Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Samantha,

What you have is what are called "canonical issues." By allowing multiple versions of your domain open and crawlable to search engines you "split" your ranking authority and result in the issues you are seeing right now.

The best practice is to choose one version of your domain as the "true canonical" and then 301 redirect the others at the server level by means of mod_rewrite code. Doing so will consolidate your content, incoming links and PageRank and greatly increase the root domain authority of your site.

To search engines, if your site hasn't instituted 301 redirect commands at the server level, all of these versions of your site home page would be treated as "separate pages" and each would accumulate authority individually:

http://yoursite.com/
http://www.yoursite.com/
http://yoursite.com/index.php
http://www.yoursite.com/index.php
https://yoursite.com
https://www.yoursite.com

You get the idea.

Most websites are run on one of three different types of servers...

• Unix-based servers running Apache.
• Unix-based servers running Nginx.
• Microsoft Windows-based servers running IIS or similar.

If you're unsure of what kind of server runs your site, ask your hosting company. Most sites are run on Unix-based servers with Apache. In that case, the server's behavior is configured using something called the .htaccess file.

If your site's root domain already contains a .htaccess file, you can simply scroll to the end of whatever code is already there and append your 301 redirect code at the bottom of the file, starting on a new line. While this may sound complicated, it's actually very, very simple to do. If you can upload files to and from your Web server, then chances are you'll have no trouble managing (i.e. altering or creating and uploading) your .htaccess file(s).

But yes, bottom line, you ALWAYS want to consolidate URLs and present one uniform "preferred" URL format to search engines and users. In your case, that would appear to the be the non-www domain which has the higher Domain Authority.

You can learn all about redirection best practices at the Moz resource here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

Short answer is no, it would not have a negative effect.

The big issue is this: WILL THE URL CHANGE if you update and republish? Hopefully, you have a FLAT URL STRUCTURE that doesn't have dates in the URL. That way you can update your best content (maybe you change the pictures, maybe you research and update the post with new information, maybe the UX has been improved) but publish at the SAME URL.

Doing this is clearly very important for SEO purposes -- you don't "break" URLs and you allow the earned authority of the post to stay intact while also republishing and generating new "pings" to Google to take advantage of Freshness boosts.

Google wants you to update and republish. But you need to update and republish WHEN YOU HAVE IMPROVED the content for the reader. And that's what is important here. That's what we are talking about when you hear about the topic of "Evergreen Content." It's not that the content itself never expires, it's that you have been a good gatekeeper of the content and when it can be updated with fresher, more current information, you have done so with the clear interests of the user in mind.

So with regards to your question, the important point is this: are you updating the date just to keep re-featuring content that you haven't actually made UX changes too? Or are you updating and republishing when you've actually IMPROVED the original content for the reader? If it's the former, personally, this is really a waste of time. But if it's the latter and you have monitored the content and made improvements, then republishing is absolutely the way to go.

Within your Google Search Console make sure to avail yourself of the "Search Queries" report. Sort that by both impressions and clicks. If you see content from the last 28 days or longer that has not accumulated any clicks that's a clear sign that Google "didn't like that content" much. Once you sort for seasonal shifts, use that report to spot the content that didn't connect the first time and then update and republish. That's where you will get the most "bang for the buck" in this area.

Pro Tip: use the tool www.answerthepublic.com to find questions users are asking around the root keywords of your posts and then seek to ask and answer some of those questions in your content. Doing this will promote more "complete" content pieces that Google will eat up and rank accordingly.

Good luck! Hope this was helpful.

First off, congratulations and good luck on your new site design. However, this is a VERY general question. The best advice I can give you is going to be a reading list. I would urge you to review ALL of these resources so you can understand what "SEO-friendly Site Design" really involves:

Moz Basics of SEO Friendly Design - http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

Designing for SEO - http://moz.com/blog/designing-for-seo

The SEO of Responsive Web Design - http://moz.com/blog/seo-of-responsive-web-design (Responsive Design is the Google recommendation and the "hot" approach these days.)

SMX 2013 Boot Camp - SEO Friendly Web Design (great read) - http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/seo-friendly-web-design/

The Web Untangled - http://webwithit.com/products/the-web-un-tangled-pdf-book (great "How To" tutorials that cover everything for new site owners, including initial set-up! - Paid)

I hope the above is helpful. Good luck and make sure to use the search box in this forum so you can bring up other, related, questions of a similar line.

