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The preferred version has been verified by adding an HTML tag in the Shopify theme (this is how I usually verify too). But I don't have access to the same search console account...
Thanks William,
That's always been my approach too, but the dev is adamant that if they redirect all variants to the preferred version there is no need to verify them all.
My question is: should I believe what this dev is saying?
I've been going on the assumption that when verifying a website in search console, it's always good to register and verify all variants of the site URL:
However, if you create redirects to the preferred URL, is it really necessary to register/virfy of the other three? If so, why?
Yeah, that's the next step. The robots.txt file is blank!
I have a client who has created a number of login pages for their clients (eg. clientA.domain.com, clientB.domain.com). They are all password protected.
Just wondering if this has any impact on SEO, good or bad?
In fact, what the client really wants is this...
... any user in the UK who:
... ALWAYS be redirected to "domainname.co.uk" so they only see what the client sells direct from the UK. This sounds to me way beyond just hreflang. This sounds like it might need some kind of redirection based on IP?
OK, thanks Gianluca.
So how would you specify hreflang so that...?
Thank you Gianluca. I will certainly checkout that deck.
But (groan)... classic SEO experience here. One expert says 'black' then next says 'what'. Who are we to believe?
Thanks Joe.
Found this link - by far the best I have read on geo-targeting:
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/google-optimization-help/geo-targeting-techniques-in-google-for-seo/
I have a client with a Shopify site. It is a clone of the 'main' website which is a .co.uk domain.
Client wants to use .com.au for Australia and New Zealand. All are English language.
How should we structure hreflang tags?
Or is there a better way to target the .com.au website at Australia/New Zealand?
The client was given this advice to use a 'hidden' page for 'other search terms'.
So sounds like they were thinking in terms of a gateway page.
I just had a client say they were advised by a friend to use 'a bunch of unlisted (hidden) pages'.
Isn't this seriously black hat?
I know these are intended for specifying different language/regional versions of one site, but can they be used to specify just ONE country (eg. "en-au")?
Or does it only work to specify an ALTERNATIVE to another language/region variation?
Hi Logan,
I've read the MOZ guide but it doesn't answer one question and I cannot find an answer anywhere else...
Can hreflang tags be used to specify just ONE country (eg. "en-au"), or does it only work as an alternative to another language/region variation?
Thanks Donald.
So how would I apply regex to an IP address like this so that it can be added to a GA filter?
I'm creating a filter for internal IP addresses and the client has sent me this: 2001:db8:85a3:8d3:1319:8a2e:370:7348
Does this mean it is not a fixed IP address?
I have only ever seen IP addresses in this format: 192.0.2.1
Can anyone shed any light?
To target:
I'm proposing to use a combination of ccTLDs along with hreflang tags.
The developer is also keen to use IP forcing as well - just to be sure!
Anybody spot any potential issues or conflicts here?
Thanks Roman.
The site is run on Shopify, so no access to htaccess file.
The devs were looking at forcing one site or the other based on IP address. That sounds fine to me, but how does it stop Google indexing and ranking the two domains (domain.com and otherdomain.com) side by side in the same SERPs?
Thanks Logan.
The 'all other countries' is the problem here. The client wants one domain for Australia, then another for 'all other countries'. The products are the same, the language is the same. the only difference is the currency.
And even though the Australian domain was specified in search console, it still appears alongside the other domain in Google searches for other countries.
Here's the scenario... Client has two domain names:
Both have identical products, but different currencies (AU$ and US$).
The problem (as most of you will know) is that without using a sub-domain or country-code top-level domains, Google has no idea which domain should be served for which domain. Furthermore, because the root domain is different, Google doesn't see any connection between the two - other than the fact they have identical products!
My recommendation to the client is to change to:
Arguably, we could leave the second one alone. But I think it's better for the brand to use the same root domain for each.
Obviously this means both will need to be redirected. Since NONE of the pages within the sites will change, do we need to redirect every page, or just the root domain?
Any other risks or concerns we should know about?
