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Hi Joseph,

You can handle both of these issues pretty easily:

Home - you can redirect /index.php with a few simple lines in your site's .htaccess file:

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

However, instead of adding these lines manually, you can simply turn on "Pretty Permalinks" in WordPress (see http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks for more details), and they should get added automatically.

Blog - since you're using WordPress, I recommend installing Yoast's SEO plugin (it's free - http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/).  Then, you can correct the ?author=1 issue by disabling author archives.  Here's a quick reference for other functionality offered by the plugin: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

I hope that helps!

Cheers,
Steve

Hi Shawn,

Your best bet is probably the Whois History tool from DomainTools: http://www.domaintools.com/research/whois-history/

This isn't a free service, but they do offer a 7-day free trial.  Also, here are a few more options that might help (they will probably have less information than DomainTools):

http://www.hosterstats.com/ http://www.who.is/

Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that any of these tools will solve your problem (e.g., if the domain has had privacy enabled for many years, you'll just see historically private records), but they're probably your best option.

I hope that helps!

Cheers,
Steve

Hi Anton,

This SEOmoz post is still one of the best site migration guides I've seen: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

If you and your team go through that process, your site migration should be as painless as possible

You're very welcome.  I'm glad I could help

Hi Dino,

The consensus in the SEO community is that search engines still identify subdomains as separate sites (with respect to how domain authority is calculated and distributed throughout the Web graph).

Therefore, the second option (i.e., companysite.com/blog) is much better from an SEO perspective because it consolidates all of the website's content under a single site and maximizes the flow of authority through that site.

4 quick comments...

1.) Check out this recent SEOmoz post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/going-beyond-moz-metrics-to-answer-why-is-this-site-outranking-me

2.) It's very important to note that SEOmoz's tools report SEOmoz-specific metrics (based on SEOmoz's data about other sites).  These metrics are very valuable for analyzing your site (and your competitors); however, they do NOT reflect the actual information that is used internally at the search engines (i.e., they're approximations).

3.) If your site doesn't appear ANYWHERE in the Google SERPs (including a "site:" query), your site might be de-indexed.

4.) Without your site's URL, we won't be able to give you specific advice.

You're very welcome.

And just try to think about it this way... every best practice you employ for your site is another best practice your competitors have to employ to keep up with you

To clarify, when I say rel="canonical" pages, I mean pages that are using that link tag to point to another page (i.e., the pages that are NOT the canonical page).  These are also the pages that Duane and Rand were talking about.

I am not saying you shouldn't include pages that are included in the actual link tag.

Let's assume you have 3 pages: A, B, and C.

Pages B and C have a rel="canonical" link that points to A.

In this scenario, you would include A in your XML Sitemap (assuming A is a high-quality page that is important to your site), and you would NOT include B and C.

Yes, it is safe to assume that all search engines want your XML Sitemaps to be as clean and accurate as possible.

XML Sitemaps give you an opportunity to tell search engines about your most important pages, and you want to take advantage of this opportunity.

Think about it another way.  Let's pretend your site and Google are both real people.  In that hypothetical world, Google's first impression of your site is established through your site's XML Sitemaps.  If those Sitemaps are full of broken links, redirecting URLs, and rel="canonical" pages, your site has already made a bad first impression ("If this site can't maintain an up-to-date Sitemap, I'm terrified of what I'll find once I get to the actual pages").

On the other hand, if your XML Sitemaps are full of live links that point to your site's most important pages, Google will have a positive first impression and continue on with the relationship

Hi Diane,

Don't worry.  This is a known issue, and Google is working on it: http://webmaster-forum-announcements.blogspot.com/2013/02/known-issue-links-to-your-site-data.html

Matt Cutts also said the same thing today on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/301021126673440768

Hi Dino,

The consensus in the SEO community is that search engines still identify subdomains as separate sites (with respect to how domain authority is calculated and distributed throughout the Web graph).

Therefore, the second option (i.e., companysite.com/blog) is much better from an SEO perspective because it consolidates all of the website's content under a single site and maximizes the flow of authority through that site.

