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In analytics you can't - referrer will always be just facebook.com
If it's a private profile in facebook which posted the link, you will probably never now.
If it's a public one - you could try searching indexed pages of facebook in google like: "title of your landingpage" site:facebook.com or "url-of-your-site" site:facebook.com - but I doubt it will work
Hi Justin,
It depends a bit on where these links are & on how your site is build.
In general - if these links are in the navigation, footer, ...etc (elements which are called on each page) - you probably only need to change them once and then it is ok for the full site.
If these links are inside articles, you will probably have to update them manually. It sometimes is possible to do something like 'find/replace' - so you could replace (as example) all references from zenory.com to zenory.co.nz (for the NZ version) - but again it depends a bit on the platform.
Check with the one who has build your website - changing links manually can be a very annoying & time consuming job (depending on the number of links that need to be changed). A programmer can sometimes find a solution to automate part of it.
rgds,
Dirk
No difference for SEO; main difference is the Green bar which is displayed for Extended SSL certifcates - these are the ones which tend to be more expensive than the "standard" ones - on top of that they don't allow wildcards - so you'll need a certificate for each subdomain. Could increase confidence of your visitors in your site - but as stated before - no direct SEO impact.
Dirk
Hi Pete,
I assume that with h tags you mean H1, H2, .. tags? There is not really a need to add these to the links. Adding theme based crosslinks will probably a better strategy.
You could also consider syndicating content - I've seen quite a lot of examples where DIY stores or fertiliser companies created content, both text and video (how to paint the ceiling / how to keep your lawn in top condition / ...) that was distributed on 3rd party sites (with the same topics). Even if the links on these pages are sometimes nofollow - it still creates brand awareness/trust and probably leads/sales as well.
If I take the sample product page - I would however put some intro text at the top of the page. I guess most people who want to hire a tool like a pressure washer have a certain task in their head, but wouldn't directly know which type to choose. I would add a kind of guide at the top of the page (which type of pressure washer do I need) - you have an article about it, but the title is only about the pressure you need ("Pressure washing guide - Which psi do I need?"). Same applies to "Power cleaning techniques using a pressure washer" - people look for "how to use a pressure washer". Videos on how to use these tools are also great (it always seems so easy to use them until you try yourself...).
Apart from the keyword research already mentioned, ask the sales persons in the stores what the typical questions are that people have when they come to the shop - these questions are excellent titles for your articles.
rgds,
Dirk
Also be careful with the hidden text at the bottom (Read more about our Pressure washing services) - in 2013 Matt Cutts indicated that this was ok for SEO (http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-hidden-text-using-expandable-sections-youll-be-in-good-shape-167753) - however end of 2014 John Muller indicated that it's not the best strategy (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html).
Hi Guilherme,
It seems highly unlikely that your traffic if it was 100k/day that it would consist only of robot visits. Are you absolutely sure that all the sections of your site are still measured by Analytics? I would suspect that you are currently only measuring one section of your site (based on session duration and number of pages I would almost guess that it would be something like a forum).
You say you did not see a difference in Webmaster tools. I don't know how much traffic you get from Google, but is the traffic you're getting in Webmaster tools closer to 2K clicks /day or to 100K clicks/day?
Did you check your statistics the day the drop occurred (set view to "hour") - was the drop very sudden (in one hour), or did it just disappear during the day?
Without more info it's difficult to help - could you sent your url in a private message so I could check if your analytics is ok?
rgds,
Dirk
Hi
The way you want to implement seems to be correct - not sure however if I would add the country to the language (although most Swedish people live in Sweden - you might want to attract all the Swedish speakers to the swedish version of your site rather than the en version) - so I would rather use hreflang="se"
If you implement it - you can always try and check a few url's to see if it's ok using this tool
rgds,
Dirk
It doesn't really matter where you put the sitemap - as long as the search engines are able to find them.
You can indicate the location in Webmaster tools - or in the robots.txt file. (you need to validate each domain & subdomain in WMT).
Dirk
Hi,
If these files are used to render the content on screen - it's not a good idea to block these files from indexing.
