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
-
Linking to my Site so I should Link Back?
I remember hearing a few years ago that it was a good practice to link back to a site that was linking to you. My company's site was referenced and linked to in a news article. The news company has an above average domain authority, which is pretty good for my company's backlink profile. Is it still or was ever a "best practice" to link back to this website/domain? I feel like linking back was a best practice, but when I try to search this, all I get back is backlinking 101 and backlinking articles. Nothing really answering my question straight forward. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | aua0 -
Moving site from html to Wordpress site: Should I port all old pages and redirect?
Any help would be appreciated. I am porting an old legacy .html site, which has about 500,000 visitors/month and over 10,000 pages to a new custom Wordpress site with a responsive design (long overdue, of course) that has been written and only needs a few finishing touches, and which includes many database features to generate new pages that did not previously exist. My questions are: Should I bother to port over older pages that are "thin" and have no incoming links, such that reworking them would take time away from the need to port quickly? I will be restructuring the legacy URLs to be lean and clean, so 301 redirects will be necessary. I know that there will be link juice loss, but how long does it usually take for the redirects to "take hold?" I will be moving to https at the same time to avoid yet another porting issue. Many thanks for any advice and opinions as I embark on this massive data entry project.
Technical SEO | | gheh20130 -
Is it problematic for Google when the site of a subdomain is on a different host than the site of the primary domain?
The Website on the subdomain runs on a different server (host) than the site on the main domain.
Technical SEO | | Christian_Campusjaeger0 -
Does anyone use inspect firebug for their site
Hi, i am using wordpress for the first time, i normally use joomla, but now i have been recommend to use inspect firebug to help me sort problems on my site which includes the title of the home page, www.cheapflightsgatwick.com being called - lanzarote reviews - cheap flights gatwick but it should say cheap flights reviews magazine The problem i have with firebug is understanding what it is telling me and where things are, i would like to know if anyone uses this product and if so how easy or hard have they found using it
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
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 -
My site cannot be found by google at all
I don't know why but our company site can not be found by google at all. I have submitted to google webmaster, have social media point to, etc, Is there any reason for this? url for our website is www.bistosamerica.com Thank you
Technical SEO | | BistosAmerica0 -
Site Hosting Question
We are UK based web designers who have recently been asked to build a website for an Australian Charity. Normally we would host the website in the UK with our current hosting company, but as this is an Australian website with an .au domain I was wondering if it would be better to host it in Australia. If it is better to host it in Australia, I would appreciate if someone could give me the name of a reasonably priced hosting company. Thanks Fraser
Technical SEO | | fraserhannah0 -
UK and USA site versions
We have a UK site selling our product and we are due to appoint a reseller in the USA, they require a .com domain, which makes sense and they also would like to see American spellings etc and currency. also we feature heavily in pubs and they want this referred to as "bars" so there are a few tweaks here and there but mainly just slight variations on spelling and terminology. These are only minor adjustments to our current site, what is the best way of achieving this without falling foul of duplicate content issues.
Technical SEO | | IPIM0
