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Luckily, 301 redirecting from one site to another (when moving a site) and using the Google Change of Address Tool has taken out a lof of the risk that used to exist. if done properly, you should benefit from combining both sites and not lose any rankings.

You're on the right track, I would outline the content and make sure that there's not any content that overlaps--every product/service and every page should be unique and not cause any duplicate content issues.

Generally speaking, you'd want to do what you're planning, which is to use a directory off of your main domain and then 301 redirect the pages from the old site to the new pages on the new site. Use the Google Change of Address Tool to tell Google about the change.

I would fully integrate the pages into your main navigation on the site rather than just provide a link--it's important that the new pages get all the internal links that they can.

Rosemary, Gaston is right--we generally list our sitemap URLs in the robots.txt file, which typically is enough for the search engine crawlers to find them. Keep in mind, though, that a sitemap file or files isn't really required at all if you have a really good site structure.

What you do with the content really depends on how much content you're talking about. If it's less than 50 posts, you may want to remove the content entirely and 301 redirect to a new post--which explains that you're no longer providing those services, and then highlight the services that you do offer.

I would, though, look at your site's Google Analytics to see how much traffic those posts are getting. If there is a lot of traffic, but it's irrelevant, consider moving them to another domain and 301 redirecting them from your domain to the new domain name. You could then advertise your other services on that site with banner ads or be a "sponsor". That way others may see the posts and then click thru to your main site because they're interested in the services you do have to offer.

If the posts just don't get much traffic, then it may be worth it to just delete the posts entirely (keep a backup of them, though) and that will allow Google to re-evaluate the content and topic of your site.

Bruce, whenever you lose rankings, there are a few things that you should check. First, I would crawl your own website using Screaming Frog, Deep Crawl, or another crawler to see if you can identify any issues. I would also look at the links to the site--have you lost links or gained any "shady" or unnatural links recently? Have you done anything related to a disavow file that might have caused this?

There are so many potential issues to deal with that could have been the culprit--but I would first crawl your own website and see if it's can be crawled properly. Then look at the links.

As for the sitemap issue, I don't think that it's going to be a sitemap issue if your pages are being indexed. But, if the sitemap does not have the current pages on your site and is not up to date I would fix it.

sym_admin is right--you'll want to find the source of those pages, as Google apparently is seeing them from somewhere and still requesting them. If there are links to those pages somewhere, you will need to remove them. Also, if you're able, I would change those URLs so that they serve up a "410 Gone" error, and not a 404.

Felix, there is a good chance that this is referral spam. The goal of a referral spammer is to get you to notice those URLs, and investigate them as if they are sending traffic to your website. Typically, those visitors won't stay long on your website, and they won't have your domain name as the "hostname" in Google Analytics.

Take a look at the traffic and see if it does have a hostname associated with it, and if it's actual human visitors. I bet it's not.

Dieter, one other way you can do this is to use a proxy service. There are several proxy services out there, such as SurfEasy, Strong VPN, or Hola that allow you to surf the web as if you're actually surfing from another country. You can choose the country and then you'll use a VPN to access the sites you need to from another country.

Rosemary, in order to remove the content quickly, you have to do several things. You see, Google's processes for crawling, etc. and removing content from the index don't always happen all at once. So, it's best to do several things:

• Remove the content. When visitors or bots visit the URL, use the "410 Gone" server header code to ensure that it's not just a 404 error being used.

• If the content must stay and cannot be removed but still needs to be removed from Google's index, consider password protecting the content, putting it behind a paywall, making users log in to see the content, and/or adding a meta robots noindex tag on the page.

• Add a robots.txt file on the subdomain so that it tells the bots to stop crawling. If you use something like dev.yourdomain.com for a dev section of the site, make sure that you have a robots.txt file at dev.yourdomain.com/robots.txt.

• Use Google Search Console to remove the content. Once logged in, use the removal tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals?pli=1

By using several approaches, this is going to be the fastest way to remove the content.

JM123, you can be assured that Google and it's bots don't create accounts--so they will never be able to sign in and sign out.

