Messy older site
-
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.
-
If the GA tracking code is on the website, then it will capture the traffic regardless of whether GA is setup with the http or https version of the site.
You might also find this MOZ Question and its answers useful:
-
Thanks for your help. We are going to move the site and set up the architecture correctly but before we do that we need to find the top pages (which have the most page views) on Google Analytics but I can't figure out if GA is capturing all of the different variations of the pages. Does anyone know how I would do this?
-
I would also recommend setting up all versions under Search Console (http, https, www, non-www, and domain property) as this gives you good insight into each version and how it's performing in SERPs, what pages are indexed, in addition to what domains are linking to each version.
You can use the domain property to see how the website is performing as a whole, or you can drill down to each version to see how (and if) it's ranking and/or indexed.
-
Before you get into the GA stuff, focus on fixing the core site architecture. Use htaccess rules to force your website to only render a single version of your http, https, www, non-www versions. You can either pick a favorite, or do a google search for the website name and see which version Google prioritizes and go with that. Of course https is always recommended over just http.
Now that your site has a preferred version that the server forces it to, modify your existing Google Analytics profile to match just that version. This way you can keep all your GA history.
Search console is a bit weird in that it may ask you to verify both the www and non-www versions of the website, which is recommended since subdomains can be different sites. You can then set the preferred version in Search Console.
Hope that helps!
Adam
https://odd.dog
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Sitemap.xml Site multilang
HI all, I have some questions about multilang sitemap.xml. So, we use the same domain subdirectories with gTLDs example.com/pt-br/
Technical SEO | | mobic
example.com/us/
example.com/es/ How should I do the sitemap.xml in this case? I thought of three alternatives: Should I do a sitemap_index.xml to each lang and make categories for these sitemaps? Examples:
http://www.example.com/pt-br/sitemap_index.xml
http://www.example.com/en/sitemap_index.xml
http://www.example.com/es/sitemap_index.xml Should I do only one sitemap_index.xml covering all categories of all languages ? Examples:
http://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml
http://www.example.com/pt-br/sitemap_categorias_1.xml
http://www.example.com/es/sitemap_categorias_1.xml
http://www.example.com/us/sitemap_categorias_1.xml Should I do a sitemap setting all multilang? <url><loc>http://www.example.com/us/</loc>
<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="http://www.example.com/pt-br/"
/>
<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="us"
href="http://www.example.com/us/"
/>
<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="pt-br"
href="http://www.example.com/pt-br/"
/></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></url> Thanks for any advice.0 -
Similar pages on a site
Hi I think it was at BrightonSEO where PI DataMetrics were talking about similar pages on a website can cause rankings to drop for your main page. This has got me thinking. if we have a category about jumpers so: example.com/jumpers but then our blog has a category about jumpers, where we write all about jumpers etc which creates a category page example.com/blog/category/jumpers, so these blog category pages have no index put on them to stop them ranking in Google? Thanks in Advance for any tips. Andy
Technical SEO | | Andy-Halliday1 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
Internal Links on eCommerce sites
I have been working on an eCommerce site; www.pretavoir.co.uk over the past year. Improvements in SERPs have been good with many top three positions. However, there are other important keywords of similar difficulty which refuse to behave in a similar way.... The site is PR4 and has a homepage PA 52. The homepage includes links to internal brand pages eg Prada, Gucci etc. Q Would it be worthwhile creating footer anchor text with eaxct text eg Prada sunglasses, Gucci Sunglasses?? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Best way to do a site in various regions
I have a client who has 2 primary services in 4 regions He does mold removal and water damage repair. He then serves cincinnati, dayton, columbus, and indianapolis. Before hiring my company he had like 30 domains (keyword based) and had tons and tons of fake google places listings. He actually got a lot of traffic that way. However I will not tolerate that kind of stuff and want to do things the right way. First of all what is the best site approach for this. He wants a site for each service and for each city. indy mold cincy mold dayton mold dayton water etc etc etc In the end he will have 8 sites and wants to expand into other services and regions. I feel like this is not the right way to handle this as he also has another site that is more generic To me the best way to do this is a generic domain with a locations page and a page for each city. The for the Places he would get one account - an address that is hidden since he goes to customer locations, and just multiple city defined regions. He does have an office like address at each city. So should I make him a Places listing for each city or just the one? And of course how should the actual sites be organized? Thanks
Technical SEO | | webfeatseo0 -
Managing international sites, best practises
This question follows on from my earlier question http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-replace-my-co-uk-site-with-my-com-site-in-the-us-google-results My client owns www.blindbolt.co.uk for the UK site and www.blindboltusa.com for their US site. They will shortly be having a new site for Australia. They have just acquired www.blindbolt.com and have expressed an interest in using this as the main hub for all of their sites, i.e. http://uk.blindbolt.com, http://aus.blindbolt.com. The current, existing sites (e.g. www.blindbolt.co.uk) could be 301'd to the new locations. Could I have your thoughts please on whether to go down this route of having international subdomains , vs keeping the sites on separate top level domains? What should I take into consideration? Is google smart enough to return different subdomain results in different countries? Many thanks!
Technical SEO | | OffSightIT0 -
Submitting site to dmoz.org
Over the last couple of years I've repeatedly submitted (about 4 times) our site to dmoz.org, hoping to get listed but have never been successful in getting the site recognized. We have an eCommerce site that deals in automotive parts and accessories. What does it take to get your site accepted in dmoz and how do you go about it? Thanks, Steve
Technical SEO | | SteveMaguire0 -
Impact of 401s on Site Rankings
Will having 401s on a site negatively impact rankings? (e.g. 401s thrown from a social media sharing icon)
Technical SEO | | Christy-Correll0