Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Jaro,

Head into search console and use the Temporary Remove URL tool - this should work pretty quickly. The next time Google comes around to that page, they should see the NOINDEX flag and not re-index it.

-Andy

**My intention for the questions was to discuss if some call to actions, or sales copy in the SEO Titles can hurt rankings. **

It certainly wont help Tyler. Google (or indeed anyone searching) wants to see something less in-your-face in terms of what is promised. I personally wouldn't visit a page with a title like that as it sounds like a sales page, even before you get there.

Put yourself in a shoes of a Google rater. Do you think they would see that as a worthwhile title or something spammy? Is someone searching for 'how much can I save' or are they searching for a solution to a problem?

I can't think of any situation where a title like this would be helpful for SEO.

-Andy

Hi Adriaan,

In terms of handling low value pages, Google advises you make the pages better rather than no-indexing them.

If that can't be handled easily, I would be looking to suggest that canonical tags are used only if there are similar multiples that relate to a main primary page. So if you had 10 pages of plates with different designs from one main page about plates, then you would canonicalise these. Ideally you would have the multiple options on one page.

Does that answer your situation?

-Andy

Hi,

I would certainly not be wanting to see duplicate answers to the same questions, so depending on how your Q&A will work, I would be looking to give one answer, unless there is a significant difference.

It's a little difficult to understand how your Q&A is presented and how answers are given, so would be happy to take a quick look if you post a link here or PM it to me?

-Andy

Hi Anna,

It would be worth checking out Search Console and head into Search Traffic > Search Analytics.

You can then look at the Queries and see which terms are driving the most traffic - and those that are driving the least! Lots of other interesting information in there too.

-Andy

It is indeed. One the one hand, err on the side of caution - on the other, links are required, but with that many affiliate links, I would have though Google was ignoring them.

-Andy

As a matter of course, I would tend to nofollow affiliate links, but I can't say I have ever seen a site penalised for having inbound affiliate links.

Unless there was a manual penalty or some other reason, I still wouldn't rush to nofollow them if all is working well.

-Andy

Hi Luke,

Google is smarter than ever when it comes to links, so if something is freely given and isn't advertising, I wouldn't necessarily be no-following all of these.

Have a read through Google's guidelines on what they suggest for no-following here.

How is the site actually performing? Are they ranking badly in Google? Is visibility low? Are there any manual penalties? Have the site recently undergone any big changes?

Lots of other questions to look at before rushing at links.

-Andy

Worth having a look at Siteground Gill. This is who I use and they specialise in Wordpress and Magenta hosting. Find them here.

I personally find them very fast, amazing support, great value and dedicated hosting. I also find that the integration is very easy to manage with CloudFlare and it all just works.

Certainly worth looking at.

-Andy

Ah really? That's not good!

Personally I use Schema so can only really comment on that - someone else might have more of a view.

-Andy

The Worlds best hosting? That's a loaded question

• What is your budget
• What sort of site
• How much traffic is expected
• What is powering the site? (Wordpress, Drupal, etc)
• Redundancy requirement?
• Speed requirements?
• Backups required?

Probably lots of other questions too. Some people love AWS but personally I don't like it that much.

-Andy

I would defiantly be adding schema because there are many benefits to showing Google exactly what is what.

I have seen sites where there has been no change in search positions, and others where there have, but this could as well be about a page being more visible in Google and as such, getting more traffic and eventually a boost from Google as they realise it is a popular result.

Done right, there is no negative to adding Schema

-Andy

Hi Laura,

As long as you have HREFLANG in place, this will prevent duplication issues in Google's eyes. This is more about explaining to Google that there is a page here that is the same as one intended for another country, but might be some information specific to that country.

What I can't tell you (because I haven't come across it before) is if a mix of English and another language this cause any SEO issues. My gut feeling is that it shouldn't because you are serving up a regional URL, which doesn't rely just on the language - you could just have a different cost or something else that is different.

-Andy

Hi,

Do you have an example you can share of your problem? You can PM me this if you wish?

Is what you are saying that the canonical element is actually being seen on the live pages and therefore not working?

-Andy

Hi,

I wouldn't be using sub domains in this manner to try and influence the main site.

I would be concentrating heavily on the primary site - write amazing content on there, share it, try some link acquisition, optimise the pages for keywords carefully and look at how useful what you are creating is going to be for your visitors.

Don't ignore usability either - make the site easy to navigate and create a pleasing experience for your visitors.

