Hey @Viktoriia1805,

Would you be able to let us know the URL so we can check this?

Also are there any errors showing when you run the URL through the inspection tool on Google Search Console (as below)?

Hi,

They have confirmed that this has no impact on your search ranking:

https://searchengineland.com/google-says-keywords-tld-part-url-ignored-ranking-purposes-251971

Cheers,

Sean

Hi,

If you go to sitemaps and then run the same report against your image sitemap, it should shed some more light. Make sure to click on 'excluded' before you post the next screenshot. This will then list out the reasons that the images are not being indexed.

Kind regards,

Sean

Hi There,

Auto tagging is a great place to start.

If that isn't possible, it it's breaking, you can manually specify UTM values by adding a query extension to each landing page URL.

Google's tool for doing this is here > https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

All the best,

Sean

Hi There,

Press the 'go to new report' button in the top right. It should take you to the new Google Search Console report which will tell you the exact reasons why URLs that you're submitting aren't being indexed.

Feel free to post the screenshot of the results on here and I can help you figure out what to do next.

All the best,

Sean

Hi Daniel,

That does seem very odd!

There can be various different things at play here in my experience:

1. Publishing and un-publishing in the CMS - Sometimes clients and CMS users will switch the page publish status around which can make it difficult to keep track of whether the page exists or not
2. Removal of redirects - Much the same as above, there's the possibility that someone is adding/removing redirects. This could also be something to do with the removal of the server level redirects file, be that htaccess or IIS.
3. Crawling tool issue - If you're using a crawling tool (especially if doing so with JS rendering active), sometimes this can put a lot of pressure on the server and it can spit out the occasional error where there actually isn't one

It could also be a problem with how you're handing hard 404 errors vs soft 404s - i.e. actual not founds vs pages that don't function but the server is under the impression that they're fine.

Best of luck!

Sean

Hey there,

In an ideal world, I would recommend maintaining the NAP (Name, Address & Postcode) you use anywhere else on the internet. This allows search engines (and users for that matter) to have some degree of continuity between your business listings.

Moz local is a decent tool for analysing your business listing and checking that your NAP is the same across the internet. It'll even highlight sites where this isn't the case so you can manually update them.

All the best,

Sean

I'm sure it would probably be valuable and pass on some SEO benefit but if it's likely that someone has purchased this domain purely for transferring the link equity of inbound links to your website, then there's always a chance that this is going to be picked up on.

A small chance, but a chance nonetheless.

Is the linking domain (not the link that links to that domain) relevant to your business?

i.e. is it an old domain that used to be active or is it just a dummy domain that was set up for the practice of link building?

Hey Adrian,

In my opinion, none of the above are 'doorway pages' (sorry!).

A 'doorway' page is one of many pages that webmasters use as spam entry points to a website and are typically targeted towards the same keyword with a variable attached - most commonly 'locations'.

Here's an example - e cigarette online retailers tend to have little to no local presence within an area but they will build a list of pages to make it look as if they do:

• http://vapour-hut.co.uk/free-offer/2584/free-e-liquid-in-ballykeeran/1.html
• http://vapour-hut.co.uk/free-offer/2634/free-e-liquid-in-ballymore/1.html
• http://vapour-hut.co.uk/free-offer/8475/free-e-liquid-in-castletown/1.html

In this example, they've even gone as far as to add in a list of these URLs (navigable from the footer) to ensure search engines crawl them - http://vapour-hut.co.uk/e-cig-town.php.

It's all a bit of a black hat tactic to grasp a whole bunch of search traffic that they otherwise shouldn't have. In your first example, the two pages for 'trumpet' and 'piano lessons', although similar, are targeting vastly different searcher intents which are relevant to the originating website - ergo they are not doorway pages.

I hope that makes sense

All the best,

Sean

Hi,

I would stay clear of automated software such as SEnuke TNG.

