Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi there

You will still need to differentiate the content on the website based on the location and language you are trying to capture, regardless if it's on the same site or not. If you sort the site, even then you will still need to categorize content. For example:

www.example.com
www.example.com/uk/
www.example.com/fr/
www.example.com/es/
www.example.com/ru/
etc.

or

es.example.com
fr.example.com
ru.example.com
etc.

That being said, look into the information that I sent prior as this will help you structure your site and tell search engines where section targets what audience - UK english and US english are still two different languages in crawlers eyes as they are two different regions with two different audiences.

Good luck!

Hi there

I would also look into Marchex and CallRail.

We have used Marchex in the past and have been really happy with the results and ease of use.

Hi there

This is completely dependent on if Google or other search engines have crawled your website and noticed the changes yet. It takes time and it can be a bit of a wait. I would pay attention to Search Console to see if Google noticed the changes in Structured Data Markup. But yeah, it's a waiting game, be patient and keep checking back! You're doing yourself a favor just by having it on the page.

Best of luck!
Patrick

Hi there

I would check Google's Report spam, paid links, malware, and other problems and see if you this is a route you should take. I would also do a backlink audit and check which links you should reach out to for removal. You can also add suspicious links to your disavow file.

Here's a great guide to remove this from your Analytics traffic and, although I have never tried this, here's some tips to block traffic from these spam sites. I would use caution on that though and consult your web dev team.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

According to this resource you can have multiple sitemaps set up for specific folders and it won't confuse the search engines, so long as they are properly linked to from the main sitemap.

If you don't want to include different sitemaps for different subfolders, you don't have to. Just make sure URLs are probably listed in the main XML sitemap and it is properly uploaded to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Hope this helps!

^ VERY nice, Dirk!

Hi John

Out of curiosity - do you have analytics code installed on the site? I didn't see it when I looked on there, but I figured I would double check. Having both the GA code on the site and having it verified through GTM (which I am assuming you did) can cause that issue - it did for me.

Also, may I ask why you put your GTM code at the bottom of the page? Google Tag Manager's Quick Start Guide says to have it placed right below the opening tag.

Beyond the Enhanced eCommerce implementation, did you make any other changes?

Hi there

Sounds like you're off to a great start! I would say that Google will crawl these eventually and notice the changes, but again, that's on Google's time, not yours - you've done what you've can! I would also make sure you take advantage of Schema markup that search engines have made available. They pull this information for the Knowledge Graph and snippets, so I would leverage it where you can!

One thing I will note, you could try to click the "Feedback" button at the bottom of the business snippet. Once doing that, you'll notice you're able to edit the snippet. You can click the pencil next to the image in question, and where it says "Optional" add the URL to the image you wish to add to the snippet. I also put my email in there so they know I'm a real person. I've actually seen this method be quite effective.

Let me know if this answers your question or if you have any more! Good luck!
P

Hey again!

...I can't believe I didn't think of the simplicity of this earlier...

"it's even faster if you sort the url's in alphabetical order & delete the rows containing priority / lastmod /.. - then you only need to do a find/replace on the <loc>/</loc> "

100,000 spreadsheets and I don't even think of sorting for this task. Unreal. I laughed at myself aloud when I read it.

Thank you per usual my friend!

OH! I am sorry for the confusion - yes, pick the site you want to index and redirect the site you don't want to be indexed over to the new site.

To answer your question, yes, both sites are being indexed.

Hi there

No, there isn't an issue here, since the videos are on topic with the content and going to trustworthy domains (YouTube).

I would read through these external links best practices from Moz and make sure that you don't go too crazy. But other than that, no, this is not an issue - if you can't create these videos yourself, by linking to relevant videos you're providing value for your users.

You could also look into embedding the videos on your page, giving the proper video owner credit as well.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Ryan

Try looking into cross domain tracking with Google Analytics (here is more information as well on that) if you own both sites, or, take a look at tracking the link where users click to make the conversion offsite, although that won't give you much beyond "someone clicked the link, but we don't know if that resulted in a conversion".

