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Category: Technical SEO

Discuss site health, structure, and other technical SEO strategies.

  • tidybooks


    Hi We have just added a new layered navigation menu to our website. so for example we had Before : www.tidy-books.co.uk/chidlrens-bookcases  (this has the seo juice) And Now:  http://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-book-storage/childrens-bookcases Might be a stupid question but do I redirect the 'now' url to the 'before' url or the the other way round I look forward to hearing your thoughts Thanks

    | tidybooks
    0
  • nathonraine


    Anybody know why pages that have previously been indexed - and that are still present in Google's cache - are now not appearing in Google SERPs? All the usual suspects - noindex, robots, duplication filter, 301s - have been ruled out. We shifted our site over from http to https last week and it appears to have started then, although we have also been playing around with our navigation structure a bit too. Here are a few examples... Example 1: Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place SERP (1): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place SERP (2): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Example 2: SERP: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deaf+center+recount+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- These are pages that have been linked to from our homepage (Moz PA of 68) prominently for days, are present and correct in our sitemap (https://www.normanrecords.com/catalogue_sitemap.xml), have unique content, have decent on-page optimisation, etc. etc. We moved over to https on 11 Aug. There were some initial wobbles (e.g. 301s from normanrecords.com to www.normanrecords.com got caught up in a nasty loop due to the conflicting 301 from http to https) but these were quickly sorted (i.e. spotted and resolved within minutes). There have been some other changes made to the structure of the site (e.g. a reduction in the navigation options) but nothing I know of that would cause pages to drop like this. For the first example (Memory Drawings) we were ranking on the first page right up until this morning and have been receiving Google traffic for it ever since it was added to the site on 4 Aug. Any help very much appreciated! At the very end of my tether / understanding here... Cheers, Nathon

    | nathonraine
    0
  • chris1980


    My site: www.kbamerican.com Competitor: www.lacollectionservice.com

    | chris1980
    0
  • burnseo


    Looking for any insights regarding the usage of  the Vary HTTP Header.  Mainly around the idea that search engines will not like having a  Vary HTTP Header on pages that don't have a mobile version, which means the header will be to be implemented on a page-by-page basis. Additionally, does anyone has experience with the usage of the Vary HTTP Header and CDNs like Akamai?Google still recommends using the header, even though it can present some challenges with CDNs. Thanks!

    | burnseo
    0
  • lzhao


    Google site search (site:'hbn.hoovers.com') indicates 171,000 results for this subdomain.  That is not a desired result - this site has 100% duplicate content.   We don't want SEs spending any time here. Robots.txt is set up mostly right to disallow all search engines from indexing this site.   That asterisk at the end of the disallow statement looks pretty harmless - but could that be why the site has been indexed? User-agent: * Disallow: /*

    | lzhao
    0
  • lfrazer


    Hello, We have always included videos, pages, and images in the same sitemap.xml file, and after reading through the Google sitemap info page, I am wondering if we should break those up into respective types of sitemaps (i.e one for video, one for images, etc)? If this is so, how to name the files and submit them? And then, should I submit a sitemap.xml directory sitemap? Note: we have the normal amount of images, videos, pages..not an ecommerce site. Thanks in advance 🙂

    | lfrazer
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    We did a 10 question quiz awhile back relating to something we were sponsoring, and it had a decent response. However, considering quizzes just aren't that long, does that contribute to making the site's content thin? Obviously, it's not a major problem at the moment, but if we did more of them would this be an issue? If there's no real issue, I'd prefer not to no-index them, but I'd love some feedback to help make the decision. Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • Rauxa


    Hello, A client wants us to create a page on two different sites (www.brandA.com/content and www.brandB.com/content) with similar content and serve up specific content to users based on their IP addresses. The idea is that once a user gets to the page, the content would slightly change (mainly contact information and headers) based on their location. The problem I am seeing with this is that both brandA and brandB would be different Urls so there is a chance if their both optimized for the similar terms then they would both rank and crowd up the search results (duplicate content). Have you seen something similar? What are your thoughts and/or potential solutions? Also, do you know of any sites that are currently doing something similar?

