I just had a quick look on ahrefs.com and your backlinks (well the ones ahrefs have clocked anyway) have dropped by aprox 15% over relatively short timescale (since 20th Jan aprox), but that doesnt really fit your 3 month timescale but thought would mention it just in case

I cant see G+ in your social properties so definately worth developing G+ pers page/authorship and link to your content (if not already) and of course G+ company page and link that to site too

Sorry prob not much help but my 2 cents worth from having very quick look

Thanks but im not looking to close down any accounts por transfer followers etc, purely and simply want to copy a Twitter list from 1 account to another, any ideas how ?

Hi

Does anybody know how to transfer Twitter lists from 1 account to another ?

Twitter says this isnt possible but is anyone aware of any software that can do this (or technique) ?

Both accounts have the same owner

Many Thanks

Dan

If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ?

Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to.

Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ?

I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?

Many thanks Gianluca !!

Thats what i thought originally but getting confised when i read this page:  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

Specifically this bit:

Annotating pages as substantially similar content

Optionally, for pages that have substantially the same content in the same language and are targeted at multiple countries, you may use the rel="canonical" link element to specify your preferred version. We’ll use that signal to focus on that version in search, while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate. For example, you could use this if you have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

And read in conjunction with this article:

http://searchengineland.com/cutting-through-the-confusion-of-googles-guidance-to-multilingual-website-owners-113586

Specifically this bit:

The Effect Of Combining Canonical Tags & Hreflang Tags

Not forgetting that the canonical tags should only be used with content in the same language, when would we use both?

Well firstly, the use of both would involve what I usually call world languages such as English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. These languages are used in many countries and, whilst there are variations between the use of these languages in those countries, the variations are sometimes small.

Additionally, multinational publishers often save costs by using one version of the language for all countries speaking that general language, thus ignoring the regional variations. In other words, for Spain and Mexico, Google is presented with exactly the same content, letter for letter.

The canonical acknowledges that this is the same content. The Hreflang tag identifies which URL should be displayed in different sets of results.

So, in other words, canonical + Hreflang = same content + different URL.

Google knows the content is the same, but displays the correct URL for the Google domain search (e.g. google.com.mx will see the relevant URLs for Mexico displayed in the results).

thanks Istvan

but what about whether its a requirement, or suggested best practice, that if you have tags (say canonical) on one set of duplicate pages then you must also add to the other similar/dupe pages (on original site).

Can you have one but not the other without it causing issues or do you need both to stop duplicate issues ?

Thanks Itsvan, its a good answer and further information! What im really trying to establish though is if its ok to ONLY add canonical & href tags to the US focused subdirectory site ? Do they need to be added to the main site too or can I leave them off (since dont want to geotarget the main site) ? Im confused by wording on google articles/bogs etc on this subject. Since think they say that if you put the tags on a duplicate page you need to also put tags with alternative region/lang tags on the corresponding dupe content page (although i dont want to since want to leave main site free of specific geotargeting). In other words is it a technical requirement/necessity to have tags on both sets of dupe content ?

If you duplicate content onto a sub-folder for say a new US geotargeted site (to target kw spelling differences) and, in addition to GWT geotargeting settings, implement the 'Canonical' and 'Hreflang' tags on these new pages to show G different region and language version (en-us).  Then does the original/main site similar pages also need to have canonical and href tags ?

The main/original sites page I don't really want to target a specific country (although existing signals (hosting etc) will be UK (primary target of main site) but pages show up in other country searches too (which we want).

Im  presuming fine to leave the original/main site as it currently is although wording in google blog/webmaster central articles etc are a bit confusing hence why im asking for anyone elses opinion/input on this.

Also is there are any benefit (or just best practice) to use 'www.example.com/en-us/...' in the subdirectory URL as opposed to just 'www.example.com/us/'

many thanks in advance to any commentators

Sorry 1 more question re my client with the .co.uk who wants to Geo-target content to france.

They do have the .com version of their domain too.  If the site was new I would recommend changing this round so they can geotarget france via the sub-directory on the .com and would still like to but since the site is well established I fear changing from the .co.uk to the .com will lose alot of its existing history/authority/rankings etc etc.

Is this a valid concern or should swapping the site over to sit on the .com, rather than the existing .co.uk, and then 301'ing the .co.uk pages to the .com deal with this ?

Many Thanks

Dan

Many Thanks Hannah !

Cheers

Dan

Thank you all for your helpful comments !!

So to summarise - all fine to go sub-directory route for generic domains like .com, .net etc but if you have country specific domain such as .co.uk then forget it and start afresh with a domain/language/hosting for your target country.

Just to throw a cat amongst the pigeons - if you have a .uk.com domain is that considered as a genuine uk focused tld or a .com ?  So for .uk.com domains can you geo-target using sub-directories since ultimately considered as .com,  or not ?

All Best

Dan