The short answer is: Yes...but not "as" bad as previously. Should you choose it over Wordpress as an example? No, you should not.

Here's the long answer and an update of sorts:

The fixes...

• Wix uses "hashbangs" in their URL structure, which previously kept Google from indexing all the content but they fixed this in 2016.
• Wix previously suffered from an inability to customize page titles and add alt tags but it is my understanding that they've fixed these issues as well. And, Google's John Mueller says that Wix Websites do-in-fact "work fine" in search.

Regardless, in spite of the fixes, Wix still has what I feel are issues that render it inferior to WordPress. For instance;

• you can't customize canonical tags (or even add self-facing ones)
• you can't customize product URLs (relatively weak on all ecommerce stuff)
• you can't add customized Meta Description to product pages
• you also can't customize Page Titles for product pages
• Wix has a mobile editor, but that's just for smartphones, not tablets.

I find Wix especially unsuitable for use in ecommerce. Wix pulls SEO information for page titles, descriptions, etc. from the Product Information you initially enter and which cannot be edited at a later time. For me, that's probably the biggest reason that I prefer WordPress over Wix. You make a mistake, you are SCREWED down the road.

Bottom Line: If you can get the client to move to Wordpress, do it. It's just "better."

Hope that's helpful.

Thanks for the question.

First, a "low DA" site score is usually not a 52. Moz Domain Authority is calculated "logarithmically" which means that it is MUCH easier to move from a 30-40 DA than it is to move to 50-60 as an example. Further, the "average" DA of a site online is much, much lower than 52. Can you tell me where or why you would think a 52 would be a low score?

As for your question, if you don't like a link then you can just "disavow" that link. Here's a link to the Google Disavow Tool. Just pop the domain into a .txt file, submit it to this tool and you're all set. If you aren't familiar with how to format a disavow file make sure to review the Moz Start to Finish Guide to Using the Disavow Tool for full information.

Hope that's helpful. Good luck!

Correcting canonical issues is just a sound SEO best practice and has the following clear benefits:

• It consolidates PageRank, DA and Page authority through one uniform URL structure
• It eliminates possible on-site duplicated issues by preventing two version of the same page from arising.
• It consolidates social shares through one URL structure
• It consolidates incoming links into one structure ensuring you get full authority to both www. and non-www URLs.
• It's user-friendly, and ensures that bookmarking and linking is done uniformly.
• It's a W3C best design practice and helps "future-proof" your URL structure.

If you want to "quantify" this to your clients all the above is where I'd start. Even though Google and Bing both make it easy to physically choose "how" you want your site to display in search results, hiccups still occur. And again, if you are indexed by your www. URLs, but are still accumulating links and social shares to your non-WWW URLs, you absolutely won't get the full algorithmic ranking benefit for these URLs until you put the redirects in place.

In sum, this is just a smart SEO practice and is a MUST correct item on any SEO audit checklist. I've seen situations were putting in the .htaccess file in place or adding server side redirects has immediately increased a site's PageRank and overall DA authority. This is usually the norm.

I'd certainly fix it, and you should as well. Hope that was helpful!

Hey Logan, I wouldn't say this is a "strange behavior." I've seen it take several months for all non-http URLs to drop out of the index when making a SSL switch.

That being said, you "could" go ahead and do a fetch request on the individual URLs in the old HTTP verified Google Search Console account and get Google to follow again the URLS to their HTTPS counterparts. That certainly won't hurt.

I had a similar issue with a client site who moved to HTTPS but forgot to noindex the dev site and all of that was indexed. They had 700+ URLs in their account in April and they still have 4 of those URLs in search as of today. It just takes awhile for all that stuff to dropout of the index.

Personally, I'd just be patient. You having the redirects in place is what is important. Google will sort it out...eventually.

To be blunt, moving from one penalized domain to another to escape a penalty is most likely a complete waste of time. It's been a known fact for years that penalties follow 301 redirects. But it was recently clarified by Google that "moving" your penalized site (and that includes content) to another domain to escape a penalty is also a foolish choice. Google now reserves the right to move a penalty to any new domain (something we've suspected for awhile, but now can confirm).

