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There are a few ways of looking at this. It also depends how old the other post is, how many links it has (plus many more factors).

One angle is to link out from the post that is ranking (https://www.clickboarding.com/18-jaw-dropping-onboarding-stats-you-need-to-know/) to the blog post targeting "employee onboarding process" - ideally using the keyphrase as the anchor text.

However, in my opinion, you might be better incorporating the blog post which targets the keyphrase into the page that is already ranking. There is a lot of crossover in the content and the stats, so it might make sense to merge them and avoid confusing Google. Just make sure you 301 redirect the post targeting "employee onboarding process" to the stats post if you go down this route.

It sounds like you are pretty deep into the move, Maureen.

A domain migration is one of the riskiest things you can do in SEO. There are so many moving parts and it has to be planned meticulously. There are hundreds of things that need to be considered and well strategised, including (but not limited to):

• Checking indexed pages to 301 redirect them all to the most relevant page on the new domain
• Checking incoming backlinks to ensure that they are also redirected so you don't lose any link equity
• Crawking the old website (you can use a tool for this) and extracting all URL's for a redirect plan
• Making sure that the internal link architecture and anchor text structure is similar
• Ensuring that Google Search Console has been told about the domain change
• Ensuring that the new pages can be crawled and rendered correctly
• Submitting the sitemap of the new website to Google Search Console
• Ironing out any technical issues (I don't want to alarm you, but there are a lot of things that need checking here)
• Making sure the content is as close to, or the same as, the old website
• Making sure that the page titles, meta description and headers are pulled over in the correct way

You were advised correctly, every single URL on the old domain needs redirecting to the same version of that page on the new website.

When did you make the change? It might be too late to recover everything, but it's worth a good try!

We have been using reviews.io for around 6 years (in house and now as an agency). It's a fantastic platform and great value. The team are fantastic, too. In my opinion, they are by far the best option when it comes to gathering trusted reviews.

I'd guess that the jobs get pulled from a job board. If this is the case, then the content ( job description, title etc.) will just be a duplication of the content that can be found in many other locations. If a plugin is used, they sometimes automatically add a disallow into the robots.txt file as to not hurt the parent version of the job page by creating thousands of duplicate content issues.

I'd recommend creating some really high-quality hub pages based on job type, or location and pulling the relevant jobs into that page, instead of trying to index and rank the actual job pages.

Can you share the URL of the site in question, please? I'd be happy to take a look for you. Those resources should be blocked from being crawled in the robots.txt file, at the bare minimum.

• What CMS is the website running?
• Do you have a plugin like Yoast running?

Ranking declines could indicate a poor migration from HTTP to HTTPS, but would require some investigation.

Before answering, it's important to understand your motive for removing 100+ pages from your site.

• Are the pages you plan on letting expire unique and useful content?
• Do these pages generate traffic?
• Do any of these pages have visibility in search at the moment? If so, removing them will limit your visibility (and traffic) - regardless of redirects. If there isn't a relevant page on the new website to redirect the old page to, your rankings won't last too long once Google figures out that the replacement page is useless for the specific search query. Arguably, setting these URL's to a 410 instead of 301 redirecting them to a non-relevant page is the best way to proceed.

In some instances, removing pages could actually help your site if the quality of those pages is poor, the content is taken from elsewhere, or if they are relatively thin pages.

There are lots of other questions, too, depending on your answers. Would you mind sharing the URL's in question?

You should steer clear of creating yourself a rule to say that you need to link out at least once to an external source on every page of your website. On some of your pages, multiple outbound links to great resources can be fine. On other pages, it might not make sense to link out.

If an outbound link adds value to your website visitors, then it's a good thing to do. If it doesn't, don't do it. It really shouldn't be any more complicated than that.

Linking to (or not linking to) your social media profiles will have absolutely zero impact on your SEO, but could be useful for your audience.

I'm not sure what industry you are in but a government white paper should be a superb resource to link to if you think it adds value.

Fantastic response, Miriam.

I think I am in a good position to answer this as in February I completed a project which created clones or White Label exact copies of one of the websites I work on. The content, the pages, the URL's and everything was the same. We did give them all slight design changes though. The site has around 30 duplications now around the web. The reason for these White Label websites is due to having "salesmen" of our branded products who are self employed and needed a website to point their own clients and customers to in the hope that it shows off the range.

Now we developed 30 of these and the first couple I started using canonical tags on every single page except the homepage. Even though largely successful, there were still some pages indexed above the main website in SERP's - luckily for no major keywords. It shows that canonical does not work in every single case perfectly.

Since then, we have noindexed and nofollowed every single link on each site and none of them are indexed nor ranked in search results now. In addition to this, we also set up canonical tags to be safe.

Hopefully that helps!

