Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Our 1,300 page site conversion from static html to Wordpress platform went flawlessly with the exception of 1 significant issue....an old, important, highly ranking page was 301 redirected to the wrong corresponding new page.  The page it was redirected to is about a similar product, but not the same.  This was an oversight that slipped through.  It was brought to my attention when I noticed this new page was still holding the old page's rankings but the bounce rate skyrocketed (clearly because the content on the wrong new page was not relevant). Once identified, we cleaned up the redirect.  My fear is that all the juice built up on the old .html page that ranked well has now permanently been passed to an irrelevant, insignificant page. -Is there any way to clean up this mistake? -Is there anything I can do to assist Google in associating the correct 'new' page with correct 'old' page after the wrong redirect was initially set-up? -Am I going to have to start from scratch with the new page in terms of trust, backlinks, etc. since google already noted the redirect? Thanks!

I've read through a lot of material to this point on the subject which has been helpful.  In making a major decision like this I'd love another set(s) of eyes on this.  A lot of the material I read is pretty dated.  Thanks for your help! Background:  Company is currently maintaining the following sites, some in multiple languages: company.com, company.us, company.de, company.fr, etc. (12 ccTLDs, some multi-lingual).  Each site represents a physical office/distributorship in each location.  Each ccTLD site (and pages) include both duplicate, and unique, localized content (intermixed).  Each country office will be producing content for their ccTLD, though some content will be duplicated from the .com.  In essence, there is a .com corporate site template and the ccTLDs will be customized but include a lot of the content on the .com corporate multi-lingual site. Some of the ccTLDs rank ok, some don't, all SEO strategy to date has been implemented by independent marketing companies in each country.  I am working on a centralized SEO strategic approach. Approach:  My initial thought was to leverage the .com domain internationally by consolidating all ccTLDs within the .com site using sub-directories.  Since some regional sites are also multi-lingual, the consolidated site structure might look like this... company.com/en-us/, company.com/en-de/, company.com/de-de/, company.com/en-fr/, company.com/fr-fr/.  This would allow for location-specific content to be presented in multiple languages. When I learned how much customization/localization will need to be done (each country maintaining its own blog,etc), and started evaluating things like the length of the urls for marketing purposes, the necessity to have multiple users accessing certain sections of the site, and some insight that the ccTLDs will likely rank better than the consolidated .com, research of other sites (amazon.com has ccTLDs for each country). I began to reconsider my initial strategy, and re-evaluate a .com corporate site in mult-languages with regional ccTLDs with a blend of duplicate and unique content instead. Beyond business needs, my primary concern is preventing duplicate content.  I can already see issues arising between the .com corporate multi-lingual site in French, for instance, and the company.fr regional site that would contain some of the same corporate content, and a lot of its own unique localized content.  I am imaging the corporate .com actually  having to defer to the ccTLDs via rel=canonical to avoid duplicate content issues which doesn't seem to natural (maybe just in the case where the .com corporate site would use rel=canonical to the .us office site) I've had a lot of success consolidating sites and working to build a single, strong, trusted, authoritative domain vs. having to build that same authority, in this case, a dozen times with all the ccTLDs.  I am not sure if the ability to leverage a single .com multi-regional/lingual site outweighs the benefit of a ccTLD for a site that operates in a single country.  What do you think? What solution would you recommend, all things considered?  Please let me know if I am missing something. I enjoyed the challenge of weighing all the factors and am at a point where I could really use some feedback from colleagues. The developers are building the site(s) in Drupal. Thanks!

If a single author contributes to multiple sites, should each site have its own author page (tying to the same single gg+ account)? Ex. One author > one gg+ account > multiple author pages (one per site) Or, should all sites publishing his content link to a single author page/bio on a single, main site? Ex. One author > one gg+ account > a single author page on one site (all other sites link to this author page) In this event, where would the 'contributor to' link point for the additional sites he is contributing to, the homepage? Thanks!

