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Category: Technical SEO

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

  • LivDetrick


    I've had someone tell me that google doesn't pay attention to H3 tags -- only H1 and H2.  I haven't found much online to back this up or discredit it; thought I'd ask the Moz community!

    | LivDetrick
    5
  • Mike555


    I have noticed Google image search has included suggestion tabs (e.g,. design, nature... when searching background) on the top of the image search.
    Are there specific meta tags I can add into my images so that my images will show up on each tab?
    Do those filters just show content based on image keywords or something else? IRme7gQ

    | Mike555
    0
  • johnwalkersmith


    Lets say you 301 redirect URL A to URL B, and URL A has some backlinks from other sites. Say you left the 301 redirect in place for a year, and Google had already replaced the old URL with the new URL in the SERPs, would the new URL (B) retain some of the link equity from URL A after the 301 redirect was removed, or does the redirect have to remain in place forever?

    | johnwalkersmith
    0
  • PeaSoupDigital


    Hi, Along with the title of each page, a Wordpress client has their brand name as a H1 on every single page. This is situated in the footer and just sits within the company info/address. Should these tags be removed, leaving just the page titles as H1s? Cheers, Lewis

    | PeaSoupDigital
    0
  • markdoel


    Hi Over several years I used many tags ( more then 1000 ) on my wordpress website 😞 but most of them haven't  any view and haven't any clicks on google search . now I want delete this old - useless - unused tags but I'm worried about seo problem like many 404 pages and problems like this . Does anyone have safe way to delete these wordpress tags? how can i safely remove them?

    | markdoel
    0
  • Packersmove


    Hi, I have found out more errors related to schema tag when using this tag on this page. Please tell me which types of schema need to implement on this URL. https://www.giftalove.com/delhi

    | Packersmove
    0
  • EverettChen


    Hi! Our company is trying to come up  with a few pages with some manuals to teach our users how to use our products. However, these pages require username and password. My understanding is that user engagement will help a website's keyword rankings and Google will not be able to crawl or have access to pages requiring login as it doesn't have username and password. Based on that idea, does that mean all the content and user engagement on those pages requiring login won't help our overall SEO? Thanks in advance!

    | EverettChen
    0
  • agrier


    Hi Team, Google search console used to allow you to use their structured data markup helperhttps://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/ to markup multiple product pages at once that were similar. I do not see this feature anymore with the new search console. Does anyone have a recommendation for marking up multiple product pages without having to have schema markup firing in GTM for each product page?

    | agrier
    0
  • barobijav


    Hi guys, I am wondering if the google manual penalty or penalty in general (because of bad backlink profile) also means that your website is blocked for Adwords? Thanks

    | barobijav
    0
  • fabx


    Few days ago Google indexed hundreds of my directories by mistake (error with plugins/host), my traffic dropped as a consequence. Anyway I fixed that and submitted a URL removal request. Now just waiting things to go back to normality. Meantime I was supposed to move my website to HTTPS this week. Question: Should I wait until this indexing error has been fixed or I may as well go ahead with the SSL move?

    | fabx
    0
  • yigitgok


    Hello, I have an ecommerce website. Due to discounts and sales on most of my products, the discount rates change very often. Some products have %10 discounts for 3 days and then same products might have %50 discounts for another 5 days. I would like to show these product specific discounts on Meta Titles and Descriptions dynamically. My system will automatically update the Meta Titles once the discount on a product changes. My question is, how often can I change the Meta Titles? Is changing them (only discount rates = 1word) too often bad for my SEO? What is Goolge's approach on this? Thank you in advance for all your help. Best,
    Yigit

    | yigitgok
    0
  • Johnroger


    Hello, If we noindex pages, will it improve crawl budget ? For example pages like these - https://x-z.com/2012/10/
    https://x-y.com/2012/06/
    https://x-y.com/2013/03/
    https://x-y.com/2019/10/
    https://x-y.com/2019/08/ Should we delete/redirect such pages  ? Thanks

    | Johnroger
    0
  • Johnroger


    Hello, How can we solve the following error : This page isn't working ** redirected you too many times.** It's very frustrating. I have cleared the cookies. Still, the problem persists. Thanks