Official Google recommendation is to allow these files to be indexed:
"If resources like JavaScript or CSS in separate files are blocked (say, with robots.txt) so that Googlebot can’t retrieve them, our indexing systems won’t be able to see your site like an average user. We recommend allowing Googlebot to retrieve JavaScript and CSS so that your content can be indexed better. "
Source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2014/05/understanding-web-pages-better.html
Rgds,
Dirk
Blocking access to your site for foreign visitors won't change anything for your "real" bounce rate. The measured bounce rate will decrease in Analytics, but these visitors will still bounce when they get to your website.
If you're using a generic domain extension - you can indicate in Webmastertools that you are targeting the local UK market (if you use a .uk extension this is automatically the case).
I wouldn't worry too much about this bounce rate - as long as the bounce rate (and time/visit - time on page) for your UK visitors is ok
rgds
Dirk
In that case it's indeed better to keep the country specific language version
Hreflang will certainly help -however it's a bit confusing how you put in in your question. Hreflang is not put on domain but on page level:
Australian pages:
United States pages:
UK pages:
=> hreflang needs to be put on every page (you can test some sample pages here: http://flang.dejanseo.com.au/
Apart from hreflang - register each folder in WMT & target it to the specific country.
So set domain.com/uk/ to specifically target UK.
Apart from that - make sure you adapt the text to the "local" English (so UK english for uk...etc) & use proper currencies & provide local contact detailes. Build local links for each subfolder.
If you do this you should be fine
Dirk
I checked your site with Screaming Frog - the issue with the product compare is solved. There is still a problem with the wishlist.
Example http://www.stopwobble.com/wobble-wedge-white-hard-300-wedges.html - if you look at the source there are links to https://www.stopwobble.com/wishlist/index/add/product/81170/form_key/XdNIJWsLMTHVFpVh/ which still give 302
You should also correct links of type http://www.stopwobble.com/sales/order/history/ in your HTML
Don't forget that Moz Crawl is only once a week - so the errors will only disappear next crawl.
rgds,
Dirk
This should normally be possible - you have to create 3 views to which you add a custom filter based on ip address; the analytics site provides an example on how to do this: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1034840?hl=en (the example is for excluding internal traffic - but you can easily change that to include only the traffic from these specific ip addresses). Not sure if this is what you're looking for
You could also use other filters or even a custom field to set up the filter (you can find the full list of available filters on the same link) - so as soon as a customer is identified you pass the custom field to Analytics which can then use it to count the visit to the corresponding view.
Hope this helps.
Dirk
Hi Richard,
There should be no concern on duplicate content - in fact if you copy the site the biggest risk you run is that people will still land on the US version rather than the Canadian one (check this article on webmaster blog on international duplicate content)
Things you should do:
1. In webmastertools set the preferred country for each of the sites (under Search Traffic > International Targetting)
If you use a .ca extension for the Canadian site this is not necessary - it is automatically set to target Canada
2. Use hreflang on each of the pages - in the head of each page add (of course you need to adapt the url's to your specific situation)
If you want other countries (outside US & Canada) to visit the American rather than the Canadian site you could also add:
You can check some pages here to see if implementation is ok.
3. Set the language tag in html - for Canada - for the US version
Alternative would be to use for US / for Canada
4. Localize your content (as you already intended to do). It is however not strictly necessary to change all the titles & descriptions just for the sake of changing them - if the content has exactly the same meaning in en-ca & en-us it is not absolutely necessary to change it. Changing folders / paths - again - if it more logical to structure your content that way for Canadian users do it - but again not strictly necessary. Metrics & prices are changes which are absolutely necessary. Local contact details & about us would be good as well.
5. You could consider local (Canadian) hosting - although a local ip isn't a very strong signal anymore.
6. Try to build "local"(=Canadian) links to the .ca domain.
Interesting readings:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html https://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2011/03/01/how-to-tell-bing-your-websites-country-and-language/
https://moz.com/blog/5-dos-and-donts-of-international-seo https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Oops - just noticed that I had an error in the first reply and didn't check the correct code. Mea culpa.
Hi
On first sight I would guess your site has been hacked - do these url's exist when you try them?
Dirk
Hi Nathan,
I checked a few pages on the site with the Tag Assistant plugin for Chrome - and there is no tracking code to be found.
