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Hi everyone,

One of our websites was changed to non-www to www. The non-www pages were then redirected to avoid duplicate issue. Moz and Screaming Frog flagged a number of these redirected pages as missing canonical tags. Is the canonical tag still required for pages already redirecting? Or is it detecting another possible duplicate page that we haven't redirected yet?

Also, the rankings for this website isn't improving despite having us optimising these pages as best as we could. I'm wondering if this canonical tag issue may be affecting it.

Thank you.

If you redirect a redirect, that's going to cause a redirect chain. Having too many redirect chains will result to slow page speed. For every step in a redirect chain, about 10% of authority is also lost. The best thing to do is a 1 - 1 redirect if possible. Have a read of this blog post about redirects - https://moz.com/blog/heres-how-to-keep-301-redirects-from-ruining-your-seo

Hope this helps!

Thank you! Yes, we have a feeling the phone number came from a hidden code somewhere. We asked our client if their website was built by the same developer that built the site of the business where the phone number goes to. If this is the case, then that solves the mystery.

We have a new client and they don't have meta descriptions yet. However, Google has assigned descriptions for them now appearing on the SERPs. The problem is that Google added a phone number that's totally not the client's and goes to a different unrelated business. Our plan is to update the meta to reflect the correct information, however, we're just perplexed as to how Google came up with the incorrect phone number. Where does it get its information from? The page currently has all the correct phone number, hours, and content.

I've read that Google sometimes also doesn't recognise our meta descriptions if it thinks they could serve up a better one. My next question is, what if Google insists on showing the incorrect phone number. Is there a way we can fix this? Thanks!

Hi Martin, thanks for sharing the article and for the tips on what to check! I need that article right now to help me calm down

Hi everyone, we noticed while doing last month's reports that even the best performing campaigns have a few keywords that slipped - some up to 10 positions down. We know keywords fluctuate every month, but May was just a weird month for rankings. While looking at possible issues that caused this, we noticed that these campaigns' clicks have gone up. So while keywords have gone down, their visitors seemed to be on the rise.

Is there a correlation? Maybe Google saw an increase in visitors and decided something's up and lowered the rankings (this sounds ridiculous - sorry! May just be pure luck, but thought I'd ask anyway). Has anyone seen a drop in their rankings for May also? I checked everywhere, and I don't think there has been a major update going on.

Thanks!

Hi, like what Bryan said, it's better if you could avoid having redirects. Because of the extra step, redirects can affect your PageSpeed. We've always used redirects however - it's difficult to avoid - and it's very rarely flagged as a major issue when running the site in Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. The one thing we found that really has an impact on PageSpeed is a redirect chain, which should be avoided. This happens when a redirect goes to another redirect. Example: non-www redirected to a www version of the site, and then later on redirected again to an https www version. PageSpeed sites flag this as an issue, and so does Moz.

Hope this helps!

Hi, I would wait it out a few weeks. There was one instance where we updated metadata and content on a page and the rankings visibly dropped a couple of days later. We thought it was because of this change, but decided to wait it out so we can be sure. A few weeks later, the rankings went up higher than where it was originally. Try resubmitting a sitemap in search console so Google can reindex your pages quicker.

Hi, I contacted Google about not receiving the pin after multiple attempts and they gave me an option to send photos of the place showing the sign and entry. Once you have verified this old address, you have to change the address to your current address and verify one more time.

If you absolutely can't verify the old address, there's also the option of creating a new Google My Business for your current location. Once that's verified, contact Google about merging the two businesses.

Here's also a post from Moz about dealing with duplicate locations - https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing

and from Google My Business help - https://support.google.com/business/answer/7005371?hl=en

Hope this helps.

Awesome, thanks Martin!

Hi Martin, thank you for your reply. Just to clarify, if we uploaded the sitemap manually to the website, we'll have to reupload a new one, and then resubmit to GSC.

If our sitemap is generated by a tool, say, in WordPress, then the sitemap gets updated automatically, and we just have to resubmit it to GSC.

Are those correct?

Hi everyone, could anyone please help me understand what to do next with the xml sitemap after making on page changes?

For example, a website has an already existing xml sitemap and it's submitted to Google search console. We make changes to the website - URL structure, content, added new pages, 301 redirected broken links etc. for optimisation. Is there anything that we should do to change/update their current xml sitemap? Does it automatically update itself? Do we have to resubmit their xml sitemap to search console?

Thanks!

I was actually also looking for an answer to this and found threads way back 2013 with the same advice that keyword density doesn't matter. What I found using MozPro is that target keywords should be mentioned in the meta title, description, H1, URL (if possible), and at least once in the copy without breaking the keywords apart. I also found that mentioning a target keyword in a 500-word copy more than 15 times is flagged by Moz as stuffing. I just use these as a rough guide. When I'm feeling particularly worried that some keywords have been mentioned too much, I use a free keyword density analyser to see how many times they appeared and reduce if necessary (especially if the copy doesn't read too well because of too much repetitiveness). Hope this helps!

Thanks, Donald and Miriam! It amazes me how I can get more useful responses here than from Google's actual support team.

Hi Belen,

I think having one brand page is enough. You don't need to have 15 Google+ pages and I don't think having more than 1 has an impact on SEO or backlinking. You can use this G+ page to promote content and post updates like any other social media account, and link to it to your website's header/footer. Apart from what I've mentioned, I think there's really no other use for G+, unfortunately.

I created and verified a new Google My Business page for a client and found that there won't be any more Google+ created automatically. I spoke to Google Support and they confirmed this is the case because apparently, the two Google products confuse people. Now, if we want a G+ page created for our client, we have to go and 'Apply' for one here - https://plus.google.com/create

We're not sure how to go moving forward with new clients. Has anyone tried to apply for a G+ account successfully using the above link? If we create a new Gmail account, don't we get a G+ account anyway (or is that not the case as well)?

Hi everyone,

I work for a digital marketing agency in Australia. Our team noticed some businesses similar to ours use a free SEO Audit tool on their homepages. We are considering having one as well but, but want to know how it would benefit us. Will adding this tool on our home page help us rank better in Google? If yes, can you please tell us how?

Thank you.