Hi Joon

With the great recommendations from Ryan and Anthony, I would also suggest a couple more items:

• Focus on internal linking opportunities so high ranking pages can pass equity through the site

• Content Marketing Institute is fantastic at this

• Take a look at Sitelinks Searchbox

• Just a great search snippet opportunity

• What are frequently asked questions your company receives?

• Answer questions before they ask with content

• Provide guides, ebooks, tips, checklists, etc.

• Is there any content on your site you can repurpose?

• Videos, images, infographics, gamification, Q&As, etc

• Also, check out the Customer Journey from Google

• Any opportunities on different mediums?

• Take a look at this content audit for more opportunities

All of the above will help pass equity through your site and also give you opportunities to capitalize on long tail queries. Remember - content cannibalization is NOT a bad thing - it gives you so many more opportunities to rank for long tail and also associates your site with your industry's topics.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

While this isn't necessarily a bad thing (at least in my opinion), what I would do is instead have a link or brand logo in the product description or below it that links to the assortment of said brand name.

From a user experience standpoint, I would be more likely to click the logo or a "See more mens Arc'teryx products" under the description. Also, H1s are usually not links, especially on eCommerce websites - so users would not think to click that.

These are just my thoughts - either have a link or logo that links to your assortment of branded products, but not in the H1. That's my two cents!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Chris

There are multiple ways of doing this, but I will give you a quick evaluation process and pass along some resources as well.

I would first pull backlink reports from the following sources:

• Google Search Console
• Majestic
• Ahrefs
• OSE

The reason for multiple sources - different tools provide different sets of data. What you get with Search Console you might not get with Majestic which won't be the same as OSE and so on. By pulling multiple sets, you see different angles.

I would then assess the source of the links in the following ways:

• 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

What you are essentially doing is a backlink audit at this point - defining which links are valuable and relevant, and which links are toxic or spammy, categorizing them for link removal or disavow.

You can also look into tools that help score your backlink profile like LinkRisk.

You can categorize what you find into a Google Sheet or Excel with tabs as easy as "Good", "Bad", "Remove", and "Disavow". Categorize each tab by:

• Source of link
• Anchor Text
• Type of link
• IP address
• Contact information of source webmaster (if you want to update good links or remove bad links)
• Dates of outreach to webmaster (I usually go 3-4 times)

I would make sure you check out the resources in this answer as they provide a lot of great tips and resources to help you. It's a lot of research and common sense, but once you get the hang of it, it's not bad at all - you will learn a lot. There's no right or wrong way of doing it, just stay focused and you will get your own system fleshed out before you know it.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

I would double check the following:
Internal links
Sitemap
Run a ScreamingFrog crawl and see if any URLs are redirecting to a subdomain page

I would also look into:
You can utilize the change of address tool through Google's Search Console
You can also request a removal through Google's Search Console.

When did you remove the subdomain? Are these Moz errors or Google Webmaster Tools errors?

Let me know - thanks so much!

Hi there

I would look into the following:
SEMRush - You can check out competitors in different regions / countries, how they rank, and what content of theirs in performing best. You can break this down by Google properties in different countries.
Majestic - See what kinds of links competitors are getting in different regions / countries, and what their top linked to content is. This will help you prioritize what content is working best and least for others in different regions.
International Keyword Research - A great webinar from Moz that discusses different tactics and processes for international keyword research. Lots of good information here.

Understand the basics of international SEO:
International SEO - Get the basic understanding of international SEO and how to approach your efforts.
International SEO Checklist - A great checklist with everything from strategy to measurement of your efforts.
Establishing Your International SEO Strategy - A great resource from SEER Interactive discussing different tips and ideas to have a successful internation SEO strategy. Includes content and understanding your audience.

Telling search engines regional targets:
Country Targeting (Google) - Target your region specific URLs for Google.
Geo-Targeting (Bing) - Target your region specific URLs for Bing.
Hreflang (Google) - Helps Google understand your alternate region website variants and how they relate to your main site.
Language Tags (Bing) - Helps Bing understand your alternate region website variants and how they relate to your main site.

Hope this all helps you! Good luck!

Hi there

If you are keeping your URL structure the same, then you should not have to update your redirects file, so long as all of the destination pages are staying in place. If you are removing any current URLs and those have pages being redirected to them, you will have to update that in your redirects file.