That said, you could technically deliver unique content to all signed-in users, because Google will never sign in and see that content.

What's important is the content that you do give to users that are NOT signed in. You should concentrate on that content to that it's unique and other pages aren't duplicated (thus having a duplicate content issue).

Excal, I've always looked considered the links that are shown in Google Search Console to be a "snippet" of all of the links to your website. For example, there are links that I know are pointing to our website that are good links--but they come and go in Google Search Console. They don't show us all the links. So, just as  you have seen them go away, there's a good chance that they will come back and be listed again.

I do know that the more often you download the links the more often they will refresh the list of links.

Russell, I'm assuming that you are going to move just the subdomain--and pages on the site. So, you would be doing something like this:

https://www.liquorland.co.nz/page.aspx --> https://shop.liquorland.co.nz/page.aspx

If that's the case, then typically you wouldn't need to load in a separate 301 redirect for each and every page on the website. You should be able to use one "blanket" 301 redirect that moves from the www subdomain to the new shop subdomain.

Keep in mind, though, that you really shouldn't have to be moving at all--and that is the ideal situation. If you're move to another server or another CMS, then you should be still able to use the www subdomain and not change URLs. If you have trouble and still would need to move, then consider using ISAPI Rewrite to take care of this.

smmour, we've actually noticed this as well, this past week. One site in particular that I'm familiar with shows a date from February 2012 on the site's home page even though the Google cache date shows that the page was cached just the other day.

Google typically does take the pub-date from a site and uses that typically, especially if it's in the code of a site using WordPress. However, what you're describing sounds more of a Google problem than a problem with your site in particular. Based on the fact that we've noticed this as well, this past week, it appears to be something that you haven't necessarily done.

What intrigues me is the fact that the domain name wasn't registered and the site wasn't live in 2010, the date that it is showing.

Lindsay, there are so many unique issues that could be causing this that it's difficult to diagnose the problem without having a specific URL to look at. However, it sounds as if you've been looking at a lot of the on-site and on-page factors. Have you looked at the links to the site and done anything to evaluate the links to your website and make sure you don't have low quality links that need to be disavowed?

When you mention the thin or duplicate content issues, have you considered consolidating the content and removing the previous year's content (or moving it an archiving it) so that only the current content exists? Besides archiving or removing it from the site, you may want to use the canonical tag. Another way to deal with that content would be to use the robots.txt file to disallow indexing of certain older content pages.

Sharon, the site site looks great--I haven't taken the time to go through it like I normally would during an SEO audit of the site, but since you mentioned there were only a few issues that Moz had indicated, then it sounds okay. I would take care of the issues that they point out, though.

I took some time to look at your site's backlinks, though, and noticed that while you have a few, it just isn't nearly enough to make a difference. A site in your industry would have a lot more links--and looking you'll need to look at your competitors to see that they have a lot more.

I would spend some time working on your site's links, as I believe that's going to be the issue you're having, especially given the topic of your site.

vtcrm, I'm not sure what you mean by "external redirects', although I suspect that you're referring to links from other websites that are pointing to a page on your site that doesn't exist. So, you are redirecting that page to another URL on your site.

If you are able to create content on a URL that's appropriate for the link that it's pointing to, then great--that should actually help your site's overall SEO. You'll be able to recover some traffic, as well. So, anytime that you can get rid of a redirect from an external site and replace it with content, that's a good thing.

You may also want to look at your crawl errors in Google Search Console, there may be pages that have traffic and links that you can also create content on--if you previously removed those pages from your site.

Stephanie, Logan is correct--we used to submit blog posts on YouMoz, and they could have the potential to be boosted up so they would show up differently if the post was good enough. That has been paused for now, and I'm looking forward to being able to contribute again.

Welcome to Moz! It looks like the site has about 169,000 pages indexed Google currently. So, if that's the number of pages you have on your site, then they're crawling and indexing it just fine.

