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  • JHultqvist


    Hi all! A client of mine owns several top level domains which are not in use, let's call them example.nu, example.de, example.net and so on. The current website is example.com.
    When checking the technical status of the unused domains I realized that all but one are forwarded (via DNS) to example.com and only one has a 301 redirect. Should I redirect all of them by means of 301 or let them stay forwarded? Very few of the domains have any other sites linking to them. Any thoughts would be really appreciated! Jesper

    Technical SEO | | JHultqvist
    0
  • CassG1234


    We own www.homemenorca.com, a real estate website based in Spain. Pages from this domain are not being indexed: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.homemenorca.com&oq=site%3Awww.homemenorca.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58j69i59l2.3504j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8Please notice that the URLs are Home Menorca, but the titles are not Home Menorca, they are Fincas Mantolan, a completely different domain and company: http://www.fincasmantolan.com/. Furthermore, when we look at Google's cache of Home Menorca, we see a different website: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.homemenorca.com%2Fen&oq=cache%3Awww.homemenorca.com%2Fen&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58j69i59.1311j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8We reviewed Google Search Console, Google Fetch, the canonical tags, the XML sitemap, and many more items. Google Search Console accepted our XML sitemap, but is only indexing 5-10% of the pages. Google is fetching and rendering the pages properly. However, we are not seeing the correct content being indexed in Google. We have seen issues with page loading times, loading content longer than 4 seconds, but are unsure why Google would be indexing a different domain.If you have suggestions or thoughts, we would very much appreciate it.Additional Language Issue:When a user searches "Home Menorca" from America or the UK with "English" selected in their browser as their default language, they are given a Spanish result. It seems to have accurate hreflang annotations within the head section on the HTML pages, but it is not working properly. Furthermore, Fincas Mantolan's search result is listed immediately below Home Menorca's Spanish result. We believe that if we fix the issue above, we will also fix the language issue. Please let us know any thoughts or recommendations that can help us. Thank you very much!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CassG1234
    0
  • aj613


    I feel like so many of my clients have multiple Google my Business Pages for one location.  Is there a way to get a list of all of the Google My Business Pages that exist for a given property and then effectively remove duplicates? Thanks, Adam

    Local Listings | | aj613
    1
  • anran


    I have a popular page on one domain and I did 301 redirect of it to another domain. Just one single page. Both the sites are very related to each other. Will the backlinks get transferred? Its been more than a week but nothing shows up in webmaster tools.

    Link Building | | anran
    0
  • ninel_P


    I'm having trouble getting http://www.procloud.ch/ to index for their german pages. The english pages are being indexed but not the german. Any ideas? Chris

    Technical SEO | | ninel_P
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, I have been investigating on why our log-in page is ranking for primary keyword, but not our homepage. I can see now homepage is ranking from our second important country. I wonder why and what causes to rank different pages in different countries for same keyword. Again the statistics does not vary much between these countries. Thnaks

    Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz
    0
  • linklander


    I have a business directory site thats been around a long time but has always been split into two parts, a subdomain and the main domain. The subdomain has been used for listings for years but just recently Ive opened up the main domain and started adding listings there. The problem is that none of the listing pages seem to be betting indexed in Google. The main domain is indexed as is the category page and all its pages below that eg /category/travel but the actual business listing pages below that will not index. I can however get them to index if I request Google to crawl them in search console. A few other things: I have nothing blocked in the robots.txt file The site has a DA over 50 and a decent amount of backlinks There is a sitemap setup also any ideas?

    Technical SEO | | linklander
    0
  • manoman88


    Hello, I'm implementing hreflang for my e-commerce websites which have different languages and do serve different content based on location. Currently, I'm only using hreflang for for alternate language (fr-fr, fr-be, fr-ma, ...). I wonder if it might be better or if I am allowed to add other version of my websites (IT, ES, DE,... ) even if those version are serving specific content for these specific location. So, the content (products) of Germany is different of the product of the other countries. Here is an example : www.mywebsite.com/apple-phone (selling apple phone for US with product avalaible only in US). www.mywebsite.de/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Germany with product avalaible only in Germany, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.it/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Italy with product avalaible only in Italy, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.es/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Spain with product avalaible only in Spain, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.pt/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Portugal with product avalaible only in Portugal, the available models might be different from US and other websites).