I would do a backlink audit for the old URLs, however, and see if any are worth updating to their new URLs so the new URLs can get equity.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would request the link is nofollow - that seems to be the consensus on multiple resources - here's one and another. From Backlinko Ranking Factors, these can potentially decrease value (but, as this is a study, it's opinion).

Nofollow links are still beneficial though, especially if the links passes traffic where the user is looking for your products or interested in your content.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

You want to showcase your work and versatility as a web designer and developer, so yes, you want those pages indexed. Keep in mind - people aren't on your site to buy products from your clients, that's not your site's purpose; they are there to view your work and see how you can help them.

If for some reason users are coming to your site to view your client's sites for window shopping purposes, something is very wrong somewhere.

If you have multiple portfolio types, use keywords relevant to those portfolios, as well as the industries your client's are in - "auto website design" / "ecommerce web design" / "sports web development" - be natural, be authentic, be honest with your tags. Make sure your on-site SEO is spot on when it comes to the content that is contained in your site. Talk about what your clients wanted, how you helped them, and the results that came from it - you're selling people on buying from you as a web designer/developer - it's your time to shine and brag!

There's a great guide from Yoast on SEO with their product, please read it.

This is my two cents on the topic - hope it helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

Use the latter. Google and search engines are phenomenal at topic association and reading the important aspects of what you are saying in your titles and content. If something reads better to your eyes and ears, but most importantly, your audience's eyes and ears, then go with that - remember, users will type in search how they speak naturally - they won't type like a search engine. Google and other search engines will catch up. Don't write for SEO, write for the user.

Hope this helps - let me know if you have any other questions or comments! Good luck!

Hi there

According to Google, it doesn't really matter - both are separators. I would say whatever keywords / queries you use in the title are substantially more important and where your focus should be. Here's another tidbit from their resource:

"...consider including just your site name at the beginning or end of each page title, separated from the rest of the title with a delimiter such as a hyphen, colon, or pipe..."

I like the look of pipes personally, you'll see Moz uses pipes, and you'll see Google uses dashes. It's really upto you, just make sure your consistent with truthful titles and branding.

That being said, I would watch your duplicate content here and overoptimization for local search. I would focus on local SEO by listing areas you service (like a "Areas we Serve" page or something along those lines) with contact information and finding listings or citations in those general areas (maybe different industry related listings or chamber of commerce, etc). I wouldn't go too crazy with multiple service pages dedicated to multiple service areas because honestly, how much different are services in different areas that are worthy of their own content?

You can also look into service areas by Google My Business. Just be careful with too many local driven pages with same content. Stuff like this can look pretty spammy.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Josh

Do not remove categories. This helps give your website a hierarchy and helps crawlers understand how your website is laid out. It is also great for breadcrumbs and helping users understand exactly where they are in the site. If your website creates dynamic URLs, look into canonical tags.

Here are some great resources:
URLs Best Practices (Moz)
Information Architecture for SEO (Moz)
Internal Links (Moz)

To me, having categories in the URL are very important for many reasons. Make sure you discuss with your team and think about users/crawlers. It helps a lot to give your website a structure and not make it seems super flat.

It also helps with Sitelinks and it's search box!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

You can do this by filtering countries in your Search Analytics in Google Search Console. While it doesn't give you an exact number traffic wise, it does give clicks and impressions, and can give you a general idea of what's happening.

In Analytics you can goto Audience > Campaigns > Organic Keywords. Change Primary Dimension to Landing Page and change your Secondary Dimension to Country. You can couple this information you got from Search Console and line up to see performance.
Also, SEMRush has the capabilities of breaking down historic keyword data by country. It will give you your rankings as well as your estimated traffic for that keyword (as no one can give you EXACT data). This is also especially useful if you do international SEO and want to check on other competitors as well.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi John

Yes, I am not disagreeing at all and sorry if that was portrayed somehow - especially if I gave a "free for all" point of view - this was not my intent. I was just referencing Matt from the perspective of "does it matter?" in Rajiv's question.

I personally like pipes in my titles. As long as it's clean, speaks to the content, and consistent across the site in format, you should be all good.

Be good!