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Random guess is that you are HTTP pages in your top pages report that are 301ing to the HTTPS versions. If that is the case, it's not an issue.

Hi Zack,

• If you want the products to still be accessible/visible on the site, you could leave the pages as 200 with a NoIndex tag.
• If you want the products gone from the site and from Google's index, you could go the 301, 404, 410 route.

Considering there are multiple decent options available, consider going with the one that will be easy for your team to implement and maintain over time.

• No traffic and no link equity = let it 404 or give it a 410
• If there is any equity (traffic/links) 301 redirect it to a related product or the category/subcategory page

Removing the pages will cause them to 404. Google will not instantly remove 404 pages, as sometimes website servers have issues and incorrectly return a 404 status on pages that are meant to be valid. As a result, Google will re-visit this page over a period of time and after seeing a repeated 404 is will remove it from its index.

The easiest option to speed this up, should be to use Google Search Console "Temporarily Hide" option in Google. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/url-removal

Pages will disappear quickly after using this and my guess is it won't come back if it's still returning a 404 status. If it's easy for you, you could turn the 404s to 410 (forever gone).

If you have concerns, I strongly recommend using Google Search Console to test URL use cases against your existing robots.txt file and before you do potential edits.

You do not need to make sure the login page is the only page that exists on https. Just make that page automatically redirect to the https version. Other pages can render in both http and https versions, just be sure to link internally to the one you want and make sure you have proper canonicals set.

This is just a login page with no SEO value/competition for this branded, specific page. Do not worry about sitemaps, and all the extra details. Just 301 the page to https and keep an eye on the rest of your pages to make sure they remain as is.

No one really knows how Google treats individual links and this should not be anything to worry about.

You won't really be able to see how much of it is direct. If someone clicks an external link pointing at the old site or types the URL in the address bar, they both would go through the same redirect process.

If you wanted to get some general tracking on people hitting old URLs, you could have your redirects go to the new site with utm parameters on the end of the URL.

Something like: old-domain.com -> new-domain.com?utm_source=old-domain&utm_medium=redirect

Decreasing will not negatively affect your organic traffic.

Here is what I think you should do.

Find those blog posts that get little to no organic traffic. Look for opportunities to combine/merge similar posts into one new, better post - then republish them. When you encounter old posts that you can't imagine having any future value, consider removing them completely.

*edited to correct a typo

As others have mentioned, simply commenting on a blog post does not directly help SEO and if done for the sole purpose of dropping a link it is basically worthless spam.

Leaving a thoughtful, intelligent comment that furthers the conversation started in a post can be a great way to build a connection with the author. If you do this regularly on a site, your chances of securing a future link to your content can be significantly increased.

Go after every link you think you can acquire that is relevant (topic overlap) and not spammy in any way. Plenty of great small sites out there that have DAs below 30.

A quick glance at your site and I can see you are still ranking for a large variety of keywords, but as you mentioned it's mostly pages 3-10. There doesn't appear to be any glaring issues with your basic wordpress setup. I'm not sure why you dropped so much around that specific date, but if it was me I would try to increase your number of external links. Even though you are targeting low competition keywords, for whatever reason since November you just don't seem to have the authority to push your posts up to the top page. I see 22 total linking domains to your site. Every single link you acquire makes a huge improvement over your existing backlink profile.

No, they do not.

The answer to this question will depend a bit on how you have your current blog post URL slug set up. If you are using domain.com/category/post-title-here and then change your categories, this will cause 404s (which you can fix by redirecting).

If you are using a domain.com/post-title-here or other option, you will be just fine to clean up, edit and alter your category and tags. I would suggest NoIndexing your tags. The decision of NoIndexing categories will depend on how you plan on using them.

If the site is only a few months old, I strongly suggest fixing this now and setting yourself up for better long term success.

Unfortunately, you're in a tough spot here. Google no longer gives you the ability to have demote specific sitelinks. When it comes to page titles, Google often rewrites them as they see fit. You cannot prevent them from ignoring or editing a specific page title.

I have seen the following two things have a major impact on Google's decision to alter existing title tags.

1. Title Tag Length: If your title tag is too long, Google often chooses to truncate it as they see fit or choose body content related to the query.
2. Anchor Text: If you can find any internal or external anchor text links that point at those pages with that punctuation style, try to get them updated to the punctuation you want.

Their plan to use canonicals is a great approach.

It is dangerous if you simply move the content to another domain and don't have plans to implement redirects, etc.

It isn't "dangerous" if done correctly. A well executed migration may see a drop in traffic for a 2-6 weeks (ballpark) and then things should settle back in to normal levels. It's going to depend on the size of the site and the complexity of the migration (content being eliminated, added, massive URL structure changes, etc).