    Local Website Optimization | | manoman88
    0
  • joberts


    Hi Mozzers, I'm working on Content Strategy at my job, and I'm close to making some recommendations on short/long-term direction. While I'm there, I want to tackle the URL/menu structure (correct term?), which is a bit of a mess as pages have been created without any consideration for it over time. For ease, let's just say we have 3 main subdirectories of the site (Section A-C), and let's also say that section A also has 3 important subdirectories. From a UX perspective at least, we want a page to look like: example.com/sectionA/subsectionAA/page1 but currently it's example.com/page1 We have dozens and dozens of these examples. To complicate matters a little further, Sections B and C have been earmarked to be consolidated into a new section (D), as they're currently confusing and overlapping, and create roadblocks in user journeys. So a page that is, say: example.com/sectionB/page2 may well want to be: example.com/sectionD/subsectionDA/page2 I'm comfortable enough with technically doing this, as I'm experienced enough in Drupal and have an agency on hand too, BUT - I don't know if there are any SEO pitfalls I need to be wary of when I'm doing this, beyond resubmitting sitemaps, and the trickle-down effects of redirects. Any advice, wise forum? thanks!

    On-Page Optimization | | joberts
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We have guide/help pages from different subdomain (help.website.com). And we have linked these from 3rd hierarchy level pages of our website (website.com/folder1/topic2). But help.website sumdomain & pages are not well optimised. So, I am not sure linking these subdomain pages from our website pages hurts our rankings? Thanks,

    Web Design | | vtmoz
    0
  • seowork214


    Hi Guys, I'm working with a site which has hidden based category content see: http://i.imgur.com/Sgko2we.jpg It seems google are still indexing these pages but i heard Google might ignore or reduce the benefit of hidden content like this.I just want to confirm if this is the case? And if this is a really bad thing for SEO?Cheers.Sgko2we.jpg

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork214
    0
  • seowork214


    Hi Guys, Currently optimizing my e-commerce store which currently has around 100 words of content on average for each category page. Based on this study by Backlinko the more content the better: http://backlinko.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/02_Content-Total-Word-Count_line.png Would you say this is true for e-commerce pages, for example, a page like this: http://www.theiconic.com.au/yoga-pants/ What benefits would you receive with adding more content? Is it basically more content, leads to more potential long-tail opportunity and more organic traffic? Assuming the content is solid and not built just for SEO reasons. Cheers.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork214
    0
  • seowork214


    Hi Guys, Currently optimizing my e-commerce store which currently has around 100 words of content on average for each category page. Based on this study by Backlinko the more content the better: http://backlinko.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/02_Content-Total-Word-Count_line.png Would you say this is true for e-commerce pages, for example, a page like this: http://www.theiconic.com.au/yoga-pants/ What benefits would you receive with adding more content? Is it basically more content, leads to more potential long-tail opportunity and more organic traffic? Assuming the content is solid and not built just for SEO reasons. Cheers.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork214
    0
  • ninel_P


    Hi, I purchased an old domain with a lot of links that I'm redirecting to my site. I want all of their links to redirect to the same page on my site so I can approach this two different ways: Entire site
    1.) RedirectMatch 301 ^(.*)$ http://www.xyz.com or Page by page
    2). Redirect 301 /retiredpage.html http://www.xyz.com/newpage.html Is there a better option I should go with in regards to SEO effectiveness? Thanks in advance!

    Technical SEO | | ninel_P
    0
  • rsnell


    I've been comparing the inbound links report from Open Site Explorer against other backlink services and the results are very different. E.g. Compare the domain on http://backlinkwatch.com/ When I ran my test this other service found about 30% more active backlinks...why would Open Site Explorer skip those results?

    Link Explorer | | rsnell
    0
  • MagnitudeSEO


    I set my user agent in my Chrome browser to Googlebot and I disable javascript within my Chrome settings, but then what?