Another thing you could consider (with team discussion of course) is somehow bringing those conversions on your client's sites. It might be an affiliate or partnership situation at that point, but nonetheless, something to consider and look into!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I am not seeing sitemaps for...

https://www.zenory.com.au/sitemap.xml
https://www.zenory.co.nz/sitemap.xml

Do you have sitemaps for these sites? Have you added each as their own profile in Search Console and submitted a sitemap? Google has a resource to help diagnose problems with your sitemap - have you looked into that at all to see if Google found any errors?

Let me know if this helps! Good luck!

Hi Kyle

Take a look at the Build a sitemap page from Google Webmaster Tools Help, particularly "Sitemap tag definitions".

There are some tags you can take advantage of that can also help with crawling and how often your pages change.

Take a look at that page and make sure everything is formatted properly.

Hope this helps a bit as well - good luck!

Hi Peter

Have you checked your Mobile Usability notifications in Webmaster Tools? That's a great place to start because it looks at your whole site rather than just a page like the Mobile-Friendly Test.

Also, just because your User Experience is a 99 doesn't mean that there are not Speed issues listed - you should make sure those are taken care of as well and your site as close to optimized as well. I would also check your mobile organic landing pages pre and post Mobilegeddon to see what pages lost transaction and how those line up with any notifications in WMT.

I would also do a quick run through Google's Mobile SEO Guide to make sure that all of your bases are covered.

There are countless other factors as well include local SEO & audit, on-site SEO, content audits, backlink audits, and making sure your site is structured correctly. There are a lot of factors that can go into your rankings so don't just limit it to your User Experience being 99 (not saying you are, by the way!).

Hope this all helps - let me know if you have any more questions or comments - good luck!

Hi there

I would agree with this, but sometimes, directories do have an impact if they are industry related or topically relevant, it just takes a little bit of manual labor and common sense to judge the site.

If it's a templated directory, then yes, these are spam and you shouldn't be seeking links from these types of sites.

Also, to answer your question, yes, links take awhile to be crawled and seen by different tools, including Moz, Webmaster Tools, and Majestic. You'll even see different numbers of backlinks from different tools and different lists. Don't be worried - this is actually a good thing as you will be able to see different links and different angles of your backlink profile.

That said, Moz updates monthly, so depending on when these links were built, it may take some time.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi LSlversen

I like your thinking here - to me it sounds like what your users are searching and what they are getting aren't meeting expectations. I would look into that and make sure you are on the right path with what kind content / expectations you are setting.

Here's a bit of reference to what LSlversen is chatting about. Check it out. I would take a step back, ask some hard questions, and prioritize on how you want to attack issues. You'll be better off - I highly doubt there are click bots happening.

Hope this helps a bit more!

Hi there

When you have these issues, you have options. For instance, if the product is never coming back, you could redirect the page to a relevant product or category, remove the page from your sitemap, and change internal links, or simply create a custom 404 page.

But, if the product is coming back and temporarily unavailable, you could create an out of stock message to let users know the product isn't available at the moment (and will be back) but there's a whole site to explore and check out other products. But again, you have to keep the user in mind with errors on your site.

You can read more about Domain Authority here - although it's not directly stated, I am sure having errors all over you site (especially almost 10% of it) could be bad for it - although it's not at the point right now.

I would start there - what products are legitimately gone? What ones are just out of stock? Can you redirect these to their categories? Are users landing on these pages a lot?

I would also take a look at your backlink profile in Majestic and see which links are worth correcting or removing.

This is upto you to prioritize these issues and remedy accordingly. Good luck!

Hi there

I would keep both if you serve two separate regions - that way you can build content and have sites directed to that target audience.

I would take a look at hreflang tags for Google and language tags for Bing. You are also able to country target for both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools if you have separate profiles set up for your sites (which you should!) You should also look into local citations for these websites - I like Whitespark, and it works for both Australia and New Zealand.

