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Category: Technical SEO

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

  • Shop-Sq


    Hello Moz Community I have three separate websites that I have planned on merging into one. I recently acquired a strong domain ( stronger than my existing ones ) & after much deliberation, I have decided to move them together into one domain. Site 1) 1 Forum - Around since 2007 - Originally VBulletin, last year migrated to discourse. Site 2) E-commercece Magento Site - Around since 2010 Site 3) WordPress - Blog & Articles - Around since last year - Currently using the new ( Main Domain I want to use ) After a lot of research and White Board Fridays, I was thinking this would be my best bet: newdomain.com  - Merged WordPress & Magento CMS Page. newdomain.com/ forum <-- Will move my forum content & Install to the new domain. newdomain.com/ store <-- Will move my Ecommerce content & Install. Between my developer and I, we have our heads around how to handle the technical aspect of the move, 301s to the new location etc. But one area we want to research before pulling the trigger ( we haven't found much data on this ) **My Main Question:**What is the possible penalty coming for shopping websites vs. content-driven websites, and possibility that forum-based content hosted on the same domain might cause another penalty to be applied to the other content on the domain. **My Developer Says:**In recent years, we noticed that forum content had been penalized in favor of editorially reviewed content when this is identified by search engines.
    What big hiccups would / could we encounter from  combining these 3 types of platforms into one site?Many thanks for any direction or insight.

    | Shop-Sq
    0
  • Digikala


    how can we get a huge site index faster?

    | Digikala
    1
  • Digikala


    Hi, I have generated a dynamic sitemap and submit it in search console, but there is a huge gap between the number of submitted pages and the number of indexed pages. 143,206 URLs submitted 2,151 URLs indexedwhy we have this gap and what should I do to reduce it?

    | Digikala
    0
  • easydomains


    We have produces a website on a .company domain extension. We have produced a good sized website with unique content. However the DA remains at 1. There are no high priority issues in the page crawl. We suspect that the domain extension may be causing a lower DA. Is this a ranking factor?

    | easydomains
    0
  • Anshul.S


    I have created separate account for my sub domain and created goal for that, we have sales force data base to capture the leads.The problem which i'am facing is comparing to the goals and Sales force leads is very much difference.Goals leads are showing huge than sales force leads. 2) When lead is creating from organic source but in goals it's showing referral lead.

    | Anshul.S
    0
  • therealfudgypup


    I have embedded the code intended to tell Google which social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc...) are associated with client on their website.  It was done via the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. I have also tested that code on Google's structured data testing tool and it checks out.  I had previously used another SEO audit tool (Seomator) and that said it checked out as well. However... the SERP for this client is still showing only their basic Google business listing info and not the additional panel showing their associated social media channels.  I followed some instructions (https://developers.google.com/webmasters/social-markup/#my_social_media_profile_isnt_displaying) searching to fix this problem at the Google developer site and it said something about clicking "feedback" at the bottom of the knowledge graph panel and then clicking on "wrong?" over the name and then entering something about how it's not displaying the social media channels.  The problem is I don't see this text: "wrong?" anywhere to click on. Been troubleshooting this for a month now and can't find an answer.  Did I do something wrong like not turning around once counterclockwise and barking like a seal? 😉

    | therealfudgypup
    0
  • Silviu


    Hi, I have a problem with my website. From my PC, when I search for site:nobelcom.com the homepage of the website doesn't appear, but on other PCs (different IPs) it is ok. 
    Also any keywords that usually responded with homepage, now responds with other page. Does anyone know way this is happening. It happen before the Penguin update, and after a fetch like google and send to index, I had the homepage back on serps

    | Silviu
    0
  • Tucker_10


    Hello, I am currently working on a site that is leveraging multiple subdomains. I wanted to see if it suggested to migrate them into subfolders. One of the subdomains is a .shop and the other is location specific. Thanks, T

    | Tucker_10
    0
  • abisti2


    I've got an old defunct domain with a lot of backlinks to individual pages. I'd like to use these backlinks for link juice by redirecting them to individual pages on the new domain (both sites belong to the same company). What is the best way to set this up? I presume I need some kind of hosting & site, even if it's just a default Wordpress install, which I can then use to set up the redirects? Would it be best done using .htaccess file for 301 redirects or some other way?

