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First off, I do think URLs help theme pages, which can indirectly help with SEO, but that shouldn't be your main goal. Aim to create a consistent structure for how all category, subcat, product detail pages are organized. This will not only make your life a whole lot easier, but it will also make more sense to users, help keep linking consistent, and (indirectly) help rankings.

I would have 3 category pages that lists all relevant products: /gallery-wood, /prefinished-wood, /parquet-reclaimed-wood. I would probably then have subcategory pages that drill-down to more specific product listings (i.e. /gallery-wood/brown-engineered-flooring). *This is the page level you'll want to target "brown engineered flooring."

From there, you have to decide if you want the product detail page URL to follow the folder structure (i.e. /gallery-wood/brown-engineered-flooring/[product-name]) or if you want it to only have the product name (.com/[brand-product-name/number]) which is usually better for complex ecommerce sites where products fall under multiple categories.

You could also drop the parent category from the URL structure, which is probably what I'd do. Something like:

• Category: /gallery-wood  *optimize for "gallery wood" & related terms
• Subcategory: /brown-engineered-flooring   *optimize for "brown engineered flooring" & related terms
• Product Detail: /brown-engineered-flooring/brand-product-name *optimize for brand, product name & related terms

Depending on search volume, there may even be an opportunity to create brand categories or landing pages.

I hope this helps!

If you think about the original use of bold/italicized text, it was to emphasize certain words/phrases/concepts to readers. Search engines would then use the markup as an indicator of what the most important concepts were on the page, and what search queries the page would make the most sense to rank for. Then came SEOs who overused the once-valid editorial tactic to manipulate search engine algos & rankings. The same thing happened with linking - the original purpose was to help users navigate from page to relevant page, but SEOs went overboard focusing too heavily on rankings & links (spam/black hat SEO) and not enough on user experience. All 3 of these tactics are now scrutinized via specific content & link quality algorithms.

I do not recommend bolding, italicizing, or even linking 'just for SEO.' However, if bolding/italicizing certain parts of text will benefit the reader (helping them better understand your point) or if linking to other pages on your site would provide the visitor with more relevant/useful information that will help with their purchasing decision, then by all means, add the markup. In general, I try not to do anything "**just for SEO" **;) Always ask whether or not a tactic would benefit the user - more often than not, user-friendly efforts will also be search-friendly.

Not the easiest question to answer, but I'll share my thoughts:

• Keyword density - for me, a red flag is raised anytime this phrase is used even if it's checked only to 'make sure we're not keyword stuffing.' Content should be created to be as helpful as possible to the human visitor; if that's done, search bots should pick up on what your site is about '_organically.' _ Pun intended.
• A quick control-find for "office" shows 36 instances of the word just on your homepage, which is spammy in my opinion. Try using some pronouns to help the content read more naturally.
• Yes, href and alt tags do help search engines understand what your site is about. So if (for example) "office space" is used throughout the page's copy at such a high frequency AND in the link & image tags, then I would consider this kw stuffing / spammy. I'm not familiar with SRE tags, sorry!
• In general, your site seems to offer a lot of valuable content that's just over "optimized," especially on the homepage. I would even suggest redesigning the homepage to be a little more brand and user focused - or at least a refresh of the "What's your search scenario?" section, which is pretty busy/overwhelming & was probably created mostly for SEO.

I hope this helps!

What you described is a link scheme that I highly recommend avoiding.  Google's advanced algorithm will very likely identify the footprint you're leaving & could lead to a link penalty.

It's good that you understand that links are valuable for SEO, but this is not the way to go about getting them. Instead, focus on building relationships with other non-competing brands or people with large followings that will broadcast your content within your industry. This WBF has some good, safe link building ideas: http://moz.com/blog/anchor-text-rich-links-without-spam-or-manipulation-whiteboard-fridayIn general, tactics that you have to question are usually ones to stay away from.

I think SEOs get used to seeing duplicate content issues caused by the same page having various URLs (parameters, www, filters, slashes, etc), so it almost catches us off guard when we see pages flagged for having the same copy (real / true duplicate content!). At one point, I believe Matt Cutts shared that internal dup content will not hurt your site, but I would work to update all pages to have unique copy. It looks like all of your product pages have the same boilerplate copy, so this may be a big undertaking but it'll be worth it both from an SEO & UX perspective - as you add more descriptive copy, these pages may begin to rank for new queries not previously captured & you'll be providing more value to the visitor.

Side note - I clicked around on a few pages & when I land on a product detail page, 4 gray boxes pop up (one saying Site Map). Something funky going on there.

