Welcome to the Q&A Forum

No worries Dan

-Andy

It sounds like there were some big changes on the site, so I would guess that the sudden jump and then subsequent loss might be Google deciding where it should be indexed. Has it been removed from the SERPs altogether or just dropped down to a lower position?

It wouldn't strike me as being anything else, but things to check...

• Use Screaming Frog to do a crawl of your site and see if there are any glaring errors.
• Use DeepCrawl to do the same and see if there are any additional issues found
• Check all redirects are correctly implemented
• Check to make sure there is no page duplication / keyword cannibalisation going on
• Are all canonical elements in place?
• Has anything been blocked in Robots.txt?
• Does the .htaccess file contain code that doesn't resolve redirections correctly?

-Andy

For this type of link, yes, that can be a little risky as it's a full page redirect (probably seen as a 301) rather than a textual link.

If it does turn out to be nofollowed (I would need to see the link to confirm) then it's a little different as link juice doesn't flow and that then satisfies Google, but I would err on the side of caution. Unless there is a good reason to pay for a premium link (more traffic, etc), then I wouldn't really bother.

-Andy

Dirk is correct - these are seen as a 'followed' link.

I have read conflicting reports on how these are viewed from an SEO perspective, but I think that the general feeling is "don't worry" as it is a one off, it's a niche directory and is just going to form a part of your overall link profile. If every link was the same from the same type of site and followed the same format, then Google might see something unnatural.

Don't sweat it

-Andy

No problem at all John - please reply back if you have any other questions.

-Andy

Hi,

I would strongly urge you not to run multiple sites. If Google catches on to this, you will end up with a penalty for all of them. This would be seen as a way to try and 'game' the search engine by trying to find ways to get more exposure for keywords. What you will also find is that you are competing against your own sites in terms of keywords, which is never an area you want to get in to.

Look at it from Google's eyes - if they were to ask you why you have 5 sites, what would be your answer? I promise you that they wouldn't let you get away with it.

Best thing to do here is ditch all but one site and concentrate, as Russ suggests, on amazing content. Pull everything back to within one domain and create pages to target specific keywords, but don't make it spammy. Well researched content will win every time and can result in great SERP placements.

-Andy

Hi,

I just want to address a point that has been missed here because duplicate content across domains is one of the Panda signals to Google and can end up resulting in an algorithm hit. Remember that how Google treats your own internal duplicate content and that on an external site are very different.

A good rule of thumb is do NOT expect to rank high in Google with content found on other, more trusted sites, and don’t expect to rank at all if all you are using is automatically generated pages with no ‘value add’.

Have a read of this article as it runs through lots of information regarding duplicate content. Here is another excerpt to be mindful of...

…in some cases, content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results. Google tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has a “regular” and “printer” version of each article, and neither of these is blocked with a noindex meta tag, we’ll choose one of them to list. In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results. GOOGLE.

I would never advise duplicating content to be used across different domains - this is a very bad practice and one that should be avoided at all costs.

CleverPhD has advised the best way to handle this and re-write the content for the Bios.

-Andy

Hey Dan,

Glad I read to the end as I was about to suggest looking at this. A client of mine was also hit very recently with something similar and it was rogue code that was carried over from one version to another.

Glad all is sorted

-Andy

Sorry Becky, I forgot to say that without some level of testing, it is almost impossible to say with any degree of certainty just what you would get from this as a site-wide task. Depending on the products, searches conducted and how Google ranks the images, you may find a good deal of additional traffic or you may find very little.

Perhaps take a control group to test and monitor the products over the course of a month to see if sales / traffic has increased.

-Andy

Hi Becky,

You aren't likely to be penalised for this, but the benefit you can derive from ALT text will be lessened. If the picture is of a floor fan, and the ALT tag says this, there is no problem.

However, I would be saying something like "Metal Blizzard Floor Fan 12" 55W with tilt". It will help because you have more of a chance of it turning up in image searches = more traffic.

-Andy

Definitely a great idea is there is a dev on hand to do this

-Andy

Hi Becky,

What you need to be careful of, is over optimising with ALT tags. This can lead to issues, but what you suggest is correct. John Mueller from Google had this to say about ALT tags...

