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Hemblem,
Although you're redesigning the site, I actually don't recommend using a 302 redirect during the 'redesign' process, as it can have disastrous effects on search engine rankings. I would prefer that you keep the current website up and running: and then 301 redirecting the appropriate pages when the site is ready to go live.
I realize that you want to do, but I have seen too many websites have problems getting things straightened out with the search engines to do what you're suggesting.
i would definitely not change the URLs. Once a page is crawled and indexed, you should leave it there--and update that page as necessary. Other sites may link to it (and you may then lose the links or they'll to 404 errors) if you change the URL. You may also have social media links out there to the article that are shared. If someone clicks on it from social media, then it would then go to an old story if you change the URL.
Generally it's better to NOT change the URL of the page unless it's a new story, requiring a new article. If it's the same story, then you should just update the current URL.
When you say "many" domains, I'm not sure how many you're talking about. Generally speaking, if it's over about 50 domains then you may run into issues with Google, as I've seen penalties for redirecting too many domains.
Also, keep in mind that redirecting a domain won't magically make that page rank any better or help it at all. If the keyword domain has previous history and links, then it could potentially help--but otherwise it won't. When it comes to domains, you're going to be better off actually setting up a site on that domain than just redirecting it to an internal page. There may still be some type-in traffic, but most likely not with the examples you've given.
The best thing to do is, in fact, to redirect it to the most appropriate page on your site--but don't expect it to help any when it comes to rankings. And, if you redirect too many, it may actually hurt your site.
In order to understand your question, can you give me more information? What crawler are you using? What do the URLs look like? You can give an example, just remove the domain name if you like.
We generally recommend keeping all of that content on the website, there are only a few cases where you would want to remove the content (for example if there are copyright or legal issues involved). Your site, over time, will become larger, and this is a good thing.
Fashion trends tend to come back, so in 5 or 10 years if you still have that content on the site it may become relevant again. And, if it's been there for 10 years then there is a good chance that it will rank well--because it's been there 10 years and it's trusted.
Overall, it's not going to have a huge impact on SEO one way or the other--but keep in mind that the links generated are going to typically be 301 Permanent Redirects. Whenever you have a 301 redirect you may lose some overall link value. So, for example, if your site's blog post is shared on another site, there will be a link to your blog post--and the link will be a 301 redirect. You'll lose some link value. How much link value is lost is debatable, but there will be some lost.
When we share links we typically want to share the full URL, and not a shortened URL that is a redirect.
I'm not sure where you're seeing these crawl errors. Most likely, though, they are links in your website where you list your contact information (your email address). So, the pages that list sales@intercallsystems.com might have the link to your email coded wrong.
The keyword in the URL is a search engine ranking factor, but is a such a small part of the overall algorithm of Google that I wouldn't change the URL. If the page is indexed, then really there's no need to change it only for search engine ranking purposes. I would concentrate on the content of that page, and work on getting trusted, on-topic links to that page.
Jarred, typically when you set up a 301 permanent redirect from one page to another, Google is going to keep the old pages in their index for up to a year (sometimes longer). I've done a LOT of site migrations from one domain to another, and this is the case--that's just what Google does.
Most likely you can only find those pages indexed with the exact search that you're doing (the site:revolve.com (designer name)). Those revolve pages won't be displayed for 'normal' keyword search queries.
At this point, since you've set up the 301 redirects, there's really nothing to worry about.
If the old domain has a penalty, you should be able to get that penalty lifted/removed/revoked. Then, later on you should be able to go ahead and redirect once the penalty is removed.
One of the concerns, though, is that if you redirect ANY page from the old domain to the new domain you may pass on the penalty to the new site. We recommend getting rid of the penalty on the old domain first--and then consider dealing with the issue of redirecting the old to the new domain.
Even though Yoast is saying the keyword does not appear in the url or any subheadings, the page still has a good chance to rank well. As long as you use it in the page copy, you should be fine. Concentrate on the internal links to that page (for example, use "moringa powder" in links that point to the page.