    | abisti2
    0
  • Kerry_Jones


    What's the best way to sort canonicals on duplicate product pages generated from products being in more than one category in a Magento web store? Thanks

    | Kerry_Jones
    0
  • abisti2


    We are seeing a sharp increase in Bounce Rate on the website via Google Search Console. Is it possible to drill down and find out which pages are causing this? And if so, is it possible to find out why?

    | abisti2
    0
  • GoMentor


    Should I use canonical tag in these cases? On the page itself (with the tag pointing to itself) On pages that doesn't have duplicate versions

    | GoMentor
    0
  • ray.soms


    Hi Guys, Can anyone please help with my situation. My domain is www.greedybins.com.au. I had title setup in every pages differently, and it has been 2 months since I made the changes. I keep checking by using site:www.greedybins.com.au in search. So far, only 1 title that been show correctly in SERPs. I used SEO Yoast before, I changed to All In One SEO Pack plugin, the titles are changing, but still not accurate as I made it. Somehow Google altered it by itself. I have tried fetch and submit sitemap couple times from Google Search Console. Could anyone please advise?

    | ray.soms
    0
  • wright335


    Hello, Whatever reviews I receive from customer on my Product page same reviews I show on relevant Category and Subcategory Pages. Now due to this I feel somewhat my page google consider as duplicate. Not sure. So I am planning to use either ajax or iframe on my categories pages so that google can't read my reviews of category pages. Is it a good practice to use ajax or iframe or anything else you can suggest? Thanks!

    | wright335
    0
  • KellyLloyd666


    Hi guys hope you can help - we have recenetly added a couple of "store views" to our magento website, in order for us to break down orders from channels that feed through M2e pro. What is great is that it gives us a little break down on amazon, ebay and the store sales separate, depending on which we select. However  - we have ran into a issue with duplicate content, mainly on pages such as the checkout? /checkout/?___store=default&___from_store=m2e_ebay /checkout/?___store=default&___from_store=m2e_amazon Issue being the above - I am hoping we can keep how we have broken down the store for a quick reporting instance by day. However how do / if I can  - get round this?? Surely if I was to redirect on the checkout it would cause issues. Any advice greatly appreciated Kelly

    | KellyLloyd666
    0
  • mcuenca2410


    When I crawl my site MOZ gave me 275 Pages with Title Missing or Empty within the High Priority Issues. So I went I reviewed it and the pages are Tag's that I use in my Blog posts. For example: https://www.cuencacigars.com/blog/tag/+cuenca+cigars https://www.cuencacigars.com/blog/tag/+florida https://www.cuencacigars.com/blog/tag/+Mobile How do I fix this? Is that a real error or is just MOZ been MOZZY? The pages have Authority 11, may I put some content on those pages since they had a decent rank? Maybe I can use this to my advantage? Or maybe I should choose my tags better? Is there anything to learn to tag?

    | mcuenca2410
    0
  • JordanNCU


    In spot checking some pages that I recently launched, I found subdomains ranking in place of the domain. The strange thing is, we never set up these sub-domains and they don't exist on our server. The pages, though they're indexed with the proper title and meta-description, time out when clicked. We're operating on Drupal 7, pages launched at the beginning of the month. The other pages within the series of content are ranking properly. Any thoughts or tips to resolve this?

    | JordanNCU
    1
  • fayfr


    Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!

    | fayfr
    0
  • JBMediaGroup


    I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!

