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I can't actually read that to comment on how similar the content is.

I terms of deciding how close to duplicate the content is, think about the paragraphs in use. Are they 20% similar? 50%? 95%? The higher up you get, the closer you are to a problem.

Google calls duplicate content "substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar"

As the pages are not huge, and the topics different (although similar), is this not something you could give to a copywriter to solve the issue for you? A good one should be able to solve it.

-Andy

I know it wasn't intended in the way I read it, but "if you can source high quality links back to your site this will help with rankings"... this doesn't mean go off and buy them - you would be surprised how many do. If you have a friendly PBN, then perhaps it's a different conversation

Think about this:

What are most people who could link to you, likely to link to - a sales page about vapes or an article about it?

It is obviously the second one and the way that I would advise this, is by taking these articles, marketing them and then getting links to those instead. You then use these articles to internal link through to your key (hub) pages. This is a very effective way to link build without trying to get links to sales pages - which almost never happens.

-Andy

The best way to handle international content, is to make use of HREFLANG. I wouldn't use a canonical tag though as Google suggest this isn't needed (read here) "Update:** to simplify implementation, we no longer recommend using rel=canonical.**"

Have a look at the following resources for explanations on how to do this:

https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

-Andy

Hi,

No, there is no good reason to do this. For linking purposes, this will do absolutely nothing for you. Sitewide and Footer links are mostly just ignored or devalued by Google, but could end up with you looking spammy.

Rand actually did a Whiteboard Friday about this very subject last year.

https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo

-Andy

The charges can vary hugely. If you are looking for companies, you can have a look at the MOZ list to get some ideas and see what they can do. You won't find many actual recommendations from posting here.

Prices can vary anywhere from £350 per day up to over £1,000, so it will be there and everywhere in-between.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

Hi Jawahar,

How old is your site? I only ask because Google often does this with fairly new sites, until they decide where you should be ranking.

-Andy

Hi Gerwin,

No problem with doing this in bulk. If you can tell Google about a big change all in one go, then this is better than still having incorrect pages lingering around while you do them in small batches.

As long as the pages match well (which it sounds like they do), then there is no problem with doing this on a large scale.

-Andy

I suspect part of the problem isn't that you are getting traffic, but the wrong sort of traffic. You want to sell products, but you might just be getting a causal searcher who gathers the information they want and then move on.

Have you looked into the key phrases you are targeting? You might also want to consider writing another information-rich page that can be linked from within the content but that is very targeted to the page your visitors are on.

There are a number of questions need answering about the page:

• Who are your ideal visitors?
• What are they arriving for?
• What can they do once they have the information they need?

Do look at Feeback Army (linked above) because for not very much money, you can get live users interacting with your page and answering questions you might have.

-Andy

It's important to remember that a healthy link profile will be a mix of both dofollow and nofollow links. There is no rule of thumb that says which links should contain which attributes, but if you were in a generic directory, for example, you would want it to be nofollowed.

More often than not, any link that is given editorially is fine with whatever it comes with. Nofollowed links are very useful, but just don't pass page rank.

Google is pretty smart at detecting spam links and negative SEO though, due to how these normally appear, so I wouldn't worry too much, unless you have seen something that is concerning you? You are also able to handle any negative SEO or bad links through disavowing the links in Webmaster Tools.

I hope this helps a little?

-Andy

Hi,

I think you have to ask yourself if this is the right thing to do first. As an example, I have never searched for anything 'near me'. I always use the phrase and my location.

If I do this in my browser, and search for 'restaurants near me' then I get the search page for Trip Advisor, but it seems to think that I am based in the US (I am in the UK), so not sure what is going in with that. Before that though, I get Google local results and then more local services offering to show me restaurants "In Chester", which is where I am.

My primary thought would be to do some research and find which way you should do this - 'phrase and location', or 'near me'. Which one do you realistically have a chance of competing against? Without knowing the full scope of your objective, it is a little limiting for me to offer an opinion on, but my gut tells me that you should do some research into search popularity first of all.

-Andy

Hi Kenn,

I think I understand all that.

In this situation, you could always use a 302 temporary redirect rather than canonical and tell Google that pages will be returning to normal at some point, and in the meantime, a 302 doesn't pass page rank so in theory, nothing should move and it shouldn't have any negative impact. It removes the duplication issue nicely.

A canonical will pass some page rank, and as a result, this might mess things up for you.

-Andy

Hi Jawahar,

If I were you, set yourself up with a tracking app and add your keywords. This way you get real numbers that aren't likely to be influenced by your own location / IP.

