Hi Eroc,

Yep, this is a super common issue for SEOs. My company's site has reviews load in JavaScript, and Google even crawls and indexes those as if they're separate pages.

Google wants to read everything it can, so you've got to figure out the cost/benefit of this situation. If you really do have all of the product information, I'd guess that visitors entering through page 2 of reviews wouldn't be the worst thing, especially since Google would probably choose the page with the reviews most relevant to the query.

The main issue from my perspective is wasting Google's crawl budget on your extra review pages. If that's an issue that will significantly help your site (likely if you have a lot of products), you'll want to noindex those reviews like Ikea. There's no other method that will stop Google from wasting it's crawl budget.

Hope this helps!

Kristina

Yep, that'll work!

That's true, they append parameters tracking where you came from, which looks like it can affect the navigation you're seeing on the left. They're making sure that Google doesn't get confused by using a canonical on their pages, like Mike, Eric and I have recommended.

Inline scripts aren't bad per se, search engines just can't always understand them. Worst case scenario: you have extra code that Google has to crawl but doesn't understand, which takes up bandwidth and doesn't add value. But, it won't lower your rankings.

So, do whatever you need to do to deliver the best user experience you can on your site with this map and related route, and figure that Google will ignore it (Google is trying to understand it, though, so it may be helpful in the long run). Then, for search engines, include some text content describing the map and the route so that search engines can send the right searchers to your page.

Good luck!

Kristina

There really isn't a problem with having 100,000 404 "errors." Google's telling you that it thinks 100,000 pages exist, but when it tries to find them, it's getting a 404 code. That's fine: 404s tell Google that a page doesn't exist and to remove the page from Google's index. That's what we want.

The real problem is with your site migration, as FCBM pointed out. If you properly 301 redirect old pages to new, Google will be redirected to the new page, it won't just hit a 404. If you fix the problems with the site migration (not focusing on Google too much), the 404 errors will naturally subside.

The other option is to just take the hit from the migration, and Google will eventually remove all of these pages from its index and stop reporting on them, as long as there aren't live links pointing to the removed pages.

Good luck!

This is a pretty thorough outline of what you need to do: http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

My steps are usually:

1. Identify pages that get significant organic traffic by pulling the Organic Traffic report in Google Analytics for the past year or so.
2. Identify pages that have a significant number of links (or, have links from high traffic sources) in Open Site Explorer.
3. Map where that content should be now, and 301 redirect to new pages.
4. Completely remove all old pages from the index by 404ing them and making sure that no links on new pages point to old pages.

Sounds quick and simple, but this definitely takes time. Good luck!

Hi Ydop,

You might be able to get away with a modal pop up without AdWords noticing, but I think that it does violate Google's policy in spirit, since Google says "Google does not allow pop ups of any kind when entering or leaving your landing page." (Bolding for emphasis) Even though they're talking about separate windows, the experience is the same for the user. In fact, sometimes it's more frustrating, since modal pop ups are often harder to close.

That said, your intent is fine, I just think that you need to use a different solution to introduce your company on your inventory page. You said that you want to use a pop up to tell AdWords visitors that your inventory page is full of hand-crafted furniture, but why can't you include that message at the top of the page? Especially if it's a core value of your business, visitors who started on the homepage won't mind being reminded about the quality of your work. And it will help visitors who land on that inventory page through search or referral links as well as AdWords visitors.

As a consultant, I push my clients to make every page include enough information that it can be a landing page. With Google trying to place visitors on the most specifically relevant page possible, and referring links out of your control, you never know where visitors will start on your website. Don't assume that visitors will start on your homepage, or that will begin their journey through your site understanding your business.

Good luck!

Kristina

Hi Rose,

Hopefully Donna answered your question already, but I want to jump in with some SEO prioritization advice.

Alt text like this can add to the relevance of the page, but minimally. It can also help your image rank correctly in image search, but that doesn't bring much traffic now that Google pulls images into its results page.

I had similar conversations with our compliance team when I worked for a university, and they had a similar perspective, that alt text should be determined by the flow of the reader rather than for small SEO boosts. The nice thing is, though, when images are important to the flow of the page, and are more likely for the alt text to support the keywords you're trying to target on a page.

In short: if I were you, I'd let this argument go, and just push for alt text on images that tell a story. There's no SEO penalty for not using alt text, and I doubt you're worried about ranking for "father and young son."

Best,

Kristina

Hi Emanuele,

Wow, that's really weird! A few questions:

• On the days where your site stops ranking for keywords, have you done a site: search on those pages to see if Google has them in its index?
• What is your competition for these keywords? Have they been changing around a lot too, or is everything else staying about the same rank, with your site just jumping in and out of the list?
• Have you been making any changes to the site during this time? Even if you didn't change the specific page in question, it's possible that changing the link structure of the site is drastically changing their ability to rank.

Best,

Kristina

Hi Laura,

It sounds like your ebook is assisting in the SEO of your website, since individual chapters are ranking. You can see how much of a page (or PDF) Google can read by searching for cache:[URL]. Here's Google's cache of chapter 8, which you shared.

But, you're on the right track, turning these pages into HTML pages will make them easier for Google to crawl, and you'll probably get more traffic out of it. Here's one way you could handle this:

• Keep http://re-timer.com/the-product/how-to-sleep-better/ as it is to encourage sign up
• Create a page for each chapter of the book, with the same content. Make sure to canonical the PDF chapters to the HTML counterparts.
• Link to those chapters somewhere else on the site, so it doesn't discourage people who land on the PDF download page.

That way, you get the benefits of the content individually, but keep the landing page.

Hope this helps!

Kristina

Hi Emanuele,

To clarify:

• When you say you've verified it with a site: search, do you mean that you verified that the pages that were no longer ranking were still indexed? Or, do you mean that you verified that the site itself was still indexed? I'm wondering if you're only losing certain pages.
• I'm not sure what you meant by your response about your competition. Are you saying that the competition doesn't fluctuate for the keywords that your site is fluctuating for?

Thanks,

Kristina

Weird. So, that means that this isn't because of problems with Google's crawler not finding your content, and it's not that you are ranking for keywords that just fluctuate all the time anyway. My next guess would be that this is a poorly applied penalty of some sort. A couple of questions to see if it is:

• During the times where you're not ranking for most keywords, does your homepage rank for your brand name?
• Have you gotten any other messages in Google Webmaster Tools / Search Console since the original "Improved search visibility" that you mentioned in your original question?

Best,

Kristina