Also, you'll most likely need links from other sites to that page with that anchor text "moringa powder". It's also good to mix up those anchor text links from other sites, such as using "ultimet moringa powder" and "moringa ultimate original powder" so it's more "natural".
Depending on the Domain Authority of the domain(s) that are linking to you, it would or would not be helping or hurting you. When evaluating links that are sponsored like this, we typically recommend looking at the traffic the site is sending. If you can clearly see traffic from the site and those clicks are converting for you, then you should probably keep those links.
If they are sponsored links, though, and they're in the sidebar, they should be labeled as such--and they should be nofollow links.
With 10 URLs ( I think you mean 10 different domains?), you should be fine. If those URLs have a lot of links pointing to them, though, there could potentially be an issue. So, if there were 1,000 links to each one, then you'd be redirecting 10,000 links. It really depends on how many links we're ultimately talking about.
I have seen situations where thousands of domains were redirected, and that was a problem--it was also a problem with about 100 domains redirected, as they all had links pointing to them.
What I would do is look at your analytics to see which of them are actually sending traffic to your site, which ones have links pointing to them. Then only redirect the ones that have traffic and links and ones that are on-topic.
Yes, in your example it WOULD affect the ranking, as the first URL no longer exists. Ideally the 1st URL should 301 redirect to the 2nd URL, the updated one. In most cases, timing is everything--and getting a URL crawled and indexed quickly means a lot when it comes to rankings. Keep in mind, though, that you're getting a good ranking, but you then essentially ignore it and get rid of that ranking when you change URLs.
Tyson, Google's mobile and desktop algorithms are different--so that's why you're seeing different results. As Ruben mentioned, there may be mobile issues that you can fix or optimize for, which will help your site rank better in the mobile search results.
I took a look at the results for your site in Google's Mobile test https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ and it's mobile friendly, but the WebPageTest.org results show that it definitely needs to be cached--you should set up a CDN such as CloudFlare in order to cache the pages on the site.
The first thing I recommend is to make sure that those are actually 404 errors on your site that the search engines (and regular users) can see. There is a link spam technique out there that is used to hide actual links from the site owners. So, if you are logged into your WordPress site, for example, the links and pages won't appear to be there. But, if you are logged out then the pages will be there, visible to the search engines and the public.
I would look in Google to see if those 404 pages on your site are indexed. Try a site:yourdomain.com search to see if they're indexed. Then, use a crawler to crawl your own website to see if the crawler can find those 404 pages.
Typically, when you see those errors, the site has been hacked and now they've been removed. Or, those pages are on your site but when you go to them they appear to be 404s. I recommend you investigate this further to make sure that the pages or the errors do not exist.
If the site has good search engine rankings, then I wouldn't necessarily worry too much about Domain Authority dropping. It could be that the other sites linking to your client site has dropped, so that would then drop your client's DA.
Oleg is right, you should be using canonical tags in this case. However, keep in mind that you can also tell Google, in Google Search Console, which parameters to ignore. If you're using tracking parameters on a regular basis then you'll want to do that, as well. And you should tell Bing Webmaster Tools, as well, to ignore those parameters.
Another option is to list those parameters in your site's robots.txt file so that they're not indexed.
Bob, generally speaking it's best to redirect users to the page that's most appropriate. Think of the users and what page they would land on--and be redirected to. If they were looking for an old product page and just redirected to the home page, would that be frustrating for them?
When it comes to an actual search engine ranking lift or boost, you most likely won't see one. You only would just not rank anymore for those products that you used to offer. There still may be a boost if you were to redirect an old product page to another page and there were links pointing to the old product page from external websites. Then, the boost might be passed on to the product page you redirect to.
They certainly will make note of those phone numbers, but since the phone number is not a web page there's no way to pass on "link juice" to it. So, there's really no reason to mark it as a nofollow link.
You really should be using Google's parameter tool if you do NOT want those pages crawled.