Are you sure that the data you see in Analytics is correct (it could as well be referral spam which is being recorded). I have a personal domain with no Analytics code (removed 2 months ago) & still get 20/30 visits/day tracked in the analytics account (mainly referral spam)
rgds,
Dirk
Hi Dan
Sorry - my mistake - when I was replying I had the href lang tag in mind. Check the link in Lynn's answer.
Dirk
Hi Rob
Wanted to reply you on your previous question but than I noticed the new one. I have the impressions that your new site has compatibility issues with the different plugins you use.
I tried to check your site with different external tools (web-sniffer.net - first time 302 status but no details / webpagetest.org - check: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/151013_3E_13EQ/ - failed & http://www.webpagetest.org/result/151013_1P_14V3/1/details/ - check the 302 in the first line ) - and results are not consistent. Apart from that - as mentioned previously - when checking your site in Firefox I can see the Analytics snippet in the source - when I try the same thing in Chrome the snippet is not present.
The cached version of your site (homepage) isn't complete - check http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_cThj8msp3EJ:www.advanced-driving.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=be#da-page_in_widget-4 - are you blocking some js/css files in your robots.txt
Try fetching pages like Google in WMT (and with the other tools) and check the results - you could try to enable/disable each module to see if results change.
Dirk
Hi,
I can't access your site in Belgium - I guess you are redirecting your users based on ip address. If , like me, they are not located in your target country they are 302 redirected to https://www.woofadvisor.com/holding-page.php and there is only 1 page that is indexed.
Not sure which country you are actually targeting - but could it be that you're accidentally redirecting Google bot as well?
Check also this article from Google on ip based targeting.
rgds
Dirk
Hi,
I think performance might be the main issue for your site. Check the pagespeed insights for desktop & mobile - it took the server 3.7s (!) to react. The result on Webpagetest.org is even worse 12.5s time to first byte. As you can read in this article - time to first byte seem to have a correlation with the ranking of the site. Check if your server is properly configured & sized. With these load times it's quite possible that Google refuses to index your heaviest pages as they offer a degraded user performance. Another reason could be that Google bot is not going to waste it's time waiting for your server to respond when crawling your pages.
There are some other quick wins here - compress your code, optimize images, use caching, combine css & js files, ... can all help to improve the overall performance of your pages - check these articles from Google.
A second issue is the duplicate content you have on the site - each page seems to exist in a http & https version - better to keep one & redirect the other one to the chosen version (I imagine you would want to redirect the http to the https version)
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Hi Antonio,
Not sure which language you prefer - but you can find some sample codes here: https://developers.google.com/webmaster-tools/v3/samples - I tried the python example which was quite well documented inside the code, I guess it's the same for the other languages. If I have some time I could give it a try - but it won't be before the end of next week (and based on python)
Dirk
Hi,
When I try the URL http://bmiresearch.com/press both in my browser and on web-sniffer.net it gives a 200 status code & is not redirected to http://www.bmiresearch.com/press.
It seems that somethings wrong with your redirect rule.
rgds,
Dirk
No - Google is just showing how slow it is when updating data in Webmaster tools.
Don't worry - if you wait long enough they'll go away. You could also mark them as solved (do this only if you are sure that there are no links pointing to these pages - to check if your internal linking is ok Screaming Frog is great tool)
Dirk
Your href lang tags don't seem to be ok - you should include all tags on all versions (incl. the own language - so the es version of the page should also include the es version of hreflang:
The UK version seems to have the es tag twice - remove the 2nd one.
You can check the implementation here: http://flang.dejanseo.com.au/ - a generator can be found here: http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/
Not sure if it's going to solve your problem - but with your current implementation I fear you're sending mixed signals to Google.
Dirk
410 & 404's are treated almost the same way by bots (the 410 just gives a stronger indication that the page is gone forever) - check this article http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-explains-differences-404-410-status-codes-189060 - so a 410 is also a valable option. As most sites already have a custom 404 page I guess the 404 solution is the easiest one;
I forgot to mention in my first reply - but there is also a good article on out-of-stock products on Moz: https://moz.com/blog/how-should-you-handle-expired-content
Dirk
Hi Dan,
You already got an excellent reply to this question from Andy
Dirk
A good checklist on site migration can be found here: http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
Hope this helps,
Dirk
A bit to long to answer this here - you can find a detailed explanation here:
http://www.verticalrail.com/kb/filter-in-google-analytics-to-track-subdomains/
The filters you will need:
Subdomain only shop.domain.com
Only www: www.domain.com
Both domains - no filter necessary - unless you have a 3rd subdomain you don't want in the reporting:
www & shop: (www|shop).domain.com
Dirk
Why don't you use the domain.com to serve a "choose language" page - store the choice in the cookie and for subsequent visits redirect to the chosen language. Example: http://www.volvocars.com. This is a pretty standard approach in Belgium to serve both Dutch/French content on the same domain.
