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I have a client site that displays properties from the MLS. Once these properties sell they're removed from the MLS and they stop showing up on her site. This would result in a 404 error, but right now any property that's not being found is being 301 redirected back to the property page. I see how this makes sense for a user, but Google is saying there's an increase in Soft 404 errors and I've read that this could negatively affect organic traffic. Should I keep the redirect for removed properties or should I have it serve a 404 with a message that the house you're looking for may have sold and link to the property page? Is it better to have Soft 404 errors or 404 errors?

I have my main Google Places / Google+ Local page in Detroit where I've had it for probably 5 years and have 10 5-star reviews. It shows up pretty well in the local listings. I recently moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and while I'm still doing business in Detroit and have an office location, my main location is now Sioux Falls. I've started a new Google+ page here, but it's not doing very well and I don't have many reviews. Which of the following should I do? 1. Create New Page and Leave the Old page where it is Create a new page for Sioux falls and leave the old page in Detroit. It will take some time to build up the new location profile. 2. Change the Address of the Old Page (Detroit) to my new address in Sioux Falls Could I change the address of the old page (Detroit) to my new address in Sioux Falls, then create a new page for Detroit? This would hopefully have my page with all of the reviews, which has been around for awhile, in my new main location and I could create a new page for Detroit. Does anyone have any experience with this? What do you think would be the best approach?

I have a restaurant client that we're setting up with SinglePlatform.com to distribute their menu and make sure all of the restaurant sites have updated information for their business. As part of SinglePlatform's service, they offer a mobile site. Normally we would just create a mobile site and make sure that it's optimized but this client isn't ready to invest in a customized mobile site yet. The mobile site we can get with SinglePlatform is very simple. Call, Menu, Address, View Full Website, Photos, General Info. I know this would make it much easier for mobile users to find information and contact them but it's not mobile best practices. Whatever main page they land on would redirect them to the home page of the mobile site (i.e. not a 1 to 1). We also won't have any Google Analytics information for this site. The question comes down to usability or SEO? I'm leaning toward the mobile site for now and sell them on a customized solution later. I guess I'm just looking for some verification or any insight. ZRVbARv

I have a client that has multiple apartment complexes in different states and metro areas. They get good traffic and pretty good conversions but the site needs a lot of updating, including the architecture, to implement SEO standards. Right now they rank for " <brand_name>apartments" on every place but not " <city_name>apartments".</city_name></brand_name> There current architecture displays their URLs like: http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=overview</client_apartments> http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=floorplans&floorPlanID=121</client_apartments> I know it is said to never change the URL structure but what about this site? I see this URL structure being bad for SEO, bad for users, and basically forces us to keep the current architecture. They don't have many links built to their community pages so will creating a new URL structure and doing 301 redirects to the new URLs drastically drop rankings? Is this something that we should bite the bullet on now for future rankings, traffic, and a better architecture?

My site currently ranks #1 or #2 for 2 separate pages on web design & SEO for my geographic location. The URLs are currently mysite.com/services/web-design/ and mysite.com/services/seo/ I'm redesigning my site and I'm taking out the "Services" page as I'm focusing on web design and SEO and lumping everything else into my "Internet Marketing" page. Because my pages for web design and SEO rank so well, should I keep the URL structure even though I don't have a "Services" page or should I just remove services and 301 redirect so I have mysite.com/web-design/ and mysite.com/seo/. I know doing a 301 redirect could hurt me in the short term but I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet now and change it in favor of a better URL structure. What do you think?

I have a site that is successful on the SERPs for a certain geography, let's call it City A (I'm sure you can't tell what it is from my username). I'm moving to a new city in another state so I will be building my business in this area (City B). Should I create a new domain for City B with CityBWebsiteDesign.com or should I create a sub-domain called CityB.BrandableCompanyName.com and just redirect CityBWebsiteDesign.com to the URL for offline marketing purposes only? My current website BrandableCompanyName.com has some authority with Google. Will it be better to building something on the sub-domain and get any sort of cross-benefits or are there really no benefits to be had between sub-domains? The benefit of going with CityBWebsiteDesign.com would be having a keyword rich URL but I would basically be starting from zero with building authority. Specific experience you've had with this or cited examples would be great for the discussion! Thanks,
Jared

I know this can be a "it depends" answer so I'll try to explain. Qualifications on your answers would be great. I use the Wordpress architecture for myself and clients on sites and blogs. Almost every business site we create has a blog and I'm always working to improve results on them. My strategy has been the following: Categories: General, main content types, general keywords. Index, follow Tags: Very specific, post specific, may only be used once for one post. My categories have descriptions that are displayed on the category pages with excerpts. Tags rarely have a description but are displayed with excerpts on the page. My idea has been to index the categories to crawl the content and they have unique content by showing the category description. Tags shouldn't be archived because they may be all over the place and may have only 1 post with no tag description. I'm trying to reduce duplicate content but I don't want to limit results for my clients and myself. Should I set tags to noindex, follow or should I have them indexed? The only thing I'm thinking with having the tags indexed is that I may be able to get additional traffic through the more specific tags (i.e. tag = meta tags, category = SEO).