Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi,

Please remember that the Page Grader is just a tool that looks at specific aspects on the page, but won't go past that.

For example, once you have your key word in the likes of the title, URL and H1, it looks like it might be ready to start ranking, but there is so much more that you need to do to the page.

First of all, it MUST make sense. There is no point in writing for Google as it will just sound spammy and the net result will result in a lack of placement in the SERPs or poor conversion rates.

You absolutely must do some keyword research. You want to explain to Google what the page is about so it should be very comprehensive and carry certain other related phrases that help explain the product / service. However... Don't go so far that the page suddenly becomes a long and tedious read.

Keep it concise, keep it factual, keep it interesting.

-Andy

Best practice is the only way with Wikipedia Julian, as each update is manually checked by an admin.

Just make sure that when you add a link, it is very much on topic. They aren't daft over there (sadly!).

For a page of your own, they will want to see you in the press, magazines, news - anything that is considered reputable. But this can also include off-line sources such as newspapers or books.

-Andy

It doesn't look like a firewall, as I can crawl it with Screaming Frog. However, the server logs will be able to answer that one for you.

Without looking in depth, I'm not seeing anything that stands out to me - do you think that there have been changes to the server that could cause issues? What firewall is the server running? Also, if there were errors in crawling the site, you would see a warning about this.

-Andy

Hi Devon,

Looking at your site, this is what I see...

When you click on the store locator in the menu, you are taken here http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/

From there, you can click on one of the state links or search. If you click on a link, you are taken here, for example:

http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/?state=AR

But, if you choose the state from the drop down, you are are taken here http://www.jakesfireworks.com/arkansas/ Am I right in thinking that the pages like this are being done just for SEO purposes? You also seem to have different location landing pages, depending on the route you take. Is this what you want to combine?

How do you rank for local results right now? Does each location have its own Goole Local page?

I would be very tempted to 301 one page to another or at least set a canonical tag pointing to your preferred page, but I certainly wouldn't leave it in its current state.

-Andy

Hi,

I suspect this is a MOZ thing. Don't worry about the fact it is appearing in an H1, that is just coincidental. There is no SEO rule based around this at all.

-Andy

If you follow some of the links in there, you will find lots of info on what is a correctly acquired link. You won't find what you are suggesting in there anywhere.

If by off base you mean, do I agree with them? Nope. It's a black-hat technique, but like many black hat techniques, you can get gains - mostly short-lived as Google finds ways to clamp down on them.

I can only give you my opinions on what this is Andrew. Just be aware that these things can come back and bite you hard and then you can end up with an exclusion, never mind a penalty.

-Andy

It sounds to me like the site where the links are coming from could be at fault.

Do you know if they have made any changes recently? It is very easy for bad coding to produce thousands of pages that the site owners aren't even aware of (speaking from past experiences here). When you look at some of the pages where the links are coming from, do they look like nonsense pages?

It's a little difficult to tell exactly what is at fault without actually looking in more detail, but as this is just one site, it shouldn't cause you any issues - if it were an attack of some kind, then you would be seeing links from different domains, rather than just the one.

-Andy

Redirecting via a 301 is always the preferred method of pointing one page to another Devon. Just from what I have seen, I can't see a reason why this should cause you any issue. Just have the location pages follow a preferred route and stick with that. Take all of the non-preferred pages and 301 these to the ones you wish to use.

You should be fine and avoid any issue of duplication.

-Andy

That's something you want to avoid if you can. There is no substitute for an HTML based website.

Whilst we understand Google can see certain aspects of a Flash file, it will be a long way from what you can achieve if you avoid it.

Regards,

Andy

Hi Brandon,

Are you able to post the link here, or send it over to me via PM?

What happens if you take this URL and just paste it into your browser bar? Does that page come up?

-Andy

A 301 is the way to go then. This helps Google understand how pages have moved.

-Andy

Hi Ade,

This isn't something I would advise splitting across domains. Choose the domain you wish to use and then sub-cats for the different types of dentistry. If you have two similar sites at the same address, it will make Google wonder why it was done (SEO purposes) and you could have issues on your hand.

-Andy

Hi Amelia,

Which version of the site is it that has been verified in Webmaster tools? Google will see each as a separate site, so my guess will be that you need to choose the https.

-Andy

I suspect that the link juice from that won't pass down to the main page, but a check in Open Site Explorer or Webmaster Tools to see if it appear in your inbound links, but I have never seen an occasion where a popup has show up in SERPs, so I wouldn't expect links to a popup to be beneficial at all.

It would be better if you could ask for these links to be directed to your homepage really.

-Andy

Hi,

It sounds to me that some internal linking and no-indexing Tag pages could help with this.

