Many thanks for your advice - yes, it seems like the logical way forward, so I'm following your recommendations
Posts made by McTaggart
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RE: Existing 301s during site migration - what to do?
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RE: Pagination and matching title tags - does it matter when using rel="prev" and "next" attributes?
Many thanks again CleverPhD, and thanks for your input Martijn - much appreciated. I guess one issue may be the mass alteration of title tags acting as a spam flag, as I have hundreds of pages to deal with - most of the website :-I - I am advising that the changes are implemented gradually so we don't upset Google - is my caution justified?
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Pagination and matching title tags - does it matter when using rel="prev" and "next" attributes?
I'm looking at a site with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place, to deal with pagination.
However, the pages in each paginated category have identical page titles - is this an issue?
Rand gives an example of how he'd vary page titles here, to prevent problems, though I'm not entirely sure whether this advice applies to sites with the rel="prev" and "next" HTML attributes in place: https://moz.com/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience
Any advice would be welcome - many thanks, Luke
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Existing 301s during site migration - what to do?
Hi - I'm looking at an old website and there are lots of 301s internal to that site - what do I do with these when I move to a new site?
Should I list them and adjust them so they redirect to the new site now (instead of from one URL to another URL on the old site) - I'm thinking that if I don't the user will have to travel through one 301 then another to get to the new site, which doesn't seem like a great idea? Your thoughts would be welcome.
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RE: Sitemaps during a migration - which is the best way of dealing with them?
Very much appreciated CleverPhD!
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RE: Dealing with 404s during site migration
Thanks - useful feedback - Do you need to forward existing 301s as well? 301s on the site you're moving from? Or might that create complications?
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Sitemaps during a migration - which is the best way of dealing with them?
Many SEOs I know simply upload the new sitemap once the new site is launched - some keep the old site's URLs on the new sitemap (for a while) to facilitate the migration - others upload both the old and the new website together, to support the migration. Which is the best way to proceed? Thanks, Luke
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Dealing with 404s during site migration
Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke
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RE: Review site using canonical tag in a puzzling way.
Yes I agree Andy - many thanks for your response - can't see any logical reason - I took a look at Tripadvisor, out of interest - and although they're not using canonical tag oddly like the site I mention above, they were using the same title tags for each page of reviews (on same hotel) - which, again, doesn't seem logical - surely better if they simply add page 1, page 2 and so on to Title Tag?
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Review website - multiple pages of reviews of same item
Hi - I've been looking at review websites like tripadvisor - I looked at Tripadvisor's hotel reviews and the reviews may extend for several pages, yet they don't change title tags and so on, on each of the multiple pages? Surely it would be a good idea, from an SEO perspective, to change title tags (and perhaps other tags) for each of the multiple pages - even if the change was slight - e.g. "The White Swan Hotel - Reviews p 1" - "The White Swan Hotel - Reviews p 2" and so on? Am I missing something?
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Review site using canonical tag in a puzzling way.
Have just been looking at a review site and they're using the canonical tag very strangely, to me.
For example, they may have several pages of reviews of the same item - they use the canonical tag on page 2/3/4 to point back at page 1 - and yet there is no duplication between the pages.
Any idea why they might be doing this?
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Image URLs - best practice
Hi - I'm assuming image URL best practice follows same principles as non image URLs (not too many files and so on) - I notice alot of web devs putting photos in subdomains, so wonder if I'm missing something (I usually avoid subdomains like the plague)!
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Electricity company - automatic backlinks from tables embedded on third party websites
Hi guys, I'm working for an electricity company and they want businesses to embed "live energy saving tables" where they choose to, on their website - each table links back to the electricity company.
Now I'm only comfortable with editorially given links these days, rather than "you choose to embed this table and it will link back to us - that's the arrangement" set ups - even when they're not using anchor text.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks, Luke
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SSL and robots.txt question - confused by Google guidelines
I noticed "Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt" here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html
Does this mean you can't use robots.txt anywhere on the site - even parts of a site you want to noindex, for example?
