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Yea the article tag can help. It shows the original page. However note that this probably best for
blogs, forum post, news story, and or comment.
The canonical tag is for more internal websites and primarily popular for blogs. When you say satellite pages, are you referring to inner pages of your website or other pages on other websites? Curious.
Hi Juile,
301s are the only way to protect your back-link profile built towards your brand. I did it for a huge project I directed with Leads dot com. We are still looking to 301 redirect one other website that is also going away. Submit A Website dot com has years of authority. Although this is a very large site example; it should serve as a rule for any other viewers of this thread.
Also to expand on the duplicate content issue. If you wanted to take an extra precaution, just make sure there are no duplicate pages within your website. You can use "Screaming Frog" (desktop software, free to use) to look at duplicate content within your website. Aside from this, you should be in great shape.
I also see having a website managed by a 3rd party; very frustrating. However, tell them to setup a .htaccess file and setup your mod-rewrite (for whatever server your site is running on) and give them a list of pages throughout your website that you want redirected.
You can use gsite crawler to crawl your website and then from there you can dump the data into excel so you can provide neat data to your 3rd party developer and they should be able to help.
If you need additional help, just message me. 
It won't hurt you in normal circumstances; however in a 100 link rule, I would certainly avoid it. Best practices has taught me that any other cloned link will be skipped over and will not add any additional weight to a particular page. It would be more for usability score if anything.
*I would stick to the 100 link rule for each page and be unique with those links.
It certainly can look like this in the eyes of Google. However, if there is no mission or intent to try and scam Google of page rank, then place this tag in your header
and you should be fine.
Also any link juice associated with the page should also follow to your website.
For more info checkout this SEOMOZ post:
To add on here, creating authority to your website comes from siloing your website. Meaning your keyword research and knowledge on certain subjects will guide you in setting up many pages in your "site" that can help in passing link juice to your most top-seeded-keyword-directories. As a result, the deeper you have pages that cover specific content of a certain category, the better your authority and page rank juice will develop. So worrying about your contact page should not be a huge concern.
You absolutely do not want to no follow any of your own pages.
I found this page within SEO MOZ that answers the link juice question:
"Will this pass 100% of the link juice from a given page to another? More or less than a 301 redirect does now? Note that Google's official representative from the web spam team, Matt Cutts, said today that it passes link juice akin to a 301 redirect but also noted (when SEOmoz's ownGillian Muessig asked specifically) that "it loses no more juice than a 301," which suggests that there is some fractional loss when either of these are applied."
Add this to the top of your pages that you feel have the same content somewhere else on the website.
As far as the backlinks, I am not sure how that will pan-out. In theory they should still flow. I'll have to double check and make sure. However, duplicate content is a big issue. I deal with it on a national level and it is a total nightmare, especially when the site is very large-dynamically produce by a cms that is not seo friendly.
Just 301 redirect whichever website has the most authority. You can manually make all the pages that the site with the most authority has and create a .htaccess file and then setup 301 redirects to the new and permanent location (or to the new website). Doing this will help you save time that you put into your "baby" and ensure the new baby get's that authority. As far as duplicate content, make sure you remove the pages from Google's index. To do that you'll need a Google Webmaster Tools account.
I am not totally sure if it is a big difference. However, my Dr. House side to my brain still wants to focus on the 301s.
The only exception I can think of is if your previous domain violated the EMD Algorithm; exact keywords domain name for a website. I am wondering if Google devalued it and whatever backlinks that were helping your website?!? I am so paranoid about Google's filters...I swear it's like they have rat traps everywhere and when they go out to look at one caught in a specific trap, they audit it for field testing. You could be just unlucky?! Also the keywords you are competing with also would have a big factor if Google randomly sampled your site and audited it??? Any thoughts?
Also do you have a Webmaster Tools account? Google would report any directories that are not found. If they are there this would definitely prove my point of 301s not properly written. If so then click all of them and mark them as fixed and let Google recrawl.
*New websites with no much authority tend to do a Google dance. So if you're site is less than 12 months old or even 2 years old without a huge domain authority it could take a while to rebound.
