Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Google has said that some duplicate content will not negatively impact your site. For example, if a site has an older Terms and Conditions page, forgets to remove it, then updates a new T&C page. this would be considered duplicate content, but won't harm your rankings.

If you're trying to put a company about me text on every page, I think that won't be an issue as well. However, in many cases that type of text on every page is not needed and you should really ask yourself if it adds value to the reader.

If so, many websites have a simple About the Company link that opens a modal window with that type of description.

The broad match may not necessarily cover the phrase match. With negative keywords, synonyms and plural versions of the keyword can still show up when a user searches with the term.

Honestly, there could be a very real world impact on your SERPs without you understanding it. I suggest not blocking all traffic from foreign countries.

Let's take this scenario as an example:

I have an ecommerce website that only sells to the United States. I really only care about the US traffic, since that is where my sales can come from. However, many of my inbound site links seem to be coming from Outside US traffic. This outside US traffic cannot buy from me, in fact, they cannot buy many of the products I sell because they are not available in their country.

Even so, when investigating my link profile, I notice that some users are getting the products I sell from somewhere and then blogging about how they love the product. They include a link back to my site since they know I sell the product.

Now, it's true that most traffic from that referral source will not convert to paid users. But, the links they provide are helping me in the SERPs, which brings in the qualified traffic that converts to sales.

In regards to the bounce rate =: You're not actually decreasing the bounce rate. Instead, you've identified the accurate segment of users to be measuring bounce rate from. In your Google Analytics, you should filter out the foreign traffic so that you're only measuring the correct segment of traffic that is important to you.

Now you have the best of both worlds - your reports show the accurate target segment and its metrics, as well as, any benefit that comes from the foreign traffic and link building.

I suggest not to block foreign traffic.

• You do not know why someone might be searching from a foreign country.

• Foreign traffic may help you identify key content areas for optimization, curation, opportunities, ect

• Your site may provide value to foreign visitors in some way that you don't yet understand and removing all traffic could have a negative impact. For example: Foreign visitors cite your content and routinely link back to it (helps you in the SERPs).

If you're seeing many bot attempts on your admin, change its login address. That is a good first measure to preventing brute force attacks.

You can also use a plugin to limit the login attempts. If a bot comes and tries to login it will be prevented from logging in after X attempts.

Use a service like Cloudflare for additional security. Cloudflare is a free CDN provider that will give you an additional layer of security for your site. It has a list of known ip abusers and can filter those out from reaching your website.

Hi DemiGR,

Yes, your site can continue to rank well. If the topics genuinely do not warrant updated content, then link building will most likely keep you at the top of the SERPs. However, you're inviting the competition to come in and outrank you somewhat easily.

When you're not producing fresh content, competitors can easily rank by creating authority pages and then adding layers of fresh, related content. I suggest finding relevant topics to write about and point back to yoru authority pages (the topics that don't change much).

For example, is there a recent new article related to your website content? Speak on that topic and link back to the authority page that explains the topic in depth. Using current events is an easy way to add new content to your site and keep things relevant.

Hi hellemans,

Make sure that your shared negative keyword list is not conflicting with your campaign level negative keyword list at the shared library level.

You can add a list of negative keywords at the campaign level or through the Shared Library - the SL is where your conflict may be happening.

To remove a negative keyword from your campaign, you'll need to manage it at the campaign level.

Campaign > Keyword > Scroll to the bottom of the campaign > Add/Remove negative keywords at the ad group/campaign level

The site does have some nice authority and link metrics.

I would start by targeting your on-page SEO a little better. Some tips:

• Add more related headings (the H1 tag was only used)

• sub pages could use better heading structure as well (missing H1 tags)

• Add some bold content (every little bit helps in this competitive space)

• Update your img alt tags (multiple images just use 'mesothelioma as alt text)

• Strengthen your intra-linking architecture. I.e. add contextual links pointing to authority topics on your site (from one article to another)

I wouldn't be so certain that you should rank high - Mesothelioma and related search are very competitive terms to try and rank for. It is a huge market for lead generation.

Start by tracking where your ranking is and work to improve the ranks incrementally. With such competitive terms, you really need to frame out your expectations and long-term goals.

Go back and answer this question for further strategies to execute:

• What are the top 10 search results doing to rank for those keywords?

You're missing some key questions to diagnose what you need:

• What are you trying to rank for?

• Which pages are you trying to rank?

• What are the top 10 search results doing to rank for those keywords?

• What are your pages doing to compete for ranking of those keywords?

Only after those questions are answered can we begin to analyse your site ranking.

Google is migrating everyone to Universal Analytics, even if you do not do it manually. This is their 'analytics engine' going forward.