Just doing a very quick scan of the site, I am seeing 439 pages that Google can crawl - 210 of those pages are Tag pages. These tend to fire Google off in all directions and serve no good SEO purpose. However, some like this, but I have seen them cause more problems than doing good.

If the opportunity arises, talk about related blog posts and then link to it - you would be surprised just what this can do for you.

-Andy

Hi Cornelius,

Are you referring to remarketing with regards Google Adwords? If so, this is what it is and where you can read more:

Remarketing lets you show ads to people who have visited your website or used your mobile app before. When people leave your website without buying anything, for example, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads as they browse the web, as they use mobile apps, or as they search on Google.
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453998?hl=en-GB

I would also suggest having a read here:

http://www.google.co.uk/ads/innovations/remarketing.html

If this isn't what you thought it was, or not what it refers to, please let me know.

-Andy

If your site is built in Wordpress, this is very easy to do as you set this in the advanced page options when using Yoast SEO's plugin.

If not, then you need to add the following code into the section of your site:

name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" > or <meta <span class="webkit-html-tag">name="robots" content="index, nofollow" ></meta <span>

You can also find more help on this here

-Andy

Thank you Billy

Brandon, I wouldn't advise trying to redirect from a page in this manner. First of all, you will lose link juice with every 301 made (there is always some loss), and secondly, you are trying to redirect for SEO benefits, rather than for the users.

I'm not even sure a 301 from a pop-up back to another page will work correctly - it isn;t something I have ever tried as it isn't something I would do.

Is asking for the links to change not an option?

-Andy

No problem.

What I was going to look for was the chain of 301 and make sure there were no errors in how these were implemented.

You could also use Webmaster Tools to suggest removal of old pages, then use Fetch as Google, to help speed up the spidering process.

It's a little awkward without seeing the sites I'm afraid.

-Andy

I hear it's good to have similar named domains to redirect to main sites and is good for seo!

I echo Dirks comments that there is no value in doing this and I pretty sure there never has been this benefit. A URL redirected to another carries no weight with Google.

As a vanity URL, no issues with doing that at all. I do see this fairly often where a targeted URL like this on a business card, then forwards to the main website itself. It's a nice way for people to remember you.

-Andy

It's a pretty straight forward 'no' Tyson. If all that is used that is the same is the theme, there is no penalty to be handed out here.

If they are concerned about it, tell them to change their theme, but you don't need to worry about this at all

-Andy

Hi David,

No site is beyond help. I have worked with sites who have been seeing hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors, only to be hit by Penguin / Panda, and seen later recoveries. What it sounds like you need is to disavow lots of the links that are associated with you now. It certainly isn't something that you need to give up on and shouldn't cost the earth to do it.

I would be happy to run a quick scan for you to give you an idea of what sort of state your link profile is in, if you wish?

Have you had a manual penalty from Google at all, or does this appear to just be algorithmic?

-Andy

Hi,

I tend not to use 302's for anything other than a temporary redirect - 301 is generally the one that works best for SEO because it will pass more page rank than a 302.

Moz also have a 'best practice' post on this here.

-Andy

Hi Gal,

Google local and organic results are almost never related. Not having a local account is not something that will affect your organic listings.

In theory, once the change and verification card has come through, the change should be quick and you shouldn't notice anything disappearing. The locations are staying the same, just the business name is changing.

However, if there needs to be a change in classification, don'f forget to do this as well.

Google is pretty good at getting this right and I have never personally had any issues when changing details for clients like this.

-Andy

Hi Richard,

Currently all iPad's will be reported in that format. I am sure that Google will get around to changing this at some point, but for now, you can't tell orientation.

Also, unless there has been a very recent change, you aren't likely to see a different resolution either (1536x2048 for retina for example).

-Andy

Hi Marie,

I am exactly the same as you in those circumstances and certainly no offence was taken to anything that you said. I didn't even think about that

-Andy

Well, I know Bing says they support it, but how well it works, I don't know.

You can read about it here on the Bing blog post, and Tom from Distilled answered a similar question on Moz here.

Hopefully these will help a little.

-Andy

Hi Steve,

Don't worry too much about the addresses because many businesses work from the the offices these days, but rather than go through lots of possibles here, I would like you to have a read through this post on Search Engine Land, because it carries lots of information and stumbling blocks that others come across.

If you still have questions after this, please do post back in here, but I hope it helps.

-Andy

"duplicate content is normally not a penalty."

This also depends on just how much there is. If you duplicate a page, that is identical information.

You can get around this problem Jon, by using the HREFLANG markup that will also work across domains, but remember that it works on a per URL basis, so you would need to use this for each of the URL's with the duplicate content.

Have a read of this article from Google on how to use the markup.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

I hope that helps.

