Hi SEOanalytics

The better a sentence is written with contextually strong keywords intertwined throughout, the more elegant it reads and the more professional it looks. Just compare reading Oscar Wilde to JK Rowling. Wilde's writing is poetic and richly written with proselike descriptions, fabulously florid verbs, alliteration and dialogue.

For me, it's important not to repeat nouns. for example 'The singer stalked the stage' (Subject, Predicate (verb), noun), then the singer leapt into the audience, smashing his face bloody on the ground'. You would change the second 'singer' to 'he' or 'front man'. There are a million examples and this is a very obvious way of using semantics.

There is an art to good writing and the Subject/Predicate/Object form is just a discipline to ensure you write in a clean and precise way. It's also good for SEO as it ensures that the correct keywords are used in the right way, using the correct tense and not stuffed.

One could imagine that if my sentence was targetting the keyword 'singers' then the use of alternative, or semantic would enhance the SEO value of the piece.

There is rather a wonderful video here: https://www.brightstorm.com/english/grammar/sentence-basics/subject-predicate-and-objects/

But of course, I have tried to explain the practical use of this in relation to SEO. If we didn't write in this way then the piece would simply be a list of interconnected words or bullet points.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Nigel

Hi James

The reality is that it doesn't matter whether there is a trailing slash or not at the end of your URLs. What is important is that only one version is used and preferably there is no 301 from one to the other if it can be avoided. Especially if there are live links going to one or the other on the front end of your website.

So in your case you have navigation links with no trailing slash and a forced 301 adding them on.

I would remove the htaccess code which is forcing everything to a trailing slash and then add a piece of code removing it from any inbound requests.

Clearly, all backlinks will include the slash including Google - adding the code will resolve these pretty quickly and your existing search results will flick over when they are next crawled. This will depend on the size of your website and the crawl rate. You can check this in webmasters.

Remember that if you do this the backlinks from other websites will have a trailing slash and when the hits come in the new 301 will take them to a non-trailing slash. There may be a small drop in link juice from these backlinks. (I say 'maybe' as Rand Fishkin still believes so - others swear blind there isn't) so be prepared.

You have to balance this small backlink problem with actively pointing to URLs that 301s that redirect. Any SEO will tell you that this is not good! Presumably, the sitemaps don't have trailing slashes? So your site says one thing and your sitemaps another - a nightmare.

This is a version of the code to be placed at the top:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d
RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R]# <- for test, for prod use [L,R=301]

I hope that helps

Regards

Nigel

Hi DGAU

There is no doubt that cross-domain 301s do pass link juice and depending on who you listen to you may experience a 15% drop in the juice passed.

The problem is that if it is completely different and irrelevant content then you may do more damage than good.

Your second option, linking to a directory with relevant content is a much better idea and may help you get the link back if you can show them that the destination URL has more relevant content. It also means that you may keep it for longer. I should imagine that no Government department would want to link out to an irrelevant URL!

First, though I would enhance the page to make it as relevant as possible - then request the link back. You'll give yourself a much better chance of getting it!

I hope that helps, Regards Nigel

Hi seoanalytics,

Haha, perfectly OK

That's completely OK, in fact, 'stop' words like 'the' 'of' 'it' and 'and' are generally ignored anyway. It also reads much more naturally so not only will you keep Google happy, the reader will prefer it!

Kind Regards

NIgel

Hi Conversal

There are search results - they are just not showing in SEMrush and Google takes a while to report them

Regards

Nigel

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OK

Yes, keep it fluid, there is no need to group them together. Make it read naturally.

The best way to format the Meta title tag is like this

'Main Keyword - Related Keyword (or higher category) - Company Name' so

'Piedmont Bike Tours - Cycling in Italy - Company Name' (keep under 60 characters)

Meta description: Make this your call to action - it does not help SEO per se so don't fill it with keywords.

'Book a thrilling bike tour of Piedmont in the sunny hills of Northern Italy - unbeatable prices from company name - call us on 12345678 or book online here!'

Keep it under 140 characters or Google will add an ellipsis at the end ' ...'

The H1 does not help SEO on its own, only part of the keyword density on the page. It should sit at the top of the page and contain the keyword:

Piedmont Bike Tours

The H2 does not help SEO per se but is useful for breaking up the content on the page. It is usually only used to divide content - so if you do use it make sure that you follow it with a few paragraphs. Some people advocate a minimum of 300 but it, not the number, rather the way it's written. Don't overdo the keyword, think semantically.

eg:

Cycle Tours In Barolo

Keep it natural - I can't advocate that enough.

Regards

Nigel

PS when I say 'per se' I mean 'directly' - of course, a well-written description with strong headings will cause people to visit the pages and take action - the interaction through lower bounce rate and less pogo-sticking is good for SEO, obviously.

Hi Jon

Do you have the pro version of AIO? Apparently, if you do then the correct translation is sent to each of the language versions of a page or post.

https://wpml.org/documentation/plugins-compatibility/translating-all-in-one-seo/

Maybe it doesn't work with teh unpaid version?

Whatever you need the meta titles and descriptions to be in the correct language - little point having them in English.