    Technical SEO | | MagnitudeSEO
    0
  • Slumberjac


    Howdy Moz Forum!! I have a headache of a job over here in the UK and I'd welcome any advice! - It's sunny today, only 1 of 5 days in a year and i'm stuck on this! I have a client that currently has 22,000 pages indexed to Google with almost 4000 showing as duplicate content. The site has a "jobs" and "candidates" list. This can cause all sorts of variations such as job title, language, location etc. The filter pages all seem to be indexed. Plus the static pages are indexed. For example if there were 100 jobs at Moz being advertised, it is displaying the jobs on the following URL structure - /moz
    /moz/moz-jobs
    /moz/moz-jobs/page/2
    /moz/moz-jobs/page/3
    /moz/moz-jobs/page/4
    /moz/moz-jobs/page/5 ETC ETC Imagine this with some going up to page/250 I have checked GA data and can see that although there are tons of pages indexed this way, non of them past the "/moz/moz-jobs" URL get any sort of organic traffic. So, my first question! - Should I use rel-canonical tags on all the /page/2 & /page/3 etc results and point them all at the /moz/moz-jobs parent page?? The reason for this is these pages have the same title and content and fall very close to "duplicate" content even though it does pull in different jobs... I hope i'm making sense? There is also a lot of pages indexed in a way such as- https://www.examplesite.co.uk/moz-jobs/search/page/9/?candidate_search_type=seo-consulant&candidate_search_language=blank-language These are filter pages... and as far as I'm concerned shouldn't really be indexed? Second question! - Should I "no follow" everything after /page in this instance? To keep things tidy? I don't want all the variations indexed! Any help or general thoughts would be much appreciated! Thanks.

    Moz Pro | | Slumberjac
    0
  • badit34


    Hi guys, I'm trying to learn how to market my carpet cleaning website in Google but without much success. I'm reading marketing forums for over 6 months still can't achieve 1st page rankings. What I'm missing? Can you please check the site and tell me what to improve to get good rankings in Google UK? There are some competitors which are doing very well, for example competitor1, competitor2 but I can't figure out what they have which I don't? I'm not very experienced in marketing but hope someone here will guide me how rank my cleaning website on 1st page.

    Local Listings | | badit34
    0
  • otherside13


    Hey all! First post on here, forgive me for being an SEO newb. Are meta keywords still a thing? Here's why I ask, I read this article from back in 2009 that said they are absolutely not a ranking factor anymore: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html However, in doing some research on our competition, I found that the top result for "Financial Advisor in Colorado Springs" was this company: http://www.strasbaughfinancial.com/ Honestly, the site seems to be doing everything opposite of what I read to do. It isn't even mobile responsive! With the Moz Bar, I found that no links pointing toward it. Not one video on the site (there is a link to a welcome video but the link is broken!!), no blog or regular content updates, no keywords in the H1 or H2 tags, page titles, etc. The website looks old and, frankly, terrible. Really I’m stumped how this can be ranking so high for so many competitive keywords. Then I realized that they stuffed tons of keywords in the meta description and meta keywords. From what I can tell, this is the ONLY intentional SEO strategy they used. Am I missing something? Are meta keywords still a ranking factor and THAT important?

    On-Page Optimization | | otherside13
    0
  • PhilC-M


    Hi ! I wonder if anyone has ever experienced this problem before. One of our client is having some trouble with his multilanguage and international website. A small number of URLs contains 2 different language. Exemple : http://exemple.com/es-ar/productos/compression-baggers/empacadora-formacion-llenado-sellado/ The part in bold is in english and the rest in spanish.
    I need some help to find the source of the problem. The number of URLs like this doesn't stop to increase, but it remains under control. I temporarily implanted 302 redirects while trying to find the source of the problem and fix it. Thank you for your help.

    International SEO | | PhilC-M
    0
  • FPK


    While my client's websites have been ranking well in SERP for their keyterms I'm at a lost on what I can do to improve their Google business/map presence. I'm referring to their listing where the top three come up or when you search on Google Maps.
    https://gyazo.com/26ec78ed7f712157ec72492199545431 Ex 1. Several months ago my client was ranked #1 both for SERP and maps until they dropped to 2nd on maps. Now they're ranked 1st in search yet 2nd for local business rankings as you can see from the screenshot above. At one point my client's business did have more reviews than the 1st ranking business yet they still weren't 1st. Ex. 2. Client(s) is ranked 4th in search and doesn't show in the top 3 map listings for their search term. If you click on More places to view Google Maps they're listed all the way down as the 15th listing or worse can't even be found when searching by their main SEO key term . Of course they are found by searching for their business name so it's not like there is a problem with the listing. I make sure to: Completely fill out their Google Business profile(NAP, hours and add pictures) Have my client try to gain positive reviews Manage and respond to reviews(mainly the negative ones) Add map and Google business link to their website Can anyone offer any other insight on what else can be done to improve their local presence on maps that I might be missing?

