You're most welcome! Have a good weekend too and lots of success with the cleanup

• Scrape Google?

• Make your own scraper and keep the requests per second really low ?

• Maybe the site has an automated sitemap somewhere ?

• Google webmaster tools -> download "internal links" table

You should indeed create 301 redirects from the old redirects to the new aliases. People could have linked to those url's, so you want to keep benefitting from those links and built up value over the years.

url.com/index.php and url.com are 2 different url's in the eye's of SE's so you should redirect that 2. Basic rule is: 1 unique  page should be available on 1 url.

Good luck redirecting!

There is of course a difference between hiding text and being user friendly.

If you read Google's policy on hidden text, you'll see there is no mention of this method. The link isn't downsized to 1px, nor is it impossible to see for humans. So I don't agree Erica, on this instance

That would be totally different if we'd do this with more text than just one (brand name) word, reducing visibility, placing [Viagra-text] behind the logo/image that has nothing to do with viagra, etc

Aha, so the content was already posted on your site. Than I wouldn't worry too much about the SCRIBD embedding. Are the 60 pages of blog posts also available on one page on your site? If not, I'd make a page with all the content on it and link to the PDF file near the top of the site to have a good alternative.

I understand, no problem In this scenario I would actually link to the page with the brand name as anchor. But I wouldn't put it in the footer. With a simple tweak in your css file, you can make a text link and still get the logo up in the top left.

Can't reproduce it right now (not a css expert) but I know it works because I've used it before.

Is there a particular reason why you embed PDF documents?

To make sure your website gets credit for that content, either post it on your site as content or as a PDF document on your domain.

If you want to rank for a particular keyword, you're always better to have your pages ranked in stead of the PDF file. It's a lot more user friendly and people can continue browsing your site if they land on your web page in stead of your PDF file.

No. You'll easily rank for your brand name, so there's no need to do that.

Footer links are an old practice. They aren't used a lot for navigation and thus search engines will not value those kinds of links a lot. (Read: almost none)

There's also a lot of writing about the fact that only the first link to certain link gets "counted". You probably have the logo in the top left directing to the home page? So that will cancel out the footer links' use.

What I mean by real value:

Link wheels are just websites you create, put a bit of (spun) content on it and link to your main site or to another site in the link wheel. It is not really adding anything to the web. It is just getting you rankings.

Why not try to make genuine, real content people appreciate and link to, talk about on social media, etc. That way, in the long run, getting links and getting higher rankings is actually much much easier. Because you don't have to do any more work.

Make something great, that people will like and they will create a unique "link wheel" if you like, for you!

Link wheels are 2010.

Stop using them.

Start adding real value to the web.

Google isn't stupid. It will see what you are doing, especially if you are making such a basic link wheel. It will denote the link wheel links and your work will be worthless.

Sorry I can't give you more "solid" advice on your link wheel.

Google crawls the pages. Google sometimes even tries the search box by typing in a random word to see what happens.

Have a look at this url: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agoogle.com%20inurl%3A%22search%3Fq%22 You'll see that search queries have been indexed. It happens if people link to it. It doesn't matter that the url is "non existent". It actually is, because it doesn't display a 404 error or any other error. It gives a 200 OK code, so search engines see it as a normal page. Google will probably not index a page it "makes" by filling in a random search term, but will index such a page when it is linked to.

Can't you give the urls of your live site?

It should be as simple as:

RedirectMatch 301 /lifestyle/feed http://www.newsite.com/location-of-new-feed

Wasn't your feed (also) available on the url that is displayed in Google webmaster tools?