Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Absolutely - need to know more about where you are seeing this. It isn't an error I have come across yet.

-Andy

Well, Google say you are, and this is what it's used for The snippet from that page explains exactly what you are trying to do.

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

No, you want to self canonicalise as well - remember, each page will be seen as unique in Google's eyes.

-Andy

As Google has said that guest posting is now considered a spammy tactic, I would look at this as a possible part of the problem. Read what Matt Cutts says about it here.

You need to be thinking outside the box and look for other ways to build links, but I would cease guest posting. You need to also look at how links coming back from these guest posts were created, as it is very easy to get this wrong and cause yourself an additional headache. You should never use keyword rich anchor text, for example.

-Andy

So just to understand, the German page has the same title, etc, in English? Or is this in German?

Either way, hfreflang deals pretty well with issues like this and you can have two pages virtually identical, but with a few differences for a different audience.

It sounds like you fall into this category...

"Your content has small regional variations with** similar content in a single language**. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland"

-Andy

Hi Kate,

Your assumption about duplicate / similar content appears to be well founded. Just to test a sample, I took the following snippet from this page, and searched in Google:

"Acacia House sits in Ol Chorro Losoit Valley, within the Lemak Hills"

Google returns 4 pages, so yes, there are issues here - and it isn't as straight forward as canonicalisation to fix as this can mean other pages could miss out on a chance to be indexed and returned. However, what you can't tell, is to what degree Google is objecting to these kids of issues. Some say that Google is smart enough to understand what a snippet is, and won't penalise based on this - others disagree. Myself, I try to ensure my clients have unique content on each page and always err on the side of caution.

I also took a snippet from itinerary here and did the same - this time it came back with 5 different pages.

My opinion is that yes, you do have problems that need to be rectified. I know this was only a very quick look, but I shouldn't be seeing so many pages with the same snippets of content in Google. The odd one you can get away with, but I bet I would find lots.

How many unique pages with content like this do you think you have?

-Andy

Hi Sunny,

Aside from cleaning up bad links and removing thin pages, are you doing anything positive for link building? Great content can make a huge difference, but remember that you are competing against thousands or millions of other sites / pages, who also want those coveted top places. You need to share what you are creating; reach out to industry specialists and thought leaders and see if you can get links that way.

Link-building and outreach is a huge subject, but it starts with creating something great - don't stop just at content.

-Andy

Hi,

With it having been a manual link penalty, I would say that you need to concentrate on some new quality links, rather than op-page items. However, just make sure you don't fall into any dangerous traps - you don't want to risk any more penalties.

-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

**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

Hi Brian,

I don't know of any data that would show this one way or another. There are benefits to both solutions, and negatives. One the one hand, you have pages closer to the homepage, but perhaps a slight negative mark from a users POV - if the user was incline to look at the URL in order to gain additional information about where they are on the site.

It does make sense to be informative for the user, but introducing a new hierarchy and pages, might have a negative effect on the SEO.

-Andy

As already indicated, there is no harm in having your business listed on a directory, just don't do it for SEO purposes.

It can help when you are looking to increase cocitations (Yelp, Yell, at al) and to promote your business through niche sites is no problem either. Just tread carefully.

-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

Hi Sophie,

There are no definitive guidelines on this, but many follow a rule that there should be at least 200 words of quality copy (as a minimum) per page, but I certainly wouldn't be looking to go lower than this.

As for strategies, what is it you are trying to achieve? Higher positions in Google? Improving the readability? To gain conversions?

-Andy

any future algorithm updates surrounding link quality...

That's the $100 question right there. As it stands, all is peachy - but if Google decide to make an update (of which there are more than 500 per year), you could be spending a lot of time trying to repair what might have been an easy fix in the first place.

It's all about damage mitigation. If I were in your shoes, I would be probably be suggesting external links of this nature, were nofollowed.

-Andy

A quick way would be to disallow crawling of all pages starting with /?PIPELINE. That will prevent Google from seeing them. You can do this by adding the following into your robots.txt file...

Disallow: /*?PIPELINE

However, you want to get to the root cause, which will be something to do with the system generating these. Ideally, this needs to be fixed.