    | JBMediaGroup
    0
  • unirmk


    Hi Mozians, My firm is looking to present different content to different users depending on whether they are new, return visitors, return customers etc... I am concerned how this would work in practice as far as Google is concrened- how would react to the fact that the bot would see different content to some users. It has the slight whiff of cloacking about it to me, but I also get that in this case it would be a UX thing that would genuinely be of benefit to users, and clearly wouldn't be intended to manipulate search rankings at all. Is there a way of acheiving this "personalisation" in such a way that Google understands thay you are doint it? I am thinking about some kind of markup that "declares" the different versions of the page. Basically I want to be as transparent about it as possible so as to avoid un-intended consequences. Many thanks indeed!

    | unirmk
    0
  • moon-boots


    Very quick question, are rel canonical, follow/no follow tags, etc. written in the htaccess file?

    | moon-boots
    0
  • eLab_London


    Does my html meta description tag have to be the same as my Open Graph meta description? I'm having problems pulling through my meta description into Google SERPs and I wondered if its because my 'OG' data is not consistent? Thanks Guys, Kay

    | eLab_London
    0
  • HLAS


    hi guys I had 2 word press sites built but since they went live a couple of things aren't working. 1.when I do a keyword search one of the sites comes back with the actual URL and when I do another keyword search for the same site the DEV site comes back indexed and not the actual URL. 2.  The other site originally started indexing with the DEV site and not the URL and the developer tried to fix it and now it doesn't index at all. Its been long enough time for it to index. Both URL's are live when put into a browser. Any advice would be great Thanks Jamie

    | HLAS
    0
  • Chemometec


    Dear mozers, Thank you for your time reading the message and wanting to help! So, we have moved our WordPress to https and redirected all the content successfully via htaccess file. We used a simple 301 redirect plugin, which we are using to redirect old URLs to the new ones. The problem today is, the redirections in the plugin are not working for http version. Here is an example: htaccess redirect: http --> https Plugin redirect domain.com/old --> domain.com/new but, the url http://domain.com/old is not redirecting to https://domain.com/new while https://domain.com/old does redirects to https://domain.com/new What can you suggest as a solution? Thank you in advance! P.S. I don't think having 2 redirects for each version of the URL is the smartest solution Best wishes, Dusan

    | Chemometec
    0
  • SEONOW123


    Hello there, I have some questions pertaining to sitemaps that I would appreciate some guidance on. 1. Can an XML sitemap contain URLs that are blocked by robots.txt? Logically, it makes sense to me to not include pages blocked by robots.txt but would like some clarity on the matter i.e. will having pages blocked by robots.txt in a sitemap, negatively impact the benefit of a sitemap? 2. Can a XML sitemap include URLs from multiple subdomains? For example: http://www.example.com/www-sitemap.xml would include the home page URL of two other subdomains i.e. http://blog.example.com/ & http://blog2.example.com/ Thanks

    | SEONOW123
    0
  • abisti2


    I want to optimise the logo on our site. Our developers have presently got the site logo code like this: 601 character description, no keywords 1. How best to use the alt text and description? 2. Do I concentrate on alt text? Isn't the 601 character description:
    a) too long, and
    b) an opportunity to add relevant keywords again, like the alt text?

    | abisti2
    0
  • RoxBrock


    I have set up my robots.txt like this: User-agent: *
    Disallow: / and I have this meta tag in my on a Wordpress site, set up with SEO Yoast name="robots" content="noindex,follow"/> I did "Fetch as Google" on my Google Search Console My website is still showing up in the search results and it says this: "A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt" This site has not shown up for years and now it is ranking above my site that I want to rank for this keyword. How do I get Google to ignore this site? This seems really weird and I'm confused how a site with little content, that has not been updated for years can rank higher than a site that is constantly updated and improved.

