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Micha,

After looking at your site and running a few quick tests, I still don't think your site has been penalized. You have a few technical and on-page issues to deal with, but I don't think fixing these alone will catapult you to the top of the SERPs.

I checked the SERPs for "climb kilimanjaro," and I think your competition is your biggest hurdle. In addition to being around a lot longer, your competitor's websites have far more targeted, editorial backlinks, and consequently much higher authority, than your site.

Unfortunately, there's no quick and easy fix for this problem. You'll have to work toward earning good backlinks.  Check out the resources below.

• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-guide/link-building-earning/
• http://www.linkbuildingbook.com/

Domain authority is not a metric that can tell you whether or not you've been penalized. Moz recently updated their index, which caused a significant change in DA for a lot of sites. See https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority for more information on what domain authority can tell you.

Moz Local isn't the type of spammy directory submission service that will get you in trouble with Google. The kind you need to watch out for are those that submit to hundreds of low-quality directories that really only exist for SEO link building. You don't see that kind of submission service as much now, but they were everywhere in the pre-Penguin days.

This type of duplicate content is common on ecommerce websites, and it isn't necessarily a big problem. However, given the fact that there will be a higher percentage of duplicate content than unique content, you run the risk of some of your pages being omitted from search results for certain queries. If that is the case, searchers will see "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the (# here)already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."

This isn't really a penalty. It's just Google being efficient with their algorithm. It shouldn't be a problem for highly targeted searches, but you may lose a little search visibility for more generic searches.

My advice is to get creative and find new ways to add more unique content to your product pages. Add testimonials, user-generated reviews, camper van adventure stories, etc.

You are right that canonical tags are wrong for this situation. Using an iframe doesn't make much sense either. Google has stated that they try to associate iframe content with the page it's embedded on anyway.

Further information:

• http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2319706/googles-matt-cutts-a-little-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-your-rankings
• https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content

That's going to be tricky if these are service area businesses operating out of the same address. There was a recent discussion in the G+ Local Search Pros community about a similar issue. You run the risk of getting all of the listings suspended. If you have a brick and mortar location,  you could set them up as different departments, but triple check the GMB guidelines before going that route.

First of all, It's unrealistic to rank well for a highly competitive single keyword like "pashmina" within 3 weeks of launch with no backlinks - even within the first 100 results. Your other pages are doing better because "white pashminas" and "white cashmere pashminas" are not as competitive. Sites rarely jump to the top of the rankings right after launch. There may be a bump at first as Google indexes the site, but then it drops back down.

Secondly, you state that you haven't done any link building, and I assume you mean that you haven't done any spammy link building. However, you still need good backlinks to your site to be competitive.  Below are a few resources on link building.

• http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
• https://moz.com/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
• http://www.paddymoogan.com/

If you are targeting local customers, you probably want to put the contact information on every page for the sake of users regardless of whether or not you need it for the search engines. Why does your client not want to put it on every page, even if it's just in the footer?

Aside from usability concerns, having the address on the page is a strong signal to search engines that you are a "local" business, meaning that you serve local customers.

This page is set to "noindex," so you've essentially told Google not to index it.

The links appear to be pages that were automatically generated when an image was attached to a page or post in WordPress.  This is fairly common with WordPress. Fortunately, these pages have the following meta tag, which tells the search engines that they should not be indexed or crawled.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"></meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

You'll want to do a risk assessment of the domain before set up 301-redirects to your site.  Set it up in Google Search Console if you haven't already. Check for any manual actions or malware warnings associated with the site.  Then you'll want to audit the backlinks to check for any problems there.

If you can share the link with the community, someone else might find issues that you don't see.

I suspect the spam score would be lower if the site was more than one page. Right now, it probably seems like a doorway page since it's just one page that links to another site.

Given what you've told us, there are any number of reasons why you have seen a dip in traffic. In addition to the load time (which would definitely have an impact, as Hutch says), I would check the following:

• Did you set up 301-redirects properly when you launched the new site?
• Did the internal link architecture change in any way with the redesign?
• What has the external SEO company done?
• When did traffic start to decline? Sharp decline? Gradual decline?
• Are there new competitors pushing the site down in the SERPs?
• Does the dip in traffic correspond to any algorithm updates? (Check the Panguin Tool.)