Looking at this I would definitely say or question the actual .htaccess rewite. It's a little clearer to me that your site lost back-links or page flow. Also the domain rank is an important metric of "authority". This is the stuff related to your website's actual content. Backlinks "deep or inner links" to various pages helps bolster the home page and "domain authority score". So I believe the actual 301 redirect technique is in question.
I know you said you did a redirect in the html files direct. I have never learned or heard of that technique (an example would be great aka markup/code); however, if your website is on an Apache Server, you would need to create .htaccess file and use this code:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^newdomain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Redirect /yourdirectory http://www.newdomain.com/newdirectory // for any other unquie content you want to redirect manually
*this is the way to do it, you can always Google or YouTube a video to show how to setup a .htaccess file on your server or on your cpu and then some special settings in filezilla (or whatever ftp software you use) so you can see the file. In FTP software .htaccess files are hidden, so you would create it and go nuts trying to locate the actual file. Filezillia I know has a feature or setting to unhide it so you can transfer it to the route of your server.
Let me know if this works!
Hi,
I am sure you have heard of Google Penguin Algorithm that rocked many of the webmasters that use paid links to try and connect their websites/blogs to certain keyword terms.
Don't be afraid to pay for links to high-end directories like Yahoo.Com, Business.Com or any of the directories SEOMOZ list. Also try to do only a few every 90 days.
If you want great traction to your website, you need to start a content algorithm. Meaning you need to do some research and determine what pain-points your potential target audience has and start figuring out a conversation you need to have with them. That means both implicit and explicit thoughts.
Build out a frame-work of content first and then come up with a plan for syndicating the content.
Find communities or follow experts in your niche and reach-out to them to host or sample your content to start generating natural links.
Overall to answer your question. You can do paid links. However, do paid links of quality. Directories, Press Releases. Vary your anchor terms and do not a ton of paid links every 90 days.
I would suggest using Majestic SEO to look at your website's overall trust for links coming into the website.
They have a great graph that shows the "trust flow" and "citation flow" of your link profile. The closer to the orgin point the better those links are and chances are Google will trust those links voting for your site.
There is also on-page seo too. Make sure you audit each website ranking over you in link profile and on page seo. Things like too many characters in title, meta description, meta keyword matter! On-page-content and or keyword density matter too; you don't want keyword density higher than 3% (if you're using static type of content), this too will be a make or break difference in where you sit in Google's SERP!
Also the delivery of actual content has a lot to do with were you'll sit for certain keyword phrases. The more organic and useful the page to the user; naturally your social signals will increase, organic links will increase and thus stronger more stable ranks for certain phrases keywords.
*In SEO today the best thing you can do is study what your competitors offer in content on the page and beat'em. Syndicating your content to places where people can share you're great content or product (whatever) is really the best way to direct your overall efforts!
Add this to the top of your pages that you feel have the same content somewhere else on the website.
As far as the backlinks, I am not sure how that will pan-out. In theory they should still flow. I'll have to double check and make sure. However, duplicate content is a big issue. I deal with it on a national level and it is a total nightmare, especially when the site is very large-dynamically produce by a cms that is not seo friendly.
I believe user reviews to work for local audience targeting. You can certainly add user reviews and ratings with Yelp and various others. I know a few engineers who use SENUKE to help manage creating the accounts and submitting reviews.
However, I would not recommend this as a stratagem to rely on for strong link signals. Remember last year's algorithms was targeting too much of the same link schemes to rank. I would include this in your SEO but balance it with a full content algorithm to help your brand target your customer's pain points. Sharing and syndicating this content will help create the social signals, which will in return have Google trust your full link-foot-print!
Also if you do this, try and get on a 0 to 90 schedule and only do it once or twice!
Hi,
As long as the content is not the same, you should be okay. Google will see them both as sister websites.
Avoid going after exact anchor match keywords that you might be thinking of targeting. Google came out with EMD (exact match domain algorithm) that is targeted to downgrade websites using this tactic to rank high in the search verticle. Also try to avoid .info, .org, .biz unless you plan on branding a community like SEOMoZ; hopefully this make sense!
