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I wouldn't sweat the drop in the rankings with Google.  It's a new site.  There's usually a little movement that can happen, especially with exact match domains.  Just work to build the site up through quality content and maybe trying to get some links from relevant industry related sites (i.e. sites that list places that offer NABCEP training, industry blogs or online magazines, etc).  I don't recommend much intentional link building any more, but there are usually some industry sites which make sense to try to get linked from.

Do the above and do a great job with the training you offer and your site will get the rankings.

Also, don't become a slave to the keyword density percentage.  Write for your audience.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Great response Tom!

Are they two truly different stores, as in two different companies?  If so, a redirect would seem odd to users.  If they are shopping on one site, they would expect the products listed on the site to be sold there and when they click on a link to a product they expect to stay on that site.  Breaking those expectations by listing products that that site doesn't offer and/or redirecting people to a different site would be confusing and possibly cause them to leave.

I like Schwaab's alternative suggestion.  At first put a message on the product pages indicating that the product is no longer available through that site, but that the product can be purchased on your sister site.  After while, for the sake of visitor usability/experience, I would still remove the product pages (and internal links to them) entirely from the one site that does not offer the products anymore.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Heather,

I'm confused as to what the duplicate content is.  The three Dallas pages you mentioned have different content.  Sure there's a decent amount that's the same from the site-wide content (nav menus, etc.), but each has different text and information about different locations that are available.  How is it duplicate?

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

The example page you provided has a good amount of content before the blog snippets.  I think from an SEO standpoint this format would be fine.  Just optimize the unique text at the top and choose related blog posts for the snippets.  I wouldn't have more than 3 or 4 blog post snippets at the bottom just because I think it will start to look messy for users.

I also like ReferralCandy's response.

Hi Antoine,

Since this is a really big project, you may want to consider outsourcing it.  The biggest part of the project is creating a database (or spreadsheet) of all the old page URLs and their new corresponding page URLs.  That work doesn't require much skill.  So, you may be able to save tons of time hiring a contractor through odesk (or some other site) and it wouldn't have to cost a lot.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Thanks Lesley and Philipp.  We're a web hosting company, so putting analytics software on the server wouldn't be a problem.  I'll look into Piwik.

Kurt

I do have a developer I work with, so I may be able to make the change, but I'm not sure exactly what you mean by only triggering extra virtual pageviews when the users succeed.  Could you clarify that?

Thanks.

Kurt

Hey Everyone,

My company has just changed the order processing software we are using and it's causing some issues with Google Analytics conversion funnel tracking.  Specifically, there is one point in the funnel where making certain selections (which about half the people do) causes the page to reload.  Also, on the login/register page, if they miss a field, the software tells them missed the field, but loads a new page which has a different URL which is not a part of the funnel when a mistake like that isn't made.

All of this is causing Google Analytics to report people as leaving the conversion funnel when they really haven't.  About a third of the traffic is being shown as exiting the funnel with the exit URL being the exact same URL as the step they are supposedly exiting from (example: the visitor enters on page1, moves to page2, Google is showing that they exit on page2 and go to...page2.

Does anyone have any suggestions of how to deal with this in Google Analytics?  If not, do you have a recommendation of an alternative analytics program which can deal with the situations mentioned above?

PS - Changing the way the checkout software works does not appear to be a viable option.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

While I haven't tested this, I haven't heard that you can't have schema and authorship on the same page.  Google has been pushing people to do both.  So, I can't imagine that they would do something like that.  As for authorship and publishership, they are two sides of the same coin and both are supposed to be used, though I think publisher is supposed to be used on the homepage.  Even still, I seriously doubt that using one would block the other.

It's quite possible that the changes to the link structure affected the way PageRank is flowing through the site and thus the authority of pages.  It's also possible that changes in Google (like the Penguin 2 update, the EMD update, and others) have affected the PageRank of both pages and the entire site and that those effects just happen to coincide with the website move.

Without a detailed investigation into the site, I can't really say what may have caused the problem and, even with a detailed investigation, it may not be possible to figure it out at this point.  It may be better to simply evaluate the site as it is now.  Look for ways you can improve the on-page optimization and internal link structure first.  Then work on creating great content, connecting with others, and building up the authority of the site.

