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Kate, when I say that I am targeting countries, the content on the website will obviously be translated into their local language. So, it will be translating but for different countries on the website. I hope you meant the same thing when you said "and not just translating". I believe the best way to go would be to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains to maintain the domain legacy and authority across the countries.
I will be targeting actual countries Kate. Will also be using Google webmasters to geo-target for different sub-domains/sub-directories.
Strange, I can! May be should try after some time
This might help - http://eliteeternity.com/mass-redirections-wordpress/
Thanks,
Dan, for the old 'overview' pages, if they were indexed or had some content anytime or if you know/feel that they have backlinks, please redirect them as well to the new url. Also, it is not good to have 302s on the URLs unless and untill there is a specific case for it which I doubt will be. Always have 301 redirects.
On bulk uploading, it depends on your CMS, right? How does it support the file format and accepts the protocol is CMS dependent thing.
This tool here will help you track rankings for each day (in different countries too!) - www.authoritylabs.com, though it is a paid one.
Hey Dan - You should be adding 301 redirects if the pages are indexed. But, as a safe route you should be adding a 301 redirect since they were present on the website and can be linked from an external source as well which may lead to its indexation later.
You should redirect all such pages so as to ensure that the search engines do not find 404s on your site or probably you could block them from the robots.txt file.
Also, If the page has some authority in the search engines - authority refers to link juice, sites linking it or rankings or any traffic, best is to redirect it to the alternative or close page so as to pass the authority or if the page does not have any authority and you would want to reduce the 301 redirects on your server, block it! This call would largely depend on the page's value but in any case, do not just delete it.
Thanks Federico, will take a look at the video. Though, for me the battle still remains on how to proceed, for now the sub-directory option looks the one. I hope to get some more views on this before I finalize the architecture.
Hi Folks - Need your advice on the pros and cons of going with a sub-domain vs a sub-directory approach for a multi lingual website. The best would be a ccTLD but that is not possible now, so I would be more interested in knowing your take on these 2 options.
Though, I have gone through http://www.stateofsearch.com/international-multilingual-sites-criteria-to-establish-seo-friendly-structure/ and this somewhat vouches for a sub-directory, but what would you say'?
Thats good, just keep your targets in mind.
Yes Wendy, the frequent changes in the file names will definitely have an impact in the rankings. Though, you are using a SE friendly redirect, it is STILL a new URL for the SE to index. Everytime it finds a redirect, it takes some time to understand and pass on the value.
When the value is passed, when through a 301 redirect, there is some link juice lost. Also, when you redirect A To B and then B To C, make sure you also redirect A To C. Do not have dual redirection on the old filenames, change everything when there is a change in filename, including the link building also (old links and new acquired).
I would still suggest to refrain from doing frequent changes to file names!
So, you have got the basics fine which is good. If you have good rankings for the root domain other than Google US and if those rankings are important to you )in terms of KPIs, business benefits) then I would refrain from doing the change.
First, try to get the rankings from the sub-folders for the countries that your root domain is ranking for and then make the change. It may not be necessary that you gain immediately with the change, but there are high chances you might loose a couple of rankings in other countries. Better Safe, then Sorry!
Chandu, the best way to let Google know is the sitemap, which you have done. Even if that has not worked out, I sense there might be some technical issues with the website. Being a ecommerce site, the chances are high. Conduct a SEO Audit to find out the potential harms and solve them.
Have you tried indexing them in Bing, if not give it a try!
James, if you could give the URL of the category folder and an example of the pages ranking, I can have a look at it to see if something was wrong. Without that, it would be hard to take a call as this is not a standard issue.
Thanks Sanket, that is a gold mine!
Hi Folks,
I would like to have your opinion on the best ways/approaches we need to take if we want to rank the same keywords in different GEOs. To consider, I have a set of 100+ keywords which I would like to rank up in different GEOs, for example 6 different countries and some of these are not English, say france and UAE.
What would be the best approach to deal in this case on a logical basis?
Any suggestions?
Sara, this post will help you get the solution.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734
Rigth Cesar! and to add to it, that is only increasing..
Anyone, any takes on this ?
Hi Mozzers,
I would like to keep it short, while checking the Index Status in my Google webmaster tools, I noticed that the number of URLs "Not Selected" is more than the no. of URLs under "Ever Crawled" the difference is also a large no, a 5 no. figure. Does anyone seen a similar pattern or any insights on this would be quite helpful.
Cheers,
Well Brandon, Bing has officially said that they see it as only a hint and determine in their senses as to what is right, but SEO folks do use the tag and I don't think anyone has yet had a problem. You can have a glimpse at the latest SEOmoz talk on this too.
Cheers,
That seems alright Stephane. Well, to be true Google Webmaster does report on duplicate titles and descriptions that have been already fixed via a canonical tag, 301 redirect or a noindex tag.
In this case, you need not be worried on the duplicates as this is well taken care of. Another step of making this clear to Google would be to resubmit the XML sitemap. Probably, Google has not revisited your dynamic page after reporting those duplicates and with the submission of the XML sitemap it will probably do so.
Cheers,
Thanks Nakul. That solves the issue.
