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Hi all, I recently took over an e-commerce start-up project from one of my co-workers (who left the job last week). This previous project manager had uploaded ~2000 products without setting up a robot.txt file, and as a result, all of the product pages were indexed by Google (verified via Google Webmaster Tool). The problem came about when he deleted the entire product database from our hosting service, godaddy and performed a fresh install of Prestashop on our hosting plan. All of the created product pages are now gone, and I'm left with ~2000 broken URL's returning 404's. Currently, the site does not have any products uploaded. From my knowledge, I have to either: canonicalize the broken URL's to the new corresponding product pages, or request Google to remove the broken URL's (I believe this is only a temporary solution, for Google honors URL removal request for 90 days) What is the best way to approach this situation? If I setup a canonicalization, would I have to recreate the deleted pages (to match the URL address) and have those pages redirect to the new product pages (canonicalization)? Alex

Hi all, A confused and frustrated SEO noob needing a little guidance here 😞 I'm a bit lost on how I should conduct my keyword research for a start-up e-commerce site selling dietary supplements (~200 brands and ~2000 SKU's). From my understanding, there are two different types of pages I have to optimize for other than the Homepage & CMS pages: Category pages and product pages. As part of the fundamental on-page optimization, I'm planning to write unique category/product descriptions for better visibility (as well as to avoid duplicate content issues) on SE. Consequently, this process has prompted several questions related to my keyword research. My questions are: How would I determine which keywords to optimize for? How many keywords should I target per product page? per category page? Should I include product / brand name as keywords? The site isn't live yet, but is set to launch in mid-August. Any ideas on how I can conduct my keyword research to be used for category/product level pages? Thanks all.