Thanks Lydia. I will expand on the internal links. I'm assuming:
Thx
Thanks James. Yes, I'm beginning to wonder of it has been over-optimized.
There are no external backlinks, but there are a few internal links and I noticed they use 'exact match' anchor text. The same keyword is used in the URL, title, meta desc and H1. So maybe over- optimization is the issue?
I have a page which (I believe) is well optimised for a specific keyword (URL, title tag, meta description, H1, etc). yet Google chooses to display the home page instead of the page more suited to the search query.
Why is Google doing this and what can I do to stop it?
I can confirm that Shopify records the source of the FIRST click to the site and does not update it.
I can also confirm that (by default) Google Analytics records the LAST source in a session which results in a conversion (ie. Last Click).
So in some cases it will be the same (eg. the user first comes to the site from a Google organic search and decides to place an order during the same session).
But in other cases, the user may first come to the site from (say) a Google Ad, perhaps sign up for email, then return some time later via the email, or direct, or from an organic search, or whatever. In this case, Shopify will have recorded the initial source (Google Ad) and Google Analytics will have recorded the last source (or Last Click).
There are a few edge cases where GA does not capture the conversion (eg. if the users transacts on Paypal, but does not return to the site, therefore does not trigger the 'thank_you' page or the conversion tracking).
I find it useful to know BOTH:
Does this make more sense James?
Don't really know if redirects were in place. Only just taken over the management. But from what I can gather, Shopify moved all sites on its platform from http to https.
The URLs do all seem to redirect. But the URLs within backlinks all still point to http. If I run a report in ahrefs, the http version might still have hundreds or thousands of backlinks, but the https does not. At the same time, I have seen MOZ domain authority plummet.
I just manually updated a bunch of backlinks for one site to point to https. Now ahrefs is picking them up as backlinks in their report.
Late last year, Shopify moved all their sites from http to https.
I did an audit of a Shopify site recently and discovered the following...
So I went into the blog (which is on a different domain - long story) and changed all the backlinks from http to https. One week later... the https version of the site now has 278 backlinks from the same 5 domains.
I've been told that Google doesn't worry about this when it comes to rankings. Not sure if this is true or not. But I definitely believe this DOES affect MOZ Domain Authority.
Can anybody confirm or deny this? If the backlinks do not change from http to https following a migration, does this impact MOZ Domain Authority and/or Google rankings?
Looks like you've done a sterling job GWMSEO. Well done!
I deal with a lot of small sites where the decision to move from http to https was made for them... by Shopify (many without them even realising). Some of these sites take months to recover. So, to see recovery within a few weeks is a good result.
Once question I have for you: how have you resolved the backlinks issue (your observation #6)?
What I have observed is that ahrefs doesn't associate the old (http) backlinks with the new version (https). I believe this then impacts backlink profile and subsequently MOZ Domain Authority, which then impacts rankings and traffic.
301 redirects ensure you don't lost the traffic, but it doesn't move the backlinks from http to https.
Nobody has been able to confirm or deny my suspicions yet. So:
Murray
Thanks for this Gaston. I have a few questions/comments to add:
Murray
Thanks for the answer - allbeit not the answer I wanted to hear!
The client sells school uniforms. I have now discovered he has created a number of 'hub' pages which simply contain lists of school names for each region, where each of the school names link to a page of fairly banal blurb about each school.
Given that he does not sell uniforms for most of these schools, it looks like classic keyword stuffing.
This being the case, surely it wouldn't be wise to preserve this type of content, even though this strategy has gotten him some pretty good rankings?
Thanks James.
The client has already said he wants to change look and feel, possibly the navigation too. So I suspect too many changes to avoid some SEO flux.
I'm trying to resolve a number of conversion discrepancies found in Google Analytics. I discovered that Shopify also provides its own 'conversion details'.
In some cases they correlate, which is awesome! But in many cases they do not. Anyone know why this is?
And which is more reliable (remembering that Shopify is an actual, real order)?