In your case, I'd strongly look at continuing to salvage the domain. If you weren't aware of the above, then I'm hesitant to believe that you've also done EVERYTHING you can to unwind your algorithmic penalty. Further, you reference both Penguin/Panda above and yet BOTH have clear different approaches to how they should be resolved. Maybe your "high-quality content" isn't really as high-quality as you think? Maybe you haven't disavowed all the toxic links/domains affecting your site? Have you tried to seek out a professional Google penalty site audit? I'm not convinced you've done all you can just based on your question.

No judgments, but personally, no, I don't believe this is a "non-dangerous approach."

What you have described above is "breadcrumb navigation."

A “breadcrumb” (or “breadcrumb trail”) is a type of secondary navigation scheme that reveals the user's location in a website or Web application. The term comes from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale in which the two title children drop breadcrumbs to form a trail back to their home. This kind of navigation has clear benefits for users, including:

• It looks better in search and can increase CTR.
• It lowers bounce rate on-site and decreases "pogo-sticking" in the SERPs
• It shows users a clear site hierarchy.
• It emphasizes primary navigation by being more "helpful" to users.

Here are some great resources on breadcrumb navigation you may want to review:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/breadcrumb-navigation-examined-best-practices-examples/

https://www.woorank.com/en/blog/breadcrumb-navigation-a-guide-to-types-benefits-and-best-practices

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/enhance-site#enable-breadcrumbs

That last link above is the "documentation" from Google on how to enable breadcrumbs. And here is the Google page on best use practices with examples

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs, especially on a ecommerce-based site, are a MUST for users. So if this is a new concept to you, definitely read-up. Google likes them and visitors like them.

Hope that's helpful.

Hi Nick,

Finding quality blogs on your own that accept guest blog posts can be difficult. I'd recommend instead you check out http://myblogguest.com and www.guestblogit.com initially. Both are the leaders in this niche and will provide you a way to connect with "quality" sites offering guest blogging opportunities.

Both sites require registration, have robust communities and resources, and cater to both guest blog writers and site owners looking to supplement their content creation by connecting with quality guest blog content.

I've used them regularly, recommended them to clients, and they do provide e-commerce site targeted opportunities. That's where I'd start.

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

Ivan, Panda is a page-level user experience algorithm. Ask yourself: do content pages that result in high bounce rates, low average site visits OR result in "pogosticking" (users click on the pages then immediately use the back button and return back to search results) REALLY qualify as quality pages? The answer is no, they don't.

I would urge you to visit the list of 23 questions I initially linked to above and ASK these of your current content options. Further, if you do visit this link, take a look at this quote from Amit Singhal on the same page:

"low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content."

Directly from the horse's mouth. Can't get any clearer than that.

Here is the mod_rewrite code that would go in your Wordpress .htaccess file that would redirect

http://www.website.com/article-title/lol

to this:

http://www.website.com/article-title/

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^article-title/lol(.*)$  http://www.website.com/article-title/$1 [r=301,nc]

Make a note of this Mod_Rewrite Tool and it should help you with similar rules in the future.

Hope that helps!

User experience, which of course is paramount as been mentioned above. However, what hasn't been mentioned above is the clear need to PRUNE (remove completely) from your site low-quality content for Panda reasons. I personally would not want to redirect any page that has a 100% bounce rate or an average site visit of less than 20 seconds. I'm sure if you filtered these target pages the metrics would be even worse than this.

The problem with low quality or thin content is that even a small amount on the average site will drag down a site algorithmically. Google used to view websites as books, and the best practice was to continually add pages to that book so that you had more possible targets for Google to rank and send you long-tail search traffic referrals. That is no longer the case. Instead, anything that doesn't provide a high-quality user experience is just dragging you down and that includes exactly what you stated in your question "duplicate content, keyword stuffed, and just plain bad content."

So what should you do with these pages? I would certainly not 301 redirect them just for the sake of "redirecting them" nor do I believe that a "custom 404 page for a previous BAD piece of content" enhances user-experience. Instead, I would urge you to remove them completely by the site via a 410 GONE redirect. Google has already publicly stated that they process 410's faster and that this is the PREFERRED best practice to ensure these pages are completely removed from the index.