    Local Listings | | FPK
    0
  • mcorso


    My client used to own a successful domain. They sold the business, the domain was not used by the purchaser. My client bought back the business and redirects the original STRONG domain to their new domain. How can I find out current page rank, traffic, etc of the original domain? Mik

    Technical SEO | | mcorso
    0
  • Roman-Delcarmen


    Which are the best tools for link building?
    I know this look like a simple question, but when you research about it, there's too many information, too many app claiming be the best tool for that, There's millions of "gurus". So there is too many noice. So I want to hear real opinions with pros and cons

    Link Building | | Roman-Delcarmen
    1
  • SwanseaMedicine


    Hi everyone, One of my pages has an optimisation score of 93, but ranks in 50+ place. What on earth can I do to address this? It's a course page so I've added the 'course' schema. I've added all the alt tags to say the keyword, UX signals aren't bad. Keyword is in the title tag. It has a meta description. Added an extra 7 internal, anchor-rich links pointing at the page this week. Nothing seems to address it. Any ideas? Cheers, Rhys

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SwanseaMedicine
    1
  • infoAnalytica


    We're moving one of our services from the current website to a different domain. That domain will be dedicated just to that service. Currently, we have one page for that service on our current website. It already has been crawled and ranks well for certain keywords. But, we would want to eventually delete that page. Can I set 301 redirection for that page to another domain? At what point should I remove the page from the existing website's back-end?

    Technical SEO | | infoAnalytica
    1
  • Videogamefan


    Hi, everybody. I started to do animated infographic marketing.  Some of the sites I used to submit the regular infographics do not do videos. Does anyone have a list of free and paid animated infographic submission sites?

    Social Media | | Videogamefan
    0
  • dpayne1


    Hi There! So I work in an industry where there are different conventions for referring to, searching on and spelling the industry name. For example, let's pretend there were a variety of different conventions for referring to the SEO industry. So someone could search for S-EO, SEO, sEO, etc. and those would all be accepted and understood means of referring to the industry. If we use the SEO example as a comparison for our industry, the two most common conventions would be S-EO and SEO. Using this example, we rank on the first page for the term "SEO" but do not rank AT ALL for the term "S-EO". We have a high-value piece of content that is targeted in the following way: "S-EO (SEO): The Basics Guide" so it is more targeted at the hyphenated word but does not rank at all for the hyphenated version, whereas it is page one for the non-hyphenated term. As additional pieces of context: -In general, our site is more targeted at the hyphenated term and there are places where we rank in the top spot for both the hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions. For example, we rank in a top 2 position for both S-EO & SEO software but do not rank at all for the broader "S-EO" term. -There are times when we do appear on page one for the term "S-EO" but it's typically only for a matter or hours or days and then we disappear entirely from the SERPs for that term. We consistently appear for "SEO." -I currently do not believe we are dealing with a penalty of any sort - our link profile is clean and our spam score per Moz is 2 / 17. Any thoughts or ideas as to what is going on here and how we can potentially rank for the term "S-EO?"

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dpayne1
    0
  • dkeipper


    We have a category page that lists products. We have parameters and the default value is to limit the page to display 9 products. If the user wishes, they can view 15 products or 30 products on the same page. The parameter is ?limit=9 or ?limit=15 and so on. Google is recognizing this as duplicate meta tags and meta descriptions via HTML Suggestions. I have a couple questions. 1. What should be my goal? Is my goal to have Google crawl the page with 9 items or crawl the page with all items in the category? In Search Console, the first part of setting up a URL parameter says "Does this parameter change page content seen by the user?". In my opinion, I think the answer is Yes. Then, when I select how the parameter affects page content, I assume I'd choose Narrows because it's either narrowing or expanding the number of items displayed on the page. 2. When setting up my URL Parameters in Search Console, do I want to select Every URL or just let Googlebot decide? I'm torn because when I read about Every URL, it says this setting could result in Googlebot unnecessarily crawling duplicate content on your site (it's already doing that). When reading further, I begin to second guess the Narrowing option. Now I'm at a loss on what to do. Any advice or suggestions will be helpful! Thanks.