Kurt

PS - The other thing to keep in mind is that the Google Toolbar PageRank isn't reliable at all.  Even Matt Cutts has said not to pay much attention to it.  I would focus more on traffic and rankings than the Toolbar PR.

Looks good.

I just saw this in the Google Webmaster Tools help section:

If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

If you don't control the links pointing to your site, no action is required on your part. From Google's perspective, the links already won't count in ranking. However, if possible, you may wish to remove any artificial links to your site and, if you're able to get the artificial links removed, submit a reconsideration request. If we determine that the links to your site are no longer in violation of our guidelines, we’ll revoke the manual action.

This was on the following page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC

I haven't seen that specific message from Google before, so I'm just giving my best guess, but I would say it wouldn't hurt to do a reconsideration request.  I don't know if it will do any good since it sounds like Google is just devaluing some links, but the worst Google would do is just respond saying there was no need for the request.

Something to keep in mind, though, is that fixing the link situation isn't going to get the rankings back.  The whole point of Penguin was that sites had rankings Google didn't think they deserved, so they sought to deal with the spammy links. Those links get devalued and the site no longer get's the authority boost from them.  If a manual penalty has been applied, getting that lifted will help, but it will not put the site back where it was in the rankings.

Think of it this way.  If you had 100 authority points, but 40 of them were from spammy links.  Google comes in and devalues those spammy links and slaps you with a 40 point penalty.  So, now your site has lost the 40 points from the spammy links and another 40 points due to the penalty.  The site has 20 points.  So, you clean up the links and get the penalty lifted.  That still only puts the site back to 60 points, not the 100 points from before.  The missing 40 points are just gone because those links have been devalued.  The only way to get the site fully back to where it was is to just work to build authority naturally through good content and good service.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

I agree with Vadim.  There's constant fluctuation in the authorship and the schema stuff.  Google's still trying to figure all that out.  The only manual potentially manual action I've seen Google take related to authorship is if the author's image isn't a faceshot.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Lesley,

That sounds fine.  I was thinking of these general site search pages I keep coming across, where someone stuck Google site search or something onto their site and then Google returns one of those pages.  Often times there's nothing even relevant in the search.  The big thing for me is that I want to find what I was looking for when I click through a search result.  I don' want to find another search results page.  That said, if the results page is a list of products that I'm searching for, then I've found what I'm looking for.

Based on your last description, it sounds fine to me and I don't think it would be considered poor quality.  It's basically just a category page and I always recommend to ecommerce clients that they optimize their category pages.

Sounds good.

Kurt

Chris,

With the switch to the new URLs was there also a change in the navigation menus and internal linking structure?

Kurt

Were the 301 redirects setup for every page (i.e. every page redirects it's old URL specifically to it's new URL) or did you do a blanket redirect (i.e. all pages redirect to the homepage or some category pages)?

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

It's hard to know how Google will respond, but I can tell you that I find search results pages in the search results all the time.  Personally, I can't stand it.

The two factors that I think will play into whether Google does something about this is:

1. Will they think these pages are poor results?
2. Will search results pages in Google results become a widespread enough issue that they take the time to deal with it?

I guess one more question to ask would be whether, if they do address it, whether they would penalize sites or just remove the pages from the search results.

My guess is that they probably would find most of these pages to be poor quality results.  I don't know if they'll get around to doing anything about it, but if they did, I think they would just remove the pages from the results, not penalize people.

That's my $0.02.

Personally, I hope this doesn't become widespread because I really don't like site search pages in the Google results.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

It could be personalization.  I've also seen that Google is experimenting with new card-style layouts just like this.  When Google does layout/formatting experiments, people will often see varied results.  It's the nature of a A/B type test.  Because you have two sessions (your using two browsers), you may see two different layouts.  I think you may have just stumbled across Google's experiment.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[Quote]Ahh, I read it as ..."then 301 redirect to the old URL."[/Quote]

Hah!  I did the same thing first.  Then I had to rewrite my response.