Hope this helps!

There probably isn't much harm in deleting them, but I'd also see if there's any way to repurpose some of the pieces or maybe some of the topics are still relevant & can be rewritten/updated to not be "crap." Even if you don't do any updating to those old posts, I would consider archiving the pages (making sure you don't create any duplicate content!) rather than deleting them as they're likely influencing how Google understands the overall context of your site. I would review the content relevancy report in Webmaster Tools to see how Google understands your site... Click on any of the listed terms to see if those old posts are where your top KWs are occurring - should help you decide on keeping or nixing some pages.

Hope this helps!

First thing you need to do is determine which is your preferred URL (probably www.site.com/fishing/). Once you have that, the key to good linking is consistency (using the same, preferred URL for any given page you're linking to & also using descriptive, naturally-occurring anchor text that's relevant to the page's content).

The fact that your site has other versions of the page (/fishing/ and /fishing/index.html) means that you probably need to implement a solution to prevent dup content issues - either 301 redirect all variations to the preferred URL or implement rel=canonical tags to tell search bots which is the preferred URL to include in its index. You can read more about this here:

• http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
• http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

I hope this helps!

The other thing is that creating unique, high quality, share-worthy content requires creative planning & resources that would be better spent towards your main site than on various microsites.

What you're dealing with is duplicate content caused by URL inconsistencies. My first move would be to implement rel="canonical" tags to tell search bots which is the preferred URL (lower-case, then either with or without the trailing-slash). You can read more about it here: http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions

I always use the Moz bar on the actual Moz site to see how things should be implemented - that's allowed, right? & I noticed that they have added rel=canonical site-wide (to prevent any unforeseen dup content issues). You can see an example of how it's used by viewing the source code here: moz.com/rand/category/archives/events/ and http://moz.com/rand/category/events/

Before you take any action, though, **you need to determine the preferred structure for all URLs on the site. **

No, you don't want to NoFollow 301s. The point of a 301 permanent redirect is for "everyone to be redirected" - users, search bots, & link juice - but adding NoFollow would prevent this.

What you're really doing is consolidating 'orphan SEO pages' to fewer, higher value pages - which is a specific example Google providesas a "good reason to redirect one URL to another." I would 301 the pages to their most relevant, consolidated landing pages that remain.

Hope this helps!

My opinion is that 1 link from a highly authoritative site is of more value than 20+ links from less authoritative sites.

However, it's also critical to look at what type of traffic might come from those sites. If a site with low DA/PA has an audience specific to your niche, then partnering with that site might drive high-converting referral traffic to your site & be a more valuable link; whereas the high DA/PA site that's maybe more broad or whose audience isn't quite the demographic you're targeting might send low-converting or no traffic at all. All these things need to be considered.

Another vote for SEMRush here! I use it daily. I also like looking at GWT's Search Queries & Content Keywords reports to see what KWs are driving organic traffic & how Google is 'understanding' my site (respectively); then, as you said, you can make a push to build up the authority of your site for specific KWs/categories within your content strategy.

I hope this helps!

I'd say you're thinking about this in a smart way. First off, the existing URL structure isn't bad.  I would consider this a low priority update, unless (or until) all other possible site issues are taken care of.

You're being smart about trying to find a balance of having descriptive yet not too long of a URL structure. What I can say is that the 'better way' depends on what words might already be in the domain, as I try to not be redundant (when possible) so it doesn't appear spammy/kw stuffed.

I hope this helps!

There are a thousand possibilities as to why they're outranking your site. I know everyone tries to keep their sites private in here, but for such a specific inquiry, we really need to see the pages in question. Kind of a 'help us help you' situation.

I typically handle this following:

• URL: "Plan A" - for our overhaul is that a product URL is always going to be www.domain.com/product-name-sku.html/. Neat and clean, and avoids end-user confusion if they navigate to the product through a category that doesn't match the URL.
• Breadcrumbs: Option 1 - dynamically changes based on how the user navigates to the page.

What you're seeing is the page's meta robots tag, which instructs the search engine bots to (in this case) index a specific page and follow links on the page. The opposite, "noindex,nofollow" instructs the search bots to not include this page in its index or follow links on the page. You can also use "noindex, follow" so the search engine keeps the page out of its index, but still follows the links on the page. I personally have never come across an example of "index, nofollow" but I imagine that it's possible - probably more of an outdated practice though related to hoarding links.

