This is the best response. Others have cited using robots.txt, that's a bad idea IMO. Robots.txt will stop Google from crawling pages, Meta no-index directs Google not to index a page. If Google can't crawl a page (due to robots.txt) then they won't be able to 'find' the no-index directive. As Jordan says, no-index should come first. When all pages are de-indexed, then OP can begin to think about robots.txt as suggested by Rajesh. OP could also combine Meta no-index with status code 410 (gone) to make it a stronger signal - though this is inadvisable with OP's situation (where the site will remain live for users, but be gone from Google). In the end, Jordan's reply is the best one which has been left here

A final note might be that, instead of editing the HTML of all OPs pages, OP could fire no-index though x-robots via the HTTP header (which is often more scaleable)

The default URL is what you should change. It is the setting which controls how the landing pages are written in the GA interface. It is necessarry because Google Analytics (STILL) does not track protocol (only hostname and page paths, which is really annoying!)

If GA would just track protocol, all of this could be handled for you automatically. Since that's not the case, you have to amend this property setting

You could just exempt Googlebot's user-agent from your paywalling mechanism. Theoretically users could use Chrome extensions to alter their own user-agent to 'Googlebot' and thereby evade your paywall, but Joe average user isn't going to do this (Ad-blocker usage is far more common than user-agent evasion)

1.) It depends on Google's perception of what has happened, you may or may not get those rankings back (ever)

i. If Google applied 'active' ranking reductions (usually signified by a penalty message in Google Search Console) then the disavow work alone wouldn't work, you'd also need to submit a reconsideration request. For a recon request to go through, especially a links one, it ranges from 2 weeks to 4 months for them to even respond to it (the higher range is usually for repeat offenders)

ii. If Google applied active ranking reductions without serving you a penalty notice, the disavow on its own should be processed relatively quickly and rankings should begin returning a week or two after the disavow is processed. Note that this is the rarest circumstance, Google almost never apply active ranking reductions without also sending a penalty notification

iii. If Google didn't apply any active ranking reductions, it simply means that links which used to count - no longer pass SEO authority. Doing a disavow doesn't magically bring the authority back (so in this situation you don't see ranking gains from disavow work, this would be called an algorithmic devaluation - not a penalty)

Items (i) and (iii) are infinitely more commonplace than (ii), which is extremely rare

2.) Build good links to replace the crappy ones you have lost

I'm pretty sure it's variable and depends on Google's perceived severity of infraction. I've seen disavow lists that never make a difference one way or the other, and ones where the list has been digested and I'm seeing movements within the next few days. Usually speaking, I find that if there's absolute zero impact for a couple of weeks, it's time to stop waiting as the list has probably been rejected, discarded or the work was incorrect and thus it had no impact. It's fairly unusual to submit a disavow, wait for weeks or months and then suddenly it kicks in. In my experience, they're relatively quick-acting! If you have waited nearly half a year I'd say that more waiting isn't going to help

Yeah Google is perfectly able to interpret an H2 as a sub-heading.  It's more of a directive than an absolute rule, for example if you crammed loads of H2s into your footer and made them really small, Google would be able to tell that the H2 was being deployed illegitimately

In your case you seem to be using the H2 correctly. I think it adds some space to add a little extra context to your pages, I think that's a really good idea! I might use the space a little differently though

This is what you have:

H1: Flavour & Chidinma – 40 Yrs

H2: 40 Yrs by Flavour & Chidinma - Mp3 Download

They essentially say exactly the same thing just with the difference of "MP3 Download"

I might use the H1 more as the news heading and the H2 for the additional context of what exactly the reader will be getting

H1: Flavour and Chidinma Release 40yrs Everlasting EP

H2: 40 Yrs by Flavour & Chidinma - Mp3 Download & Video

I gave the page a schema scan:

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fxclusiveloaded.com%2Fflavour-chidinma-40-yrs%2F

Nice usage of Article schema. You could also think about using AudioObject schema for the MP3 download. Google have recently come out and said that whilst some schemas don't result in visual changes in the SERPs, they're still a good structural framework for Google to work with (in terms of contextualising information) so usually I always push for the maximum Schema.org implementation possible

Did you know that MP3 files also contain their own Meta data, inside of the file? You can inspect and modify the Meta data with industry-standard audio-editing software, or simple applications such as MP3Tag

This is what your MP3 file looks like in terms of the internal MP3-tagging Meta:

Screenshot: https://d.pr/i/iUxtv0.png

I have boxed in red the field "Album Artist" which has not been filled out. Most media players and media apps, actually categorise music into artists by the "Album Artist" field and not by the "Artist" field (makes no sense, I know!)