rgds,
Dirk
For the url's - my advice would be: if it ain't broken - don't fix it. While static url's may be the best situation - Google is quite capable to analyse the parameters in the url.
You could fix the url's & put 301 from the old to the new - but if the products rank well on the current url I wouldn't touch them. Check also this old post on webmaster central : http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html
While the main topic is unrelated to your question - this article http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html also gives you insight on how Google deals with parameters in the url.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
If Google for some reason chooses another url as the preferred version rather than the canonical I think you can assume that links to the duplicates are counted as links to the preferred version - no hard evidence to confirm this however.
If you check the Best Practices
http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm.So if possible - rather link to the canonical than the parameter version.
On duplicate content in general - there is an interesting article on Kissmetrics - https://blog.kissmetrics.com/myths-about-duplicate-content/
Dirk
Don't forget that . & ? have a specific meaning within regex - if you want to use them for pattern matching you will have to escape them. Also be aware that not all bots are capable of interpreting regex in robots.txt - you might want to be more explicit on the user agent - only using regex for Google bot.
User-agent: Googlebot
#disallowing page.php and any parameters after it
disallow: /page.php
#but leaving anything that starts with par1=ABC
allow: page.php?par1=ABC
Dirk
Hi,
We all had to start somewhere. There is a lot of useful content on Moz (check the beginners guide for starters) & there is off course the q&a. For the budget you mentioned you should be able to get some decent SEO company helping you out.
On the robots.txt - it is in the root of your website: www.carshippingcarriers.com/robots.txtYour javascript is located in the /wp-includes/ folder - however in the 2nd line of your robots file you put
Disallow: /wp-includes/
I would take-out this line.
New design looks clean & content is better to read and is closer to the top. You moved your form to the bottom. Personally I would keep it on the top (there is sufficient place on the main image)
Page speed hasn't really improved mainly because of the images: the image http://www.carshippingcarriers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/IMG_0528.jpg is high-res & much too big. Same for http://www.carshippingcarriers.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_0538.jpg & your main image. Resize & use a tool like https://compressor.io/ (free) to compress them even further.
Check also Pagespeed insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.carshippingcarriers.com%2F&tab=desktop - score is not too bad - but you could enable caching for static resources & minify your css/js/html files (the tool does this for you - you can download the optimised js/css at the bottom of the page.
From usability perspective - the links on the green background are blue rendering difficult to read.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
The links to the images do not seem to work.
If you modified the Analytics code - my first idea would be to check if the tags are present on all the pages - you can do this quite easily using a customer filter in Screaming Frog. Set the Analytics on "hour" view - during the period of transition - and see if there is a sudden drop of traffic at a specific point in time - if this is the case - it's almost certain that the drop is related to a problem with the Analytics tag.
Check Analytics reports- check if the drop is equal in all sections or if the drop is significant in some sections - which could give you an indication of where to look. If you're site has a structured url - the easiest way to check this would be in the Audience report > Site Content > Content Drilldown.
Check the pages with issues with the Chrome Plugin for Analytics - check if Analytics is collecting data on these pages - you could also consider using the Analytics Debugger plugin
Dirk
One sitemap is ok from technical perspective (as long as it doesn't become to long =>50K URLs). For reporting it is interesting to split per country - this way it's easier in WMT to check if you have indexing problems on a specific country version.
Dirk
PS There is a typo in my initial answer for UK - the language has to be en-uk & not en-us
You could add them to the robots.txt but it you have to remember that Google will only read the first 500kb (source) - as far as I understand with the number of url's you want to block you'll pass this limit.
As Google bot is able to understand basic regex expressions it's probably better to use regex (you will probably be able to block all these url's with a few lines of code.
More info here & on Moz: https://moz.com/blog/interactive-guide-to-robots-txt
Dirk
The moment they revoke your access it's exactly that - you won't be able to access the data from that specific account.