If you've never seen this attribute before, it may be because the page doesn't include the tag (in which case the bots, by default, assume "index, follow"). And as for whether or not having it is a bad thing - probably not, unless it's a page you really don't want visible in search results.

Another thing to consider is how having your brand in all caps takes up more of the allotted pixel space for the title, even if it's just a little bit more. I'm seeing a lot of titles (in Google SERPs) have their brand name moved to the front, regardless of the actual title tag, so  think about how "MOGAS: Title Tag" vs. "Mogas: Title Tag" might push important terms out. You might even consider having your titles start with the brand name since Google's adjustments seem to indicate a preference.

I hope this helps!

It's possible, but it sounds like the ranking fluctuations are likely from multiple URLs competing for the same search queries ("Often really similar landing pages exist - just minor keyword targeting difference and I would call it "thin" content") rather than poor link profiles. He didn't mention any manual penalties either.

I agree that you would not want all 50 URLs redirecting to one or even just a few URLs. Only redirect the ones that are really related to the content of the remaining pages and let the rest drop off. Also make sure you have a killer 404 page that helps users get to the right pages.

From an SEO 'link building' perspective, links behind a login can not be crawled by Google & will not provide any type of traditional/old school link value (since bots cannot access that content).

However, as Andy shared, those links may still be very valuable if your business is contextually relevant to the news outlet. Readers of a paid newspaper are likely serious about getting the info shared there, so visitors from the news site may be high converting if your service/product fits their interest. In general, try to think of the value to the human visitor rather than the SEO value... you'll tend have a more clear answer on what to do every time.

I hope this helps!

I'm working on a very similar scenario, where .com.au pages are ranking in Google US and .com pages are ranking in Google AU (above .com.au pages).

We are moving forward with the hreflang attribute since it was specifically introduced to help search engines serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers. In helping search engines index and serve the localized version of your content, “hreflang” also prevents duplicate content penalties by telling Google that each potential “duplicate” is actually an alternative for users who require an alternate language version. * We see this as a short-term goal, as we plan to eventually consolidate the ccTLDs to the .com site.

Here are some international SEO / hreflang resources that might help:

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
• http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
• http://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
• Anything from Aleyda Solis &/or Gianluca Fiorelli
• http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
• http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php

Also, since the AU subdomain pages were ranking well, I probably would have left the redirect in place rather than let it go to a 404. Then focus on mapping out the equivalents between the .com and .com.au sites. This is a very tedious project, but the last 2 links I shared above really help move things along once you have all the URL equivalents mapped out.

I hope this helps!

Oh the woes of exact match domains...

If I were you, I'd try to work in the actual brand name, even if it's just a logo or branded tagline somewhere in the header. As you explained, it wouldn't be very good for visitors to arrive at a site that has almost no reference to the brand they thought they were visiting the website for. I would also look into a possible rebrand that works the primary KW (tattoo removal) into the brand name - "[Brand Name] Tattoo Removal." With that, you could build out a location page that reinforces the target city with local SEO.

The self-referencing canonical tags should only be for your actual preferred URLs. So if www.testwebsite.com/duplicate is a duplicate because of parameters (for example), then no, it should not have the self-referencing canonical tag - it should have a canonical tag pointing to the preferred URL should (www.testwebsite.com/ in this case, which would have the self-ref tag).

Zappos example:

• http://www.zappos.com/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops~1 (self-ref canonical tag)
• http://www.zappos.com/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops~1#!/beyond-yoga-women-shirts-tops/CKvXARDL1wFSAv0eegLgBIIBAukjwAEB4gIFGAECCg8.zso   (canonical tag points to unfiltered page)

If www.testwebsite.com/duplicate is a static page that you want indexed, but that has the same content as www.testwebsite.com/, then the solution is updating/adding content to be unique (then applying the self-ref canonical tags to both URLs which are now unique).

Make sense?

I agree with Kari's comment. Using this tactic is becoming more and more rare for me, as I have moved towards using tabbed content (which there's also a good amount of debate about its SE-friendliness) and anchor links for having additional content in an easy to navigate, lighter/better designed way. A good example is at http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro.

I hope this helps!

I feel your frustration! You spent months planning & removing any type of old SEO tactic, and your rankings have tanked. I know it's a little late since you've already launched, but the first thing I have to say is how important it is to set the right expectation whenever making large site updates - especially those including URL rewrites. In my experience, it can take anywhere from 1-4 months to see a turnaround, but there are of course things you should be doing in the mean time.

