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i use them as well and have not seen any issue.

hi -
i've been through this and can offer a few suggestions:
1.) see if your server can use some sort of rewrite program like isapi rewrite. you can create code to have the page rewrite the url to what you want.
2.) consider moving to a new ecommerce platform (scary, i know) and then using 301's from your old stuff to your new stuff. any ecommerce vendor that is not using seo friendly product url's in 2011 does not deserve your business. if they aren't doing that chances are they may also be behind on such things as pci compliance, security, and general features.

good luck!

hi -
i've been through this and can offer a few suggestions:
1.) see if your server can use some sort of rewrite program like isapi rewrite. you can create code to have the page rewrite the url to what you want.
2.) consider moving to a new ecommerce platform (scary, i know) and then using 301's from your old stuff to your new stuff. any ecommerce vendor that is not using seo friendly product url's in 2011 does not deserve your business. if they aren't doing that chances are they may also be behind on such things as pci compliance, security, and general features.

good luck!

so your saying that:
beta.olddomain.com  will go to: olddomain.com
existing content at olddomain.com will go to  newdomain.com

if that's correct it may be a bit over my head. perhaps someone else can chime in?

it sounds like you are trying to preserve link juice two ways, which i don't think you can do .  perhaps a staggered launch that will allow the 301 to redirect the content, and then a relaunch via the beta content later (no 301s)?

hi Kyle,
all the domain forwarding sounds kind of dangerous to me.

i've done a few site redesigns and can offer the following advice:
1.) if it ain't broke, don't move it.

2.) if you can develop your new site via a local server, or a cheap host (set up a pw so only you can see it while you develop), i would do that.  again, just moving domains seems risky.

301 redirects communicate to the search engines that you are permanently redirecting your content to your new site. you want to consider doing a 301 for ALL content/urls. this will help preserve rankings. a lot of times you can use a program like rewrite to handle this if you have tons of urls.

your best bet is to get all your "new" content ready to go, live, and then 301 redirect to it at your new domain. if that is happening on THE SAME domain (old content -> new content ; same domain), you want to 301 redirect your old url's to their equivalent new urls.

hope that helps! :>)

hey justin -

try importing it into microsoft excel or google docs spreadsheet, that should make it quite a bit more readable. if that doesn't work you may be able to export it from one of those 2 programs in a more readable format. :>)
thanks

dan

read up on "keyword cannibalization" - it will give you a better view of how you can compete with yourself on keywords.

best of luck!
dan

So you are optimizing 10-20 keywords each with those expansions? if the base keyword is the same you would probably want to minimize this and sectionalize where-ever you can.

ex:
grapes section
   free grapes subsection
   how to order grapes online subsection

a warning, if you're building sections on those expansions individually you are going to have a tough time building content and earning relevance as you are kind of competing with your own keywords, against SERPS that are targeted with relevant content.

you may be better off just targeting "free grapes" in 1 section with some keyword mix in the content and having 1 good relevant page instead of 10 low quality pages.

hope that helps.

dan

I've been through this a few times, and as per Maximise, make sure those 301 permanent redirects are 1.) correct and 2.) in place. That will make the whole process 100% easier.

Be prepared for some bumps. If your site gets cached everyday you will work through them faster than if it only gets cached every 5 days - 2 weeks. Your less relevant pages may take a little longer to get re-indexed. BUT, seeing as how you have set up 301's you should be fine!

Dan

Sites have Authority because they are relevant.

Example:
Topic: Bee viruses

site#1: New York Times - highly authoritative site about all sorts of news posts a story about Bee viruses and links to your Bee virus website

site#2  Martha's Bee Virus fan site - has 2 articles about her part time hobby of  Bee viruses, but is new to the community and hasn't really built her links. A link from her will certainly be relevant, but is she an authority yet? Nope.

dan

Mike,

How many keywords are you optimizing for?  If we're talking 100's/1000's, I would personally tend to lean towards pointing towards the most relevant content on your site. This will up "time on site" and lower "bounce rate" because the content the user just clicked the anchor text of will be more relevant than pushing them to your home page and having to search allover again. How many times have you clicked a random link only to be pushed to a home page and thought, "Well hell, I'm not going to bother!"

You should have a base set of "core" keywords you can target for your root domain.

Hope that helps,

dan

Eric,

Every page is another opportunity to be relevant on a given subject. If you have a limited budget I would suggest determining the top 25 pages (or 200 - depending on your time/budget), building those up, and using their optimization successes as justification for a larger budget.

Nothing wrong with starting small.

Dan

a 301 permanent redirect (as ninjamarketer mentioned) will work. if that's too technical you can also take a look at adding a canonical link to your default.asp.

the canonical link will not remove the "default.asp", but it will communicate to google and the SE's that the correct url for this content is at http://www.search-engine-upgrade.com

in the header put:

< link rel="canonical" href="http://search-engine-upgrade.com"/>

here is google's page on this.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394

you may also want to check your server settings. sometimes they will use a default homepage or configure the 301 for you.

:>) good luck!

dan

a lot of rewrites use similar rules. not sure if this will help but:
http://www.isapirewrite.com/docs/

mentions  using "CL" (Case Lower)

use whatever your search analytics tell you drives the most traffic that people search on. in most cases this will be just the product name, with the sku somewhere on the product page or in the description.

i don't believe seomoz submits any urls on your behalf. good there.  as to "check rankings", yes, i guess technically this would violate terms of service.

you could check rankings manually but that's going to eat up the same, if not more, amount of computing resource (and way more time!).  the results rankings are coming off of seomoz's crawler though, not your sites.

perhaps he/she needs to try a browser cache clear and is currently see old results?

if it's a features overhaul, update each feature progressively over a few days or weeks.

if it's a total overhaul, 301 to all equivalent pages is the way to go. you shouldn't need an "under construction" in that case so long as all your content is ready.  the 301 permanent redirect will let google/spiders/crawlers know that this is the new, most important content.

hi,

not 100% sure what you are asking, but with that said, in most cases you are not putting any seomoz "code" on your website. seomoz's tools & website may crawl your website and offer suggestions and data on it in order to optimize that EXISTING code.

perhaps if you have 10 crawlers running at the same time it would slow down your site response, which could affect rankings, but as far as i know seomoz only crawls once a week on day listed in your campaign homepage

have you checked your robots.txt file? have you checked yahoo's site explorer (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/) ?

Hey Netminds,

did you update any code for the page(s) on that keyword? sometimes google will knock you down, and then after a spider cache or two it will return to normal (assuming no massive difference).

hope it returns! :>)