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RE: Online household calculator for utility company - SEO thin content issue
Thanks for your input Andy - some good commonsense there Luke
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RE: Online household calculator for utility company - SEO thin content issue
Thanks for that superb contribution, Don - helpful beyond words for me, because I've never worked with such a site before - hugely appreciated - Luke
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Online household calculator for utility company - SEO thin content issue
Hi - I'm working with a utility company that's produced a calculator for individual households.
When you go to their website and type in your address, various household info is pulled across (from various databases) and a calculation is generated on electricity costs/savings per month - the only unique content on each page = numbers. Beyond that, the content on each page is a template.
There is actually a unique URL for each household (when you click on your property name a unique results page is generated).
I'm worried about thin content penalties - is the best option to nofollow noindex these individual household pages (99% of the site!)???
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RE: B2B site targeting 20,000 companies with 20,000 dedicated "target company pages" on own website.
Many thanks EGOL - some excellent points.
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B2B site targeting 20,000 companies with 20,000 dedicated "target company pages" on own website.
An energy company I'm working with has decided to target 20,000 odd companies on their own b2b website, by producing a new dedicated page per target company on their website - each page including unique copy and a sales proposition (20,000 odd new pages to optimize! Yikes!).
I've never come across such an approach before... what might be the SEO pitfalls (other than that's a helluva number of pages to optimize!). Any thoughts would be very welcome.
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Why is /home used in this company's home URL?
Just working with a company that has chosen a home URL with /home latched on - very strange indeed - has anybody else comes across this kind of homepage URL "decision" in the past? I can't see why on earth anybody would do this! Perhaps simply a logic-defying decision?
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RE: Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Thanks Tom - that's incredibly helpful - much appreciated Luke
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Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content
So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes
So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on.
What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
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Directory concerns - am I right to request nofollow?
A client had taken a free trial on a directory - a niche directory which only takes food related websites. They mentioned, in passing, that the directory listing was replicated across 90 food-relevant "partner" sites [alarm bells!] - some of which use nofollow - some which don't, apparently.
The main directory doesn't use nofollow and offers a mix of monthly-fee based listings or free listings.
I've demanded a nofollow backlink from the main site and partner sites, or no backlink... what are your thoughts?
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University website outbound links issue
Hi - I'm working on a university website and have found a load of (1) outbound links to companies that have commercial tie ups to the university and, beyond that, loads of (2) outbound links to companies set up by alumni and (3) outbound links to commercial clients of the university.
Your opinions on whether I should nofollow these, or not, would be welcome. At the moment I'm tempted to nofollow (1) yet leave (2) and (3) - quite simply because the (1) backlinks may have been negotiated as part of a package (nobody can actually remember at the university!), yet (2) and (3) were freely given by the university.
Your thoughts would be welcome!
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RE: Need help determining how toxic this backlinking is
I'd say you need to get a full overview of what's been done so far - and sign-off on anything that they're planning to do for you in the future (including tactics, target media and so on). You might find this helpful: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/what-is-nofollow/
See the bit here, under "How do we get natural links" http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/unnatural-links/
Switch to PR focused work, in the future, where your submissions are editorially reviewed (sure, some will be rejected - yet this is all about quality over quantity).
This is a good rundown of what not to do: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-to-avoid/
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Duplicate title tags due to lightbox use
I am looking at a site and am pulling up duplicate title tags because of their lightbox use so...
So they have a page: http://www.website.com/page
and then a duplicate of that page: http://www.website.com/page?width=500&height=600
on a huge number of pages (using Drupal)...
that kind of thing - what would be the best / cleanest solution?
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Membership/subscriber (/customer) only content and SEO best practice
Hello Mozzers, I was wondering whether there's any best practice guidance out there re: how to deal with membership/subscriber (existing customer) only content on a website, from an SEO perspective - what is best practice?
A few SEOs have told me to make some of the content visible to Google, for SEO purposes, yet I'm really not sure whether this is acceptable / manipulative, and I don't want to upset Google (or users for that matter!)
Thanks in advance, Luke
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Strange 404s in Screaming Frog
I just ran a website (Drupal) through screaming frog and the only 404s I found related to web pages which were the same as URLs already used on the website plus the company phone number so... www.company.com/[their phone number] - www.company.com/services[their phone number] - any ideas what might be causing this problem?
