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I am thinking of two possibilities:

1. Googlebot may see 302 instead of 301

2. 301 redirect might have been implemented recently

if you manage this domain, please post additional details for digging further.

If newly created inner page and home page target the same keyword then definitely it will be an issue.

Whereas internal links with different anchor texts will be helpful.

Noindex will take out the pages from the index of search engines. This will impact your traffic if your pages are already ranked.

As long as the category pages have different content, you will be fine. No need to remove them from the index unless you have specific requirement to do so.

For some reason, if you want only the first page to be ranked then go with the pagination hints which will consolidate your link value to the first page and most likely the first page will come up in the search result.

Note: Bing didn't officially endorse this practice and may be on its way.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

As long as the article is more interactive, I don't see any problem. Most linked vs. more valued links will be an another discussion point.

Articles of the other types like the following also can be explored:

1. DIY - do it yourself

2. Creative ideas - e.g., Creative Christmas makeovers

You said as the old URLs can not be redirected.

Then why don't you try for canonical implementation in the important pages to avoid losing link authority that  might have built over the years naturally.

The rest of the URLs can be blocked through GWT using parameters. Since you have new version of site, you may want to concentrate only on the new pages. If the old pages are not redirected, anyway you are going to be benefited.

I would suggest to go with canonical wherever possible and URL parameters only as a last option.

Note: To have canonical, pages need to have more similarities

Check how you are getting these pages.

Robots.txt is not an ideal solution. If Google finds pages in other places, still these pages will be crawled.

Normally print pages won't have link value and you may no index them.

If there are pages with session ids or campaign codes, use canonical if they have link value. Otherwise no index will be good.

There won't be any issue. But you need to check with system admin if your server could be able to handle thousands of redirects. Most of the time, reducing duplicates from the current site and using regular expression for 301 redirects will reduce the number of 301 redirects considerably.

Step 1: Use robots.txt to block Google bot  crawling directories of your site

Step 2: Once you've blocked crawler access to the directory, use Google webmaster tools to remove directory URL from Google index

You need to avoid internal competition while selecting keywords for the internal pages.

It is unavoidable using the same word for the home page to give overall idea about the site to users and search engines.

I would suggest a couple of steps to rank your preferred page for a specific keyword:

• checking anchor texts of internal and external links. "Yoga mat" page to get link for the anchor text "yoga mat".

• usage of keyword in the URL and position of keyword in the title

• checking usage of keywords in the headline, image alt tag and image title

Answers to your questions:

1. Identify the top traffic driving keywords to your site. You may use them in the home page title but don't acquire links for the home page using these keywords which may develop internal competition with your home page and internal pages.

2. Title length is very limited. So use the space appropriately.

Canonical will help to remove duplicate issues and also to consolidate your link values. I didn't see any issue with cross domain implementation.

If you add "noindex" to any of these pages, you won't get any link credit.

There won't be any penalty if 404 pages are redirected to other pages. At the same time Google prefers to see 404 error for pages that are not available.

Couple of steps may reduce 404s:

1. Check on page / internal links if they are working URLs and update them with valid URLs

2. If you are linking your pages from different site, check the URLs used

3. If you are using free or paid directories, paid campaigns etc. check if the URLs are valid

Syndication tag can be used if you are not worried about your pages in Google news.

You may also use "noindex" or "canonical" if you want to play a very safe game. But as you know, your pages won't be indexed.

If you mention the content source at prominent places, you will be O.K.

Example:

In title you may say as "....event by ........."

In the body, you may say as "...thanks to .........."

As long as the overall percentage of duplicate content in your site is in very reasonable level and you link back to content source, you won't find any problem.

Google clarified that content duplication alone will not lead to negative impact.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/duplicate-content-due-to-scrapers.html

Keywords placed closer to start of H1 and Title will help to have better SEO value.

Matt Cutts says as we can go with any density as long as the content reads natural. Also the recent Google Penguin update penalizes sites for keyword stuffing. So it is advisable to use keywords only at appropriate places.

Since you can edit HTML, adding canonical on your homestead  pages would be able to avoid duplicate issues. In addition, canonical helps to consolidate link values to preferred page (your new sub domain page).

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

Let me know if you need more details.

Blog pages have more value than the knowledge section static pages. Also blog posts and knowledge section contents should have different tones. From user perspective, normal users will like to read blogs instead of knowledge section which used to attract serious users.

So blending both will be the right approach.

I assume that old and new sub domains are different (sub1.example.com and sub2.example.com).

You will lose historical link values if you delete files from the current sub domain/homestead.

I recommend you to retain the current sub domain/homestead as long as possible.

If main and duplicate sites are already indexed then I would suggest implementing canonical element on the duplicate sites with the main site URLs as preferred URLs.

New pages can be blocked by adding "noindex" on the page.

All the best !