't recommend using the disavow tool for this. The disavow tool is used to clean up spammy links that were not gained naturally.

A better solution is to use 301 redirects and redirect the 404'd pages to the new pages that work on your website. That way users will land where they should if they click the links, and Google will still give you juice from those links.

Here's a place to get started on how t do that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en

It depends on a lot of factors, but in general, I don't like to put category subdirectories in unless they are necessary. For example, if a category page is useful to your audience, then it might be a good idea, but in this case it doesn't sound like one would be.

Also, consider how your audience will react to the URL: domain.com/attorneys looks a lot better to people, I think, than domain.com/industries/attorneys, which implies you're marketing to a bunch of different industries and may lead them to believe this is solely a marketing play and you don't actually understand their needs. A page right off the root seems more exclusive and like you care more about their industry.

These are just my opinions. From a strictly SEO perspective, you're fine either way, but I'd still go right off the root.

To Google, there is not. The R=301 at the end of the rewrite rule defines it as a 301 redirect, so it's practically the same thing. For a one-off redirect I wouldn't use the rewrite format. This is usually for when you need to grab big chunks of URLs and redirect them all at once. Still, if it works this way, there's really nothing wrong with it from the redirecting standpoint. If there was, when people used it for large quantities of redirects, it wouldn't work.

You can recover, but I wouldn't recommend hiring one of those companies that said you couldn't.

I'm referring to inbound links to your website. That's what Open Site Explorer shows you, but since your domain doesn't have much yet and it's all pretty new, it's not displaying yet.

I still find PRWeb safe to use and haven't experience any noticeable penalties.

Press releases are still safe to use, just not as link-building technique. You can still utilize them to get newsworthy information about the company out to the public. Distributing it on your website, some online place like PRWeb, and also sending it manually to larger publications that your information is relevant to can be very valuable.

Are you able to access the .htaccess file on the old website? If so, it sounds like the best thing to do would be to 301 redirect from the old review pages to the new ones. With these 301s in place, Google can figure out that the site has moved, and you aren't just spamming a ton of new reviews and manipulating dates.

If that isn't possible, implement canonical tags on the old pages.

In either case, make sure to mark up the new pages in Schema.

In my experience, it doesn't matter where the byline is. I've dealt with sites with is almost everywhere and recently had a site with it in the footer with no issue. Maybe not the ideal place to have it, but still an option it seems.

The page 2 URL looks spammy, and if it provide the same kind of content as on page 1, then I would agree that 301ing page 2 is a good option.

There are tools out there you can pay for to do this work for, things like linkdetox.com can be helpful to identify the bad links. Something like Rmoov is great to then begin to removal process.

If doing it on your own, you'll need to check out each questionable domain manually. You can rule out big domains that you know are not spammy, and focus on the ones you have no idea about. When looking at a domain, ask yourself the following:

• Is this site indexed in Google?

• Could I easily create a followed link from this domain to mine? OR pay for one?

• Does this site seem to be scraping information of mine from other sources?

• Is this site in English (or whichever language your site is in)?

• Is it a crappy directory site? Article submission site? Other easily exploitable kind of site?

These are the sorts of things to look out for. Google doesn't want to count links for you if you made them for SEO purposes, or paid someone else to. If you look at a site, and it appears that their business model is building links, or they are spammy in anyway, you know it's a red flag.

Also, I'm learning more and more that when you're on the fence about a domain, disavow it.

I think both options are viable, and it comes down to your demographic split in analytics.

If the majority of your audience in English-speaking, then the best option would be option #2. This eliminated an extra step and gives the majority of your users what they want, faster.

If there's a more even split in the traffic for languages you write for, a landing page to decide on a language may be more useful.

It's also possible to auto-detect the language and automatically direct users to the appropriate page, so you might want to consider that as an option as well.

Is it possible to host the domain somewhere cheaply once it's shut down, just to have an .htaccess file on it? Then it can still be done, just make sure everything redirects somewhere in the .htaccess.

An .htaccess file on your new domain can't control web pages from the old domain to redirect them, that .htaccess file has to go on the old domain. .

Correct, you can cannot tag canonically if the old site is shut down.

Schema generators are to taste, pick one you feel comfortable using and double check the markup.

Depending on the amount of reviews you need to mark up, this tool may be all you need: http://schema-creator.org/review.php

Just embed the generated code and you'll be good to go, or it will at least give you a good start.

There are also Wordpress plugins that allow this sort of generation in the backend.

Hope that helps.

The office just got some of those fancy Google Partner bottles, and I want to fill them up with a tasty cocktail that is link juice themed.

Any ideas on how to tie Google and/or SEO into a fancy cocktail?

Nope, you're good. This is the style I use, and I've had good success with it. As long as your KML file is on-point, this should be fine. You're just telling the bots where the KML file is.

When you go to your Places for Business page, click to edit details, then at the bottom of the page there is a "Get help with this listing" link, which will allow you to tell Google to call you. You'll get a Google Local rep on the phone who can tell you exactly what's going on and possibly reverify it on the spot.

Check this post out, it may help https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en

EGOL knows what he/she/it's talking about. You can report and disavow if you'd like, but worry about yourself. These people don't go away and are better off ignored if they aren't directly effecting your marketing efforts.

Depending on the size of the company, it might be better to leave subdomains out of it. Subdomains are like brand new sites, so you'd be working a lot harder to get things ranking if you went that route. You don't have a ton of pages per category, so everything might be more manageable under the single domain with good URL structure.

Websites that aren't AT&T need all the help they can get, and keeping things in subfolders instead of subdomains will help keep all your authority under a single domain.

So, site.com/business, site.com/personal, etc.

Subdomains are seen as completely different websites. This means you would be diluting your authority. Using duplicate content on these subdomains would also definitely be an issue.

You're best bet would be to have different pages for each location, and make sure each of those page have unique content. This way it's all on the same website, fresh content on each page, and you still accomplish what you were looking to.

You could also go one step further and link each of the location pages to individual G+ pages and take advantage there as well.

You'll notice some citation sites specifically request unique content for the descriptions. This is most likely so they don't encounter duplicate content, but it's a good practice. I know it's a hassle, but unique descriptions enable you to tailor content to the specific citation site, and you can surround your links (even if most are no-followed) with different contextual words they may be picked up on.