Here are some good migration resources:

• Domain Migration Checklist
• Domain Migration Lessons
• How to Change Domain Names and Keep Rankings

You mention these pages are returning 200 in SEO tools, but would you please share what are these URLs are returning when you Fetch as Googlebot in Google Search Console? Test it in both desktop and mobile versions.

Essentially it sounds like you simply want to eliminate a /blog/ directory and instead use a keyword rich category slug as a directory for each article. That URL structure is just fine. You will still be able to filter your analytics by category performance and the URL is easy to understand as a user.

Page Authority is just a marketing metric made by Moz and won't update until they re-run their index, which I believe is still on a ~monthly timeline. Just because Moz says a page temporarily has a PA of 1 doesn't mean Google sees it that way.

If you have a good reason to change a URL structure, feel free to do it as long as you have 301s. Do not change your URL structure for small, un-needed reasons, such as cramming a slightly better KW variation in the URL.

I have not ever seen proper documentation on this type of remarketing policy, but I have retargeted to a Partner Website in the past and our Google PPC rep was aware and more than OK with the process.

In general, I think if the result is "you spend more on Google ads" they tend to be OK with that.

Start building links the day you publish. The "I just published this today" angle is part of what can make a pitch relevant, especially if you are pitching industry/news type sites that want to "break the story" on a bigger scale.

Panguin is a great tool, but it requires you to give up your GA data (or at least it used to). If you want to keep your data private or get info on a site that you don't have GA access to, consider this tool which uses SEMrush traffic data and matches it up with Algo Update dates. http://feinternational.com/website-penalty-indicator/

The Moz recommended list is great, but a bit on the high end side of project scope for many Small to Med sized businesses. Another resource for you to check out is Credo. There are some good agencies and consultants listed there as well as some info on the types of work they specialize in and the rates of the projects they take on.

Yep! You can set all kinds of Custom Alerts in Google Analytics. Go to Admin->Custom Alerts (far right column) and configure them any way you want. Here is an example that might be close to what you are describing above.

• Alert Name: High Sales Product:
• This Applies to: Product SKU = Value
• Alert me when: Product Revenue = Increases by more than = Value %

There is some flexibility in the metrics to configure the way you want. You can't do everything but hopefully you find some options that match what you are looking to do.

Yep! Just plug your domain into OSE and then export the results via the Request CSV link. Once you have it in Excel, you can filter it any way you want.

I would simply set up rel=next/prev on the paginated series and not so much worry about duplicate title tags or using canonical tags. You want to make sure Google continues to crawl deep into your blog pagination and can access older blog posts.

This is different for every site, but here are two very good resources for you to get started on:

1. A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page SEO
2. On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page

Don't forget to try and wow and delight your users in there. Making an "SEO optimized page" that looks like everyone else's isn't necessarily the best method in the long run.

I would tell GWT that this parameter Does Not change the content on the page. A single breadcrumb path does not significantly change the content on a page.

Consider a site that sells shoes and may be using parameters like fakeshoestore.com/mens?color=black. In this case, the color parameter is creating a completely new set of results, Narrowing the entire men's shoe category down to black shoes. That is a new page and you want it treated as such. (No canonical, Yes->Narrows).

With Google thinking http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget and http://www.oursite.com/item3332/blue-widget_?breadCrumb=BrandTree_ have different content on them, they may be splitting the link equity between these duplicate pages, allowing neither of them to rank well. Even though you have the canonical tag in place (good job) it is more of a hint to Google as opposed to an absolute directive.

The 404 pages isn't a huge concern. As with all 404's redirect the ones that receive organic traffic or have external links pointing at them.

Tag your URLs with utm tags. Use a consistent naming convention like this.

• Source: YouTube
• Medium: Social
• Campaign Name: Name of Video Series, Video Game, Some Grouping to Reference the type of video it is
• Content: Video Title or Reference

Are you going to have valuable category page at /bands/ or /wedding/ and /wedding/bands/? Using subfolders can be great for filtering in analytics, analyzing indexation as well as for the users who want to view things at a category level.

Consider what makes most sense for your users. Are they looking for a type of band first or by location first? I would imagine that I would want to look in my location first, then move on to the type of band. In this case, you might want to consider building your directory path to be samhillbands.com/charlottesville-va/wedding-bands/ or something similar.

As Dirk said, this is not a concern. A typical e-commerce site is going to have the same images on product pages, category pages, brand pages, etc. In general, I would recommend using fresh images across your site, but a bit of re-use when it makes sense is not a problem at all.

