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Product / content focus. Some products supplied internationally not supplied in US. Should say that we are not intending to have a complete US sub-folder or sub-domain, simply a variant homepage.

We are building a new site on .com and wish to redirect traffic from US to a dedicated US-specific version of the homepage , whereas international traffic will go to the standard homepage.

We acknowledge the problems of IP redirection and googlebot crawling from US. So instead we are considering a Javascript pop-up if we recognise a US visitor (based on IP) which asks the user if they wish to view the US version or International version. We will store cookie of preferred selection for future visits. Within the site we will have a US/International selector.

Can Moz community members confirm this is the best approach?

Thanks

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your input.

The reason for doing it is part of an SEO site review process to examine pages indexed in Google compared to a site crawl in a tool like screaming frog and the indexed pages defined in GSC.

In terms of the "page 24 of 201 results" example, I mean that when you first use the site:domain.com Google will give you an estimated number of results, e.g. 3000 but actually as you click through the pages you find that the number of results is reduced - sometimes significantly.

The site:domain.com search seems to show less pages than it used to (Google and Bing).

It doesn't relate to a specific site but all sites. For example, I will get "page 1 of about 3,000 results" but by the time I've paged through the results it will end and change to "page 24 of 201 results". In that example If I look in GSC it shows 1,932 indexed.

Should I now accept the "pages" listed in site: is an unreliable metric?

In these days of CDNs does it matter for SEO whether images (and PDFs etc.) are hosted off-site?

Does it make a difference if images hosted on Flickr, photobucket etc.

Thanks

From PR activity we've found that lots of newspaper sites will include reference to a domain name in an article but not actually make this a link through to the domain. For example we will see text like:

For further information read the full report at www.bluewidget.com

Of course we make attempts to contact the newspaper to request they make it a link but this doesn't always achieve a result.

So the question is, does Google place any value for the identified domain in a case like this?

Thanks for your quick response Cristian.

Do you think if the authors share the article from the company page rather than posting it directy to their profile page they will still earn G+ authorship?

I have a client company looking to make use of G+ The company has a high quality, decent traffic blog with articles written by 4 in-house team members. The company has a G+ company page and each of the 4 blog authors has their own G+ profile. None of the G+ authors have any interest in using their G+ profile for general social reasons - simply as a means for sharing content (and consuming content from others) within the scope of the business sector they are in.

In order to take advantage of G+ authorship, we have now linked each user to their own G+ profile page (using Yoast WP plugin) and linked the website to the G+ company page. Rel=publisher also added for the company.

In terms of best practice would you recommend sharing new blog posts to the individual's G+ profile page AND to the G+ company page or just do one or the other?

As a final twist the company also has a G+ Local page which is primarily used for local search/map entry (the company is online but has a physical office address). Should articles also be posted to the G+ Local page?

Thanks Miriam. That post is exactly what I was looking for.

I have an established G+ company page but also want a G+ Local listing in order to appear on Google maps. The company does have a physical address, phone number etc. to qualify for a G+ Local listing. No current local listing exists to claim.

Should I:

a) Switch the currrent G+ company page to be a G+ Local page; or

b) Create a new G+ Local page and keep the G+ company page; or

c) Ignore G+ Local and create the listing through Google Places

Thanks

Hi Greg, thanks for taking the time to reply. I've outlined some further thoughts on my investigations around the size of the radius Google is using when considering  local intent in my comments to Dana. Interested in other members experiences.

Hi Dana, that's an interesting insight about the major competitor outside the city limits. Most of my focus has been on results that don't offer Google Places/Google+ Local but still have local intent. It appears that the ranking boost from local intent is either fully-on or fully-off, because I can rank #1 for approx 40miles from the location of this particular service, but at 50 miles I'm on page 3. I am carrying on my testing, just interested in other members experiences.

Based in the UK, I can see clear differences in search results for terms that Google considers have local intent, based on location. I'm interested in the community's experience of how far in distance local intent reaches. Does it depend on the search?, e.g. If I search for restaurant will it have a different local intent radius to a coffee shop etc.

