Hi there

I recommend learning the best practices for redirects, as well as hreflang attributes and language tags - you should also read into country targeting your sites in Google and Bing - this is a big deal for international SEO and targeting.

I would also look into your dynamic URLs by reading through this resource from Google on potential duplicate content - this will help you categorize and manage your URLs, helping Google understand their purpose. You should also check your internal links and sitemap to make sure that there are not dynamic URLs listed there.

This will require your web development team as well, so make sure they read and understand these resources, both for current and future situations. Some of this has the tendency to get pretty technical and indepth so if you need help, know that Moz has a fantastic Recommended Companies page to help.

That being said, 301 redirects are preferred by search engines, 302s passes 0% link juice and most cases should not be used, and all URLs (and their dynamic variations) should have a canonical tag to the preferred URL.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

From an organic standpoint, I am really not sure - maybe someone can take a look for you there.

You could (and really should) check your referral spam (here's another resource) - from there you can remove and disavow possible links that are hurting your profile.

But again, from an organic standpoint, I am not entirely sure, and even then, I am not sure how you can prove it's malicious without hard proof.

I would focus on the links above and see what moves the needle for you. That's really the most you can do from my vantage point at the moment.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Rand actually just gave some insight to this in another Q+A thread; I recommend reading it!

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

If you need to update your disavow file, you're going to do number 2.

Here's a great resource on disavow files from Moz. It says the following:

"Disavow tip: When you upload a new disavow file, you are COMPLETELY REWRITING your old file. If your old file has 300 domains in it and you want to add 30 new domains, your new file will have 330 domains in it." Take the time to read through it - there is a ton of great information and will help you immensely.

Hope this helps! 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 there

Can you provide a URL for your company that we can take a look into? Also, do you have proof (whether current or previously as you stated) that this other company has been attacking your site? If so, you should be reporting that to Google. I wouldn't do this though unless you are ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE this company or SEO team is doing this, and you can PROVE it. If you can't, then don't.

If you could though, please provide your URL. As you said you could be being paranoid and it could be a number of things such as your:
On-site SEO
Content
Backlinks Industry & keyword difficulty
etc.

...that could be hurting your rankings. It'd be easier to gauge with a URL.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Check out URL Profiler - this tool is fantastic for pulling different metrics for URLs - single or bulk - for a multitude of reasons.

There are also other tools you can find through search, but I would stick with URL Profiler.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

No, it will not hurt your rankings for not having one. That being said, you should have one because it makes crawling your site easier for search engines and also helps inform them of any changes made to your website. If search engines offer you a hand, you should take it - sitemaps are a hand.

Sitemaps also make it so you're also not relying as heavily on search engines to find you from external links. This is important because if you don't have many backlinks pointing to your website, you're waiting on those sites to be crawled to find yours. Same concept with internal links - if you have broken internal links (which you shouldn't - you should be crawling regularly to check) and pages can't be found because of that, a sitemap can help search engines understand that the page does exist, even if internal links are broken.

I use them - they are worth the effort, you can do a lot with them, they are directly uploaded to both Google and Bing.

If I were you, I would look into generators so that you don't have to manual upload or edit your sitemap. If you have the wrong structure currently, have a generator will ensure that you do have the right structure and that it's up to date.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Are you sure you are using all of the tools above properly? Not saying you're not but people make mistakes and it's just something to look into.

When did you implement all of the changes? Was it recently or was it a long time ago?

How is your organic traffic and rankings? Did you check if you have a manual action at all?

Let me know - thanks!