    | RoxBrock
    1
  • tidybooks


    Hi, We use Magento v.1.7 for our store. We have recently had an SEO audit and we have uncovered 2 major issues which can be pinpointed to our layered navigation. We use the MANAdev layered navigation module. There are numerous options available to help with SEO. All our filtered urls seem to be fine ie. https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-shelves/colour/natural-finish-with-letters/letters/lowercase have canonical url correctly setup and the meta tags as noindex, follow  but Magento is churning out tons of 404 error pages like this https://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-shelves/show/12/l/colour:24-4-9/letters:6-7 which google  is indexing I'm at lost at how to solve this any help would be great. Thank you **This is from our SEO audit report ** The faceted navigation isn’t handled correctly and causes two major issues:● One of the faceted navigation filters causes 404 error. This means that the error isappended each sequence of the navigation options, multiplying the faulty URLs.● The pages created by the faceted nav are all accessible to the search engines. Thismeans that there are hundreds of duplicated category pages created by one of theparameters. The duplication issues can seriously hinder the organic visibility.The amount of 404 errors and the duplicated pages created by faceted navigation makes italmost impossible for a search engine crawler to finish the crawl. This means that the sitemight not be fully indexed and the newly introduced product pages or content won’t bediscovered for a very long time.

    | tidybooks
    0
  • ArchieChilds


    Hi, Can we validate a CDN like Max in Webmasters? We have images hosted in CDN and they dont get indexed in Google images. Its been a year now and no luck. Maxcdn says they have no issues at there end and images have ALT and they are original images with no copyright issues

    | ArchieChilds
    0
  • RBijsterveld


    Hi all, We're running a Magento webshop and we discover some strangs things regarding canonical urls and redirects after using the Amasty improved navigation extension. To clarify, please check these four urls. They contain the same content (the same product page). https://www.afwerkingshop.be/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html https://www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden/gipsplaten/standaard/gyproc-gipskartonplaat-ak-2600x1200x9-5mm.html All these four pages have different canoncials (the page url). Obviously, that's not good. However, in Google (site:...) url (1) is the only one that's indexed. Thereby, if I visit the productpage by first going to a category page (fe. www.afwerkingshop.be/wanden.html), I'm redirected to url (1), but the canonical url is www.afwerkingshop.be/last_visited_category_name/product. So, the canonical seems dynamic depending on the last visited category. And still, only url (1) is indexed. Additionally, all aforementioned pages contain . Is anyone familiar with this issue? And more important, will it cause problems in future? Thanks in advance. Kind regards, Chendon

    | RBijsterveld
    0
  • DebashishB


    Hi Mozzers, I went through many Q&As in the community this morning. I found a solution where I could just remove the referral site in analytics>admin>property>tracking info>referral exclusion list. So I removed paypal.com which was the main referral traffic. I thought the problem is solved. Later today I got another order, now the referral traffic is from eway.com, now what? Yes I know I will add this to the exclusion list but there will be many more referral sites. My main concern is I am not able to track the actual traffic source. How do I do that? 1. Do I need to use google url tracking for all my pages?
    2. Do I need to add tracking code in each page of the site?
    3. Is there a way to track the actual source of this traffic, now that the transaction is already made but reflects as referral traffic in Google Analytics? jZjTN

    | DebashishB
    0
  • onefoursix


    Hi, Quick question about duplicate page titles. I have a few duplicate pages where I've got lots of portfolio items under the same category, lets call it a portfolio of kangaroos. I can see there are separate URLs for each of the pages, i.e, www.blahblah.com/portfolio/kangaroos and www.blahblah.com/portfolio/kangaroos/2, but they both have the same page title, i.e, Kangaroos Portfolio | Domain and it's coming up in Moz as a medium priority duplicate page title error. Where in WordPress can I change the page title for the second page of portfolio items? Thanks very much! Tom.

