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In this case, tab = link styled like a tab using ul/li. nothing is hidden, just poor semantics for those in the industry. (i initially thought it was the same thing and was gonna link to one of the "content in hidden tabs gets less credit" posts that have been going around the past few days)
Sitemap looks fine. Click on the urls in GSC and see the referring links. That would give you some more insight.
Yep, it would be essentially transferring links from one page to another. If the page with links aren't producing anything, feel free to 301 them to related-producing pages, or rework those pages to convert better.
If the pages are already indexed and you want them to be completely removed, you need to allow the crawlers in robots.txt and noindex the individual pages.
So if you just block the site with robots.txt (and I recommend blocking via folders or variables, not individual pages) while the pages are indexed, they will continue to appear in search results but have a meta description of (this page is being blocked by robots.txt). However, it will continue to rank and appear because of the cached data.
If you add the noindex tags to your pages instead, the next time crawlers visit the pages they will see the new tag and remove the page from the search index (meaning it won't show up at all). However, make sure your robots.txt isn't blocking the crawlers from seeing this updated code.
The plugin doesn't affect any H1 tags at all.
I'm guessing that you are inputting the SEO title into the wrong section. Name you post whatever you want regularly (this will be your H1), then scroll down to the Yoast section and change the field called SEO Title (which will only change your title tag).
If its doing something else, then the problem is with your theme.
If you could keep the .aspx pages at their old locations, you can add aspx redirect code: http://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm
Sitemap should contain every link that you want indexed and ranking in search engines.
So the more specific a sitemap can be (actual articles vs just the categories), the better.
Make sure...
Don't worry about exif/meta data.
Did you delete the pages that linked to 404s or remove the links to those 404s?
Google will recrawl your site and pick up on the missing pages and remove from their index. However, you should make sure that you remove all links pointing to those pages first!
I would redirect any pages that have external authority (links from an external site) and leave the rest as 404.
Correct. They won't be indexed but are still followed.
nope, totally okay. its like having brand.com vs brand.co.uk vs brand.es etc
I would noindex the categories or clean them up + optimize them... seems like most categories only have 1 post and the categories have more internal backlinks than the posts.
I would combine categories by brand or something and add a unique paragraph of text to the top with phrase(s) you want to rank for. Alternative is to noindex the categories which should help your posts rank - less duplicate content.
Don't think there is much else you can do but send Google signals to recrawl the site and see that the noindex tag was removed.
"I recently read that another Mozzer saw a great improvement after disallowing all query/parameter URLs" - do you have a link for this?
Canonicals should be enough but Google does mess up and the more clues you can give them, the better.
You can also manually tell Google parameter meanings (if you check out your parameter page now in search console, you should see all of the parameters they've detected for you - you can just change their meaning).
I don't see any harm in disallowing parameters via robots.txt. They will still be crawled and internal links followed, just not indexed in serps.
No way - you don't mess around when you are already ranking #1.
Only do that if your rankings tank.
Upon further research, you are correct. A noindexed page is still crawled and indexed, just not in SERPs. So any links will still be followed and the page is still a part of the website. With this in mind, I think you should 404 the page and redirect via meta refresh after some time. Reach out to the webmaster's of the good links and ask them to change the new URL.
I still don't think a 302 is the way to go in this scenario. Ideally, you'd experiment with different options and see which produces the best results.
Hmm, how about you remove the 301s from long domain and set canonicals from shortdomain to longdomain. Eventually, shortdomain will be deindexed (or at least mostly deindexed) and then you can 301 to longdomain.
If you haven't done any link building to those sites, they are pretty much worthless. G knows about this strategy and best case scenario, ignores them. DA is irrelevant to rankings. I can show you many sites with amazing DA but shit rankings because they are penalized/crappy links.
Opportunity cost: 100 domains @ $10/yr + 100 ips @ $20/yr = $3k in yearly savings. You can easily put that money to better use.
right on. Also be sure to submit the "Change of Address" request in GSC
Manual > Yext BUT Yext take a lot less management/time/effort and will be effective in ranking small businesses.
So if you have the time and resources to hire and manage an employee/outsourcer to manually submit, claim, verify and update your listings - do that.
Yext pretty much does that but all automated through a backend. You enter your business info and Yext submits/updates the listings on all the sites (I don't know whether they have outsourcers doing it on their end or its all coded). I've found that changes take longer to update with Yext and isn't as flexible.
Are there any good reasons to close a discussion to new comments?
comments going off topic, a topic that can be split into several threads instead of one, low quality comments, hard to find information (poor ux). But overall, I think it would be great to just keep updating a strong thread. Keep building the authority + hit more long tail kws + QDF bump.
what do you think is the optimum qty of unique text before paginating?
I think this would be more of a UX issue as "paginated" pages are treated as part of a series.
"I am wondering if it may be better to have one page dedicated to the specific material properties, one page dedicated to specific applications, and one page dedicated to available types. "
^ this. Create a page targeting each type of customer (one looking for a specific material, one looking for a specific application and one for available types). You can use similar content with some quoted content blocks on each page, just make sure there is unique content there as well that tailors the content searching for a specific need.
Yep, your canonicals are incorrect which is likely causing the issue. You have all of the office locations canonicaled to https://www.hrblock.com/tax-offices/local-offices/index.html#!/en/office-locator/ and Google is determining that these are separate pages that should be indexed individually. That's probably why they add extra to the title to differentiate the pages.
