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A couple of quick tips that may help:

1. Make sure you have the site scrolled to the very top of the screen, otherwise the scores will be different, because the test leverages the visual layout you see on the screen.

So if you're scrolled down the page a bit, and then you do a test, you'll get a different result because of different layout shifts caused by the different non-critical elements taking longer to load. Also, make sure you dock the Dev tools in a different window, so the page being tested has the full normal screen size without Dev tools .at the bottom etc.

2. Your co-worker might be viewing the site on a different screen size, so there may be less CLS (cumulative layout shift) happening on their screen size, which is why the scores would be different.

Ah yes when it's pointed out like that, it's a conflicting signal isn't It. Makes sense in theory, but if you're setting it to noindex and then passing that on via a canonical it's probably not the best is it.

They're was link out in that thread to a discussion of people who still do that with success, but after reading that I would just use noindex only as you said. (Still prefer the no index on the robots block though)

I don't think it should be blocked by robots.txt at all. It's stopping Google from crawling the site fully. And they may even treat it negatively as they've been really clamping down on blocking folders with robots.txt lately. I've seen sites with warning in search console for: Disallow: /wp-admin

You may want to consider just using a noindex tag on those pages instead. And then also use a canonical tag that points back to the main job category page. That way Google can crawl the pages and perhaps pass all the juice back to the main job category page via the canonical. Then just make sure those junk job pages aren't in the sitemap either.

The truth is no one knows... That's why the algo is such an evolving mystery

It's also different for every niche. For example in an easy niche, you can fix a page's SEO and a couple of days later it will move up the rankings 5 spots, say from position 12 to position 7. Then in a competitive niche you can spend 100 hours doing onpage SEO and the page position might improve by 1 spot over the course of 3 weeks etc.

The best way to test different on-page factors is with single variable tests in isolation using fake keywords like the guys at SIA (Search Engine Intelligence Agency) do it. Then you pin down the most effective tweaks and bust a lot of myths as well.

The joy of the new site eh. Sometimes no matter what you do this can't be helped and is just temporary. You've completely changed your site framework and URL structures so it may take a little time for Google to trust the site again.

But firstly, some blatantly obvious things like.

1. check robots.txt file for unintended blocks
2. check some of your main pages' canonical tags to ensure they are matching the real URL
3. check for nofollow & noindex tags in the source code on some of the main pages
4. check your country and language targeting hasn't changed in your hreflang="en-us" tags
5. check you haven't accidentally changed the country targeting in Webmaster tools
6. check a whole bunch of your old URLs to double check the redirect chain. Use a tool like https://httpstatus.io/ and paste in a bunch of them
7. check your htaccess file for some kind of accidental googlebot block ( RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^googlebot [NC,OR] ) (some devs use this)
8. check if any old trusted schema markup been completely taken out

As far as content length goes, I wouldn't worry about that as long as it is good content - but that also depends what niche your site is in and whether or not content length is a factor.

But you say, you have added an extra folder to your URLs. This is usually worse. Was your old URL:
example.com/clean-short.html   -  and now you have
example.com/useless-folder/another-one/now-long-full-keyword-here.html  - This URL structure would hurt your rankings no matter what you do.

If you have changed all of the following it will be a bumpy ride:

1. your URL structure and the keywords in it
2. your main title tag
3. the content of your H1 & H2 tags

Share your URL if you want some further advice as someone may see something very obvious that you've overlooked, but without seeing the live site it makes it harder to help.

If that was the final product page, then yes, you should be using a standard htacess rewrite command to ensure that the final product urls are always www.domain.com/productx But in saying that, the way you had it is totally fine if all the other url possibilities have a canonical tag that points back to optimised version (original product url - www.domain.com/productx)

The htacess rewrite it's not something you should be handling manually. Magento has that option inbuilt into it. It would be a fair amount of work if you had to do that manually. and I would just run with the canonical option if that were the case. Any good eCommerce platform should have the inbuilt ability to automatically remove the category folders and other search queries from the final product url.