It is certainly not something I would do every few hours and I wouldn't really trust my own searches in 100% of instances.

-Andy

That isn't an 'SEO' drop as such, this is related to your sitemap errors. Doing a site: wont show the same numbers as you see as being shown on the sitemap itself.

Rebuild your sitemap, correct the errors and then see what state it is in.

-Andy

Hi Laura,

Does the site have anything to do with Mexico? Is there any mention of Mexico anywhere? Do they have a product / service that sells in to Mexico?

It is very possible to rank in Mexico with a site from anywhere in the World, but you might have to put more work into achieving this. Google is also likely to rank other Local sites above yourself, but it depends a lot on what it is you are selling.

-Andy

Hi,

There is no harm in using the new site as a pre-launch kind of thing, but I would be noindexing it until you are ready to make the switch. At that point, remove the noindex and ensure 301's are in place for the move. Without the noindex, it leaves it open for Google to pass judgement on - not something you want on a pretty empty page.

If your IT department just want to use it to form the basis of an e-mail campaign, then just don't try to do any SEO and you will be good. However, at least ensure the page is branded and has some content and a nice page for someone to land on. You don't want an empty Apache holding page with a sign-up form.

-Andy

Hi Alfred,

if I mine the logfiles and only deindex stuff that Google sends no further traffic to after a year could this be seen as trying to game the algo or similar?

No, this wouldn't be seen as gaming the algorithm. All you are doing is finding those pages that are serving no purpose and removing them.

if the articles are noindexed but still exist, is that enough to escape a Panda penalty or does the page need to be physically gone?

There are two thoughts on this. The noindex route is seen as the more gentle way to see if this fixes things for Google - in my experience, it is generally not enough.

What you need to remember is that even if you noindex a page, Google can still apply a penalty based on the page existing as the content can still be seen / crawled. There is no hard and fast rule to say they will, but it is a real possibility.

The advice to my customers is generally to remove the pages in question to avoid all possible doubt. Find the pages that are not delivering benefit to the site or visitors and start there.

I would be advising you undertake a content audit to fully assess the site and what really needs to be done. There is little point in killing lots of pages if it isn't lots of pages causing you issues.

-Andy

Hi Micha,

I can't think of why Google might object to this as it isn't the page that is refreshing constantly. That said, iFrames are frowned upon from a SEO standpoint as there have been many issues with blackhat techniques in the past.

To me, I would be looking at how big the iFrame is, where it is on the page, is it every page, what content is contained in there - the usability might harm your SEO in a roundabout way though.

At best, it will do nothing to your SEO - at worst, it could cause issues.

Would you not be able to achieve what you are wanting to do by using Ajax or similar?

-Andy

Hi Wouter,

I would say that you don't want to be following in what they are doing. There might be other reasons why they are doing so well, but without seeing the site, it is almost impossible to say why.

Perhaps their content is considered exceptionally good - perhaps they have a few non-spammy links that are really high quality? - Perhaps they have more trust gained from Google?

Remember that Google will ignore a lot of the spammy links from directories and blog comments. Look past the links if you want to see what is going on as there may be something else.

-Andy

It sounds to me like they might be trying to follow some advice but got it a little wrong - or perhaps they were expecting duplication but it never happened? Perhaps it came out-of-the-box like that?

There is no SEO benefit or trickery to why they are doing this though.

-Andy

Hi,

I have never heard of any issues with this in either case. Google can see past a right click block with ease, but why do you think this might be hurting his traffic? Because of scraping tools and copying content? It isn't something I would really suggest doing unless there is an exceptionally good reason.

In fact, here is John Mueller endorsing an answer over on Google's forums.

-Andy

Hi Lisa,

1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?

If they are keeping them to help ensure brand security, then this is very popular and no harm in keeping them.

2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?

There is probably not a lot of point in all of them being live and pointing towards the main site as there will be no SEO benefit in doing this. If the sites were live and each had a site on there, it would be a different story and one that would end in a penalty.

If they are hoping to gain any SEO benefit from doing this, then they will be wasting their time. By all means they can buy them, but if what they have is delivering nothing beneficial (and I suspect they aren't), then I would just take them all down. It is more common to have a .co.uk and .com (and perhaps a few others) pointing to one key domain to capture traffic that types it wrong, but outside of this, it's a bit of a dead duck.

-Andy

I'm going to chime in with Rand's Whiteboard friday on Link Building Outreach as it covers so many important factors related to offpage link acquisition.