That's certainly debatable, and I'm interested to see what others say as well. For a long time, the best practice has been to put the most important keywords toward the beginning of the title tag. However, in a recent Google Webmaster Tools hangout (17:38), John Mueller said just shuffling keywords around probably doesn't affect rankings. He says that it should essentially be the same if it's still the same keywords.

Now, you have to take what John Mueller says with a grain of salt, and he certainly wasn't definitive in his answer. My understanding of his answer is that the order of keywords in the title tag only makes a difference if all other factors are equal, but I'd like to see someone test that theory.

The fact that Google frequently changes the title tag based on the query suggests that the order of keywords is less important than it once was.

You say that you only changed the date, but I assume that means the URL as well. Is the 14-15 page gone? If so, have you set up 301 redirects to the new URL, or is it returning a 404 error? If the page is gone, you'll need to set up 301 redirects to the new page. Otherwise, you'll lose any value from backlinks to the old page. This will also eliminate the duplicate content issue.

If the page is archived on the site, you have a duplicate content problem. Either revamp the new content or set up a canonical tag on the old page pointing to the new one.

I would also go ahead and update the image filenames to reflect the current year as well as the meta description, as previously mentioned.

If you don't plan to archive the product page for past years, set up a generic URL so that it doesn't change from year. Leave off the "-15-16." Change the meta and on-page content as needed, including image filenames, but keep the same URL. That way you won't ever lose value from backlinks.

I would also revisit the content each year to freshen it up.

Just because Google shows the sub URL in a "site:sub.example.com'" search does not necessarily mean it shows the sub URL for natural searches. Do you have evidence that Google shows the sub page for normal searches? You may be making an issue out of something that isn't much of an issue.

I suspect you had it right the first time with the 301-redirects from main to satellite pages.

The Austin district won't show up in search results unless it has a unique URL. Will search parameters show in the URL when the visitor submits a search? If so, you can create an XML sitemap with precise URLs (including search parameters) for each district and submit it to Google. Unfortunately, I can also see the potential for duplicate content if more than one URL (different parameters) could be created with the same page content, and I don't see how you could solve the problem with canonical tags if the pages are dynamically generated.  You may be able to use the URL Parameters tool in Google Search Console to exclude duplicates, but that could add even more complexity to the problem.

If you were my client (and we've worked with preschool franchises), I would make sure there was a dedicated landing page for each individual location, regardless of how many there are. A search function is fine for users, but a local landing page with a unique user-friendly URL that can easily be crawled is best for search engines.

Are the backlinks pointing to actual pages on your website? I have seen cases where there was malware on a site that created new pages the site owner couldn't see. Then hundreds of backlinks were created that point to the malware pages. You may want to scan your site for malware.

Yes, Google can index dynamic content. Whether or not this will affect search performance depends on multiple factors.

• What platform is being used?
• How are URLs affected?
• Are the blocks of content creating a duplicate content issue?
• Is it possible to optimize the title tags and other on-page factors with that kind of variable content?
• Is content hidden on the page and then revealed based on user activity?
• Will you be able to set up canonical tags?

With more information, I might be able to point you in the right direction.

When you say "there seems to be more and more spam links that are popping up on my site," do you mean the links are actually on your site? Like blog comments?

You can scan your site at https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/.  There are others as well, but it's a good idea to have a web developer actually look at the files on your server as well. Scanners don't always see everything. If your site is a WordPress site, you can install and scan for malware using the Wordfence plugin. (Note: Some hosts, like WP Engine, don't allow the Wordfence plugin.)

If you don't want to share your domain name publicly, you can send it to me in a private message and I'll take a look.

You seem to be referring to local search results (with the local pack and map) rather than organic results. Local search results for Michigan will not show up for someone searching in New York unless they specifically add a geographic modifier. Otherwise, they'll get local pack results for their own location or they may not get local results at all.

Are you trying to get the Michigan G+ page to show up higher than others in organic results? If so, why would this be preferable to having your website show up first for branding searches?

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding the question. If so, can  you clarify?

I agree with Joey. Most prepositions are stop words, so they may carry less weight in the search algorithm. That's not to say they aren't important. I just searched "sporting goods stores in Atlanta" and "sporting goods stores Atlanta" and got very slightly different results for each.

The on page optimization suggestions are just suggestions to point you in the right direction based on keywords you entered into the tool. You should never sacrifice usability for your readers in order to satisfy an SEO tool. The tool is just a starting point.