    | Johnroger
    0
  • naturalsociety


    I have over 18,000 tags. Needless to say, most of them are relatively useless to the user and generate no traffic, while cluttering the site. (I use Wordpress.) My plan is to delete tags, but I want to do so safely as to not accumulate website errors. (Tags pages are noindexed.) What process should I take here? Here was my basic plan (any help is appreciated). 1. Find irrelevant tags that are connected with hardly any posts. 2. Go into the post, and remove said tag. 3. Now, with a tag having a 'count' of 0, I go into Tags, and delete it. Safe, right? But now it seems those tag pages just turned into 404s "Uh-oh...Page not found!" Where do I go from here? Create 410's? Thanks Mike

    | naturalsociety
    0
  • naturalsociety


    Can I safely delete unused tags, ones with 0 posts connected to them? Thanks, Mike

    | naturalsociety
    0
  • RobertN-London


    hey, on https://www.xxx.co we've setup a 301 redirect to xxx.us - > BUT in webmaster tools its still showing a 200 load ok, whereas on all other testing tools its showing a 301 redirect (screamingfrog etc) even https://dns.google.com/query?name=www.xxx.co is showing that its 301 redirected. Any ideas? as we want to trigger the change of address tool in WMT and its saying it cant as it loads the homepage still....

    | RobertN-London
    0
  • triveraseo


    I have a site that will have 90% of the content behind a metered paywall. So all content is accessible in a metered way. All users who aren't logged in will have access to 3 articles (of any kind) in a 30 day period. If they try to access more in a 30 day period they will hit a paywall. I was reading this article here on how to handle structured data with Google for content behind a paywall: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/paywalls-seo-strategy/311359/However, the content is not ALWAYS behind a paywall, since it is metered. So if a new user comes to the site, they can see the article (regardless of what it is). Is there a different way to handle content that will be SOMETIMES behind a paywall bc of a metered strategy? Theoretically I want 100% of the content indexed and accessible in SERPs, it will just be accessible depending on the user's history (cookies) with the site. I hope that makes sense.

    | triveraseo
    0
  • mattpettitt


    Hi guys, I have a site with around 300 articles on it and these articles came from three old domains which were migrated during a Wordpress domain migration almost four months back. There The problem I'm having is that for quite a lot of the articles in the SERP, Google is adding '- Maine Coons' to the end of the title. One of our old domains was related to this breed of cat so at least in Google's eyes it must have something to do with this I guess. I've attached a screenshot that shows one such example. What's odd is a lot of the new content that has been created also has this suffix added and it doesn't show in any other search engine. So, it doesn't appear in other search engines and it's not coming from the article itself (proved also via developer tools inspecting the code).  So, Google is adding it but as you can see in this example (there are many more) it has absolutely no relevance to the post. Has anyone seen this behavior or have any idea how to fix it? I've tried all kinds of things and have even hired SEO 'experts' that haven't been able to see any problems. Any clues? Thanks, Matt K71Y3P9

    | mattpettitt
    0
  • Chris_Wright


    Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L

    | Chris_Wright
    1
  • Johnroger


    Hello, One of our client is interested in  creating a duplicate blog under a new URL.  We told them about Google penalizing the new blog since it would have duplicate content.  Will it be ok to go ahead with the plan ?  Their response was there are multiple news sites that carry the same stories. So, they said that it won't matter. Cheers

    | Johnroger
    0
  • akashkandari


    Hello all, We have a sitemap with URLs that have mostly user generated content. Profile Overview section. Where users write about their services and some other things. Out of 46K URLs, only 14K are valid according to search console and 32K URLs are excluded. Out of these 32K, 28K are "Discovered - currently not indexed". We can't really update these pages as they have user generated content. However we do want to leverage all these pages to help us in our SEO. So the question is how do we make all of these pages indexable? If anyone can help in the regard, please let me know. Thanks!

    | akashkandari
    0
  • naturalsociety


    In Wordpress, I'm using a plugin called Broken Link Checker to check for broken links. Should I be worried about/spend time fixing outbound links that result in: 403 Forbidden -Server Not Found -Timeout -500 Internal Server Error -etc. Thanks for your help! Mike

    | naturalsociety
    3
  • rimix


    We have a membership site that has links out in our unprotected pages. If a non-member clicks on these links it sends a 302 redirect to the login / join page. Is this an issue for SEO? Thanks!

    | rimix
    1
  • laszlosf


    Hi There! We have been building our website (https://systemfarmer.hu) for years, and had a great position for the keyword "office 365" in hungary. Now our site dropped in the middle of nowhere in natural search list. Is it possible that google penalized us? Tried to find out the reason without any luck. Thanks! Laszlo

    | laszlosf
    0
  • SimpleSearch


    Hello, community! My client wants to use the barba.js plugin for their new site. What are the implications for SEO?