Dirk
Hi Becky,
You are correct - normally if a tag is fired it won't be counted as bounce (unless you set "noninteraction=true" - check https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068#NonInteractionEvents)
Dirk
In addition to Ria's answer - make them noindex/follow.
If these pages (2/3...etc) would have any value to be included in the SERP's you could consider using rel next/previous - indicating that these pages belong together and should be considered as one page. The way I understand your question - the noindex/follow is probably a better solution.
Dirk
Hi,
In the example you mentioned the query parameter would be q - as your syntax is domain.com/search?q=keyword - check here for more info: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1012264?hl=en#Params
(I imagine you gave the link as example as the site isn't tagged for Google Analytics)
Dirk
We did something similar in the past. Changing the servers won't make any difference as long as the front-end part isn't changing. Google doesn't care if your site is running on one or multiple servers, or if two parts of the sites are running on different technology, as long as the user experience is not affected.
If you are changing your URL structure at the same time - there are some things you will have to check. There was a post on Moz a few years ago on site migrations that could help. Basically you will have to check that all your current url's are properly redirected to the new ones and that performance of the new site is ok.
Dirk
Hi,
Did a quick check - some remarks.
1. Homepage - very heavy to load (http://www.webpagetest.org/result/151007_D6_180W/ ) - important text at the bottom and difficult to read due to the background image - part of the text/links is hidden behind images which isn't exactly what Google likes.
2 A lot of content is on your site is about new cars - not sure if this is the best strategy to follow. You will never be best in class for this. The links inside this part to your "main" content look a bit artificial. I would rather build content around shipping cars (what is the most expensive car you ever shipped, the strangest car, remarkable stories...etc) - provide content about the shipping process (the different steps, illustrate how you take care of the cars during shipment,...etc which is much more related to your core business. Check what the main concerns of your customers are and build content around this. Use tools like Semrush to checkout the keywords that are generating the traffic for your competitors and build content around them as well.
3. Your competitor's site might be ugly and quite light in content - it charges much faster and has all the content that counts visible upfront. He has about 1200 follow links to his site - you have about 100 - so you might want to work on some linkbuilding (you will find plenty of resources on this topic here on Moz). His links seem to be quite (over) optimised - so it's possible he's buying them.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
You could create a segment that contains only people that have visited page x. If you define your goal as all people who have reached page y and you filter to show only the segment you will see only the conversions for those who first went to x and then somehow came to page y.
Don't have hard evidence - but from my personal perspective: My browser is set to be-nl (Belgium)- when I'm in the Netherlands (nl-nl) I am automatically redirected to google.nl & all the results I get are from the Netherlands (even for international sites were Dutch Belgian versions exist). Browser language will have an impact - but in my opinion proximity will be more important.
Dirk
Href lang tags should be reciprocal: If page A links to page B, page B must link back to page A, otherwise the annotations may not be interpreted correctly (source: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/troubleshooting-hreflang-annotations-in.html)
Example: suppose http://www.example.com/es/myspanishpage.htm contains the spanish content & http://www.example.com/en/myenglishpage.htm the english version both url's should have the hreflang tags:
The error you get indicates that you tagged only one version & forgot to tag the other one.
You can check here if implementation is correct: http://flang.dejanseo.com.au/
Hope this helps.
Dirk
Not sure why you would want to do that. If you want to know if it works - give it a try & check with the Google Analytics plugin for Chrome if the correct data is measured
Dirk
There is a very useful & detailed post on site migration on Moz - I used on two previous migrations and it worked great (no traffic drop at all) - check https://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
Dirk
For the redirect check http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21417263/htaccess-add-remove-trailing-slash-from-url :
Right below the "RewriteEngine On" line in your .htaccess file, add:
<code>RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-f
RewriteRule^(.*[^/])$ /$1/[L,R=301]</code>
You also have redirect chains on your site:
Example page: http://www.youpack.com.au/shipping-container-sales-commercial/ links to http://www.youpack.com.au/?p=564 301 redirects to http://www.youpack.com.au/the-low-down-on-self-pack-removals/ 301' redirects to http://www.youpack.com.au/stamp-the-low-down-on-self-pack-removals-2/ = error 404
Dirk