Hey Jordan!

As Dean said, this would not be a recommended approach as it could create page conflicts, etc.

Just to clarify, are you looking to have ALL url's using this structure (url.com/post-name)? Or just some?

So no /product-cat/some-category/ or anything?

I agree with WilliamKammer. Our team religiously uses the MoZ website migration guide when dealing with site transfers. At best, you can "minimize" the risk. No real way to prevent the dip in traffic or know when it will level out unfortunately.

There is no real need to use all those domains. Build the trust and authority with your primary brand URL. Maybe use "some" others if there is any real value but 500, jeeze!!! That will be a ton of work and I think you'd be spreading yourself too thin.

The best plan of action IMO is to focus on properly optimizing and building the TRUST for the company's branded URL. Forget all that old school "microsite" nonsense

Hey Vanguard Communications!

I don't see why doing this would hurt your sites rankings or be deemed as duplicate in any way.

Since SEO is an "experimental" process (which is why you've heard such conflicting answers on this), my best advice would be to give it a try and see how it plays out. Or as EGOL stated, try adding a few extra words if the page content is too short. Or even add a few extra words to make it differ from the page content. Best of luck to you!

Okay the question is regarding indexing, I should of been more specific.

If we are removing 100 product pages from an ecommerce site because they barely convert (regardless of a nice 404 page) and we cannot transfer the user to a relevant page. Is it a best to leave the pages live? or remove them (404) and block them in the robots.txt file?

Right the questions is regarding crawlability, link juice etc..

What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site?

If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine

A. block it out in the robot.txt

B. let it 404