-Andy

Hi Becky,

I have never seen a case where this actually makes a difference. However, I have found code issues because of it, but again, nothing that impacted SEO.

I guess that if a page is really large, then this can slow things down - that can impact SEO, but outside of this, I wouldn't be worrying about it.

Just keep an eye on any 'thin' pages that might pop up as a result of seeing these.

-Andy

It is up to Google Zack and there is never a guarantee that they will show, but you would like to think that they would be adopted at some point.

What I would also suggest, is having a look on the Google forums for help as well.

-Andy

Hi Zack,

Have you checked search console for any errors or warnings? It would also be worth trying the Structured Data Testing Tool here.

When were they added to the site?

-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

Hi Raymond,

As EGOL said, random posts like this are highly unlikely to hurt any efforts, but it does help if you have a hook in articles that allows you to make use of internal linking.

What you need to be thinking about it how can you show Google that you have the necessary EAT (Expertise, Authority & Trust) in your field? Are you producing articles, papers, research or any other thought-leading content on what you do? Are you active socially and are you being mentioned and corresponding with other thought leaders?

There is so much that can be done to help and it just takes a little planning and effort to get the ball rolling

-Andy

Redirects are a funny old thing, and a source of much frustration for many.

I asked John Mueller about this last year and his response was basically, "be patient". There are occasions where a reversed redirect can see an almost immediate change, then other times it seemingly never happens - in the long run, it probably will though.

Just don't go changing back and forth too quickly because this is likely to cause you extra headaches.

-Andy

EGOL has already covered this off nicely.

I also have clients with lots of links from Pinterest and never seen a single issue. I would just continue doing as you are - I have also found Pinterest to be a great source of traffic for the right sites.

-Andy

Dan from Screaming Frog has just had a look at this, and although he is on the move at the moment, he said this...

On the road to a meeting, but they can switch user-agent & change to JavaScript rendering mode to test for cloaking. Depends how it's cloaked, though. Some may do via referrer which you can't test for within the Spider (yet!). Will reply a bit later

-Andy

Hi,

Keyword cannibalisation is a problem that many sites face and it is normally down to pages not being targeted enough, or being too similar to one another.

The example that you used there, Graphic Design and Web Design, if either is talking about the other, makes too many references or doesn't include the words and phrases that Google would expect to see, then you are likely to face this problem.

Rand went over this a while ago and suggested that if the wrong pages are ranking for the wrong pages, then you need to devalue the wrong pages by removing those words and phrases that are causing you these issues.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Hi Bob,

Those sound terribly long. What is the thinking behind such big articles? These can often work against you because people see how big they are and then don't read it - this can have a number of negative impacts.

Do you think that people are going to be reading the whole thing? Have you got tracking in place to monitor what people are doing on the page? (use HotJar).

-Andy

If you haven't seen a drop because of this, then it means they are either being ignored by Google, or they are just not worth worrying about. Penguin has evolved and Google are now pretty good at just ignoring links that are 'crappy'.

There might come a point where too many of these does cause you problems though, so if they aren't doing anything either way, perhaps disavow the domain for peace of mind?

-Andy

There have been some interesting articles surfacing recently on this with the last study I read (this week) showing that simply updating the date with "Last Updated" and updating the article, refreshed something that was a year old and that had dropped from the first page to the second, and had reached position 1 again.

This is definitely something that anyone with a blog should look to do.

-Andy

Hi Rhys,

No, you can't dictate which links are shown. As Google says, they are automated, but there are ways to influence this such as internal linking, but this can be hard work to get just right. You can get some ideas here, but be careful what you do as this could go wrong if you over-do something.

-Andy

Hi Lida,

Going to be a very awkward one to diagnose without seeing the sites and testing.

Is this on a Wordpress powered site? Is the content in the page source rather than actually on the page?

-Andy

Hi Chase,

Not really because Google doesn't want people to hit holding pages before being redirected on again.

Personally, even if there were a way to do this, I would be looking for a more subtle solution or even promoting a blog post that explains the change?

-Andy

Hi,

I would definitely be looking at what the winners for these phrases are doing. I never advocate copying exactly what someone else is doing, but it can certainly save you many hours of head scratching and worrying.

It does sound like you need to spend some time coming up with a structure for the site that will work, but remember to make the pages as descriptive as possible, but don't stuff keywords and try not to have them sound like they were written by a robot.

