Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Just one piece of advise is very hard to give, because there are so many aspects to look at. It really isn't as simple as "do this to win".

Read the link that Dirk has given you, but also have a look at these resources.

• Information from analysing 1-million articles
• How to get more shares to your content
• How long should a blog post be

You need to make sure your content is something more than those others out there. There is no point in writing an article that is 500 words on the economics of a country, and then wonder why it wont rank if it carries nothing more than any other article.

That said, there are many situations where short content can be just as popular. For example, if you had found a cure for Alzheimers, then I am sure that would be shared and ranked very high and very quickly without it needed to be thousands of words. Links would flow to it and shares would be through the roof! It's all about being fresh, being different or offering something more that hasn't been said before, or if it has, then enhanced upon that so that people have a reason to read and share it.

Just keep in mind, you never want to write for Google - keep it 100% user-orientated, and you should do well.

-Andy

I hear it's good to have similar named domains to redirect to main sites and is good for seo!

I echo Dirks comments that there is no value in doing this and I pretty sure there never has been this benefit. A URL redirected to another carries no weight with Google.

As a vanity URL, no issues with doing that at all. I do see this fairly often where a targeted URL like this on a business card, then forwards to the main website itself. It's a nice way for people to remember you.

-Andy

I found an amazing writer on Fiverr. She is based in the US and writes content that need no editing on my part at all.

By the same token, I have tried to find others and they have been absolute pants!

I would say you need to trial a few in order to see who comes up with the best work, and for me, I took a dozen writers gigs and gave them all the same article to write and then reviewed these for originality, research, ease of reading, punctuation, etc. Only 2 stood out and the one I chose was the one who kept me updated and asked me questions.

I don't mind if an article is a day or two late in the slightest, but communication was key.

-Andy

Look past YouTube for your SEO benefits Neil. If you have a lot of hotels working with you, links from these to key pages on your site will be much more beneficial for you.

However, this doesn't mean you should ignore YouTube, as it can be a great source of traffic. Get those call-to-actions in there, as a video watermark, as a link on the video and from your channel, and engage with those that join in with the discussions. Human interaction can play a big part.

-Andy

Ahh I see what you mean now.

I tend not to look at text like this as something for SEO benefits, but use them for usability purposes. It is not shown until after a hover event has happened, and although it is a neat way of it being shown, it doesn't do much for the page until you hover over it.

I would look at this in the same light as tabbed content. You aren't purposefully hiding it or trying to be cloak and dagger with it, but it is only ever going to be a snippet of information, so don't rely on this sort of thing for SEO purposes.

-Andy

Hi Neil,

This is ALT text and should be filled in with each image that is added.

MOZ talk about use of ALT text here, and Google give you a lot of information that you should read here. Hoboweb able have a very useful document here.

-Andy

Hi,

The best way to look at video, is look at any search results where they appear - Google never shows anything that is self hosted. In terms of getting traffic from a video, I would be creating the video and hosting it on YouTube and then embedding that on your site. Create your own channel and then link back from the videos and your channel back to your site.

Perhaps if a video is embedded on a hotel's website, you could try and figure in a way to get a link back to your own site as part of the 'package' on offer.

I hope that makes sense?

-Andy

Hi,

In many circumstances, you can answer these questions by looking at a thesaurus if you are unsure, or any of the keyword tools (SEMRush, Keyword revealer, Adwords Keyword Planner, etc) - but for your example, a wife and a bride while related, are not the same. You couldn't replace one word with another and still have it make sense. e.g "The bride looked beautiful on her wedding day"... "The wife looked beautiful on her wedding day".

Context will play a large part in your decisions when choosing keywords.

-Andy

We are - i'm gathering data from all different sources. Hoping more will chime in with opinions

-Andy

Just fyi, it's a client page that already exists and there are only two options that are not open for discussion: scolling or clicking next to see more.

So that's one for scrolling?

-Andy

Hi Dmitrii,

As I said in my original post, say there are 50-60 products / services / businesses on a page, would you prefer to scroll or have paginated / next pages to minimize the scolling?

-Andy

Hi peeps,

I am just interested in this from a usability POV and to see what you would prefer to see when you are met with a page that has multiple options. Lets say that the page looks like a list of services, each clearly marked out in its own segment, but there are 50-60 options that match your requirements.

Do you like to keep scrolling, or would you prefer to take what is there and then move on if you feel you want to dig deeper? Would you like to see a long list, of have the options loaded in as you get to them?

-Andy

Well good luck with 100/100 but you should be good to get a 90-ish score.

-Andy

Hi Mark,

Have you run the site through Page Speed Insights? What does Google suggest? It might be that you can get some good speed increases just by making .htaccss changes.

-Andy

With most of these you can't Mark. You can set a different country on Pingdom, but that is about as much flexibility that you get.

-Andy

I'm going to chime in with Rand's Whiteboard friday on Link Building Outreach as it covers so many important factors related to offpage link acquisition.

Try and create content and articles that are above and beyond what others have in your niche. Give people a reason to really want to grant a link because they feel it is beneficial.

