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I would also suggest that you add alternate language tags (in the HTML code as well as the XML Sitemap).

This would avoid any duplicate content issues that might arise due to different country websites.

The instructions for alternate language tags can be found here.

Thanks,
Sajeet

Hi,

I would suggest that you verify whether 301 redirects are even a possibility. For example, if the website is hosted on IIS server, then the 301 redirect rule might result into a redirect loop. In such a scenario, I would suggest you place self canonical tag on the page. For example on the page domainA.com/page 1, we will have the following tag in the head section of the page -

For the PDF files, place the canonical tag in the header response.

On the links front - You will not be losing a lot

Regards,
Sajeet

Hi,

Regarding the number of links - domain.com and www.domain.com are two separate URLs and hence treated separately. So its a possibility that some domains will link to domain.com and some domains will link to www.domain.com and accordingly the numbers reported will vary.

Regarding acquisition of links - Based on the evolution of links over the past 5 years and Google's stand on acquisition of links, I would strongly suggest that you don't focus on building links artificially. Instead, I would suggest that you focus on the following -

Generation of content that results in a lot of coverage - Surveys, useful information to users/consumers , interactive content are some of the elements of the website that can help generate a lot of natural buzz. IMO, citations and natural references across the web are the future (if not the present already) and keyword based linking should be a complete NO NO.

Focus on consumers - The moment we focus on consumers and come up with innovative techniques for more customer acquisition, more the word of mouth awareness and more the possibility of mentions across the web (social media channels, online press etc)

As far as competitors are concerned, even if say they are using non white hat techniques, its only a matter of time before search engines penalize them.

Regards,
Sajeet

Hi,

Please check the following -

• 301 redirects - Once the domain name was changed have you placed 301 redirects. Domain A >> 301 redirect >> Domain B.
• Page level redirects also need to be in place. For example - domainA.com/Page1 >> 301 Redirect >> domainB.com/Page2
• Check for robots.txt file. You might be blocking the search engines.
• Check for SEO elements such as Page Title, Metas etc. If you have not retained these elements, you might see a drop in rankings.
• Check for no index and no follow. Maybe you have placed these tags on all the pages and hence the drop
• Check the XML sitemap, ensure that you have submitted the new URLs via the XML sitemap
• Check if you have made major modifications to the content. If you have changed the content by a great extent, then it's a possibility that the old pages had better content from an SEO perspective as opposed to the existing content.
• Check if you specified the correct GEO in Google WMT
• If you have done all of the above, then check your backlinks, maybe your domain transition coincided with an algorithmic penalty (either manual or automated). Check WMT messages for details.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

You can check the cache copy, in some cases Google appends the parameter and in some cases it does not. This depends on the authority of the specific URL.

Hi,

For getting data related to internal links, you can select the URL filter and select contains -"Your domain name". Since we get target URL as well we can get data related to internal links.

In most of the cases, such a huge number of internal links results from top navigation or footers that are spread across all the pages of the website. In such cases I would not worry. Just check site: data and see if the number approximately matches the number of internal links data.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

Hi,

Regarding UTM parameters, if implemented correctly, Google will not treat it as a separate URL. For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?utm_medium=moz&utm_source=qa&utm_campaign=forum and www.mysite.com/main-page will be treated as the same page.

For manual tagging always remember, you can only add the following parameters -

• Campaign Medium
• Campaign Source
• Campaign Term
• Campaign Content
• Campaign Name

Canonical tags should be placed under the following circumstances -

• When 301 is not an option
• When you append dynamic parameters to URLs that Google will treat as a separate entity For example - www.mysite.com/main-page?medium=abc

In your case I would suggest that there is no need to place a canonical tag since the tagging adheres to Google guidelines. However for hygiene purposes you can place a self canonical tag.

Note - I have noticed that in some PPC campaigns people append the URL with utm_adgroup. Please note that this is wrong technique and Google does not recognize it. In such scenarios, use auto tagging instead.

Regards,

Sajeet

Hi,

Instead of implementing 301 redirects, would recommend that you implement Alternate tags.

Assuming that you have only .com and .co.uk domains and that .com domain caters to the whole world, the following code needs to be placed  -

In case .com caters to US then place the following code -

The highlighted part will vary depending on the URL of the pages.

In addition you can also specify alternate tags in the XML sitemap. You can refer Google support document here

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Sajeet

First click on one of the URLs and see the pages from which they are linking from. If its an internal link then check the source code and rectify the error. If its an external link then the third party website needs to be contacted and the links must be removed.

For different geos suggest the following -

• Use CCTLD
• Host the websites on geo specific servers (US website on a US server)
• Implement href language tags on the geo specific pages to avoid duplicate content issues
• Implement href language tags in the XML sitemap as well
• As a safety measure, implement self canonical tags

• Sajeet

Suggest going back to the basics -

• Generate sectional sitemaps and submit them to WMT. Check which sections are not getting indexed to the fullest
• 301s to the home page might be an issue in cases in which the URL numbers are lot
• Code clean up, use gzip compression, call all JS and CSS files externally, improve text to code ratio
• Implement self canonical tags along with Syndication and original source tags, this is just for hygiene purposes
• Check for duplicate content, see if anyone is scraping your content
• Check at server levels, sometimes some CMSs generate scripts that block search engine spiders at the server level
• If you can clean WMT HTML improvements that would be great
• Check if rel=next and prev tags have been implemented in case of paginated series

I am assuming that all the other SEO basics are in place, no spammy on page and off page techniques.