Hi,

A client has a FB like button on their website but is frustrated that those "likes" are disconnected from their company FB page.

It is possible that they could change their website like button, to a like box, which will then mean people are liking their FB page and give them a greater opportunity for on-going engagement through FB.

However, from an SEO perspective is it better for them to attract likes & potential sharing of their website content rather than their FB content?

Thanks.

Just checking the headers on a client site and discovered a 307 redirect.

General suggestion from http status code sites is that it is similar to a 302 temporary redirect. Can someone confirm this is the case or is there a difference?

I've been investigating a serious Google ranking drop for a small website in the UK. They used to rank top 5 for about 10 main keywords and overnight on 24/3/12 they lost rankings. They have not ranked in top100 since. Their pages are still indexed and they can still be found for their brand/domain name so they have not been removed completely.

I've coverered all the normal issues you would expect to look for and no serious errors exist that would lead to what in effect looks like a penalty.

The investigation has led to a an issue about their domain registration setup. The whois record (at domaintools) shows the status as "Registered and Parked or Redirected" which seems a bit unusual. Checking the registration details they had DNS settings pointing correctly to the webhost but also had web forwarding to the domain registrar's standard parked domain page.

The domain registrar has suggested that this duplication could have caused ranking problems. What do you think? Is this a realistic reason for their ranking loss?

Thanks

Hi Anthony - thanks. I wasn't aware of the inallurl command. I'll give that a try.

Hi - Is there a way of checking whether pages are in the supplementary index?

Thanks

Hi kchan, thanks for your reply. No, it was the homepage.that was the ranking page. GWT reported a drop in traffic warning but nothing else. Hard to see how this site could have been caught up as over optimised, as no SEO ever carried out!

I am helping out a small UK company who have had a sudden drop in organic search traffic since March 24th.

Investigation highlights some issues with the site,e.g. Potential canonicalization of home page, a few html errors, some inbound links to the /index.html version of the homepage rather than /. But, nothing particualrly major and nothing that is different to pre-March 24th.

The indexed pages looks ok in Google (although Bing is ranking the non-www version of the homepage) but this does not appear in Google's index.

Searches for the company name on Google.co.uk show it as top result & some keywords are ranking reasonably well (based on homepage). Selecting blocks of text from the homepage and it ranks #1, but its Google rank for the primary keyword has gone from #2 pre-March 24th to not in the top 100 results since. SEOMOZ is grading the page A for the keyword which appears prominently on the page & keyword is the first characters of the title. It is not a particularly competitive keyword. Adding UK to the keyword and the page is Google.co.uk ranked #3. It's almost as if they are being penalised for a single keyword which I've never seen or heard of before. Any ideas?

** The company has never carried out any SEO - white hat or black hat. The site is perfectly normal, nothing dodgy or concerning about it at all.**

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Thanks for your reply.

When looking at the OSE metrics (DA, PA, Number Linking RDs etc.) is it purely based on OSEs evaluation of the specific domain or will it take into account links that have been 301-redirected to the domain?

Ryan - thanks for your advice.

Examining the backlink profile of a new client I can see a large number of links developed by an offshore agency they used for link-building. The client is a reputable, professional company but some of the links are on very low-quality sites in-between viagra, online pharmacies, cosmetic surgery etc. It is unclear whether some of the links are paid or not.

There is no indication that they have been penalised for these links but they are obviously unhelpful. Can I use GWT to request Google ignore them or should I just leave them and move on with more appropriate link building techniques?

Hi Andy - I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my question. I'm currently monitoring the transition process (losing the extended sitelinks on the original domain but fingers-crossed they will return on the new domain)

Thanks Alex for sharing your experience. The DA on this site is about 40 so maybe it will be somewhere between the two you mention. I'll keep monitoring.

In your experience how long does it normally take for 301-redirected pages to drop out of Google's index?

EGOL - thanks for advice. Yes there are lots of ilinks between the domains. Although I also have clients who have done this deliberately for perceived gain, I think in this case the client has made an honest mistake by simply applying their CMS (with relative links) to each of the domains they thought they should purchase. It's confused a bit further by one section using https with an absolute domain so users can end up migrating from one domain to another and from http to https!