Sometimes it's ok to leave the category folders in the url, it just depends on the products being sold. Below would be an example where I would leave the category folders in the url if I was selling different colored soccer balls.

www.sports.com/soccer-balls/black-white/
www.sports.com/soccer-balls/blue-white/
www.sports.com/soccer-balls/red-yellow/

Yes it does take some patience to find a nice domain that's relevant and has stats. I wouldn't 301 the other domain to the new domain as a new domain won't be able to handle that many new inbound links which is what your effectively doing by sending a 301 with links behind it to your new domain.

If the urls follow any particular pattern then you can use a  htaccess redirect and return the header code 410 / 403 / 404 to Google. (I suggest 410) They will soon drop out of the index.

I don't know the exact .htaccess syntax off the top of my head but it will be something like this:

If they all come from the same folder then it would look something like this:
RedirectMatch 410 ^/folder/.*$

If they have a common character string after the forward slash (such as xyz) then it would look something like this:
RedirectMatch 410 ^/xyz.*$

If they have any common character string footprints at all (such as xyz) then it would look something like this (now I'm guessing):
RedirectMatch 410 ^/()xyz.$

This would be a pretty easy fix if all of those spammy urls have any common characters after the forward slash or they all originate from a certain folder.

Re-purposing domains is no where near as safe or effective as it used to be. Your asking for trouble if your going to completely change the topic of the website and expect easy ranking benefits from the old off-topic inbound links. (this is one of the footprints they used to recently de-index low quality PBN's because the sites topic had completely changed after the domain was re-birthed)

In saying that, I wouldn't start with a fresh domain either.

I would do my homework on domcop or register-compass and find an expiring/expired/deleted domain with great on-topic link metrics and start the new site that way. If your niche isn't that big then you may be able to find an on-topic domain with metrics like DA40 - PA45 - TF35 - CF40 for under $500. That would give your new site a huge kick start. Hunt for decent Trust Flow with good topical relevance. If you build a great site under a domain like that your rankings will come much easier than using a fresh domain.

Those paths all seem fine as they are all legitimate ways of getting to that bunch of products. I'm also assuming that the final page on each of the below urls is a page that contains a selection of products and you can still click on an individual product from the list and go to its url.

1)www.domain.com/productx
2)www.domain.com/category/productx
3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx
4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx

It's even debatable whether you need canonical tags on any of those above urls, it all depends on how different those pages are from each other with regards to the content on the page before the products. If all of those above urls had different H1 tags and different content before the product feed then they are all stand alone legitimate pages that don't need canonical tags. But if they're all virtually the same and not much customization has been done to the auto generated pages then yes, they should all have a canonical tag back to www.domain.com/productx perhaps, or the most suitable page.

A bigger issue I think you may have is the url of the final single product page. It shouldn't be like this:
www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx/final-product/
or like this either:
www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx/final-product/

Optimally, it should read like this no matter how the visitor got there:
www.domain.com/final-product/

In most cases, for optimal Seo, an extension, plugin, or htaccess command should rewrite the final product url to strip out all of the category url paths or best seller url paths from the urls so your final product page url is short and clean like this: www.domain.com//final-product/ even though the path is really ths: www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx/final-product/

It's pretty hard to tell what the optimal solution for your site is without having a look at it and understanding your product range and categorization a bit better, but I hope that helps a bit.

Sounds like a big job Firstly, I would go with the sub-folder approach (and by sub-folder, I mean inner page) as inner pages can bleed more authority from the root domain than sub-domains can. You'll be able to rank an inner page easier than a sub domain. I also think that the sub-domain approach is confusing for referring offline clients. Telling someone to go to newsite.mysite.com is more confusing than saying, go to mysite.com forward slash newsite.

As far as all of your local Seo is concerned just be sure that the relevant addresses are on the relevant pages. Don't let the address of the primary site pollute the other business pages where that address doesn't belong on.

Yes, the rankings have crashed but getting rid of those 302 redirects and changing them to 301's will have a significant impact. All you have to do is ensure that any old page redirects to the most relevant new page. Don't bother redirecting the old about us page to the new homepage, just redirect it to the new about-us page where it should redirect to.