It 'simulates clicks' and 'builds links for you' - basically your one-way ticket to a Google Penalty. Yes, there's a chance that this may give you a short term boost in traffic, but rest assured your site will be laid to waste when Google picks up on it and it'll take you months to get it back to normal again.

My advice, don't touch it. Keep your 'white hat' on and do SEO right.

I hope this helps,

Sean

Hey there,

In an ideal world, I would recommend maintaining the NAP (Name, Address & Postcode) you use anywhere else on the internet. This allows search engines (and users for that matter) to have some degree of continuity between your business listings.

Moz local is a decent tool for analysing your business listing and checking that your NAP is the same across the internet. It'll even highlight sites where this isn't the case so you can manually update them.

All the best,

Sean

Hi there,

Historically in SEO, search engines used to use the 'exact match' text of a page (be that in the page title, URL, page copy, H1 etc.) to inform the term to rank the page for.

Nowadays, Google is a lot more understanding of related terms and synonyms since the 'Hummingbird' update. For example, if I optimised my entire site for 'advertising agency', there's a good chance that Google will understand that 'branding' is likely to come under my field of expertise and rank me for searches such as 'branding agency' or similar.

Their optimisation for the term 'branding agency' might not just be down to the homepage - the likelihood is that they have a page on the site explaining their branding services which helps the overall domain rank for that kind of term.

I hope this helps,

Sean

Hi There,

Auto tagging is a great place to start.

If that isn't possible, it it's breaking, you can manually specify UTM values by adding a query extension to each landing page URL.

Google's tool for doing this is here > https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

All the best,

Sean

I've definitely heard of this working with people using crowd-sourcing websites (such as Crowdflower) to pay next to nothing for thousands of people to Google a keyword and click on a specified listing.

Whilst the effects of CTR manipulation are pretty instant and it definitely works, it's often short lived and Google is quick to pick this up as an anomaly, rather than data of statistical significance.

In short, it works and it works pretty quickly but if you can't sustain the CTR metrics, you're going to fall back down the rankings.

Is the linking domain (not the link that links to that domain) relevant to your business?

i.e. is it an old domain that used to be active or is it just a dummy domain that was set up for the practice of link building?

I'm sure it would probably be valuable and pass on some SEO benefit but if it's likely that someone has purchased this domain purely for transferring the link equity of inbound links to your website, then there's always a chance that this is going to be picked up on.

A small chance, but a chance nonetheless.

Hey Adrian,

In my opinion, none of the above are 'doorway pages' (sorry!).

A 'doorway' page is one of many pages that webmasters use as spam entry points to a website and are typically targeted towards the same keyword with a variable attached - most commonly 'locations'.

Here's an example - e cigarette online retailers tend to have little to no local presence within an area but they will build a list of pages to make it look as if they do:

• http://vapour-hut.co.uk/free-offer/2584/free-e-liquid-in-ballykeeran/1.html
• http://vapour-hut.co.uk/free-offer/2634/free-e-liquid-in-ballymore/1.html
• http://vapour-hut.co.uk/free-offer/8475/free-e-liquid-in-castletown/1.html

In this example, they've even gone as far as to add in a list of these URLs (navigable from the footer) to ensure search engines crawl them - http://vapour-hut.co.uk/e-cig-town.php.

It's all a bit of a black hat tactic to grasp a whole bunch of search traffic that they otherwise shouldn't have. In your first example, the two pages for 'trumpet' and 'piano lessons', although similar, are targeting vastly different searcher intents which are relevant to the originating website - ergo they are not doorway pages.

I hope that makes sense

All the best,

Sean

Hey there,

Put your website URL through Moz Open Site Explorer and pull out all backlinks pointing to any page on your domain. Moz has it's own metric known as 'Spam Score' that will rate how likely each link is to be 'spam'. This should help you on your way:

https://moz.com/blog/spam-score-mozs-new-metric-to-measure-penalization-risk

I hope that helps!

Sean