So, regardless of where it appears (Universal or Classic), you will see it as long as you're opted in to share information. I suggest getting on UA as soon as possible, their are many fun features to use to explore your data.

Hi MyOwnSEO,

Absolutely, there are a couple ways you can do that.

• Create an Advanced Segment

You can create an advanced segment which filters out any results coming from a certain keyword. Since you know that keyword is currently being abused, I would exclude that traffic from your reports.

• Used the Advanced Filter

Go to the report you want to view. Then click on the 'advanced' link next to the tiny search box directly above the table of data. Now set an Exclude rule to filter out any of the results you wish, based on dimensions / metrics of the report you are viewing.

As long as you keep your URLs the same, you shouldn't see an impact on SEO.

However, if your previous host was causing site performance issues and you expect the new host to serve your website faster and more efficiently, than you can see an SEO impact through site performance.

Make sure you get those rewrite rules consistent on your new host prior to switching, you don't want to change URLs, if possible.

It sounds like you have relative URLs improperly set in your HTML. I'd start by checking there and see if you can fix the URLs by adding absolute values and/or updating the relative values.

Yes, there is a large impact on SEO ranking if your home page doesn't have content.

What would you expect to rank for without content on your home page? Brand terms only?

I think that the most important piece is the content itself, not the author.

If you think that the author's name will be a main attraction (i.e. if the president has his name as the author it will be more attractive to link to) then it may be worth editing it to their liking and publish it under their name.

However, I don't think that is the advantage. The advantage is putting out quality content around the topic you've found. If you have it edited for the president, make sure they are willing and knowingly speaking as the subject originator. If there is something controversial in the article, it will be viewed as the president's opinion - which can have greater negative effect than positive.

The best way would be for you to choose a method that works and keep it consistent.

I'd go with

• S355G10-M

I've consistently experienced problems with the Moz crawler - to the point of I no longer put much value into it.

I'm getting this error and nothing has changed in my robots.txt.

Instead, use GWMT and Screaming Frog SEO spider - that's all you need and does more than the Moz crawler.

Leave the comments as is and do not worry about spelling. Google understands spelling mistakes and I don't think you'll receive any kind of penalty for it.

In fact, if the people commenting are the type of people you want on the site, then the mispellings will work in your favor. That same demographic is typing those horrific misspelled words in Google search and you have them right on page.

Hi BobGW,

Here's the problem: I don't want to spam them. How do I get these people interested in my weight loss hypnosis program (I could really help them) by sparking up a conversation and not spamming.

Well, regardless of your intention, you're still connecting with someone that didn't ask for your communication. Rather than think of it as spam, it's more appropriately cold-calling.

If someone cold calls you, how do you feel? Chances are that more most of the time you disregard because you feel like it is spam and non-value added. Try and find some cold call emails that you were attracted to - what made them effective? Can you adopt a principle they used to your own service?

Review your past clients that you've helped successfully - do they have friends that could use the same help? If you can get the validity of a friend, then reaching out to the next person won't be as difficult.

Try and focus on personalization - what about this individual makes you think you can help them? Have you helped similar people with the same problems and can express the result?

Keep it short and direct.

Relieve any pressure in the sales process. It's great that you provide a free 30min consultation, but that still scares people away. A lot of people feel like if they go in to see someone for a free consultation, they are still pressured into the sale. Attack that upfront (if you see it being an issue) and maybe point out that you don't allow a sales decision to be made at that point - i.e. after the free consultation you will reach back out to them and let them know they can be part of this program now that you've qualified them.

Use natural language and adapt your script to the individual. You'll quickly lose people if they feel like you are just blasting them another pitch message.

I hope these tips help, best of luck!

There is a very straight forward answer - make it HTML.

An image will give you an SEO disadvantage

An image is not user friendly (accessibility)

You want the info in the image crawled and indexed

An image bloats your page load size

PPC and Organic tend to work together. In Adwords you can see the click through rates and numbers when a term is in both the organic and paid section. Try and figure out how many additional clicks you're getting because you're now doing a branded campaign.

You may be getting a better CTR and/or increased organic traffic simply because you have two campaigns targeting the brand term now (organic and search). If so, then the worry you have would be false, since the engagement has increased overall.

To answer directly, I would not be concerned that your organic rankings are affected because some clicks moved to the paid channel. However, if you identify a lot of cannibalization, maybe you want to stop the paid campaigns simply because you're paying for the traffic instead of getting it for free. But, cannibalization doesn't happen too often (as mentioned, the campaigns more often than not work together).

Hi AlanJacob,

If your client has physical retail locations, as you've said, then you'll want to get each location listed with Google.

