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
-
Content from Another Site
Hi there - I have a client that says they'll be "serving content by retrieving it from another URLÂ using loadHTMLFile, performing some manipulations on it, and then pushing the result to the page using saveHTML()." Just wondering what the SEO implications of this will be. Will search engines be able to crawl the retrieved content? Is there a downside (I'm assuming we'll have some duplicate content issues)? Thanks for the help!!
Technical SEO | | NetStrategies1 -
Backlinks from an Association Site
My company is joining an Industrial Association. Part of the membership is a link to our site from theirs. I've found that going to their site triggers a "threat alert" through our company malware detection system and shows a link that may be infected with malware. With all of that said I have (2) questions... Since this is a paid membership, will Google penalize us for having a link to our company from this association's website? Since a link on their site has potential malware issues, should we add our link to their site or could it be harmful to us? Any helpful advice is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | SteveZero121 -
Discontinued Product on a Ecommerce site
To create a better customer experience, rather then remove discontinued product from a site, we remove many links from the page, and remove it from the navigation of the site, but we keep the url and show that the product can no longer be purchased. This keeps the links, keeps the content, and gives customers the opportunity to find other products we have. But I often wonder if we should allow this items to just 404 and be done with them. Here is an example. http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-dyn-bm5a-list. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | dianeb1520 -
Is a micro site the way to go?
Hello, a client has asked us today to quote for how much it would cost them to get a micro site built. A Google employee has told them that because their current URL doesn't include .co.uk or.com it is simply: brandname.word that it will be harder for them to get their website to rank. My understanding is that micro sites aren't a good solution for any problem as Google doesn't like them. Would it be better for them to buy a .co.uk (they are a UK company) url and then redirect the url to their current website or is there a better solution? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | mblsolutions0 -
Site Wide Links
I have a link on pr 3 home page website placed in the side bar. It is on a WordPress website that spans a couple hundred pages and the side bar is on every page. The majority of the pages are not ranked or have any pr. Can this affect me negatively?
Technical SEO | | raph39880 -
Google Custom Site Search
I am an admin on a google custom site search account. I am also the owner of a verified webmaster tools account for the same site. The Custom Search control panel will not let me add URL's or a Site map for on demand indexing, but says "you must submit a sitemap of your own verified sites". Has anyone else has this issue? Does the Owner of the custom search account have to be the owner of the webmaster account, or can the logged in admin be? Thanks
Technical SEO | | SEMPassion0 -
Duplicate Content on Multinational Sites?
Hi SEOmozers Tried finding a solution to this all morning but can't, so just going to spell it out and hope someone can help me! Pretty simple, my client has one site www.domain.com. UK-hosted and targeting the UK market. They want to launch www.domain.us, US-hosted and targeting the US market. They don't want to set up a simple redirect because a) the .com is UK-hosted b) there's a number of regional spelling changes that need to be made However, most of the content on domain.com applies to the US market and they want to copy it onto the new website. Are there ways to get around any duplicate content issues that will arise here? Or is the only answer to simply create completely unique content for the new site? Any help much appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Adding Google +1 To My Site
This may seem like a silly question, but I had my site designed by a third party and I don't know how to find this info. I want to add Google +1 button to my site. I've already added the script that makes it work in my , but don't know how to add the to the part of my site I'd like the icon to appear. If you take a look at my site, http://www.youdrivethesuccess.com/, you will see the twitter and facebook icons that follow you around the site in the top right of the page.  I'd like to drop in the +1 right next to them, but I don't know how to get to it. How do I access this on the server? What section of my FTP do these lil icons live? A folder? Any direction is greatly appreciated...thanks.
Technical SEO | | brentmitchell0