If they are crawled, and you use the canonical tag in order to tell Google to pass any "juice" to the page you're setting the canonical tag to, then you won't lose any traffic. Both of those URLs (the one with the parameters and one without) essentially will be crawled, but won't be indexed.
We moved a lot of client sites over to HTTPs from HTTP. We always use the proper 301 Permanent Redirects, and there is no loss of rankings as far as we can tell. When it comes to links in particular, if you 301 redirect one page to another on the same domain name, you will NOT lose any link value. The key here is that it's a redirect on the same domain name.
If you are moving from HTTP to HTTPs, make sure you verify the site in Google Search Console and update Google Analytics, as you will see a loss of data if you don't update those.
Whenever you migrate a domain name to another domain name (I think this is what you're saying you did), Google will keep the URLs of the old domain name in their index for at least a year. That's if you migrate to a new domain name.
If the pages have 301 redirects to other pages on the site or new pages on the site, then those old URLs could still remain in the index for a period of time--you'll be able to see them if you search for the URL.
Typically even if those URLs are still indexed, it shouldn't be hurting rankings at all.
Unless you are going to have all of the products listed on the domain.com/products/ page, then you should consider getting rid of the /products/ directory altogether. It serves no purpose if you're not using it, and only lengthens the URLs.
Issa, there are plenty of Google algorithmic penalties that a site can have, like the Google Panda and Penguin penalties, that do not show up in Google Search Console. These can be tough to diagnose, and even when diagnosed they're can be tough to fix or can take time to fix.
What I would do is look at the Google Algorithm change history (https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change) and compare the date(s) where the site had traffic drops with the dates of algorithm updates. That should help diagnose some of the issues the site is having.
During these events we show them the "behind the scenes" of our company as well as the manufacturing process and give them an amazing experience surrounded by our products.
I believe that that qualifies as promotional--you are giving them a perk that others don't normally get. So, those links should probably be tagged as nofollow links. The post or article that is written should include an explanation that the writer was invited to the event--which would be clear when reading what they posted.
Keep in mind nofollow links aren't always a bad thing--it's logical that your site have both links that have nofollow them and links that don't have nofollow on them. It's ultimately up to the individual blogger or author/site to decide, though, and I wouldn't obsess over these links.
The most popular sitemap plugin for Magento appears to be this one: https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/xml-sitemap-generator-splitter.html, the XML Sitemap Generator & Splitter.
The way you're going about it sounds just fine--as long as it makes sense to you and is logical. I recommend you use a keyword classifier (such as ads, careers, location, etc.) in the URL so you know which ones are which ones.
We typically have had up to 50,000 URLs in one sitemap.xml file and then it's split up. Some of the files may contain less, but typically that's the maximum.
Brain, based on the example you provided, Google is correct--there is no proper meta description tag on those pages, so that's why they're not including your meta description tag. If there is no meta description tag, then Google will just show text from the page.
For example, the syntax of your meta description tag on the /7175 page is incorrect.
There are a few ways to do this.
First, I would use the Google Removal Tool to remove those URLs. More information here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en
Then, using the robots.txt file is good, you need to make sure that you're listing the correct URLs or URL path there.
I would make sure that you are using a "410 Gone" in the server header, and not a 404 error. The 410 Gone will get those URLs removed faster.
You'll definitely want to take care of the duplicate content issue. Rather than using a noindex tag, we usually recommend using a canonical tag in this situation. If you're able to only show the canonical tag on pages that have fewer listings, that would be great.
Another option would be to always make sure you have a certain number of listings showing up. Perhaps in those cases where you only have a limited number of listings you can show listings from other cities in the area? I know in our area, I wouldn't have a problem traveling to another city in order to get the service (like a dentist) that I need.
Whenever you move, here's what we typically recommend:
When it comes to hosting images off site, keep in mind that there may be connectivity and image load speed issues associated with these images. I typically wouldn't rely on an image being pulled from someone else's site, even if it was something like Flickr or Photobucket. I don't think those particular services intend for you to use their service like that.