-Andy

What you want to be careful of it falling into the trap of keyword duplication / keyword cannibalisation. This is why it's important to ensure every page is well focussed.

To answer your question, Google only really wants to deliver one of your pages for a desired term, so it is very likely that the homepage would drop if you were to optimise the internal pages. That said, it's not always a bad thing, because someone searches for "Cheap Phone Plans" and are taken to a page just about that, can help convert more readily - as long as you do the work to the page, of course.

-Andy

Ah OK - well keep us updated with what you find. Someone else will chip in with other info if they have some

-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 Granit,

Has any work been done to the site in the last 2-3 months? Have you had any warnings in webmaster tools at all? I did once see a strange problem where Google wasn't crawling a site correctly because it had been compromised, but after checking, there is nothing like this on yours.

-Andy

That will teach me to skim read

Perhaps trying a different 301 plugin will help? Alternatively, you can pretty much redirect anything from within .htaccess.

This page on Webmaster World might be worth reading.

-Andy

It's never too early to start. It also doesn't need to take 6 months to start to see benefits from SEO. If you go ahead and create a comprehensive content strategy, start building social connections and letting Google see you, then 6 months down the line, you will be in a much stronger position.

As they say, no time like the present

-Andy

It actually isn't required - Google have no way of telling if you have tried to contact webmasters and ask for a link to be removed. I have done many disavows without this (at the site owners requests) with fantastic results.

One of the Matt Cutts videos actually says that if you just notice a lot of links that are appearing and shouldn't be there, or you don't know where they came from, just go ahead and disavow them.

-Andy

The hash tag means that the page wont be indexed by Google and therefore, carry no page rank. It is like it is invisible. Just launch the new pages because Google will have never seen the current ones.

-Andy

Hi Mark,

Did you notice any actual drop in the SERP's while you had the keywords in last time? Or has the removal of these seen an increase? Or is everything stayed the same?

If noting has changed, I would be tempted not to add them back in again. You are right that too many keywords can cause issues (depending on where they are, keyword cannibalisation being a problem), but the re-introduction (or addition) of many keywords might also harm you if there is an algorithm update that looks at this aspect.

When linking out to a merchants website, don't do this with anchor-rich text. Do something like " Visit Merchant - www.merchantname.com" and make the URL the link.

-Andy

What is the reason for doing this? What are you wanting to achieve?

Imagine if you are Google - ask yourself "does this look natural to me?"

As a one-off site, then not much of a problem - but 100+ sites? Especially when you look at the sites themselves - as you say, all keyword rich. I can't imagine Google would look at this and consider it natural.

-Andy

No more needed than EGOL's answer

Absolutely no reason why not - you can read more about how DA works here:  http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority

-Andy

There are two kinds of content that Google sees. One is evergreen, the other is fresh. Evergreen might be something that doesn't need to change (not all sites and pages change all the time), with fresh being the likes of articles and news. If there is a thread with good information on it, then it might still be useful.

However, if you think there are a handful of forum pages that could be redirected to main internal pages, then you can do this as well - there is no need to redirect every thread though. You could redirect 10 pages and 404 everything else.

-Andy

If people are still reading the forum, is there then a reason you want to remove it? There is no harm in leaving it in place and it won't harm current SEO either.

-Andy

Without seeing the site and proposed structure, it is a little awkward to say with certainty, but if you have a structure for the product pages that can be matched via a wildcard expression, then it is possible to write an .htaccess redirect for it - but most would probably opt to do this with the old page being redirected to the new page - a more straight forward procedure.

-Andy

Hi,

Do people still visit the forum? If so, you can take it down, remove everything but the index and then just have a polite notice advising that the feature has been removed, and that you will be automatically redirected to the homepage in 10 seconds - that kind of thing.

However, I wouldn't advise to just 301 with there being so many pages that don't match anything else - If there is no chance it will ever be used again, I would just take it down and ensure you have a decent 404 in place. Google doesn't mind 404's where pages are no longer in use.

You don't want to 301 a forum to a site homepage where there is no forum.

-Andy

What are you trying to redirect? Is it every page in a site, or specific pages?

-Andy

This exact question has also been asked on here previously, but without a solution I'm afraid.