Another couple resources for your to check out:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)
5 Dos and Don'ts of International SEO (Moz)

There is a lot of information here but it will definitely help you. If you have two regions that you do business for and have unique value to add to each, then I suggest keeping both variations and making a targeted marketing strategy for both - this will help you rather than redirecting your New Zealand audience to an Australian site where it's targeted to Austrailians.

That's my two cents - I hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would make sure you take a look through this migration guide from Moz as it has steps to ensure your site is properly migrated.

From there, I would check the following:
Sitemap
Internal Links
Canonical Tags Change of Address Tool (if necessary)

The first three links above could potentially be utilizing old URL structures, so you want to make sure that you change those and they are up to date. The last is for if you changed your domain at all.

Your analytics tag should not be the reason that your new URLs are not appearing in search.

After these steps, I would then go through a backlink audit and make sure that you update any quality backlinks or listings and remove and/or disavow any links that you find to be spammy or irrelevant to your website.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would trash them, especially if you can see that they are manipulative and repeating.

You want to have integrity for your comments section, so even though they are nofollow, you don't want to become a link dump for a SEO who is a hack.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hey there

I would also make sure that your sitemap and internal links are up to date so that there are no redirects happening in those places. You may also want to make sure you take the time to update listings and do a quick backlink audit to see if there are links you wish to update or possibly remove.

Hope this helps as well - good luck!

Hi again

If you want to focus more on the Australian site and the NZ site isn't where you want to place efforts, then you can redirect it - but I would URL map it properly so that pages on the NZ site find their corresponding pages on the AUS site.

But that is ultimately up to you to decide - if the return is not there and you want to focus on one site, then redirect and make sure all pages find their new home. I would also update relevant citations and back links.

I would personally optimize both and put efforts in if you think potential is there - it's just a better user experience - especially for different regions, local search, and audiences.

Hope this helps!

Hi there

You can look into call tracking through tools like Marchex, CallTrackingMetrics, CallRail, or Website Call Conversions (here's more from Google).

The beauty with these tools is you can even break down what sources and mediums calls are coming from.

If you're just wanting the button clicks, then yes, Events or Goals are the best way of handling this otherwise.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

In other words, the hammer came down.

Hi there

I answered a question a few minutes ago with the same layout, so don't be offended if you run across these suggestions again!

Here are some suggestions to help the process:

• Check your server responses
• Check your robots.txt and meta tags
• Verify your site in Google & Bing Webmaster Tools
• Check and see if there are any issues in Webmaster Tools
• Update your sitemap and upload it to Google & Bing Webmaster Tools
• Make sure your site is crawlable for Googlebot
• Google also crawls through inbound links to your site - take a look at your Local SEO for some potentially quick and easy wins
• Check your internal links to make sure they are follow

Running through those should help you find the issue rather quickly - hope this helps! Good luck!

I agree with EGOL here.

I would look at it more from the usability standpoint and if it provides value for the user. I am not too fond of them so I never recommend them, but that's really up to you and if it appeals to your audience.

You can test with VWO or Optimizely and see the engagement based on the data collected and go from there.

Hope this helps - good luck!

Hi there

Yoast has a great plugin, but you don't need one - you can read more here in How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress for Beginners. Also, you're going to want to install Webmaster Tools (now Search Console); here's how you do that.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I guess I would ask why you're taking the news on one domain and moving it to another? I would think you'd move it to a directory of abc.com? Is there a reason why you're doing this?

Check out Rand's post on Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - it's extremely helpful!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Great answer, Hutch.

Building on that - Moz offers an extremely comprehensive content audit that goes step by step on how to evaluate your content.

No blanket answer - this will take time and research, but it will make your site so much better overall!

Good luck!

Okay - 99.9% sure that is your issue - make sure your WMT is properly implemented on your site - everything should fall into place then.

Hi there

What you would do is create your sitemap.xml as a directory for multiple sitemaps.

From there, you would then submit your sitemap index file to Google Search Console.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Great advice as always!