    SERP Trends | | dkeipper
    0
  • AMA-DataSet


    Hi, Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! I have been reading up on this topic but there is some contradictory articles out there and I was hoping someone could clarify the latest practise for me. Website A links out to four of its partner websites.
    These links are using a target="_blank". When i look at the acquisition data for any of the partner websites there is zero referral data from site A. 
    I tested this wasn't an analytics bug by using the real time feature while clicking the partner links to see what had happened, and to also find the source, but I found that they are all being returned as a source direct. Ideally id like it to show the referrals once more for reporting purposes. Do I need to add extra google analytics parameters/functions to track the outbound links? or should this referral data be appearing correctly and it is something unrelated to the links themselves? or should I throw in the towel and drop the target blanks? Thank you in advance for your time.
    Best Regards.

    Search Behavior | | AMA-DataSet
    0
  • SwanseaMedicine


    Hey all, I'm looking to use some schema to publicise an upcoming event. I can't make any sense of the Schema website for this section (http://schema.org/event). Can anyone help with drafting some schema? Or point me to an illustration of an example? Cheers, Rhys

    Algorithm Updates | | SwanseaMedicine
    0
  • RayflexGroup


    What are your tips for B2B link building? We manufacture and supply PVC strip curtains & rubber site safety products but currently lacking creativity for link building ideas.  
    Does anybody have any case studies or tips to help us out?

    Link Building | | RayflexGroup
    0
  • Ronanmartin


    In particular, I have a PA and DA score of 1 across all pages on the site - is this the cause?

    Technical SEO | | Ronanmartin
    0
  • HashtagJeff


    I know most people who remove dates from their URL structure usually do so and then setup a 301 redirect. I believe that's the right way to go about this typically. My biggest fear with doing a global 301 redirect implementation like that across an entire site is that I've seen cases where this has sort of shocked Google and the site took a hit in organic traffic pretty bad. Heres what I'm thinking a safer approach would be and I'd like to hear others thoughts. What if... Changed permalink structure moving forward to remove the date in future posts. All current URLs stay as is with their dates Moving forward we would go back and optimize past posts in waves (including proper 301 redirects and better URL structure). This way we avoid potentially shocking Google with a global change across all URLs. Do you know of a way this is possible with a large Wordpress website? Do you see any conplications that could come about in this process? I'd like to hear any other thoughts about this please. Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagJeff
    0
  • Indikon


    On a New Rankings & Insights email I got today, one of our sites showed over 50 404 errors totally 49% of the site. When viewing the details, every one of the errors shows the URL in the following structure: http://domainname.com/page/domainname.com. I'm not sure why this is happening, but the site and all of its pages are fine. We were having an SSL issue, but that is cleared up now. I just ran a crawl report and all checked out ok, but there were no result in the .csv file that concatenated the domain name to the end of the URL string. That doesn't seem like it would be the issue, but it's the only issue we were aware of with this site. This is the only site of ours that this is happening to. Does anyone have any thoughts on why this happened? Thank you.

    Moz Bar | | Indikon
    0
  • TadiBrothers


    I have a problem with all video pages on www.tadibrothers.com.
    I can not understand why google do not index all the video pages?
    I never blocked them with the robots.txt file, there are no noindex/nofollow tags on the pages. The only video page that I found in search results is the main video category page: https://www.tadibrothers.com/videos  and 1 video page out of 150 videos: https://www.tadibrothers.com/video/front-side-rear-view-cameras-for-backup-camera-systems I hope someone can point me to the right way

    Technical SEO | | TadiBrothers
    0
  • Striventa


    Hello, Moz Community! I am currently trying to replace a slider on our client's site. Sliders, in my opinion, are awful, they slow load times and just don't convey a solid message. I am using Wordpress and the visual composer plugin. Any ideas are really appreciated even they may seem a bit much, if I don't know how to do it I will figure it out. I apologize as well if this isn't the appropriate place for this type of question.