The harm is that Google may well class your site as having duplicated content issues. This wont always happen but there is a chance. There are also a few other issues which are covered well by Dan Petrovic (link at the bottom).

Google does indeed see millions of duplicate content issues and it tries its hardest to only rank one version of that content.

You can always make your category pages the landing pages for keywords and not the tags. If you are already being found from tags then don't deindex them but there will be a risk that a Panda data refresh or algo update may hurt your site.

http://dejanseo.com.au/effect-of-tag-clouds-on-seo/

Tough to explain where you should start with this without a 10,000 word reply.

It sounds like you might benefit from reading this... http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Once you have read that, there are a few other things you need to do before thinking about building some nice, relevant and natural looking links.

• Add the keyword to the page title in an natural looking way
• Add some relevant content to the page and make sure you include the keyword once or twice
• Add a H1 and H2 heading on the page with the keyword in

There are loads of other bits to do but these are certainly something which will help you on the way.

You should noindex your tags, yeah. All the post snippets are just duplicated content. There are loads of other stuff you should also noindex. If you haven't already, install the Yoast Plugin. There are loads of guides online on how to set it up to block the correct pages.

What kind of info are you looking for the crawl to provide? Moz will do a quick crawl and then a detailed crawl within a week. However, there are other things you can use.
EDIT: You can use the Moz tool - http://pro.moz.com/tools/crawl-test

One of the best on the market is Screaming Frog Spider. You can do so many things with it. There is a great post over at SEER Interactive on things to do with it:

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide

I think in order to give a conclusive answer one would have to delve deeply into your Google Analytics data. I would guess that if your main keyword rankings haven't changed they should still bring in roughly the same amount of visitors (give or take a few). The issue might be on the wider picture - longtail visitors, less important keywords etc...

If you log into Google Analytics and look at your main keyword, check its visitors over time - what do you see? Has that declined? Or has that remained stagnant? If it is stagnant then the issue is not with your main keywords but more a case of how wide you are spreading your net.

You shouldn't really use your keyword as anchor text too often... That technique is very 2008. If it fits into the context of where the link is coming from then it's not the end of the world but ensure it only amounts for a maximum of say 10% of your link profile. To Google, anchor text links look un-natural and have been manipulated by spammers for way too long.

Your anchor text should depend mainly on whether it fits into the content or the page the link is on. There is no generic answer available.

Please just make sure that you vary it. Use anchor text that actually works within the website. Just ensure you don't keep using the same anchor text over and over again.

In reality this isn't a huge issue IF you either get them to provide a snippet of the content (first paragraph) with a link to your article to be able to read more OR you ask them to set your site's content page as canonical. This will show Google that your content is the original version.

The chances of getting another site to set up canonical tags just for you are quite frankly slim. Their sites are probably automated and not manually edited.

Personally I prefer to write something completely unique on the high profile site.

Removing duplicate content won't necessarily increase your search positioning. It will however, give your site the foundations needed to start a (relevant, natural and organic) link building campaign - which if done correctly should increase your SERP's.

You should see content as part of the foundations. Good quality and unique content is usually needed in order to be rankable but it doesn't make you rank necessarily.

Having good quality unique content will also minimise the chances of being hit by an algo update.

Have you got a link to the site Matthew? I'll take a look.

It sounds like just a replication of the menu to me? If so, this is perfectly fine - it just means more links going to the pages. If both links point to the exact same URL's then there are no issues at all.

Hi Jeff,

Some interesting points I found instantly whilst checking out the link profile. I'll give my initial findings now and then examine them afterwards to summarize soon.

You have 569 links (out of a total of 2399 links that I checked to your site, this is a huge portion of your link profile) using the anchor text "twin prams". Every single one comes from the same domain (babyandco.com). You do not rank for this term in Google.

You have a fair few links using the anchor text "quinny prams". This time, they are from various domains and not one domain. You do not rank for this term in Google.

You have a fair few links using the anchor text "pushchair" again from various domains. You do not rank for this term.

The above also applies for Prams, Pram Systems, Baby Car Seats & Baby Buggies.

I would hazard a guess that your Google analytics shows drops in visitors coming on to your site from searching these terms. How do you feel about letting me have a look?

I think your link profile, while not terribly horrific, certainly isn't anywhere near natural or clean. I think that there could also be other issues playing a part. If I can access your analytics I can check out visitor drop dates and cross reference against Penguin and Panda algo updates to see if there could also be a content issue.

Here are a few links pointing to you site which are pretty toxic links (either deindexed from Google or have horrific trust signals):

EDIT: Removed the backlinks. I'm sure Moz don't want to be linking to these sites!

http://abdulmohideen.fastpage.name/litesun

http://bargainbabygear.info/otherresources/browse/73/quinnypushchair.html

http://pram-stroller.com/choosing-baby-car-seats-bytrevor-hobbs/

http://www.stufftobuyforbaby.co.uk/cheap-baby-stuff/cheap-prams-and-pushchairs-uk/

http://nursing-australia.com/baby-lo-nursing-chair/

I can give you a full list if you like. I would not submit these to Google Disavow unless you have received a warning though. Instead, you should use it to contact the owners of the sites to get them to remove the links. In total,  Link Research Tools shows that you have 7% of incoming links being toxic.