Try and create content and articles that are above and beyond what others have in your niche. Give people a reason to really want to grant a link because they feel it is beneficial.

-Andy

Hi Steve,

First of all, don't worry about internal pages being added that have a 301 feeding them. Remember that link juice flows all ways, not just continues down a site structure.

I think I understand what you mean above, and I would copy the content from the old pages, produce them on the new site and then have a 301 that points from the existing pages to the new pages on the mens. All this tells Google is that the content has moved from one location to another and it doesn't need to get any more complicated than that.

By all means, rewrite the content if you feel it needs a bit more of a mail spin, but a cross-domain 301 is not an issue.

Google talks about these issues here as well.

-Andy

Hi Jonathan,

When I visit your site and I go to www.swiftcomm.co.uk/, it redirects me to www.swiftcomm.co.uk, so this looks OK.If I check the Google cache for both versions of the URL, the only one cached is www.swiftcomm.co.uk/ - this looks fine to me.

Might I suggest you download Screaming Frog and run a crawl with that as well, just to be sure. I can't do this today myself as I am on a Chrome box.

-Andy

Hi Becky,

This sounds like a perfect candidate for some internal linking.

I like to point anyone looking at this, to the following article on EConsultancy as it explains the idea behind it and how you would implement. Well worth the read

https://econsultancy.com/blog/65433-why-internal-links-and-hub-pages-are-a-major-factor-in-seo-success/

-Andy

Hi Lise,

It isn't best to do this because Google won't give you any benefit for doing so (or very minimal at best), but what you need to do is to redirect the old URL to the new one (if you haven't already) as this will show Google that there is a new page in place. Otherwise you are just starting with a new page.

Don't change it back, but don't do this to other pages, unless you are making them friendly URL's.

-Andy

Hi,

You are in the same boat as countless others waiting upon the next release of Penguin.

My thoughts around this are that it is probably a huge piece of work for you, and one that means you are going to have to rewrite all of the content again - but more of a worry, is if Google catches on to what you are doing. In their eyes, they might see that the business has two sites while there is only a need for one, and with that might come many more issues.

You wouldn't really want to be releasing a site and then have to disallow all crawler access as that wont do anything for it.

If you were to invest in a new site, I would be advising you switch the old one off before the new one was open to being crawled.

However, Google have said that Penguin isn't far off now - but they have been saying that for a while.

-Andy

The answer is whichever one works best for your particular situation.

Yes, while fewer folders is a benefit, it might not make sense to do this if you need to separate products, for example.

Try to keep URL's short, sensible and straight to the point - don't add keyword bloat and never stuff the URL's.

-Andy

Hi Donald,

The very best starting point is by reading the Google guides on moving a site.

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html

I don't actually know about plugins for Wordpress that will do this but your solution is going to lie around making the required changes in your .htaccess file. There is a lot of information out there on how best to do this, but this is what you need to be looking at.

-Andy

In that case, you want to be resolving this through your .htaccess file really. There are other possible ways, but I find that this is the most solid solution.

Do you know how to do that?

If you are on Wordpress, it might also be worthwhile checking your settings and ensure you have the site set to your preferred choice, and that the site is verified in Search Console.

-Andy

Hi Becky,

The most important factor here, is to ensure it makes sense. If you can get the main keywords towards the front, all well and good, but if you can't don't try and write it to fit because that then can impact CTR and you will end up driving people away.

The title and description should make sense to the page in question.

-Andy

Hi Sigurd,

A 503 seems like an odd choice in this circumstance - is this something that the eCommerce software dictates, or are there options for this?

A 503 is service unavailable and isn't something I would expect to see on a page that has expired. There are a number of alternatives depending on the product & niche. For Google to be seeing thousands of 503's might make it look like the site is having problems.

If a page really must go, then it should be a 404 / 410, or a 301 to a close alternative, but not a 503.

Are there pointers that show these are causing issues with the site's SERP's?

-Andy

Hi Patrick,

There are a few reasons for a 500, with the main one being a server error.

However, this can also occur if there are timeouts or even problems with the .htaccess file.

If you think that it is fixed and that Google has it wrong, mark them as fixed and then do another fetch as Google.

-Andy

Hi,

I really wouldn't do that as the page match doesn't fit, Canonical similar pages only.

However, internal linking can help create strong 'hub' pages on a site and this is a great way to top up your homepage without getting into any form of redirection.

