Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thank you for your feedback. It helps. All best, S.

This is a really complex topic and a special case of the canonical tag.. It also doesn't help that Google keeps adjusting their advice. See this thread: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 "When Google discovers a cluster of pages with a single canonical URL, our algorithms will use the title and snippet from the canonical version in our search results. Therefore, it's a good idea not to include region-specific content in the title and meta description tags of the canonical URL. For example, use "Example Widget Inc" instead of "Example Widget USA Inc" or "Example Widget UK"." So, what about the non-canonical pages? Well, the implication is that, if you use hreflang AND canonical, you'll avoid dupe content problems but the proper pages may rank in the proper regions, even with the canonical tag. In that case, you'd want to include regional variations in the non-canonical META data (for regional searchers). Unfortunately, I haven't seen good data on this yet. Like Istvan, my gut reaction is to try hreflang first, without the canonical, IF you're not having duplicate content issues or seeing regional variations cross over into inappropriate regions. If you are seeing that, then you'll probably need both.

If Apple was using that for a clever optimization trick their alt would not be "Picking up where amazing left off." I would not model my SEO after Apple.

Hi Marco, I took a look at your page at http://www.beautifulpuglia.com/it/linea-costiera/isole-tremiti.html Looks like you've got the canonical in place okay here. The next step is to add the canonical on every page that is a duplicate of this page. And you want to make sure to point to the right page. Let me be clear: Every page that is a duplicate of this page should have the same canonical. In this case: <link rel=”canonical” href=[”http://www.beautifulpuglia.com/it/gargano/isole-tremiti.html”/](view-source:http://www.beautifulpuglia.com/linea-costiera/%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.beautifulpuglia.com/it/gargano/isole-tremiti.html%E2%80%9D/)> You can find the other pages you need to add this tag to in your SEOmoz report. In each duplicated content report, it will list the number of other pages that are duplicates. Simply click on the number to see the URLs. I'm not a Joomla expert, but webmasters I've talked to have expressed that other platforms such as Wordpress and Drupal are much more accommodating of these types of fixes. There are some various plugin modules you can use, but you'll have to select one appropriate to your configuration. Here's a good resource from Dr. Pete: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world Hope this helps. Best of luck.

Ive run your site through the Page Speed tool here and you get 94/100 (which is awesome!). No idea on the JS sorry I'd be more than happy with 94/100!

I got your point. What you think about page rank? Can I pass maximum page rank to my product pages. It may increase my organic ranking during long trail keywords.

Hi Samuel, First of all I want to tell you that 404 Error page is about the  "Page not found" i.e error page is  displayed whenever we tried to access a page  & that page  was not in the website. For this problem we had to display the message that "404 Error Page not found . After that we had to redirect to the homepage  or simply put the homepage link Samuel here is the solution to fix this 404 soft error. Google Fix this Soft 404 Error . For more details on how to fix the soft 404 error please vist the below link also: google-webmaster-tools-adds-soft-404-pages I hope that your query had been solved.

Thanks Edward. Regarding the page speed stuff, Google rate the page speed of the GZ site at 91/100 – with the javascript being the only place where points are being deducated. The only problem is, the JS relates to the trustpilot widget, and social links at the bottom of the page – neither of which work when they are deferred. I'm looking into the content now!

It's ahrd to address in blog comments, but these things can be very situational. In a perfect world, I don't like those phantom folder levels for 2 reasons: (1) Someone will eventually try to link to or access one, including possibly Google, and that may lead to odd behavior. I've seen claims Google will extrapolate URLs, but have never seen clear proof. (2) It just makes for long URLs that, in this case, look a bit spammy. Practically, is it making a difference? They aren't being indexed, so that's certainly a positive sign - it indicates no weird extrapolation by Google and no inbound links to those levels. At the same time, as discussed in my post, revamping your entire URL structure does carry risk. So, it's not ideal (IMO), but I'm not sure I'd mess with it unless you're changing URLs for other reasons (then, do it all at once).

Not sure of the technical answer. I'll leave it to others. But why not publish slightly different versions on the company site and the press release site (unless there is a compliance or disclosure issue.) Verbatim press releases on company websites often disrespect readers by including things best avoided: a hyperlink to a site people are already on an "about XYX company" that duplicates material already on the site boring, label-like headline wording done for SEO purposes, or to comply with the "news hook" requirement from some PR distribution sites If I read one more press release headlined "XYZ Company Announces Launch of Super-Duper Widget" I'm gonna scream. IMHO, best practice is to produce a slightly different version for the website. Failing that, you can just summarize the news release and link to it on the press release site.

OK thanks Alan I Appreciate your response.that clears it up!I'm going to mark this as answered thanks much. Shawn

Yes, how do you do this? I am ok with HTML but when it comes to server-side and whatnot, I am lost.

Thanks Robert. Yes, I believe we have a good link profile and work hard at it. This is really a shame. I don't see any reason to really waste more time and not submit a rec request to Google in the next few hours. I will keep everyone posted and thanks for contributing.

SEOJellyfish, There is no way that you can turn off the site, wait 1 to 2 months, turn the site on, and expect to be anywhere near where you were. So, have you asked any more questions around the "testing" they need to do? I am assuming you are an affiliate and not an agency since you state a line between their site and your "campaign" site. Are they just tired of paying affiliates? What do they want to achieve with this? How are they going to compensate you for going black for up to 2 months? What are they going to test? If you do this and the test finishes and you cannot readily regain your ranking, what changes in your relationship? I think I would clarify all of this before moving to turn your site off. Best

Using this as an example: If google showed duplicate content for http://www.domain.com/seo.html  and http://www.domain.com/seo then you would want a 301 .htaccess redirect so anyone accessing the http://www.domain.com/seo.htm version of the page is automatically sent to http://www.domain.com/seo. You can use the following in your .htaccess file. RewriteRule ^/seo.html$ http://www.domain.com/seo/? [R=301,NC,L] The benefit to having no file extension (.html) on the end of your URLs is it allows you to change the underlying framework or your website or even the programming language without the need for adding redirects each time you change (provided the website structure remains the same)

Hi Paul Which CMS system are you using? I ask because there can sometimes be a ready built solution to your problem in the form of a plugin or module.

Cool thank you, was starting to lose hope of this being answered

Yes, but it may take more than a few days to rise back up.  I'd think more along the lines of a few weeks.