Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Two days ago I found out through search console that my website's Robots.txt has changed to

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

When I check the robots.txt in the website it looks fine - I see its blocked just in search console( in the robots.txt tester).

when I try to do fetch as google to the homepage I see its blocked. Any ideas why would robots.txt block my website? it was fine until the weekend.

• before that, in the last 3 months I saw I had blocked resources in the website and I brought back pages with fetch as google.

Any ideas?

Actually, it sounds like a pretty good idea to accomplish two things,

a. Fresh content to your page - you are right, its probably not the best fresh content you can get there but it have some sort of add value.

b. get social proof for your website and products to increase conversion rate.

First of all - no, this is not good for SEO. not sure that at the moment it is hurting your website but it is far from begin best practice and might cause problems in the future.

I think that EGOL's solution is the best for this issue,

Combining all the 3 versions into one page with "select your format" is the best solution for users and search engines.

if you take this approach (although it means that you need to develop it into your website) the best thing will be to 301 redirect all the URL's into one for every product.

If you rather leave the pages as they are and only deal with the duplication then Canonical tag, as Justin suggested, will be good practice.

I would go with solution NO. 1

Good luck!

I think that you answered your own question,
If there is a doubt there is no doubt..

Here are some practical tips for contnet link bulding:

1. create usefull articles - not the boring same old things that everyone are doing. dig in and reaserch to find out what users really want and then give it to them.

2. publish your content in one (!) resource - make sure that it is original and not copyed (especially not from your own website) - you can use copyscape.com for that.

3. after your article is live on the web you should link to it from tweeter, facebook, bookmarks, forums and other articles you publish later on. If your article is really good you can also contact blogers to write or mention it.

4. link to inner pages (products?) - not just your home page.

The bottom line is that you can not get high quality links with low quality work - you really need to put the effort in to it.

Good luck!

Great answer Ryan. One more important note, If you also going to change the domain name it is important to let google know about it in google webmasters tools.

if you will use "-" between word you will increase the resanbalety that Google will understand that thare are seperate words in the URL and it's not just one word.

It is a bit tricky to deal with, and for high end SEO you will need a japanese speaker to optimize your landing pages and for local link building.

You have to understand that footer links are not a bad idea for themselves, but it is important that you don't stuff it - and you did.

I would recommend that you get rid of the brands links - instead I would place a few links with logos for the most known brands that you have. dont forget the ALT. (now I see that you have this above the footer - isn't it enough?)

Second, I would get rid of the duplicate links that you have in the category section in the footer - for example, you have the link "Men's Waterproof Jackets" both under men and under clothing.

Then I would start to think about the links - do I need all of them or can i just settle with the main categories and few subcategories.

This should cut out at least 60%-70% of the links, and then you should be fine..

Hi,

I'm trying to target my SEO to several English spiking countries (Canada, UK, Australia, South Africa and so..) and I came across a big dilemma: should I tray to build a local version of my website for each country, or perhaps I should stay with my one .COM website and re-direct all the English-local-countries with 301 (if anyone will tray to go into the local domain)?

The thing is that obviously the best practice to get high ranking is to be local, but what should I put in those sites and who can I avoid duplicate content and user confusion?

On the other hand, do you think I can really get high ranking with one website for all those countries, and how?

Thanks,

Itay Drory.

First of all - no, this is not good for SEO. not sure that at the moment it is hurting your website but it is far from begin best practice and might cause problems in the future.

I think that EGOL's solution is the best for this issue,

Combining all the 3 versions into one page with "select your format" is the best solution for users and search engines.

if you take this approach (although it means that you need to develop it into your website) the best thing will be to 301 redirect all the URL's into one for every product.

If you rather leave the pages as they are and only deal with the duplication then Canonical tag, as Justin suggested, will be good practice.

I would go with solution NO. 1

Good luck!

You have to understand that footer links are not a bad idea for themselves, but it is important that you don't stuff it - and you did.

I would recommend that you get rid of the brands links - instead I would place a few links with logos for the most known brands that you have. dont forget the ALT. (now I see that you have this above the footer - isn't it enough?)

Second, I would get rid of the duplicate links that you have in the category section in the footer - for example, you have the link "Men's Waterproof Jackets" both under men and under clothing.

Then I would start to think about the links - do I need all of them or can i just settle with the main categories and few subcategories.

This should cut out at least 60%-70% of the links, and then you should be fine..

I think that you answered your own question,
If there is a doubt there is no doubt..

Here are some practical tips for contnet link bulding:

1. create usefull articles - not the boring same old things that everyone are doing. dig in and reaserch to find out what users really want and then give it to them.

2. publish your content in one (!) resource - make sure that it is original and not copyed (especially not from your own website) - you can use copyscape.com for that.

3. after your article is live on the web you should link to it from tweeter, facebook, bookmarks, forums and other articles you publish later on. If your article is really good you can also contact blogers to write or mention it.

4. link to inner pages (products?) - not just your home page.

The bottom line is that you can not get high quality links with low quality work - you really need to put the effort in to it.

Good luck!

Great answer Ryan. One more important note, If you also going to change the domain name it is important to let google know about it in google webmasters tools.

Actually, it sounds like a pretty good idea to accomplish two things,

a. Fresh content to your page - you are right, its probably not the best fresh content you can get there but it have some sort of add value.

b. get social proof for your website and products to increase conversion rate.