The folder structure that you suggested for your new pages is fine, and I would go with that too. It's crucial that your new inner pages have the right address and phone number details on the front end. Ensure your Schema markup is also properly optimized. You want to make sure that when you run an inner page through the structured data testing tool that it's showing all of the correct Schema address and business details. As long as you pay close attention to this I think you should see minimal disruption to your Google local rankings.

I would also go to your Google local pages and put the right URL in the about us section (XYZ.com/auto-detailing). Make sure you re-upload the verification file again to the correct page (XYZ.com/auto-detailing).

Hi Edward,

Duplicate content is generally only harmful when it's on your own site. I say generally because you wouldn't want to post the exact same or poorly spun article on multiple websites to get links coming in but that's not what's happening here.

I have duplicated entire sites onto new domains and changed only the suburb keyword. I just did an entire swap and replace of one location keyword and the new duplicated site ranked beautifully. It's not a tough niche of course, but in duplicate content on different domains isn't a problem.

In your case I wouldn't worry about it too much at all, as it won't hurt your rankings. If you want to get rid of it though, just sign up for a free DMCA account and they'll get it taken down for you, assuming you own that content or originally paid for it to be created.

Hi Kaitlin, Consider this perspective regarding your duplicate content, especially seeing as your content and keywords seem to be geo-targeted to different areas.

For this example, let's use a keyword like 'air conditioning repair Houston'

Let's say that you've written the best 1000+ word page on the internet about the keyword 'air conditioning repairs Houston' and Google have ranked that article/page in the top 3 results. They ranked it because it was highly informative and well written.

Now let's say you just swapped the word 'Houston' to 'California'. Would that article technically still be the best information on the internet about 'air conditioning repairs California'? Well, unless someone has written one better in California, I believe it would be.

All Google cares about is showing the best information in relation to the search query. They couldn't care less if it's duplicate. That's a problem for site owners to bicker over if someone else is using someone's content. As far as Google is concerned, that article is still the best article on the internet about 'air conditioning repairs California', which is why they'll allow it to rank first. They don't care that there's another 99.9% similar article about 'air conditioning repairs Houston', as that's a different keyword, and the searcher is searching for different information.

Even as an internet user yourself, do you care that the amazing information you're reading is available in another state? As long as your query is answered with the best information possible then who would really care. All of the top high authority news and entertainment sites circulate duplicate content all day long.

The duplicate content penalty is for pages on your domain only. If you have multiple pages under a single domain that have duplicate content, that's where the misunderstood duplicate content penalty applies. It doesn't apply if you use the same content on a different domain. You might not rank as well using duplicate content on a different domain, but you definitely won't get penalised for it.

I've tried and tested duplicate sites a few times, exact same words, images, themes etc. Although the niches weren't that strong, the complete duplicate site was soon ranking in 1st place for all of the same keywords as the original duplicate site, just in a different area. That's because the content answered the searcher's query the best. All that changed was the location, but Google still considered it to be the best content on the net about that particular keyword.

Here's another example, let's say you published a great article 10 days ago about a generic keyword. Let's assume my site is a DA60+ and PR5 and your site is a DA10 and PR-N/A. And now I publish the same article on my site, who do you think will rank better. In the worst case scenario, I would rank second, but more than likely I would rank 1st. My point being, that even though it's copied 100%, I'll still rank with it.

You need to be mindful of the anchor text they use. You don't want five new links coming in all saying 'Your Main Keyword' You also need to be aware of their site's overall quality. Check all of their site stats such as Domain Authority - Page Authority - Trust Flow - Citation Flow, etc.

Also, check their outbound and inbound links. You don't want your link on their site if they also link out to other sites that are completely irrelevant. And you wouldn't want your link on their site either if they have lots of low-quality inbound links pointing to their site.