"alt attribute should be used to describe the image. So if you have an image of a big blue pineapple chair you should use the alt tag that best describes it, which is alt=”big blue pineapple chair.”** title attribute** should be used when the image is a hyperlink to a specific page. The title attribute should contain information about what will happen when you click on the image. For example, if the image will get larger, it should read something like, title=”View a larger version of the big blue pineapple chair image.”

If the image someone can click on is the rear view of a cupboard, then say this in the ALT tag. However, it is worthwhile remembering that you need to be descriptive with these.

Here is a great article on the subject.

-Andy

Hi Liam,

If you have a mix of slash and no-slash URL's, just make sure that they all forward correctly.

If you go to www.example.com/product/, does that forward correctly to www.example.com/product, or what does it do?

If you wish to PM me your URL, I will happily do a quick crawl to make sure there is nothing else that might cause you issues.

-Andy

Hi Liam,

To enforce a no trailing slash policy sitewide, you need to do this in the .htaccess file. You do this by adding the following:

**`RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]`**

If you wanted to enforce a trailing slash policy, you would instead add this.

RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-f RewriteRule^(.*[^/])$ /$1/[L,R=301]

-Andy

Should we even have a /en-us/ version when our root domain is the default version, in english, and targeted to US primarily?

Hi Andrew,

The general rule of thumb here, is if your target is the US and language English, then this should sit at the root of the site rather than within a location identifier - so from what you say, this is implemented incorrectly.

Correct this and it should correct your issues.

However, you will need to set some 301's so that any pages that are indexed under /en-us/ will forward on to the new and correct URL.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Would a canonical tag be suitable for this?

Hi Liam,

Yes, you would use a canonical tag here to prevent the pages from competing with each other. This wont (shouldn't!) prevent them both appearing in the Google map results.

I hope this helps

-Andy

I really don't know because I know the square root of nothing about IIS I'm afraid.

Sorry, not an awful lot else I can help with on this one.

-Andy

Hi,

Have you had a look at installing Wordpress under Windows? There are also alternatives to Wordpress if you wish to look at these.

I'm not aware of a workaround otherwise - it isn't something I have ever had to do, but someone else might chip in with ideas.

-Andy

You are very welcome

-Andy

Hi,

I answered a very similar question yesterday here. You will find lots of useful information related to what you are wanting to achieve.

-Andy

The best thing you could do Dave is decide on what you want to write, but don't focus on keywords too heavily otherwise it could sound very odd. Look at the subject as a whole and delve in.

Here are a few articles that will give you some ideas...

• Moz
• Kiss Metrics
• Quick Sprout

Just keep in mind that you are writing for your audience, not Google. Research your subject heavily as this will help make the work more accurate.

With regards the keywords, you will need to do some keyword research and add in supporting content. For example, if you are talking about Cats, you would talk about different breeds, life span, history, etc.

-Andy

I  put an end to that, mostly because it was absolutely pointless and not user friendly.

This..

Hi Rosemary,

Is Google penalizing my client for this?

Does it look like there is any penalty going on?

What you need to do is add a rel=alternate from the desktop location pages to the mobile versions and a rel=canonical from the mobile page back to the desktop version. This should remedy all duplication issues and send Google the correct signals at the same time.

What Google says...

1. On the desktop page, add a special link rel=”alternate” tag pointing to the corresponding mobile URL. This helps Googlebot discover the location of your site’s mobile pages.
2. On the mobile page, add a link rel=”canonical” tag pointing to the corresponding desktop URL.

You can read the information you need that matches your separate page format here on Google.

This should fix all issues.

-Andy

No problem at all

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

Before I answer that, I would like to point you to this article on eConsultancy about internal linking. This is the go-to article that I show everyone and explains exactly how to do it.

Should I link every instance of "Blue Widget" to the blue widget product page or just once from each relevant page?

John Mueller has also just confirmed here, that internal linking to your product pages is not over optimisation. Here is the snippet of interest...

"In general, I don’t see any problems with internal links from articles on an e-commerce site. So if you are an expert on a topic, and you have products that belong to that topic, then maybe you will write some articles about this topic as well and give more insight on why you chose those products to sell, or the pros and cons, the variations of those products, and that is useful content to have. And that is something that sometimes does make sense to link to your product pages or the rest of your site.

So that is not something I’d see as being overly problematic. If this is done in a reasonable way, that you are not linking every keyword to different pages on your site, but rather saying this product is important, this product is important here, this is something we offer, this is something someone else offers, this is a link to the manufacturer directly. Then that is useful information to have, that is not something I’d remove."