Hi there

Yes, based on the location and their IP, you can redirect users to the proper webpage they are supposed to see.

I will reference a great answer from Dirk about this that you can read here. I learned a lot from this, as my answer in the thread is obviously wrong.

Another source Dirk references is this blog post from Matt Cutts - check it out.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Ideally, if you have different regions, you should have different areas of your site dedicated to that region. I would focus on the following items:
Use hreflang for language and regional URLs (Google)
International SEO (Moz)
International SEO Checklist (Moz)
How to Tell Bing Your Website's Country and Language (Bing)

Do not merge and 301 redirect, that is a bad user experience, especially if you have local listing links.

Also, set up individual Webmaster Tools for each section and look to Country Target those sections.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments - good luck!

Hi there

According to a study recently conducted by Ahrefs:

"...we’ve shown that almost 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the Top10 within a year.

And most of the “lucky” ones, which do manage to get there, do it in about 2–6 months."

To be one of the "lucky" ones, I would focus on developing a SEO friendly website and notify Google / Bing when the site is launched. Make sure you claim proper listings and Google My Business / Bing Places for Business if need be. Make sure you're leveraging a natural and organic link building strategy as your site grows.

The ranking results may not be immediate, but if you follow SEO and Google guidelines, you'll be on the quickest and honest path possible.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

You can include the release/creation date if it is relevant to the industry - something like SaaS or item models or something like that where features are added.

I would highly recommend if you do include information like this (and even if you don't, really) to check out Schema that will help you markup important information about your products, possibly helping your search engine performance.

If it's just one type of product that doesn't change often or hasn't in years, it's not really necessary to add dates or anything though.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

The only time you should noindex a site is if it's not supposed to be seen by search engines - if that's the case, then noindex it.

However, if this content is supposed to be seen by search engines, I would make use of your canonical tags on the subdomain and point it to the original content on the domain.

I would also think of a way to build a community with your website - it sounds like you have opportunities to do so and are getting some attention from your audience and how they are sharing your posts and information.

Also, look into sitemap opportunities with your images and how you can help crawlers understand the information on your website.

You can read more about duplicate content here.

Hope this helps a bit! Let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Hi there

I like to include brand in the title, and I actually use the " Page Title | Brand " format. As long as the main page title is seen within the 50-60 characters of your search result, your brand doesn't have to appear - reason being, crawlers read the entire title, but users really only care what they searched for, unless they have a brand preference, so the title of the content will do just fine.

Whatever format you choose, keep it consistent.

Hope my opinion here helps, good luck!

Hi again

According to Google's resource:

Blocked - Your robots.txt file blocks Google from retrieving this URL. - This is a common problem that you can fix by updating your robots.txt file. If your site address is at the root of a domain (for example, www.example.com and not www.example.com/my_site/), you can use the robots.txt Tester tool to diagnose why the URL is blocked from Google.

There's also a comment in this thread that references AdWords with responses afterward that may be able to give some insights.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Have you done any link building in the past? Or have you had any SEO companies do work for you?

With the 2 sites that are linking to the other sites, are there footer links or site-wide links of any kind?

I would run through a backlink audit and look into removing any potentially spammy backlinks or disavowing.

If you feel your site has been hacked, you can look into this resource from Google about what you can do to remedy the situation.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Do you have a web development team or a web developer? What I would do is pass this notification over to them, along with your notifications from Moz, and see if they have a means to correct these issues. I am assuming that Google passed along resources in their notification; I would look into those and see what your options are.

If you do not have a web development team, I would check out the Recommended List to find a company that does web development as well as SEO that can assist in this. What it sounds like to me is that you are linking off to an app with a subdomain and it's creating a different user experience than the one generated by your website.

If I were you, I would find a suitable blogging platform that you can bring your sharing capabilities onto, and create a consistent and seamless experience for your users. Two questions:

• Is your subdomain blog.domain.com? Or is it named differently?
• Do you have your blog posts on your website and copied word for word on your subdomain?

