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Hi Jon,

Use of the canonical tag in this situation is just what it is intended for. Have a quick read of what Google says in these situations:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

• Consolidating link signals for the duplicate or similar content. It helps search engines to be able to consolidate the information they have for the individual URLs (such as links to them) on a single, preferred URL. This means that links from other sites to http://example.com/dresses/cocktail?gclid=ABCD get consolidated with links tohttps://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendress.html.

While Google do say it is a recommendation, I find that in situations like this, it will work just fine for you. As David said, give it a go, but I can't see that you will have any problems. Google is pretty good at sorting these issues out, and especially so if you tell them which is your preferred page for ranking:

"While we encourage you to use any of these methods, none of them are required. If you don't indicate a canonical URL, we'll identify what we think is the best version or URL."

-Andy

I am completely with George here.

There is nothing that you can't learn, given enough time, but when I 'went it alone' all those years ago, I realised just how much time and effort had to be put into communication with clients.

OK, it might seem like just a part of what you do now, but what makes you stand out from the crowd, is being able to empathise with the clients issues and help control any situation that might come your way in a professional manner.

Take the time to understand their frustrations and take your time when replying - no good ever came from a hasty reply that ended up as a slanging match.

Remember, if a client keeps coming back looking for more clarification on something, it could simply be down to how you are explaining it.

-Andy

The article that PaddysDisplays has linked to, doesn't really cover this because what you are doing doesn't sound like the author link is spammy.

Yes, if there are links in the article that are pointing to an external site, then I would tend to err on the side of caution if it is done for link benefits - but author links? I have seen many sites that carry an author link that are followed without issue.

Have you noticed any problems in what you are doing - any signs of a penalty?

-Andy

Hi Rosemary,

I'm not too sure you can use 'bone fide' and 'distribution networks' in the same sentence

Quite seriously, I would be looking to make some headway in their market niche rather than trying to make use of networks. I am sure that between your client and yourself, you can find top industry influencers to engage with and start to build their brand a bit more.

I would be trying to take a more natural approach to this and find forums, discussions, questions (Quora?) and Social Media to make a start with this. Perhaps some of the older articles can be checked to see if they are still relevant and if not, update them with something more current.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

It's hard to say with any certainty because you need to have a look and test, but these normally occur due to a malformed rewrite of some sort.

Sorry for being a bit vague but it's one of those things that is hard to address fully.

-Andy

Hi Scott,

Just a little tip for you - set a Google Alert for your brand name, URL or title that others will use to link to you, and then when they appear, you will get an e-mail from Google - this is normally a  much faster way to approach discovery.

But as Donna said, no one place will report everything linking to you as they have limited resources to go off and crawl the web. The best thing to do is gather resources from different locations and collate them (MOZ, Search Console, Ahrefs & Majestic).

-Andy

Hi Paul,

For anything like this, I would always suggest that you nofollow the image links simple because they are not 'earned'.

I couldn't tell you what others are doing or if not nofollowing has had any impact, but from a safety point of view, nofollow is the way to go here.

Would google have a problem if not? Hard to say because they might recognise what is going on, but I tend to err on the side of caution here.

-Andy

Hi Patrick,

There are a few reasons for a 500, with the main one being a server error.

However, this can also occur if there are timeouts or even problems with the .htaccess file.

If you think that it is fixed and that Google has it wrong, mark them as fixed and then do another fetch as Google.

-Andy

Hi Steve,

Don't worry too much about the addresses because many businesses work from the the offices these days, but rather than go through lots of possibles here, I would like you to have a read through this post on Search Engine Land, because it carries lots of information and stumbling blocks that others come across.

If you still have questions after this, please do post back in here, but I hope it helps.

-Andy

Hi Arnold,

I haven't seen anything recently that would suggest that a URL shortened URL would pass anything useful along, but this does depend on the service, and something I don't have an immediate answer for.

Have a read here for a little more info on this though.

-Andy

Hi Sigurd,

A 503 seems like an odd choice in this circumstance - is this something that the eCommerce software dictates, or are there options for this?

A 503 is service unavailable and isn't something I would expect to see on a page that has expired. There are a number of alternatives depending on the product & niche. For Google to be seeing thousands of 503's might make it look like the site is having problems.

If a page really must go, then it should be a 404 / 410, or a 301 to a close alternative, but not a 503.

Are there pointers that show these are causing issues with the site's SERP's?

