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any insight would be helpful!

I am working on a project for a company that is going through a major transition. They are deciding to move from a subscription publisher to a digital membership content site. They are ALSO consolidating their sub-brands into one, becoming a branded house.  They are a publisher of a niche-hobby, whose base is extremely passionate about the overarching topic. Currently, each sub-brand has its own website with its own branded content. Their new "mega-site" will have all content combined on one domain.

Their goal is to appeal to a new user who has overlapping interests in one core topic, while also allowing their existing users and brand loyalists to be able to navigate the site by brand if they want to .  If users land on the main domain HP, they will see a simple global navigation where they can navigate the content by topic OR select a brand. Each sub-brand will have it's own sub-navigation.

We are currently at the phase where we are working on information architecture and trying to figure out the global nav and the nav for each individual brand.

I am A) looking for advice on the best analytics reports to use to help inform navigation decisions and how to categorize content, and B) trying to decide if I should keep the BRANDED content in a sub-folder, or if I should categorize the content by topic and then tag branded content.

I'm not concerned about how users will be able to filter the content because that will be easier to figure out. I'm just trying to decide what the main URLs should be when content can be navigated to in multiple ways. Would it be easier to redirect brand1.domain.com > domain.com/brand-1....? Are there benefits to doing it that way?

So you would suggest holding off using any kind of structured data to inform Google that a (metered) paywall is in place?  If the option to exempt Googlebot is not available, should we proceed with structured data?

I think my main thing is - I know structured data is imperative for hard paywalls, but I am not sure if it will be detrimental or harmful to add the paywall structured data when there is a METERED paywall in place. I want all the content o be indexed and ranked, and am not sure if metering is considered cloaking.

Thank you!

I have a site that will have 90% of the content behind a metered paywall. So all content is accessible in a metered way. All users who aren't logged in will have access to 3 articles (of any kind) in a 30 day period. If they try to access more in a 30 day period they will hit a paywall. I was reading this article here on how to handle structured data with Google for content behind a paywall: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/paywalls-seo-strategy/311359/However, the content is not ALWAYS behind a paywall, since it is metered. So if a new user comes to the site, they can see the article (regardless of what it is). Is there a different way to handle content that will be SOMETIMES behind a paywall bc of a metered strategy? Theoretically I want 100% of the content indexed and accessible in SERPs, it will just be accessible depending on the user's history (cookies) with the site. I hope that makes sense.

I am working on building an area guide page for a local hotel website. The hotel itself has a lot to offer in forms of on-site entertainment and they are concerned about sending people away from their website (and their business). However, it's also important to write about the area and local attractions in close proximity to their hotel for many reasons, including building local authority.

Is there any benefit to adding links to the Google My Business/map listing of the local attractions? Or can we just simply not include external links?

GTM allows a great deal of tracking capabilities without having to use a programmer to modify your code. Better tracking equals the ability to make better decisions and determine what is and isn't work.  Google Search Console keeps an eye on the "heartbeat" of your website and helps you see any issues that Google may have with the technical aspect of your website.  Both free and both great tools. The better question to ask would be, "What should I do if my agency DOESN'T ask for or use these tools?"

If an agency isn't tracking performance and using that data to continually improve, I'd be questioning the agency.

Hello,

I have a question concerning maintenance & pruning content with a large site that has a ton of pages that are either expired OR reoccurring.

Firstly, there's ~ 12,000 pages on the site. They have large sections of the site that have individual landing pages for time-sensitive content, such as promotions and shows. They have TONS of shows every day, so the # of page to manage keeps exponentially increasing.