    | Rauxa
    0
  • jfmonfette


    We have a page that ranks really well and gets a lot of traffic. We're wondering what would be the SEO impact of putting a lead gen form before visitors can download what they want. Currently, entrepreneurs can download a free business plan template kit. It's a zip file that include 6 files like a blank template, an blank Excel for the financials, examples files and links to related articles. The page is : http://www.bdc.ca/en/advice_centre/tools/business_plan/Pages/default.aspx Do you think that adding a form before downloading the zip file would cost us rankings? Thanks,

    | jfmonfette
    0
  • WSteven


    Hi, We are redoing our site structure and I was wondering what are the benefits of having a flat url structure. For example store.com/product instead of doing store.com/category/product. I noticed sites doing it both ways, even moz.com has both structures ex: moz.com/learn/seo and when you clck on something it brings you to moz.com/seo-expert-quiz (even though following the previous logic it should be moz.com/learn/seo/seo-expert-quiz) Please advise, Thanks!

    | WSteven
    0
  • Bridge_Education_Group


    Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone had this same situation, or may know of a solution. One of our sites was recently pharmahacked 😞 We found an entire pharmaceutical site in one of the folder of our site. We were able to delete it, but now Google is showing us on not found error for those pages we deleted. First, I guess the question is will this harm us? If so, anyway we can fix this? Obliviously we don't want to do a 303 redirect for spam pages. Thanks!

    | Bridge_Education_Group
    0
  • spackle


    We're building a page that is going to feature over 31 people as difference makers in their field. We're unveiling one a day for an entire month. The very early mockup of the page has name, pic, some bio info, and a link to open up a new window with the full bio. I would love to have all of the bio content for all of the people on the page (and indexable), but I'm not sure how to do that while still being able to hide the full bios until they are expanded. Anybody have any tips that are SEO-friendly and/or examples of a page that is built like this and ranks well. Thanks!

    | spackle
    0
  • renukishor


    Hi, I want to remove more than 6,000 pages of my website because of bad keywords, I am going to drop all these pages and making them ‘404’ I want to know how can I inform google that these pages does not exists so please don’t send me traffic from those bad keywords? Also want to know can I use disavow tool of google website to exclude these 6,000 pages of my own website?

    | renukishor
    4
  • TheHecksler


    Hi all, I have a client who has a domain lets say www.xyz.de which is redirected 301 to www.zyx.de. Now they're working on a relaunch and they want to use the www.xyz.de as their origibnal doman after that. So, at the end the www.zyx.de - which is indexed by Google - should be redirected to www.xyz.de. It vice versa. So the redirect becomes the original and the original becomes the redirect 😕 Is there anything we have to care off? Or will that run into the hell? Thanx. Seb.

    | TheHecksler
    0
  • tomfifteen


    Hello I have a website with 2000 nofollow links backlinks and about 20 follow links. It is currently ranking 11<sup>th</sup> on Google. The websites that are outranking it have lower ranking stats and in some cases only 2 follow links. Most of the nofollow links are blog comments, could this be what is dragging down my stats. The only factor my website is worst on is the number of server requests per load, which is 194 as it is a theme. Blog comments can be very difficult to remove; I created these several years ago before I knew too much about SEO. Most of them are on other websites in same niche. Would I be best to ask website owners to delete my comments or restart on a new domain. Thanks Rob

    | tomfifteen
    0
  • U-Digital


    Hi, A client of ours has a website with a manual spam action (duplicate content). Because they made some mistakes with redirects while moving the site from a URL to another google penitalized the site. We fixed the errors and the spamction is revoked. My question is how long it ussualy takes before the first results are back in the SERP. In WMT Google says "some time". But has anyone got some more information on it? Best Regards, Sam

    | U-Digital
    0
  • Crocodesign


    What's the best practice to switch from an all HTTP site to an all HTTPS site ?
    No changes to the site structure, just a full site switch to SSL.
    Right now, the site is reachable with HTTP and with HTTPS. http://crocodesign.be --> https://crocodesign.be
    http://www.crocodesign.be --> https://crocodesign.be
    https://www.crocodesign.be --> https://crocodesign.be CMS : Wordpress 3.9
    Server type : Apache
    Preferred method : .htaccess

    | Crocodesign
    0
  • Morten_Hjort


    3 days ago I sent in a new sitemap for a new platform. Its 23.412 pages but until now its only 4 pages (!!) that are indexed according to the Webmaster Tools. Why so few? Our stage-enviroment got indexed (more than 50K pages) in a few days by a mistake.

    | Morten_Hjort
    0
  • Maayboli


    I have some old valuable followed links from high ranking domains and I noticed from moz reports they are reporting 404.Visually they looked fne but when I clicked on those they indeed were generating 404. When I researched further they are defined as My domain.com   Notice there is extra space between "/" and the closing quote.  It turns out it is sending "www.mydomain.com/ " to browsers. Any ideas How to solve this? If I should put a perm redirect in apache, how do I deal with these "%C2%A0" characters. It seems the issue is happening at more than one remote domain.

