First of all, for the benefit of the discussion it's worth pointing out that the Googlebot will ignore the CSS code and read whatever is in those tags.

Using tags like "display: none" and other similar ones will not by itself result in the Googlebot sounding the alarm.  It is sophisticated enough to recognise that many web designs use the tags for a better look at the website and UX experience.

Where it might start getting angry (and you won't like it when it's angry) is when it finds links within the tags - particularly those that point to completely irrelevant webpages and/or spammy ones.  If that happens, it's quite a big no-no, as it will think you're trying to hide these links from Google for nefarious reasons.  Similarly a whole bunch of content that could be duplicate and/or is being used for keyword stuffing etc would also sound the alarm.

Provided you avoid that, I wouldn't worry about using the tags, as it can be useful for a number of reasons.  Worth remembering, however, that the Googlebot will crawl and see whatever is hidden in their anyway.

If you can check through all the backlinks and can be sure that they're good quality links, I'd bop in a 301 redirect.

I look for two things when considering 301s: Traffic and live links.  Your client has both.

If she is serious about promoting the new site as the definitive website for her brand, then I'd put in the redirect.  For continuity's sake, you may want to make the new page similar to the old one, or carry the same brand messaging, but I think a 301 is much more preferential than a landing page.  It would pass on link strength and also not interrupt the user's journey.

I'm fairly sure that Screaming Frog would be able to do that for you.

Hi there

The DA and link equity will need to be there.  In fact, the TLD (.org, .com. net etc) has no impact whatsoever.

Yes, it may 'appear' to look more 'natural/authorative' if you had 100 links from .org websites as opposed to, say, .info websites - but I'm as certain as I could possibly be (without looking at it myself) that Google's algorithm doesn't look at a website's TLD when deciding it's authority and strength.  Nor would Moz's metrics.

The website needs to have many more quality factors for it to be considered worthwhile, such as links, social metrics, high quality content, user engagement, age and more.

Hope this helps.

Hi Tiberiu

No, a site won't be penalised because it has the same site structure, design or architecture as another site.  For example, I've worked with a number of companies that have multiple websites for different countries.  To establish brand consistency and awareness, the designs are all kept the same.

Of course, your website might get penalised if it contains duplicate content, so obviously it's important to ensure all your content is unique before launching.  Google may also look negatively on your site if it contains a lot of ads above the fold, or tries to use ad-space too aggressively, so be wary of this.

Hope this helps!

I don't see how noindexing pages would help with regards to a Panda recovery if you're already penalised.

Once the penalty is in place, my understanding is that it will remain so until all offending pages have been removed or changed to unique content.  Therefore, noindexing would not work - particularly if that page is accessible via an HTML/XML sitemap or a site navigation system.  Even then, I would presume that Google will have the URL logged and if it remained as is, any penalty removable would not be forthcoming.

Noindexing pages that has duplicate content but hasn't been penalised yet would probably prevent (or rather postpone) any penalty - although I'd still rather avoid the issue outright where possible.  Once a penalty is in place, however, I'm pretty sure it will remain until removed, even if noindexed.

Hi Rob

The JS script will increase the load time of the page, but it might not be too bad.

What I'd suggest you do is input the URL into this tool.

This will measure the speed of your site and the individual elements, including that bit of JS script.  From there you can measure whether it is effecting your site speed too much.

If it is, there are a couple of things you could try to do.  You could try loading the script from the footer, so that the rest of the page load isn't delayed while waiting for the script.  You can also minify some of the JS code, reducing its size and therefore time to load.  JSMin is a good free tool that helps you do this.

Hope this helps.

It certainly used to be a bigger factor.  And the annoying thing is that Google still has older videos up saying as much.

However, with so many new TLDs, server locations and CDNs in particular, I think the impact of server location has diminished quite a lot.  For example, on my UK sites I always try and use UK servers.  However, I often use cloudflare on them, which will be either US or Central Europe based.  It hasn't affected their performance.  Google alludes to this:

“Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure; so, we try not to rely on the server location alone.”

So I wouldn't say a server's location will hinder a website's ability to rank in a certain country.  The only way that it might would be related to speed.  Obviously, the further away your user is from your server, the slower the website's response might be, and speed is considered to be a ranking factor.  However, if you get any decent hosting solution, the speed difference would also be negligible.

Hi there Alex

One premium heatmap plugin, Crazy Egg, has a 30 day free trial.  It comes quite highly recommended.

If you're running Wordpress, there is a free heatmap plugin you could use.

Finally, Clickheat is an open source (and therefore free) software that gives you heatmaps as well.

Hope these help!