I would second Justin's recommendation of the attribution builder rather than using URL shorteners.

-Andy

Hi Tej,

Moz have a best practice guide on redirects here, but the general rule of thumb is that a 301 is used for most scenarios where a permanent redirect is required. This also passes more link juice than a 302, which is generally used for temporary redirects, and passes no link juice.

In terms of SEO, a 301 is almost always the preferred option because of the benefits in helping a site retain a more natural flow of link juice.

-Andy

The only think I can see that is missing, is a self rel=canonical to the home page. I would have this as a matter of course.

I also can't do a quick crawl on the site as I am getting a 403 Denied error.

-Andy

Hi Patrick,

Will this hurt your SEO? Maybe, but not in the more traditional way. For example, there is no direct penalty that this would fall under, but what it could do is confuse the user experience. Just keep in mind that SEO isn't just about your SERP positions.

As a user on any site, you want to see consistency. If you change theme part way through, then this can devalue the level of trust in the site as it no longer looks like the original site.

I would stick with one theme and if you aren't happy with the current look and feel, change your whole site to match this.

From Google's perspective, no, this wouldn't cause a devalued ranking by installing an additional theme (unless SEO issues arise from the installation), but there are a whole host of reason why you shouldn't do it.

-Andy

So you just want to disallow the /review/ element?

*Disallow: /review/

I am pretty sure the wildcard will work.

I would use the Robots.txt tester in Webmaster tools to try it out first before committing to any changes. This will tell you if it works and if so, if it's blocked successfully.

You then try the URL without the /review/ element on and make sure it passes.

-Andy

Example of what they would like to do

That would be a no-no Shawn. If you are running over SSL, then you need to canonical back to the https version of the page. If you don't, you will end up with errors on the page (yellow warning triangle) and trust issues with Google. What they would like to do is canonical to a malformed URL which it could interpret as a file.

Try going to any URL and just entering it as //www.domain.com

-Andy

I have had that in the past - the link appears and then goes again - I wouldn't worry about it too much Never caused me any problems.

Regards,

Andy