I would guess it is something within the theme that is causing this - but what, I do not know. The Yoast SEO plugin is supposed to handle this somehow, but it seems no-one knows how.

Sorry I can't be more help on this one.

-Andy

I know this might sound like a bit of a daft question, but you do have a page 2 of your blog? And if so, when you view the source of that page, do you see something like this?"prev"` `href="http://example.com/"> **``"next" href=``"http://example.com/page/2/"``>``** -Andy

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

-Andy

So just to understand, the old page was just the same as the new page, but with a URL change? If this is the case, then yes, a 301 would be the way to go.

-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

Hi,

It is always good in these cases, to err on the side of caution. It shouldn't harm your site, but to be safe, disavow the site through Webmaster Tools. Just remember to add a note to the file to explain that you have been in touch asking the site to remove the links, but they have not responded.

If you haven't disavowed a site before, copy this into a .txt file:

# The following site was contacted on <date>requesting removal of links. No reply was ever received and links remain.</date>
# Correct as of<todays date=""></todays>

domain:wpdatar.com

When the file is ready, you can upload it here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1

-Andy

Sadly you are asking a question that is impossible to give a concrete answer to. There are many factors involved, meaning it is possible that you 'may' notice a drop, but on the other hand, it is just as likely (if a good job is done of the work) that you will notice no drop at all.

-Andy

Hi,

If you have confirmed the pages are actually indexed, I really wouldn't worry about it. I have seen numbers of pages indexed jump around in the past on many different sites.

-Andy

If they are category pages, then yes, I would move them. However, there seem to be an awful lot there. Probably more category pages than I have seen on a blog. I would be looking to change this, if it were mine, and present it in a usable format, rather than lots of links like this. There also appear to be different links on each page, that doesn't show consistency with the categories on offer.

I also couldn't find these categories from the menu structure anywhere?

-Andy

Wow! That's a lot of link on that page! I would start by removing all those and replacing them with more content. There is no doubt that will be causing you issues.

-Andy

Hi Craig,

Welcome to the baffling world of SEO

First of all, I would suggest you read the MOZ beginners SEO guide here. That will cover off a lot of the best practices that you need to be following.

In terms of your question about domain authority, this is going to be looking at links that have been built to your site - if you haven't done this yet, then I would suggest you read Chapter 7 on how this is handled. I also note that you mentioned a directory - as a rule of thumb, steer clear of these, unless they are niche or something like Yelp. For the most part, links from directories will at best do nothing, and at worst, cause you to get a penalty from Google.

-Andy

I don't actually use Feedburner myself, so can't really help with anything in that respect, but I am surprised if it isn't updating automatically.

Because I don't use this, I did have a quick look at this page, and perhaps you might find your answer there?

-Andy

Hi Saab,

No, there is no correlation at all - the local results have absolutely no impact on the natural ones at all (unless you count actually appearing for a local search). Search results are littered with examples of this. As an example, a new customer of mine is lagging behind in the SERP race and although she has a local page, she doesn't appear for her key phrase anywhere useful. Her main competitor has no local page but is position 1 for her phrase.

-Andy

Hi Samuel,

Are you trying to move back away from Feedburner and use your own feed again, or is it just that it won't load?

I did try going to your main feed URL http://www.theclinegroup.com/wp-rss2.php but this does forward to Feedburner rather than go to /feed, and I think it is this redirect that is causing the problem. If you go to my site, http://www.inetseo.co.uk/wp-rss2.php, you will see it forwards to /feed.

-Andy

No, having two canonical links wouldn't work and cause you issues with Google as well.

Have a look at the Google support page on this and see which one best fits your needs.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

-Andy

Thanks Keri and sorry for not getting back sooner Akhilesh. Keri is right that I am in the UK.

As Keri has said, you really need to read the section on link building and content - If you get this wrong, you can cause yourself some big problems.

Have a read of this so that you are sure what you need to be doing... http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links

-Andy

You can and should link to your own internal content using strong anchor text as this helps Google to crawl their way around. However, don't make it spammy - be descriptive and imagine you were a user reading the anchor text, would it describe the page that it leads to?

-Andy