Since you did bring up the fact that you're dealing with dynamic pages, or dynamic URLs, it is important that you have a sitemap (probably multiple sitemaps) available so that Google can quickly crawl and have the proper URLs indexed.

You currently don't have a sitemap file here: https://jane.com/sitemap.xml which is where it should reside. I recommend also listing the sitemap file(s) in your robots.txt file here, as well: https://jane.com/robots.txt

Your site's web development team will need to auto generate the sitemap files, which currently isn't happening right now. I recommend having up to 50,000 URLs in each file, as it can get quite large if it's over that number. If you're able to generate the files based on certain criteria (such as main pages in the site, categories, or something else), then that would be helpful, as well.

Matt, there are really a lot of reasons why a site won't seem to gain any ground when it comes to ranking in Google. It could be links, it could be content, it could be lack of social media, it could be a lack of local links and citations, or it could be something else. It could be just that you're in a competitive market and that the competition is doing more (or has been around longer).

Regardless, it's most likely NOT the URL. Every domain name has an equal chance of ranking in the search results. So whether or not your keyword is in the URL really doesn't make any difference. It could still be a URL issue or domain name issue, such as if you have other domain names redirecting to your site or if you have used another domain name in the past that has the same content on it.

Without specifics, it's tough to pinpoint a specific reason why the site's not ranking well.

George, I think it's a great move to move the content over to the company blog. If the content is good, then it should help the overall domain and it's visibility. There are, though, some considerations:

• Duplicate content. Once you move the content, you don't want it residing in two places.

• You'll want to see if you can set up a 301 redirect(s) from the old pages to the new location. I don't recall if this is possible with blogger, though.

• You'll want to check the backlinks to see if you can any of the links pointing to the blogger blog updated to the new location.

Mark, for our WordPress client sites and our own sites, we're implementing AMP on all pages on the site(s). What we know is that Google's implementation (adding the pages to the results) is changing, and we don't know what the rollout plan is in search. We started only seeing it on news sites, but it's been expanded.

I do recommend making the pages available on sites if it doesn't take away from the content on the pages. So, if the content of a page relies heavily on images, for example, it might not be appropriate to use AMP or have an AMP version because it really isn't going to be a mobile friendly page. But, if it's primarily content-based or text-based, then you would want AMP to be available on those pages.

Jeremy,

The correct answer to your question is that it needs to look natural. I wouldn't necessarily optimize the anchor text and the link so that it's pointing to one particular page or even your home page with certain anchor text.

If it's your author bio, then naturally it should point to your site's home page. An alternative would be to create/write a page specifically for your author bio (where you list your articles that you've written).

Based on our experience, we generally think that as long at you're on the same website, links should open up in the same window. They should not open in a new window. If you are going to open a link in a new window, then you'd want to notify the user that you're going to do that by telling them before they click the link.

For example: this is a link (opens in a new window)

This is a general user experience issue. While I don't necessarily have any specific stats to show, it just makes sense.

shogajen, consistency with your local business listings is extremely important, as the Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) data should be the same on all listings. One of the ways that the search engines use as a ranking factor is that consistency: if they see another address, phone number, or company name, they might not give you "credit" for that listing or citation.

When it comes to the local business listing check, they don't only check the Google listing, other listings are checked. Also, even though your business isn't verified yet, Google will most likely have your company NAP data from another source.

In order to correct any listings, you'll need to verify the listing first, and then you should be able to log in and correct it. If it's a duplicate listing or an incorrect listing (an additional listing), then there are ways to flag listings.

The other option is to work with a service such as Moz Local, Yext, Advice Local (our service) that have direct access to update the listings at Google and other sites.

Brian, yes, this is the best practice. The canonical tag is essentially telling the search engines that the letter page is a duplicate of what's on the other page. So, they should give the credit to the other page.

Technically speaking, those letter pages are crawled by the search engines, but since they canonical tag is there the page is not indexed.

Again, this is the best practice if you're going to have the content appear in more than one location. Ideally, I would probably split it up into separate pages (a page for each term) if you can write enough content for each term to have it's own page. But, given the scenario you're outlining, this is most likely the best practice for your site. I'm asuming that the letter pages are clickable in your site's navigation and that users can click on them easily.