Show URLs:

• I'm auditing the show URLs and looking at pages that have backlinks. With those, I am redirecting to the main show pages. 
  -However, there are significant # of show URLs that are from a few years ago (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) that DON'T get traffic or have any backlinks (or ranking keywords). Can I delete these pages entirely from the site, or should I go through the process of 410-ing them (and then deleting? or ...?)Can you let 410's sit?)? They are in the XML sitemap right now, so they get crawled, but are essentially useless, and I want to cut off the dead weight, but I'm worried about deleting a large # of pages from the site at once.
• For show URLs that are still obsolete, but rank well in terms of kewyords and get some traffic...is there any recommended option? Should I bother adding them to a past shows archive section or not since they are bringing in a LITTLE traffic? Or ax them since it's such a small amount of traffic compared to what they get from the main pages.
• There are URLs that are orphaned and obsolete right now, but will reoccur. For instance, when an artist performs, they get their own landing page, they may acquire some backlinks and rank, but then that artist doesn't come back for a few months. The page just sits there, orphaned and in the XML sitemap. However, regardless of back-links/keywords, the page will come back eventually. Is there any recommended way to maintain this kind of situation? Again, there are a LOT of URLs in this same boat.

Promotional URLs:

• I'm going about the same process for promotions and thankfully, the scale of hte issue is much less. However, same question as above...they have some promotional URLs, like NYE Special Menu landing pages or Lent-Specials, etc, for each of their restaurants. These pages are only valid for a short amount of time each year, and otherwise, are obsolete. I want to reuse the pages each year, though, but don't want them to just sit there in the XML sitemap. Is there ever an instance where I might want to 302 redirect them, and then remove the 302 for the short amount of time they are valid?

I'm not AS concerned about the recycled promotional URLs. There are much fewer URLs in this category. However, as you can probably tell, this large site has this problem of reoccurring content throughout, and I'd like to get a plan in place to clean it up and then create rules to maintain. Promotional URLs that reoccur are smaller, so if they are orphaned, not the end of the world, but there are thousands of show URLs with this issue, so I really need to determine the best play here.

Any help is MUCH appreciated!

Thank you!

If doing a bulk update, should I include information about the listings that already exist, or should I tackle only those manually? I am not sure if Google would create duplicates or catch that those listings already exist if doing it this way.

I am working with a client who owns a driving school. There are 32 franchises in the same region of the state. These are independently owned and run. Each franchise has its own service area, phone number, offering, and contact information. The tricky thing is, they teach the classes either online or at local high schools, so it's service-based and there is no physical address to publicly display.

They are trying to straighten out their Google Listings. They have 15 or so GMBs already either claimed or unclaimed. Some have the incorrect street addresses, some have service areas, etc.

I am planning to manually create or clean up each one, marking them as serving the city they are in. I'm trying to put together an estimate on how much time it will take, and I'm wondering if there is any way to do this from a central ownership standpoint, instead of tackling each one independently. The same user will be the owner of each listing... Is there any way to speed up the process of claiming & optimizing (or any recommended approach in general)?

Thank you, The 301's are only being used for content that has been moved.

I hope the developer takes care of this ASAP.

GTM allows a great deal of tracking capabilities without having to use a programmer to modify your code. Better tracking equals the ability to make better decisions and determine what is and isn't work.  Google Search Console keeps an eye on the "heartbeat" of your website and helps you see any issues that Google may have with the technical aspect of your website.  Both free and both great tools. The better question to ask would be, "What should I do if my agency DOESN'T ask for or use these tools?"

If an agency isn't tracking performance and using that data to continually improve, I'd be questioning the agency.

I am working on building an area guide page for a local hotel website. The hotel itself has a lot to offer in forms of on-site entertainment and they are concerned about sending people away from their website (and their business). However, it's also important to write about the area and local attractions in close proximity to their hotel for many reasons, including building local authority.

Is there any benefit to adding links to the Google My Business/map listing of the local attractions? Or can we just simply not include external links?

I am working with a client who owns a driving school. There are 32 franchises in the same region of the state. These are independently owned and run. Each franchise has its own service area, phone number, offering, and contact information. The tricky thing is, they teach the classes either online or at local high schools, so it's service-based and there is no physical address to publicly display.

They are trying to straighten out their Google Listings. They have 15 or so GMBs already either claimed or unclaimed. Some have the incorrect street addresses, some have service areas, etc.

I am planning to manually create or clean up each one, marking them as serving the city they are in. I'm trying to put together an estimate on how much time it will take, and I'm wondering if there is any way to do this from a central ownership standpoint, instead of tackling each one independently. The same user will be the owner of each listing... Is there any way to speed up the process of claiming & optimizing (or any recommended approach in general)?