-Andy

Hi Bas,

Without looking in more detail, it is almost impossible to say how it has been done, but there are so many dirty tricks out there.

Is the site running on Wordpress? Do you want to PM me an example to have a look at?

-Andy

mywebsite.com/essays-writing than mywebsite.com/student-help/essays-writing

The structure of your site is unlikely to make a big difference, but where possible, smaller sites where there is no required structure, should try and opt for a flat site, as in your first example.

I would only post in a structure like option 2 if there is a benefit to users (and Google) by doing so.

-Andy

I can't really help from a coding aspect I'm afraid, but I don't know that there is a way to do what you suggested there. However, If both benefits and side effects are equally important, can these not be displayed on the page where they don't feature in a tab?

I would be trying to keep the page as straight forward as possible rather than trying to show tabs depending on search intent.

-Andy

Hi,

Structuring pages to best make us of keywords is a multi-step approach, but here are a few key points to keep in mind.

• Focus one page on one topic / keyword set
• Write content that is better than your competitors
• Give people a reason to want to be on your page
• Create a pleasing usability experience. Make the page look interesting

In terms of the structure for your site, this is a bigger discussion, but don't just add all of your links into the footer of your pages. Use a nice clean structure from the menu at the top of the site that then leads to other key pages. Link to other pages internally with a normal anchor text link if you think that it will help your visitors.

This is a good article that will explain it in a lot more detail.

-Andy

Another vote for noindexing tags.

They serve very little (no real) benefit for SEO and cause more headaches than anything else. I never really want to see tags indexing and competing with primary internal pages that actually carry the information I want people to find.

Use them, but just don't index them.

-Andy

Hi Malika,

This sound like it might be a design / development issue that you are facing.

In Wordpress, generally the first tab is the one that is shown on the page, so could the primary benefits that you want to show not be moved to that first tab?

-Andy

Hi,

How old is this site? Has it been given enough time to start to rank well amongst your competitors?

One term / one page is the general thought that you should follow as this is the safest way to make sure you don't fall into keyword duplication / cannibalisation and makes for a much more straight forward strategy.

Just remember to try and keep the pages as targeted as possible and add amazing content that is backed up by strong supplementary content. Make the page great for visitors and you will start to see returns.

-Andy

138 audits competed to date and counting.

Private Message sent

-Andy

Hi,

Is there anything going on in Google that might lead you to think that there is a problem in this respect?

Remember that MOZ is going to report things for you to take a look at and much prefers to report this than gloss over it. This doesn't actually mean that there is a problem, just something you need to be aware of.

I have clients who have sites with lots of uses of the same word which can sound spammy if they are all close together, but if they are spread out and make sense to be there, then it won't be classed as stuffing. If your Title, H1 and content need this word in because it is needed to explain the page and product, then don't try and find ways to miss it out because chances are, you won't be penalised for it.

A little tip I have for content, is to have a text-->voice reader read it back to me. OK it is in a synthesized voice, but you can pick with your ears, what your eyes miss. It is a great aid to help you listen to how it really sounds.

-Andy

Hi,

It certainly sounds like you have been through the mill with this and it is something I see a lot of. There comes a point where fixing one thing can cause issues with another and before you know it, there could be all manner of issues at play.

Google clearly indexes your site because it is cached and not blocked but as for what could be going on, this would be impossible to tell without doing an audit, but here are a few pointers / questions.

1. Is the site setup correctly in Search Console? Has Google got any current warnings, of have you had any in the past? Have you verified each iteration of the site? (non-www, www & https)
2. Are you aware of any dates where Google might have hit you with a penalty of some sort? My first thought was Panda when you mentioned so many pages, but could be others too
3. Do you know if any link-building has been done? Perhaps you might be caught in Penguin?

As I said, it really could be so many things that are causing this and could even be something like .htaccess rules or robots.txt blocking important elements.

-Andy

Hi Emily

For a raw SEO benefit, Google+ will do nothing for your site.

However, SEO goes way beyond mere site benefits, and encompasses the likes of CTR and visitor interaction as well as helping with your brand.

If you take these points into account, you will see that there are SEO benefits to be had, just not in the way most think about them.

So yes, use it to help with engagement and with that, you could notice additional benefits.

-Andy

My question: Are these text links still affecting my SEO negatively?

It is highly unlikely that the text is going to impact anything - if you think about it, it wouldn't make sense for them to apply a penalty to a main site if something on a sub-domain was created by someone else and that is outside of your control. It's unlikely that the live links would impact your main site either, but it's good that you devalue these when you see them.

