Hi Nakul

Here is my stab at question 1, my methodology is trial and error so if any guru's want to take another shot at it please do so. Here is a nice 301 reference page lots of examples

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.)_red-widgets-cid-1234.html$ www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-4567.html [R=301]
#Example 2
RewriteRule ^(.)_red-widgets-cid-1234+10.html$ www.domain.com/red-widgets-cid-6789.html [R=301]
#Example 3
RewriteRule ^(.*)_red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html$ www.domain.com/american-red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html [R=301,L]

We use ^ to denote start of string

We use $ to denote end of string

We use (.*)_ to look for a keyword. In the examples above we are looking for what each page name has in common

We use [R=301,L] for the Last rewrite, previous rules just use [R=301]

One thing that (maybe) needed is escaping the +signs in the string so like example 3 would be

^(.*)_red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5.html$ www.domain.com/american-red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html

Also I may missed a wildcard on some of these....

^(.)_red-widgets-cid-1234+10+5(.).html$ www.domain.com/american-red-widgets-cid-6789+5.html

Question 2:

Canonical to self canonical tag is okay.
This = That and That = That ..........Okay
This = That and That = The ..........Not Okay

Hope that puts you on track

Hello,

Google certainly looks at some register information. Its been long known factors like domain age, and length of ownership have some bearing. About 8 years ago Google became a domain register which now allows them a better level of access to the domain whois information. One may also deduce that with the Panda and Penguin updates seeing Google cracking down on link rings, spam sites, that Google is certainly using this information.

I laid out that information for you so I could say this. Even though Google may know you are the same owner of multiple domains, it is very unlikely that you'll receive any sort of extra penalty for operating 2 sites from the same server. However, remember that page rank and domain authority relates to linking C-Blocks, and being on the same server would reduce that link metric by 1 domain.

Hope that makes sense

Hi Larry, that was a great question. This is why I love SEOMoz.org, there is always something to learn. I had never thought seriously about this question before, as I web developer I just figured it if I commented out html I didn't have to worry about it being crawled. After reviewing the responses I can see there may be a tad more to it then that.

Good question, good responses.

I wanted to expand on what I said earlier as I feel I may have missed the nuance of the question. If the purpose of the rollover text is to enhance the user experience, then in that sense it not only is good for user but also 100% safe from an SEO perspective. Examples; tabbed content (product reviews, specs, manufacturer info ect.), or expanding images and displaying some captions. The purpose of these sorts of things are to specifically add to the user experience and give them as much information as possible.

My first response I focused on more of what was said then what was meant. My original post still stands if the purpose of the rollover text is specifically designed only to make search engines rank you higher.

Hi Samantha,

I really like the way your developers think. It is very very important that as developers they are thinking with SEO in mind. I personally don't think there is much if any risk if implemented in way that is not underhanded, that is because search engines are not yet at the point of being able to compare "visible" vs "invisible" text. That being said, the point of putting the text in rollovers is specifically for search engines and not a sanctioned tag, it is then in essence, trying to trick the search engine to ranking you higher. By sanctioned tags, I mean things like h1, h2, alt text, metas etc... that is an important distinction because those tags are there to help the search engines and recognized as such, anything that deviates from that distinction that purposely tries to lead a search engine is black hat.

In summary, I agree with your developers kudos.

Hi Simon

BobGW last a very similar question last week in which elicited some nice responses from the community.

My advice is it is not hurtful to follow link them as long as we talking a few sites, but I would not do it site-wide like in the footer. Rather an example of a site we own which only links to the family sites on 1 page (where it made the most sense).

Hope that helps,

Don

Basically yes, if you were to come up under the query "Wood Desk" google would highlight Wood Desks .

I don't know that anybody can give you a concrete answer. I can say that having a plural and non plural keyword will not outright cause any penalty as our website uses this strategy for some of our pages. These pages have been ranked as far back as 50+ and over the last year have found their way to top 10 results.

In your example the more daming issue would be the repetitive "Wood" in the title then the plural versions. When creating a title tag I find that it is very easy to get caught up in the keywords which is not good, you should focus on clearly and directly describing your page that is after all what the "Title" is for. Further harm can be done by focusing on just a couple keywords as you inadvertently discount long tail keywords, which can be as powerful as keywords you focus on. The best approach is to know your keywords, use them in the title and accurately title your page.

To expand on your example..

Wood Desks - Home Student Office Desk designs by | Furniture Store

This tile has both Wood Desk and Wood Desks as its first 2 keywords, and uses nearly all the remaining characters to include more information about what would be found on this page. I'm also not a fan of ending with Brand / Domain unless it is going to be heavily marketed.

Hope that helps,

Linking to pages in the footer generates more links which dilutes link juice passed to all pages that are linked to. Usually the footer is where non-important SEO pages are located but important pages for customer experience like, accounts / support / contact / privacy / terms of service / legal.

You should always side with the USER EXPERIENCE it should not be frustrating for your users to find what they are looking for. Taking that into consideration you should also keep the links to less important SEO pages sitewide to a minimum and not duplicate your navigation unless it makes sense from a usability standpoint. Other-words don't do it to fill up space.