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Category: Technical SEO Issues

Discuss site health, structure, and other technical SEO issues.


  • I'm betting all those subcategories were indexed (unless you had specifically set them not to be, to manage dupe content). If indexed then yea, removing/redirecting them is removing pages from your site, so obviously number indexed would show a reduction. Same if you removed tags. When you made category changes e.g. changed /updates/ to /news/ did you make sure that WordPress created a proper redirect fro the old URL? If not, you'll get all those posts 404ing which will look like fewer pages indexed as well. When you say you removed  low quality content - that could be a lot of pages right there. Lastly, have you confirmed that your xml sitemap updated fully and correctly? If not, the crawlers could be looking for pages that no longer exist. (For example, pages that have been 301-redirected should no longer appear in the xml sitemap. As you can see - lots of possibilities, but those are some starting points. Paul

    | ThompsonPaul
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  • Hi Andrew, You are looking for a complete content management system (CMS) based on .NET, correct? That is, you currently have a site written in .NET, with no CMS. Please confirm. Thanks! Christy

    | Christy-Correll
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  • First off, make sure your site has not been compromised. Are there sections on your site where users generate their own content? Are the links pointing to spam comments or pages you didn't create? Spammers whose sites Google has already banned will often hack or otherwise compromise a site and use it as a gateway to their site. More on that from Google here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=163634 Next, if you're not dealing in anything like the anchor text indicates, don't worry about it. Spam attacks are generally ineffective, and this is especially true when they're completely different from the terms on the page or the terms you seem to want to rank for. Really, this is probably not worth worrying about. I wouldn't disavow unless you think it's negatively impacting your site, or unless you have had a warning from Google Webmaster Tools.

    | Carson-Ward
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  • Looks like this is the current URL: http://www.covario.com/2010/09/bing-and-yahoo-same-algorithm-different-results/#fbid=EVtSrt0tirw

    | KeriMorgret
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  • Hi Chris, thanks a lot for taking the time to respond.  It almost doubles our page load time (again, 95% of the page is loaded, but the FB friends widget takes just as long again).  Our programmers are blaming slow page speed on the FB widget.  If we think about Google's goal of creating good user experiences, one would think they care more about the core content than a widget that appears on every page on the site.  But I'm not sure if they're accounting for that.  Our page speeds are bad (often 5-7 sec or more), but its hard to know if that is having an SEO impact.  I couldn't find any concrete answers online.  We're going to opt for a simpler version of the widget and hopefully that has a positive effect.

    | etruvian
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  • Thanks, Andrew! Appreciate the help.

    | manutx
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  • Thanks Lars. I re-submitted the site in WMT and it seems to have sorted itself out, still unsure as to what caused the problem though.

    | tonysandwich
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  • Hi Jason, The implementation your developer has put in place, with the noframes fallback is actually fine - I can watch the video on iOS devices no problem and the video has been indexed. It's not really going to be read as cloaking by Googlebot so wont cause you any issues, but the method is slightly antiquated. However, I wouldn't recommend changing it since it seems to be working for youYour sitemap it absolutely fine. You only need to include one of the   <content_loc>and <player_loc>tags.</player_loc></content_loc>If you search for site:laddersfree.co.uk/window-cleaning-services/national-window-cleaning/ on video.google.com you'll see the page appear with a snippet, which shows you that it has been indexed correctly. Thanks,Phil.

    | PhilNottingham
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  • Pagerank won't register for a long time - 3-9 months over the past couple years is how long it takes to update the toolbar Pagerank. Don't bother disavowing a couple links, that is likely not related unless you had issues with unnatural links prior to the domain migration. Open Site Explorer will register 301 redirects as links - is that what you're referring to?

    | KaneJamison
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  • No problems, happy to help out!

    | MichaelYork
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  • Thanks.  It seems there are so many opinions on disavow it's hard to know what's right.  A lot of people say to only use it when you get a GWT warning but others say it's OK as a preventative measure. I think I'm going to put together a list of sites that I know are garbage pointing to me and disavow them.

    | GlenCraig
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  • I've never actually had any errors listed for non-indexable content in the HTML Improvements section of WMT. So I'm not 100% sure what would set off that notification. Though the sites I work on do have a number of pages that are NoIndex and/or NoFollow. So i guess the issue would be caused not by purposefully blocking the page but some other means that makes your page unable to be crawled properly.

    | MikeRoberts
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  • Yes, No doubt. You should change and keep your all duplicate page title and also if you have duplicate content, change them asap.

    | Perfect007
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  • I have to agree, content is the ace card here, but i will say one thing: My suggestion here is to not try for to many key words on one page. Instead, create a blog post for every key word you would like to target. Often you will find it is the long tail keywords that generate the best traffic. there is a few great whiteboard fridays that will explain longtail.

    | jeremycbray
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  • Thanks Paul, that is a great help. Appreciate the assistance

    | vivadata
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  • In addition to EGOL's excellent comments, you will also have to compete with all the Amazon affiliates that sell your product, and even worse, they will create crappy ads on the web and Youtube showing your product.  There are countless Youtube videos of Amazon products that are nothing more than a pan and zoom of an affiliate product set to elevator music.

    | ChristopherGlaeser
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  • You will lose some link authority that comes with 301 redirects but if the new domain is worth the branding and potential gain of future backlinks, you should go for it. As BeardoCo said, you need to replicate/recreate the posts from the first two sites onto the third and have individual, page specific redirects set up. This would conserve as much relevancy and link authority as possible. Also take note that your traffic will most likely tank for 2 weeks while G deals with the site transition. Don't panic, rankings will return within 3 weeks. Make sure you tell google you changed domains and set up 301 redirects as soon as you do that. Otherwise, you can get hit with a penalty for creating too many pages too quickly + content is duplicate from the other two sites. Good luck!

    | OlegKorneitchouk
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  • In my experience, the html sitemap does not effect SEO as far as indexing the site, assuming you have good XML sitemap and a good link structure.  I I would say that the sole reason to provide an html sitemap is UX, but that is a huge reason to do it.  Anything that upgrades your UX, also has the potential to boost your SEO. Making the full site easy to see and easy to explore will encourage longer site visits and more page views, and that effects your value in the eyes of the search engines. To expand on what Branden said, specialized sitemaps are a very good idea.  Seeing as you were hoping to get rid of a sitemap this may not be what you want to hear but you really should have a sitemap for each type of content you have. Mobile | Video | News | Images | TV Shows and of course your general web sitemap Take a moment to learn about each of them as you will want to understand each maps expectations.  ie. You should never have anything on a news sitemap that is older than 2 days and Google will reject anything that does not meet it's criteria. Here is the Google Resource that explains it all.

    | yeagerd
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