Hope this helps.

• Sajeet

There are two issues with your tracking -

• The code is correct for tracking views to the banner, however its not correct if you want to track the clicks. For clicks, you will have to add onClick function.
• The regex is incorrect. The correct regex is bannerID(.*). Suggest you use regexpal.com to test your regular expressions.

Hope this helps.

• Sajeet

MOZ has more metrics and is very detailed, but in terms of freshness and latest links recommend using href and majestic SEO. One more advantage of using href and majestic SEO is that the reports can be downloaded ASAP. Unfortunately for whatever reasons reports by MOZ take more time to download.

Whitespark is especially useful in cases of US and UK citations. However for Asia and Africa specific regions, the results are not very good

For lead based websites, recommend using wordpress since its free and very user friendly. For e commerce related websites, majento is highly recommended as it is more stable.

• Sajeet

You can use jpegmini.com for jpeg images. Majorly useful when you want to compress huge images.

For optimization -

• Implement image micro data
• Submit an optimized Image Sitemap
• Have an optimized filename
• Optimized Alt Tags for images
• If applicable have a brief description under the images (approx 50 words)

• Sajeet

Matt,

On the mobile front simply focus on the users and UI.

On the SEO front, you just need to do the following -

• Place user agent specific redirects
• Place canonical tags on the mobile pages to the corresponding pages of desktop

This will ensure that you are not hit by duplicate content penalty and at the same time user experience is not hampered.

With the exception of local results, the search landscape on the organic front for mobiles as well as desktop is not majorly varied.

Hope this helps.

• Sajeet

Hi Bob,

Some good points by Thompson Paul.

I am more interested in knowing how are you going to rewrite the URL?

The website is hosted on nginx/1.4.5.

I know about IIS Server - You require an ISAPI rewrite module. For Apache you can do it manually, but how would you go about doing it in this server?

• Sajeet

On the Google places front -

You are absolutely right. Since you do not have a physical listing, you cannot rank in Google places. However all is not lost.

On the on page front -

Targeting keywords related to Orlando on your main static pages would not be ethical for the simple reason that you do not have a physical presence in Orlando. However I also understand your perspective of increasing your reach and targeting people from different Geo locations.

You will definitely need to create new pages for targeting geo specific keywords. Three types of pages need to be created -

• Primary Page - This page will talk about your services for a specific location
• Secondary Pages - The aim of these pages would be to support your primary page, for example how laws in orlando differ from other location, Case studies of cases in orlando etc
• Fresh Content - I noticed that you have a blog section, need to leverage this section by writing orlando specific content (can be a news, can be an article etc)
• Cross Promotion on various platforms - Once you have the on page side of things settled, focus on promoting the new sections via other channels that you might own (Facebook, Twitter etc)

The combination of all the above techniques should help you achieve a decent standing on the organic front. Unfortunately without a physical location, Google places will be a lost cause.

• Sajeet

Hi Mark,

When it comes to link building (internal or external) there are few thumb rules -

• The link should look natural
• The link should point to a useful resource

Lets take the example of internal links -

If say i own a digital marketing agency, and i want the home page to rank for the keyword "digital marketing". Old school SEO would suggest that I use "digital marketing" as one of the anchor texts and create links from inner pages to the home page. Trust me two years ago that tactic worked. But now lets evaluate from a users perspective, a user is say reading a blog that talks about Facebook as a marketing tool and sees the anchor text "digital marketing".With the reading flow, the user would probably expect a post that gives more insight into digital marketing but alas he is taken to the home page. You getting the drift? Same logic is used by search engines, on the website the links should be used to indicate hierarchy and more importantly help the users. Occasional use of keywords in the anchor text is fine.

Now lets look at external links -

With the advent of Penguin update that focuses on over optimization (both on page and off page), having keyword rich anchor texts (example - car loans) to point to your website from third party websites is not at all recommended. Also having links from general directories, general blogs etc is not considered a good practice. In short no shady link building techniques work. An ideal link profile will consist of anchor texts that are either brand terms or title of the post or other natural identifiers such as Click here. If you think about it, say you read an article that was very useful and wanted to link to it, would you use a keyword as anchor text or brand name as anchor text? Obviously you will chose the latter. So in order to have natural looking link profile, do not focus on keyword rich anchor text, focus on high quality relevant sites, focus on high quality content and more importantly focus on the target audience.

• Sajeet

Whether one should have a folder structure versus # tag implementation completely depends on the content, page design and user intent.

#tag implementation is useful when the entire content needs to be rendered on the same page.

The advantages -

• You dont have to wait for the new page to load
• You can have a single page that has all the content

Disadvantages -

• You cannot create multiple pages which some believe is important from an SEO perspective i.e. having more pages in Google's index

In case of dedicated pages, the advantages and disadvantages are reversed. Again I would suggest that instead of SEO, more focus is provided to user intent and design.

Lastly in case of folder structure, please do not forget to add pagination tags as recommended by Google.