Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Nikolaj,

Thank you for sharing the page.

I do see why this might be a concern and if I were doing this, I would change the text at the top first - 11 occurrences in this small text area is far too much and will be seen by Google as such.

Then there are the listings, and this is where it gets a little more tricky because I don't believe you need to remove everything here - but I would do something with each Champagne title. If I take that first bottle as an example:

Champagne - Brut Origine - Halve

There is no need to have Champagne here - go to the page for that bottle and it doesn't say this. It would be much easier to read if you remove Champagne from each of these headings as the word just gets in the way - you already know you are looking at Champagne, so no need to keep putting it.

Then you have:

Fra Champagne Henri Mondi - again, there is no need to have Champagne here because it is just Henri Mondis, not Champagne Henri Mondi.

Do this with each listing and your page will be much healthier, have a lower word count and with that, much less keyword stuffing.

You were absolutely right to check on this.

-Andy

Hi Nikolaj,

... if it is, in fact, a problem?

Well, if you are noticing poor rankings for these pages in Google, then I think the answer to this is yes.

Is it just MOZ telling you that you are stuffing, or have you had a warning or suggestion in Search Console from Google? Or just poorer rankings?

I honestly think I would need to see the page in order to really have a look at what is going on and how it might be perceived, but it sounds like it could be a problem.

... we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer

By the sounds of it, I am not sure this is the case. If people know they are on a page about champagne, then I am not sure that removing this word from so many listing, would, in fact, cause you a problem.

-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

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

Hi,

Content is content irrespective of the type of site it is hosted on. As long as the article is good enough for Google to want to rank it, then I wouldn't worry about this.

I would recommend you have a read of this post:
https://moz.com/blog/case-study-ranking-high-volume-keyword

It covers a whole host of great information from choosing the content through to best ways to promote it.

-Andy

Ahh now I understand - so they are sending your listings out twice?

Have you checked to make sure that your listing is actually being duplicated on other sites?

Chances are that this wouldn't do anything from any SEO or Google perspective - I'm not actually familiar with that site so can't offer any specific suggestions on how they work.

What is your main concern that is worrying you?

-Andy

My question is simply: Do i need to do anything further in the .htaccess file to ensure we don't lose the value coming in from all the external follow links pointing to the http version of the site?

And very simply no

-Andy

Hi Christopher,

It is generally understood that when you move a site from http to https, that you should go through and have your links point to the new domain. However, in reality, that isn't possible for 99% of situations and as such, I have never yet had a client suffer because this wasn't done.

I don't think that Google would ever penalise a site because old links were not changed.

You should make sure that all new links point to the new domain though and that all internal canonicals are changed. Hard coded links can be a nightmare!

-Andy

Hi,

What sort of duplicate listing is it? Any chance of sharing the duplication problem?

-Andy

Hi Luke,

If you are looking to test with JS etc, then I can highly recommend you install the Web Developer chrome app - a very nice addition to a load of useful features.

Get it here

-Andy

Hi Dana,

Have you had a look at the site with Builtwith.com? Perhaps this will give you some information?

https://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fwww.pens.com%2fblog

Just looking at the source code of the blog page though, it seems as though Yoast is already installed?

-Andy

Hi,

Chances are, a brand video won't do anything for your SEO as such, but it could help with brand visibility and explaining more about what you do.

It is highly unlikely that in adding this, you will entice any new visitors, but if it does help explain a service or product, then it can help with those already on the page.

Don't have it auto start though and be careful that however you embed it so it doesn't slow the page loading down.

-Andy

Hi,

As Logan has said, you want to avoid too many redirect chains, but if you are only talking about 1 or 2 hops, then the chances are you will never see any negative effect.

That said, I always try and keen these down to 1 hop so rather than having page A to page B & page B to page C, are you able to edit the redirects and then just have Page A to Page C? If you can cut out the middle hop, this would be much better.

Wordpress is going to be the same as any other site where redirects are concerned. There are also a lot of really good plugins to help with redirects, so do look into them.

-Andy

Hi,

The page title is a two-fold benefit.

1. It explains the page to Google
2. It tells visitors what they can expect

Best practice here dictates that you write your title for your audience, but not ignoring the important keyword(s) for Google as well.

Try not to keyword stuff as pages like this tend to look unnatural before you have even got to them.

-Andy

The problem that I have found with this in the past is that Google sees the whole page and not the images. I found this to be more of a limit of Wordpress.

However, you could use an image sitemap and see if you can get them indexed that way?

-Andy

Hi,

The top and bottom line, is how many are needed.

I have clients who dominate huge search terms and have pages with many hundreds of links - others who only have a small number and the only difference between the two is what is actually needed.

If you have so many that the page is confusing, then I would reduce them. If you do have many hundreds, why do you have them? Can they be reduced without affecting usability?

There is no one answer to this and each case much be looked at on its own merits.

-Andy

I'm a little torn between what I would do in this situation.