Hope that helps. Good luck with your project.

Hey Armands,

803 errors are the result of incomplete HTTP responses being received, using as a result of incomplete/incorrect SSL implementation on a site. Per the MOZ Learn about HTTP Errors in Crawl Errors report, here's how these are defined:

"804 errors result from a site with misconfigured SSL software. If Moz's crawlers cannot correctly interpret an SSL response for a home page, the crawl ends immediately."

Basically, these "can" be bad in that they result in an inefficient crawl and can end an actual crawl, immediately. Just like you should fix 4xx level errors since they can be bad for users, so too should you probably address these 804 errors since they can be bad for crawlers (specifically Moz though).

More information on this issue can be found in these previous MOZ threads:

1. https://moz.com/community/q/moz-crawler-has-been-finding-a-lot-of-803-and-804-errors
2. https://moz.com/community/q/how-do-fix-an-803-error

In my experience, these are usually the result of "Mixed Content" issues with your SSL implementation. However, this is also NOT what most SEOs (myself included) would classify as a HIGH PRIORITY ISSUE. But for some reason, Moz continues to classify it as such.

That looks pretty good to me. And you pass validation so you're probably good-to-go!

Did you check-out any competitor markup for comparison-sake?

Hey Damon, your "guess" about linking to the specific page with a specific target anchor text isn't wrong.

However, with link building the best approach is always to "distribute the weight" amongst your entire site. Your home page is going to naturally accumulate a large percentage of brand-based/commercialized links and in so doing so, accumulate authority that will flow naturally through your site anyway.

But when we talk about a "content-rich site" it's always a site that as very high percentage of deep links -- 70% or more is a great target. That's why having a blog embedded deeply on your site as a subdirectory is a GREAT way to accumulate both deep links and inbound linking authority. But doing this effectively means understanding what "quality content" looks like.

The best way to accumulate good, deep links to your site (and move the dial algorithmically in Google) is to put up GREAT content that people will want to link to. I know we hear that all the time "all you need is great content and you'll move the dial" but most people don't know what good, evergreen content looks like.

Over 2 million blog posts are published each day. Most of them SUCK. But if you can find and publish high-quality pieces of content that generate shares, freshness signals, and attract incoming links, that will lead to great individual Page Authority score that do reinforce overall domain authority.

If I could offer you a tip in this regard, I highly recommend a tool like Answer the Public. Go over there and type in target keyword phrases and look at the questions returned. Then, look to write up detailed pieces of content that ANSWER these questions on your site. Not only is this type of content like CAT NIP to your visitors but it will also work to generate those fantastic Featured Snippets (Answers) you are seeing more and more at Position Zero in Google (like this one for "How to be a Food Blogger").

Hope that's helpful. Good luck with your link building!

Klarke hit it briefly in his reply. The problem is that you were "artificially" achieving your previous rankings and traffic by means of paid links. Those links are what Google was using algorithmically to value your site for ranking purposes.

When you received the manual links notice from Google (you were discovered using paid links) Google placed a filter on your website AND discounted those paid links. When you removed those paid links to recover from the manual penalty you also FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED the backlink value and overall algorithmic strength of your site in the process.

Bottom line: when Google removed the filter from your website you were left with a much reduced backlink profile that no longer had its previous ranking strength. The result? Lower rankings.

Further, there have been over a dozen algorithmic Panda, Penguin, EMD, Top Heavy and other assorted  updates by Google during the course of 2012. Any of them could have also adversely affected your sites' natural ranking profile.

If you haven't done so, head over to the www.panguintool.com and compare your site accordingly against the more notable updates. That will allow you to pinpoint if and where you were affected so you can make necessary content or backlink changes as needed.

I hope that helps. Otherwise, drop me a note for a full penalty site audit and we can go from there.

Happy Holidays and good luck!

Matt Cutts with Google has publicly stated (as has John Muir here) that 404 and 410 errors are treated the same and won't hurt you algorithmically. But there is clear evidence that it can impact usability and customer experience.

