Category: Intermediate & Advanced SEO
Looking to level up your SEO techniques? Chat through more advanced approaches.
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Should pages with rel="canonical" be put in a sitemap?
I would just title them according to their view type. Try to put your most informative words as close to the front as possible so that it's easy to read in browser tabs, for example: Red Widgets, All Widgets, <$25 Widgets... etc. Meta description could probably be a repeat of the title tag. Make the title as UX friendly as possible.
| RyanPurkey0 -
Safely change canonical URL many times
Hi Julien. Got it. The method you're describing sounds contradictory to the designed uses of canonical and as such will be difficult to make work in this approach. Here's a few reasons... You're relying on the search engines to recognize the changes and apply them in a distinct time frame. While Google tends to be quick there's no guarantee that the changes will be applied in a fashion that lines up with your campaign dates. The thing you want to make canonical (the product) is moving from location to location. Canonical is specifically an attribute for URLs and ones that are supposed to stay static. It seems like it would make more sense to have the product be on a dedicated, canonical URL and just change the promotion around it. A redirect could better serve your purposes. With conditional time frames and offers you're probably best served by using 302 redirects. Cheers!
| RyanPurkey0 -
Should I buy a keyword rich domain to prevent competitors from buying it
Excellent - thanks for your responses guys, that's a great help!
| RG_SEO0 -
Do I need to actively disavow links to my site?
In short - It's probably worth proactively disavowing those links since it's a quick and easy task, but the possibility of them actually causing you any harm is ultimately very small. I wouldn't worry about asking the webmasters to remove the links unless you're under manual penality, as this won't be a particularly good use of time.
| PhilNottingham1 -
What is better for web ranking? A domain or subdomain?
Glad I could help Best wishes, Don
| donford0 -
Canonical tag - link juice to the frontpage
As html both are correct, the /> is a standard close tag, however browsers and crawlers do not require the "/" to know the tag is closed. In XML you would close the with a standard close tag . That should answer the technical question. I also want to mention something about what you wrote. "I want to use it on pages that rankes together with the frontpage in Google, but i only want the frontpage to rank alone and to have the link juice from the other 2 sites direct-ed to the frontpage.." You should understand the purpose of Canonical tags is really used to keep pages from competing with each other. A good example is if you have a page with info but you also want to give users a printer friendly version (you don't want those pages competing). If you have two pages with stronger content then your home page for "Keyword X" you could be doing yourself a dis-service by trying to rank a weaker page.
| donford0 -
How to solve outbound broken links? Those don't exist now?
The best way is to use a crawler like Screaming Frog to detect all broken external links. These links need to be corrected, because it's bad for user experience, and if it's bad for the user experience, it bad for SEO as well. If the main reason of broken links is like the example above, because the products you mention on the page don't exist anymore, you will have to update each of these pages, not only removing the links, but also updating the description and putting links to the newer products. The question is if linking to your suppliers is a wise idea from a business perspective. You probably do a lot of efforts to get visitors to your site, and when they are trying to decide which product to buy, you send them over to the site of the supplier. Once they are on the supplier site you can only hope that they will get back to you once they make the decision which one to buy. Personally, I think your site would offer more added value if you would list the main products on your own site and add some value, like you would do if somebody would visit a physical store (which is the best model to choose, the difference between brand A/B, which A/C to choose on which budget, ...etc). rgds, Dirk
| DirkC0 -
Pros & Cons of Switching Your Main Domain to Mask Links & Combat EMDs
I understand why you would think disavowing links would be time better spent, but any professional would tell you that anytime you add a disavow file to your site, you are essentially raising a red flag and giving Google the in to really inspect your profile. That can be extremely detrimental in most cases. Links have age, just like domains. Fresh, new links will carry more weight than older spam links, especially if they are driving traffic to your site. I would spend my time building new links and not disavowing any links unless I am trying to remove a penalty. As I understand it, you have already been cleared of a Penguin penalty, so I don't think your time is best spent on disavow actions. However, there might be people in the community who disagree with that theory. As far as the EMD goes, there are over 200 ranking factors. Although it might be easy to point to their domain and say that is why they out rank you, you can't really do that. As far as evening the field, you will want to get ahead of them, not just get on their level. I wouldn't go through the redirect process unless it was my last option or hope. Just because the other domain has been registered for the same amount of time, doesn't give it the same value of the domain you are using. There has been no traffic to that domain, nor has it been crawled in that time, unless you have two operating sites. The domain that has been registered and in use is the more valuable domain. Is it worth building up your domain authority from scratch? The URL structure is not doubt important, but the focus should be on what follows the .com. Some other factors you should consider before you decide to 301 or disavow is general site structure and user generated content. Do you have a responsive design? How about any uniquely valuable content like customer reviews or comments? These are the easiest things to work on in order to build your domain authority and your trust signals. By no means do I want to discredit your theory, however, I would encourage you to seek further research to really understand the cons of all of the disavow files and starting with a new domain.
| MonicaOConnor0 -
Setting up 301 Redirects after acquisition?