    | SimpleSearch
    0
  • Katarina-Borovska


    **Hi,****I am looking to improve the aesthetics of some pages on my website by adding written content into collapsible tabs. I was wondering whether the content that is ‘hidden’ by tabs is given less weight by Google from the perspective of SEO? **Some articles I have read suggest that tabbed content is weighted equally with the content which is already immediately visible to the user, but others suggest that this may not be the case. **Please, can I request opinions on the matter? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, many thanks.**Katarina

    | Katarina-Borovska
    0
  • m1700


    hey, just wanna know  does <base> in head of website affect SEO? and if it's a yes, how?

    | m1700
    1
  • Alternatively.marketing


    Hi all, I've got a big question. I'm helping out with digital marketing at a non-profit that I volunteer with. We're working on developing an on site blog for our site, because we've realized we need that middle of the funnel content. Our issue has been taking up much of the developers' time & we're really working out the kinks with the system, so I'm trying to alleviate that with a light blog solution. We're considering installing a wordpress site on a separate server from the main site & sending traffic over to that. The primary questions: Do we negatively impact our main site by having a link to a different domain in the topnav? Do we positively impact the main site by developing SEO content on a redirected&masked URL? What are the ramifications of redirecting a subdomain to another server? Would we be better off using something like Ghost? A good example would be: Visit theMainDomain
    Click: blog on topnav
    Redirect to: theSecondDomain/blog [masked as theMainDomain/blog]
    Click: home on topnav
    Redirect to: theFirstDomain/blog

    | Alternatively.marketing
    0
  • Kyleroe95


    Our sitemap is showing in Google's SERP. While it's only for very specific queries that don't seem to have much value (it's a healthcare website and when a doctor who isn't with us is search with the brand name so 'John Smith Brand,' it shows if there's a first or last name that matches the query), is there a way to not make the sitemap indexed so it's not showing in the SERP. I've seen the "x-robots-tag: noindex" as a possible option, but before taking any action wanted to see if this was still true and if it would work.

    | Kyleroe95
    0
  • CongthanhThe


    Hey guys,
    In the past weeks, i was ranking #4 for a keyword and as a result, I was getting a lot of traffic and I made some unremarkable modifications to page content and reindexed it.
    after that, i noticed a drop in traffic, and when i checked it out, i noticed that the page is not ranking for that keyword anymore, it's no longer in the search engine (not even in page 15).
    The funny thing is that if i add any letter to the main keyword (for example "Keyword" c) and search for it, my page ranks #1.
    It's as if google bots are avoiding to rank my page for that main keyword only.
    Ps: I didn't make any black hat SEO for that page or my website in general. No issues with other keywords i reindexed the page several times and what i noticed, is that in the first 4 hours i restore my ranking whit that keyword but after a while, the same problem occurs (My site disappears from the search engine)
    If you have any idea about this issue, i will be grateful if you could help.
    Thanks in advance

    | CongthanhThe
    0
  • virtuance_photography


    One of our most important keywords (ranked 5) dropped to 51+ one week and then went back to 5 around the time we launched a new site. Why did that happen?

    | virtuance_photography
    0
  • MartinAndrew


    Hi All, First post and apologies if this seems obvious. I run a niche jobs board and recently one of our openings was shared online quite heavily after a press release.  The exposure has been great but my problem is the URL generated for the job post will soon expire. I was wondering the best way to keep the "link juice"  as I can't extend the post indefinitely as the job has been filled. Would a 301 redirect work best in this case? Thanks in advance for the info!

    | MartinAndrew
    0
  • Saba.Elahi.M.


    Hi all, I am trying out list schema on my site, but in Google's structured data testing tool I'm having an issue with the URL section. Whenever I have the same URL for each position is says that duplicate URLs aren't allowed, then when I have different URLs it says that they all have to be the same URL. Does anyone have any pointers that can help make my list schema error free!? Heres my schema:

    | Saba.Elahi.M.
    0
  • SpodekandCo


    I am taking over a website that doesn't have any canonical tags and spotty redirects. It looks like they have http://, https://, www and non-www pages indexed but GA is just set up for the http://non-www home page. Should all versions of the site be set up in GA and Search Console? I think so but wanted to confirm. Thanks in advance.