You also need to be careful that you aren't creating pages that are too similar as this will also compromise your work and try not to make everything too 'boilerplate'.

-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

Very much outdated - Google want's links that are earned and while there is no harm in having banners on a site, I wouldn't be using it for linkbuilding.

-Andy

Hi Bob,

I do agree with Krzysztof that an audit would help see what it going on, but something else to keep in mind is that if a side does get hit with a penalty, then they rarely just go back to where they were beforehand.

Check the dates in a little more detail to see what they correspond with.

-Andy

Hi,

No, I wouldn't do this as a link building strategy.

Link building needs to be thought about carefully and just putting badges on sites is unlikely to do anything because they will probably end up at the bottom of a page - and that kind of link generally gets ignored by Google.

Sorry, not a good one to go after.

-Andy

That's great to hear Marcel

-Andy

Hi Andrew,

Re. your comment:

My main concern is that in the eyes of Google I'd be stripping a lot of content off the domain all at once, and then replacing it with these shell pages containing nothing (in terms of SEO) but meta, a headline, navigation links, and an iFrame.

... you are right to be concerned about this. It is going to look, as you say, like a very thin page with no value-add for anyone visiting, or Google.

If the pages served no real purpose to Google, you could always robots them out, but what is being suggested isn't a particularly good idea if you are still wanting them to rank in the SERPs.

-Andy

It's gets everything from Google but it doesn't give you search volume - just different types of questions / searches.

-Andy

Correct - Bing and Google are as far as you need to go

I do know you can submit to Yahoo but don't know anyone who ever needed to do that.

DuckDuckGo crawls other search engines to gather its data, so nothing needed to be done there.

-Andy

Option 2 sounds like the logical option - I don't think a flat structure would make sense for what you have to work with.

Interlink your content from other pages and don't try to be clever with structures here - it's whatever makes the most sense to what you are trying to do.

Of course, it is ideal to try not to place any content too far down the tree but if you have no options in what you can and can't do with changing the structure itself, then I would work with what I have.

-Andy

There are no others that will really use it - assuming you aren't talking country specific search engines such as Baidu.

Once you submit it to Google and Bing, that is pretty much where you organic traffic is going to come from.

-Andy

First of all, one of the best tools to use to find questions is http://answerthepublic.com/ butMOZ also have a very nice tool as well now.

In terms of what I would consider best, it is whatever is going to sit well on the site and make the most sense to be there.

Tread carefully with longer content on your product pages and make sure that however it is done, it doesn't ruin the user experience. I would say you might have to do a bit of both.

-Andy

It's hard to say without doing some digging Becky, but for yourself, I would do the following:

• Create a content strategy. This should be articles of probably 1k words, well researched and informative. Perhaps half a dozen of them.
• See who is talking about / asking questions related to the niche and then fit these into your articles.
• Look on Social Media who is talking about these areas and reach out to them. Discuss this with them and ask them to take a look at what you have produced.
• Use something like Ahrefs content explorer to find other similar articles and where do they get links from - can you also get a link?
• Don't worry about asking for links, but be very careful how you do it - ask if you can be added as a resource and never mention the word 'link'

There is a lot more to this, but it should give you a few pointers to get started - however, it's not going to be a quick fix so expect to put a bit of leg work into doing this.

-Andy

Some great pointers from Patrick there, and this is something that is more common that you might realise - a question that is asked daily.

As a generalist, it does make it a little more awkward because the ideal scenario would be to be creating amazing content based on your niche, but if you have multiple, that makes it a little different.

Do you have particular industries you are focussing on?

-Andy

Best of luck James and please feel free to reach out to me if you need any further help - I tend to live on Twitter as well.

-Andy

Absolutely agree with James - the businesses are just too different to be on the same domain. If I were Google looking at a site that offers wedding photography and then logistics, I would wonder which one it is meant to be.

Some businesses can carry this off if they are sufficiently similar, but not in a case such as this.

-Andy

Copyscape is my go to tool in this case.

There are others, but I find this to be about as good as it gets.

-Andy

I would certainly be looking to use Ajax - iFrame wouldn't be a good move in this case.

However, I personally wouldn't think it were necessary to do this as I would add an overall review score on the page and then link "read reviews" to a modal window or such that just carries the review once, but linked to from many different pages.

It does away with the issues you might face with Ajax and means your pages are much tidier without lots of extra content that does nothing for the page.

-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

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-Andy