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 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

Hi Taysir

You can catch all the data you need by analysing this URL in analytics: www.example.com/marketingcampaign

Why do you need to 301 somewhere else? It doesn't make any sense.

UTM parameters could only be used if you append an existing URL (eg the homepage) with tracking. for example, if you had an email campaign or Facebook. As yours is aural (listened to on the radio) you wouldn't be able to convey it so it would be useless. Worth noting though.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Vtmoz

It's probable that you have a new plugin which is conflicting with this one. A simple solution is to disable the newer plugins one by one and keet testing the 301 redirect plugin, clearing the cache after each disable before you do.

If nothing works and updating the plugin doesn't work, copy all of the redirects in two columns into a spreadsheet. Then add 'Redirect 301' in the first column and then add them to the htaccess file manually (The best way anyway) like this. You will need ftp access or server side file access to see the htaccess in some cases.

Redirect 301 /old-url https://yourdomain.com/new-url

Note the source URL has no http and the destination one does!

So try the first solution and if it doesn't work do the second. It should be quite straightforward to copy and paste them.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Taysir

I can understand why you would want to do this and this is a perfectly acceptable way of doing it. However, I'm not sure why you would want to redirect it to another page. Why not just put all the information required on that page www.example.com/marketingcampaign?

There may (depending on who you listen to - I'm with Rand) up to 15% loss of link juice passing through a 301 redirect.

Also by publicising the 'vanity URL' it may well be indexed by Google but then de-indexed in favour of www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018. because of the 301 redirect. When people searched for that page it wouldn't exist!

Intentionally setting up a URL that 301s is just bad practice and you risk Google not respecting it and listing both URLs anyway - so any ranking could go out of the window.

So in conclusion - fine having the 'vanity URL' (as you call it - it's a bit of an old-fashioned expression - any URL these days could be considered a 'vanity URL' - it was in the days when URLs had long strings of numbers and non-relevenat characters) but don't bother 301 redirecting. Use that single URL to provide all the information you need. You will be able to see it in Google analytics along with all of the source data.

(If you do decide to redirect - I wouldn't - do it in the htaccess file as it will all be seamless. Don't do it by java on the 'vanity URL' page. )

You could just use a preferred landing page and use UTM parameters to track in Analytics if you knew which source it was coming from.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

Regards Nigel

OK, Paul, I hear what you are saying. It's a very open and obvious diss.

I'm not sure what you are saying makes any difference to the argument that the canonical way here is not the way to go. I was explaining in the simplest way, I would not want, and I'm sure you would not want either, a live page like this - the home page, live and canonicalised.

(It's a given that the canonical works like a 301, passing link juice to the preferred version.)

So thanks but it makes no difference - delete & 301 every time.

Google is heightening its distrust of canonicals - the new Seach Console tool reveals which pages are the preferred canonical and it's something of a surprise to SEOs!

If you feel like playing top trumps again then why not PM me? - it's so much better and the uninitiated do not need to see it!

Cheers Nigel

Hi Dre

If you just do a canonical then the page will still be live, you will just be telling Google not to rank it. Best practice is to remove it all together and 301. It is bad practice having more than one version of your home page, (any page) live!

Regards Nigel

Hi dre

Your site really shouldn't be generating an index.html in the first place but if it is you must make sure that there is a 301 in the htaccess file sending all traffic to the single homepage URL as Lynn correctly points out this will be a permanent redirect.

It is very simple to do. Both versions are treated as separate pages (as http and https) so you are essentially showing a duplicate site to Google so your rankings will be terrible until you change.

Regards Nigel

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

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 KP

There really is no limit but URL's with many hyphens tend to look spammy.

Remember the old days of long partial match URLs? www.cheap-car-insurance-for-u.com? and suchlike? They just look really crappy. If you really must use one in the TLD then limit it to one.

For Pages & Posts, it's quite common to see more use of hyphens. I'm editor at a music blog and it's quite common to see for example:

sitename.com/the-rolling-stones-manchester-live-review It looks natural even though there is a stop word in the URL because 'The' is actually part of the Stones' name

You will get a warning in Moz because of the long URL but it will not stop it ranking well, at all!

For images, it depends on how descriptive you want it to be. If the image was of Mick Jagger in Manchester then the image URL could easily be sitename**/mick-jagger-manchester-old-trafford** and then the Title or Alt text tag would be 'Mick Jagger - Manchester - Old Trafford, so highly descriptive with a couple of hyphens and great for image SEO.

So it's up to you really - the more descriptive the better. Ignore warnings of long URLs unless they are stupidly long and focus on enhancing the ranking of the page rather than worry about minutiae.

Now:

If you are talking about Meta Titles then it's common to use a variety of separators such as a hyphen (-) or a bar (|). In that case, it's fairly simple as you need Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword - Sitename so they are often limited to just two.

I think the more you use them the less space there is for Keywords and it's important with a limited length (60-70 characters) to get those in as a priority. The hyphen takes up 3 characters so they are largely a waste of space.

I hope that helps

Regards Nigel