    | SpodekandCo
    0
  • Caffeine_Marketing


    We had a malware hack and spent 3 days trying to get Bluehost to fix things.  Since they have made changes 2 things are happening: 1. Our .xml sitemap cannot be created  https://www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk/sitmap.xml  we have tried external tools 2.  We had 301 redirects from the http (www and non www versions) nad the https;// (non www version)  throughout the whole website to https://www.caffeinemarketing.co.uk/ and subsequent pages Whilst the redirects seem to be happening, when you go into the tools such as https://httpstatus.io every version of every page is a 200 code only whereas before ther were showing the 301 redirects Have Bluehost messed things up?  Hope you can help thanks

    | Caffeine_Marketing
    0
  • DougRoberts


    A site I'm looking at for a client had 100's of pages flagged as having Mobile Usability errors in Search Console. I found that the theme uses parameters in the URLs of some of theme resources (.js/.css) to identify the version strings. These were then being blocked by a rule in the robots.txt: "Disallow: /*?" I've removed this rule, and now when I inspect URLs and test the live versions of the page they are now being reported as mobile friendly. I then submitted validation requests in Search Console for both of the errors ("Text to small" and "Clickable Elements too close") My problem now, is that the validation has completed and the pages are still being reported as having the errors. I've double checked and they're find if I inspect them individually. Does anyone else have experience clearing these issues in Search Console?  Any ideas what's going on here!

    | DougRoberts
    1
  • SpodekandCo


    I am trying to put together a comprehensive list of all pages that are indexed in Google and have differing opinions on how to do this.

    | SpodekandCo
    0
  • LouCommaTheCreator


    Hi, When I started out I was pretty green to SEO, and didn't consider the usability/SEO impact of URL structure. Flash forward, I'm 5 years deep into using the following: mysite.com/downloads/category/premium-downloads/sub-category/ ("category" is quite literally one rung on the link - thanks, WordPress - however "sub-category" is a placeholder) I run a digital downloads store, and I now have 100s ofinternal links beholden to this hideous category linking structure. Not to mention external links at Google Ads, etc. I would LOVE to change this, but if I were to do so, what should I consider? For instance, is there a checklist for making a change like this? I was thinking of changing it to something like the following: mysite.com/shop/c/premium/sub-category/ And also, how much damage, if any, would this be doing to my SEO? Thanks in advance,
    Lou

    | LouCommaTheCreator
    1
  • AmberHanson


    I've got a lot of duplicate pages, especially products, and some are new but most have been like this for a long time; up to several years. Does it makes sense to use a canonical tag pointing to one master page for each product. Each page is slightly different with a different feature and includes maybe a sentence or two that is unique but everything else is the same.

    | AmberHanson
    0
  • Frankie-BTDublin


    Hi Does the product URL's in Sitemaps affect the sub-categories authority too? For example, if I have a product with 2 URL's and which have a canonical tag: **/brands/michael-kors/bags/**jet-set-double-zip-wallet/ **/women/accessories/wallets/**jet-set-double-zip-wallet/ If I make the main URL "/women/accessories/wallets/jet-set-double-zip-wallet/" and set that as the Canonical URL & list that URL in the XML Sitemap, will it also mean the "/women/accessories/wallets/" category will get more authority and increase it's power to rank? Thanks Frankie

    | Frankie-BTDublin
    0
  • Siphoplait


    For a client we would like to work with a content hub, but their website is build on a custom CMS so we are limited in our options and if we aks their web developers they ask crazy prices to help us.  So now we have the idea to build the content hub with wordpress and implement it next to their current CMS. for example on www.website.com/contenthub/ . As far as i know this is technically possible and there are no negative effects regarding SEO as long as we link the two sitemaps together. Am i right or am i missing something here?

    | Siphoplait
    0
  • BottleGreenWebsites


    My client's website has 1000+ pages and a Domain Authority of 23. I have just discovered that the entire site is duplicated on a second domain (main URL = companyname.com - duplicate site URL = company-name.com). The home page of the duplicate domain has a 301 redirect going to the main domain. However, none of the 1000+ other pages have any redirect set up, so Google is indexing the entire duplicate site. I'm assuming this is a bad thing for SEO. Duplicate site has a domain Authority of 4, so I'd like to transfer whatever link juice it has, towards the main site. What's the best thing to do? Ultimately I think it would be best to delete the duplicate site. So would it be a case of adding a redirect to the htaccess file along the lines of: redirect company-name.com/?slug? to https://companyname.com/?slug?    (I realise this isn't the correct syntax - but is the concept correct?) Has anyone ever dealt with this successfully?