Google says don't change URL's for the sake of SEO as it won't many any difference, but if there is a location mentioned in the URL and that is now limiting, from a usability point of view, this might be detrimental.

I would probably go for removing it though as this is always going to be there and might make less and less sense.

Create 301's and you should be good either way.

-Andy

Hi,

I quite like this one personally but I can't say for sure if it will ever get it wrong. Seems to be pretty decent though
https://totheweb.com/learning_center/tool-test-google-title-meta-description-lengths/

However, I tend to keep meta descriptions purposefully shorter than I need as I like to try and get the point across as quickly as possible.

-Andy

It sounds like there are a number of issues going on here and it's quite hard to envisage everything.

Having captions indexed as snippets requires the page to be setup in such a way that Google can use them. But remember that in terms of what Google shows, they will deliver what they thing bets suits the search query.

In terms of images being indexed, have you thought about having an image sitemap, or having them included in this? However, I wouldn't be setting a canonical from slideshows to base pages as this sounds like it could cause you a load of headaches.

Duplication is hard to assess as there could be a number of reasons from this, including incorrectly set canonical tags, indexed pages or other semi-technical issues.

Personally, I wouldn't be looking at slideshow images as something to be indexed, but I would be using some of these images in the page itself. This is just what I have found in the past.

-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,

I haven't had to do this myself, but this guide in Google might help you outwith the Apple stuff?
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6095881?hl=en-GB

-Andy

Hi Michael,

The problem is we are having difficulty getting the products within p= indexed*

If you have a canonical set on a p=* to the base URL, this will mean those pages never get indexed by Google.

If each page is different /p=1, /p=2 et al, then a rel prev / next will handle this for you. However, it depends on what is on each of those pages. If they are virtually identical (or at least very similar) then the solution might be to leave the canonical in place - but that doesn't sound like what you want.

If what I am reading is right, the nel=next & prev would work for you - but remove the canonical on each page. You could also use a view-all as this will work, but have a read of some of the options here. It covers what you need to know.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en

-Andy

They can do Clair, but it really depends what they looked at. Technical can cause issues with SEO but so can content and backlinks and page usability (UX).

I haven't seen many times when changing a 301 redirect made any significant difference - at least not if it is just minimal hops.

-Andy

Hi,

There are many ways to do this depending on your site and structure.

Are you doing this to try and get the additional phrases into Google, or for usability once someone lands on your site? If you are doing it for Google, you will want to avoid duplication of pages based on naming / keyword conventions and try not to create lots of pages that only have the basics to differentiate them.

-Andy

Hi Clair,

301's are absolutely fine to use, as long as they are used carefully - after all, that is why we have them. You also need to be aware, that any loss of link-equity is likely to be very small, so I wouldn't worry about this as a reason to undertake it.

As Greg said, a 301 will result in the new page being indexed so as long as there is just 1 or 2 hops as a maximum, then I really wouldn't worry about this.

Was this all that they found for you?

-Andy

Depending where you are hosted, you might find some help from them - certainly in terms of fast servers.

Some of this can be handled with plugins (if you're using Wordpress) but you can also edit your .htaccess file to make some changes yourself.

Just be careful with plugins though because I have seen these cause more problems than you want.

-Andy

Hi,

...how much will we penalised for having the same 'Things to do' content on say up to 10 hotels + 1 location page?

Simple answer is that you won't. Google doesn't have a 'duplication' penalty but anything you can do to make pages as unique as possible, is a good move. If there was nothing else on that page, then it might be a different conversation.

Could this impact on the quality score of the page? It is possible and I might do things differently if I were designing the page to help avoid this (Modal popup on click?).

By the looks of things, the content is towards the end of the page, so it is supplementary content rather than main.

Just always try and make the pages as unique as possible and always concentrate on the usability - make it is easy to navigate as possible.

-Andy

Hi,

Google is pretty smart, so it knows that when someone types 'Voucher Codes', that is can also mean 'Coupons', 'Promo Codes', 'Discount Codes', et al.

I would be looking to create as much great content as you can and in that content, do some keyword research and use these variants to help Google understand more about the page.

That is a very simplistic way of looking at it because you also need to look at primary and supplementary content and how you distinguish yourselves as a specialist site.

Have a look at MOZ's Keyword Tool to help with the keyword research.

-Andy

Sorry for the late reply - I have been away a few days.

Has this been sorted yet for you?

-Andy

Hi,

Rather than redirect an article to the homepage, if you just don't want it on the site anymore, either redirect it to something similar or just remove and 404 it. Homepage redirect doesn't offer any benefit to someone landing on that page.

If your 404 page is good, then you can recommend other articles that they may be interested in?

-Andy

Have a watch of the recent Whiteboard Friday from Marie Haynes - she tells you about many different tactics that can work.

https://moz.com/blog/what-links-comply-googles-guidelines-whiteboard-friday

I tend to advise others to steer clear of anything that goes against Google's TOS. If they catch up with it, you will get a nasty penalty.

