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Hi there, I would go with option #1 and use CSS to improve the design of the table. You can then use JavaScript to add functionality if necessary without the risk of some content being un-indexable. Some examples of nicely designed tables using HTML and CSS: https://www.freshdesignweb.com/free-css-tables/

Hi, Canonical tags are used when there is the same content in different locations of your website. For example, If you have a blog post that is also available in a printable version, you would want to put rel=canonical tag that points to the original piece of content (to tell search engines that you want them to show that original piece and forget about the printable version). Please read this guide from Moz. It will explain everything you need to about canonicalization. I hope this helps!

Hi Dmytro, That's precisely my concern. I got in touch with the owner of the website linking to us and asked him to nofollow our link. I'll monitor and see if there are any noticeable changes. Cheers J

Hi Rosemary, Dave here. I like to think of it like our addressing system.  Because we all use the same system and format for our addresses on an envelope we don't need a code to tell us but as you know ... everyone displays their product information and other data differently on a page. Because of that the engines can have difficulty telling what bit of data is what.  Is "blue" the color of the product, the color of the screen or simply used on the page in a "Don't feel blue ... buy XYZ !" Structured data, as Matt well-noted, is just an idea really of matching information with what it means.  Like saying "blue" = "product color". Of course, that's all well-and-good but we can all build our own systems and many have been.  If we're all using different systems then nothing makes sense so folks got together and created Schema.org simply as a body that could help create a standard.  Like saying, "on an envelop you put the name first, then the address, then the city, then the state, then the zip code".  If we put things on the envelop differently things would get messy so Schema basically gives us the instruction on how to pass information across.  Schema isn't the idea or even the data, it's the instructions on how to tell Google what specific data means. Clear as mud?

As EGOL suggests, if the pages haven't received any traffic in the past year or so, then they most likely are dead weight and  you need to get rid of them. I would, however, do two things: Review all the links to your website and 301 redirect any news articles or URLs that have links pointing to them. You'll want to make sure that you keep any links that you have pointing to those pages. Rather than use a 404 error on those pages when you remove them, I would use a '410 gone' error to indicate to Google that they're no longer present, have been removed, and they need to remove them from their index.

Brilliant thanks Dan. This is what I'm going to do.

No, you won't get penalized for redirecting the PDFs to HTML versions of them. In fact, Google will like it. Here's a video that may help you out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDzq-94lcWQ

Hi Sarah, I can only see three pages in the index now. Google tries to find any and all content people might want to find using their index. They have a number of ways to identify anything that might be of use. Now you said that you put a noindex in the sitemap. That is new to me, sitemaps are used to index files, not to command a noindex. Typically, a noindex is placed within the page's code. Can you clarify what you have already attempted? A noindex is best (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en), teh page will still be crawled but cannot be put into the index.

That's why I mentioned: "eventually". But thanks for the added information. Hopefully it's clear now for the original poster.

Hi, I would try to avoid duplicate content as much as I can but, there is no such a thing as "duplicate content" penalty unless all of your content is simply copied from elsewhere. I would try and use rel=canonical tags to tell Google that this piece of content is the original one. Please watch this WB Friday: https://moz.com/blog/guest-blogging-content-licensing-without-duplicate-content-issues-whiteboard-friday Thanks,

You are a star, thank you!

So I used the Google PageSpeed Insights to get a better idea: I'm somewhat technically saavy, but I can't seem to wrap my brain on HOW TO Enable Compression fix??? Do you happen to have a "simple example" of what needs to be done?  I understand the concept of having a compressed file will save on bandwidth etc...  But am I literally "gzipping" the files like "jquery.js"... but how does the HTML code work etc..   Any straight forward example you could possibly show me? Same with ENABLING CACHE...   My site is done w/ PHP, so i thought sending a simple HEADER command like so: header("Cache-Control: max-age=2592000"); would suffice... but the pagespeed insight still says,the following elements: which are jpgs, css files, js files that my "www.stephita.com" index file references...  Am I doing the Cache statement correct, by putting it on the INDEX.PHP page?  Or do I somehow have to literally have to reference each jpg/css/js file that the PageSpeed insight is saying needs something done?  Again, examples? I appreciate any help on this matter

Applying Broken Windows Theory to SEO is such an underrated tactic. It's totally worth the time. Will you be able to directly attribute revenue to the cleanup? Probably not. Will it improve the overall quality and user experience of the site? Absolutely, 100%, and that's where it becomes an SEO play - because that better quality and better UX exactly what Google is aiming to reward in the long run. And because your site no longer looks like an easy mark for spammers, it should attract less spam in the long run. Also, adding to MattAntonino's comment, Paul Haahr said a few weeks ago that the quality rater guidelines are basically Google's ideal algorithm, so you can count on Google working to incorporate as much of that as they can into the algorthm over time as they figure out how to automate it instead of relying on human maintenance. So even if it's not there now, count on it being there in the future. Future-proofing is always a good idea.