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RE: Google Mobile algo traffic issue?
Thanks Ryan - have now checked and there is a message and the site is a disaster, from mobile perspective... oh dear me! I can see why Google is pushing mobile, though.
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Google Mobile algo traffic issue?
Hello, I have just been approach by a website owner - site isn't mobile friendly in any way - and they've seen a significant fall off in traffic since 23 Jan... backlink profile is clean (and no linkbuilding undertaken) - nothing else has changed... - more than half their traffic is via mobile devices and they've lost a good 1/3 of their traffic - and drilling deeper it's their organic traffic that's been hit. Anybody else seeing similar?
edit... for reference: https://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/google-released-mobile-algorithm-think.html
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RE: "Hot Desk" type office space to establish addresses in multiple locations
Thanks Miriam - that's incredibly useful - much appreciated
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RE: Should digital marketing agencies treat SEO differently when it comes to homepage content?
I can't see it's a sensible strategy, really... style over [SEO] substance, perhaps. Some larger brands have told me they understand there's an issue with their lack of words (on homepages and elsewhere), yet argue their pages can "take it" due to strong backlink profiles, etc. - and that the design impact matters more than words - I spend much of my life arguing for more words (or at least some!).
This is useful re: how many words/page: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-much-page-text/
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"Hot Desk" type office space to establish addresses in multiple locations
Hello Mozzers,
I'm noticing increasing numbers of clients' competitors getting physical addresses and phone numbers in multiple locations, no doubt partly for SEO purposes. These are little more than ghost presences (in hot desk style office space) and the phone numbers are simply diverted.
Do such physical addresses put them at an SEO advantage (over and above those who don't have hot desk style space and location phone numbers). Or does Google weed out hot desk type office spaces where they can?
Your thoughts/experience would be very welcome!
Thanks in advance, Luke
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Can't crawl website with Screaming frog... what is wrong?
Hello all - I've just been trying to crawl a site with Screaming Frog and can't get beyond the homepage - have done the usual stuff (turn off JS and so on) and no problems there with nav and so on- the site's other pages have indexed in Google btw.
Now I'm wondering whether there's a problem with this robots.txt file, which I think may be auto-generated by Joomla (I'm not familiar with Joomla...) - are there any issues here? [just checked... and there isn't!]
If the Joomla site is installed within a folder such as at
e.g. www.example.com/joomla/ the robots.txt file MUST be
moved to the site root at e.g. www.example.com/robots.txt
AND the joomla folder name MUST be prefixed to the disallowed
path, e.g. the Disallow rule for the /administrator/ folder
MUST be changed to read Disallow: /joomla/administrator/
For more information about the robots.txt standard, see:
http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html
For syntax checking, see:
http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml
User-agent: *
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /bin/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /cli/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /layouts/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /logs/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /tmp/ -
RE: New site causes massive drop off in ranking, old site restored how long to recover?
If you want to DM me a few more details I'll take a quick look. Did you make any significant changes... hosting/domain/CMS? Have you compared speed of updated site to old one?
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RE: New site causes massive drop off in ranking, old site restored how long to recover?
This is very useful when you're managing a migration: http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos - without specific details I can't advise on other issues...
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RE: 230 town pages in 40 counties
You might find this useful. http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide - especially the ** I serve a huge number of cities. Do I really have to create a page for each one?** bit!!!
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RE: Should I switch all paid-for directory backlinks to nofollow backlinks?
Thanks Chris... they have virtually no backlinks but definitely operate within niche and quality is middling - there is some useful content on the site relevant to the niche, but not shedloads of content. Almost all outbound links (and not many of those either... perhaps 200). Finding it a tough one to call...
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RE: Downsides of Squarespace v WooCommerce
Many thanks for your response Dennis - you make a lot of sense - speed is so important and the SS sites I've browsed weren't doing particularly well on that side of things.
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Should I switch all paid-for directory backlinks to nofollow backlinks?
Hello Mozzers, I'm looking at a niche party services directory (b2c), established for over 8 years. They're not using nofollow tags on backlinks from their paid entries (free entries only get phone numbers and not backlinks).