Regards Nigel

You can have related topics on the page as long as they don't swamp the main keyword, making it invisible within the text. If you are going to do this then have a heading for each and continue like this.

"Barolo, set in the heart of Piedmont in the province of Cuneo is the perfect place to pack up your trail bike and hit the road. There are miles of country routes to choose from..........."

So you are weaving a story about how great these areas are to cycle in whilst occasionally mentioning the region and province, all of which are important baby anchor texts.

I am not saying 'don't' mention the towns - I am saying that if you do make it clear where they are and don't swamp the main keyword - i.e dilute it too much on the page. And, if Barolo is very prominent maybe consider a page for it.

You could end up with a category killer page of 1000 words + but remember that this pages need to keep the attention of the reader so pepper them with a nice balance of text and images.

In terms of the MOZ keyword tool.

Enter the term 'Piedmont bike tours' and filter by medium lexical similarity. You will see words like 'Cycle'', 'cycling routes' 'rental' ' trail'. Weave these into the sentences that you are constructing. It takes some skill to write in a fluid manner without repetition - make it for the reader, not Google - make it engaging so that people will read it - make sure all pics have different Alt text.

Regards

Hi Alexis

If the third one is the default then you need a default hreflang tag.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

So the last one would have this tag pointing to it:

More on Google here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

It will then become the default site for all people not in England or Canada. Google will not see any of them as duplicate content.

Regards

Nigel

Surely the x-default is, as the tag suggests, a default where no country or language is targeted? So if someone resided in an untargeted country and the site happened to rank it would be that one that came up.

Someone in the UK (which contained a UK target tag) would not go to default first, as you suggest, and then select their own country & language. That's misleading.

I agree that the subfolders would be used to target each country but you would still need both country and language. With Canada you may wish to target en and fr as both are relevant and each would reside in a different sub-folder.

The language is essential imho.

Regards Nigel

Hi Becky

I can see chairs:

https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs

But the paginated versions above are not in there. (can you see them?)

All you need to do is remove this directive for pages without a page 2: rel="next" href="https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=2" > as there is no page 2 for chairs.

Regards

Nigel

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Hi Jon

I am with Joseph here - I use Yoast as well.

Just make sure that if you have multi-language version fo pages that you specify the hreflang tag on each.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

Regards

Nigel

Hi Roman,

I work with a lot of e-commerce companies and I have to say from one SEO to another this is great advice!

Best Regards

Nigel

Hi India

It is unusual to keep both domains if you really want to move site but yes, you can do cross-site canonicals.

So place ON EVERY page of the old site a canonical to the corresponding page on the new site.

The old site will disappear from SERPS and the new site will appear.

Warning

The problem you will have is that the new site will not inherit any of the backlink equity you have built up on the old site. For that, you will need to do a page by page 301 redirect in htaccess on the old site.

I hope that helps

Regards Nigel

Then there is no problem simply putting a self-referencing canonical. There is in effect no mobile version as there is a single URL so no need for a rel=alternate.

It's an even easier solution. Well, there isn't a problem in the first place.

rel=alternate is only necessary if you have two different URLs! The fact they are the same takes away the problem.

Regards

Nigel

You are right - you could only use teh rel=alternate if there was an m. version or similar

Regards

Nigel

The reason we answered 'quickly' by the way is because we are in the UK -  you were still in bed lol!

Hi seoanalytics

The whole area of primary and secondary keywords (or Keyphrases) has largely been overtaken by Google's new Rankbrain AI system of determining themes and relevancy. So don't think in terms of these terms - also please don't listen to anyone focusing too heavily on LSI's as these have mostly been debunked as a load of flannel used by SEO's to impress, although leading SEO Brian Dean still insists that they have some effect on SEO. If you start researching LSI's you will end up in a rabbit hole from which you will never emerge! to advise - 'use your primary keyword a couple of times is nonsense'.

Think of your website like this:

Each page represents a theme - for example as Alick300 has used 'Laptop chargers' You need to think about writing chunky, relevant content around the term 'Laptop Chargers' but you do not need to mention every 'secondary keyword' you can think of to pepper the text with. Write compelling copy using semantically connected words like batteries within the content.

By all means, search related terms like batteries, tablets and transformers (are they still a thing?) but if you think in the way of 'Primary keywords' and 'secondary keywords' you will risk overusing certain terms, not having free-flowing writing and turning your intended customer into a brief visitor. Think of the use of synonyms as well - (the Bike/Bicycle analogy is a good one).

Modern SEO is about writing semantically connected and lexically relevant content in such a way that you engage your website visitor and ultimately convert them into customers. The more you engage, the longer the 'dwell time' and the more you satisfy user intent.

Have a read of Brian's latest post on Rankbrain - it's pretty brilliant and you should come away inspired!

https://backlinko.com/google-rankbrain-seo

There is no way of outsmarting Google by determining and hoofing in endless keywords and phrases. Modern content needs to be well written with perfect grammar and spelling and theme focused.

Also, break it down into easily readable chunks - this helps the user to stay engaged as opposed to being lost in long paragraphs. Pretty much like I have here.

Use Google search box to help and 'related search terms' at the bottom of the page to find semantically related phrases.

I hope this helps,

Regards

Nigel