Brian, that's definitely an issue. If it's not delivering a 404 error when you go to a non-existent page on your site, that's the problem. I could theoretically go to yourdomain.com/aslksjdltkjlkjalskdj.html, make a link to it, and Google would index the page.

Check with your web developer to see how you can make sure that 404 error pages (page not found) delivers a 404 error in the server header.

There are lots of ways that Google will discover new URLs (even someone browsing with Google Chrome might allow Google to discover a new URL and then crawl it). So, you'll want to make sure that you have this fixed on your site.

Generally speaking, in our experience, it's not worth it to take the time to change filenames (and thus change URLs) unless you absolutely have to. If you're still using the same CMS, then just changing the URL might not be worth it, as you have to take time to set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL.

What it would be worth it to do is to go with a flat file structure, such as domain.com/category/page or domain.com/page/. In the long run, you won't generally have to change URLs in the future if you move to another CMS.

If those pages are ranking well with the current URL, you may not want to change the filename. But, if they aren't ranking on the first page, it should be fine to change the filename. Don't forget to set up 301 redirects from the old URL to the new URL.

Brian, when this happens, there is typically one reason: somewhere there is a link with that URL in it. What we've seen before is that oftentimes those links are created by hackers or spammers that then try to create content on your site with that URL. For example, when a site is hacked, they will create a page on your site and then link to it.

Without the URL (or the page name without your domain name), it's tough for me to see what might be causing this. But, there has to be a link somewhere to it in order for Google to want to index it.

What I would do is use a server header check tool (such as http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html) to see if the page has a "200 OK" server response or a 404 error. Google typically doesn't index pages that deliver 404 errors. It could be that the server is set up to deliver a "page not found" on your site but it comes up with a "200 OK" in the server header, so Google indexes the page.

Check your site to see if there is a link to the page. If the link exists, then fix it. Then, look at Majestic.com or Open Site Explorer to see if they show any links from other sites to the page. If those links exist, see if you can get rid of those links.

Muhammad, while we cannot predict the future of link building, we can actually concentrate on what works. Link earning, earning your links by posting and creating good content on your website, is what works now and what will work in the future. If you post good content that others want to share, then others will share it and do the link building for you. That's link earning.

Lomar, you definitely don't want the duplicate content issue. However, what you could do is a third option: use the canonical tag and put a canonical tag on the /fr/page1.html so that it points to /en/page1.html. You would simply remove the canonical tag when the content is translated and it's a unique page.

Alternatively, I would use this option and remove the 301 redirect when it's translated:

Leave the naming scheme intact and set up a 301 redirect so that /fr/page1.html redirects to /en/page1.html

phero, once you disavow a domain or a URL, all it takes is for Google to crawl it. Once they crawl the page, they will see that it's been disavowed and recognize it.

spacecollective,  you don't mention whether or not these product tag links, when clicked, end up creating more pages on your site or not. Typically, with a blog, for example, a tag will create a new page, which can lead to duplicate content issues. So, when you're evaluating these tags, check to see if those links are creating new pages on the (which would then be a page that has all the products with the same tag).

If it's creating new pages, then you'll need to check to see if it's creating duplicate content, and how those pages are created (which content appears on the page). If it's low quality content, you'll need to get rid of pages, make sure there's a canonical tag on them, or disallow them from being indexed in the robots.txt file.

phero, according to the Moz Algo Change history, Penguin real-time did roll out a few weeks prior to October 8th. But, as we have heard time and time again form various sources, even Google, that it has continued to roll out. So, I wouldn't be surprised if you were actually hit by a Penguin-related update.

What I would do is take a look again at the site's links to see if there are any links that you need to disavow or get rid of completely. Keep in mind that Penguin isn't just about links, there are other issues that can affect your site's rankings, as well.

DSCarl, taking care of the duplicate content that the site appears to be generating is a big deal. So it definitely needs to be fixed--and that's good that you've identified it.