Thanks for you answer Eric!  In your example its actually an attorney getting the .attorney extension so it makes sense. But what if I was selling shoes online, would it make a difference if my site would be Myshoebrand.com or Myshoebrand.world? Or even Shoeshop.com or Shoeshop.world (if I want to rank for Shoe shop)? I know Google stated that all domain extensions have just as good a chance of ranking as any other. But as Bill Hartzer also writes: we can't always take their word for it: we need to see proof.

There really isn't a typical amount of time as it depends on links to your site, crawl frequency of your current page, and how many resources they choose to use on you at that time. There are, however, ways to speed up the process. Claim your site in Search Console (Webmaster Tools) Submit a sitemap Use the "Fetch" tool in Search Console. Build/earn some new links to the pages you care about. All of those will help your pages be reindexed more quickly. Also, if you want the "very fast, slightly cheap" way of doing it, post the links on Google+, ping them with Indexkings and build internal links from new blog posts. All of those definitely help with index status.

Yes you want to have it match the canonical tag so most effective method is to 301 redirect so they match the canonical tag site map and robots.txt etc.  You can use a Regex code like this at the end of the URL /?$ in the case of category URLs it will allow them when needed. if you use the proper 301 you will not have to deal with the category issue anyway. rel="canonical" href="https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-on-url-trailing-slash" /> I hope this is able to shed more light on the issue and great answer Eric. Hope I was of help, Tom

With canonicals, I would not worry about the incoming pages. If the new content is useful and relevant, plus linked to internally, they should do fine in terms of indexation. Use the canonical for now, and once you launch the new pages, well a month after launch, if there are key pages not getting indexed, then you can reassess. The canonical is the right thing to do in this case. As for link equity, you are right, that is a simplistic view of it. It is actually much more intricate than that, but that's a good basic understanding. However, the canonical is not going to hurt your internal link equity. Those links to the different sorting are navigational in nature and the structure will be repeated throughout the site. Google's algo is good at determining internal, editorial links versus those that are navigational in nature. The navigational links don't impact the strength nearly as much as an editorial link. My personal belief is that you are worrying about something that isn't going to make an impact on your organic traffic. Ensure the correct canonicals are in place and launch the new content. If that new content has the same issue with sorting, use canonicals there as well and let Google figure it out. "They" have gotten pretty good at identifying what to keep and what not. If you don't want the sorting pages in there at all, you'll need to do one of the following: Noindex, disallow in robots.txt - Rhea Drysdale showed me a few years back that you can do a disallow and noindex in robots. If you do both, Google gets the command to not only noindex the URLs, but also cannot crawl the content. Noindex, nofollow using meta robots - This would stop all link equity flow from these pages. If you want to attempt to stop flow to these pages, you'll need to nofollow any links to them. The pages can still be crawled however. Noindex, follow - Same as above but internal link equity would still flow. Again, if you want to attempt to cut off link equity to these sorting pages, any links to them would need to be nofollowed. Disallow in robots - This would stop them from crawling the content, but the URLs could technically still be indexed. Personally, I believe trying to manage link equity using nofollow is a waste of time. You more than likely have other things that could be making larger impacts. The choice is yours however and I always recommend testing anything to see if it makes an impact.

Eric, you're right that you should be 301 redirecting the old page to the new one using a 301 Permanent Redirect. If Google Search Console is showing you that they're getting a 404 error on that URL, then they're getting it--it's not that they're telling you you no longer are getting any benefit from the 301 redirect. I would check the redirect to see if it's still working. Use a server header check tool, or I like Rex Swain's HTTP tool: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html Also, you should use Google's own Fetch and Render tool to make sure that they can reach the page and they don't get a 404 error: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?rd=2 I have seen cases where we can get to a page or see the redirect but Google cannot. So you need to use the Fetch & Render to make sure Google isn't being blocked. I've see a case where users could get to the site but Google was being blocked and given a 404 error.

Many thanks Eric - much appreciated - that clarifies everything perfectly

Hi - right, then if the URL changes for the user, you'll want to probably use the PushState method (linked above) to convey this to Google. They likely can't see the URL change by default. You can check by trying to crawl the site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider with the user agent set to Googlebot. Then go to "outlinks" for the page with the facet links, and see if they are listed. Hope that helps some more! Let me know if you need further direction. -Dan