    On-Page Optimization | | Striventa
    0
  • meghanennes


    Hi folks - we're relaunching our website and have been sure to make it SEO optimized -- descriptive copy, new readable URLs, keyword-laden page metadata, and the like. However, I'm new to Moz Pro and unsure how to utilize it during this transition. My questions for those of you -- assuming many -- who have gone through a redesign: **How did you use Moz to track the success of your redesigned website? What do you wish you'd done? ** Any campaigns or resources you can suggest will be helpful, as I am new to the functionality!

    Moz Pro | | meghanennes
    0
  • Choice


    I've enjoyed Moz's new video ads and want to share them with colleagues, however am unable to find the vids anywhere other than when they're delivered before a video plays on YouTube. Are they available on demand? If anyone is unfamiliar with the videos I speak of, they are new ads for Moz products like Keyword Explorer, Mozbar, and MozCon. Thanks in advance!

    Feature Requests | | Choice
    0
  • TWB


    My new website went live on 13th April and the organic traffic levels increased by 110%, staying at that level for 3 weeks. Then exactly 3 weeks later the organic traffic halved again, going back to the same level as the old site. Has anyone seen this happen before or worked out why?! Thanks Viki P2R76O9

    Reporting & Analytics | | TWB
    0
  • Kdruckenbrod


    When I say duplicate content, I don't mean that the content on a clients site is displaying on another site on the web or taken from a site on the web. A client has a few product pages and each product page has content on the bottom of the page (4-5 paragraphs) describing the product. Now, this content is also displaying on other pages, but re-worded so it's not 100% duplicate. Some pages show a duplicate content % ranging from 12% to 35% and maybe 40%. Just curious if I should suggest having each product page less than 10% duplicated. Thanks for your help.

    On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod
    0
  • ben_mozbot01


    The brand name is Mø but users are searching online for Mo. Should I changed all instances of Mø to be Mo on my clients website?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ben_mozbot01
    0
  • danatello


    Hello. My question is:** Can cross domain canonicals help with international SEO when using ccTLDs and a gTLD - and the gTLD is much more authoritative to begin with? ** I appreciate this is a very nuanced subject so below is a detailed explanation of my current approach, problem, and proposed solutions I am considering testing. Thanks for the taking the time to read this far! The Current setup Multiple ccTLD such as mysite.com (US), mysite.fr (FR), mysite.de (DE). Each TLD can have multiple languages - indeed each site has content in English as well as the native language. So mysite.fr (defaults to french) and mysite.fr/en-fr is the same page but in English. Mysite.com is an older and more established domain with existing organic traffic. Each language variant of each domain has a sitemap that is individually submitted to Google Search Console and is linked from the of each page. So: mysite.fr/a-propos (about us) links to mysite.com/sitemap.xml that contains URL blocks for every page of the ccTLD that exists in French. Each of these URL blocks contains hreflang info for that content on every ccTLD in every language (en-us, en-fr, de-de, en-de etc) mysite.fr/en-fr/about-us links to mysite.com/en-fr/sitemap.xml that contains URL blocks for every page of the ccTLD that exists in English. Each of these URL blocks contains hreflang info for that content on every ccTLD in every language (en-us, en-fr, de-de, en-de etc). There is more English content on the site as a whole so the English version of the sitemap is always bigger at the moment. Every page on every site has two lists of links in the footer. The first list is of links to every other ccTLD available so a user can easily switch between the French site and the German site if they should want to. Where possible this links directly to the corresponding piece of content on the alternative ccTLD, where it isn’t possible it just links to the homepage. The second list of links is essentially just links to the same piece of content in the other languages available on that domain. Mysite.com has its international targeting in Google Search console set to the US. The problems The biggest problem is that we didn’t consider properly how we would need to start from scratch with each new ccTLD so although each domain has a reasonable amount of content they only receive a tiny proportion of the traffic that mysite.com achieves. Presumably this is because of a standing start with regards to domain authority. The second problem is that, despite hreflang, mysite.com still outranks the other ccTLDs for brand name keywords. I guess this is understandable given the mismatch of DA. This is based on looking at search results via the Google AdWords Ad Preview tool and changing language, location, and domain. Solutions So the first solution is probably the most obvious and that is to move all the ccTLDs into a subfolder structure on the mysite.com site structure and 301 all the old ccTLD links. This isn’t really an ideal solution for a number of reasons, so I’m trying to explore some alternative possible routes to explore that might help the situation. The first thing that came to mind was to use cross-domain canonicals: Essentially this would be creating locale specific subfolders on mysite.com and duplicating the ccTLD sites in there, but using a cross-domain canonical to tell Google to index the ccTLD url instead of the locale-subfolder url. For example: mysite.com/fr-fr has a canonical of mysite.fr
    mysite.com/fr-fr/a-propos has a canonical of mysite.fr/a-propos Then I would change the links in the mysite.com footer so that they wouldn’t point at the ccTLD URL but at the sub-folder URL so that Google would crawl the content on the stronger domain before indexing the ccTLD domain version of the URL. Is this worth exploring with a test, or am I mad for even considering it? The alternative that came to my mind was to do essentially the same thing but use a 301 to redirect from mysite.com/fr-fr to mysite.fr. My question is around whether either of these suggestions might be worth testing, or am I completely barking up the wrong tree and liable to do more harm than good?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatello
    0
  • BeckyKey