    | BottleGreenWebsites
    0
  • AnilTanwarMI


    Please check given screenshot URL. As per the screenshot we are using highlighted content through out the website in the footer section of our website (https://www.mastersindia.co/) . So, please tell us how Google will treat this content. Will Google count it as duplicate content or not? What is the solution in case if the Google treat it as duplicate content. Screenshot URL: https://prnt.sc/pmvumv

    | AnilTanwarMI
    0
  • RoxBrock


    I have a page in English that has both English & Spanish translations on it. It is pulled in from a page generated on another site and I am not able to adjust the CSS to display only one language. Until I can fix this, I have made the English page the canonical for both. Do I still want to use hreflang for English & Spanish pages? What if I do not have a Spanish page at all. I assume (from what I've read) I should not have an hreflang on the English page. Is this correct? Thank you in advance.

    | RoxBrock
    0
  • williamhuynh


    Hi there, /collections/living-room-furniture/black
    /collections/living-room-furniture/fabric Is that ok to make all the above filter/tag pages canonicalised with their main category /collections/living-room-furniture OR I keep them as it is, so /collections/living-room-furniture/black can rank for filter keywords, example: black living room furniture, /collections/living-room-furniture/fabric fabric living room furniture etc. Also, does it needs to be noindex, follow as well? Note - already removed the main category content from filter pages, updated meta tags as well. Please advice, thank you

    | williamhuynh
    0
  • SoulSurfer8


    Regarding Google's new max-snippet:[number], this is specifically for the length of the meta description? Also, does anyone know what the max character length is?

    | SoulSurfer8
    1
  • NathalieBr


    Hello. So my website currently has 8 pages in total. (Homepage, 5 Service Pages, Contact, About). I currently have about 80 quality RD and my Homepage already ranks #8 for my main keyword, while all Service Pages (P1, P2, P3, P4, P5) are stuck somewhere at #30-60 positions for their target keywords. My internal linking scheme looks like this https://i.imgur.com/2cA529v.png. The Homepage has a sidebar with links to all Service Pages, and each Service Page has the same sidebar that links to each Service Page, but doesn't link back to my Homepage. Contact and About pages can be accessed only via the links in the menu. I don't have any contextual links on my website, so all pages that are important for SEO are linked only via this same very sidebar. All these Service Pages are equally valuable to me, but they don't seem to grow much in Google. The Onpage Score of these pages is better than those of TOP10 competitors, and my content provides more value (I used the Skyscraper Technique). Taking all that into consideration, can you please tell me what might be wrong? Why Should I build more quality backlinks to these service pages instead of the homepage? Should I add contextual links to all my service pages from the homepage? Does my internal linking strategy look good to you? If not, what should I change? Can I hit top #10 with my internal pages for their target keywords if I mainly build links only to my homepage? All keywords that I'm after have low to medium competition. My website has 90 RD in total, and my website's DA is 27. Thank you. 2cA529v.png

    | NathalieBr
    3
  • LivDetrick


    This Moz blog references a page load time of 2-3 seconds. I've seen the 3 seconds referenced elsewhere, but I'm not sure what that measurement is -- is the target a 3 second speed index, or 3 second CPU idle?  Or something else?  Curious if anyone knows the answer. https://moz.com/blog/website-page-speed

    | LivDetrick
    0
  • jluke.fusion


    I have a client selling home goods online and in-store under two different brand names in separate regions of the country. Currently, the websites are completely identical aside from branding. It is unlikely that they would have the capacity to write unique titles and page content for each website (~25,000 pages each), and the business would never consolidate the sites. Would it make sense to use canonical tags pointing to the higher-performing website on category and product pages? This way we could continue to capture branded search to the lesser brand while consolidating authority on the better performing website. What would you do?

    | jluke.fusion
    0
  • cwltd


    Hey. On my WordPress page I did reviews about other websites. My page is in German language. My keywords and title are: "DomainName.de Erfahrungen". Wordpress changes the dot "." to an dash "-" and I cannot change it. Yoast SEO told me, my keywords are not (complete) in my permalink. Google use an "-" to separate to words (https://moz.com/community/q/how-is-a-dash-or-handled-by-google-search). Wordpress changes a "." to a "-": domain-de Invasion forum just removes the ".": domainde Trustpilot has the full domainame in permalink: domain.de So what's is the best strategy for the best SEO results?

    | cwltd
    0

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