In your case, the 410 permanently gone error code is the appropriate status to be returning in your situation. The pages aren't returning, ever. My experience shows that Google tends to drop 410 pages from the index almost immediately, whereas it can still take days or weeks for 404s to completely fall out of the index.

However, usability in your case comes into play. 30 days seems a pretty DRASTIC cutoff date for content (except in the case of finite classified ads, event listings, etc.). You may want to eliminate one hard-and-fast rule and look at this issue from a more flexible viewpoint. Can some of these 410's be redirected to more appropriate (read current) resources via 301s? How about link equity? Are some of these redirects actually worth salvaging and redirecting to more related long-term resources via 301s to salvage link equity?

Finally, bounce rate, time-on-site, and general usability continue to become more important from an algorithmic standpoint. One of the things I do internally with my sites and those of my clients is track the 410/404 error traffic on specific URLs and make sure that if these pages are still being searched for and/or visited that I am mindful of the site experience. First impressions do matter...especially on 404/410 pages.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

You said this:

"Would disavow even be of any use though? I though that a disavow file had to be for the specific domain, so adding a disavow to all those links wouldn't do anything"

When you disavow at the domain level, you also cover ALL the subdomains on that domain as well (even if they are deleted). So the best practice in this case, even if the domain isn't there anymore would be to just disavow those links.

John Mueller clarified this in a Google+ thread back in 2014.

You can link to a sub-page if you want but the WHOLE point of your question (which is how I read it) is that you wanted to concentrate on improving your client rankings for the keyword "computer page" tied to their home page. That means generating as many "unique domain" links into your home page for that anchor text from external, related pages.

But again, to promote a "diverse link profile" you want to vary that anchor text. Hence my first answer.

If you have access to a country-specific TLD (ie .com.au for Australia or .co.uk for the UK) and you are trying to target that country's audience then absolutely, you should be using a country-specific TLD. Google already automatically geotargets these for you and yes, you get a clear algorithmic ranking boost for using them over something more "generic" that you physically geotarget yourself within Google Webmaster Tools.

For example, if I'm attempting to target Google Canada (Google.ca) and I want to provide the best algorithmic ranking potential for my site right out-of-the-gate (based solely on a domain level), I'm going to choose a .ca domain over a .com domain every time. All you have to do is browse the country specific indexes yourself to see this in action. As you correctly pointed out, even a low-authority country specific TLD routinely trounces stronger generic sites or subdomains that have been individually geotargeted. And yes, as you stated, coupling a country-specific TLD with in-country hosting is just a smart practice since it reinforces a clear geotargeted preference. The more signals the better in that regard.

Bottom line: if you have access to both the country-specific and general TLDs, allows go country-specific. It's the recommended best practice.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your future efforts!

Hey Charles, sorry you are having problems.

I would like to suggest you check-out WP Fix It. I've used them in the past for clients who needed just what you need right now: a monthly managed WP service to do all the heavy lifting for you.

The price for their service is $57/mo. Here's a list of what that service plan looks like:

1. Premium Stable Hosting
2. Elite Security Protection
3. Daily Full Site Backups
4. Monthly Software Updates
5. Personalized Agent Connection
6. Unlimited Issue Support
7. FREE website transfer

Now, again, I have no direct involvement with the site myself but I've used them multiple times and I've always been impressed with how fast they respond to client questions and concerns...including when a site "suddenly goes down."

In your case, if your "host" can't figure it out then your host probably SUCKS. If you are using the Bluehost and GoDaddys of the World that may explain your problem. So it's possible that migrating you off your host to something more "reliable" may solve a lot of your problems.

But if you need a suggestion, check-out www.wpfixit.com. You can do much, much worse.

Good luck and keep us updated in the thread!

It's an issue in that it's not correct.

A "header tag" is always text based. They are used to determine, to search engines, what a page is about. The search engines can't really "see" images in the traditional sense so this application is incorrect.

A lot of designers mistakenly wrap the logo in a H1 tag and call it a day. I call it out in audits all the time. It's just not correct or the best practice. It will have no effect for SEO or for image optimization in that format.

Your goal is always to communicate to users (and Google) what the page is about. The proper application of H1 tags is part of that process.

How new is the online retail store you are working with? I ask because what you have described is VERY common with new sites. It's normal to see indexed URL fluctuation counts, even large fluctuation counts, occur in the first few months of a site as Google works to index the URLs "appropriately."