Ideally, you really do need to be able to canonical the sizes of the dress, for example, to the product page, which is "Green Lace Maxi Dress", assuming that you will have a unique page (along with a unique product description) written for the Green Lace Maxi Dress, which would be different than, say, a Red Lace Maxi Dress.

There are generally two ways to deal with duplicate content like this. One way is to deal with it using canonical tags. But before we had the canonical tag, we certainly did have duplicate content--and we dealt with it using the robots.txt file. You can deal with this issue with a canonical tag or robots.txt.

With the robots.txt file, you would need to identify which pages (for example by looking at your URL parameters) and stop the search engines from indexing URLs with certain parameters in them. This is pretty easy to do if you understand your site structure, your parameters in your URLs (or how you have those set up in folders in the URLs), and can add those to the robots.txt file. Using the robots.txt file sounds like it would be a cheaper option for you (rather than spending $1,000 on plugins or add-ons to your CMS).

Alternatively, the canonical tag is the way to go if you can get it to work properly. Oftentimes if it's not working properly you can contact the developer of the plugin or add-on and see if they'll help you install it or get the settings right so that it works properly on your site.

Either way, it's definitely an issue that you need to deal with, as it will have a dramatic effect on your site's rankings. The canonical tag option is probably preferred if you can get it to work properly, as all of the "link juice" and other "credit" will be passed onto the page you're canonicaling "to".

Marcus, I know this is frustrating. I've checked several things, and looked at many of the possibilities that you've already brought up. I don't have access to the Google Search Console, so I cannot comment about any of that data. I'm assuming that you don't have a manual action on the site or any other messages from Google.

What I've seen in the past is issues with schema markup, especially when it comes to reviews and how they're handled on sites. I'm not saying that this is the issue--but I've seen issues that Google has had with these (especially because there is the word "hidden" there in the code). So, you might look into that some more.

The issue could also be related to links--look at the links to the site's home page to see if there is an issue with low quality links pointing to that page or other unnatural links.

If someone has copied the page, added a canonical tag, and then added a "meta noindex tag" to their page, it's possible that they could have taken your page out of the index. This has happened before.

Godard, that's a good question. What I recommend is that you look at each link individually and determine if that link has been created naturally or in a spammy way. If it's a legitimate link, on a real business's website, then the link should be okay. But, if the link was created in order to try to manipulate Google's rankings then you should disavow it.

Many sites get links just because they're ranking well--and that's typical. It doesn't mean that you necessarily have to disavow them or try go get them removed.

If you are using Moz's Open Site Explorer to see the Domain Authority and Page Authority of the site linking to you, then that would be a way to judge the quality of the site linking to you. If the site linking to you is, in fact, very low quality because it doesn't have a lot of good links pointing to it, then the site's Domain Authority and Page Authority will be low.

When disavowing and working on getting links removed, take a look at Google's Webmaster Guidelines and keep them in mind--if the link wouldn't pass their guidelines, then you should disavow it.

Ben, it sounds like it should work--but there are preferred methods that I would try before you use nofollow. Ideally, you should use the canonical tag on those pages, and not the nofollow tag. If someone were to link to one of those pages (sorting options), then you wouldn't get any credit passed onto the main page of the category. Using a canonical tag accomplishes what you're trying to do, and has greater benefits in the long run.

Another option would be to get rid of the sorting options entirely, and not allow anyone to sort them (and remove the links to those sorting options, as well. If the sorting options don't exist, then there won't be any duplicate content generated.

Sean and Logan are right... if you properly redirect http URLs to https URLs on your site, you generally should not lose any search engine rankings as long as you're moving (and redirecting) on the same domain name.

A couple of things to watch out for, though, that can cause a site to lose rankings if not done properly:

• verify all versions of the site in Google Search Console (http://, http://www, https:// and https://www)

• crawl your own site and change ALL URLs on the site, even references to image files and external files such as .js files, if you're using absolute and not relative URLs.

• set up only one redirect (multiple redirects can cause issues). Make sure the site doesn't redirect from http:// to http://www and then from http://www to https://www..

