Hi Silviu

It is as Ari said - source URL is relative and destination URL is absolute.

Peter

Thanks everyone for your feedback. Much appreciated. Glad I am not the only one who doubts the value of this tactic,

Peter

Hi Silviu

There is always the possibility of some SEO value being lost when you implement a 301 redirection so that may be why you have seen a hit.

Have a look at Moz's information on this here...

Note this paragraph: A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.

One thing though, I have never seen relative redirection for the same domain written as "http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "/new-url.html" but always as "/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "http://www.domain.com//new-url.html". I'm not saying the other way wouldn't work - which if the links are working correctly when you follow them they clearly are - but just not seen that.

I hope the above helps,
Peter

This is something I asked myself this evening. You see a lot of sites with a Facebook or Twitter feed displayed, but I struggle to understand their value.

OK, it shows that you are active on this or that social media channel, but unless you are posting great content consistently on the social media displayed, the impact of your feed could detract from the web page it is displayed on. It could also cause a visitor to that page on your site to click away from your site into the noise and distraction of that social media channel.

I don't have an issue with using social media icons to link to your channels, but they are more discreet and the sort of thing people will look for if they are interested enough in your web pages to want to connect with you. Also, social sharing icons are good, but I do not see the value in social media feeds.

Do you agree or disagree? I am more than will to be persuaded otherwise.

Thanks in advance,
Peter

Hi Steve

If it can only be viewed legally by health practitioners who are members of your site, then it seems to me you don't have an option as by putting any of this content into the public domain on Google by whatever method you use will be deemed illegal by whichever body oversees it.

Presumably you cannot also publish short 25o word summaries of the content?

If not, then I think you need to create pages that are directly targeted at marketing the site to health practitioners. Whilst the pages won't be able to contain the content you want to have Google index, they could still contain general information and the benefits of becoming a subscriber.

Isn't that the goal of the site anyway, i.e. to be a resource to health practitioners? So, without being able to make the content public, you have to market to them through your SEO or use some other form or indirect or direct marketing to encourage them to the site to sign up.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Steve

As you already know, if a page is not crawlable it's not indexable. I don't think there is any way around this without changing the strategy of the site. You said, _"We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages". _Is that limitation imposed by a legal requirement or something like that, or by the site owners because they don't want to give free access?

If the marketing strategy for the site is to grow the membership, then as it's providing a content service to its members then it has to give potential customers a sample of its wares.

I think there are two possible solutions.

(1) increase the amount of free content available on the site to give the search engines more content to crawl and make available to people searching or

(2) Provide a decent size excerpt, say the first 250 words of each article as a taster for potential customers and put the site login at the point of the "read more". That way you give the search engines something to get their teeth into which is of a decent length but it's also a decent size teaser to give potential customers an appetite to subscribe.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, it's difficult to say without knowing anything about your site. Would you be able to share a link to it?

The other possible reason - and I am not saying this is the case - is if you have had any used any overseas backlinking service that could be based in these areas. Could that be the case?

Peter

Hi, I have seen a situation before where GWT says that no images are indexed but they have indexed them. I don't know why.

Checking Google directly, by searching site:thesalebox.com and then clicking the Image tab shows that Google do have images indexed on your site, maybe not all, but there are some so maybe more are being indexed:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:thesalebox.com&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=pPpgUoHvBoHJ0AWQnYGgDw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=955&dpr=1

Peter

Thanks for including that screenshot Iris.

Regarding villasdiani.com/?db being shown as one of your top visited pages, I think (and perhaps someone from Moz will confirm this) that because you have been receiving links to your site to villasdiani.com/?db and that is probably also being recording in your Google Analytics, it considers that to be a page when it actually isn't.

As I mentioned earlier in our conversation on this, villasdiani.com and villasdiani.com/?db are actually go to the same page. They are just seen as different because you have had inbound links to villasdiani.com/?db and as said before when the query string ?db is not processed by the web server because there is not recognised, it is then ignored.

I have run a search to see what external sites/pages are linking to villasdiani.com/?db and the following were some of the results:

http://dianibeach.com/airservices/index.html
http://dianibeach.com/apartments/index.htm
http://dianibeach.com/bedbreakfast/index.htm
http://dianibeach.com/books
http://dianibeach.com/carhire
http://dianibeach.com/golf

and they are showing as all having had the anchor text of "Raul".

Is Raul the name of this guy you know who said he was giving links to your site from the footer of your site?

I have checked the source code of some of the pages above villasdiani.com/?db.

The data being reported by Moz for these type of reports is not totally up to date but taken from the last crawl they made. You said at the start of this thread that you had asked this guy to remove the links to your site. Could it be that in the last few days or so he has done that and so from now on you won't be getting any links to villasdiani.com/?db ?

That's possible, but I cannot say that is definitive, but it would explain what you have been seeing.

Maybe someone from the Moz team can throw some light on this or one of the other more knowledgeable forum members.

Peter