-Andy

Err on the side of caution where there is any doubt at all. No-one really know if Google use this in some capacity, so take no chances and keep it all clean.

-Andy

Hi,

There is no real issue with either noindex or rel=canonical. Which one I would choose would depend if you have been penalised for this already?

Canonical is used to tell search engines of a preferred page, and is used to handle duplication issues, but I wouldn't create a constantly changing canonical in this manner. I would set the http://www.theatermania.com/video/mary-louise-parker-tommy-tune-laura-osnes-and-more_668.html to canonical back to http://www.theatermania.com/videos/, as this is the main page for all videos.

-Andy

Not something I have tried Miriam, but I have a new client who would be a good one to try with this as they have just opened a shop that repairs iPhones, iPads etc., and at the moment, have no listings anywhere.

Seems like a useful feature that should get some use

-Andy

Unrelated to rankings, I would not be wanting the login URL to the site so easily accessible Simon. I would look to change this - it will be much better hidden from view.

As for what has happened, I would be very surprised if this was anything to do with page layout, but looking away from analytics, how are your positions in the SERPs? Are you seeing a drop of just a few places, or a number of pages?

-Andy

I would only do this if it sits with the general theme of what is being said. Don't just try to make it fit just so it's in there.

-Andy

It is still possible it isn't a penalty from one of the major algorithms and you may be able to solve this by creating a strong internal linking strategy. It helps to formulate one if you use something like MindNode to create an overview of the site and then you can drill in on the pages in questions.

It is possible that a noindex would cure this, but it all depends because even though you add a noindex tag to a page, Google can still read the page and apply the penalty. All it means is that the page won't be indexed.

However, if you are relaunching everything very soon, you might be as well to sit tight and not do anything too rash for a short-term solution.

-Andy

Hi Rhys,

No, you can't dictate which links are shown. As Google says, they are automated, but there are ways to influence this such as internal linking, but this can be hard work to get just right. You can get some ideas here, but be careful what you do as this could go wrong if you over-do something.

-Andy

**1.  I'd like to remove most of the blog articles as I want the new site to be very high quality, but isn't it dangerous to do a 301 redirect to the same page for all these articles?  **

Correct - you don't want to be redirecting multiple pages to a single page. This is bad for user experience and SEO.

**2.  I want to focus on the new site as the current site has too many issues but still managing to hang in their.  is highly outdated yet I don't want to spend a ton of time on the site before the 301 redirect.  With the Pigeon and Panda 4.0 rumors being released soon, I want to get the new site completed ASAP.  Do you think it's better if I fix the **

If moving the site, don't forget to advise Google in Webmaster Tools, as well as 301 pages. In terms of fixing issues, I would be tempted to correct issues before moving over so you don't have problems follow you.

3.  Would removing cloudflare make things better or worse with the crashing of my site due to high traffic (mainly spam on the blog.)

I can't really give a definitive answer on this one, but I know of a lot of other cloudflare users who have experienced problems like this. I would also be looking to use Akismet to control the spam that comes through the blog comments.

4.  My best article by far is outdated, but should I waste time updating it before redirecting or should I just get the new site going?

As long as it gets updated, I wouldn't worry about it beforehand. Lots of old articles can be resurrected by re-working them again to make them more current.

**5.  Anything I can do to slow down these spammers on Wordpress?  I noticed most of them are checking for vulnerabilities but I'm keeping it up to date, have caching setup. **

See the answer to question 3 above.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

The practice itself is not considered ethical, as Matt Cutts has talked about this and their view is, why are you registering multiple sites just to get a boost in the SERPs? If found out, I would expect they would take a dim view of it. They said that all of this information should be kept on a single site.

If I were to want to achieve something like this, I would handle it either though a subdomain or within the current site structure.

-Andy

Hi Rachel,

This is similar to another question asked just yesterday and the same could apply very well to yourself too.

HREFLANG is used in cases like this where a site could encounter duplication issues through this kind of setup. There are two areas to look at and consider here - this answers your question if you decide to keep all TLD's the same.

**Q: <a name="q16"></a>Can I use “rel alternate hreflang” across domains / across TLDs?
A: **Yes! Keep in mind that this markup is on a per-URL basis, so if there are alternate URLs across those domains, you would need to add the markup for each individual URL.

You can get many questions answered here: https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16

If you decided to pull everyting into just one site, then this would fit what you want to do:

• Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

In terms of inter-linking, this seems to be down to the whim of Google, if they wish to see it as problematic or not. If you are concerned about it, leave the links in place and just add the rel=nofollow attribute - this will remove possible issues.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Inconsistent, yes - this could have a negative effect, but just because a listing appears a second time on the same site, this wouldn't be a negative.

