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I would also suggest that you add alternate language tags (in the HTML code as well as the XML Sitemap).

This would avoid any duplicate content issues that might arise due to different country websites.

The instructions for alternate language tags can be found here.

Thanks,
Sajeet

Hi,

I would suggest that you verify whether 301 redirects are even a possibility. For example, if the website is hosted on IIS server, then the 301 redirect rule might result into a redirect loop. In such a scenario, I would suggest you place self canonical tag on the page. For example on the page domainA.com/page 1, we will have the following tag in the head section of the page -

For the PDF files, place the canonical tag in the header response.

On the links front - You will not be losing a lot

Regards,
Sajeet

Hi,

Regarding the number of links - domain.com and www.domain.com are two separate URLs and hence treated separately. So its a possibility that some domains will link to domain.com and some domains will link to www.domain.com and accordingly the numbers reported will vary.

Regarding acquisition of links - Based on the evolution of links over the past 5 years and Google's stand on acquisition of links, I would strongly suggest that you don't focus on building links artificially. Instead, I would suggest that you focus on the following -

Generation of content that results in a lot of coverage - Surveys, useful information to users/consumers , interactive content are some of the elements of the website that can help generate a lot of natural buzz. IMO, citations and natural references across the web are the future (if not the present already) and keyword based linking should be a complete NO NO.

Focus on consumers - The moment we focus on consumers and come up with innovative techniques for more customer acquisition, more the word of mouth awareness and more the possibility of mentions across the web (social media channels, online press etc)

As far as competitors are concerned, even if say they are using non white hat techniques, its only a matter of time before search engines penalize them.

Regards,
Sajeet

Hi,

Please check the following -

• 301 redirects - Once the domain name was changed have you placed 301 redirects. Domain A >> 301 redirect >> Domain B.
• Page level redirects also need to be in place. For example - domainA.com/Page1 >> 301 Redirect >> domainB.com/Page2
• Check for robots.txt file. You might be blocking the search engines.
• Check for SEO elements such as Page Title, Metas etc. If you have not retained these elements, you might see a drop in rankings.
• Check for no index and no follow. Maybe you have placed these tags on all the pages and hence the drop
• Check the XML sitemap, ensure that you have submitted the new URLs via the XML sitemap
• Check if you have made major modifications to the content. If you have changed the content by a great extent, then it's a possibility that the old pages had better content from an SEO perspective as opposed to the existing content.
• Check if you specified the correct GEO in Google WMT
• If you have done all of the above, then check your backlinks, maybe your domain transition coincided with an algorithmic penalty (either manual or automated). Check WMT messages for details.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

You can check the cache copy, in some cases Google appends the parameter and in some cases it does not. This depends on the authority of the specific URL.

Hi,

For getting data related to internal links, you can select the URL filter and select contains -"Your domain name". Since we get target URL as well we can get data related to internal links.

In most of the cases, such a huge number of internal links results from top navigation or footers that are spread across all the pages of the website. In such cases I would not worry. Just check site: data and see if the number approximately matches the number of internal links data.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

Hi,

Regarding UTM parameters, if implemented correctly, Google will not treat it as a separate URL. For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?utm_medium=moz&utm_source=qa&utm_campaign=forum and www.mysite.com/main-page will be treated as the same page.

For manual tagging always remember, you can only add the following parameters -

• Campaign Medium
• Campaign Source
• Campaign Term
• Campaign Content
• Campaign Name

Canonical tags should be placed under the following circumstances -

• When 301 is not an option
• When you append dynamic parameters to URLs that Google will treat as a separate entity For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?medium=abc

In your case I would suggest that there is no need to place a canonical tag since the tagging adheres to Google guidelines. However for hygiene purposes you can place a self canonical tag.

Note - I have noticed that in some PPC campaigns people append the URL with utm_adgroup. Please note that this is wrong technique and Google does not recognize it. In such scenarios, use auto tagging instead.

Regards,

Sajeet

Hi,

Instead of implementing 301 redirects, would recommend that you implement Alternate tags.

Assuming that you have only .com and .co.uk domains and that .com domain caters to the whole world, the following code needs to be placed  -

In case .com caters to US then place the following code -

The highlighted part will vary depending on the URL of the pages.

In addition you can also specify alternate tags in the XML sitemap. You can refer Google support document here

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

First click on one of the URLs and see the pages from which they are linking from. If its an internal link then check the source code and rectify the error. If its an external link then the third party website needs to be contacted and the links must be removed.

For different geos suggest the following -

• Use CCTLD
• Host the websites on geo specific servers (US website on a US server)
• Implement href language tags on the geo specific pages to avoid duplicate content issues
• Implement href language tags in the XML sitemap as well
• As a safety measure, implement self canonical tags

• Sajeet

Hi,

Please check the following -

• 301 redirects - Once the domain name was changed have you placed 301 redirects. Domain A >> 301 redirect >> Domain B.
• Page level redirects also need to be in place. For example - domainA.com/Page1 >> 301 Redirect >> domainB.com/Page2
• Check for robots.txt file. You might be blocking the search engines.
• Check for SEO elements such as Page Title, Metas etc. If you have not retained these elements, you might see a drop in rankings.
• Check for no index and no follow. Maybe you have placed these tags on all the pages and hence the drop
• Check the XML sitemap, ensure that you have submitted the new URLs via the XML sitemap
• Check if you have made major modifications to the content. If you have changed the content by a great extent, then it's a possibility that the old pages had better content from an SEO perspective as opposed to the existing content.
• Check if you specified the correct GEO in Google WMT
• If you have done all of the above, then check your backlinks, maybe your domain transition coincided with an algorithmic penalty (either manual or automated). Check WMT messages for details.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

There are two issues with your tracking -

• The code is correct for tracking views to the banner, however its not correct if you want to track the clicks. For clicks, you will have to add onClick function.
• The regex is incorrect. The correct regex is bannerID(.*). Suggest you use regexpal.com to test your regular expressions.