4 quick comments...

1.) Check out this recent SEOmoz post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/going-beyond-moz-metrics-to-answer-why-is-this-site-outranking-me

2.) It's very important to note that SEOmoz's tools report SEOmoz-specific metrics (based on SEOmoz's data about other sites).  These metrics are very valuable for analyzing your site (and your competitors); however, they do NOT reflect the actual information that is used internally at the search engines (i.e., they're approximations).

3.) If your site doesn't appear ANYWHERE in the Google SERPs (including a "site:" query), your site might be de-indexed.

4.) Without your site's URL, we won't be able to give you specific advice.

Right now, it looks like your backlink anchor text profile is over-optimized for "website design" (that's the anchor text you're using in the site-wide footers).

As you already mentioned, I recommend removing the site-wide links.  For the links you keep on the homepage, I also recommend using brand-related anchor text instead of money keywords (i.e., link with "BlueTone Media" instead of "Website Design").

You're using these links for branding purposes (so it makes sense to emphasize the brand), and if you use brand-related anchor text, you'll be much safer with respect to link-related search engine updates.

Hi Shawn,

Your best bet is probably the Whois History tool from DomainTools: http://www.domaintools.com/research/whois-history/

This isn't a free service, but they do offer a 7-day free trial.  Also, here are a few more options that might help (they will probably have less information than DomainTools):

http://www.hosterstats.com/ http://www.who.is/

Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that any of these tools will solve your problem (e.g., if the domain has had privacy enabled for many years, you'll just see historically private records), but they're probably your best option.

I hope that helps!

Cheers,
Steve

Short answer: using rel="canonical" to point to the default URL for each product will solve the product-related duplicate content issue.

As for the "best" way to solve this problem, I actually prefer using a robots meta tag with "noindex, follow" attributes on each duplicate product page.

Since the duplicate URLs only exist for navigational purposes, I'd prefer to keep them out of the search engine indexes altogether.

Once you have this issue squared away, be sure to read through these resources for other important eCommerce considerations:

Perfecting On-Page Optimization for Ecommerce Websites

Holy Grail of eCommerce Conversion Optimization

hReview is just another way to markup a review.  Specifically, it's the microformat way to markup a review.  Here's the hReview specification: http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview

Google still supports microformat markup, but I recommend using schema.org markup because it is supported by Google, Bing, and Yahoo! (and it is the standard that those search engines are emphasizing for the future).

Once you've implemented the markup, use Google's Rich Snippet Tool to test if the markup is functioning correctly.

Hi Diane,

Don't worry.  This is a known issue, and Google is working on it: http://webmaster-forum-announcements.blogspot.com/2013/02/known-issue-links-to-your-site-data.html

Matt Cutts also said the same thing today on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/301021126673440768

Yes, it is safe to assume that all search engines want your XML Sitemaps to be as clean and accurate as possible.

XML Sitemaps give you an opportunity to tell search engines about your most important pages, and you want to take advantage of this opportunity.

Think about it another way.  Let's pretend your site and Google are both real people.  In that hypothetical world, Google's first impression of your site is established through your site's XML Sitemaps.  If those Sitemaps are full of broken links, redirecting URLs, and rel="canonical" pages, your site has already made a bad first impression ("If this site can't maintain an up-to-date Sitemap, I'm terrified of what I'll find once I get to the actual pages").

On the other hand, if your XML Sitemaps are full of live links that point to your site's most important pages, Google will have a positive first impression and continue on with the relationship

To clarify, when I say rel="canonical" pages, I mean pages that are using that link tag to point to another page (i.e., the pages that are NOT the canonical page).  These are also the pages that Duane and Rand were talking about.

I am not saying you shouldn't include pages that are included in the actual link tag.

Let's assume you have 3 pages: A, B, and C.

Pages B and C have a rel="canonical" link that points to A.

In this scenario, you would include A in your XML Sitemap (assuming A is a high-quality page that is important to your site), and you would NOT include B and C.