I'm sitting here with my head in my hands, two years work in a dusty pile, everything undone. Not as bad as it sounds but when a new developer comes along, reproduces an "exact copy" of the original site, but doesn't populate any of the Meta Tiles, Descriptions or Keywords  - then changes the naming conventions in the URL structures so half the internal links are now broken, and produces canonical pages by configuring the www's and non-www's to be both hosted instead of redirecting. I have to say, it is, at least, a significantly demoralising prospect to have to recover basic old ground.

Whilst ultimately easily fixed, it never ceases to amaze me how developers repeatedly demonstrate how little they understand search. In this vein I thought instead of ranting I'd cover some basics of SEO when changing developers, hosting or design.

1. When setting up hosting, any alias' or canonicals (non-www's) redirect to the primary domain -do not host and point to the local hosting file.

2. Ensure if you are changing a URL structure, you configure a 301 redirect for every page changed, or better still keep the old convention if you can.

3. Always ensure you have unique, relevant Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions and Meta Keywords on every page.

Back to the grind stone to get this one fixed.