You mentioned removing a lot of duplicate/thin content pages & letting thousands 404 - rather than creating so many broken pages (thus losing all possible link equity from those old pages), I recommend 301 redirecting them to the most relevant new page. So 50 pages with thin content about 'carpet cleaning equipment' should be 301 redirected to /cleaning-equipment/carpet-cleaners.

Other things to consider if you haven't already:

• updating all internal links
• updating all external links on sites you own (social!)
• stepping up paid ads at least until rankings turn around
• stepping up other inbound marketing tactics - email marketing
• stepping up social engagement, especially on Pinterest! Think of all the homeowners/DIYers/potential customers on that site!
• generating new content that will engage your audience & also build quality links
• ideas from this article: http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons

I hope this helps!

I do not have experience with any site using this type of selector, but theoretically you should not encounter any problems as you're showing different content with the intent of improving the experience, not to deceive. If Google handles this like an ip-redirect, then you should be fine.

In scenario 2, however, I'm wondering if you even want Google to index these URLs - since it sounds like these URLs will be dynamically generated & might end up being duplicates of other pages on the site (similar to internal search pages). Something to watch out for!

First off, I like the way you're thinking through this - it's critical to understand that no one solution should be applied to every scenario, so here are my thoughts on what you should do:

• For programs no longer offered, I would leave the page up with a notification that it's discontinued plus related products ('this program is no longer offered, but here are some other programs you might like'). Your idea of having a custom 404 for discontinued products (with the same type of language) could also work. If you do 301 redirect visitors, I suggest going to the category page & also incorporating some way of letting the visitor know. You basically want to avoid confusing the visitor by taking them somewhere different than expected.
• For the programs temporarily on hold, do not 302 redirect them - 302s should be avoided in almost all cases. Instead, leave the page live & let the visitor know that this program is currently unavailable, with a CTA to be alerted via email as soon as it's available. Also have related products in case they need the program/service now.

There's an old Moz post (that I can't find atm) where Rand explains how he dealt with this situation - I believe he had the same idea as I shared, followed by closely monitoring the traffic to the pages; then adding 301s to the very low trafficked pages & working to improve the messaging/CTA/UX of the ones still receiving traffic.

I hope this helps!

If you're getting the dup content error reports in the Moz crawl diagnostics, see the Staff response here: http://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-title-tags-even-with-rel-canonical

As gazzerman1 shared, you should be in the clear from any duplicate content penalties caused by URL parameters, especially with having rel next/prev or canonical tags setup.

It's very common for responsive sites to reduce the content for mobile devices, without any penalty. This is not a deceptive or black/gray hat tactic, as long as you're not cloaking the text. In fact, you're just making a better UX.

In my experience, the hover-state text will be indexed (as a link). You can see an example on my company's work page here - notice how the hover-state content reduces as the site responds to different devices. Also see how the hover-state text is showing (as links) in the cached version of the page.

I hope this helps!

http://www.rei.com/video/  Pretty much everything here is awesome!

Do you mean that your Moz Analytics Crawl Diagnostics Report is showing duplicate titles for pages that have rel=canonical? If so, this is something I noticed a few months ago & brought up to the Moz team. I believe it's something they're working to implement/somehow allow us to 'check off' pages in the report that we've already implemented a solution for. Also, if this is your situation, I think you should add your experience / request to Moz's feature request forum.

I hope this helps!

Don't forget to pull from your own experience. We've all encountered easy & difficult to navigate sites or frustrating checkouts - take the good, avoid the bad.

This article is about removing blog posts, but I think it's still relevant: http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/deleted-900-blog-posts-happened-next/

The 'removals/redirects' & 'lessons learnt' sections are particularly important to consider.

Moz.com does this as well and you may also see an "Insight" in your Moz Analytics account recommending site-wide implementation 'to prevent any unforeseen duplicate content issues.' I have started following this practice since it really can't hurt & sometimes dup content pops up in the weirdest, most 'unforeseen' ways.

All good points you're making here. Unfortunately, there isn't a consensus on whether it's best to use the tool or not. I fall into the category of SEOs who disavow obvious spam/low quality links even without any manual penalty notification... I feel it's the honest thing to do & also don't like the idea of waiting for Google to really penalize the site. I then focus on creating unique, engaging, possibly long-format content pieces that the audience will love & share (building up authentic, high quality, contextually-relevant links that support on-site optimization & outnumber/overshadow any residual low quality links).

This Moz post walks through some critical steps for using the tool: http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool

Rel=canonical is great for helping search engines serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers, but I'm not sure how it would work for two sites both purposed for the US (.us and .com).