A few questions/notes:

• Has the site got any sister sites, old owned sites, micro sites, niche sites etc 301 redirected to it that you know of? (other than the .com version I mention below)

• Did you receive an unnatural link message from Google?

• Can you give me a list of maybe 5 competitors so I can check out their backlink profile please.

Perhaps most worrying is that babys-mart.com redirects to the .co.uk version. The .com version has been deindexed by Google. This could be causing problems and is a big issue. It will pass on some very bad trust signals.

Nothing has come through Jeff. Mail me: me@mattjanaway.co.uk

Nothing is coming up Jeff. Try this: https://plus.google.com/u/0/103919683606070410359/

Click my profile and there are links to my social accounts (LinkedIn, Google +, Twitter etc). Come find me

Hi Jeff,

Firstly, you need to figure out if your link profile is actually causing problems. There have been numerous algorithm updates in the last 18 months which could be causing your ranking struggles... It might not actually be your links. I can take a look at your site to see if I can give some advice.

I can actually save you LOTS of time and money in hiring a freelancer to trawl through your links. I have a spare Link DTox credit from Link Research Tools. It can give a list of any bad links. This could be useful even if your links aren't effecting your rankings. Pop me a private message on here or add me to socials and we can discuss. Of course, you can have this credit for free, I wont and don't charge for my advice or help on SEOMoz Q&A.

Matt

Sorry!!!

Simple answer... You cant.

You should contact your client and ask them for access so you can add yourself as a user on their account. Without this you might struggle. Even looking beyond simply connecting their GA account to your SEOMoz campaign, I would say that working on someone's website without access to their GA might be a little tough... Not impossible but it will make your job much harder.

There are literally hundreds of alternatives. All do require effort though, nothing in SEO should be easy.

Add me on Skype and I'd be happy to guide you through a few ideas

"However, you CAN do white hat tiered link building."

Oh absolutely. This can actually be a nice tactic to use and can also be pretty safe if done in a natural way. That's an important note Brian.

However, software cannot do this and more often than not - certainly if you are a novice - it can be hard to implement. Generally, people just assume a tiered link building tactic is spammy.

"The way it is being explained is that the websites pointing at your website are 'clean' websites that have gained rank by the other websites pointing to the second tier and then all the spammy and automated links pointing to the second tier."

Ah, see, there is an issue with this. Google's algorithm is very complicated and clever. If you imagine a link passing PR from tier 1 to tier 2 and then to your site then you can also easily imagine a link passing bad trust metrics from tier 1 to their 2 and then to your site.

Link juice is not the only thing that passes through a link. Just because there is a site in-between doesn't mean you are safe.

These are methods that used to work pre 2010 which are considered (rightfully so) as spammy. Look at it from Google's point of view; their algorithm is built to serve the searchers. If you are doing things to try to manipulate their algorithm then the searchers might not get the best results. It is their job to try and ensure that spammy sites don't rank as well as sites that belong high in the rankings on merit... Whether this happens in reality is a separate topic. As you are already seeing, competitors do rank well whilst using poor methods of link building. I'd argue that they won't rank for too long and will be caught out at some point but there are other who cant beat them so they join them.

I can see reviews on his site for things like SENuke and many automated link building programs. He might know his stuff, without me looking into it further I couldn't tell you. However, any real SEO who is tried and tested will tell you to steer clear of methods that are automated. His site seems pretty honest though and it looks like he talks about varying methods of digital marketing.

Generally, if something is too good to be true then it usually is. Link building software is something I wouldn't touch personally.

There are a few methods of tiered link building. I'm not sure which one you are talking about in your question. Could you elaborate on the method?

If you are thinking about the generally accepted concept of tiered link building it would go something like this:

Tier 1: 10,000 links pointing to 10 websites

Tier 2: 10 websites pointing to 6 websites

Tier 3: 6 websites pointing to your main website

You can replace the amount of websites above with any you like but I entered 10 and 6 as just random numbers.

Can you confirm that this is your intention? If it is, don't do it. PLEASE! This is considered as evil spam by G.

You can install Wordpress on the same domain on a page like mydomain.com/news

Blogs can be a great source for gaining visitors and also keeping your website's content fresh.

Also, with regards to blogging on other sites or your own site, I wouldn't assume you should limit yourself to one or the other - do both As long as you blog on other sites and build natural looking links then this should help your site rank better and in a safe way.

