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Those pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but if there are still sites (either pages within your own site or others) that are linking to any of those pages you will continue to see 404 error codes. I'm working on fixing the same issue on a site that I just started optimizing.

The best thing you can do is a 301 redirect from each of the old .php pages to a similar, relevant page that currently exists on the site. This will fix the 404 codes and also pass any page authority from the old page to the new page that it is being directed to.

Here's some helpful info from Moz on 301 redirects: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

Hope that helps!

I have used both Yext and Moz Local as well as a few others. Moz Local is without-a-doubt the best option. Less expensive, better management dashboard, more control over your listings. Neither services goes through and actually cleans up duplicate or inconsistent listings, but Moz Local does a great job of notifying you of those so that you can handle it. Yext might have improved since I used it last, but we had a terrible time with duplicate listings and Yext was no help at all in finding, claiming and cleaning them up.

I use Moz Local for all of my clients now and highly recommend it. Local listing optimization will always need to have a personal management element to it, but Moz Local does a great job of eliminating as much as the hand-on work as possible. You will not regret making the switch!

Jonathan - I would suggest doing the same thing that Lesley mentioned in order to make sure that you are only disavowing the spam links. You might also want to try dealing with the spammer directly, if possible.

If the links are coming primarily from the same source, you might be able to resolve the issue directly with the spammer. That might be far fetched, but we had a recent issue with spam links on a small scale, from a disgruntled customer of one of our clients. Unfortunately the customer never expressed any frustration to the client, and instead started posting negative reviews, links with negative anchor text, etc. We were actually able to contact the spammer directly, resolve their frustration with the client's product and the spammer actually started doing the complete opposite - changed negative reviews to positive, and it ended better than we could have anticipated.

This might not work for your particular situation, but just thought I would share.

I agree with Cole on this one. If the forum has a legitimate purpose on your site and will benefit the user, then go for it. Google definitely shouldn't punish you for creating the forum, again assuming that the forum isn't just built to act as a home to link spam, and I would expect it to have a positive SEO impact on the site as a whole.

The URL structure of site.com/forum/topic should be beneficially as well. Hope that helps!

Nettv,

You're right, you need to have content to help get the site ranked. Site's that are primarily images or videos can be tough to rank, but there are still things that you can do to help.

As you mentioned, you could definitely include a description of each video with applicable details that will help both search engines and users to know what your site is all about. I hope that helps!

I have had the exact same question. I work primarily with franchise companies that have multiple locations that offer the same services, so this question has been on my mind for a while.

I currently use the same photos for the most part on each of the franchise location's G+ listings, Yelp, CitySearch, etc., without changing the image file names. I have been doing it this way for years and haven't ever seen a negative impact, but would be curious to know if there is potential upside to using unique file names for each image in each location.

Would love to hear what others' opinions are on this topic.

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the feedback. Their reasoning for the new site was that the original site was never able to rank well for their main target search term (and similar variations), so they assumed that creating a site that is completely specific to that search term/service would help with ranking for that search term. I actually agree with that thinking, but there is a definite trade-off. It means time has to be taken away from optimization and up-keep of the original site to build up this brand new website, and I could also see a lot of issues with citations and local search discrepancies between the two sites as well.

I'm waiting on access to analytics and webmaster tools data for both sites, but will definitely use that information before making a final decision on which route to take. Data aside, there are A TON of improvements that can be made to the original site that will make a positive difference.

It's good to hear that your thinking is along the same lines as mine. Overall I'm leaning towards proposing that we stick with the original site and put our efforts towards building that up.

I have read a lot about how it is important to keep URLs as short as possible, but I have also seen first-hand how longer, descriptive URLs have performed really well.

You'll probably get different answers from different people, and I don't know that either is right or wrong. In my opinion the longer URL would be more beneficial, assuming that trail of URLs isn't going to continue on and get too long - /anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses/red/bouquet - you get the idea.

My reasoning behind going with the longer URL structure is because you get the benefit of having both potential keyword search terms, anniversary flowers & dozen roses, in the page URL. Hope that helps!