Instead, on http://www.hrblock.com/tax-offices/local-offices/#!/en/office-profile/3704?otppartnerid=9192&campaignid=pw_mcm_9192_5138 you should have a canonical pointing to http://www.hrblock.com/tax-offices/local-offices/#!/en/office-profile/3704 (the one listing I'm seeing that loads correctly has that style URL in serps).
Try fixing your URLs, and wait for Google to recrawl/index the urls.
Where is Google finding these URLs? I don't see the variables when I browse through the website.
Search engines can't tell the difference so all good.
Note: Googlebot crawlers all originate in California
Don't expect the old site to rank (since Google won't follow the redirect) but new site should be fine.
Here is Google's official recommendations for website testing. According to them, no amount of cloaking is okay. Try using one of the other methods suggested.
So I would recommend you mod_rewrite to a SEO friendly search page for your docs results. e.g. newsites.com/resources/search/technical-documents/ and redirect to that
If not possible, I would still simply redirect to the search results page. Users want to see those docs so redirecting them anywhere else will just cause them to bounce.
Check to see if they are both in the index (or 1 is in supplemental index). If so, it's an issue.
In general, capitalization does mean a different url (think of all of the link shorteners that user a mix or upper and lower case letters in order to differentiate)
Yup, they are counted. Yelp won't show up because it uses a redirect but I see merchantcircle, urbanspoon, manta, etc in my GWT links list. OSE is reporting less but i still have a urbanspoon and yellowpages backlink.
I've always treated it as such and their case study seems to confirm it. You can't sculpt link authority with it, but you can control the crawl budget better.
Not auto approve - those are usually spammed, if posts have 7934 comments that read like "great site, thanks! bookmarked!" and link to their own sites with keyword anchors, its a bad site
Niche related - content on site is related to your website, don't contain illegal/porn/gambling/pharma related content
Switch up anchor text - don't over optimize, make your linking text varied. use real name, brand name, keywords
Make sure the blog is indexed & ranking - if its penalized, your time is better spent elsewhere
Social signals - the more tweets/shares a blog post gets, the better the website typically is
I'm sure there is more but having these elements is almost guaranteed to be a good blog.
"My Domain Authority has not moved from 17 in a long time." = there haven't been new links to the site in a long time.
If you want to rank, you need backlinks. Get your content shared and you'll see your rankings climb.
They are considered completely separate entities that have nothing to do with one another.
Ideally, widget.com/blog/ is the best place to run your blog.
Add the site to Google Search Console and do "Fetch as Google" to see how they would index your pages.
My guess is Penguin - specifically because it 1) a single page that was effected and 2) the anchor profile for that page. You built a lot of links to that specific page with the same anchor text. In fact, you have more links to that page/anchor text than branded to your homepage. I would build more links to your homepage with your brand/URL as well as more diversified links to your /what-should-i-read-next/ page.
Cheers,
Oleg
I do believe the URLs are indexed (based on his url) and I know that you can use non-english characters in URLs.
Do you get the 500 error when you fetch as google for a url?
That could work too. Something along the lines of "View more jobs at www.site.com" (basically, don't use money/keyword anchor text)
Here's another idea - when you post a new job on your site, post it to your company's google plus business page as well (and/or personal). G+ links are almost instantly crawled so you can post to the other job site right afterwards.
huh? hreflang shouldn't be part of the equation here.
If you can't setup redirects, see if you can put canonicals on old pages to the new site. That way you'll transfer ranking benefits to the new site.
Not sure what you are looking to hear. There are sooooo many more factors than just # of links to look at.
You need to consider all of these variables when performing competitor analysis, not just the number of links.
Cheers,
Oleg
So bigger site reposts smaller site's blog post with canonical to the original post? should be fine. try to make sure the title/heading is identical as i've seen more powerful sites outrank original sources even with a canonical url.
For most of the site content, you can improve the small site's rankings by linking to it from relevant pages on the larger website.
There have been a bazillion posts written about this topic.
Top two are my faves
Maybe it just wasn't crawled by OSE (especially with a low twitter presence). Try running OSE on your twitter page to get it crawled.
I double checked my OSE backlinks and I have my twitter is showing up as well.
Here is my experience...
Client runs a large ecommerce site and also creates a feed that is used for the Amazon listings.
When title on ecommerce site = title on amazon, only the amazon listing ranks (images and product descriptions are the same)
When title on ecommerce site is slightly different than title on amazon (e.g. "brand model t-shirt" vs "brand men's model t-shirt"), both of the pages rank in search.
So titles MUST be different in all channels, images/descriptions should be different, but not nearly as important. If you have a handful of products, I'd invest the time in creating several variations of the descriptions/images. If you have thousands, you are better off spending your resources elsewhere.
I'd be wary of that - many will just employ old school link building tactics that may hurt your rankings more than help. I'd ask them to share exactly how they plan to build links and to provide some samples.
I'm going to assume that you are in a low-competition area (otherwise you'll have a tough time competing on that budget) in which case you can just do on-page optimization + use a service like getlisted.org. Many times, just having complete and consistent information across all of the major local directories is enough to get you ranking locally.
Quality UGC - comments, threads, reviews, etc.
This means that the site 1) gets REAL traffic (cause its hard to fake) 2) impresses visitors enough so that they take the time to engage with the content (which means the site is high quality).
Everything else can be faked and you wouldn't catch it in 10 seconds.
I would create the blog on your own domain and have them link to that page. That would help you rank all of the other pages on your website as well. Having it on another website won't help your rankings as much as direct links to your site.
With your thousands of guests, I would also try to streamline some way for them to leave reviews on your website as well as travel review websites. That would 1) help you rank locally 2) get you to the top of other lists/directories and attract more links to your website