Does anybody know how Shopify attributes conversions (ie. last click, first click, or some hybrid of the two)?
Thanks Brandon. I tend to agree with you. Just too many variables outside of my control.
Given that they are moving to Shopify, which means 'collections' and 'products' added to URLs, it's clearly impossible to maintain continuity in URLs and site/nav structure.
Nightmare!
Thank you James. Very useful.
The current site is custom-built in PHP, moving to Shopify. So straight away, I know the URLs and site structure cannot be the same. There's also a very good chance they will move from http to https. I've seen several sites drop page authority when this happens.
Doesn't sound promising does it?!
I have acquired new a client who wants to migrate to a new platform. He also wants a 100% guarantee we maintain he Google search rankings. How realistic is this? Anyone got a checklist they can recommend?
I manage a number of Shopify stores for ecommerce clients. MOZ keeps kindly telling me the URLs are too long.
However, this is largely due to the structure of Shopify, which has to include 'collections' and 'products'. For example: https://domain.com.au/collections/collection-name/products/colour-plus-six-to-seven-word-product-name
MOZ recommends no more than 75 characters. This means we have 25-30 characters for both the collection name and product name. VERY challenging!
Questions:
I just went to check my client sites in Google search console and noticed a whole bunch of them no longer 'verified'. They were all previously verified.
Oddly, the redirects don't appear to be working at all.
I set up two of them using the Traffic Control app for Shopify and they appeared to have been accepted fine, but the old URLs are not redirecting anywhere. Probably a question for Traffic Control.
I have a simialr problem...
In December, a client site switches from http to https. Any clicks from old backlinks redirect from the http target to https, so the traffic still flows. But because the backlinks are to http, not https, the latter version has lost the Domain Authority.
How do we resolve this? Is the only solution to approach referring sites and ask them to change links to https?
Hey Andy,
Somewhat heartening to know we're not alone, but I share your pain!
My client went from a Domain Authority of 16 in December to a DA of 1 after moving to https. They have finally bounced back to 11, but it has taken 3 months AND they still only have 2 referring domains linking to the https version.
There are 53 referring domains still linking to the http version. In fact, this has risen from 40 referring domains in the last month. So how can the number of referrers to http be increasing, when there is an https verion? I just don't get it!
Anyone know (a) how this can happen and (b) how to address the issue?
A client has just given me a list of redirect URLs as requested of them. However, they're wanting to redirect a bunch of pages to various anchor points within the same page.
Is there any problem with this? I've never seen or been asked to redirect like this before.
Picture this - if you have a spirit for adventure!
Questions:
Yes. What a mess!
has anyone discovered this bot in their robots.txt file?
User-agent: MJ12bot
Crawl-Delay: 10
Good or bad?
This issue just keeps getting murkier and murkier...
Even though ahrefs 'overview' reports 104 backlinks from 46 domains, when I go to The Best Pages by Backlinks, it says there are 691 results with a 429 Too Many Requests error.
Anyone know how to fix 429 errors on Shopify? Or even what causes them?
I have a client who appears to have taken a big hit in a few areas recently:
Ininitally, I thought this might be due to the MOZ indexing problems last month.
However, I now suspect this is connected to their switch from http to https, which occured in mid December. Although all the http pages appear to be redirecting, it looks like the backlinks are not being associated to their https version.
Anyone had experience of this and/or now how to remedy?
Definitely looks like something to do with http/https...
Just checked the domain in ahrefs (http and https):
I also noticed in ahrefs:
Although all the http pages appear to be redirecting to https, it seem that the backlinks have been lost.
If this is the case, can they get them back? And if so, how?
The challenge is I've only just started with this client, so I don't really know what has/hasn't been done over the last few months.
What I can see is:
So does it sound plausible that the switch from http to https could also affect DA?
Yes, I read that post before.
Unfortunately this client's primary competitor has maintained their DA of 19. So I suspect (the client is certain) there is something else going on. So I need to know where to start digging!
