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Thanks.  So it's not true that Google doesn't like two pages from the same website ranking at the top of page one for the same exact term? I could swear I've heard this several times.

Hi, No - that's not a problem. Anyway google is good at determining how things are even if you have a lot of duplicate content. And it's important to mention that there is no such thing as a Google duplicate content penalties - manual or otherwise. Panda dose target "duplicate content" but Panda is not a penalty is a filter and it's more complex, way more then "duplicate content" .. but that's a story for another day - anyway with a 500 pages site you are probabaly safe from panda even if you would have a lot of Panda signals... Cheers.

I was looking for an answer to the 2nd part of the question. Is there an easy way to tell google that you are the author sitewide? It would take years to go around and do DCMAs for every piece of content that's been stolen. One thing I've noticed: In Image Search, Google is able to do a very good at tracking the orignal picture and ranking that. In Web search, Google does a very poor job and often ranks copied content higher than the original.

Yes its a drastic change in navigation and I took a dive in the SERPS. I am still trying to figure out the cause of this. Thanks for the article. It will come in use.

After reading some Google documentation I set it up like this: <url><loc>http://www.mexpro.com/</loc>   <lastmod>2014-08-25T21:02:47+00:00</lastmod>   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>   <priority>1.00</priority>   <xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"                  hreflang="es-mx"                  href="https://www.mexpro.com/mx/"                  />   <xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"                  hreflang="en"                  href="http://www.mexpro.com/"                  />   <xhtml:link <br="">rel="canonical"                  href="http://www.mexpro.com/mexico/"                  /></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></url> Do I need rel="alternate" and rel="canonical" for the sitemap, or is it better to do a traditional sitemap for English and Spanish?Thank you.

Hi guys, have a client in a similar situation and working through best option for them...would appreciate any comments or feedback... Current Status - client has two websites each targeting different countries: .co.nz and .com.au With the exception of a few products that are offered separately between NZ and AU, the sites are the same. In essence duplicate content. This is due to current platform limitations (the way their web company has built the site it is same site showing in each region on separate domains with option to change products between regions using inventory an integrated inventory tool). The great news is they are currently rebuilding their websites onto a new platform with two unique versions of the site…which will be great for ongoing SEO - ie we can really drill into creating separate sets of page, product, template content and meta data etc. They also have a magazine running on Word Press Blog using sub-domains associated with the regional root domain. E.g. magazine.domain.co.nz and magazine.domainname.com.au Again, with a few exceptions, this is also duplicated for both countries…ie sub domains assigned to the same site. Again duplicate content. Question: The magazine being built on Word Press has to date been geared at offering an “FAQ” type engagement with visitors....visitors can submit questions via module which are then answered in Word Press blog posts. There are also links from main site menu away to the magazine...so not ideal for conversion. Client wants to bring this FAQ type feature back to the two main sites and can now do so during new site rebuilds. There is also some SEO juice in the magazine as in essence it is a large Word Press blog. I am trying to work through what would be the best option for transferring all of the FAQ answers/articles (content) from magazine FAQs to the two new main sites...so over time the two new main sites obtain that SEO strength. Option 1 Leave magazine as it is so that main sites continue to get benefits of referral traffic to main sites and sales as result of the referrals. Also retains the links from magazine to main site (although links are from a sub-domain of the same domain) Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new NZ site Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new AU site (Bearing in mind stringent Panda rules etc – mixing up titles so unique, unique content and posting etc to avoid Panda penalties) Option 2 Take down magazine site and implement 301 redirects + one new version of the articles. Move all magazine articles across to the highest performing region (NZ by far) and 301 redirect from NZ magazine to the new NZ site with corresponding articles. 301 redirects take care of the indexed pages to retain traffic and rankings for the NZ magazine articles. Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article and add to the new AU site and 301 redirect from AU magazine articles to the new version on AU site. 301 redirects take care of any indexed AU magazine articles...but there may be some fluctuation in rankings as the content is now completely different (brand new). Could there be any issue with loss of the internal backlinks? impacts SEO strength that magazine subdomain to main site might give? Other Options? Appreciate any thoughts or comments... thanks in advance...