-Andy

In a roundabout way, yes, that is the general idea.

Decide on the page, create a title that suggests the objective of the page (Learn about Heavy Haulage | Freight Etc Inc).

Google is very good at understanding that Haulage will also mean Haul, Hauliers etc, so try to fill the page with lots of related information. Talk about transporting of abnormal loads, types of trailers, training required, etc. Make the page as informative as possible.

When it comes to finding the keywords to use and research, look for what others talk about that are doing well in Google and then give your own spin on this - although I don't mean spin the content. Spend some time making your content better than the sites above you.

-Andy

Hi Deein,

What you are seeing there isn't the sitemap, but Google choosing to promote Sitelinks to the site. This is only available when someone searches for the company name and if you have a strong enough structure, then Google might start adding these.

However, there is no way to push this through. Google will add these in their own time.

Have a read of this as well. You might get some good pointers to try.

-Andy

Hi Eric,

It sounds like there are many things going on here. From what you say, it does sound like the competitor might be doing something dodgy, but it also depends if the links are linking domains, or just a handful of domains with site-wide links that are producing that number. Either way, it doesn't sound natural, but Google clearly isn't objecting at the moment.

It is highly unlikely that the structure of the site is what is causing the problem here, unless you have a real problem buried away somewhere - maybe a penalty? It could possibly be the http-https transition, but you can check this by looking in analytics at the dates this happened for clues. I certainly wouldn't be trying to artificially increase the page count without any real benefit for the pages being there though - this will cause you problems.

Try and focus heavily on amazing content, a natural-looking link profile and I would be looking at setting up a strong internal-link structure to your key hub pages.

Google ultimately will deliver results that they feel meet their E.A.T (Expertise, Trust, Authority) requirements. This can be down to so many factors that it would be impossible to know where to begin just from a discussion here though I'm afraid.

-Andy

Google is pretty good at delivering pages for similar terms, so try not to worry about that. They will know that Heavy Haul and Heavy Haulers are one in the same.

My thought in this circumstance would be to have a page Heavy Haul Companies (it it lists other companies) and then rel=canonical all of the others to this one.

However, if they are so similar and only there to try and gain extra traffic, then I would be taking all of the content from each similar / duplicate page, pulling it into one fantastic page and then removing the others.

Without seeing everything, I wouldn't be able to advise if they should be 404 or 301, but it isn't good practice to have so much duplication / similar pages on the site.

-Andy

Rel=canonical is the one thing that can really mess a site up, so please do be careful.

Basically, what is does, is helps you tell Google if you have pages that are similar, are useful to your visitors, but you don't want to remove to avoid duplication.

For example, if you have a page: www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php and www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul-trucks.php, and both are similar but www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php is the main page you want to appear in Google, you would set the rel=canonical tag on www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul-trucks.php to point back to www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php.

Screaming frog will help you make some sense of everything on your site, but the free version stops at 500 pages, so you won't get to see everything.

-Andy

Hi Brian,

Without doing more digging, it is a bit difficult to say exactly what is going on, but this is normally down to page and search intent.

What this means, is that Google will return what it thinks is the best page for the query (Rankbrain probably doing its stuff) and out of the box, you have little say in this.

However, you can structure your site by building an internal link structure where you give signals to Google, telling them which are your important 'hub' pages. Just make sure you are setup for this because you don't just want to start adding lots of random links that make no sense, as this will work against you.

What it sounds like is that the /bands-by-location/ page doesn't benefit the searcher, so Google is going to try and match a page based on search query and location.

Have a read of this article on building internal links and why they are so important.

-Andy

Hi,

Without knowing a little more detail, it's hard to say with 100% certainty, but I can't see why the sitemap should have every iteration of a product in there. These pages (pages that are produced due to an attribute change) should rel=canonical back to the main product page anyway and this will handle duplication.

And unless you many many thousands of products in each sitemap, then you wouldn't want to be splitting them up like this, although you can rationalize these somewhat depending on the products and site.

Just remember that the sitemap is only there as an aid to helping Google crawl and there is no actual SEO benefit to this. It is whatever is going to make the most sense to the site and to Google.

-Andy

Edit: Just Tweeted this out as well to see if others wish to chime in

I see this daily - the struggle is real!

You have one department arguing that SEO and content is where the good money is spent, and then the UX and designers screaming at them to please change the placement of the CTA button.

