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Hey @henrichjrr420,

Google has definitely indexed your site (see image) but it's not ranking it.

Without a proper technical audit and access to analytics it's hard to see what's happening but the site looks super spammy.

@Miradoro what would you like to track?

If you have Google Search Console set up for that domain it should be fairly easy to export data on clicks, impressions, CTR and average position.

You could then filter this data by subfolder and create visualisations like graphs if you needed.

You could see a quick overview of what's happening on each subfolder by adding a filter in GSC. Navigate to Performance > Search results > new > page... then filter by 'URLs containing' /de/en_uk

On a related note, I assume from these subfolders that you're targeting English and German speakers in Germany and Austria?

Have you got hreflang tags set up correctly? If not, this would be highly recommended to help avoid content duplication issues.

Cheers,
Stefan

@VendoIreland seems like you've got a lovely long ChatGPT answer here so I'll chip in as well.

If that page contained information that is no longer relevant or has been deleted then it is completely fine for that URL to return a 4xx status code (normally a 404).

In the case that you've moved the page's information to a different page you should implement a redirect (often referred to as 301 redirects).

However, what you should not do is link to broken or redirected pages, which is maybe what the Moz report is picking up on? It's hard to say without seeing the report.

I haven't taken a detailed look but I can see that the link to "Contact" in your footer gets redirected from /contact to /contact/

The crucial difference in those two URLs is the trailing slash. The fix here is to update any hyperlinks that don't contain a trailing slash to use one that does: https://vending-machines.ie/contact/

Hope that helps! If you want to share the Moz report you can fire it over to me at stefan.eldridge-gatti@digitalsix.co.uk and I'll see if I can provide some more clarity.

Cheers,
Stefan

@Tracey_Evans agreed. You should also consider that browsers will cache data for websites they visit @moz46y

If a user visits a URL that returns a 301 status code it will remember this. If the user tries to access that redirect URL in the future the browser can just take them to the version that returns a 200 status code (in the name of efficiency).

This can be undone, but it requires the user clearing their browser's cache.

Not sure if it would be an issue in your use case but it's worthwhile knowing!

Cheers,
Stefan

Hey @CustomMadeCasino,

I shouldn't think this is anything to do with your analytics set-up, but it certainly isn't ideal for SEO. In an ideal world you'd set up a permanent redirect from the non-standard homepage URL to the correct version. You could also add a canonical tag but a permanent redirect is the preferred method.

If you can edit the .htaccess file of your website you can even add a redirect rule using RegEx to catch any URLs, more info here: https://www.semrush.com/blog/301-redirect-htaccess/

On a related note, If you enter this into Google "site:https://custommadecasino.com" you'll see that your staging subdomain is also indexed (https://staging.custommadecasino.com/)

It looks to me like it would be worthwhile conducting a basic technical SEO audit on your website. Have you got Google Search Console set up with this domain? If so, the Indexing > Pages report can help you find issues. If not, I'd recommend doing it ASAP!

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Stefan

Hi Mary,

Just to clarify, this answer is based on the premise that you want to find hyperlinks on your site that lead to a different domain, but are broken?

For example, yoursite.com/page has a hyperlink to othersite.com/page-2 but that othersite.com/page-2 URL returns a 404 status code.

Without a doubt the best tool to use here would be Screaming Frog. The tool is free to use to crawl up to 500 URLs. Otherwise it's £149 (from memory) for a year's licence.

It might seem daunting to use but it is relatively straight forward. They have great documentation on how to find broken links on your website, and their support team is excellent.

I'm not affiliated with Screaming Frog in anyway btw

If you need any further assistance feel free to chuck your website in here, or DM me (I think you can do that here). I can compile a list of broken external URLs for you if you like.

Cheers,
Stefan

@Ryan07 said in New business / content marketing:
Hey @Ryan07, I've added some answers to your various queries below.

We have rebranded recently, using a new domain as entered new business partnership

Out of interest, what have you done with the old domain?
If the two are directly related and the old one has been discontinued it would be worthwhile adding redirects. Either from specific URLs or the entire domain.

there doesn’t seem to be much guidance on this at all, from various SEO websites

Which websites have you been using to find information? Obviously forums like Moz are helpful but resources like Reddit can also be good.

So would SEO’s decrease the frequency of publication of blog posts, because the website is new? Or perhaps it does not matter, and would still post every week as you would if the website has been live for a long time?

Exactly, I wouldn’t worry about posting frequency at any stage of a website’s lifecycle. The key, especially going into a turbulent 2024 for SEO, is going to be focussing on creating actually valuable content for your end-users.

As long as your website contains all the information necessary for users to make an informed decision about whatever niche you operate in (it’s hard to be more specific without knowing what your website does).

So, in nutshell, what we are wondering is, is the “Google Sandbox” still in use?
I don’t think we can actually know this for sure.

There’s no concrete evidence that Google “sandboxes” new websites. Either way, I wouldn’t worry about it. If it does, writing and publishing quality content should never be seen as spammy.

As Ahrefs say: “As a new website owner, it is crucial to (1) remain patient and (2) focus on creating high-quality content and (3) building links. Over time, your website will eventually start to rank well in Google search results.”

Regarding frequency, the most important thing to focus on is your end-user. If publishing content daily/weekly/monthly is what they need then go right ahead. Otherwise I wouldn't make frequency my highest priority when it comes to content marketing for organic search.

Hope that helps!

Stefan