Hope this helps.

• Sajeet

Hi,

Regarding UTM parameters, if implemented correctly, Google will not treat it as a separate URL. For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?utm_medium=moz&utm_source=qa&utm_campaign=forum and www.mysite.com/main-page will be treated as the same page.

For manual tagging always remember, you can only add the following parameters -

• Campaign Medium
• Campaign Source
• Campaign Term
• Campaign Content
• Campaign Name

Canonical tags should be placed under the following circumstances -

• When 301 is not an option
• When you append dynamic parameters to URLs that Google will treat as a separate entity For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?medium=abc

In your case I would suggest that there is no need to place a canonical tag since the tagging adheres to Google guidelines. However for hygiene purposes you can place a self canonical tag.

Note - I have noticed that in some PPC campaigns people append the URL with utm_adgroup. Please note that this is wrong technique and Google does not recognize it. In such scenarios, use auto tagging instead.

Regards,

Sajeet

Hi,

Regarding the number of links - domain.com and www.domain.com are two separate URLs and hence treated separately. So its a possibility that some domains will link to domain.com and some domains will link to www.domain.com and accordingly the numbers reported will vary.

Regarding acquisition of links - Based on the evolution of links over the past 5 years and Google's stand on acquisition of links, I would strongly suggest that you don't focus on building links artificially. Instead, I would suggest that you focus on the following -

Generation of content that results in a lot of coverage - Surveys, useful information to users/consumers , interactive content are some of the elements of the website that can help generate a lot of natural buzz. IMO, citations and natural references across the web are the future (if not the present already) and keyword based linking should be a complete NO NO.

Focus on consumers - The moment we focus on consumers and come up with innovative techniques for more customer acquisition, more the word of mouth awareness and more the possibility of mentions across the web (social media channels, online press etc)

As far as competitors are concerned, even if say they are using non white hat techniques, its only a matter of time before search engines penalize them.

Regards,
Sajeet

MOZ has more metrics and is very detailed, but in terms of freshness and latest links recommend using href and majestic SEO. One more advantage of using href and majestic SEO is that the reports can be downloaded ASAP. Unfortunately for whatever reasons reports by MOZ take more time to download.

Whitespark is especially useful in cases of US and UK citations. However for Asia and Africa specific regions, the results are not very good

For lead based websites, recommend using wordpress since its free and very user friendly. For e commerce related websites, majento is highly recommended as it is more stable.

• Sajeet

Hi,

For getting data related to internal links, you can select the URL filter and select contains -"Your domain name". Since we get target URL as well we can get data related to internal links.

In most of the cases, such a huge number of internal links results from top navigation or footers that are spread across all the pages of the website. In such cases I would not worry. Just check site: data and see if the number approximately matches the number of internal links data.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

Suggest going back to the basics -

• Generate sectional sitemaps and submit them to WMT. Check which sections are not getting indexed to the fullest
• 301s to the home page might be an issue in cases in which the URL numbers are lot
• Code clean up, use gzip compression, call all JS and CSS files externally, improve text to code ratio
• Implement self canonical tags along with Syndication and original source tags, this is just for hygiene purposes
• Check for duplicate content, see if anyone is scraping your content
• Check at server levels, sometimes some CMSs generate scripts that block search engine spiders at the server level
• If you can clean WMT HTML improvements that would be great
• Check if rel=next and prev tags have been implemented in case of paginated series

I am assuming that all the other SEO basics are in place, no spammy on page and off page techniques.

Hope this helps.

• Sajeet

For different geos suggest the following -

• Use CCTLD
• Host the websites on geo specific servers (US website on a US server)
• Implement href language tags on the geo specific pages to avoid duplicate content issues
• Implement href language tags in the XML sitemap as well
• As a safety measure, implement self canonical tags

• Sajeet

You can use jpegmini.com for jpeg images. Majorly useful when you want to compress huge images.

For optimization -

• Implement image micro data
• Submit an optimized Image Sitemap
• Have an optimized filename
• Optimized Alt Tags for images
• If applicable have a brief description under the images (approx 50 words)

• Sajeet

Whether one should have a folder structure versus # tag implementation completely depends on the content, page design and user intent.

#tag implementation is useful when the entire content needs to be rendered on the same page.

The advantages -

• You dont have to wait for the new page to load
• You can have a single page that has all the content

Disadvantages -

• You cannot create multiple pages which some believe is important from an SEO perspective i.e. having more pages in Google's index

In case of dedicated pages, the advantages and disadvantages are reversed. Again I would suggest that instead of SEO, more focus is provided to user intent and design.

Lastly in case of folder structure, please do not forget to add pagination tags as recommended by Google.