Make articles about your Blue Widgets more Why / How, rather than 'buy these', and title the pages accordingly. Steer clear of titles that could cause duplication issues again, but there is no harm in talking about them in great detail and linking.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Hi Dave,

You aren't really missing anything as one point you make here...

How do we therefore have 1 page that talks about all kinds of great stuff about the "Rugged smartphone" but one that also targets rugged handheld, rugged android device etc etc?

You have kind of answered your own question here. Of course, your Page Title has a limited number of words available to you, so you need to focus heavily on the page content itself. You want to talk about rugged phones, that is fine - mention in detail, Android devices, iPhones, link out to reputable sources as citations, build supporting content and any of your own insights.

Use these other keywords in the page, but don't overuse them as that will land you in trouble.

There is no secret really, just a good dollop of research and writing - if you target the phrase 'Rugged Handset' you will find Google can return your page even though this isn't mentioned in the title. G is very good at matching searches with intent and will pick up on what you talk about.

-Andy

I wish to add my two-penneth in here...

Link building has changed hugely over the last few years and to the point, I am actually going to be dropping this as an offering within my consultancy services. Link building should really now be tied in to a bigger service / article marketing production plan.

Of course, there are some sites / areas where you might still be able to go out and build natural links, but these are going to decrease over time. Google now wants to see a fantastic site with outstanding content. The happier your visitors, the happier Google will be.

Content, content, content - focus heavily on creating something not seen on your competitors sites and market that through as many channels as you can.

-Andy

Hi Bejan,

Your chosen language should be sat at the primary domain.

For example, if your are a Saudi based site that wants Arabic as the primary language, this shouldn't be sat in an identifier. Ideally, you want to have a primary site language as this is how most will do it.

www.example.com (Arabic Language)
www.example.com/en/ (English Version)

Or...

www.example.com (English Language)
www.example.com/ae/ (Arabic Version)

You need to also remember to set these correctly by using HREFLANG. This is what will tell Google which languages should be associated to which pages. Moz have a couple of very useful pages on this here and here.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

Hi,

E-commerce sites are littered with canonical issues for so many different reasons. The most common is like this, where there are cross-overs..

Your issues are probably being caused because you have a main Blue Widget page that carries everything (I assume).

Here is one way I would approach your issue... Probably not the best for your circumstance though.

-- Set canonical from Waterproof Blue Widgets to Blue Widgets
-- Set canonical from Alarm Blue Widgets to Blue Widgets

You might want to remove the primary page from Google's eyes as this could be seen as a doorway page.

The second (probably best) way is by targeting the pages a little more closely - of course, this is a little awkward to advise on because I can't see the site. You would need to add a more thorough description to the secondary pages and make sure they are very focussed. Internal links as you have described will also help here with very focused anchor texts. These links I would add high up the page in an introduction text.

I would then create some blog posts related to each product and link through from these too. Try and get the link high up in the copy again. Don't just stop at one though - you want to create hub pages for each and this is the best way to achieve it.

-Andy

Hi Chad,

Option 'C' would be the wrong way of doing this, as would 'B'

You need to build the site and then have a page per location. Make the pages very specific about the location and add things in there about travel, directions from different places, landmarks, etc., as well as address and other contact details. The more specific and targeted the page, the better for your client and SEO.

-Andy

Hi Yiannis,

I tend to add these in as an advisory to my clients because for the most part, and unless I see something specific, the results have absolutely no effect on SEO. If they wish to act on them, it is for their developers to handle.

I don't argue my corner really - never had to. I just tell them like it is - the site is rendering fine in everything and with no issues, so fix errors if you have the time and resources.

As I said, unless I spot something that is an actual problem, then it tends to just get bypassed.

-Andy

Hi Pete,

I think it's important to remember that Google doesn't penalise duplicate internal content...

John Mueller - Google
John clearly states  “We don’t have a duplicate content penalty. It’s not that we would demote a site for having a lot of duplicate content.” and “You don’t get penalized for having this kind of duplicate content” in which he was talking about very similar pages. John says to “provide… real unique value” on your pages.

There is no direct guidance on just how similar 'similar' needs to be before it is picked up as duplicate - if it were all on one site, it would be less of an issue, but as you have these crossovers on 3 sites, this might cause problems.

