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When creating a redirect map for a site re-build or domain change, it is necessary to include .PDFs or any other non-HTML URLs? Do PDFs even carry "seo juice" over? When switching CMS, does it even matter to include them?

Thanks!

Thank you for your response!

Unfortunately, we're not working within wordpress, so it's not as simple. The article you referenced was very easy to follow but im concerned that it's a bit outdated since it was from 2010 and we all know best practices change. I'm hoping I can use it as a basic guide to share with my dev team. Thanks!

Hi Brett, thanks for the response. I am on Chrome in Windows. This is the first time that I have noticed a page cached for more than 72 hours after a site update.

of course! so my recommendation would be to inspect the page (with chrome dev tools) and see if it is styled as an H1, and if it isn't styled as a true H1, I would add that as a task to your backlog but I wouldn't suggest that you make it higher priority then other more important ranking factors. That being said, most of these SEO best practice recommendations come from people doing tests and identifying trends, so there is no 100% solid answer that "yes you NEED it to be styled as a true H1" or "no it does not matter at all".

My personal opinion is that it still carries some value, so if you can figure it out, I would recommend that you do have it read as a true H1 tag. Even if it does not impact your rankings significantly, I think that your site will be better off following all recommended best practices.

Title Tags = Page Titles (if you're using a CMS, it is usually called page title, not title tag).Your title tag is the name that appears on your browser tab. This is one of the first places that search engine spiders crawl to see what a page is about. When it comes to SERP ranking, your title tag has far far more of an influence then the H1 does. In fact, so many people used to keyword stuff the H1 and use it for spam, that it no longer has much of impact at all, if any. The H1 of a page is now more intended for the user to get a clear idea of what they are about to read, as well as styling of your pages. Moz recommends the following format for your title tag:  Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. However, if your title tag doesn't match what content of the page is about, than you're spamming.

Here's an example: Let's say you have a page about why organic apples are the best, and you sell organic fruit and your brand name is organics (which is probably a real brand name but oh well, it's for this example). Your title tag (page title) could be this: Why Organic Apples Are Better - Premium Organic Fruit | Organics. But your H1 could be: "Why You Should Start Eating Organic Apples Only" or "Why You Should Avoid Non-Organic Apples" and it would be the first thing on-page.

I typically see browsers refresh at 48 hours the longest. We pushed some changes through production about a week ago and Chrome still has the old version cached. I'm seeing some similar posts and wonder if Google is up to something and we are starting to "cache" on (pun intended)?

Hello,

In most cases I would simply recommend a 301 redirect map to update your domain, if you're sticking with the same host. There are some safety steps here, like doing them gradually, starting with pages that have lower traffic,etc.. (here's a youtube video from Matt Cutts on how to change your domain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wATxftE8ooE)

However, you mentioned that your product offerings are different -- the question here is _how different _? You could do the redirect, but if Google now notices that your main content and site objective are entirely different than it used to be, than it is essentially a new site and you may not have those rankings carried over. If it's simply that your content and products are the same or similar, but you would like your domain name to better represent your site, then go ahead and implement the redirect, just make sure that you have your site claimed and verified in search console first and watch that video from google on the topic.

I find that the advice for multi-language sites is always tied with multi-region, but what about US only sites that want to be multi-lingual?

What are the best practice recommendations there? HREFLANG tags necessary? TLDs? Do you need to purchase yoursite.us , yoursite.sp , etc.. or would yoursite.com/en yoursite.com/sp suffice? Should the extensions be region based even if the language is the only difference?

Title Tags = Page Titles (if you're using a CMS, it is usually called page title, not title tag).Your title tag is the name that appears on your browser tab. This is one of the first places that search engine spiders crawl to see what a page is about. When it comes to SERP ranking, your title tag has far far more of an influence then the H1 does. In fact, so many people used to keyword stuff the H1 and use it for spam, that it no longer has much of impact at all, if any. The H1 of a page is now more intended for the user to get a clear idea of what they are about to read, as well as styling of your pages. Moz recommends the following format for your title tag:  Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. However, if your title tag doesn't match what content of the page is about, than you're spamming.

Here's an example: Let's say you have a page about why organic apples are the best, and you sell organic fruit and your brand name is organics (which is probably a real brand name but oh well, it's for this example). Your title tag (page title) could be this: Why Organic Apples Are Better - Premium Organic Fruit | Organics. But your H1 could be: "Why You Should Start Eating Organic Apples Only" or "Why You Should Avoid Non-Organic Apples" and it would be the first thing on-page.