Google provides a bulk location edit tool. You can review the protocol here: https://support.google.com/business/topic/4662257?hl=en&ref_topic=4539578

Hi cathibanks,

I don't foresee you getting a significant SEO impact by switching from /ramblings to /blog. If users easily understand that /ramblings is your site's blog, then that is all you need.

Will you get a ranking boost because you now have 'blog' in your URL? No.

Continue to concentrate on creating value-added, unique content and your blog pages will naturally increase rank.

If you think it would help user experience by switching to /blog, then I do suggest making the switch. Since you're on WordPress, you don't need to access your .htaccess file, instead you can usually use your SEO plugin (Yoast) to create a custom redirect for any page.

**I'd like to think not ALL duplicate content is bad. **

I agree. However, more often than not, it is bad. It's best to approach each situation with caution.

As long as your site has been crawled and that page is already in the SERPs, and the new website puts a link to the original article on your website, I don't think there should be any issue.

I don't feel that confident in this statement. In theory, yes the original article would get the attribution. However, in practice, that can not be the case. If the site posting the duplicate content has higher authority and traffic, they may get the attribution even though you published the content first. Google does a decent job in figuring this out, but it's an area they need to drastically improve upon.

I personally would re-work a new article or ask them to summarize your article, to be on the extra safe side. But that's just me.

Summaries are a good idea. Still, you can't beat new unique content. Use the article for inspiration and create a new article that takes a point the original article made even further. Definitely include a link back to the original article, if possible. This strategy would give you a better gain the simply posting or summarizing the original article with a link back.

Because Google doesn't update pagerank regularly - maybe 2x a year.

Do not pay attention to PageRank

Do not use PageRank as a measure for success

Ignore PageRank

• Your putting your website at risk for being penalized by Google (Penguin!). Anytime duplicate content is associated with your domain, it is bad.
• Google may not understand that you're the original content creator and give authority to another domain
• You're increasing competition in the SERPs for your article's terms

My biggest concern is the penalty and devaluing your entire site authority.

You could purchase a short domain that represents your company - i.e. hmp.ge

Once you have that domain, you could use a service like Bit.ly to use your branded domain to shorten the long URLs

If you can't purchase a branded domain, you could always use Bit.ly's or Google's URL shortener to have a recognized shortened URL.

Hi Visier,

A cost-benefit analysis needs to be done with each individual external domain, to see if it's worth allowing them to publish your blog content.

At first, I would say no. Keep your content on your site and request that people do not simply duplicate it on their domain. This can hurt both of your SERPs and doesn't provide much value back to you.

However, certain situations may be a good idea. For example, the external domain sends you a lot of customers. I would suggest the following:

• Talk with each website about the content they would like to republish

• Suggest using your article as inspiration for a new article on their site, maybe even work with them to create a new unique piece of content

• Be sure to have your article mentioned in the new article, preferably with a natural content link back to your site/article

• If they insist on republishing the article then use a cross-domain canonical tag to indicate that your article is the original piece of content and deserves the authority / reduce the possibility of a dup content penalty.

In most situations, I would advise against republishing content exactly on another domain.

I would suggest building a page for each location and service, as long as you can create value-added content for each topic.

The major issue here is, if you do not do it then a competitor will and I would bet on the unique pages with deep content ranking higher.

ah, I see - You're trying to update the 'Website' field on your Facebook page. Unfortunately, FB keeps that section inflexible.

Can you use a branded, shortened link? That way you could add all the URL parameters, shorten the link down to the right size, and keep consistent with the brand.

Are you tagging it with the Google URL Builder tool? https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

You can set the tags easily and then measure the traffic through GA

As long as the correct robots.txt setting has been applied to the /testing folder, then you do not have anything to worry about.

Considering that it is a staging environment, I would recommend securing it with a password just to be safe and secure with your non-production site content.

I think you may be referring to something very specific. There shouldn't be a problem is someone legitimately names their business something local.

Make sure to be consistent with the NAP (Name Address Phone number) and the local results should reflect accurately.

Hi 94501,

Example #1 above is the one true page for search and the one that all the canonicals reference.

If the pages are properly canonicalized then Example #1 will receive nearly all of the authority stemming from pages with this URL as the canonical tag.

I.e. Example #2 and #3 will pass authority to Example #1

Examples #2 and #3 shouldn't be in the index because the canonical points to url #1.

Setting a canonical tag doesn't guarantee that a page will not be indexed. To do that, you'd need to add a 'noindex' tag to the page.

Google chooses whether or not to index these pages and in many situations you want them indexed. For example: User searches for 'product X' and product x resides on the 3rd page of your category. Since Google has this page indexed (although the canonical points to the main page) it makes sense to show the page that contains the product the user was searching for.