Try and avoid templated copy with a few changes because this can be seen as 'boilerplate' which Google doesn't like either.

I'll be honest, carrying the same products on different sites is a bit of a dangerous game in most cases, but there are exceptions.

Lets say you have 3 sites that are Football, Cricket & Tennis. One product that might be the same could be socks. If you differentiate here and write about socks for each sport (and each site), then you will be OK, even if it is the same product.

I hope this makes sense?

-Andy

Ahh great stuff. Glad you managed to track it down

-Andy

Hi Thomas,

I have done a lot of this over the last few years - removal of negative / unwanted search results. You effectively need to bury it, as suggested above. I have a little info on my own site here if it helps.

Profiles that I create to help in these circumstances:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Wordpress
• Blogger
• Youtube Channel
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Tumblr
• Flickr
• Reddit

Google+ posts specific to the search phrase (place phrase in first 50 characters)

However, don't forget to add some content to your profiles. Just creating empty profiles probably wont cut it for you. I would also advise interlinking your profiles to help give them a boost.

You can also write something specific to the subject and use a Google News Submission service (Press Release Distribution) as this can also rank quite highly with a specific subject.

-Andy

Hi Andrew,

You need to be editing your .htaccess file to forward from one to another if Wordpress isn't getting it right.

In the Wordpress General Settings, just make sure that both URL's are set to your preferred version (www or non-www) and if this doesn't work, a bit of .htaccess code will cure it for you.

Add this to your .htaccess if required:

<code>RewriteEngineOn RewriteBase/ RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST}^www\.(.*)$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

-Andy</code>

Hi Al,

There are so many possibilities for this, so I will run through a few for you to check / think about.

• Have a look at Positionly for daily SERP updates
• Is it a particular set of products where sales drop, or across the board?
• Add heat mapping to your pages (Crazy Egg) to see how users are interacting with your pages.
• How often are you pages / products updated?
• Have you checked Google Analytics to look for issues?
• Do you integrate with Google Shopping?
• Is most of your traffic PPC or organic?

-Andy

Hi,

Always awkward to speculate on issues like this because there could be a problem we aren't aware of because we can't see it.

However, as Moosa said, I would also give it a little time as these things are often just part of the 'Google Dance' while it is decided what to do with the site and new content. Your Robots.txt file certainly isn't going to be the issue here.

If you wish to share the site and URL's, then we can take more of a look.

-Andy

No problem at all

-Andy

Hi,

**Will infinite scroll affect ranking when there is an text below? **

I highly doubt that this alone will be enough to impact any search results. With Infinite Scroll, Google want to see it done properly first and I would check this out. You don't want to be blocking elements of the page if you can avoid it.

John Mueller gave a great example of how an infinite scroll should work along with pagination. This ticks all the boxes required.

Of course, the better your page(s), the better the chances of being well ranked, but much more at play than just a bit of text below products.

-Andy

Just to add my 2c in

I remember a while back that Google said they don't like page titles that change, and I would be tempted to not change these to something seasonal that you then have to change back again.

There is absolutely no harm in creating new pages though (as Tim said). Write new pages that focus on seasonal products and then link these internally as they will help you create strong 'hub' pages. Have a read of this fantastic article from eConsultancy.

-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 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

Excellent news - glad it has all returned

-Andy

Hi,

Internal linking can be a fantastic way to build internal page authority and to give more emphasis to particular pages.

In a simple way, here is how it works...

-- Create amazing article related to the page you are trying to rank for
-- High up in the copy, create a target anchor text that leads to the page you are trying to boost. Make the anchor text the same / very similar to your desired phrase - but make sure it makes sense.

Have a read of this article over at eConsultancy. This goes through it in a lot more detail and will show you exactly what you need to be doing.

I personally have had some astounding successes with this. The article you create should be better than the norm though. You want something that will get shared socially and hopefully, result in some backlinks too.

-Andy

Hi Ben,

Are these actual additional businesses, or just services that you run?

There is no harm whatsoever in using one address and having multiple businesses running from there. Look at any serviced or office complex that has multiple different businesses running from there. Google won't penalise on this.

So if you have Daycare Services Ltd running from Golds Gym, then it is still a registered location. The fact that there are unrelated services at the same address isn't an issue at all.

I hope this helps

-Andy