• make sure your SSL certificate is set up properly (it's easy to screw it up so it gives errors if not set up properly).

Taylorw, you mention the number of times the keyword is mentioned on the page, 6 times... which really has very little to do with search engine rankings anymore. Generally speaking, keyword density and how many times a keyword is mentioned on a page is not a major factor now.

You alluded to links, and you're right, there is a good chance that your search engine rankings have changed due to the Penguin update that recently occurred. It could still be other factors, though.

I wouldn't think necessarily that it's your competitor pushing you down--it could be, in fact, that your site's rankings went down because of certain links that you have that have been devalued, dropping your rankings. Without specific knowledge about your URL(s), there's not much anyone can do to give you more specific advice.

I would, though, take a careful look at all of the links pointing to your website, especially looking for low quality links that may need to be removed and/or disavowed.

mamadoux, duplicate pages on an ecommerce site (and on all sites, for that matter), can really have a devastating effect on search engine rankings and overall visibility. I would definitely make this a priority, as you need to do something to take care of this issue. There are a few options.

First, I would see if you can properly implement canonical tags on the duplicate pages. This will tell the search engines that you know that the pages are duplicates--and they should pass on the "credit" over to the main page (the one you're canonicaling to).

Another option would be to use your robots.txt file to disallow indexing of certain pages on your site, the ones that are duplicates.

There are standard ways in Shopify to make the canonical tags work--and they go in the 'head' of each page in the code.

Gabriel, the "readmore" URL is going to be the first URL that Google indexes, as that URL is typically on the "main blog page" of your blog. Since you update that page on a regular basis (by adding more posts) and the page has been around for a while, Google monitors that page and then updates it fairly quickly.

It takes more time for the blog post itself to get indexed, and socializing the post (such as Tweeting the URL) will get it indexed faster than just waiting for Google to crawl. There are a lot of factors that Google uses in order to determine indexing speed and pages that they add to the index, though.

Since you're using "read more", though, that is a good thing--generally you won't run into duplicate content issues because only a snippet of the post is on the site's main blog page (and category pages, etc.) and not the full blog post. So, that's a good thing.

Neil, the others are right--you should first show the full content and not hide any of the content on the page like you're doing. Depending on the size of the content, though, you might consider why you're hiding the content in the first place, as you might need to create more pages on your site for that content. Adding the content to new pages on the site might be good for your users, and certainly will fix your problem.

When considering the content and indexing, though, if the content is in the page source code then it will be indexed. Google does know if it's hidden, though, as Googlebot, Google's crawler, is essentially a version of Google Chrome.

Roy, this is definitely a complex task--which should take careful planning and organization. The steps that are outlined in the link that you provided is a good start, but that's only a small part of what needs to be done .There are a lot of sub-tasks that need to be taken care of in between those larger tasks.

When it comes to moving site A to B, there is no site C involved--so just think about it as if you're moving site A to C and then B to C. Or, you could also first think about combining both sites and rather than moving site A to B you can choose the best content on each and then just move them to site C.

What's important, though, is to figure out which content and pages are duplicated on both sites and then choose the best page(s) and move those to site C. There will be content that's essentially not on both sites, so those can just be moved. The key is to spend plenty of time organizing the content and deciding which content can go away, which needs to be moved, which needs to be combined, and soforth.

There is one major step that's missing in that other list, which is to use verify all sites (http and https, as well as http://www and https://www) in Google Search Console, set up those 301 redirects, and use the Google Change of Address tool to tell Google that the site's moved.

There is also a mention of rel canonical, and since the sites are moving entirely, canonical tags won't be appropriate to use. You'll need to use 301 Permanend Redirects to move the content from one site to another, especially since site A and B won't exist anymore (they'll be redirected).

Ben, Tom is right. Having both versions out there can lead to duplicate content issues, especially if the site is linking to both versions of the site (which tends to happen). The best option is to make EVERY page on the site HTTPs, and move completely away from HTTP in its entirety. You should set up 301 permanent redirects so that all HTTP pages get redirected to HTTPs.