Will she have an actual office at this new location in Chicago with staff, or are you talking about a virtual address rented for the purpose of making Google think you have an office at that location?

If your answer is the second one, then let me stop you there. This type of virtual address goes against Google's policies and can have negative consequences. See https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en for Google's guidelines. They've been going after these types of virtual offices for a while now. See also http://www.localsearchforum.com/help-support-google-local/978-virtual-offices-home-address-google-plus-local.html.

Leave the real address and focus on building organic traffic for Chicago. If she really wants to grow to a national level, you'll have to work on growing the brand to a national level through social media and content marketing.  Unfortunately, there are no SEO quick fixes in this situation.

I agree with Hutch42 and RangeMarketing. In most cases, the best practice for SEO is to create a self-hosted blog under the same domain as your main business website, if applicable. There's no reason to create more than one website (or blog) to achieve the same purpose. It dilutes your link equity (juice).

Creating a separate blog for the purpose of creating a bunch of links back to your website could be seen as spammy and cause more harm than good. There are much more effective ways to get links to your website with good quality content and digital PR.

I'm chiming in to add a vote for Mike's strategy. I've used the same strategy with great success when rebranding a business and moving it from one site to another.

Is this a brand new website? If so, you should continue to see rankings improve over the next 2-3 months as long as you don't have any serious issues. Work to earn good backlinks, which is a critical factor in search performance.

Your non-www URL is not redirecting to your www URL, but your canonical tags are set up correctly to tell search engines which URL should be indexed. On the other hand, if you redirect the non-www URL to the www URL, you'll improve crawl efficiency. Make sure your internal links are pointing to the www version as well if the links are absolute.

Double check that your XML sitemap has the right URLs. I noticed that your pages sitemap has the search results URL (https://www.newageawakeninggifts.com/pages/search-results-page), which shouldn't be there. It should really be set to noindex since there's no default content of value for search engines to crawl. See the pages sitemap at https://www.newageawakeninggifts.com/sitemap_pages_1.xml.

Personally, I would get rid of the ad at the top of the page. You'll make more money if someone stays on your site and buys your products than if someone clicks the ad and goes to another website.

You'll improve your chances of competing in search by adding more content to your product pages. It takes time, but it can make a big difference.

There are probably a dozen more ways to improve your site for SEO, so you may want to have someone do an SEO audit of your site.

This sort of thing is very difficult to troubleshoot without the site URL and page in question. Feel free to message me privately, and I can take a look

There are so many variables that can be affected when you migrate sites, especially if you are combining multiple sites under a single domain name.  You really need to perform a full technical audit after any kind of migration or redesign.  Here are a few things that I would check right away.

• Were 301-redirects were set up properly? If they weren't, you may be losing the value of your backlinks.
• Are there any duplicate content problems created by Joomla?
• Was the information architecture or linking structure changed significantly in the process?
• Are there any files left on the server from the old static site that are still indexed by the search engines? (I found this recently during an audit.)

Is the blog on a separate domain or subdomain? Can you share the URLs?

Most likely you'll want to add rel="nofollow" to the links rather than disavow them, but it's hard to say definitively without understanding the site architecture as a whole and what you hope to accomplish. Regardless, you might want to dig deeper to find out why those links are being flagged.

Okay, I see. That's often referred to as the "Authoritative Onebox."  The searcher's location may be influencing results the most in this case, so you'll definitely need to build up the other local signals for the Michigan location. Unfortunately, I don't really have anything to add to what you've already mentioned.

Are you filtering spam referrals in your Analytics data? A lot of SEOs noticed that spammy Analytics data declined significantly in the first quarter of 2016. (Unfortunately, the spam data has definitely come back over the last 2-3 months.) If you aren't filtering out spam and the site had a lot it in 2015, that might account for a 15% drop in overall traffic reported.

Your points are valid, but cover your bases to ensure there are no hidden issues. You should perform a technical audit and risk assessment of the site if you haven't done so already.  Check for crawl issues, page speed, content duplication, and risky backlinks (to name a few).

Google will probably index it, but it won't be given the same weight as content that's immediately visible.

I just got back from LocalUp Advanced, and I can tell you that the line at the original Starbucks was way out the door. I took a picture and then walked down the street to get a latte at Local Color Espresso Bistro. One of the locals at the Pike Place Market recommended it.