    | onefoursix
    0
  • wallacep


    Hello , I am in a fix right now. I have a website which is ranking well for many keywords in search engines.I am redirecting all my pages and blogs to new website with new domain name for better user experience and will be adding more content to new website. If i redirect all pages and posts from present website to new website will it affect my present rankings. What can be the possible effects that my present website will have. I need to fix this as soon as possible. I want to redirect so please tell me what best should be done as well. Thanks

    | wallacep
    0
  • inlinear


    Asking people, they say tags are bad and spamy and as I can see they generate all my duplicate page content issues. So the big question is, why Google very often prefers to show in SERPS these Tag-URLS... so it can't be too bad! :)))? Then after some research I found the "Term Optimizer" on Yoast.com ... that should help exactly with this problem but it seems not to be available anymore? So may be there another plugin that can help... or just delete all tags from my blog? and install permanent redirects?
    Is this the solution?

    | inlinear
    0
  • AliMac26


    I apologize in advance, but I am an SEO novice and my understanding of code is very limited. Moz has issued a lot (several hundred) of duplicate content and 404 error flags on the ecommerce site my company takes care of. For the duplicate content, some of the pages it says are duplicates don't even seem similar to me. additionally, a lot of them are static pages we embed images of size charts that we use as popups on item pages. it says these issues are high priority but how bad is this? Is this just an issue because if a page has similar content the engine spider won't know which one to index? also, what is the best way to handle these urls bringing back 404 errors? I should probably have a developer look at these issues but I wanted to ask the extremely knowledgeable Moz community before I do 🙂

    | AliMac26
    0
  • O2C


    Hi All, We have recently discovered a site was linking to our site but it was linking to an incorrect url, resulting in a 404 error. We had only found this by pure chance and wondered if there was a tool out there that will tell us when a site is linking to an incorrect url on our site? Thanks 🙂

    | O2C
    0
  • SushiUK


    I am running a WordPress/WooCommerce site for a client, and Moz is picking up some issues with URL's generated from WooCommerce product attribute filters. For example: ..co.uk/womens-prescription-glasses/?filter_gender=mens&filter_style=full-rim&filter_shape=oval How do I get Google to ignore these filters?
    I am running Yoast Premium, but not sure if this can solve the issue? Product categories are canonicalised to the root category URL. Any suggestions very gratefully appreciated. Thanks Bob

    | SushiUK
    0
  • LIVEASISSTINFO


    I have noticed Spam external links linking to my website. I do not know who has handled these spam external links to my website. It looks like a Spam SEO my competitors did on my website. I believe my site was penalized by google with those spam link and lost it's visibility in search . How do I get rid off SPAM external links now?

    | LIVEASISSTINFO
    0
  • WhittingtonConsulting


    FYI I'm a beginner within the company, so this might be a basic question, but ...I was going through open site explorer and checking www.partnermd.com for opportunities to reclaim links and I found a bunch of 404 pages that we never created that had nothing to do with the business. Out of curiousity, I plugged in one of the weird links like this one:http://www.partnermd.com/images/2015-best-space-heater-best-wers.html  into open site explorer and found several bad spammy links pointing to it. When I clicked on one of them I got a notice that the site might have been hacked.I did some research and it looks like Google doesn't penalize you for spammy links to 404 pages, but how do we prevent this from occurring in the first place if possible?

    | WhittingtonConsulting
    1
  • KathleenDC


    Hello everyone! The company I am working for is working on selling websites templates to clients in the near future. In terms of SEO purposes, would it be detrimental for our clients if we hosted all of these sites under the same server/IP? Also, in the past we've sold sites under a domain we own, adding them on as a subdomain. For example, we would own yourflowers.com, and if Mark's Flowers wanted a site, we would give him: marksflowers.yourflowers.com These sites are going to be the same niche as we are industry specific (example would be, we sell website templates specifically designed for flower shops around the United States). I want the best possible SEO experience for our clients and I believe using subdomains and hosting under the same server IP can be detrimental, but I wanted to see what the Moz community thinks of this. Any feedback is appreciated! Thanks