Perhaps the main thing to watch our for in your scenario is that they don't just give you a site-wide footer link. You may think you're getting a good link in the footer of their homepage, but if it's a site-wide footer link they've just sent your website anywhere from 25 to 300 inbound links. That's something you don't want either. Hope this help a little.

It doesn't really matter which pages of your site have links going to them, including category pages. There's a few things to watch out for regarding unnatural inbound links and they're listed below in order of priority, however any of the below points will cause you issues if you abuse them.

• The main one to watch out for is an over optimized anchor text profile.
• The second thing to watch is the type of inbound links you have. Are they all the same type of links such as directory links or blog comments etc.
• The third thing to watch out for is your inbound link velocity. Is that category page getting new inbound links at 5 x the velocity of everyone else's sites in your niche.

If all your links are from diverse and (reasonably) reputable sources, and your inbound anchor text profile isn't over optimized, then you could have hundreds of links pointing to your category pages without an issue. If a big brand suddenly released a whole new range of merchandise then their category page/s would acquire 1000's of links without an issue.

Feel free to build links to any page you want to rank, just make sure they're good links. I also hope that your category page has it's onsite Seo is up to scratch. Having all of your meta data, heading tags, and content up to scratch will go a long way and it'll help you to get the most power out of your inbound links too. Hope this helps a little.

Hello Ted, yes they can hurt your site in a number of ways. Site owners tend to make these links anchor text rich, so if you've got a link in your footer saying 'Blue Widgets' then effectively you may have 30+ anchor text links from your own site. And yes, anchor text backlink ratios are calculated with the inclusion of internal links from your own site.

As you also mentioned, these footer links are draining the juice out of your main contextual links within in your main page's copy. Effectively, those nice internal silo links you send to your inner pages are being watered down by all of your dofollow footer links.

So do I make all of my footer and menu links no-follow then? And there's the problem. You won't find definitive answers on this because it's grey hat. Google will tell you that nofollow links are links that you don't want to vouch for. So are you going to send a signal to Google that tells them you don't trust internal links on your own site because you added the nofollow attribute to them?

And yes, whether the link is nofollow or not, it's still included in your overall anchor text ratios.

Now we move into PR sculpting. Google will tell you not to do that, and that PR sculpting doesn't work anyway. Is that because it still works very well indeed? Why are there so many authoritative sites that still use the nofollow attribute on some of their internal links? Don't they trust these internal links, or are they channeling link juice to the pages they want it diverted to.

If the rest of your link profile was pretty clean, and all of your offsite SEO was above board, then I think you'd be pretty unlucky to get a penalty from internal links coming from the footer of your own site.

One of my sites is ranking top three for many medium to semi-hard keywords that uses PR sculpting. Every single menu and footer link is nofollow. So the homepage has about 30 nofollow internal links on it, and only two contextual links in the main copy that link to the other inner pages that I wanted to rank.

That site has remained top 3 for over 1.5 years now without a hitch. This definitely isn't conclusive evidence by any means. The site itself is very strong and has great content too, but it seems as though all of the nofollow links haven't affected it negatively. And the inner pages that I sent all of the juice to are ranking #1 too. In my opinion PR sculpting does work but I also think it's dicey.

In your situation, I would maybe just dial down the exact match anchor text and change them to partial match links. Google do devalue your internal footer links to a certain degree but there's no black and white answer. If your site is big, then your generating 100's of anchor text links, and although they're devalued, it's still a bit dicey.

Hello James, The effects of a 301 from a penalised site are dependant on the site the 301 is pointing too. You say that your old site was penalised from over optimised anchor text. If you 301 this penalised domain to a more authoritative domain, then this domain will be able to handle all of the anchor text links you've effectively redirected to it via the 301.

Penalties do not pass through 301 redirects. People get confused about this because the new site often gets penalised too, but that's not because the 301 was from a penalised site. It's because the new site couldn't handle all of the keyword-rich anchor text backlinks either.

If penalties could pass through 301 redirects, then you could simply redirect a couple of penalised domains to an authority site like Amazon or eBay and cause them to be penalised. This is not the case.