    | Maayboli
    0
  • Zippy-Bungle


    A lot of my keywords have + signs in them which causes lots of problems in urls and feeds For example S355G10+M. What is the best way to  put this in a url S355G10M S355G10-M S355G10_M Thanks

    | Zippy-Bungle
    0
  • RoxBrock


    Is it possible to have schema.org itemtypes for both secure and insecure ports? I run a static-ish site made in Jekyll, and am implementing Schema.org on the individual pages. As a result, I'm trying to use the following:     This doesn't validate with Google's Rich Snippet Tool. It doesn't register the Items as existing. Is there a good way to implement Schema.org in a static page hosted on both SSL and non-SSL ports?

    | RoxBrock
    0
  • cathibanks


    Describe your question in detail. The more information you give, the better! It helps give context for a great answer I have had my blog located at www.legacytravel.com/ramblings for a while. I now believe that, from an SEO perspective, it would be preferable to move it to www.legacytravel.com/blog. So, I want to be able to not lose any links (few though they may be) with the move. I believe I would need to do a 301 redirect in the htaccess file of www.legacytravel.com that will tell anyone who comes knocking on the door of www.legacytravel.com/ramblings/blah blah blah that now what they want is at www.legacytravel.com/blog/blah blah blah Is that correct? What would the entry look like in the htaccess? Thank you in advance.

    | cathibanks
    0
  • A.Ronny


    I have just started using Open Site Explorer and discovered a lot of spam links to my website.
    (I have mostly ranked on page for many years one but in the last two weeks ranking have dropped to page two)
    The links have Anchor Text such as Scam - Dishonest - Drugs. Most of the of the links are "nofollow".
    Will links with "nofollow" affect my ranking and if so which of the links should i priorities to remove?
    Do I look at  Link Equity - Domain Authority - Page Authority or other criteria? Many thanks
    Ronny

    | A.Ronny
    0
  • lfrazer


    Hello, I think this may be a coding issue, but hoping someone can help me. I am still having issues with our mobile site ranking, even though we created redirects/canonical to identify similar content between desktop version and mobile. I did notice through MOZ analysis of backlinks that we have no domain authority. If the mobile site is automatically detected dependent on the user, shouldn't we also have the same domain authority? How does that work exactly? How can we build up the domain authority for our mobile site? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

    | lfrazer
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    Does keyword density only account for the content-based text on the page or everything that can be crawled on the page? To illustrate, I'll use this forum page and the keyword Moz. Here's my incredibly short blog post: "Moz forum is very helpful, but I still can't figure out Moz analytics." Now, in terms of keyword density, is "Moz" only being counted twice for the times I mentioned it in my post (what I'm calling content-based text) or is "Moz" being counted 40-50 times for all the places it appears on this page. Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    1
  • cbarron


    A number of steps in my purchase funnel are competing against each other in the SERP. So wwww.exmaple.com/step1 and wwww.exmaple.com/step2 are both appearing on the SERP. What is the best course of action to stop this. Other than implementing robots.txt on wwww.exmaple.com/step2 is there anything else that I should be doing?

    | cbarron
    0
  • Muhammad-Isap


    Hi guys, I'm auditing a site covering compensation for cancer. Keywords could include: Undiagnosed cancer      20 cancer compensation     10 undiagnosed cancer symptoms 10 cancer misdiagnosis claims     20 cancer claims     10 misdiagnosis of cancer     50 cancer misdiagnosis     70 So, when structuring the URL for the category, this was previously selected: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis Although sub-pages appear like this: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ 'Cancer misdiagnosis' as a keyword attracts the most traffic, but if we're using it on sub-pages - is there a need to include it twice on all sub-page URLs? With that in mind, would it be better to follow the following format? www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ Or is there a better way to structure this? Thanks in advance guys!

    | Muhammad-Isap
    0
  • Dan-Lawrence


    Hi How important is it that when migrating sites to HTTPS they have their own SSL certificates as opposed to choosing the much cheaper multi domain certificate options such as: https://www.namecheap.com/security/ssl-certificates/comodo/ev-multi-domain.aspx I have been told really should have 1 certificate per domain and people generally unsure about multi domain certsificates ? All Best Dan

    | Dan-Lawrence
    0
  • TWSI


    Hi guys, Has anyone ever had this before? My clients website was appearing 4 & 5 in Google.co.uk for the keyword 'voltage optimisation'. Since moving up in the rankings after furiously optimising the website we have now gotten to position 3 in Google.co.uk but the homepage ranking has disappeared and now is just displaying our 'what is voltage optimisation' page.  I'm guessing Google feels that this page is more useful to someone searching 'voltage optimisation' but my client wants answers?! It's almost like Google have said, "if you want to take position 3 were only going to list one of your pages" because everytime we drop back down to position 4 our homepage appears position 5.

