Canonical tag isn't likely to have the effect you want here. Search engines expect (require) that conicalised pages be essentially identical to each other or they will likely ignore the canonical "suggestion". Identical meaning essentially word for word, except for perhaps word order, like on parameter-sorted product category p[ages.

In my experience, EGOL's solution is vastly superior. Create a permanent page for each, then find all the old related blog posts and redirect them to the permanent page to harness whatever authority those pages have for the new one. That way all further authority to the same page year after year, instead of being diffused amongst many weak separate pages.

Paul

There was a Moz blog post published last year that gives a complete rundown of the Whiteboard Fridays production methods. Includes lighting, sound, editing, camera choice etc.

That should give you a great headstart.

Paul

While a good solution if it were possible, unfortunately ESPs like Constant Contact don't give you any way to alter the content of the of their pages. And canonical tags must be in the or they'll be ignored.

Google Webmaster Tools has upgraded their Fetch as GoogleBot tool to show you a visual representation of what the search crawler will see on your page, Tiffany. I'd absolutely start there, as it's Google's own tool, and you need to have a GWT account anyway.

Paul

This functionality was built directly into Google Analytics back in October, William. By changing a line in your on-page tracking code to use the Doubleclick js instead of the regular ga.js, you can pull the demo/interest info into your Google Analytics automatically.

You change this line...

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';

to this...

ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://' : 'http://') + 'stats.g.doubleclick.net/dc.js';

A couple of things to note:

• the biggie! This functionality is only available in the classic Analytics. It hasn't yet been enabled in Universal Analytics, so if you want to use it, you'll need to stick with the classic version.
• you must also modify your site's Privacy Policy to indicate how this additional data will be used
• you'll need to turn on Enable Demographics and Interest Reports in Property Settings
• this change will also allow you to create and collect data for Remarketing campaigns

Once you've made the above changes, you should go to Audience > Demographics > Age to validate the code and confirm that the change has been successful.

That what you were looking for?

Paul

Glad to help!

As far as register.com's Premium Web Site Forwarding, I'm not familiar with it. But from the quick look I took, it's an INCREDIBLY expensive way to do something that is standard with almost all other domain registrars.

The cost of their domains is exorbitantly high ($79/3 years from what I see) plus they're charging an extra $50/yr to be able to do simple domain redirecting. Most registrars charge about $12.00/yr to do all that for a .ca domain.

Sorry, didn't want to muddy the waters, but thought you should know those prices are crazy high.

For specific info on how to do the redirects, you should get register.com's support to help you. You just want to be certain to ask that they show you how to create 301 redirects (only 301 - not 302 or CName or anything else) as I mentioned.

Then to confirm, 24 hours after the redirects have been done, use a header-checking tool to test each of yoursite.ca and www.yoursite.ca. The tool should show a 301 redirect leading to a "200 OK" response for each.

Paul

Wp-includes doesn't include any user content, William. The wp-content folder is where all user-uploaded images, pdfs etc are stored, so removing wp-includes from the robots.txt won' t have any effect on whether posts/pages are indexing or not.

But even if such content were in that blocked directory, posts and pages are in the database and are output from their respective pseudo index pages, none of which are ni the /wp-includes directory.

I'm just on my out the door, Eric, but if you want to PM me a few example URLs/pages, I'd be happy to have a look. Or of course you could post them publicly here for others to give you a hand, if you're comfortable with that. It's pretty hard to address problems like this without being able to research the actual pages.

Paul

Most welcome, Lucy. I've also used a number of different dashboards - if you can describe the highest-priority things you want to be able to do with your dashboard, I may be able to make a suggestion or two.

eg how many and what types of accounts? Are Analytics and tracking important? Do multiple team members need to collaborate/manage the same accounts?

Paul

There are a number of issues that are likely causing indexing problems with this site, Eric, but I'm going to have to be up front with you.

The site's business model is so completely against the search engines' terms of service, and is contributing to the low opinion so many in the public have of SEO, that regretfully I must decline to provide any further help with this particular site.

This is my own judgement call and is not intended to reflect on you in any way.

Paul

[Update] Between here and the MozCon Facebook Group we've got a number of folks interested, so we're going to grab a table together for lunch on Tuesday at the conference. I'll try to mark it with something noticeable, or you can tweet me @thompsonpaul and I'll let you know where to find us. Hope to see lots of us there! [/Update]

Hey gang - I'm wondering which Q&A regular (or irregular!) contributors are coming to MozCon next week? I know Dana Tan and Marie Haynes are for sure.

So who else is coming? If there's a bit of a gang of us, it would be fun to connect up for a lunch table or a drink at some point during the event to meet each other face-to-face.

Let me know in the comments, and if there are enough of us, I'll set something up.

Paul

Referrer data is stripped when the referral is coming from HTTPS to HTTP. That's a security measure that Google has had in place for some time. Because the link is hitting the HTTP first, it is negotiating its initial connection over an unsecure channel, so the referrer is being stripped. (The incoming connection is being initiated over HTTP before it is ever able to detect and process the redirect.)

So yea, expected behavior. One way around the issue that I'm pretty sure would work is if you implement HSTS for the receiving site. That forces the initial connection over HTTPS regardless of the incoming request's protocol.

Hope that helps?

Paul

In my experience, Carolyn, links between subdomain and primary get the worst of both worlds.

The search engines can clearly see that two sites are interrelated  so the links between them aren't entirely "natural". Therefore I don't  find the links carry the full amount of their influence across (not to mention the subdomain is usually far lower authority than the primary.)

On the other hand, the search engines still seem to consider subdomains as stand-alone sites which must earn their authority on their own, so they don't directly benefit from the halo of authority of the primary site.

See what I mean by  "the worst of both worlds"?

The blog post Thomas refers to is quite specifically only related to how links between subdomains and primary are reported in Google Webmaster Tools, so I'd be careful about extrapolating it too far into ranking factors. (Though in essence I agree with him that these types of links seem to function more like internal than external as far as value is concerned)

As far as the location of the links on the subdomain's page, typically links in menus & sidebars (especially if they are site-wide menus) contribute a smaller percentage of whatever influence they have than if they were a natural part of the content.

And from a user's perspective (which I prefer to think of first, before SEO considerations) it probably makes more sense to include the link to related info right in the article rather than making them go looking for it elsewhere on the page after finishing the article.

You've asked a good question, and it's answer really starts to get into the "art" part of SEO as few pure data points are viable to use when answering. Which will be why you will get a range of perspectives in the answers.

Hope that helps?

Paul

[Edited to add: If the microsite is so closely tied to the topics and purpose of the main site, it may be worth considering moving it to a subdirectory of the primary so the two sets of content can better support each other's rankings.]

Great stuff, Irving! Will keep an eye out for you. I'll let you know if enough folks chime in to make up a lunch group.

This is a really common problem on shared Windows IIS-based hosting, Brian.

In addition to the web.config method Oleg mentions, there's another method if it's only for a few specific pages.

This method involves actually having a "placeholder" page on the server at the old URL. You then add a script to provide the 301 redirect. (Or just replace the content of the origianl page, if it's still on the server.)

For example:

On ASP.net you would create the page oldpagename.aspx and its content would be:

On ASP you'd create the placeholder oldpagename.asp and its content would be:

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", "www.mydomain.com/newpagename.aspx"
%>

Obviously this method doesn't scale as easily as the web.config method, but it's generally easier if you're just dealing with a few pages every once in a while.

Paul

Great to hear, Jesse. Look forward to meeting you.  Will let you know if it looks like a lunch group will happen.