    | KathleenDC
    0
  • SushiUK


    I am working with my client managing/maintaining their online store.We have been making big improvements to onsite SEO, improved URL structures (complete with re-directs) etc, we use Yoast Premium to optimise pages for search and Yoast Local. We have a bounce rate of around 20%, however, suddenly in mid August, our revenues virtually vanished overnight. Moz is reporting a search visibility  drop of 51%, while visitor levels remain fairly average, certainly no drops that can be compared with the sudden loss of conversions. I am at a loss and cannot fathom why our sales have dropped. Can anyone suggest where I might look? Many thanks Bob

    | SushiUK
    0
  • whitetable


    Most of our SERPS are ranking, but video is not. We use Youtube for hosting and I am wondering if Google/Youtube somehow block video rich snippets from ranking when hosted through Youtube? Is there a better hosting service or should we host the video ourselves in order to get these videos to show up?  Does

    | whitetable
    0
  • Beachflower


    I am working on creating new blog. I already had one. I want to add this new topics as subdomain. Now i am confused. Which one will be better for SEO? subdomain.maysite.com or mysite.com/subdomain Thanks in advance

    | Beachflower
    0
  • easyoffices


    We have 44,249 errors and I have set up for most of the URLs a 301 redirect. I know exactly which links are correctly redirected my problem is I don't want to mark as fixed each one individually. Is there a way to upload a URL list to webmaster tools and it automatically marks as fixed based on the list.

    | easyoffices
    0
  • themesh


    hello everyone, It seems my website http://www.scribidocampus.com/ is indexed by google but it si not ranking anywhere, even wehn i google scribidocampus. If i search any of the text on my website in " " no results come up. can someone tell me the reason?

    | themesh
    0
  • moon-boots


    So I've noticed that the sitemap I use has a capacity of 4500 URLs, but my website is much larger. Is it worth paying for a commercial sitemap that encompasses my entire site? I also notice that of the 4500 URLs which have been submitted, only 104 are indexed. Is this normal, if not, why is the index rate so low?

    | moon-boots
    0
  • abisti2


    I've discovered that my clients website used to have another domain name, which they still own but don't use. It's doing OK considering its not been used for a few years - almost 6,000 backlinks showing on Majestic. So what's the best way of using this for SEO? I'm presuming some kind of redirecting? A simple redirect of everything on the domain to the new domain index page? Or going trough all the old pages and redirecting them one by one?

    | abisti2
    0
  • pablo_carrara


    most of them where old URLs pointed from a really old domain, that we have just shutten down. If the pages didn't receive any traffic, should we redirect? If I follow this https://moz.com/learn/seo/http-status-codes we shouldn't

    | pablo_carrara
    0
  • bendyman


    Hi, My client has a new WordPress site http://www.londonavsolutions.co.uk/ and they have installed the Yoast Premium SEO plug-in. They are having issues with getting the lights to go green and the main problem is that on most pages Yoast does not see any words/content – although there are plenty of words on the pages. Other tools can see the words, however Yoast is struggling to find any and gives the following message:- Bad SEO score. The text contains 0 words. This is far below the recommended minimum of 300 words. Add more content that is relevant for the topic. Readability - You have far too little content. Please add some content to enable a good analysis. They have contacted the website developer who says that there is nothing wrong, but they are frustrated that they cannot use the Yoast tools themselves because of this issue, plus Yoast are offering no support with the issue. I hope that one of you guys has seen this problem before, or can spot a problem with the way the site has been built and can perhaps shed some light on the problem. I didn't build the site myself so won't be offended if you spot problems with it. Thanks in advance, Ben

    | bendyman
    0
  • mpchobbydb


    Hi everyone! We've been trying to decipher how many of our pages are indexed by google at the moment. If we do the usual "site:https://www.hobbydb.com" search term, the serp says that we have more than 740,000 pages indexed. However, when I do a deep dive and click through to the last page of results, I can only get to page 54, and then there are no more results. This would mean that I only have 540 pages indexed, not 740,000. We have also done other queries for other sub-sections of our website, and the results also truncate at 50 pages. Has anyone run into this problem? Any suggestions are appreciated! Best, Alex

    | mpchobbydb
    0

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