Thanks Alan, I was told that phone numbers and other details should be marked up with Schema, If you have multiple instances of the phone number on the page - i.e footer, content etc - should all instances be marked up? or just one? If just one, should it be an occurrence in the navigation or footer? Thank you.

You're in a good position with the site, because as far as I can see the business is well-liked and referenced. Definitely try and put the dampeners on those comment links and if you can, recommend re-investing budget in a more natural linkbuilding strategy that matches up to the calibre of the business. I appreciate this can be tricky though if it's a third party building those links. I think for the next few months I'd concentrate on improving the content on-site and using digital PR (definitely not press releases, but buzzworthy articles/content that people want to share) to build brand links. Hopefully the comment spam will be outweighed by those, if not a few guys here more experienced with disavows can advise if this is necessary.

Ideally, the closer you are to the homepage the better.  However - most of Amazon's products sit  Homepage > Thing Being Sold > Category > Subcategory > Product So I don't think it can really hurt that much - they seem to do ok with it.  But yes, closer is better in general.  Shorten the checkout cycle, though, and people may not care as much.

Thanks so much guys, really helpful. Will a 301 pass this "age trust", or any other trust factors?   I'm moving over from a long establish domain,  about 4 years old.  It's a flash site though, so i want to convert to something more SEO friendly.  Also how long does it take to gain trust? Got some high quality backlinks (only about 20 but very relevant).  The 301 will help pass the "link juice" right? Cheers. Isaac.

I agree with Rafi, you probably should go for the URL that better coves your message and still follow the SEO guidelines. The 2^nd example of the URL follows the following checks and that is why the 2^nd option for you is ideal. -          The URL length is under limit. -          The URL conveys message to the audience and do not contain any special characters. -           It does not violate any guidelines. Hope this helps!

Thank you so much!  Yes that does help indeed. One small question if i may? I maybe have 20 backlinks to the site, but all high quality and very relevant.  I would keep almost all the value of these links wouldn't I? And wouldn't it bowd well because Google 'knows' I've been around for a while? Thanks. Isaac.

Google has now changed their algorithm so it will PROMOTE SAFER SITES, thus using any form of SSL, SSL EV or similar will help SEO, however, you have an existing domain with a lot of ranking keywords/pages and inbound links, you have to do a "Domain forward", so the SEO might take a little hit initially, but from what I gather, the net benefit will be that adding an SSL will help SEO. It for sure helps with conversion rates anyway.

What you want to be careful of it falling into the trap of keyword duplication / keyword cannibalisation. This is why it's important to ensure every page is well focussed. To answer your question, Google only really wants to deliver one of your pages for a desired term, so it is very likely that the homepage would drop if you were to optimise the internal pages. That said, it's not always a bad thing, because someone searches for "Cheap Phone Plans" and are taken to a page just about that, can help convert more readily - as long as you do the work to the page, of course. -Andy

I think it should be safe to do.

Hello, First deactivate the Sitemap functions, clear cache and then reactivate the Sitemap functions & voilá the error 404 is gone! if not, add this to the .htaccess file: <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 [L]</ifmodule> cheers! Arnold

I agree with you. It was a chest thumper article.  It simply crows about rigging a fix for historic bad practice.  It does not explain what caused the problem and the randon links solution isn't the best way to handle 404 traffic and probably not the best way to repair site structure problems.

The above answers are spot on. Have one H1 per page, and that H1 should be unique and reflect the main heading/title. I just wanted to add this great article by Bill Slawski - he goes into really great depth about their best usage and importance: http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/01/heading-elements-and-the-folly-of-seo-expert-ranking-lists/

Hi, this means you have redirects set up which are not particularly SEO friendly. Moz has the following description of Meta Refreshes. Meta Refresh "Meta refreshes are a type of redirect executed on the page level rather than the server level. They are usually slower, and not a recommended SEO technique. They are most commonly associated with a five-second countdown with the text "If you are not redirected in five seconds, click here." Meta refreshes do pass some link juice, but are not recommended as an SEO tactic due to poor usability and the loss of link juice passed." So, if you have something on your site saying something like "you are about to be redirected", it is basically saying you should not have this, and instead use a direct redirect which passes link juice more. Ash