Chris, the 301 redirect from the old page would transfer most of the link authority the old page has, redirecting any links to the old page to the new page.  So, it's not like having a completely new page with no links.  That said, you are right that having the keyword in the URL is losing value.  So, it's probably not worth it, though I don't know that it would hurt to do it.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Ah, thank you for the clarification.

In that case, here are somethings you do:

• Review the on-page SEO of the articles and see if they are fully optimized for the keywords.  If not, then optimize the pages, but try not to fall into the trap of over-optimizing.
• Update the articles and republish them.  Freshness can affect rankings.
• Create a new version of the article and publish that.  I'm not talking about spinning, but rather if it's been a while since the article was written and perhaps there are some new things that could be added or old things that should be removed, you could create a new version.  In fact, in some situations, you may have articles that can be redone every year.
• Try to build some links to the articles.
• Share the articles on social networks and with bloggers in your niche who  might find the articles interesting and useful.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

I agree with Devanur, that you should wait if the change just happened.  Rankings are constantly fluctuating and are especially volatile after an update.  It's always good to let the dust settle a bit.

That said, if you find that your rankings continue to stay down (or it's already been a couple weeks) then you'll need to investigate the cause.  I wouldn't just assume the issue is with Penguin.  Start by checking to see if you've received any notifications of a violation of guidelines.  If not, check to see if there is a correlation between when your rankings dropped and any particular known Google update. If so, proceed with the appropriate means of addressing the issues related to that particular update.  If there is no obvious corresponding update, then analyze your site and it's link profile and check to see if there are any glaring issues either in the structure/functionality of the site or issues with the content or link profile of the site.  Start by addressing the obvious issues and then continue to do your best to continue to improve the site's content and authority.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but figuring out what caused a site to lose rankings is something that usually takes detailed investigation of the specific site and situation.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Agreed.  Great answer Highland.

I've seen this as well with sites buying or selling links.  Also, keep in mind that the Google toolbar PR and a site's real PageRank (authority) are two different things.  I've seen Google mess with people's toolbar PR before without actually penalizing them (manually or by algorithm), especially when dealing with paid links.

Without more info, it's hard to identify what the real problem is.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Mike and Tim have some  great suggestions.  I wanted to add to it that part of the social campaign you create can include a blog (as Mike suggested).  Some content you create for the social campaign may be best put on the blog and then pushed out the social sites.  Other content may be best distributed straight to the social sites (image memes, quotes, instagrams, etc.) but can also probably be used for content on the blog as well.  Blogging is a great way to put out new, unique content which can help to build authority for the site and you may be able to target keywords on that content as well.

Also, keep in mind that a lot of SEO, especially for smaller or newer sites, is about targeting longtail keywords that are less competitive.  Sure, you may not be able to rank for "buy sunglasses" today, but you may be able to rank well for "designer sunglasses for women".  It doesn't get as many searches, but it gets some.  You build up incrementally.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

I agree with Lesley for all three.

-Kurt Steinbrueck

Stephen,

Dropping in ranking because you loose links either from them being devalued by Google or the sites shutting down is quite possible.  It could also be a combination of lost links and a spammy profile.  But you've gleaned onto something a lot of people don't get about Penguin and spammy link.  People like to talk about "recovering" from Penguin, but what they often don't understand is that the link authority that was getting them their earlier rankings is gone.  There's nothing to recover to.  What's really going on is that their site's new authority level is lower and they are going to just have to build their site's authority level up as though they never had a higher authority site before.  So, it's not something where they can disavow a few links, get a few links removed and "Alakazam!" rankings have returned...but they seem to expect that.

If you had a lot of links pointing to your site which are now either gone or devalued, then it would make sense that your site lost rankings.  You just have to build the site back up with some natural link building.

As to your question about spammy directories, I wouldn't worry about the initially.  Focus on putting out great content and sharing it and see how that goes.  If, after several months, you find that you aren't getting any movement, then perhaps you go in and have links removed and start disavowing links.

And, yes, Google will eventually remove the old links from your profile.  It just takes Google forever and a day to do so.  The link list in Google Webmaster Tools is never up to date.  It's always months behind.

-Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Hi Btrinh,

Social engagement is about connecting with people.  It’s about responding to people’s comments, asking questions, etc.  The point is to create a relationship with people or create a community of people.  It’s not something that has a direct connection with SEO, but rather an indirect connection.  By forming these relationships/communities, it makes it so people are more likely to consume your content and then link, Like, Share, retweet, +1 etc. when you push content out (the content still needs to be good).  They are also more likely to tell others about your organization.  So, it provides indirect SEO benefit as well as many other non-SEO benefits.

Good on-page optimization is a must, but link building is different today.  For link building, I think the focus today needs to be on doing a great job with your company/website, creating a good user experience on your website, creating great content, connecting with people personally and on social sites so you can push your content out and get people to respond by linking, Liking, retweeting, etc.

Most of the old link building strategies which focused specifically on getting a link, especially one with your target anchor text, aren’t of much benefit anymore.  Some can provides some value if done while also doing natural link building.  You might get some benefit from article marketing if you produce good enough content that people use your stuff.  You don’t get any value from links on the article sites themselves.  There is also value to contacting relevant websites and asking for a link, but that is best done by first forming a relationship with someone who works on the website and you are giving them a good reason to want to link to you (your company is good, you have good content, etc.).

The point is that Google has always wanted links to come naturally, either because someone likes your company/website or you produce great content.  Up until recently, they weren’t technically able to enforce that, so people were able to come up with unnatural link building strategies that worked.  Now, they’ve advanced their tech to where those unnatural strategies generally don’t work anymore.

-Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Jesse said what I would said.

I would choose one domain to go with instead of keeping content on two.  From what you've said, you don't really need two sites, you are just thinking about having two sites because of domain authority.  Just redirect one domain to the other and combine the sites.  If both sites already have the same content, then try to redirect each page to its corresponding page, if possible.  That will make for an easier transition.  Using 301 redirects will pass the authority from the redirected domain/pages to the other domain, increasing it's authority.

As for which domain to keep, I'd go with the one that's getting the most user traffic.  From what you've said, it sounds like that is the .info site.

By combining the sites, you won't have to worry about an approach for sending people to the "real" content.  There will only be one place for the content and it will (hopefully) all be real.  You'll also be able to focus all your attention to building up the one site instead of spitting your efforts.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

To answer your specific question, I'd target different keywords.

That said, why do you have two different websites selling the same products?  If you are just trying to get two rankings in the top ten or rank for more keywords, I'd suggest that you are better off just having one site and building the authority of that one site up instead of trying split your efforts.  If there is a legit user-based reason to have two sites than I would think the two different target groups may have their own search phrases and way of speaking which should determine your keywords and the text on your site

I'm guessing that "public webshop" and "trade webshop" indicate that you are targeting the general public with one site and people working in the industry with the other.  You'll need to familiarize yourself (if you aren't already familiar) with the terminology that the two groups use and have that guide your decisions.  It's not something you'll be able to pick up on from keyword tools since they would just give raw data not indicating which group was searching for what keywords.

Even if you are targeting two different groups, I wonder if you couldn't just have two sections withing a single site instead of two completely different sites.  I'm not saying two sites is always bad or anything, there are good reasons to do it in some situations, I just think that when building the authority of websites, it's almost always easier and more effective to focus on just one site instead of two or more.

Hope this helps.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

I agree with that Carl.  It's one thing if your worried that Google might penalize you, maybe you don't worry about the nofollows.  However, once Google has already placed a manual penalty on the site, it's all about showing Google that your not trying to game their system and you're working hard to correct the situation.  A bunch of links on spammy sites will still look bad to a reviewer even if they are nofollow.  I'd try to get them removed as well...though I may not put as high a priority on them.

-Kurt

Yeah, Google definitely wants to see that you've put some effort into removing the links and that you aren't doing it anymore.  It's also not uncommon for it to take several requests and several months.

In your request to Google, did you explain that you were not building these links and that it appears to be someone performing negative SEO on your client?

-Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Hi Stephen,

A quick review of your link profile didn't actually look too bad, at least I didn't notice anything glaring.  You have some keywords that have lots of links, but those appear to all be internal links that are part of the navigation of your site which is normal.