Cheers,
Thanks for the response Nakul. So, in the image sitemap, would you recommend to add all the locations of the images or should I just mention only one. If one, which should be that and any reasons for choosing the same. If this does not cause a duplicate issue, it is fine with me.
For better indexation I can certainly have a sitemap but would like to know on how to go about this?
Cheers,
Hi Mozzers,
I have some doubts on the images hosted on my site. I have a single image on the website coming from 3 different locations. The locations are:
img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg
img1.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg
www.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg
Now, these 3 are the same images with the same Title (they currently do not have an Alt Tag). Now, the 2 sub-domains when opened without any internal URL, redirects to the main domain.
For instance, if I access img.mydomain.com it 301 redirects to www.mydomain.com but if I access img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg I will get the image and it does not redirect. I have checked Google Image search and the full path on the sub-domain of the image is being indexed and crawled by Google Image bot.
Now, this is true for both the sub-domains which act as CDN for the images. If Google does crawl all the locations which have the same image, does it cause a duplicate issue for it?
I know that if it was content, I would be in trouble but does image also has the same implications. I am planning for image optimization and faced with this situation.
Any answers?
Cheers,
Stephane,
Could you clarify on how do you use the canonical tag on the dynamic pages?
This will help answer your query better.
Cheers,
Thats great! The canonical URLs are showing URLs without slash as they are probably reflecting their original URL which is without slash. Hope Google clears them soon.. 
Thanks Alan for the reply. Though, I had read this over a few posts I just wanted to confirm whether I should be sending the email out to dev to block these URLs, but I wont now since this may not actually get the count down.
I had rather see which I can remove from the page.
Cheers,
Hi Mozzers,
I know that this has been asked a few times and answered as well, I would just like to know some more on the internal link count on a page.
I ran the SEOmoz report and many of the pages on the website have more than 150+ internal links. Now, should I use the rel=nofollow tag on some pages that I feel are not important?
I have a list of pages which are not important from the SEO point of view, but from the usability factors they need to be there so I cannot remove the links to them. So, would be OK to place the rel=nofollow tag on them. My whole purpose is to reduce the count of internal links on the page as seen by SE's. Now, some say that the rel=nofollow tag does not lower the link count, but it can definitely (I believe) prevent the bots time in getting to those pages, which SEOmoz report also quotes.
(__When search engine spiders crawl the Internet they are limited by technology resources and are only able to crawl a certain number of links per webpage. )
So, probably I can save their time. Does anyone have any views on this,
Cheers,
You are welcome.
Well, the first time you did submit the sitemap right, but now since Google has found new URLs on your website and indexed them, it would be good to notify the big G that they are no longer a part of your website and resubmitting would not hurt.
About the redirections, Google does take a bit of time to understand that the URLs have permanently moved and will gradually remove them from the index. So, keep checking the index for the trailing slash URLs and when they are gone, you can remove the redirections.
Cheers,
Yups, its done. Just need to be sure if the Home Page is fine. The indexed version of the Home Page stays as it is without any redirection.
Cheers,
Sounds good, do keep a check to make it 100% sure. I believe the SE's will be fine now.
Cheers,
I think some of these posts can help you understand:
http://html5boilerplate.com/docs/Proper-usage-of-trailing-slash-redirects/
Do try this a test environment and take a backup of the .htaccess file before making any changes, Have it go through a programmer.
Cheers,
Jvalops,
This is a common scenario in SEO when you have 2 versions indexed of the same URL. This bascially creates a duplicate issue. Now, this situation has a solution which includes 2 things to implement:
1. Fix it from the search engines's perspective.
2. Make changes at the server level.
You did remove the trailing slash so you fixed it at the server level but you left the search engines to think - Where did the URL go? Am I supposed to show a 404 for that or what?.
So, it is important that you first fix them for the SE's and then make any server level changes because you never know how quick the crawlers can re-visit the disappeared URL and take their own action. Since this is just a recent change I hope that the SE;s will not evaluate it in a negative way but you should be quick to inform them. Now, since you have already removed it, do add a code in the .htaccess file stating that any URL with a slash redirects it to the URL without slash. I hope there are no URLs that have to end with a slash (just have a re-look on this, the home page and others).
After this is done, to make things more clear to the search engines, resubmit your XML sitemap with all the correct URLs on the website and I think you will be just fine.
On the rankings, I don't think it will be affected, unless there was a re-crawl after the indexation.
Cheers,
Michael, the first thing I would suggest you to perform is an extensive keyword research for both the pages, the Home and the Second Page, lets call the Home as A and Second as B.
Do a keyword research and as you said, since both of them have the same content, you will get a bunch of similar keywords (excluding the plurals/singulars). The ones with high search volume can be targeted from A which you think are your business keywords as A will have a better SEO value being the domain. The second bunch of keywords with less searches can be targeted from B. Do keep in mind that an good amount of quality links to A will help you make the page more valuable. It is good to optimize B also as the more optimized the pages are, the better chances of getting more value from the SERPs.
Note - You did mention above that the page have same content, so if they are are entirely the same with respect to content, you better not optimize B and instead place a 301 redirect from there to A or if it is not feasible from the user's point, do add a canonical tag on B. Duplicate pages can harm your traffic and rankings, especially when it is the Home Page.
Hope that sums it up!
Cheers,