You might consider copying the Artist text into the Album Artist field and re-saving the file, then re-uploading it. There are a lot of sites that illegally rip music and upload it in hopes of search rankings and ad-revenue. Much of the time, those sites fail to correctly fill out their MP3 file Meta (sometimes everything is 100% blank) and that's often a piracy signal

I don't think that's what your doing, but it might pay to verify you have correctly amended MP3 Meta before uploading the files to your site (especially as a UX thing, if people download the MP3 and then can't find it on their media player then it won't get many listens)

Fun track by the way, thanks for the listen

It's still quite important and helps Google to contextualize a page effectively. If you try to have an H1 without giving it the proper / normal prominence, Google will be wise to that and they will simply devalue your H1. Either have one loud and proud, or don't bother

Not a problem

How long has it been since you uploaded the images? Implementation in Google's SERPs isn't instant

There are three potential issues

1. You haven't waited long enough

2. Your organisation has had staff turn-over and through time multiple GMB listings were created for you. The one you have the logins to, might be the wrong one

3. Your brand's search entity is not yet considered to be important enough to solicit the "see photos" box for your knowledge panel

From the images it seems as if you represent the Specsavers inside of Broadway Sydney (a shopping mall, I think) in Australia (New South Wales?)

I actually am seeing the photos now, so maybe this issue is no longer a problem for you (most likely that #1 applied, at the time you authored your question - I think we can rule out #3 as it's Specsavers)

Check this

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=specsavers%20broadway%20sydney

• https://d.pr/i/OGO9eL.png (SERP screenshot)

That's using Australian Google (Google.com.au) but the screenshot is taken from a UK IP address

I switched to a Melbourne IP address (Aus) using Surfshark and I saw the same thing. My thought is, this is working now and you just hadn't waited quite long enough for the store images to be appended to your brand SERP

A good way to check would be to load one of your client's pages (which is utilising barba.js) and turn off JavaScript using the Web Developer plugin for Chrome - then reload the page and play spot the difference

If pages look very bare or nothing really loads without JS, you could have a problem. Google can penetrate and crawl JS (by using headless browsing and script execution) - but they don't do this all the time, or for everyone

I find that sites which contain more for Google to read in the non-modified source code (before scripts execute and generated items are rendered) tend to perform better in Google's SERPs (still, yes - in 2019)

This schema defines the name of your business, it should just contain your business name (and nothing else)

"Name:_ This is the name of the business you are talking about_"

If the name of your business (legally, the name you trade with) is "ABC Dental", then this should be set to "ABC Dental"

Editing your business name for SEO is something that Google frowns upon at the GMB / schema level. Lots of the information which affects a businesses' prominence in the SERPs is cross-fed from schema, but also from Google My Business

• https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/20273/google-my-business-tips/

For Google My Business, it's frowned upon to conjoin your location and business name (indeed this can cause GMB penalties)

"[Don't] Stuff only keywords in the title: Don’t take the advice above badly. If you have multiple keywords, just focus on the main one and keep the secondary ones for your website’s pages. A good example of keyword stuffing which you should avoid is the following: “Arcadia: Hotel, Motel, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Restaurant in London. Google doesn’t like that and will often hard suspend pages that do this, so avoid it." ~ Cognitive SEO

• https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB

"Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your shop front, website, stationery and as known to customers. Accurately representing your business name helps customers find your business online.

_Add additional details like address and/or service area, opening hours and category in the other sections of your business information. _

For example, if you were creating a listing for a 24-hour coffee shop in Southampton city centre called Shelly’s Coffee, you would enter that business information as:

• Business name: Shelly’s Coffee
• Address: 324 Poppy Street, Southampton
• Hours: Open 24 hours
• Category: Coffee shop

Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended. Refer to the specific examples below to determine what you can and can't include in your business name." ~ Google

Since Google frown on building out the business name with keywords (yes, EVEN location based ones) for GMB, and since LocalBusiness schema and GMB data serve similar functions for Google - why would they think any differently?

As such I'd personally not include your location in your business name specifically (either through schema or on GMB) as the benefit of doing so will be slight, whilst the risks may be more substantial (GMB / rich snippet spam penalties)

That does sound tricky. Maybe you could consider them to be sub-events

• https://schema.org/Event
• https://schema.org/superEvent
• https://schema.org/subEvents

... but I am unsure as to whether subEvents can have specified dates (start / end)

I might look more to something like EventSeries

• https://schema.org/EventSeries

"An EventSeries is a collection of events that share some unifying characteristic. For example, "The Olympic Games" is a series, which is repeated regularly. The "2012 London Olympics" can be presented both as an Event in the series "Olympic Games", and as an EventSeries that included a number of sporting competitions as Events.

The nature of the association between the events in an EventSeries can vary, but typical examples could include a thematic event series (e.g. topical meetups or classes), or a series of regular events that share a location, attendee group and/or organizers."

This would seem to be a better schema to use in your situation.

This is the JSON-LD example of implementation from Schema.org:

• https://d.pr/f/WDYKni.txt (TXT file)

It looks like it could be re-engineered to do what you want

Whilst Google don't explicitly state that they support EventSeries yet, IMO their documentation cycle for what they do support is wildly out of whack. I have seen front-end instances of them experimenting with loads of schema that isn't in their official documentation. As such I wouldn't be overly, dramatically bothered by that. At the end of the day, the home of schema is Schema.org. I actually often push for schema which Google don't explicitly state that they cover, and I'm often pleasantly surprised

It doesn't always yield fancy rich-snippets, but it does help Google to gain contextual awareness and rank pages more appropriately. In fact you can read about that here: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-follow-our-structured-data-requirements-to-ensure-rich-result-eligibility/329679/

"Independently, you’re always welcome to use structured data to provide better machine readable context for your pages. Which may not always result in visible changes, but can still help our systems to show your pages for relevant queries."