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Ah sorry, I misunderstood the Title for meaning ALT text.

It is important to try and be as unique as possible with the page title. It can lead you into duplication problems, but more than that, you can fall into Keyword Duplication (cannibalisation) issues. This is where Google doesn't know which page to rank for a particular phrase.

The best way around this, is to come up with a naming strategy, where you can substitute words for something unique to the page.

For example "Buy Mona Lisa prints online" could be made up of "Buy <title>prints online" and you substitute the <title> for that particular image name.</p> <p>Of course, this just an example of how it works, and you can create a number of different templates to use. It is a good way to avoid having everything look and sound the same.</p> <p>-Andy</p></title>

As you might be aware, Google is very clever when it comes to finding similar / same images around the web, but there is no penalty for using the same image in different sites at all. Just ensure that you have the correct permissions to use the images, as this is about the only stumbling block.

There will be no duplication penalty in doing this, but do try and make the ALT as descriptive and on-target as you can, and don't use any of these opportunities to spam keywords / phrases.

-Andy

That is a very open ended question and one I wouldn't even try to answer.

Tell your client that there are hundreds of factors at work with Google's algorithms and this is something that is completely out of your control. Even Google couldn't tell you the answer to that one.

If they want to know more, then tell them that each of the 200+ primary ranking signals, have their own set of criteria. I think it was 'assessing how links appear on a page', had something like 2,000+ individual signals that Google used. Now imagine that each of the 200 primary signals each have 2,000 of their own signals - this is hundreds of thousands of possibilities that Google will be looking at when ranking a site.

-Andy

Hi Geraldine,

Have you had a look at traffic in Analytics and confirmed that it is the final purchase stage that isn't happening? Or is it that traffic to pages aren't moving through to the product pages? Is this a new problem, or is it something that has just started? Have there been any changes to the site recently?

In these circumstances, I find that using something like Crazy Egg also helps to diagnose what is wrong as this will give you a heatmap of how the page is being used. This can be quite an eye opener!

-Andy

Copyscape throws the same up as you have there - your YouTube page.

Perhaps consider a revision of this on YouTube?

-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

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 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

Hi Virginia,

You would be fine if there is a canonical in place. it exists for just this sort of occurrence. You also have the canonical example correct

This will also be much more preferable than writing very similar content.

-Andy

Hi Chris,

There is a chance this could happen. I have seen a high bounce rate affect the whole site (probably for many different reasons). However, this was a site that then was given a manual penalty because of what they were trying to do, but it wasn't that dissimilar to yours.

-Andy

Hi Paul,

Yes they would. Duplicate is duplicate, no matter where it's hosted. Depending on just how Google see this, you may find one sites doesn't get ranked well, or perhaps both. I have seen both scenarios.

-Andy

I wouldn't take any chances with poor links, even if they are nofollowed. Even though it passes no pagerank, it is still going to be a signal that passes a message back to Google.

I never take a chance and disavow these as a matter of course. You never fully know just how much Google is using them.

-Andy

Matt Cutts (from Google) actually said on video that links like these are the sort of links that they don't want to see from sites. A link should have a reason to be there and Google's algorithms will have ways to determine which these are.

You might also want to watch this new video from Matt on paid links.

-Andy

The only things you can really check for someone else's website is their Alexa ranking and Page Rank, although the latter is of less use these days. You might get some useful information from SemRush.

The Wayback Machine only really shows site changes.

-Andy

Peter - I have tried Yell myself and over 12 months, I never had a single enquiry - Not a one!

You won't be penalised for being in there, but I urge you to put your money into something different. Find something around your niche that people visit, and don't fall for the stories they tell you at Yell. I am in the progress of going through the complaints procedure right now to get my money back. I was warned about this myself and wish I would have listened.

-Andy

This depends - do you mean dynamically generated content (like search results), or a dynamic design?

-Andy

Well, as I said, open the forum up to Google, but no-one can give a cast-iron guarantee that there will be no impact to the main from Google. It's unlikely to cause issues, but that is as much of a guarantee as I could give.

-Andy

Well, Google is recognising a subdomain as part of a TLD now, so I couldn't give any guarantees of what could happen here, even though my suspicions are that it would be absolutely fine.

Can I ask why you don't wish to noindex the forum if you are already concerned about thin content?

-Andy

Rather than worry about thin / lack of content, just noindex the forum itself in the robots.txt file by disallowing access to it. You can then host it happily on your main site without having to look at a subdomain.

If you prefer it on a subdomain, just do the same thing here.

It would look like this:

Disallow: /forum/

-Andy

Hi Mark,

With internal linking, your anchor text needs to be as descriptive as possible. Look at the page it leads to - does the anchor text accurately describe that? However, do not be spammy with it. Keep it clean and engaging and you will find people will click on it.

-Andy

Failing all else, post this on the Webmaster Forums to see if they can shed any light on it.

-Andy

Hi Jaan,

This is probably a good place to start. Loads of useful information about mobile SEO.

http://searchengineland.com/the-definitive-guide-to-mobile-technical-seo-166066

-Andy

This is going to be markup language, Schema / MicroData perhaps, but I haven't come across this myself yet.

I think perhaps it is time to do some digging

-Andy

Edit

Just read this:

"Update: A Google spokesperson let us know that restaurant menu data is coming from an unnamed data partner. It's similar to how Google uses data from The Weather Channel and other partners to pull in data for searches about the weather."