What's the thought behind having two sites - is the .us site intended for Google US searches and .com the default for anything outside of the US? Are there language variations? What are the different "locations" you're referring to?

If 301 permanent redirects are used, then yes, about 90% of link equity is passed on. You can read more here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

I usually encounter this when I'm logged in to my work email/Google account. Try opening your browser in a "new incognito window" and make sure you're logged in to the Google account used for the site's GA account.

Wildcard placements are always tricky, so be sure you test it in GWT's robots file tester. You can also look into adding meta noindex, rel next/prev, or canonical tags to those pages.

I hope this helps!

Another vote for SEMRush. I plug nearly every site I come across into it.

I agree with Oleg's response. As it stands, I would have all of this content on one URL, then focus on building the authority of that page for all terms related to "This is our youth."

In general, tabbed content is not bad for SEO & is actually a great way to simplify/improve the UX of pages with a lot of content. I've been implementing this more & more lately, especially when consolidating multiple 'orphan SEO pages' to one or a few more valuable pages. You can do this a few ways:

• actual tabbed content (making sure all copy shows up in the text-only cache version of the page). Example: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-ipad-air-2-wi-fi16gb-silver/2881022.p?id=1219084308979&skuId=2881022
• tabbed navigation that looks like tabbed content, but are actually anchor links (or links within a page) that "scroll down to the appropriate part of the page." Example: http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-mini (see just below the fold).

My preference is to use the anchor links - with users getting more & more mobile, scrolling has become second nature.

I hope this helps!

Hopefully someone with Hubspot experience will jump in here, but (setting the Hubspot detail aside) I'm thinking the best approach will be to use canonical tags. You would have to take a phased approach, first creating all the equivalent pages on the new site with canonical tags (across both domains) indicating that the new URLs are the preferred pages & to pass all linking/ranking equity from the old site to the new one. You would have to wait for all the new pages to be indexed & begin to rank before putting the old site behind the login. Once this is all setup, submitting new sitemaps may expedite the lay time.

I'm interested in knowing why your company wants to put a well-established/ranking site behind a login.

Update:  The technical part of this article reminded me of what you're trying to do: http://searchengineland.com/breaking-glass-ceiling-search-acquisition-209676

It sounds like you need a pattern redirect implemented, ideally in one 301. If that's not possible, I would definitely add another to get all the URLs redirected to their new location (avoiding any redirect loop) - better to lose 10-20% of link equity than all! Plus you said the old pages rank well - changing domains already almost guarantees a drop in rankings, even with 301s implemented. You absolutely need the 301redirects! As a last resort, have them 301 to the new location of each page's category.

Make sure you test whatever solution you go with on a few pages before pushing across entire categories.

Hope this helps!

Hi there! So lots of thoughts came to mind as I read your question, so here it goes:

• Yes, links to subdomains are counted towards the entire domain - I believe it was 2010 or 2011 when Google announced this change, which was to prevent black hat SEOs from using their own subdomain as a link farm/wheel to the main domain- which leads me to my next thought...
• This statement raises an immediate red flag: "The main purpose of this blog is to attract backlinks."
• Generally, it's best to have your blog at domain.com/blog - of course there are sometimes technical limitations preventing this.

I hope this helps!

Sure! What I mean is if (for example) your domain is debtlifestylemanagement.com, then having the dlm folder spelled out in the URL (i.e. debtlifestylemanagement.com/products/debt-lifecycle-management/hire-collection-agents) would be redundant & appear spammy. The same could happen if your domain had 'collection agents' in it.

I'm suggesting that I would "tend towards not including a keyword in the URI if it alreadyappears in the domain," especially if including it would only be for SEO purposes.

First off, getting your site mobile optimized is smart.

Next, you need to have a clear understanding of where all this traffic is coming from. If it's organic, dig into Google Webmaster Tools & even Semrush to determine how much of it is from branded queries. If a large percentage of your traffic is from non-branded organic searches, I would be very cautious of changing URLs & title tags - unless your organization is completely okay with the possible ranking & traffic loss that will most likely come with all the necessary 301 redirects. The current URLs are already far, far cleaner than a lot of sites (especially ecommerce sites that have crazy dynamic URLs).

With all that said, I have worked with a few brands in similar situations where we decided to move forward with a site overhaul (which is what you're describing) because (a) most of their traffic was either direct or branded organic and (b) they worked with an SEO agency years ago that implemented a number of spammy tactics that we needed to clean up. Ultimately, we decided that the benefits of sort of "getting straight with Google" was worth the possible ranking & traffic loss.

I hope this helps!