-Andy

Hi Bob,

Have a watch of Rands Whiteboard Friday on Outreach here. He talks about many aspects of outreach and you can probably pick up some great ideas.

-Andy

Hi,

Ranking for an A in the page grader is the very tip of a huge iceberg.

You will need to acquire links, create amazing content, become a social diva, pay attention to site UX (Usability) and test pages with the likes of Crazy Egg to make sure that people are using your pages as you would expect.

A lot of SEO is not ranking your pages - it's about creating a user friendly site that is fast and that answers questions quickly and without fuss.

Have a read of the MOZ Beginners Guide to SEO - You will learn everything you need to get started in here.

-Andy

Hi Lukas,

If you have a bit of informative text that is the same throughout the site, don't worry about it - as long as you have enough unique content to balance it out.

For example - if you have 2000 words on a page and 100 of these are the same on each page, it really isn't a problem.

Remember that Google doesn't have an internal duplicate penalty, but you will get hit for thin / useless content. As long as this isn't the case, you're golden.

-Andy

Hi Mark,

First of all, have you tested your sites to see how they are in terms of speed? I would suggest checking with...

• Google Page Speed Insights
• GTMetrix
• Pingdom

My own personal experience is that it can cause real issues in terms of page load times - to the point I have had clients drop it altogether. Out side of that, I can't advise on the best way to utilise it.

Are you finding that your experience is a good or bad one so far?

-Andy

No problem

Hope you get it sorted!

-Andy

Ah sorry I missed that bit!

-Andy

Disallowing them would be my first priority really, before removing from index.

The trouble with this is that if you disallow first, Google won't be able to crawl the page to act on the noindex. If you add a noindex flag, Google won't index them the next time it comes-a-crawling and then you will be good to disallow

I'm not actually sure of the best way for you to get the noindex in to the page header of those pages though.

-Andy

Sorry Martijn, just to jump in here for a second - Ria, you can test this via the Robots.txt testing tool in search console before going live to make sure it work.

-Andy

Hi Ria,

I have never tried regular expressions in this way, so I can't tell you if this would work or not.

However, If all 1000 of these URL's are already indexed, just disallowing access won't then remove them from Google. You would ideally be able to place a noindex tag on those pages and let Google act on them, then you will be good to disallow. I am pretty sure there is no option to noindex under the URL Parameter Tool.

I hope that makes sense?

-Andy

As amusing as Dmitril's answer is, you don't want to be looking at directories for any SEO perks - you won't find any. I would avoid directories for anything other than picking up clients who are actually looking.

Look more towards content and link acquisition. Make something great that people will want to make use of / refer to. Much more longevity in this route.

-Andy

Hi,

Please remember that the Page Grader is just a tool that looks at specific aspects on the page, but won't go past that.

For example, once you have your key word in the likes of the title, URL and H1, it looks like it might be ready to start ranking, but there is so much more that you need to do to the page.

First of all, it MUST make sense. There is no point in writing for Google as it will just sound spammy and the net result will result in a lack of placement in the SERPs or poor conversion rates.

You absolutely must do some keyword research. You want to explain to Google what the page is about so it should be very comprehensive and carry certain other related phrases that help explain the product / service. However... Don't go so far that the page suddenly becomes a long and tedious read.

Keep it concise, keep it factual, keep it interesting.

-Andy

Hi,

I would say that is bad for both - the SEO would depend to what level it was done.

In terms of user experience, that is pretty confusing though - Watercraft and Boat on two different menus? Why? The same with Home and Condo. You need to cluster terms where you can, not pull them apart. It helps no-one doing that and you will lose traffic - or worse.

If they still insist they want to change them, tell them to talk to me and I will explain in more detail

-Andy

Hi Alan,

**Any suggestions or contact information would be appreciated. **

You could take a look at the contact link I gave you above?

-Andy

No problem at all. Let me know if you get stuck.

-Andy

Hi,

As Dirk said, you have a lot of http & https issues so you should fix these with a bit of .htaccess code, as below.

`RewriteEngine On` RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^.*$ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]

You also have some non-www to www issues. You can fix these in .htaccess at the same time...

`RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.` RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

<code class="htaccess" title="in your .htaccess file">You should find this fixes a lot of your issues. Also check in your Wordpress general settings that the site is set to www.cheaptubes.com for both instances.

Let me know how you get on with these.

-Andy</code>

Spot on as always Egol - and the biggest takeaway here...

Don't waste your time with the big comprehensive page if you can't beat the quality of the content that already exists.

Everyone could learn a lot just from remembering this.

-Andy

This is always a good one Bob

http://www.cssdesignawards.com/

-Andy

Hi,

Have you had a read through the Adwords account suspension page here? It might give you a few ideas of things to try. You could also contact them and see if you can talk through your specific issues.

-Andy

Hi,

I can't see any reason why Google would object to this. Mobile and desktop sites are often very different and have different elements showing - in fact, I can't think of many where they are identical in terms of showing everything.

My own site hides elements from Google via mobile (option via the theme) and I make good use of this as you don't want a huge page on mobile - it's about quick conversions and getting the point across on a much smaller screen.