I found this page within SEO MOZ that answers the link juice question:
"Will this pass 100% of the link juice from a given page to another? More or less than a 301 redirect does now? Note that Google's official representative from the web spam team, Matt Cutts, said today that it passes link juice akin to a 301 redirect but also noted (when SEOmoz's ownGillian Muessig asked specifically) that "it loses no more juice than a 301," which suggests that there is some fractional loss when either of these are applied."
**1.) You want to check first for duplicate content issues. **
*SEO MOZ has a great tool suite here that ran a full analysis of the website from multiple angles.
**2.) You want to study their link profile and anchor text. **
If they were hit hard (not due to duplicate content), then their website probably got smashed to bits by Google Penguin algorithm. This is an over-optimize-algorithm that Google used to destroy websites that had thousands of links using exact anchor matches.
*You want to use brand anchor text and mix up your anchors when link building
*Research link prospecting and anchor text diversity
*Use majestic seo or ahrefs to study your link profile and determine if the site engaged in this damaging link building tactics.
*You certainly can try to disavow links through Google Webmaster Tools, but I don't think it is a good use of time.
*Focus on high quality directories (tons of curated list online just search), free directories, press releases using the website brand name anchor text
3.) General Marketing Persona Map - Learn Who Your Target Consumers Are
Also user site bounce rates can really become a sign of website that has worthless content. I would asses the goals of the website, product, and services and start with a general marketing persona map for surfers/customers. This is huge because it will lead to a better conversation algorithm to help you build out a marketing plan to reach your target audience at each stage of their though process and decision making.
**4.) Plan your content map and **strategy
You need to setup a schedule for custom content creation, on page call to actions, and a syndication schedule to help generate social signals of engagement to your website.
Also your blog need to establish Authorship and put a face behind the content you produce.
After doing this you need to create ideas for link bait opportunities like guest posting and info-graphics if possible.
*To do all of this, I suggest getting organized and setup a team of people within your organization to help you with each stage of the project.
This will keep you busy for a while! Hope this helps. Don't be afraid to Google the concepts I mentioned if you don't understand. This is how I learned back in 2004!
Yea you can certainly do that. The only case where I see websites being on the same server are unique things like directories and other Internet utility websites to keep cost low.
Using C-class ips can get very expensive if you have a big network or plan for dynamic content on separate domains.
The only time I would use different domains is if the content is so different or you're content strategy is targeting something completely different to engage users in implicit or explicit conversation. You can use this angle to start a massive content algorithm system to funnel people into your main website. This is good tatic for white-hate-content development and conversion building. Hopefully this makes sense!
Flat site architecture shows that any directory one step from the root shows extreme importance; so essentially you can link to any inner page in any other directories.
For example: USA
Jacksonville Atlanta Mississippi New York Los Angeles Ohio Las Vegas
As you can see in this model, this is natural. But it shows the flat site architecture I was referring to. Any of the cities show great value to the home page. You want to include any unique data in these directories. Essentially any file can be made important, so you don't have to worry about specific keywords you want to rank for not have an equal opportunity. You don't have to worry about one folder on your server having more importance over another.
You can Google "flat architecture"
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/a-flat-architecture-in-practice
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-flat-site-architecture
You can certainly should focus on your content algorithm and start planning your linking building profile.
You Heading Tags also know as your h1 and h3 tags are important for on page seo.
Especially the H1 tag. You should probably define a css class for styling because this tag can be big, bulky, and ugly; however, Google uses this as a large signal for what a web-page is about. The title tag is also the other most vital signal and it should match the h1 (I mean the keyword phrase you are targeting).
I emphasize everyday to internal departments where I work about the importance of on-page-seo. In competitive search ninches, these on page scores and organicness (if that is a word) will matter in stable rankings.
Also where you have your h1 should be above the fold (nerd jargon), right under the top nav. The h1 followed by a simple paragraph that has useful content and one or two links to direct users to targeted pages or directories.
Hope this helps.