The Sky View Observatory was worth the money, even in rainy weather. I wanted to see Chihuly Garden and Glass, but it was closed for a special event while I was there. I'll check it out when I go back for MozCon (whenever I can make it to MozCon).

Unfortunately, there are a lot of business directories that require your street address. If she wants her home address to remain private (understandably), it will be tougher to rank locally but not impossible. You'll need to work harder on other local ranking signals to be competitive.

Fortunately, there are quite a few sites that allow you to hide your street address even if your city is still shown. Here's a great guide for this - https://www.brightlocal.com/2014/07/10/citation-sites-allow-hide-address/.   Some of the information may be out of date, so you'll have to double check with each site.

If she serves clients at their location rather than hers, her business is considered a service-area business (SAB). Joy Hawkins had some good advice for SABs in her Moz post at https://moz.com/blog/intro-local-seo-service-area-businesses.

Are you tracking conversion goals or events in Analytics at all? If not, you might want to set some up on the old site so you can get some before and after stats. I would also keep an eye on some of the data available through Google Webmaster Tools, such as pages indexed, crawl errors (after re-launch), search queries, and crawl stats.

I'll chime in to wholeheartedly agree with Ryan and Travis. This is a particularly valuable link from the standpoint of local SEO, given that it's coming from a local new source.

I'm curious to see what others have to say on this, but I've always assumed that "fresh" and "unique" go hand in hand when it comes to website content. Therefore, duplicate content would not be fresh content.

I'm not sure I fully understand your question, but I'll give it a shot based on what I think you mean.

Just swapping out the NAP will not create unique content for those category pages, so you'll want to add a canonical tag with a link to a single category page that is not location specific.

Panda is site-wide.

If you're seriously considering nofollowing links in your main nav, then they probably don't belong there in the first place. Take them off of the main nav and add them as submenus that only show on topically-related pages.

Here's what I would look for:

• Comment spam - Do you have any visible comment spam on your website that includes these types of keywords? If so, remove it all.
• Malware - Some types of malware will create new pages on your site that you can't access through a simple crawl from your home page. Search "site:example.com" in Google, replacing "example.com" with your domain name. Go through all of the results to see if Google has any pages indexed for your site that you don't recognize.

Even if Google doesn't flag your site for malware, it may still be there. Look at the files on the server to see if there are new files that shouldn't be there. Scan your site at https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/ to see if anything comes up there.

If your site is infected with malware, Google will eventually find it and flag your site. Yes, it will certainly harm your SEO efforts.

The duplicates will likely affect affect organic rankings for the entire site. Local pack results are somewhat affected by organic signals, so that could be affected, too.

As for whether or not to 301 redirect the duplicate category pages, do you want users to see them? If not, why do you have them? The 301 redirect will prevent users from seeing those pages.

If you want users to see them, use a noindex tag at the page level, or use the robots.txt to exclude them from search engines.

As much as I love the Yoast SEO plugin, I find that it oversimplifies on-page optimization with its SEO score. Getting a green light for your focus keyword will not automatically catapult your page to the #1 spot in Google search results. In fact, it can sometimes lead to over-optimization because you've focused all of your efforts on one keyword just to get the green light from Yoast.

It's fine to have "moringa" and "powder" separated in some places, especially since you have "moringa powder" together in the page title and several times elsewhere on the page. You also have lots of good content on the page. I would spend more time optimizing for long-tail keywords and earning good, quality backlinks.

In that case, you'd need to add the robots meta tag at the page level before the tag.

or

What's the rationale for having two separate websites if both locations are owned by the same person, under the same brand, and sell the same products? These two websites will naturally compete head-to-head for a lot of different queries, not just branded ones. The ideal scenario would be to merge the two websites under one domain and set up individual landing pages for each location. Then, focus on optimizing for local search. If you do this, Google should display the location that is closest to the searcher for branded searches.

I realize that it may be a tough sell to the owner to consolidate the two sites, but I would certainly try to get them to sign off on it.

I don't see a specific reason why this page should not rank, but I did notice that the sitemap referenced in your robots.txt file goes to a 404 page.  You should also look at crawl efficiency and see if that can be improved.  If you haven't done so already, you can use the "URL Parameters" tool to tell Google not to crawl all of the parameters associated with the filtering. Those URLs are canonicalized to the main category page, so there's no reason Google needs to crawl them.