It's also worth noting that in a post-Panda world Google has really TIGHTENED UP what they choose to index. If a majority of these URLs lack unique compelling content, are just aggregated content from other sources, or suffer duplicate content issues, that will certainly impact Google's decision to include them accordingly.

Unfortunately, what YOU value as good content doesn't matter much if Google doesn't share that opinion. I'd strongly recommend you review the pages that Google is NOT indexing and note similarities. Most likely, all your pages aren't "worthy" of current indexing by Google and as it slowly shifts down deeper into your pages it's making the determination as to which of your pages deserve listing consideration and which do not.

As to how to combat this...work to create QUALITY content that sets you specifically apart from your retail competitors. Make sure as well to REMOVE any questionable or thin content. This type of content can bring down an entire domain post-Panda.

Sorry I don't have better advice. Good luck with your retail site this holiday season!

Unfortunately, and I could be wrong here, but I believe that Moz doesn't use anything close to a static IP address for their crawl and instead uses thousands which constantly change when they run a crawl. It's all hosted from the cloud. So there is honestly no way to get a "range" for you to pass along.

Instead, all you can do I believe is make sure you whitelist the useragent which I believe is just "roger."

Just my two-cents, but that sounds like a TERRIBLE idea. Further, it's going to look pretty disingenuous to your social followings.

If you have a brand, that you've built up social followings on over an extended period of time, it seems VERY short-term to change out different domains. And frankly, the days of partial or exact match domains having long-term, strong, SEO staying power, is really over. Branded sites with branded anchor texts are really the SAFE way to go in what is a clear war by Google on keyword-rich link building.

A domain change is never an easy decision but unless you've legally changed your name or are "rebranding" -- doing a domain change JUST to get some kind of "partial match" in your URL sounds like pretty piss-poor SEO advice. Clearly, I have limited facts here and it sounds like they are doing this for some perceived "local SEO" geographic benefit but in my experience, most of these changes don't end up being successful in the long-term.

Now, the above being said, it is very common in the legal industry to have a keyword-rich domain (ie. http://www.bestinjurylawyers.com/) but use the Firm or Brand Name for social accounts (ie. https://www.facebook.com/TheReevesLawGroup). You can find a ton of examples of firms doing this so it's not the end-of-the-world and you can easily use these examples to justify NOT making a uniform change at your end.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck with your client situation.

Hi ZoomZoom,

Although I can't do a full site audit in this forum I see some clear issues which could easily explain your drops:

• Your site loads horribly slow. You're scoring very low on the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool
• You've got 70 images on that home page. That's hurting your Page Speed and overall usability.
• You appear to optimizing for the phrase "3D IC technology" and yet it's not represented on the page once.

I'm showing a PageRank 0 on your site, a white toolbar. There has been a PageRank update since October. What was it previously? Did you lose PageRank during the last update? It looks like you have a relatively average DA 34 score which should be enough to rank you for most keywords. Make sure to head over to the Panguin Tool and run this site against reported recent algorithmic updates by Google, that will help fine-tune your site auditing.

Finally, when you change or jigger with setting in GW Tools it can take a period of a couple of weeks for things to "shake out." So just an FYI there as well.

Good luck!

This is actually a pretty simple process. Here's the specific GA help page showing you wahat to do to configure one account for multiple cross-domain tracking:

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175538

It's really just a matter of setting up cross-links and a couple of custom filters to separate out the data by domain name.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

I think the recourse here is simple. IGNORE IT.

Again, this is a "Moz Crawl" prominence issue -- they just assign a higher value to it than most. I seriously doubt this is hurting you. Go over to www.ssllabs.com and run your SSL configuration through that tool there. If you returns a high score, you're good.

Absolutely! Think of your site as a book. It used to be (pre-Panda) that adding new pages to your site was the right result. More pages, even low-quality pages, allowed for your site to better trigger long tail keywords which generated more traffic. This traffic may not have been super-targeted though and tended to generate very high bounce rates.