I once worked for what could be described as a "holding company" that's in the Fortune 500. Because everything they owned was so diverse, they either kept separate branches or the companies/brands separate. Especially if the brand was worth money as a name. It's important to do the research on how valuable the brand itself is because even if you decide to have one company to rule them all, you need to figure out how to transition customers.
| EricaMcGillivray0 -
How stupid is it to launch a new URL structure when our traffic is climbing?
I would tend to agree with Lynn Patchett. Could you tier out your changes and plan to methodically release it in small increments while monitoring the effects? This way you could begin with smaller changes, even a few url's with an update and gauge its effectiveness (or non)...
| plahpoy0 -
.ac.uk subdomain vs .co.uk domain
You're welcome. Definitely get to the 'whys' behind what they're doing or thinking about doing. Also ask them who they hope to compete with by doing so, or what problems they currently see that they think this will fix. Things like that should give you a much better understanding of what they're doing as well as ideas on alternate solutions.
| RyanPurkey0 -
Training Website Improvements...
Hey, No problem. I appreciate you taking the time to have a look and get back to me. I've fixed the issue. It was a JavaScript class selector problem but it's all sorted so thanks for spotting that mate. Cheers Gaz
| PurpleGriffon0 -
Duplicate content - how to diagnose duplicate content from another domain before publishing pages?
Thank you again Monica. The reviews are definitely be implemented. Good luck!
| Chemometec0 -
Ranking dynamic landing pages
HI Mark, There really isn't a big secret to ranking dynamic pages. Provided they all have unique URL's then it is just a matter of populating the content based off of some parameter. I can't say what is the best way to do this but I can give you an example of how I would handle lets say a site like LinkedIn So we have a search box that requires some input lets say we use a name. Run a query in a database to see if we have a match. If we have multiple matches then query basic information (Location, Title, Image) show them to the user and let them select the correct one. Once a user is selected then use that information to populate the page. So I would set as many variables as I could based off of our database information. Say we queried my name (Don Ford) and you found me from multiple matches displayed them to the user and they selected me. $person_fname=Don $person_lname=Ford $person_job=Web Developer $person_company=Columbia Engineered Rubber etc.... Then I would use this variables to generate my title, description, h1, h2 tags, and content and serve it up. Provided the page has a unique url you get my page on LinkedIn. It can be included in a sitemap, indexed by search engines and found online. Example: <title>$person_fname . ' ' . $person_lname . ' Professional ' . $person_job . ' At ' . $person_company</title> The real trick is how much unique content can your store in your database and return to the user. The more you have the more unique content you can display. Since its dynamic you make everything possible dynamic including all the SEO basics. Its really that simple.
| donford0 -
SEO Experts: Where did you start?
Read everything, believe half of it, test everything twice whether you believe it or not.
| TheeDigital3 -
Client has moved to secured https webpages but non secured http pages are still being indexed in Google. Is this an issue
Hi, thanks for your questions! Don has provided some great advice. In addition, you should verify both the http and https versions of your site in Google Webmaster Tools, and configure each account according to Google's guidelines for webmasters at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033085?hl=en&ref_topic=6033084. (You can also use GWT to tell Google your site has moved, denote the new site, remove old URLs, etc.) Hope that helps! Christy PS - To clarify what Don recommended on preventing duplicate content, it is best practice to 301 redirect URLs when moving from http to https (vs. using canonical tags).
| Christy-Correll0 -
Can 410 links trigger a penalty?
Great. Also remember that the disavow tool only uses the latest list you send in, "Note: Uploading a new file will replace all previously uploaded ones." from: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487, so make sure that the list you send in last is the most complete list you have. In general, I try to get a site's referral traffic up if it's not a healthy percentage of their site's visits, so if the PR company is providing that as well via their placements then they're really doing well. Cheers!
| RyanPurkey0 -
Link building - still effective ?
Hey guys, Thanks a lot for the valuable insight. It's definitely going to help me. I also had the impression that linking back to high quality domains by creating unique and valuable content is a great way of improving the SEO.
| kiraftw0 -
H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?
Hi Monica, Many thanks . OK cool Will do Pete
| PeteC120 -
Site dropped after recovery
Well, get ahead of your competition! Also, you probably need to ask the sites hosting the dodgy links to remove them. Failing this, collate and them all to the disavow file on WMT.
| PeaSoupDigital0