The fact of the matter is, both are equally important and I tend to find the best way to resolve these conflicts, is to A/B test and let the numbers speak for themselves. At that point, someone has to concede and should do so gracefully, because they should all be focusing on what is best for the company.

Failing all else, a boxing ring and last man standing gets the budget.

-Andy

Hi Francois,

One question: If this product is only available from yourselves, why are you looking to sell on Amazon? Are you not better keeping this on your site, or is there another decision to this?

-Andy

You do indeed - and so much is out of date.

Always good to post here in Moz to see the state of play

-Andy

No problem at all.

Pop back if you have other questions

-Andy

Hi Isabelle,

The general rule of thumb here, is that if a page has moved, you should always 301 it to it's new alternative, but only if there is one - don't try and match pages unless they are very similar, or as in your case, just moved to a different URL.

If you have internal links to the old URL, this should be updated to reflect the new page. A rebuilt sitemap should be given to Google once this has all been done.

With regards what to do with pages that get no traffic, that it a bit of a different question. My feeling on dead pages is to try and make them better than remove them to get traffic. No need to get rid of a page if there is a chance to use it.

-Andy

Hi Becky,

The most important factor here, is to ensure it makes sense. If you can get the main keywords towards the front, all well and good, but if you can't don't try and write it to fit because that then can impact CTR and you will end up driving people away.

The title and description should make sense to the page in question.

-Andy

We have also considered purchasing backlinks to improve our situation.

Please don't do this - that will never improve your situation.

-Andy

HI,

Would you like to PM me this over as well? Got something that might be of interest

-Andy

Hi Ricky,

how can they keep BOTH sites without damaging their SEO efforts

The simple answer to this, is that you can't. If Google catches on with what they are doing, they are likely to get a swift boot. In Google's eyes, they ask they question:

"Why have you got 2 sites when you can say all you need to in just 1?" Keeping both is only to try and game Google and they won't like that.

OK, you could make sure that all content is unique and hope for the best, but long term, this isn't much of a business strategy for them.

Sorry, no solution to this really - at least not a particularly good / safe one.

-Andy

Just a little more info from Google here as well on how Pagerank Sculpting no longer works...

http://www.thesempost.com/google-pagerank-sculpting-still-doesnt-work/

Have a read of what Google say about them here.

And yes, image search is huge. As for the way it's used, I can't comment on what everyone else does.

-Andy

Hi Brett,

Don't forget to add an images sitemap, as Google is pretty hot on those, and make sure you do some good image marketing as well.

But what you suggest is absolutely fine. From the main Sitemap, Google will find all of the others as well.

Just as a note, do make sure you know which pages need more crawling through using the last modified date. This will help them know which pages they should be recrawling more often.

-Andy

Hi Chris,

AMP isn't intended for this use. It is only for the likes of blog posts and news articles.

If you want to speed your internal pages up, then you will need to run your site through the Google Page Speed Insights and follow those recommendations.

-Andy

Hi Dave,

I'm struggling to understand your scenario. So are you looking to have all searches result in landing on pages within one domain, or will they remain on their respective domains?

-Andy

I honestly wouldn't worry Becky. The page looks fine, the links look fine and it is certainly not what you would call spammy,

Link crafting was a 'thing' a number of years ago, but today Google pretty much ignores this, as has been shown many times in testing.

However, you can benefit from internal links, but that is a different discussion. Read this if you are interested.

If you are interested, there is a round-table discussion on eCommerce SEO hosted by SEMrush on Thursday and that could be useful to you? Myself and 2 others will be talking on a number of issues.

-Andy

Confirmation from Google here to limit the links on a page to 3000

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/news/google-webmaster-hangout-notes-friday-8th-july-2016/

I would consider that to be a lot though

-Andy

In that case, you want to be resolving this through your .htaccess file really. There are other possible ways, but I find that this is the most solid solution.

Do you know how to do that?

If you are on Wordpress, it might also be worthwhile checking your settings and ensure you have the site set to your preferred choice, and that the site is verified in Search Console.

-Andy

Hi Rich,

Don't nofollow for the sake of it. If a link is paid for, then yes, you should nofollow this, but that is probably one of the very few occasions i would suggest you do it.

Perhaps if you have written a blog post and then were asked to inject a link into it, then I would be tempted to nofollow that, but I wouldn't do it to try and retain link juice - that isn't really a tactic these days.

Google wants to see you link to sites externally, as long as it is called for - this will help show your authority as well.

-Andy