-Andy

Hi,

...but I'm convinced that by modifying the URL structure, SEO will improve. I am correct in thinking this?

Not necessarily. I tend to look at the site and product as a whole first and see which URL makes the most sense.

Imagine you are a new visitor - does the category / subcategory make sense and explain the product / service more readily than just the category / page.

It could very well be that removing the subcategory is the right thing to do, but you aren't going to be guaranteed a ranking increase if this is amended.

-Andy

OK so first because some are indexed, if you block access, they will never be removed.

What you will need to do is add a noindex tag to the pages but don't block access to them so that Google can honour the noindex. Remove the pages via Search Console and once you have confirmed these are all removed from the index, you will be good to then block access via robots.txt.

As CleverPhD said, ideally you don't want pages in the index that can't be crawled, but it isn't likely to cause a penalty of any sort (I have a client with about 70-80 blocked - long story - no issues in 12 months) if you are stuck because of Megento - Perhaps research to see how others have got around this?

-Andy

Hi Peter,

First of all, I would ensure the page is noindexed as this will prevent issues. As long as the page is followed (don't set nofollow) then page rank will flow from this. All noindex does is prevent Google from showing the page. However, this will only benefit other pages linked from there as you will get pass-through page rank - Google isn't going to rank a noindexed page or one that is just duplication.

Is there a way I can build quality links to it that benefit my overall websites DA

So to answer your question, yes.

Alternatively, try and get people to link to your homepage?

-Andy

Hi,

Is this terrible SEO wise?

Not really - it just means that Google can see that there is a page they can't access so are informing you of this. There is no negative penalty that is going to come from this. If there were old pages that are now 404's then it would be a different story.

I just want to be sure of something - were the pages previously open to Google? Are they currently indexed?

-Andy

This definitely looks like it is being guided by Markup. However, don't underestimate Google's ability to find a structure it likes and deliver that in the SERP results.

Without investigating fully, it is a little difficult to say exactly what is driving this.

-Andy

Hi,

I don't see any image at that URL?

-Andy

+1 for Screaming Frog

-Andy

Hi Lisa,

1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?

If they are keeping them to help ensure brand security, then this is very popular and no harm in keeping them.

2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?

There is probably not a lot of point in all of them being live and pointing towards the main site as there will be no SEO benefit in doing this. If the sites were live and each had a site on there, it would be a different story and one that would end in a penalty.

If they are hoping to gain any SEO benefit from doing this, then they will be wasting their time. By all means they can buy them, but if what they have is delivering nothing beneficial (and I suspect they aren't), then I would just take them all down. It is more common to have a .co.uk and .com (and perhaps a few others) pointing to one key domain to capture traffic that types it wrong, but outside of this, it's a bit of a dead duck.

-Andy

Hi Robert,

Just to add to David's answer, to really help with local SEO, here are a few pointers which I always have great success with. And yes, keep everything on one site rather than splitting it up.

• Create your pages
• On each page ensure the NAP (Name, address, phone) follow the same format
• Add local information such as "how to get here via bus" - "How to get here via car", etc
• Add a local landmark for those travelling on foot or car to look out for
• Add a local map
• Will people need to use a taxi to get to you? Add a link to a local company

These will all help with local results and the more informative the page the better. Remember that each local site can have its own Google Local listing. Here is the information specific to that.

• Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location.

  • Use the precise address for the business rather than broad city names or cross-streets. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.
  • If you need to specify a mailbox or suite number within your physical location, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mailbox or suite number in Address Line 2.
  • If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours.

• Do not include information in address lines that does not pertain to your business’s physical location (e.g. URLs or keywords).

• Do not create more than one page for each location of your business, either in a single account or multiple accounts.

• Individual practitioners and departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may have separate pages. See specific guidelines about individual practitioners and departments for more information.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

No worries

Don't forget that both rel=canonical and internal linking can send good signals to Google in terms of which page is prominent. A 301 (if used) can be reversed out of if you ever need to do a semi-permanent redirect, but these days, rel=canonical does pretty much the same.

-Andy

Not a lot to add to that reply

-Andy

Hi,

...are inpage anchor links looked upon and dealt with differently

I would be trying to name your anchor texts as something a little more than just a Keyword. Try and make it answer a short question if you can so that the link makes sense to both the user and Google.

Anchors are handled like a new page if Google decides to index them, which is why you should try and have these as something that is more of a benefit add to the page, rather than anything too short and simple as a keyword. It will satisfy Google and also remove the worry of any issues.

There is no problem in running with a 'quick skip to content' as it will help with usability. Anything you can do to increase that is good.

I hope I have understood what you are asking correctly?

-Andy

No worries

Hi Arnout,

Dr Pete has a post that runs through these areas here and is well worth a read. Search for the word HOTEL on that page.

Hotels w/ Book a Room Ads

Some Local Knowledge Panels for hotels allow you to check availability dates and link directly to booking services. Google is actively expanding both organic and paid hotel elements, including amenities data.

Google is always testing these kinds of things and they are definitely rolling this out - sounds like a test in your area perhaps?

Have a read of this article from Google on how the hotel finder works along with inclusion suggestions via your Local page.

-Andy