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I would canonicalise the index.php and non index.php versions to avoid duplicate content here and ensure that the weight is combined into one version.

You may find that your rankings have changes as a result of this redirect process based on IP.

As far as I can see, any links that point to your homepage go through this process:

link -> www.mysite.com

--301--> www.mysite.net/index.php?country=usa/uk

--301--> www.mysite.net/index.php

This is going to send the links on a chain of 301's eventually ending up with duplicate content, which isn't best practise. Hopefully someone else can chip in on this one and advise if this is the case and potential solutions.

I think if you were to do a "site:www. competitor.com" query in google it will bring up the list of indexed pages for that site, with the strongest ones generally appearing higher up the results. It may be worth having a look at this method also and combining the two methods.

Yes I would do that, it's the best solution, redirect every corresponding page to the new one, and redirect the rest of the pages to the homepage / most relevant area. I can't see any issues with doing it this way.

404's won't transfer any of the weight over to the new site so would be a waste IMO.

This is the case as far as I'm aware, and Keri seems to have confirmed it below.

Chances are that Google has already taken note of some of the links so I would imagine you will be seeing changes over the next few weeks / months as it finds out these links no longer exist.

If the domains have expired, removing them isn't something you can do as they already don't exist.

Does this mean that Google will no longer see www.mysite.net then?

With www.mysite.net and www.mysite.net/index.php being different URLs this may mean that there is duplicate content between these two pages.

I think it may be the case that open site explorer will update when it discovers the links no longer exist. How long ago did they expire?

35% of your backlinks dropping seems like quite a big chunk. Is there a common cause for these domains expiring? If they all dropped off quite recently I would image there would be some fluctuation in terms of rankings

Have you tried using a .htaccess file to redirect individual URLs and then a sitewide one for the others?

If it doesn't let you do this at the same time, redirect the individual pages first, wait until the SEs have picked up on the redirect and then redirect the rest of the site. I would have thought you should be able to do both at the same time though.

Open Site Explorer will be able to list the top pages on a site dependant on their weight. Have you tried giving that a go?

It would seem that the best solution is the URL structure that you have suggested, but with unique content. I know you don't want to do this but you will run into duplication issues if you don't.

If I understand correctly, the search engines will only see the index.php with the US language on it? You don't have canonical issues do you? i.e. when you say you redirect them to index.php, do you mean the root (www.domain.net) or the actual index URL (www.domain.net/index.php)? - ideally these two should be the same thing.

You may find some benefit to this. The closer to the start of the title tag the keyword is, the more weight is given to it. I would give this a go and review the effect it has on your rankings.

I would also recommend testing this out on one category first, and reviewing the results before applying it sitewide.

This process may lend itself to PPC a bit more than SEO. When split testing you will need to be aware of duplicate content, and considering that your ultimate goal is to figure out which landing pages are more effective, you will end up removing some of the pages anyway. On a large scale this isn't going to be as effective.

I would consider running a PPC account to test these pages and not have them indexed. Then, once you have a landing page that performs well, create it on the site and promote it with SEO.

Hi Vince,

I would recommend authors byline for a few reasons:

1. link diversity - more domains linking
2. more natural - less likely to be placed around other paid links
3. less devaluation - generally the first link from a domain is the strongest, a blogroll link wouldn't give you the value of a link * 1,000 (or however many pages).
4. Build relationships through posting

Create good content and share it with people, you will benefit much more this way.

Ben

If your customers would find it useful I can't see it being too much of a problem. I like a small selection of links in the footer. Often customers will look in the footer for contact links and information.

If it's just for SEO and you are putting in some keyword links I would probably say avoid it.

Just checked how you have done it and I see what you mean - it's a bit tricky. One thing I noticed is that all that text is wrapped in a h1. I would take it out and put it in as standard content.

Also if you could take the text that is in your slideshow images and convert it to readable text that would provide you with a bit more relevant content on the site that may help.

Best of luck with it!

Hi Zack,

Have you recently changed the extensions on your URLs? e.g. removed .html

This could be one cause.

Ben

I understand where you're coming from, but I would personally spend as little time as possible focusing on the keywords tag. If there is any benefit to come from these directories it's going to be minute compared to the return from quality link building.

Competitors aren't going to be led astray by incorrect meta keywords, as most of the time you can tell what people are trying to target anyway.

I would say you need to have crawlable links from the initial landing page. Can you not create a page with links to the different sites rather than having a drop down box? You could then have text links for the search engines to crawl. Alternatively you could use a javascript drop down.

As long as the search engines can get past the initial page there should be no issues with them crawling the rest of the site.

I would also question how you are going to display the different versions of the site in terms of duplicate content. Are the different sites going to be hosted in different subfolders? e.g. www.domain.com/en and www.domain.com/us?

If they are going to be hosted like this I would strongly recommend considering your strategy for avoiding duplicate content across these sites.

Hi Richard,

My thoughts would initially be:

a) yes a 301 redirect is probably the best way to avoid the duplicated pages and pass the weight on

b) if you have 301 redirected them they won't be 404 errors, the weight of the previous URLs will be passed on (although there is a slight decay factor involved with redirects so you won't get 100% of the weight)

c) I can't see how there will be too many errors as long as you 301 small.com to big.com sitewide. If anything big.com should get a boost from any links that the small.com pages had. Also this should help clear up the duplicate content issues.

Hope that helps,

Ben

Hi Alan,

It's not as easy being hosted on windows. I would suggest a 301 redirect from this URL to the homepage through IIS and after having a quick look around there seems to be this guide. http://www.hpseo.co.uk/301-redirect-tutorial-iis/

Have a look see if that helps. You could also try adding the rel=canonical tag into the head pointing to the homepage to help the search engines determine the right one.

Have a look at this article for the differences http://www.seomoz.org/blog/301-redirect-or-relcanonical-which-one-should-you-use

Ben

Hi Walid,

I would personally eliminate A and B purely based on the fact that they aren't targeted enough. I would put the "Free dliver on $50 purchase" in the meta description to encourage the click through, but C seems the most concise and targeted out of all of them.

Plus I'm a big fan of the " | " symbol