Another issue I notice is that most of the unique content on the page is hidden to the user unless they click "read more." This is not necessarily a problem, but Google probably won't give the hidden content as much weight as the content visible when the page loads.

To my knowledge, the behavior of the googlebot is not influenced by whether or not the product is out of stock. Is the page still accessible when the product is out of stock, or does it not display at all?

If the product page remains with an "out of stock" message, that's what users from search will see. If the product page becomes inaccessible when it goes out of stock temporarily, users from search will likely see a 404 page.

You may want to canonicalize to a higher level category page rather than one of the product variation pages.  That way, it won't be an issue if one product variation goes out of stock.

May I ask which ecommerce software you are using?

First of all, we are all rather impatiently awaiting the next Penguin update, which is long overdue and expected any day now (for the last few months). It's been a while since the last one.  If your website traffic did tank as a result of Penguin, you'll see the results of your clean-up efforts soon(ish???).

Secondly, your experiences with Google Plus/Google Local are probably related to the fact that Google separated the two over the last year. Read more at https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-kills-off-google-local-still-committed-local-search/146049/.

Thirdly, I disagree with your conclusion that building good backlinks to your site is "a problem for the future as far as I’m concerned, and not related to the penalty in any case."  If your site has not incurred a manual penalty, meaning that it's algorithmic in nature, you'll help offset any negative effects of the bad backlinks by increasing the number of great backlinks to your site.  If your site is set up with Google Search Console, you'll know if you have a manual penalty.

Do you want users to be able to access the blog category URLs that were inadvertently created?

If so, use canonical tags. Users will be able to access both URLs, but Google will fold them together in the search index.

If not, use 301-redirects. Users will be redirected to the custom archives.

Either way, Google will eventually remove the blog category URL from the index and any link equity from backlinks will flow to the correct URL.

If the canonical page disappears when it's out of stock, the user will get a 404 error when they try to access that URL. You'll need to canonicalize duplicates to a generic product or category page that won't disappear when the product is out of stock.  Furthermore, if a product goes out of stock and you'll have more in stock later, it's best (for SEO purposes) to leave the page with an "out of stock" notice rather than remove it completely from the website.

Do you have a single physical location or multiple physical locations?

The "unique landing page" in your first quote refers to landing pages on your website. In most cases, the best practice is to have a local landing page for each physical location. When you claim and verify the Google My Business listing for each location, Google will automatically set up a Google+ page for that location. Link both the GMB listing and G+ page back to the associated landing page.

Matt Cutts did a video about what criteria they use to change page titles back in March, and Jennifer Slegg posted a breakdown at http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2342232/why-google-changes-your-titles-in-search-results.

Cutts mentioned 3 criteria that they use. If your existing title doesn't meet that criteria, they may change it.

1. Concise (short enough title)

2. Good description of page and site that the page is on

3. Relevant to your query

Apparently, Google finds it more relevant to put the Category name + the name of your site.

watch?v=L3HX_8BAhB4

I suspect the canonical tag implementation is the culprit for the loss in indexed pages, but that's just a strong suspicion. When you implement a canonical tag, Google will fold together all of the pages pointing to the same canonical URL so that they are treated as one URL for the purposes of indexation. This will naturally cause a reduction in the overall number of pages indexed. You won't see 404 errors as a result of this either.

One important point to remember is that a decrease in indexed pages is not necessarily a bad thing that needs to be fixed. In fact, if you were having problems with duplicate content or crawl issues, canonicalizing those URLs should be beneficial if properly implemented.

As for the loss in traffic, it could be related or not. It may just be an adjustment period from the canonicalization, or it could a separate issue. Have you seen a corresponding loss in conversions?

Given that the new shop opened up 2 months ago, you should continue to see improvements for that location if you've covered all the local SEO best practices.

The original location probably has more authority for the reasons you specified, but you may see the newer location perform better when someone is physically closer to that location. You'll have to test that to see. If you are physically closer to the Lower Garden District when you search, which result do you see for local?

I doubt the ideas you mentioned would make much difference. If you've covered all the local SEO best practices, you should focus on adding hyperlocal content to the Lower Garden District landing page. Talk about some of the best XYZ within walking distance of your shop, any events nearby, add photos of the interior of the shop, etc. Make sure you have blog posts pointing to that landing page as well.