Rather, we typically will set up a CDN for hosting the images or PDFs, and use a subdomain of the main site in order to host the images. For example, we would set up images.domain.com and pdf.domain.com and put the images and PDFs on the CDN.
Whatever the case, if you have more than one link to the same page on the same page, only the first one is counted. So, there may be no need for the second link.
What I would do, though, is use Google Analytics' in page analytics to see if you are getting clicks on that second link and which link is getting clicked more often by visitors to that page. If no one clicks on one of the links, you might consider removing it altogether.
It depends on how many keywords you're wanting to find at a time. You can use the Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush.com that will show related keywords, SEMrush.com will show you a lot at time, and you can download the data into spreadsheets.
Another option would be to use the Google Suggest tool, as you begin typing in Google you'll see related keywords. We also use <cite class="_Rm">https://ubersuggest.io</cite>
Logan is correct, whenever you use a 301 redirect from one page on your domain to the same domain the link equity is passed (all of it, 100 percent). So, migrating from http to https isn't going to hurt at all. You won't lose any link equity.
I still prefer to updated any links on other sites whenever I can, such as links from social media profiles, etc. and any other links I can get updated.
Anoop, when a 'development' or 'preproduction' website or subdomain is getting indexed, that means that you haven't stopped the search engines from crawling it. The search engines, especially Google, are very aggressive at crawling, and they will crawl just about any URL that they find. It seems as though all you have to do is visit that page and it's going to get crawled.
Best way to stop Google from crawling (then indexing) a website is to stop it from getting crawled using the robots.txt file. Keep in mind, though, that even if you tell them to stay out of it using the robots.txt file they will still index those URLs.
The only way to stop Google from crawling would be to password protect the website or make it available only on a private server, or available via VPN only.
usDragons, the best way to deal with these links is to use Google's Disavow Links tool to disavow them.
First, you need to identify all of the links, and you an do that by downloading all your links from Open Site Explorer, Majestic.com, ahrefs.com, and Google Search Console. Combine the lists and remove the duplicates.
You'll want to manually review all of them, make a list of the ones you want Google to ignore, then upload a list of the domain names using Google's disavow links tool. Google has more info about their disavow tool here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
kfallconnect, if the 404 errors are being picked up as duplicate content, then most likely they're not actually showing up as 404 error pages. It's quite possible that it's a 404 error on the site (that's what the user sees) but, in fact, the server header is not displaying a 404 error. It could be showing up as a "200 OK".
First, I would identify the pages. If the user sees an error on the page, then that's fine. Use a server header check tool to see what the response code is when someone goes to the page. You can use something like Rex Swain's HTTP header tool to check it: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html . If the page shows a 404 error then you should be fine, it's not duplicate content.
If the page is showing a "200 OK" then it most likely IS duplicate content. If the page is showing an error to users but showing a '200 OK' in the server header, then that needs to be fixed.
But if the page is showing actual content (and not an error to visitors) then you need to look at potentially using the canonical tag or removing the content on the site completely (which is preferred).
Alex, using the product name and then the company name is perfectly fine. That's what is recommended, unless you want to add another keyword in there from time to time when it's appropriate. Having the product name in the title tag and in the H1 tag is perfectly normal, as well.
If you have meta description tags that are very short, then that's not typically going to be good. If you can use the first 140 characters of the product description then that is going to be preferred if you can't get those 800 products updated quickly. A short or bad meta description may not be good to have, so you might want to remove them entirely if you have enough text on the page to suffice. Either way, you'll want to start adding meta description tags as soon as you can to product pages.
Google does crawl JavaScript, and they do index it. Googlebot is really a form of the Chrome web browser, so they will see the information that you give to them and most likely the other remaining content. Keep in mind that cloaking is against their guidelines, so may get the site penalized.
I would go ahead and give Google and all visitors the full content.