Don't underestimate the role that a blog can play in building links to your site. If the content is good, you might find some natural links firing your way but even if this doesn't happen you can build links to your blog posts manually which would then send "juice" through the rest of your pages

Matt

Hmmm, I understand. It can be frustrating.

The problem is that even if you are trying (and trying hard) to sort the issue out, if they still see bad links they wont lift any manual penalty.

I'm not saying that it is worthwhile in your case but sometimes it can make sense to throw away a domain and start again. Does it take many sales?

Just remember that if you start again with a new domain, do it properly and don't outsource to people who can't be trusted

As long as you continue to build links the correct way then you should do fine. Just ensure they are very natural links on relevant sites and aren't based on anchor text links

If you need advice on how to build decent safe links just fire me a mail or something, I'd be happy to advise.

Did you invest much into the new design? If so, it might be too late to consider moving platforms. Service levels like that belong in the 1900's!!!

I'd recommend giving Madwire Media a shout if they developed it for you. They MIGHT be able to help. Feel free to pop them my email address if they get lost, I could be of some help possibly.

I'm not sure if this is the issue but having looked at the link profile of that specific page it looks a little unnatural. There are lots of links pointing to that specific page on your site with anchor text. Granted, the anchor text is mainly long tail but still very keyword rich (hard disk failure).

It could have something to do with the issue. I'd recommend maybe building a few nice clean links to the page using branded anchor text or naked anchor text (www.mydomain.com). Even if anchor text isn't the issue, it should only help your website if the links look natural

I'll try and delve a little deeper later on, I have to jump into a meeting now I'm afraid.

Matt

Ah, sounds like that could be an issue. Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with Big Commerce. I have used it a couple of times but not in detail. I tend to use Magento or OSCommerce for large eCommerce projects and sometimes Wordpress (using something like WooCommerce) for smaller projects.

It's definitely worth shouting up to Big Commerce though to see if they can help.

I see a problem already, although it could be that these links have been disavowed (there is no way something like Open Site Explorer can tell this).

Check out the image attached. You have used some very aggressive link building tactics which target exact match anchor text links - and lots of them! Very unnatural indeed.

Can you confirm that these have been disavowed?

Matt

bROmGPS.jpg

WOW. They are using some SERIOUSLY OLD techniques. They have incredibly aggressive and poor link building methods, all based on exact match anchor text links and all from horribly poor domains mostly built to serve the purpose of creating links.

You will be safe in the knowledge that their rankings shouldn't last long at all - hopefully!

Yeah its pretty cool. Its basic but serves its purpose nicely. Saves having to remember the dates of each algo update (or checking them manually).

This should help you out Josh:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2109932/Google-Introduces-New-Pagination-Tags-Pushes-View-All-Pages

You need to set up pagination correctly.

Alternatively, altering how many products are on the page might help but don't do this if you think it might effect your customers experience (although unlikely).

Exactly. Sounds ominous.

Also, it seems like their main method might be blog posts... Great, IF done correctly. Looking at the pricing, I doubt it will be done correctly or will be poorly written.

Sorry to hear of the problems, Chris.

Can you give us an idea of the keywords that have dropped off and their relevant landing pages?

Also, it might be worth checking whether the drops in visitors coincided with any algo update. To check, try this great tool:

http://www.panguintool.com/

Matt

Don't do this. Please.

This is very risky way of trying to help your website rank and has become even more risky since the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates. One targets thin content (like these free blog sites will have) and one targets spammy links (which these free blog sites will also have).

What they are effectively doing is creating a link network. I'd like to estimate that they will be hit by Google at some point... Especially if the link network plays a big part in their link profile.

Care to share a link to their site for me to take a look at?

I'll admit to not being too familiar with their service but after looking on their website I still can't tell what methods they use to "gett you to rank 1" (in their own words).

Smells fishy to me instantly.

Do you have a link to your site please? In order to help, I think we would need to have a good look around your link profile.

Matt

The most important thing to think about here is your visitors and not the search engines.

Imagine being a customer and searching for "log house prices". Chances are you will want to see a list of prices. This lends itself to the category page perfectly. I would imagine that seeing an article or content page would have a higher bounce rate and will most certainly have a lower conversion rate (for this keyword at least).

Remember that there is no reason not to have a nice bit of content on the category page if it adds value to your visitors.

With regards to the term "log houses", this could be used for a more generic page which covers your entire range. This decision should be based on how much time you have to spend on the website, your resources and more importantly, the competition for the keyword. If you feel like you can rank for that term instead of log house prices then go ahead and give it a go... It will be harder though, that's for sure.

Matt

No problems at all Feel free to give me a shout if you need anything advice on how to implement anything. Feel free to mark this question as answered to help clear up the Q&A area of the site

Matt

Also check out this useful post:

http://www.wojdylofinance.com/how-google-crawls-and-indexes-social-media-posts/