If they suddenly switch all the paid-for backlinks in their directory to nofollow backlinks, might that have some kind of negative impact. Switching sounds like the best way forward, but I want to avoid any unintended consequences. Perhaps I should only implement this change gradually?
Thanks in advance, Luke
Edited 30 minutes ago by Luke Rowland
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Downsides of Squarespace v WooCommerce
Hello Mozzers! I'm thinking of using either Squarespace or WooCommerce for an ecommerce website. WooCommerce is great - I've used it before... how flexible is Squarespace from an SEO perspective, compared to WooCommerce? Thanks in advance, Luke
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Should party services directory switch to nofollow links? What are the implications?
Hello Mozzers, I'm looking at a niche party services directory (b2c). However, they're not using nofollow tags on backlinks from their paid entries (free entries only get phone numbers and not backlinks).
If they suddenly switch all the paid-for backlinks in their directory to nofollow, might that have some kind of negative impact. Switching sounds like the best way forward, but I want to avoid any unintended consequences.
Thanks in advance, Luke
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Duplicate content URLs from bespoke ecommerce CMS - what's the best solution here?
Hi Mozzers Just noticed this pattern on a retail website...
This URL product.php?cat=5
is also churning out
products.php?cat=5&sub_cat= (same content as product.php?cat=5 but from this different URL - this is a blank subcat - there are also unique subcat pages with unique content - but this one is blank)
How should I deal with that?
and then I'm seeing:
product-detail.php?a_id=NT001RKS0000000 and
product-detail.php?a_id=NT001RKS0000000&cont_ref=giftselector (same content as product-detail.php?a_id=NT001RKS0000000 but from this different URL)
How should I deal with that?
This is a bespoke ecommerce CMS (unfortunately).
Any pointers would be great Best wishes, Luke
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RE: Should I include www in url, or doesn't it matter?
Thanks for input everyone - much appreciated
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Should I include www in url, or doesn't it matter?
Hello Mozzers, I was just wondering whether Google prefers www or non www URLs? Or doesn't it matter? Thanks in advance!
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Should rel=publisher tags (pointing out at Google+ Business page) only go on the homepage?
Hello, I've just read...
“Publisher tags should only go on the most significant page of your site, usually the homepage.”
Is this correct?
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RE: Redirecting external blog to main website blog - two questions I'm struggling with
Thanks David - I was wondering whether blog root domain should go to the main website's blog page (www.mainwebsite.com/blog) or homepage (www.mainwebsite.com/) - not sure that it matters one way or the other as never had to deal with this kind of issue before.
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Redirecting external blog to main website blog - two questions I'm struggling with
Hiya Mozzers - I have a blog separate from main website which is duplicating the blog on the main website. This separate blog is duplicating the main website blog, so it needs to be closed down and redirected. There are some 200 pages of separate blog (identified via Screaming Frog).
So I am suggesting the blog pages should be 301 redirected from the separate blog to the equivalent blog pages on the main website.
Q1) Should the root domain of the separate blog be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website?
Q2) Should the blog pages, which lack equivalent content on the main website, be 301 redirected to the main www.mainwebsite.com/blog page, or to the root domain of the main website?
Thanks for your help on this one, Luke
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Two websites to merge into one - one has already been migrated - what about the second?
Hiya Mozzers,
I have just been checking a website for duplication issues (this is a new website - they have just migrated across from old website to this new "main website"), and I found a wordpress blog on a different URL, duplicating the "main website"'s blog.
Should I just close down this wordpress blog, 301 redirecting from the wordpress blog to the "main website"'s blog (equivalent blog posts to equivalent blog posts, with other indexed non-specific pages 301 redirected to "main website"'s blog homepage)?
Thanks in advance for your help.
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RE: Is Link Earning the same as Blogger Outreach?
It's all about earning the link these days (PR is an important part of that), and you need a balance of approaches too. What amazes me is how many SEO agencies still offer old-style link building services (I spend half my life clearing up the mess they've left behind them - ugh!).
Also, see this on guest blogging: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/