We recently fixed a Meta Refresh that was affecting our home page - But something still seems wrong. Any suggestions?

[danatanseo]

We recently fixed a meta refresh issue on our home page. Our store URL:

http://www.ccisolutions.com  had a meta refresh on it that was going to:

www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain

The meta refresh is now gone, however there still seem to be some problems:

1. Our IT Director has not been successful in trying to make www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain  301 redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com  - so I believe we now have a duplicate content issue
2. If you look at both of these URLs in OSE, you will see that www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain  is getting credit for almost all of the Internal Followed Links, while http://www.ccisolutions.com is getting all the credit for External Followed links. Why doesn't http://www.ccisolutions.com show the same number of Internal Followed Links?

I realize this is more of a developer/webmaster question and would be very appreciative of any suggestions or advice. Thanks!

[danatanseo]

Thanks again Keri. It feels so good to finally have this particular issue resolved. The company has been struggling with it for more than 5 years, but until I came along (lucky them, lol!) - they had no idea what was wrong or where to even begin fixing it. I do have a follow up question I am going to post regarding how Google views this sudden massic increase in links....

[KeriMorgret]

Don't forget to add processing time. The data from this latest update is from crawls of mid-September to mid-October, then it takes another bit of time to process.

...but in any case, so glad to hear the good news!

[danatanseo]

Hah! Funny coincidence Well, nonetheless, the problem seems to be resolved. Here's what's interesting Keri. The meta refresh was actually fixed on September 23rd, before last month's linkscape/OSE update. If the meta refresh was the only problem, our link profile would have shown correctly back then. This mean it was either our canonical tags, the breadcrumbs, or both that were contributing to the problem.

I'm just happy it's fixed! Yay!

[KeriMorgret]

Dana, just a quick note that it wasn't an instant recalculation on DA and PA. You happened to check right as we rolled out the new OSE index today (see the main blog for a post about that).

[danatanseo]

Well, you just aren't going to believe it. It all had to do with our breadcrumbs. The breadcrumb for the homepage was still using the old homepage URL (the one in use when we had a meta refresh happening). I had my IT director update it and check out what happened to our link profile in one day:

Total External Links:  Before -  2,757     After -  **4,311  **Total Internal Links:   Befpre -  125        After -  3,221
Total Links:               Before  -  2,882     After -  7,532

Our Domain Authority and Page Authority also both went up by 3 points instantly. I want to thank you for hanging in with me and helping me get to the root of what was wrong. People like you are what makes SEOMoz such a great forum!

Dana

[danatanseo]

Hi Streamline - Thanks for answering

Yes, here is a link to what I am seeing in OSE. It includes the old homepage URL, the new homepage URL, and several interior pages for reference. Be patient, it takes a bit to load (I had to refresh it because it hung when I tried just now)

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.ccisolutions.com%2FStoreFront%2FIAFDispatcher%3FiafAction%3DshowMain&comparisons%5B0%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com&comparisons%5B1%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com%2FStoreFront%2Fcategory%2Flive-sound-live-audio&comparisons%5B2%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com%2FStoreFront%2Fcategory%2Fwireless-microphones&comparisons%5B3%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccisolutions.com%2FStoreFront%2Fcategory%2Fcountryman-e6-headset-microphones&=Compare

See how the old homepage URL is showing 3,174 internal links, while the new one is only showing 125?  We fixed the meta refresh on September 23, in addition to correcting all canonical tags and making them absolute. I can't figure out why the new home page URL isn't getting credited with those 3,174 internal links. What do you think?

[StreamlineMetrics]

Hmm... I just looked up the site in OSE and I see that ccisolutions.com is being credited with the most internal links and I don't see the other URL anywhere in the top pages. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.ccisolutions.com&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=internal&target=page&group=0

Are you seeing the same thing? If not, can you let me know what you are seeing and where you are seeing it?

I see that you do have the rel=canonical tag set up correctly so even if you left the breadcrumb link to the old URL, eventually it shouldn't matter. However, if you're able to, I would recommend changing that breadcrumb link to point to the correct URL just to keep everything consistent.

[danatanseo]

Hi Streamline. The issue persists. I did discover (completely by accident) that the breadcrumb URL in our source code is the old home page URL. I've attached a screenshot. Could this be the reason we are not seeing those internal links being credited to the new homepage URL?

uNMRR.jpg

[StreamlineMetrics]

It will take some time before OSE updates its index. Let me know if you don't notice any changes once OSE has been updated.

[danatanseo]

Thanks so much for your comments and suggestions. I just checked and it looks like the canonical tag you suggested is in place. Still, OSE is showing our linking structure split between these two URLs. Is this just an idiosyncracy of OSE that I shouldn't worry about, or is Googlebot going to see the same thing and credit nearly all of our Internal Links to one URL and all of External links to the other? Isn't this eroding the potential Page Authority of both pages?

Because our homepage URL was this:

http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain

for a very long time. I am very concerned about that old URL not passing page authority ("link juice" - I hate that term, but just trying to be clear) to www.ccisolutions.com  If I understand correctly, a 301-redirect will pass most of the page authority, but a canonical tag will not pass any.

Here is what OSE is seeing when comparing all possible versions of our homepage URL:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.ccisolutions.com%2FStoreFront%2FIAFDispatcher%3FiafAction%3DshowMain&comparisons%5B0%5D=www.ccisolutions.com&comparisons%5B1%5D=ccisolutions.com&=Compare

I thought fixing the meta refresh would fix the problem and show all the links credited to our desired URL www.ccisolutions.com ...but that doesn't appear to be what's happening.

Thoughts?

[StreamlineMetrics]

Hi Dana,

If all you are doing is adding the canonical tag, then it may take some time before Google picks up on it. Probably looking at a few days or maybe a week or so, but you should definitely notice an improvement (if you have in fact seen a negative impact in your rankings/organic traffic due to the meta refresh/duplicate content issue). My suggestion is to simply add the canonical tag and keep an eye on Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to see if you notice any changes. I'll keep an eye on this thread in case you have any more issues or questions.

[danatanseo]

I never thought about the TTL being an issue, but I suppose it could be? It's certainly a bone of contention between marketing and IT, I'd love to have a solid reason to get away from our whole "24-hour wait to see what you messed up" model.

I thought about your post when I put up this question. I even looked for "Webmaster" in the categories in hopes SEOMoz had added it. This is definitely a Webmaster issue. Thanks PolarKing!

[polarking]

Dana

I hope Seomoz adds the Webmaster catagory soon like you posted on my question a few days ago 

Does the TTL have anything to do with it not working yet? I had a big issue with TTL and do not want you to have to go through what I did.

Have a great day otherwise

[danatanseo]

Thanks Streamline - I am going to have him try your suggestion. Since our site does not update immediately, we won't start seeing the redirect work until tomorrow morning. Is this something where we should see the effects right away, or will it take time for Google to recognize the change?

[StreamlineMetrics]

1. I'm betting you are having infinite loop issues when you are trying to add the redirect, am I right? If so, that's because both versions of the URL are both hitting the same page. Anyways, to fix this, simply add "<rel="canonical" href="<a href=" http:="" www.ccisolutions.com="" "="">http://www.ccisolutions.com/" /> to the head of both URLs to tell the search engines to only count that version of the URL in its index so you won't have a problem with duplicate content.</rel="canonical">

2. The canonical tag should fix this issue as well.

Hope that helps!