The best thing I can suggest is have a read of this article to understand how it works, how to do it, and what you can expect, but essentially, it is all about creating string text anchor links to your homepage. That's the short version

On top of this, just make sure you are doing the very best possible job on your homepage. Do a page audit to see what is working for you and what you might need to be updating.

-Andy

We have also considered purchasing backlinks to improve our situation.

Please don't do this - that will never improve your situation.

-Andy

Hi Rob,

1. Will updating the sitemap for this test have a big impact? Google has already picked up the new URL's so that's not the issue. Furthermore, the 301 redirect on the old pages should tell Google to show the new page instead, right?

No, updating the sitemap won't speed the indexing up (but you should do this as a matter of course), but a 301 redirect should tell Google that there is a new page in place.

2. Is it normal that search impressions will slowly shift from the old page towards the new page? How long should I expect it to take before the new pages are consistently shown over the old pages in the SERPS?

I have asked John Mueller this in the past and he said "as long as it takes - just have patience".

Basically, sit tight because sometimes it can take hours, other times it can take weeks and months.

I would need to be taking a more in depth look to see if there was anything else going on.

-Andy

Hi,

Yes, Google can see the links within a slide, but I wouldn't use this as a source for link building.

As for placing it on your website, you can embed this, which means that it isn't actually hosted on your site, so there is no problem with any duplication

-Andy

OK, so if you have duplicated the content on each TLD, then this needs resolving. However, if you are just pointing say the .com to a .org, then this is absolutely fine.

If this content is live on each domain and it isn't intended for a different country, then this is a big no-no. You would normally handle this with HREFLANG, but, there is something to think about.

You could noindex / disallow access to all but one website so that Google can't see lots of duplicates, but the sites are still going to be available to browse for a user.

-Andy

...I've read many articles about page rank loss from 301 redirects

You are right that there is a loss of PR from a 301, but it is going to be very small.

In terms of managing the site, long term, you are going to find it much more straight forward to take the route of tidying up.

I have just been through this with a site over almost 2000 pages and we didn't notice any drop in the SERPs at all. However, we did see a few uplifts, but there could have been a few other reasons for this as well.

If you were changing the URL's to try and gain favour with Google by having more friendly URL's, I would tell you not to bother. This, however, seems like a worthwhile change.

-Andy

Hi Robin,

There is no real problem in what you want to do. Medium is a great way to get your content in-front of more people, as is Pulse.

This is what Google has to say on the matter...

• Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.

I would say go for it - have seen this done many, many times and without any issue.

-Andy

Hi,

There are literally dozens of reasons why this might be happening and without a complete audit, it will be impossible to say what is going on.

However, you mentioned that your site is a bit under a year old - could it be that your brand isn't established as much yet? And try not to focus on WP vs custom built sites - both have the ability to rank as well as each other.

Is there a reason you went with a .net rather than a .fr domain? Have you installed anything to monitor page-level traffic? Something like HotJar?

-Andy

Have you actually tested this in robots.txt tester in Search Console? This is usually one of the main causes.

Without being able to actually see the pages themselves, it is a bit awkward, but I would start there.

Also, are the blocked resources actually on your site or somewhere else?

-Andy

OK so another thing to check, although I suspect these are OK, but the pages aren't orphaned somehow? You can get to them through a logical set of clicks through the site and don't have a noindex anywhere?

With the image you gave above, it is a bit awkward to diagnose without actually seeing them myself.

If you want to email me an example, I will gladly take a look for you. info at iqseo.org

-Andy

To further expand on what Egol said, some businesses don't bother putting keywords on the homepage title as that is the brand page. That said, it is very often a huge missed opportunity and why anyone would pass up building a strong phrase into the main site page is beyond me.

I also think that the type of business makes them feel as though they need to be perceived as above that sort of thing - their brand is strong enough for them.

For the vast majority of businesses, follow best practice and help both Google and visitors see what you are about in the SERPs.

-Andy

Don't forget that the description has no effect on the SEO. Tis is just for those reading the search results. I would suspect that with a site the size of amazon, descriptions will be made up from algorithms, or a description pulled from a database. Might even be something stock that the manufacturer supplies them with. Regards, Andy

A great move Simon - welcome to the madness

One tip I would give, is to make a name for yourself. If you are planning on becoming a consultant, then your name is everything and the strongest marketing tool you will have at your disposal. Yes, stronger even than your MOZ subscription

Be active everywhere. Go networking, be active on Twitter with other professionals, offer free advice if someone is stuck, connect with other professionals on G+ - and have a great website that will inspire people to take you seriously.

If you do have any particular questions, happy to answer them

-Andy