Example #4 shouldn't be in the index, because it's just a source code that, again doesn't change the page and the canonical points to #1.

To make sure it is not indexed, you would need to add a 'noidex' tag and/or make sure the parameters are set in GWMT to ignore these pages.

But again, if the canonical is set properly then the authority passes to the main page and having this page indexed may not have negative impact.

Example #5 shouldn't be in the index because it's excluded in parameters as not affecting page content and the canonical is in place.

How long ago was the parameter setting applied in GWMT? Sometimes it takes a couple weeks to deindex pages that were already indexed by Google.

I would use the number: '3'

When searching, most people will use the number instead of writing it out.

What environment is the site built in? Normally, you build the microdata markup into the site template, this way no hard-coding of individual microdata is needed.

If you're on WordPress, there are plugins for that.

Removing them through GWMT won't do you much good, I believe. Google will re-crawl your site and re-index them.

Do the URLs contain specific query parameters? If so, you can tell Google to ignore URLs with specific queries and that should prevent them from being indexed.

GWMT > Crawl > URL Parameters

The on-page optimizer will only help you understand how well a page is targeting a specific term, not necessarily the reasons why that specific page is ranking in the SERPs.

First, make sure to be searching Google anonymously - i.e. don't allow your personal preferences (which impact the SERPs) to get in your way. If you want to understand where the site ranks, you'll need to remove the personal adjustments Google makes for your search behavior.

Then, the on-page optimizer is an OK place to start. In your example, the page isn't necessarily targeting the term searched, but still ranking highly - why?

• The keyword is highly relevant to the content on their site
• The site's internal link structure could be targeting that term and making the specific page an authority on the topic
• The page's external links could be targeting that page for the term

A lot of the time a page as broad as your home page will receive lower scores for many terms, since you're not targeting many of them (i.e. they are not in your Page Title, Meta Description, used sparingly in on-page content) directly, but rank highly for a large amount of diverse terms since it is an authority on related topics.

Use your list to determine which keywords are most important to the page you're optimizing, then use the page grader tool to improve the targeting of terms for specific pages.

I would say that the only piece missing is the notification to the user that the article content has been updated.

Let's say that I read your blog everyday. I've seen this post previously, read it, and the content is value-added. Now I notice that the same post is again at the top of your blog - why? When I click into the article it seems similar to me, at first glance.

I would suggest putting a highlighted notification at the top of the post that informs the read the content has been updated for the latest trands|content|info|your word here

Now it makes perfect sense to update the publish date, informs the user that there is new content in the article, and it makes perfect sense for articles that are as old as your example.

You PR hasn't changed because Google hasn't updated it, because they rarely update PR.

PR should be ignored.

I don't see an upset for keeping rel=next prev, I see only an upside.

Google doesn't have to listen to the noindex tag, although they almost always do. Furthermore, adding the rel=next prev tag only makes your code even more correctly developed, and since Google isn't the only service that looks for tags like this I would feel more comfortable with it present.

From an accessibility standpoint, it makes sense to have the rel=next prev tag.

It sounds like your struggling with demonstrating the value proposition of an effective social media presence to your customers. I'd start with the following:

• Develop a flexible social media content framework

• Show examples of content creation/ideation that is related to the customer's niche

• Establish a content strategy for the customer

• Explain why the content strategy adds value to their business (why consistency matters!)

• Set clear goals and expectations

• Without them, you and your customer will not understand the success or failure of the campaign

Make sure to clearly outline the time requirements and expectations. Use case studies and statistics to convince the customer about what's good for them (i.e. not every campaign should be measured by sales, maybe specific engagement is the metric to watch for success).

You're correct, make sure your Google Analytics and Adwords accounts are connected properly. Then you'll be able to dissect the analytics by Ad content, keywords, campaigns, ad groups, landing pages, ect.

Make sure your tracking code and conversion pixel are all setup properly.

Google Help: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722021?hl=en

You should only need to install 1 tracking code to track all of your conversions through Google Adwords. The campaigns are all under a single account, correct? If so, ensure that your conversion pixel is installed properly and you'll be good for any campaigns running in your Adwords account.

I definitely recommend setting up some expected funnels that your visitors would go through. It'll help a lot with identifying where a visitor abandons the process and what you need to improve upon for the most effective campaign.

Hi Cindyt,

It sounds like you need someone to further adjust your redirect settings.

When I visited the page: rock-n-roll-action-figures.com/fender-jazz-bass-miniature-guitar-replica-classic-red-finish.html

I received a 302 status code and you'll want to make sure that all the old domains 301 to the new domains. I wouldn't sit and wait, since the changes are nearly immediate. I'd begin looking into the redirects implemented, htaccess file, and talk with your host about the procedure for extra help.