Can you share some details why you want to "move" the store locator to a subdomain? That makes me think it is already operational in a subfolder at the moment. In general, I would recommend not moving content unless there is a very good reason for it.

Yes, this certainly could cause issues with your rankings. If the site is more authoritative than yours it certainly could be an issue. I would most certainly provide unique descriptions for them. Especially since this is a small number of products, not thousands of products. Also, focus on improving your content as well. Is there anything additional you could add to your page that would help the user? Perhaps some fresh user reviews or testimonials?

Yes, you absolutely can redirect this link. However I think your time would be better spent focusing on a solution that prevents this from happening long term. You will continually have to redirect new content as long as this continues to work as is.

Those discrepancies would not concern me, but there are some differences between all the things you list:

Total indexed: 2,360 Search Console - this is likely a reasonably accurate list of the number of pages you have indexed in Google. You could use a tool like URL Profiler to check index status of specific URLs.

About 2,920 results Google search "site:example.com" - site: search is less accurate and will likely return a different number each time you do it, even if it's just moments apart.

Sitemap: 1,229 URLs: these are URLs you added to a sitemap because they are priority pages you want to make sure Google has indexed and hopefully ranked. You control this number.

Screaming Frog Spider: 1,352 URLs - Screaming Frog is going to start on your homepage and crawl the site attempting to discover as many URLs as possible. If you are not linking to a page, SF won't be able to crawl it. Google on the other hand may have old pages, old URL structures or pages that were linked from an external website in their index and they won't forget them.

A really important question is: how many pages do you have that you want to be indexed? Is Google's index bloated with pages that you want to keep out? Figure these things out, and then try to adjust your sitemaps, noindex, robots.txt as needed.

Just try to work them both into the content, meta, etc. Example Title: Property Inspection Software: Free App (iOS, Android)

Put less focus on cramming your exact keywords across your page and more focus on writing natural & marketing.

If you are just changing the content a bit based on location, I think canonicalizing them all back to the root page is OK.

If this is redirecting based on translations, you should look into using the hreflang tag. It tells the search engines that there are alternate versions of the page in different languages.

Here are some resources for you.

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
• https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights

Once that is in place, each page can canonicalize to itself.

• domain.com/us/
• domain.com/fr/

You are sort of in an odd situation. You could tell Google that the "p" parameter is for pagination and they would better understand that. However, the canonical tag usage sort of tells Google that all of your paginated pages are actually duplicates of the first page.

Just because your competitors are not doing it, doesn't mean you can't. In fact, you might consider it a great opportunity to stand out. You might want to consider creating some content you think will be link-worthy.

• Humor/Buzzfeed style: 12 Hilarious Classified Ads That....
• Informational: Guide to Writing the Perfect Classified Ad
• Seasonal: These Creepy Classified Ads Will Be Sure to Scare You This Halloween

It's not as easy as just creating the content and getting links. You have to find the right spots to promote it as well.

Do not change the URLs unless necessary. The URLs you've described above are perfectly fine. Look at Amazon's URLs to see that it is absolutely OK to not have /product-name-here style URLs.

Typically, if you want to use the Canonical Tag for pagination, you would have it point to a View All style page, such as friendly-url.html&view=all.

If you have too many products/pages in the pagination series, you might want to consider removing the canonical tag and implementing rel=prev/next. You can get more info here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

As you mentioned above, giving each objective a $ value is going to be absolutely necessary to measure ROAS. Hopefully, you can use some historical data to help you come up with the numbers.

If set up correctly, using the canonical tag as described above will usually keep the actual PDF out of the index. Using NoIndex is a guaranteed method to keep it out of the index.

Tons of good suggestions here. Some profiles that can easily move up high in the SERPs for a non-competitive name search can be:

LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, About.me, Product Hunt, Medium, Pinterest.

Create a few of these, and link to them from the exact match domains, mentioned by Russ.

Some good advice has already been given. Also, it's not un-normal to experience a traffic dip after migrating a site. It's only been two weeks and I would expect you to begin recovering that as more time goes by, redirects are crawled, etc.

I would have absolutely no concerns over changing your content, as long as you are confident you are changing it for the better.

I don't think there will be an ASAP solution to this. I think you simply need to continue to build a brand (authoritative website, social profiles, strong online presence) and increase the search volume for your brand. As more people begin to search for Zotey and click the "Search instead for zotey" it will go away.

I think Similar Web is the best (closest to real data when compared to sites I have analytics on) and SEMrush is also valuable to get another dataset.

I would absolutely delete them. Take note of the products that have any external links or organic traffic and consider redirecting them.