Take Yell.com as an example - you can appear on many pages on there, as you can in many directories, and this has never been shown to cause any problems. However, I would be interested to see any research that says otherwise.

I really wouldn't worry about this if all it is, is a possibility that a second listing might also get featured.

I can't offer advice on specifics to do with the site itself I'm afraid though. Have you tried reaching them via Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook?

-Andy

**My only question is I have hundreds and hundreds of articles....So I just keep them and remove the links?  I'd say 15% of them are guest posts and they have followed links. **

If you are going to rework them over time (rather than remove them), then yes, remove the external links, or like you said, no-follow it. If you want to still give them a link that falls in line with Google standards, make the link their URL / brand at the end of the post. You can still no-follow it. It will clean the post up as well.

**Maybe I could redirect the links in sets? **

Seeing as you have so many articles, it might be best to do this, but don't be afraid of just killing off old posts that carry no real value. 301 all those you wish to continue with on the new site, but it does make sense not to have the articles in two places at once. If you intend to run with two live sites until all is transferred over, of course.

When evaluating old posts, look at what they add to the site. Is the post indexed? Is it similar to other posts on the site? You don't want to fall foul of similar posts that can cause issues with keyword cannibalisation either.

Glad I was able to help

-Andy

For the most part, Google can find their way well around dynamic pages with few problems. There are always going to be exceptions, but this tends to be when there are lots of components to the URL structure.

As long as it is pretty simple, you shouldn't have any problems.

-Andy

I see what you mean - it is a bit messy. It appears to be using the ALT tag for the logo as the first part of the description?!

It's something I would need to spend time on to try and get to the bottom of I'm afriad - however, you might find someone else with more schema experience can diagnose in a second. You may have to wait to see if someone else chips in a little later.

-Andy

Ahh I understand now - yes, then this could be bad and I would be trying to find a way to resolve it.

Best of luck with sorting it out

-Andy

I **also plan on buying high quality internet marketing writers to edit the most important aspects of the site.  I really am looking for someone that is good at hooking people in.  **

This is a great idea, and one that can net you huge rewards. The benefits of quality content have shown themselves time and time again over the years, and continue to do so.

**Thanks so much for your help.  Very appreciated. **

You're welcome

-Andy

Hey Bob,

Link building is far from dead, but it has changed direction hugely! You just have to be a little smarter about what you do.

Competition analysis is a fantastic way to find high quality links through a niche market. It helps you to track down opportunities that you might not otherwise find. For example, a high quality site links to a competitor who has written a useful blog post. Write a better version of that blog post and approach that site with it. Tell them that the link on there is out-dated now and hint that your article is much more relevant. Hopefully, the gears should start turning.

Also, don't worry too much about DA. Look more at the site itself and if it is a quality resource. It might not have a high DA, but that doesn't mean it isn't a trusted resource.

-Andy

You don't need to worry about the page title and URL matching exactly. Google doesn't give any inherent SEO boost to sites that have URL's and titles that match.

That said, there are most certainly benefits to having a good URL structure. It will help with usability and can help with click through rates, which in a roundabout way, can impact your positions.

An an example, if you look at the following, what do they say to you?

• ../armani/emporioarmani/suits   <-- This tells me all I need to know about the page I am on
• ../product/cat63/23487HA.html    <-- This tells me absolutely nothing useful

"...am considering whether we need to get it locked down so that if the page title is amended (only in a minor way) it does not also change the URL."

This would be fine to do. However, you don't want to go changing your page titles frequently. Pick a format that you are happy with and try to stick with it. Only change this if something significant on the page also changes that would call for rewording.

-Andy

Google is smart enough not to require language specific characters and I have worked with these in the past. You don't need them.

As suggested, test it yourself and you never see these characters in the results (just had a good search around). However, I would put them in Page Titles because at this point, you are down to text that people will be reading.

Andy

Hi Robert,

I have never gone back that far myself (30-40 days max), but I can see no reason why this isn't worth a shot. There could still be a lot of potential hanging around out there for the grabbing. Grab any low hanging fruit with both hands

-Andy

Hi,

There are likely to be a number of factors that play a part in this, although there is no rules from Google on how to achieve it. If there were, people would be changing them based on what they want, rather than what Google wants. It is also worth remembering that Google only show these for brand searches, so a strong brand is important.

That said, if I were looking at this myself, I would include the following:

• Clean internal linking structure with good anchor text
• Correctly code your links to ensure they can be fully spidered
• Links to your desired pages
• Pages with a low bounce rate and good organic traffic that already appear in the SERPs for their desired phrase(s)
• Unique page content that is no duplicated anywhere else
• Unique and appropriate page titles and descriptions

There is never any guarantee that you can influence these sitelinks or have Google guarantee a demotion, but follow a bit of best practice, and you might have some success.

-Andy