Here are a couple of more resources to review with your team:
App Indexing for Google Search Overview What is App Indexing?
App Indexing for Google Search Technical Details Enabling Deep Links for App Content

Let me know if any of this helps or if you have any more comments - good luck!

Hi there

I want to say cannibalization isn't a bad thing if it's done in a well structured and thought out way. Here's a more recent Whiteboard Friday regarding this topic, along with targeting and density.

I would agree with you that "pashmina" is a little overused on this particular site and should be cleaned up.

Just wanted to add that Whiteboard Friday here.

Hi there

Google has resources on this - check out Tracking Multiple Domains - Web Tracking (ga.js).

Also, Moz has a great resource called How to Quickly (and Correctly) Track Google Analytics Across Multiple Domains.

Hope these help! Good luck!

Hi there

Do you have any access to Analytics or Webmaster Tools? Reason being, you can line up traffic / ranking drops to algorithm history and go from there.

I would definitely go through a backlink audit and remove & disavow bad backlinks.

As far as redirecting a site, there are differing opinions. Google says it likely won't be negatively affected but then say it might, so there's really no straight answer. I always assume it will.

The best option in my opinion is to assess what data you do have and ask what's the best course of action. I personally would start removing backlinks, make sure the on-site SEO is on point, do a content audit, and start benchmarking traffic / rankings - also, make sure you are annotating analytics.

Whether you attack the problem or start from scratch to build the brand, it's going to take time and money. I would just weigh the options with what data you have present.

Let me know if this helps - good luck!

Hi there

This doesn't appear to be your sitemap. Your sitemap lives at:

https://www.compleetverkleed.nl/sitemap_index.xml

However, this works as well:

https://www.compleetverkleed.nl/sitemap_index.xml/

There should not be a trailing at the end of this URL. This needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

I would also make sure that your non www. sitemap redirects to https://www.compleetverkleed.nl/sitemap_index.xml.

This should clear up your problem. Make sure this URL reflects in your Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Let me know if this helps - good luck!

Hi there

What I would do is take advantage of a backlink audit and assess which links are toxic enough for removal or disavow.

I would not redirect spamming backlinks to your homepage - try to remove these and if you hear nothing back, disavow them.

The way I assess spammy links:

• Does this link help my website?

• Is this link relevant to my website?

• Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?

• Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?

• If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

• Are the links from directory templates? (example)

• Inspect URLs with blatant spam words

• Free

• Porn

• XXX

• Submit

• Directory

• Paid

• Links

• URL

• Sex

• etc.

• Check for multiple domains and URLs on the same IPs

• This can usually show link farms or spam

Pull your backlinks from a few different sources like OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs, and most importantly, Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools), as different tools pull different data.

If you see spammy links, redirecting will potentially hurt your ranking. Be safe and take the proper steps listed above.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi D.R.

To answer question 3, I just realized I sent you Classic GA setup - my apologies. Here is more information on how to set these up:
Cross Domain Tracking - Web Tracking (analytics.js)
Set up cross domain tracking Cross Domain Tracking (Google Tag Manager)

To answer your questions:
1.) Yes, you can do that. Or you can break it down by hostname as well in your GA data if you don't want to create multiple views.

2.) I would keep it under the same property. It makes it easier to consolidate your data and you're not clicking back and forth.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Jeremy

I understand - that can definitely be an issue. Have you looked into SEMRush? You can line up historical data to see where traffic and rankings began to fall and pinpoint it from there.

That will definitely help out a bit! Let me know!

Hi there

I would ask that all press releases that link to you be "nofollow" - Google has some thoughts on this sort of thing, because it will appear on multiple sites.

Keep in mind, a nofollow link still provides value if the site the link is on provides traffic and value to the users that see it. If it doesn't, then you shouldn't want the link to begin with. Don't be afraid of nofollow links, just make sure they are relevant and beneficial to your site and whoever will see the link.

Hope this helps - good luck!