So there we go - I am sure we will all find out soon.

-Andy

It is a bit of an add one this because an algorithm update is unlikely to affect bounce rates on a website.

Is your client feeling the effects of the bounce rate? Have conversions gone down at all? The only thing that has happened in February was the update from Google and their Page Layout algorithm, but I can't see how this would affect the bounce rate at all.

-Andy

Hi Chris,

Don't get hung up on load times. These are not going to make a lot of difference if you have an amazing site.

I have a number of sites of my own, all using a Wordpress single page theme that was purchased from there and I rank 1st to 4th for a range of very highly competitive phrases.

Find a theme you like, look for good reviews and don't worry about having to go with a specific framework.

-Andy

No, I am afraid this isn't something that Google would do Muhammad. You will always be taken to the top of the page.

-Andy

Hi Chris,

Without wishing for it to sound like I am avoiding answering your questions, one of the best things you could do is read the MOZ Beginners Guide to SEO. You will find this is the best resource to start learning from and chock full of everything you will need to know.

I hope it helps,

-Andy

Google has said in the past that the odd outage shouldn't be a problem, but if it is like you are saying, then yes, this could be very harmful. Matt Cutts said that if every time someone comes to your site it is down, then it will have a negative impact.

Recovery is a very open-ended question though. It could be a week, a month or 3 months - there is no way to determine this sadly and anything here is going to be guesswork.

I would say to move the site as soon as you can.

-Andy

Heart Internet or Fasthosts are both great with amazing tech support. I have servers with both of them.

-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

Much better Jack

I see only about 50 pages now. Hopefully this will cure some of your issues now.

-Andy

Great to hear Andrew

Have a great weekend.

-Andy

If you just want to congratulate them Adam, then yes, the sensible thing to do is add a nofollow to the link. The alternative would be to form the link as their URL or say at the end "Click here to visit their site". Something that isn't a money keyphrase or that isn't looked upon as an obvious attempt at trying to provide a spammy link.

-Andy

Those load speeds are absolutely fine and wont be hampering any SEO efforts at all. One of my sites takes around 7 seconds to load and ranks 1st to 4th for very highly competitive phrases

It is more about the user experience, content and making sure you are attracting the right people.

If your site is built in Wordpress, look at a cache plugin to speed load times up if you want to get a little more from it.

Don't sweat about those times though

-Andy

OK, so I contacted John Mueller from Google for you, pointed him at this question, and this is what he said:

"Your site is currently indexed as https (yay!), do you have the https version verified in Webmaster Tools?"

-Andy

I don't know or any issues with webmaster tools at the moment, but that doesn't mean there isn't. Perhaps post a request on the webmaster forums if no-one here is aware of anything?

If traffic is stable though, I wouldn't worry at this stage.

-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

Great stuff. Hop back if you are still having problems

-Andy

I would look at your Wordpress install first Jack. There is no way this sort of number of pages should be getting generated. Sort that out and you have sorted a huge problem out.

-Andy

Hi Jack,

I used Screaming Frog Spider to run the report, which is still going and up to about 9k pages so far.

-Andy

I just ran a very quick scan of your site and you have thousands of blog and category pages.

There is a chance because of this that you are seeing a penalty - This is just one of the pages: http://www.calibersi.com/category/Vehicle-Graphics?page=1904

I would start by having a quick look at how the site / blog is setup and seeing if there is anything glaringly obvious there.

-Andy

RxLXhvX.jpg

I tend to follow the rule of thumb that states, if you have a close match to a page being removed, then setup a 301 there. If not, it is better to remove it altogether and give it a 410 (Gone) rather than a 404 (Not Found).

I hope that helps a little.

-Andy

It certainly isn't a white-hat (ethical) technique Andrew. If it were, it would appear in the Google links guide, which it doesn't. What that article above says is just how you do it - no mention of it being an ethical way to gain links. What you are saying there is just because one site is similar to another, it is OK to just forward people there - it isn't. At least, it isn't if you want to stay white-hat about it.

If this were you moving a site, then that is a different matter altogether.

-Andy

Hi Andrew,

If all you are planning on doing is buying / renting a domain, only for it to be redirected to another domain, this is something that will definitely pick up a penalty off Google. This would fall into the category of 'misleading / deceiving visitors'.

If you have a domain with such a strong link profile, why would you not want to have a site on that domain and use it, but don't go down the route of automatic redirects to other sites. This will cause you untold headaches.

-Andy

The change of address in GWT only handles domain to domain moves and wouldn't understand how to handle this. If Product.com was moving to Brand.com, then you would be correct to use this then.

What you are doing using the 301's is correct.

-Andy

There - you can see how often I have worked on IIS servers

Although Google say you site needs to be quick enough for visitors, there are also times when it doesn't matter because what you have is an experience.

There is an increasing trend to build specialist sites that require a bit of initial loading - sometimes as much as 10 seconds or more, yet Google will continue to rank them well because people love them.

If you were still on a 9600 baud dial up connection, then yes, speed is critical. But that isn't the case today.

One of my own sites takes almost 7 seconds to load, yet I am 1st-4th for a range of highly competitive phrases.

As long as the content is worth it, the wait (to a degree) doesn't matter.

-Andy