Now, post-Panda, it's clear that even a SMALL amount of low-quality, thin, or poor user experience content will drag down your entire domain. That's how Panda works -- it's a page-level quality algorithm. So pruning or removing that content is definitely a consideration to which you must give serious thought. Ask yourself: does your client's content answer a question, fulfill a need, or provides a unique viewpoint all of which work together to provide a full quality user experience? If not, then either re-write (usually a complete waste of time) or remove it completely from your site.

When Google pushed out Panda waaaaay back in 2011 they published a list of 23 questions that site owners should be asking themselves when auditing their site for content and user experience. Read this list and take a hard look at your site and content practices with an eye to understanding how Google may see your site.

Then, I'd suggest you go into Google Analytics under Behavior, choose Site Content, then All Pages, and then sort that content by Bounce Rate. Any page that has a bounce rate of 100% OR an average visit of less than 30 seconds should be reviewed closely for complete removal from your site. Even a small amount of these type of pages can drag down an entire site algorithmically.

Finally, if you do remove the pages from your site, I'd suggest a 410 GONE status code. These seem to be processed much faster than regular 404s and it's a clear sign to Google that these pages are NEVER coming back!

I hope this was helpful Claudio. Good luck with your client's site!

Hi Michael,

You submitted this same exact question over at The Guild (SEO Chat). Did you receive that answer?

Here's that answer again, including links to the subscriber-only materials you have access to you. Let me know if you can't access anything or if you have any clarification questions:

First, if you haven't seen our article this month on Domain Authority I'd like you to review that first here:

https://guild.seochat.com/se-news/content/looking-to-boost-your-domain-authority-here-are-some-tips

As for your question below, honestly, there is no right answer. Speaking as a link builder myself I'm ALWAYS going to choose a lower DA value site link target that is niche-related over a higher DA site that is not. That's a qualified linking target. Just as I would always choose a link on a page that is actually going to get clicked over a link on a higher DA page that sends me NO traffic.

So there is really not a quantifiable answer to your question. If you want to use DA 70 as your make or break it number, awesome. But considering that the VAST majority of sites have a DA score of 40 or less, personally, 70 seems awfully high to use as a preconceived standard for evaluation.

Make sure to read my detailed article on link evaluation here:

https://guild.seochat.com/se-news/content/Link-Building-7-Simple-Ways-a-Pro-Evaluates-True-Link-Quality

When I'm evaluating a link I'll honestly not review DA till the end. And even then, again, if a link isn't going to get clicked or send traffic, to me that is a HUGE deal and I devalue the link immediately.

Hope that helps. Thanks for the question and definitely respond (other here, or at The Guild) for more information.

Hey Chris, it looks like you got some responses to this over on the Google Help Thread.

This is an interesting question. My understanding is that you should include all relevant XHTML, image, and video elements within their corresponding <url>tag all within the XML sitemap itself</url>.

This is discussed a little bit over at Allotment Digital and they even include an example XML file that shows the best practice writeup.

Let me know if that's helpful or if you get any further clarification over on the Google thread.

Good question, and you should be aware that recent large scale 301 redirect campaigns have shown a small loss (around 15%) of total link authority.

However, Google has said repeatedly that 301 redirects dilute the same amount of PageRank as it would through a regular link. Matt Cutts said this most recently in a 2013 YouTube video that has a clear discussion on the matter. Basically, what this means is that to Google the "loss in PageRank from 301 redirects is so minimal it's not an issue webmasters should even worry about."

Based on that statement, your next question on a large-scale URL change needs to be NOT SEO-focused, but UX-focused:

1. Will the URL change impact your users?
2. Will that URL change be a POSITIVE impact for users?

Personally, I think  the most important question you need to ask yourself though isn't making the change. But AFTER you make the change can you really justify keeping 7500+ articles?

Let's be honest, are you REALLY sure all 7500 articles are high-quality? We know that even a small amount of thin or low-quality content on a domain can effect the performance of all the content, so maybe a focused content audit needs to be a priority?

Have you reviewed closely the Google Search Console Search Queries information for your articles? Any article on your site that hasn't generate traffic in 28 days is not a "high-quality article." That's the content you'd want to focus on specifically. Can that content be updated, improved and republished? Or is that content better CUT AWAY COMPLETELY from the domain so that other content has a better chance of improvement?

Just something to think about. Hope this was useful. Good luck!