Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for your help guys - and also reassuring to confirm my initial recommendations were correct.

Hi Mozzers

I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage.

I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page.

What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway?

Many thanks

Hi there - thanks for your responses.

Robert - sorry, got my terminology wrong, I meant Moz's KWD tool (not KDS). Too may TLAs around! And I guess that's why I am unclear, as they are all Moz metrics but seem at odds with each other. So wondered whether I was missing something or whether the KWD metric needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The content is not good for the hoses, My client is taking some persuasion, and I was going to show him the KWD metric but it kinda says the opposite of what I am trying to tell him as makes it seem a good term to target. I'll just stick with showing him the returns. And get him to focus elsewhere as he won't want to do what is necessary!

EGOL - yes, I agree! I'll just need to work harder to convince him that being on page 1 for the term garden hose is not the be all and end all for him. We have other better directions we can go. I initially got quite excited at KWD 28 (this is the UK) but alas, not to be! I guess that is the danger of looking at any metric in isolation.

Keri - hmmm, I got the opposite once. I was asked when my baby was due to which I hissed 'I am not pregnant' - I felt quite sorry for the sales assistant as they were horrified !

Hi there

A KDS report question...

My client has a keyword with a low KDS (garden hose - 28). Intuitively this seemed too low, and when I checked what ranks, it is all high quality brand sites with high DAs. Admittedly the specific pages ranking have low PAs, but I can't see my client ever being able to compete with these big boys right now.

How come the KDS is so low? This seems just wrong as the metric implies it is a good keyword to target - I know there are always lots of other things to check, but this does make me less confident with KDS reporting

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Many thanks

Many thanks guys

Hi Mozzers

I'm just doing an audit for a client and see that all non-trailing-slash URLs are 301'd to trailing-slash URLS. So far so good.

But then all the trailing-slash URLs are canonicalled back to the non-trailing-slash URLs.

This feels wrong to me, but is it? Never come across this before. Should the canonicals just be removed?

Any help much appreciated

Hi there

So you would provide lots of great and unique deals info on your site for your visitors before linking across to Expedia just to make the booking? If so that is fine and should not hurt your SEO at all.

If you are replicating Expedia content on your site then that is not so good. Just make sure all the descriptive content is unique and you'll be fine.

All the best, Wendy

Thanks Christy and Don

My clients blog is currently integrated into a subfolder. The current situation is:

www.mainsite.com - with 301 from non www version

mainsite.com/blog/ - with 301 going from www version

Are you saying this is not OK? Should they both be www or non www? Or should I not worry?

Will links going into the blog be helping the mainsite or are they working independently? As there is no duplication I think we are OK, but just wanted to check!

Many thanks

Hi Diana

I went through this same discussion with a client of mine. Only the other way round - ie should he go to local domains rather than the .com that he has. I did a lot of research and came up with the conclusion that local domains are great IF you have lots of local resource to support the site - for local content, local links, etc. If the resource is there then the main benefit is that people in each country often favour visiting sites with a country domain.

Otherwise, If the resource is not there then you are better off with a .com domain where the focus can go towards building overall authority for just 1 site rather than many - as you say, it helps with the link juice. Languages can be placed in subfolders (/de/ etc) and that way Google will know to return the correct version in the country Google version.

Hope that helps - good luck

Hi Mozzers

My client has their main site with www as the preferred version and utilises 301s for the non www version which is good.

For their integrated WP blog, they prefer the non www version, again utilising 301s.

So we have no duplicates, but is this different use of sub domains going to hurt SEO with regards to the links pointing in? ie do the links pointing into the blog benefit the main site or are we missing a trick and should change the blog to www?

Many thanks

Wendy

Hi there

A KDS report question...

My client has a keyword with a low KDS (garden hose - 28). Intuitively this seemed too low, and when I checked what ranks, it is all high quality brand sites with high DAs. Admittedly the specific pages ranking have low PAs, but I can't see my client ever being able to compete with these big boys right now.

How come the KDS is so low? This seems just wrong as the metric implies it is a good keyword to target - I know there are always lots of other things to check, but this does make me less confident with KDS reporting

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Many thanks

Hi Eliz

You could just noindex the tag archives so in time they would drop out of the index.

The easiest way to do this is if you have an SEO plugin installed like Joast or All in One SEO. Both these plugins give you check boxes to tick saying you want to noindex tag archives (as well as lots of other stuff). You can also noindex categories and Archives which can give the same problem.

If you don't have one installed then I suggest you download Joast's.

Good luck

Wendy

Hi Neil

I have just checked this and am getting matching  figures

What metric and dimension have you set up your custom report on?

I used the metric as visits and dimension as source/medium - and then filtered on organic and the figures matched.

best

Wendy

Hi there - thanks for your responses.

Robert - sorry, got my terminology wrong, I meant Moz's KWD tool (not KDS). Too may TLAs around! And I guess that's why I am unclear, as they are all Moz metrics but seem at odds with each other. So wondered whether I was missing something or whether the KWD metric needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The content is not good for the hoses, My client is taking some persuasion, and I was going to show him the KWD metric but it kinda says the opposite of what I am trying to tell him as makes it seem a good term to target. I'll just stick with showing him the returns. And get him to focus elsewhere as he won't want to do what is necessary!

EGOL - yes, I agree! I'll just need to work harder to convince him that being on page 1 for the term garden hose is not the be all and end all for him. We have other better directions we can go. I initially got quite excited at KWD 28 (this is the UK) but alas, not to be! I guess that is the danger of looking at any metric in isolation.

Keri - hmmm, I got the opposite once. I was asked when my baby was due to which I hissed 'I am not pregnant' - I felt quite sorry for the sales assistant as they were horrified !

Hi Diana

I went through this same discussion with a client of mine. Only the other way round - ie should he go to local domains rather than the .com that he has. I did a lot of research and came up with the conclusion that local domains are great IF you have lots of local resource to support the site - for local content, local links, etc. If the resource is there then the main benefit is that people in each country often favour visiting sites with a country domain.

Otherwise, If the resource is not there then you are better off with a .com domain where the focus can go towards building overall authority for just 1 site rather than many - as you say, it helps with the link juice. Languages can be placed in subfolders (/de/ etc) and that way Google will know to return the correct version in the country Google version.

Hope that helps - good luck

Hi there

So you would provide lots of great and unique deals info on your site for your visitors before linking across to Expedia just to make the booking? If so that is fine and should not hurt your SEO at all.

If you are replicating Expedia content on your site then that is not so good. Just make sure all the descriptive content is unique and you'll be fine.

All the best, Wendy