As an SEO I also have inclination to 301 page-by-page to best ranking site. However, as I mentioned to Thomas (above) I think the client will probably want to go with their preferred domain and as such I'll 301 page-by-page to that one. I'll discuss with the client and post the outcome.

Thomas - thanks for your reply. All the domains are very similar - variations from the same core concept. I have a feeling that the client will want to standardise on their preferred domain and as you say it is the easiest to remember.

I am working on a new project where the client has 5 domains each with identical website content. There is no rel=canonical.

There is a great variation in the number of pages in the index for each of the domains (from 1 to 1250). OSE shows a range of linking domains from 1 to 120 for each domain.

I will be strongly recommending to the client to focus on one website and 301 everything from the other domains. I would recommend focusing on the domain that has the most pages indexed and the most referring domains but I've noticed the client has started using one of the other domains in their offline promotional activity and it is now their preferred domain.

What are your thoughts on this situation? Would it be better to 301 to the client's preferred domain (and lose a level of ranking power throught the 301 reduction factor + wait for other pages to get indexed) or stick with the highest ranking/most linked domain even though it doesn't match the client's preferred domain used for email addresses etc.

Or would it better to use cross-domain canoncial tags?

Thanks

I normally advise clients never to optimise around keywords with very low or even zero recorded Google search volumes. However, if the core keyword has decent volumes but the organisation is serviing specific towns/cities/locations would you consider it valid to optimise for :

core keyword + focused location (even if this has zero search volumes).

The Google Places results are obviously highly relevant but depending on the core keyword you sometimes get the 3-box places at the top but sometimes in the middle of the natural results.

I've read previous Q&A where people have been a bit dismissive of the ranking significance of exact match domains but my experience recently using the keyword competiveness tool is that exact match domains seem to outrank other sites regardless of domain or page authority or other on-site/on-page optimisation.

I'm interested in other people's opinions and experiences.

Does anyone have experience of how Google deals with slight character variations, e.g. Facade v Façade?

From an SEO perspective, are these treated as two completely separate words or is Google clever enough to determine the intent of the searcher & the site?

Many thanks David.

Regards

Blaine

Hi Steven

Thanks for the advice. I've now got the Yoast plugin and starting to work with that.

Regards

Blaine

Both SEOMOZ and Google webmaster tools report lots of 404 errors throughout my wordpress blog.

I have the url structure set to category/title

Most of the 404 errors seem to be that the crawler is looking for a /home.html page. Each time I add a new post I get more 404 errors. I could, of course, add 301 redirects but I presume there is an easy way to do this within the WP setup.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Hi Steve, Many thanks for replying.

I checked the acquired domain in OSE and there are 302 redirects from an online pharmacy (that according to the wayback machine existed back in 2009) to pharmacy pages on the acquired domain. In turn OSE shows the linking site has a single link from a dodgy looking russian site called picto.ru. So, I guess the spiders are simply following the links.

Assuming my client wants to use the acquired domain will they get penalised for the existing spammy links?

Hi,

My client purchased a domain which based on the seller "promising lots of traffic". Subsequent investigation showed it was a scam and that the seller had been creative in Photoshop with some GA reports.

Nevertheless, my client had redirected the acquired domain to their primary domain (via the domain registrar).

From the period on which the acquired domain was redirected to the point when we removed the redirect, the web log files had a high volume of spider/bot 404 errors relating to an online pharmaacy - viagra, pills etc.

The account does not seem to have been hacked. No additional files are present and the rest of the logs seem normal. As soon as the redirect was removed the spider 404 errors stopped.

Aside from the advice about acquiring domains promising traffic which I've already discussed with my client, does anybody have any ideas about how a redirect could cause the 404 errors?

Thanks

One of my clients has a template page they have used repeatedly each time they have a new news item. The template includes a two-paragraph customer quote/testimonial for the company.

So, they now have 100+ pages with the same customer quote. The rest of the page content / body copy is unique.

Is there any likelihood of this being considered duplicate content?

Thanks James.