Authoritative sites can easily absorb the influx of anchor text links from a 301 because their link profile is so strong and diverse. 1000's of exact match links won't do anything to them, it would probably help them.

There are many situations where 301's from penalised sites can help another site to rank better. If your penalised site was fairly small and you had a 100+ links with the same anchor text, then this domain would make for a great 301 to a bigger site. The bigger site would have to have very low anchor text ratios of about .5%. If all of the new domain's other links were generic and branded links, then the new 301 with 100+ anchor text links would do wonders for the new site. This is provided both sites are in the same niche, and the links were relevant, etc.

Another obvious caveat; if you're pointing 301's to a money site, then this is very risky business indeed. The site may flourish permanently with the new injection of links from the 301; it may also crash and burn a couple of weeks or months later.

In your situation, it sounds as though your new site wouldn't be able to handle the influx of new links via the 301 from your old site. Your new site is just too weak to cope with these potentially toxic links. I'd advise you to remove the 301. I'd also advise you to disassociate the old site completely from the new site too, and this means no 302 redirects or backlinks from the old site either.

As much as you probably don't want to hear this, I think those domains are pretty much useless. I'm also assuming (possibly incorrectly) that you have just bought these domains for around $10 because they were available.

If the domains don't have any on-topic inbound links or authority behind them, then you can't really do much with them except start from scratch. If they do have some established authority and topically relevant trust flow, then that's a completely different story.

Keyword rich domain names are more of a hindrance these days than a help. One of the main reasons is that every time you acquire a naked URL backlink to your site such as www.citystatephotos.com, it already has the main keyword in it. This makes it very difficult to control your link anchor text ratios in the long run.

Google is all about brands now and not keyword rich anchor text domain names. Yes, those domains are perfect candidates for a churn and burn spam campaign but they're not the type of domain names that you'd want to build a long-term stable Internet presence with.

They're also no good to build a PBN's on either because they have no juice going to them. The effort required to send them quality link juice would be far better off spent just improving the quality of your original site.

Definitely don't go redirecting them to your money site Mickey. Any 301's pointing to your site are always risky. If you are trying to maintain some high-level branding recognition with the domains then that may justify redirecting them to your money site, but I know that's not the case.

The only other reason you would want to 301 a domain to your site is because it had powerful on-topic inbound links pointing to it. That kind of redirect could help your site in a big way, but it's also very risky too. In general, you want to have the least amount of 301's pointing to your domains as possible. And if possible you want to have absolutely no 301's pointing to your site, especially if there's no authority or inbound links juice attached to them.

The joy of the new site eh. Sometimes no matter what you do this can't be helped and is just temporary. You've completely changed your site framework and URL structures so it may take a little time for Google to trust the site again.

But firstly, some blatantly obvious things like.

1. check robots.txt file for unintended blocks
2. check some of your main pages' canonical tags to ensure they are matching the real URL
3. check for nofollow & noindex tags in the source code on some of the main pages
4. check your country and language targeting hasn't changed in your hreflang="en-us" tags
5. check you haven't accidentally changed the country targeting in Webmaster tools
6. check a whole bunch of your old URLs to double check the redirect chain. Use a tool like https://httpstatus.io/ and paste in a bunch of them
7. check your htaccess file for some kind of accidental googlebot block ( RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^googlebot [NC,OR] ) (some devs use this)
8. check if any old trusted schema markup been completely taken out

As far as content length goes, I wouldn't worry about that as long as it is good content - but that also depends what niche your site is in and whether or not content length is a factor.

But you say, you have added an extra folder to your URLs. This is usually worse. Was your old URL:
example.com/clean-short.html   -  and now you have
example.com/useless-folder/another-one/now-long-full-keyword-here.html  - This URL structure would hurt your rankings no matter what you do.

If you have changed all of the following it will be a bumpy ride:

1. your URL structure and the keywords in it
2. your main title tag
3. the content of your H1 & H2 tags

Share your URL if you want some further advice as someone may see something very obvious that you've overlooked, but without seeing the live site it makes it harder to help.