    Hi I have 2 issues appearing on my site audit, for a number of pages. I don't think I actually have an issue but just want to make sure. Using this page as an example - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/0-5-l-capacity-round-safety-can-149p210 The errors I get are: 1. Conflicting hreflang and rel=canonical  Canonical page points to a different language URL - when using href & canonicals, it states I need a self referential canonical . The page above is a SKU page, so we include a canonical back to the original model page so we don't get lots of duplicate content issues. Our canonical will point to - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/justrite-round-safety-cans 2. No self referencing hreflang. Are these big issues? I'd think the bigger issue would be if I add self referencing canonicals and end up with lots of duplicate content. Any advice would be much appreciated 🙂

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, Recently I got an answer from this community about "why our login page is ranking but not my homepage for primary keyword"? Possibilities are keyword cannibalization or linking structure. In our case, our homepage is not ranking for "primary keyword" but ranking for other keywords. If it is linking structure, what might be wrong? Like do we need to unlink login page from many internal links? Thanks

    Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz
    0
  • SUCCESSagency


    Hey there! I'm seeing categories at the top of a search (ex: cam software). You can see a screenshot example here: https://cl.ly/1w3J2s0W0K43. Any idea what these are called and if/how they are influenced? Thanks.

    Industry News | | SUCCESSagency
    1
  • 94501


    I'm working on a site that sells products that come in many different sizes. One product may come in 30 sizes.The products themselves are identical, except for the size. There are collections pages that are all of several kinds of product in a particular size and then there are individual product pages of one product the specific size. Collections pages for widgets size 30 is the same content as widgets size 29. A single product page for gold-widget-size-30 is the same content as the single product page  gold-widget-size-29. To make matters worse, they all have the same tags and very little written content. The site is in Shopify. Last month there were almost 400 pages that produced visits on organic, mostly in the 1 to 4 per month range, but all together about 1000 visits. There are several hundred more that produced no traffic in organic, but are duplicate (except for size) and part of this giant ball of tangled string. What do you think I should do? Thanks... Mike

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 94501
    0
  • rich.owings


    Hi all, I discovered that a site I'm working on has some pages from their old site that are stil live and getting traffic. I would like to add redirects for them to the .htaccess file. Unfortunately, I have zero experience writing or editing .htaccess files. Here is the existing .htaccess file: BEGIN WPSuperCache END WPSuperCache BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress And here are a few sample lines that I need to add: Redirect 301 /files/John-Doe.html /staff/
    Redirect 301 /files/Jane-Smith.html /staff/
    Redirect 301 /files/contact.html /contact/ So my question is, should I place those lines immediately after Rewrite engine on, or just before the closing IfModule tag or...? There is no consistent pattern that would allow for a single rule or two. Oh, and I will backup the current .htaccess file first! Many thanks for any help anyone can offer.

    Technical SEO | | rich.owings
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