-Andy

Hi,

I just did a site:crocozino.io and I can see your homepage is actually indexed.

-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

All of this ^^

-Andy

I don't think there is as much of a need to worry about disavowing as there was before the update from Google, but it is still something that you need to look at on a case by case basis. I don't think you could classify a particular set of criteria to disavow against or ones to ignore.

-Andy

Urgh!

Hi Shalu,

If Google is adding your brand name to the end of a page title, that is probably because it is something that they suggest. As a general rule of thumb, I tend to follow this format for page titles:

• Homepage: Brand Name | Title Description
• All other pages: Title Description | Brand Name

Brand is important to Google, but might be worth having a read though their best practices on page titles here.

However, if it is more than that, then I would suggest looking at what is being changes and why this might be - it could be that what you have written isn't descriptive enough for the page and Google is trying to make it better.

-Andy

MOZ doesn't allow these sorts of posts I'm afraid.

-Andy

Daft question perhaps, but are you sure nothing is blocking access as it seems to suggest in the screenshot?

When did you do the fetch as Google?

-Andy

Sometimes

That is a big question as there are some amazing tools out there, but here are a few that I use on a regular basis... Depends what I am doing really.

• MOZ / OSE
• SEMrush
• OnCrawl
• DeepCrawl
• URL Profiler
• Ahrefs
• Search Console
• Screaming Frog
• Sistrix
• Rankpage Redirect Check
• Raven SEO Auditor
• Dynomapper Visual Site View
• Greenlane Indexation Tester
• Google Page Speed Insights
• GTMetrix
• Webpage Test
• Pingdom
• Wayback Machine
• Buzzsumo
• Hemmingway
• Copyscape
• Siteliner
• Check Dog
• uClassify
• Google SERP Preview
• Portent Title Maker
• Google Preview Tool
• Geo IP Facts

-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

HI,

First of all, have a watch / read of this Whiteboard Friday where Marie talks all about links and what can work for you.

https://moz.com/blog/what-links-comply-googles-guidelines-whiteboard-friday

In my view, if someone has linked to your site without you asking, then there is never usually a problem, but it depends on the the type of links / quantity of links.

There is too much at play to give a generic answer that will fit everything you ask here. You should look at each site on its own merits, but with the introduction of Penguin into the main algorithm and this now running in real time, there is less of a need to be worried about these kinds of things. There is less of a need to disavow links because Google has improved how it scores these and if it spots a spammy link, is more likely to just devalue it.

-Andy

Hi Nicky,

How far off do you see the content as being published? The reason I ask if because Mobile First isn't far off and this is changing how Google indexes pages and works out the rankings.

Part of this is that they are going to start viewing the content behind a tab or accordion - the main reason for this is that Google is going to start using the mobile site for both mobile and desktop rankings and they see this as the best technique to keep mobile users happy. It is good for UX.

At the moment, Google will index that content, but it will be given a lower score than if it was all shown, but you also need to think about how a page might look without it - will it just be a huge page that you can get lost in, or is it not so big that you could have only 20 Q&A's and have it still looking good?

-Andy

Hi,

Just to confirm, do you have the same content on each TLD or just have these forwarding to your primary domain?

-Andy

Hi,

Alexa is a bit of a funny one really, but have a read of how they work out rankings here. Someone needs to have the Alexa Toolbar installed in order to contribute to the stats seen. I am pretty sure this hasn't changed.

It has never been a good source of useful stats for me.

-Andy

Option A is definitely the one that is going to be the best long-term approach. Google wants unique content and anything you can do to give them this is a winner.

-Andy

Hi Thomas,

You are correct that Mobile First is changing the game when it comes to tabbed / accordion content. Google's take on this now is that they will help usability by not having pages and pages of content on show.

From a desktop point of view, will this help when visitors arrive? Will they know to find the answers they seek behind a tab? Can you have one design for desktop and another for mobile?

Google haven't really said anything about using tabbed content on a desktop site once Mobile First hits, but based on the fact that it will be powering the desktop SERPs, I wouldn't have thought it was a big problem - as long as it enhances the page for a desktop user.

One more thing - John Mueller did tell me in a recent Tweet that layout can affect ranking, so take the time to test what works well for your visitors - it could be the difference between a win and a loss.

-Andy

Hi,

Open up search console (as long as you have it setup) and check to see if there are any warnings from Google.

It might be something very straight forward, but I would start here.

I would then read the MOZ guide on how they score these - you might pick up some ideas as to what can be causing this.

It's a bit awkward to say what else might be causing this without spending some time looking at it.

-Andy

Hi Jaro,

Please see my answer to your other question.

Perhaps have a read of these two resources to get some ideas as well?

• https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-for-ecommerce-websites/
• http://backlinko.com/ecommerce-seo

Depending on how your site is structured, the platform and many other factors, there could be other considerations.

-Andy