    | TWSI
    0
  • fionah


    We are working on an internal project, where the website owner is thinking of making regular changes to one or two items on the top level menu. Assuming they redirect the original pages or navigate to them in other ways, is there any other impact on SEO to changing the menu structure? I assume they'd submit new sitemaps after each change. Many thanks Fiona

    | fionah
    0
  • Iwashima


    I would like to hear your opinion about which between robotics.kawasaki.com and www.kawasakirobotics.com is more effective for SEO of keyword robotics and kawasaki. We have been using kawasaki.com　domain name for more than 15 years.

    | Iwashima
    0
  • NancyVPS


    I have a client that recently moved from an old ZenCart e-commerce site to Volusion.  The domain name did not change.  We need to redirect a bunch of the old URLs; however, Volusion's redirect tool does not work for URLS with "?" .  The old ZenCart structure is: http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=563 Volusion is a hosted platform and we do not have access to the .htaccess file. Any suggestions on a workaround? Thanks!Nancy <colgroup><col width="960"></colgroup>
    |   |

    | NancyVPS
    0
  • sbrault74


    I recently bought an SSL certificate and moved my site over to HTTPS. Now how do I make the change in Google Webmaster Tools?

    | sbrault74
    0
  • SeoMartin1


    I'm familar with A/B testing variations of a page but I'd like to A/B test a new designs version of a e-commerce site. I´m wondering about the best way to test with SEO concerns... this is what I´ve in mind right now, any suggestion? Use parameters to make version B different from A version. Redirect 50% of the users with 302 ( or javascript would be a better way?) Use noindex in the B pages. Use rel=canonical in the B pages pointing to A version. In the end use 301 redirect to all B pages to A urls. PS: We can´t use subdomain and i don´t wanna use robots.txt file to protect the new design from competitors. I´d love any suggestions and tips about it - thanks folks 🙂

    | SeoMartin1
    0
  • poiseo


    | 0 <a class="vote-down-off" title="This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful">down vote</a> favorite | Hey community, my first question here 🙂 Imagine there is a page with video, it has hreflang tags setup, to lead let's say German visitors to /de/ folder... So, on that German version of page, everything like menus, navigation and such are in German, but the video is the same, the title of the video (H1 tag) is the same, <title></code></strong> and <strong><code>meta description</code></strong> is the same as on the original English page. It means that general (English) page and German version of it has the same key content in English.</p> <p>To me it seems to be a SEO duplicate content issue. As I know, Google doesn't think that content is duplicate, if it is properly translated to other language.</p> <p>Does my explained case mean that the content will be detected by Google as duplicate?</p> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table></title> |

    | poiseo
    0
  • sandeep.clickdesk


    My website URL is: http://goo.gl/AiOgu1 Hello, Recently my websites revoked from manual link penalty, impressions in GWT increased from 3K to 9K within 2 months, but most of all keywords are ranking on the 3rd, 4th and 5th page. Please suggest me some onpage changes.

    | sandeep.clickdesk
    0
  • cathibanks


    There are a number of entries in my htaccess and I'd like to understand what they are doing so that I can understand if they need to be there or not. So, can someone tell me what this says...in plain english? RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^legacytravel.com$ [OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.legacytravel.com$
    RewriteRule ^carrollton-travel-agent$ "http://www.legacytravel.com/carrollton-travel-agent" [R=301,L] Thank you a million times in advance.

    | cathibanks
    0
  • Zanox


    Right now the product page "gedroogde goji bessen" (Dutch for: dried goji berries) is available true 3 URL's! **http://www.sportvoeding.net/gedroogde-goji-bessen ** =>
    By clicking on the product slider on the homepage
    http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
    First go to sportvoeding.net/superfood (main categorie) and than clicking on "gedroogde Goji bessen"
    http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen =>
    When directly go to the subcategorie "Goji Bessen" true the menu and there clicking on "gedroogde Goji Bessen" We want to have the following product URL:
    http://www.sportvoeding.net/superfood/goji-bessen/gedroogde-goji-bessen Does someone know´s a good Exetension for this issue?

