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Kate, when I say that I am targeting countries, the content on the website will obviously be translated into their local language. So, it will be translating but for different countries on the website. I hope you meant the same thing when you said "and not just translating". I believe the best way to go would be to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains to maintain the domain legacy and authority across the countries.

I will be targeting actual countries Kate. Will also be using Google webmasters to geo-target for different sub-domains/sub-directories.

Strange, I can! May be should try after some time

This might help - http://eliteeternity.com/mass-redirections-wordpress/

Thanks,

Dan, for the old 'overview' pages, if they were indexed or had some content anytime or if you know/feel that they have backlinks, please redirect them as well to the new url. Also, it is not good to have 302s on the URLs unless and untill there is a specific case for it which I doubt will be. Always have 301 redirects.

On bulk uploading, it depends on your CMS, right? How does it support the file format and accepts the protocol is CMS dependent thing.

This tool here will help you track rankings for each day (in different countries too!) - www.authoritylabs.com, though it is a paid one.

Hey Dan - You should be adding 301 redirects if the pages are indexed. But, as a safe route you should be adding a 301 redirect since they were present on the website and can be linked from an external source as well which may lead to its indexation later.

You should redirect all such pages so as to ensure that the search engines do not find 404s on your site or probably you could block them from the robots.txt file.

Also, If the page has some authority in the search engines - authority refers to link juice, sites linking it or rankings or any traffic, best is to redirect it to the alternative or close page so as to pass the authority or if the page does not have any authority and you would want to reduce the 301 redirects on your server, block it! This call would largely depend on the page's value but in any case, do not just delete it.

Thanks Federico, will take a look at the video. Though, for me the battle still remains on how to proceed, for now the sub-directory option looks the one. I hope to get some more views on this before I finalize the architecture.

Hi Folks - Need your advice on the pros and cons of going with a sub-domain vs a sub-directory approach for a multi lingual website. The best would be a ccTLD but that is not possible now, so I would be more interested in knowing your take on these 2 options.

Though, I have gone through http://www.stateofsearch.com/international-multilingual-sites-criteria-to-establish-seo-friendly-structure/ and this somewhat vouches for a sub-directory, but what would you say'?

Thats good, just keep your targets in mind.

Michael, the first thing I would suggest you to perform is an extensive keyword research for both the pages, the Home and the Second Page, lets call the Home as A and Second as B.

Do a keyword research and as you said, since both of them have the same content, you will get a bunch of similar keywords (excluding the plurals/singulars). The ones with high search volume can be targeted from A which you think are your business keywords as A will have a better SEO value being the domain. The second bunch of keywords with less searches can be targeted from B. Do keep in mind that an good amount of quality links to A will help you make the page more valuable. It is good to optimize B also as the more optimized the pages are, the better chances of getting more value from the SERPs.

Note - You did mention above that the page have same content, so if they are are entirely the same with respect to content, you better not optimize B and instead place a 301 redirect from there to A or if it is not feasible from the user's point, do add a canonical tag on B. Duplicate pages can harm your traffic and rankings, especially when it is the Home Page.

Hope that sums it up!

Cheers,

Yes Wendy, the frequent changes in the file names will definitely have an impact in the rankings. Though, you are using a SE friendly redirect, it is STILL a new URL for the SE to index. Everytime it finds a redirect, it takes some time to understand and pass on the value.

When the value is passed, when through a 301 redirect, there is some link juice lost. Also, when you redirect A To B and then B To C, make sure you also redirect A To C. Do not have dual redirection on the old filenames, change everything when there is a change in filename, including the link building also (old links and new acquired).

I would still suggest to refrain from doing frequent changes to file names!

This tool here will help you track rankings for each day (in different countries too!) - www.authoritylabs.com, though it is a paid one.

That seems alright Stephane. Well, to be true Google Webmaster does report on duplicate titles and descriptions that have been already fixed via a canonical tag, 301 redirect or a noindex tag.

In this case, you need not be worried on the duplicates as this is well taken care of. Another step of making this clear to Google would be to resubmit the XML sitemap. Probably, Google has not revisited your dynamic page after reporting those duplicates and with the submission of the XML sitemap it will probably do so.

Cheers,

Jvalops,

This is a common scenario in SEO when you have 2 versions indexed of the same URL. This bascially creates a duplicate issue. Now, this situation has a solution which includes 2 things to implement:

1. Fix it from the search engines's perspective.

2. Make changes at the server level.

You did remove the trailing slash so you fixed it at the server level but you left the search engines to think - Where did the URL go? Am I supposed to show a 404 for that or what?.

So, it is important that you first fix them for the SE's and then make any server level changes because you never know how quick the crawlers can re-visit the disappeared URL and take their own action. Since this is just a recent change I hope that the SE;s will not evaluate it in a negative way but you should be quick to inform them. Now, since you have already removed it, do add a code in the .htaccess file stating that any URL with a slash redirects it to the URL without slash. I hope there are no URLs that have to end with a slash (just have a re-look on this, the home page and others).

After this is done, to make things more clear to the search engines, resubmit your XML sitemap with all the correct URLs on the website and I think you will be just fine.

On the rankings, I don't think it will be affected, unless there was a re-crawl after the indexation.

Cheers,

This might help - http://eliteeternity.com/mass-redirections-wordpress/

Thanks,