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This is a large consumer brand, so it isn't a handful of people - but let me chat with them about their communication plan.  Not sure what they are doing from a customer experience perspective and it would be good to note. Thank you!

So you vote with having the pages live and not order, rather than a redirect...   Even for a large consumer brand?

Thanks!

Due to the limitations in their system (see my response to Bruce above) I have no say in having inventory or not.  But, one of the options is to have all the product pages live and no option to purchase.  Possibly putting a banner on the top explaining what is happening...  Maybe that is a better option the the temporary redirects... I just don't know.

Sure!  It is a large brand that has a warehouse system and inventory system hooked into its website.  By moving the warehouse, they must take the shop offline.  That is just a fact I have to deal with.   It is not a decision I can make or can influence.  But, I can influence how it is taken offline.

I can't agree more on the "give us a few extra days" solution, but their inventory system (which is hooked into its website) can't do it.  Otherwise they lose their data.  I don't get it, but that is the way it is...

Thanks!

Yes, I read that one.  Figured it was a few years old and maybe there was another solution available.  

Thanks!

I have a client who is moving their warehouse, and their shop will be down for four days.  I have been doing  some research on the best ways to handle this and I wanted to get the communities feedback on this.  One thought is to have the pages live, but people can't place an order - but this does not provide the best customer experience.  Another thought is to just do temporary redirects for the shop pages, to land on the "sorry we are moving" page for customers.  Another thought was to do 503 HTTP status codes on the pages and then do a temporary redirect to the landing page.

Have any of you experienced this issue?  If so, what did you do to minimize the impact to the organic search programs?

NOTE: All of their static content will remain in tact.  Only the shop/store will be down.

It looks like it was a typo on my end.    Thanks ...  great catch.

Even when it references the page that it is on?  That is where I am a little baffled.  It is like saying this page you are looking at is the same as the page you are looking at... right?  (page x is referencing page x)

Again, might be out of the loop here, so want to verify.

This is a new one for me.  I have a client that has a canonical tag on almost every page of their site.  Even on pages that don't need it.

For example on http://www.client.com/examplex

they had code:

Maybe I have missed something, but is there a reason for this?  Does this hurt the ranking of the page?

Thanks!  Now my big issue is the whole "disabilities" issue.  Have you heard that it helps with users with disabilities?  Even if it is hidden?

Trying to figure this part out so I have a complete argument against it.

Thanks!

I am trying to triple check this - I have a client who has all of their H1 tags as hidden.  As far as I am concerned, anything hidden is not a good thing for SEO.

I am debating with their online store provider that this is not good practice.  Everything I am reading says it is not good practice.  They are saying it is for "My SEO experience would suggest otherwise.  In addition, the H1 adds semantic value for users with disabilities to help give them context with what the content of the page is."

Did I miss something?

They are a large brand and have not been penalized.  This has been happening for 8 months.

I am trying to pull some data for a client and there are a bunch of redirects going on until I get a message from Safari that says too many redirects are happening.  Any idea on what is going on?

Need this info asap...

Ya, this is what I figured.  Was just confused when I saw it and wanted to make sure I was on top of it.    Thanks for your help!

So one of the keywords they are focusing on is photo.  You would optimize for "photo" on the page and then add other keywords such as "print" "prints" "cheap" to get the longer tail keywords?

If so, that is fine iif you have done the keyword research around the long tail keywords.  But you are OPTIMIZING for those long tail keywords, right?  Not just the blend of a few of them...

From what I heard them tell me, they are optimizing for photo, prints, print, cheap, printing, photography, etc. and then blending them when it makes sense.  That to them is a long tail keyword.

Personally, I think you figure out the long tail keywords, optimize for that by page.  Maybe there are combo's on a page, but generally you are optimizing for the keyword combinations, not just a random keyword within the combo.

They used them in context... but it is so general I can't see how they can rank competitively on the terms.

Oh, thanks for that.  I think they already had that problem a few months ago... but I didn't even think about that happening again.  I'll dig deeper there.  Thanks!

Thanks Ryan!  I agree - it takes tons of time.  I was wondering if this person got lazy or if this was a real strategy...     Looks like a combo of them both.   These keywords are way too general and there is no way you can get any real movement here without tons more work.

So, I agree with you here... 100%.  I have just never seen a strategy like this and I was floored...  I don't get it.   Did some more research last night and they are not ranked for general keywords (way too competitive).

The theory was that the blend of these keywords makes the long tail keyword.. I get it - but just seems like an ineffective strategy... and I think I  can now prove it.  

I am working with a company that has had a few "SEO Experts" work on it's site over the last year.  The strategy these "experts" used to generate keywords is to optimize on many general keywords and, when mixed all together, make the keywords they are optimizing against.

For example, they did photo printing.  They would optimize for the keywords:

photo

prints

printing

print

photographs

photography

4x6

cheap

....

Maybe I am missing something, but I have never seen  a keyword list managed this way...  is this "normal"?  Is this something "new" I am missing?  Any advice or strategy tips on this one?

Thanks in advance!