    | Zanox
    0
  • tbinga


    Hey guys, So a current client of mine has an e-commerce shop with a few hundred products. They purposely choose to keep the prices off of their website, which is causing errors in Google Webmaster Tools. Basically the error shows: Error: Structured Data > Product (markup: schema.org) Error type: missing price 208 items with error Is this a huge deal? Or are we allowed to have non-numerical prices for schema ie. "call for quote"

    | tbinga
    1
  • JanetJ


    I am using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to generate a sitemap on http://www.atozqualityfencing.com. Last month, I had an associate create redirects for over 200 404 errors. She did this via the .htaccess file. Today, there are the same amount of 404s along with a number of 503 errors. This new Wordpress website was constructed on a subdirectory and made live by simply entering some code into the .htaccess file in order to direct browsers to the content we wanted live. In other words, the content actually resides in a subdirectory titled "newsite" but is shown live on the main url. Can you tell me why we are having these 404 & 503 errors? I have no idea where to begin looking.

    | JanetJ
    0
  • PrasoonGoel


    I'm going through the process of redesigning our website, and the URL structure was brought up. We currently have our URLs structured as domain.com/keyword.  It seems that some people think setting your URLs up to look like:  domain.com/directory/keyword makes more sense from a user's perspective, and from a search engine's perspective. With our directories labeled as services, solutions, clients - I see no value in adding directories as it dilutes the keyword and brings the keyword further away from the domain. Are there situations where adding a directory before the page in the URL makes sense? If anyone has data showing the difference between the two that'd be great! Thanks, Brian

    | PrasoonGoel
    0
  • viventuraSEO


    Hi, what do you reckon of taking away the mouseover effect on the header pictures seen on www.viventura.de/reisen/peru?
    We are thinking of eliminating the mouseover text to make User Experience even better but are worrying that our ranking might go down when doing so. Any experiences, any help is highly appreciated!
    Thanks, Benno

    | viventuraSEO
    0
  • mdmoz


    Hello guys, I wonder, my sites are currently being indexed every 7 days, exactly. At Index Status page in GWT. However, this new site gets updated almost everyday, how can I ask google to index faster and more frequently/almost daily? Is it about SItemap.xml frequency ? I changed it today to Daily. Thanks!

    | mdmoz
    0
  • SEOhughesm


    Hi, I have implemented this function into my wordpress theme. However,  I can only get the prev rel to show up. Does anyone have an idea? function rel_next_prev(){
    global $paged; if ( get_previous_posts_link() ) { ?>
    } if ( get_next_posts_link() ) { ?>
    } }
    add_action( 'wp_head', 'rel_next_prev' );
    ?>

    | SEOhughesm
    0
  • absoauto


    Hey everyone, We've got an issue where our current shopping cart provider (Volusion) allows us to use canonical and rel="alternate" links, however the canonical links are forced on our Desktop as well as mobile pages. When they should only be on the mobile pages. You can view what I mean at the below two pages: http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/fgd400-sensaphone400-p/fgd400.htm https://www.absoluteautomation.ca/mobile/Product.aspx?ProductCode=FGD400 Does anyone have any ideas in terms of working around this?

    | absoauto
    0
  • EcommerceSite


    My site is currently verified using a meta tag for both Google and Bing. Will I need to recreate the meta tag or will I be able to use the same one?

    | EcommerceSite
    1
  • arnoldwender


    Hello, In your opinion what is better for a root domain and micro-sites using sub-domains?, to have a single sitemap for the root domain including all links to the sub-domains or to have a separate sitemap for each sub-domain? Thanks Arnold

    | arnoldwender
    0
  • HCHQ


    Hi Guys, I have a forum on a subdomain and it is no longer used. (like forum.mywebsite.com) It kind of feels like a dead limb and I don't know what's best to do for SEO. Should I just leave it as it is and let it stagnate? There is a link in the nav menu to the main domain so users have a chance to find the main domain. Or should I remove it and just redirect the whole subdomain to the main domain? I don't know if redirects would work as I doubt most of the threads would match our articles, plus there are 700 of them. The main domain is PR3 and so is the forum subdomain. Please help!

    | HCHQ
    0
  • Kennelstore


    Hi All, im trying to find a way to do a mass list of 301s instead of just doing them individually, does anyone have any ideas or tips into how i can do this?

    | Kennelstore
    0
  • Zippy-Bungle


    The authority of my key pages is staying resolutely at 1 even as I've improved my domain authority from 16 to 25 over the last month

    | Zippy-Bungle
    0

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