I'd recommend focusing on building links rather than removing links.  Your site doesn't have a ton of links pointing to it.  According the the Open Site Explorer report you referenced, you have 434 links.  Even if there is some issue with an unbalanced link profile, it should take many good, natural links to balance it out.

-Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

If the content is originally yours, then you can add canonical tags.  It's not a guarantee that the search engines will follow those tags, but it's a start.  You could also try to report the competitor site to Google and Bing and tell them they are stealing your content.  Keep in mind the search engines usually take a while to respond.

If your site stole the content, then you just need to remove it and create your own, unique content.

• Kurt Steinbrueck
  OurChurch.Com

Hi Serkie,

If they had duplicate content, then I understand.  Most category pages I've been on are not duplicate, so I hadn't though of that.

In regards to the link juice distribution, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to sculpt and control link juice.  You're usually better served spending that time producing content that will bring more link juice into your site.  It's not a problem to do it, you just may get more benefit from getting more link juice into your site than sculpting what link juice you already have.

Kurt

Hi Serkie,

Is there a reason you want to noindex your category pages?  I don't know of any SEO benefit you would gain from this.  I guess if you don't want people going to those pages or finding them in the search engines, then you can noindex the category pages.

Setting up schema is good.  I'd recommend you do that.

It's also good that you are spending time focusing on user experience.  Getting traffic to a site that has a bad user experience can actually be worse than not getting traffic at all.  People remember bad experiences...and good ones.

As to your main issue, no traffic, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. You are in a competition for the rankings of relevant keywords.  If your site is only 6 months old, it's not going to be very authoritative and, considering that the pet supply industry has some pretty tough competition, it shouldn't be surprising that you aren't getting much traffic yet, especially if you haven't done much SEO work.
2. Links are still very important for SEO.  On-page optimization is important, too; so you should do that, but on-page SEO will only get you so far.  You need links and social shares to build up the authority of your site which will allow you to rank for more competitive keywords.  The best way to get links is to do a great job with your company (and have a good user experience on the site) and then produce interesting, quality content to share with people.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Hi Btrinh,

It sounds like your moving in the right direction and Pedram had some great advice.  To answer your more specific questions...

1. Effectively incorporating social media into your SEO can involve a lot of things, but I'd suggest you primarily focus on two things, sharing content (and having your content shared) and engaging people.  Sharing content yourself is easy enough, but getting other people to share it is trickier.  People need a reason to share something and the best reason is if it impacts them and they feel compelled to share.  Things that impact people are things that are funny, moving, very interesting, about a cause they like, and even sometimes if something is a great deal.  Beyond sharing content you want to engage people.  Ask for opinions. Ask questions. When people post on your account, respond.  Share other people's stuff, etc.
2. Natural links means people link to your site of their own desire without reward.  This usually means that either your company does a good enough job that people recommend/talk about you or that you produce content that is valuable enough to link to.  By the way, you referred to "alt tags", but I think you mean anchor text.  Alt tags are generally used with images.  Assuming you mean anchor text (the text of the link), you want a combination of branding, naked URLs, keywords (and variations), and random words (click here, etc.).  The thing is, that if you are getting most of your links by producing great content and doing a good job with your company/website, then this will happen naturally.
3. Keyword research is essential.  You need to know what keywords to target in your content and, to some extent, your link building.  On-page SEO is still very important, so using keywords in your content is important.  As for link building, I prefer a natural approach (as described above), but even with a natural approach you can target keywords by including them in content titles and things like that.  It's natural for someone to link to an article using it's title as the anchor text.  So, using a keyword in the title, can get you keyword-rich links naturally.
4. I like video content as well.  Done right, it can be very cost effective.  Video has two other great benefits.  If you are using people, you can create a stronger connection with people than they get from reading an article.  Secondly, Google uses a different algorithm for the videos used in their blended results.  So, if your site doesn't have enough authority to rank well with a page, it may still be able to rank well with a video.
5. I use Google Analytics.  It isn't perfect, but it's good.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Is there a reason you are considering option 1?  Option 2 is simpler to implement and doesn't chain the redirects.  Unless there's some other, non-SEO reason for considering option 1, I'd go with the second option.