Site:  12 year old financial service 'information' site with lead gen business model. Historically has held top 10 positions for top keywords and phrases. Background:  The organic traffic from Google has fallen to 50% of what it was over the past 4 months compared to the same months last year.  While several potential factors could be responsible/contributing (not limited to my pro-active removal of a dozen old emat links that may be perceived as unnatural despite no warning), this drop coincides with the same period the 'mobile site' was launched.  Because I admittedly know the least about this potential cause, I am turning to the forum for assistance. Because the site is ~200 pages and contains many 'custom' pages with financial tables, forms, data pulled from 3rd parties, custom/different layouts we opted for creating a mobile site of only the top 12 most popular pages/topics just to have a mobile presence (instead of re-coding the entire site to make it responsive utilizing a mobile css). -These mobile pages were set up in an "m." subdomain. -We used bi-directional tagging placing a rel=canonical tag on the mobile page, and a rel=alternate tag on the desktop page.  This created a loop between the pages, as advised by Google. -Some mobile pages used content from a sub page, not the primary desktop page for a particular topic.  This may have broken the bi-directional 'loop', meaning the rel=canonical on the mobile page would point to a subpage, where the rel=alternate would point to the primary desktop page, even though the content did not come from that page, necessarily.  The primary desktop page is the one that ranks for related keywords.  In these cases, the "loop" would be broken.  Is this a cause for concern?  Could the authority held by the desktop page not be transferred to the mobile version, or the mobile page 'pull away' or disperse the strength of the desktop page if that 'loop' was not connected?  Could not setting up the bi-directional tags correctly cause a drop in the organic rankings? -Our developer verified the site is set up according to Google's guidelines for identifying device screen size and serving appropriate version of page.  -Are there any tools or utilities that I can use to identify issues, and/or verify everything is configured correctly? -Are we missing anything important in the set-up/configuration? -Could the use of a brand new subdomain 'm.' in and of itself be causing issues? -Have I identified any negative seo practices or pitfalls?  Am I missing or overlooking something? While i would have preferred maintaining a single, responsive, site with mobile css, it was not realistic given the various layouts, and owner's desire to only offer the top pages in mobile format. The mobile site may have nothing to do with the organic drop, but I'd like to rule it out if so, and I have so many questions. If anyone could address my concerns, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Greg

Site Pages:  When I wrap a page title, or a string of several words in quotes, and GG search, my client's page shows up first.  My understanding is that this shows general health of site, and acknowledgement as the original source of the content. Blog Posts:  When I wrap a blog page, or post, title or string of words in quotes, and GG search, Feedblitz, Facebook, and other scraper sites appear before the blog home page, and also the actual blog post.  The blog is in a separate directory.  Does this suggest that the /blog/ is being penalized or demoted in any way? Does it indicate the /blog/ directory does not have authority? Both the static site pages, and the blog pages, are using rel=canonical tags. What causes this, what does it indicate, and how can I fix it? Thanks,
Greg

A client has an application area of the site (a directory) that has a form and needs to be secured with ssl.  The vast majority of the site is static, and does not need to be secured.  We have experienced situations where a visitor navigates the site as https which then throws security errors.  We want to keep static visitors on http; (and crawlers) and only have visits to the secure area display as ssl.  How is this best accomplished? Our developer wants to add a rule to the global configuration file in php that uses a 301 redirect to ensure static pages are accessed as http, and the secure directory is accessed as https.  Is the the proper protocol?  Are there any SEO considerations we should make? Thanks.

Hello, just paranoid, but thought i'd ask.  We are installing an SSL certificate on a site ranking very well organically in all the engines.  This will change our site from http:// to https://.  Is there an risk to our rankings in doing so? What might I need to consider?  Changing my htaccess redirects to https: instead of http;?  Any ripple effects from switching to a secure site? Thanks,
Greg

My client wants to move from a dedicated server with unique dedicated IP address to a cloud server.  We have great rankings for competitive terms.  I believe their motivation is to cut costs.  What is the risk to the rankings in switching from dedicated to cloud? I don't believe unique static ips are available on a cloud platform. I told him I would strongly advise against it, don't risk it, but would appreciate others' feedback and experiences to take into consideration. Thanks, Greg

A client's site ranks very well for extremely competitive terms.  The google rankings have been stable for over a year.  There has been an organizational shake up, and the 'registrant' and administrative/billing/technical contact info needs to be updated, including the physical address.  I have been hesitant to modify the information for risk of a negative impact on the rankings. Will changes to the registrant/contacts/address info at the registrar have a negative impact on current organic rankings? Thanks,
Greg

I collect the information contained in open site explorer reports and csv backlinks audits on the 15th of every month.  I noticed that the numbers are unchanged from 9/15-10/15.  How often are the reports typically updated?

I just discovered a competitor in the insurance lead generation space has completely copied my client's site's architecture, page names, titles, even the form, tweaking a word or two here or there to prevent 100% 'scraping'. We put a lot of time into the site, only to have everything 'stolen'.  What can we do about this?  My client is very upset.  I looked into filing a 'scraper' report through Google but the slight modifications to content technically don't make it a 'scraped' site. Please advise to what course of action we can take, if any. Thanks,
Greg