Don't forget to verify the HTTPs version of the site in Google Search Console, and if you have done anything with the Disavow Tool you'll want to upload a new disavow file for HTTPs, as well.

Overall, if you are going to translate your website, it really should be translated by a human rather than an API. There are certain ways things should be translated and written that an API just cannot do properly. It's more of a user experience and readability issue than anything else.

It sounds as if the screaming frog crawling issue isn't related to the translation issue--it is a crawling issue. You may want to see if you can crawl much slower, which is a setting in screaming frog.

Donald, when it comes to local SEO, we typically recommend making sure that you first have to local citations taken care of--and then focusing on the content on the website. The Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) should be consistent across the board.

You can manage the local citations, submissions, fixing of duplicates, etc. yourself manually, or you can use one of the services out there, such as Moz Local, Yext, Advice Local, etc..

Then, as far the on-site issues are concerned, schema.org markup is a must on the site, as well.

It sounds as if you are already handling the content on the site, so continue with that. But the missing link is the local citations and local listings, which sounds like the missing piece here.

Hi Rillik, that's a good question. Since you have already established a brand, I wouldn't go create a new brand. Your current customers, even though they know you online, are familiar with your first brand. It would take time to create the new brand and get it established.

The best option would be to use your current brand and current URL (domain name), and add a section to that current site. If you wanted to separate the in-store pickup, then I recommend setting up a subdomain on your current domain/URL. For example, instore.domain.com or store.domain.com or cityname.domain.com (i.e., Dallas.domain.com).

Taking the time to create a new brand and establish that new brand is not really a good idea--you should capitalize on the brand that you have already established.

Reyzer, there really is no risk when you move from http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com on the same domain. If you were to move from one domain name to another, that would be different--and you'd want to use Google's Change of Address tool to tell them that you're moving from one domain name to another.

But, when you  move from one subdomain to another subdomain (which you are doing in your case), there is NO loss as long as you properly implement 301 Permanent Redirects on the pages. Google has been very public about this, and as long as you move using a 301 redirect and it's on the same domain name, there is NO loss whatsoever.

The same goes for moving from http:// to https:// as well, as it's the same domain name.

Nikki, if you hide the unsuitable places from the Moz crawler, you'll be also hiding them from other search engine crawlers, such as Googlebot and Bingbot. So, when it comes to duplicate content, we typically recommend using canonical tags in order to tell the search engines (and crawlers like the Moz crawler) that the content is duplicate. This way the pages are essentially still recognized, but their "link juice" and any other "value" is passed to the page you're canonicaling "to".

Generally speaking, these types of schemes don't work, as Google is quite aware of people trying to do this. With the latest Google algorithm updates in the past few years, we've seen it become tougher and tougher for black hat SEO or gray hat SEO to be successful by trying to manipulate clicks, etc. and faking traffic.

We are aware of other techniques that have been manipulating Google suggest, though, and while that doesn't specifically influence rankings, it can lead to people searching for keywords that they wouldn't normally search for.

Donnleath, I wouldn't worry too much about this. In fact, Google has been rewriting title tags for about 3 or 4 years, now.

Google, for whatever reason, has decided to rewrite your title tag for you if the one you're using better matches the actual search query being used by the searcher. It's quite possible that if your home page, for example, ranks for one search query they will rewrite it but for another search query they won't rewrite it.

Google will use, from time to time, your brand name, company name, and even elements of your site's navigation to rewrite your title tag. I've seen them take internal links from a site's navigation and breadcrumb trail and use those words in the title tag.

In your case, what you need to decide is if the title tags that Google is rewriting are better or 'worse' for your searchers. If they're worse, then you might consider looking at your site's navigation and breadcrumb trail to see if there's something that you can fix on your site to maybe influence Google to rewrite them another way.

If you see that Google is rewriting ALL of those title tags, though, on all pages, then you might want to take a look at your site's title tags and see if they do need to be rewritten, taking what Google is suggesting, into account.