Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello,

This coming weekend we will be changing our http sites to https versions. I have a very quick question regarding Google Search Console.

Because the migration is happening over a weekend, we want to get as much as possible setup beforehand. Is there any risk to adding the new properties to the search console without the sites being live yet? I want to deliver the Search Console verify files to our IT team in advance for them to add to the site, and then once I get the okay that the migration went successfully, I would go into the Search Console and click on the Verify button to get the sites verified and of course, then fetch as Google to help speed up indexing a bit and ensure there are no errors.

Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated!

Amiee

Do the quote pages need to be indexed? Or can you add a noindex tag to them? This would make it that the quote form would not appear in search engines and alleviate the duplicate title/description issue.

If the page has valuable content on it, of course, this is not the method you'd want to proceed with. But if there are pages on the site that link to the quote page that a user would fill out, then perhaps this could be a good solution?

The other option would be to add a canonical tag to the pages.

Sorry I can't be of more help!

We typically just use a headline format where the 1st letter of each word is capitalized with the exception of stop words (when used - but we of course, try to limit the use of these types of words in meta titles!)

I wouldn't have considered that the capitalization could impact rankings, however, I could see where it could have an effect on CTR.

I'm glad I stumbled upon this question to read some of the valuable comments made so far on this topic!

• Amiee

Hello,

I'm not able to read the content, but just looking at it side-by-side, the content appears to be very similar. You may want to consider re-writing a bit to make the pages a little more specific to their topics. I understand that the topics are closely related, and we encounter issues like this on our site as well - there are only so many ways you can write about a rail pass! But, by changing the copy up a bit, you'll garner better SEO results.

It has been my experience that search engines scan from top to bottom, so especially your intro paragraphs on each page should be different copy, just looking at these two pages, they seem VERY similar including the headline: Een vaste rentevoet, dus geen verrassingen is there an easy way to change this copy up a bit? You may want to consult with a copywriter who should be able to assist you with this.

Good luck!

Amiee

Thank you MattAntonino - I will definitely check out Google Analyticator. This is exactly what we're looking for, a tool to display the analytical data in the WordPress dashboard!

Thanks for your insights!

Amiee

Thanks so much Patrick!

We are tracking the blog in GA, we have that all set up, and it's also setup in Webmaster tools - however, we were looking to get some basic reports to display in WordPress itself, so basically, pulling the data from GA and having it appear in the WordPress dashboard.

We're primarily an e-commerce site, but we do offer a blog full of travel inspiration and tips, it's a secondary marketing tool for us, but we're trying to find ways to best measure the success or shortcomings of our posts. By adding the reports directly to the dashboard would give us a quick overview to go on for these metrics.

Thanks again for the advice, I'll look into the Yoast plugin!

We're looking to install a plugin for our Wordpress blog, to be able to receive analytical data right in our wordpress dashboard. Can anyone suggest a good one that is working well for them? We are looking for one that is either free, or fairly inexpensive.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WordPress appears to be a front-runner for us, has anyone had any experience with this plugin?

Thanks so much!

Amiee

Hi there,

We use many of the above mentioned resources, but also follow Occam's Razor: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/ by Avinash Kaushik - it's not 100% dedicated to SEO, but he does have many good tips and thoughts on the topic - well worth following, in my opinion!

Good luck with your feed!

I'm trying to view the competitive domain analysis history for my US campaign and keep receving the following error: LSAPI error.

Is this a known issue that is being worked on? I tried searching for any questions relating to this issue, but came up with nothing.

I appreciate the assistance.

Amiee

Thank you for your responses. I did get a weird feeling about canonicalizing my .co.uk and .ca sites into my .com site. I leave the canonical tag on each country specific TLD, referencing the canonical URL of the page within each TLD site.

Hello,

I would like some clarification about the correct implementation of the rel="alternate" tag and the canonical tag.

The example given at http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 recommends implementing the canonical tag on all region specific sub-domains, and have it point to the www version of the website Here's the example given by Google.

My question is the following. Would this technique also apply if I have region specific sites site local TLD. In other words, if I have www.example.com, www.example.co.uk, www.example.ca – all with the same content in English, but prices and delivery options tailored for US, UK and Canada residents, should I go ahead and implement the canonical tag and alternate tag as follows:

I am a bit concerned about canonicalizing an entire local TLD to the .com site.

Hello, I have a question about the correct way to implement the canoncial and alternate tags for a site supporting multiple languages and markets.

Here's our setup. We have 3 sites, each serving a specific region, and each available in 3 languages.

• www.example.com : serves the US, default language is English
• www.example.ca : serves Canada, default language is English
• www.example.com.mx : serves Mexico, default language is Spanish

In addition, each sites can be viewed in English, French or Spanish, by adding a language specific sub-directory prefix ( /fr , /en, /es).

The implementation of the alternate tag is fairly straightforward.

For the homepage, on www.example.com, it would be:

-MX” href=“http://www.example.com.mx/index.html”  /> -MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/fr/index.html“ />
-MX” href=”http://www.example.com.mx/en/index.html“ />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/fr/index.html” />
-US” href=”http://www.example.com/es/index.html“ />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/fr/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/index.html” />
-CA” href=”http://www.example.ca/es/index.html” />

My question is about the implementation of the canonical tag.

Currently, each domain has its own canonical tag, as follows:

rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/index.html"> <link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.ca="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:> 
<link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com.mx="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>

I am now wondering is I should set the canonical tag for all my domains to:

<link rel="canonical" href="http: www.example.com="" index.html"=""></link rel="canonical" href="http:>

This is what seems to be suggested on this example from the Google help center.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

What do you think?

I'm trying to put together a brief template for our copywriters to use when requesting the creation of a piece of content.

These are the points I have thought of so far are:

• Subject / Topic
• Content Objective
• Desired User Outcome / Call to action
• Sources, References
• Tone of voice
• Related product information
• Target SEO keywords

Can you think of anything else to add?

Do you know good resources (articles, blog post) tackling the subject of a content creation brief?

Thanks in advance.