If you are considering option 1 because you want to only be changing the domain and not also changing the subfolder when you do the domain migration, I wouldn't worry about it.  As long as you are setting up 301 redirects for each page to redirect to the new URL for that page, Google and Bing can understand that out just fine.

• Kurt Steinbrueck

I would think there has to be a better way to do that.  Sites detect IP addresses and deliver dynamically created local content all the time.  I would think there are some scripts out there which would do what you want without all the 302 redirects.  It would be cleaner and better SEO.  Unfortunately, I'm not a developer and don't have a specific suggestion, but I'm sure there's a better solution.

Yes, if the client doesn't mind not having the content on the old domain, then 301 redirects are the best solution.  Without seeing the navigation menu and the two sites, it's hard to evaluate whether you need to change the links.  If it would seem odd to user to click the current link and land on the new domain, then what you suggest sounds good.  If both sites are clearly identified as being the same company and look pretty similar, you may not need to change the link(s).  The 301 redirects will take care of the search engines, the change to the link(s) is a question of user experience.

I'm not sure that any redirect is guaranteed that Google won't pass on the links to the .uk domain.  The two options I could think of which would probably be the least likely for Google to pass on the links would be,

1. You could setup a meta-refresh redirect on the .com.  Make sure it's a few seconds and not instant.

2. Redirect everything from the .com site to a single landing page on the .com site.  Put a message on that landing page that tells visitors the site has moved and provide a link to the new site.

Neither of these solutions are great from a user experience standpoint, but their the least likely for Google to pass on all the bad links from the .com site.

That's what should happen in theory.  Your telling Google an Bing that the original content is at the new domain with the canonical tags.  They should essentially ignore the content on the old site and only care about the content of the new site, since it's the original.

There's two caveats, though.  First, is the Google expressly states that they treat the canonical tag as a suggestion.  So, there's no guarantee that they'll treat the tags the way they are intended.  Secondly, if the new domain has already been hit by Panda, then you have a bit of an uphill battle.  Google has already decided that they think the real source of the content is the old domain name and you are trying to convince them they have it backwards.

Even with the caveats, though, canonical tags are the only solution that fits the situation and the client's wishes (to still have the content on both sites).  The only other suggestion you could give is to redo the content on the new site so it is unique.  That's a lot more work, though.

Andy,

The issue with keywords in anchor text is usually a matter of the overall link profile.  If you look at all the links pointing back to the site, do a large percent of them include money keywords?  If so, than you'll want to balance that out either by removing links or getting new links without keywords.  As to how much a "large percent" is, there's no clear figure.  Some would say 25% and others as low as 10%.  The best way to determine that for your site is to just keep reducing the percentage of keyword-rich links until you see the site moving back up in the search results.

Depending on how many links this site has in total and how many of them are either spammy or keyword-rich (or both), you may just be able to ignore them and just concentrate on building good quality, natural links.  If the site doesn't have a lot of links right now, you may be able to achieve the right balance pretty quickly while also continuing to build the site's authority (instead of removing links and potentially loosing authority).

It sounds like you have done pretty much everything you could do to remove those pages from Google, and that Google has removed them.

There are two possibilities that I can think of. First, Google is finding new pages or new URLs at least. These may be old pages that have some sort of a parameter on them or something like that that are causing Google to find some new pages even though you're not adding any new pages.

Another possibility is that, I found that the site:search is not entirely accurate. So, it's more like anything else that Google gives us words this kind of estimate of the actual figure. It's possible that Google was giving you a smaller number of pages if in that original 3700 they said they had. And now they're just reporting more of the pages that they had had in their index, which they weren't showing before.

By the way, when I do a search for site:top four office.co.uk, I only get 2600 results.

In theory, nothing should change and it should not hurt your SEO, but there's always some risk involved whenever you start redirecting pages. There may be some authority that's lost or Google may take some time and shuffle things around for a while. So, I would consider if there are other options. If you have good rankings for these pages, see if there's another way that you can track the traffic in a reliable way before you go messing around with 301 redirects. If it's the only way to track what you need to track, then what you're planning should work in theory.