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Bob, It sounds like you are doing a good job so far. How about link building? I don't have much experience with ecommerce, so i am not sure how that would go. Besides SEO, a balanced approach involving social, advertising, and email marketing should help bring the traffic and let people know about your new site...And if the content is really great, you should start climbing the ranks. I know...i make it sound easier than it actually is. Good luck, Matt

I certainly think it would hurt you in your link building activity. Many websites will state that they don't support content related to alcohol, tobacco or gambling. Unless it is a huge money maker for you, I would purge that content.

An organization can have multiple brands and websites. If the subdomain is home to a different organization than the root or www. domain you should use the subdomain URL and org name. If it's the same organization, but a different brand, you would use the top level domain and org name. Make sense?

Thanks, Donna. I just came across it and was curious to know if it was as detrimental as I have once lead to believe. We will work on getting this issue fixed. Thank you for the advice -Ryan

VTCRM, Good luck! -- Jewel

If the site has low authority and hundreds of backlinks, it's probably a spam site. You're wasting your time to reach the webmaster to get the links removed. They are not linking to you to help you, but to help themselves by association with a high authority site.

It could end up outranking the homepage depending on how many links you have pointing to the page in question and how well optimized your homepage is for the keyword. Rather than focusing on ranking this page because of the URL though, I would focus on ranking the page that provides the best user experience. If the homepage is too broad to provide a good UX then maybe a separate landing page does make sense. If you're trying to outrank the homepage, the two things you have the most immediate control over are: decreasing the amount of times you use the keyword in prominent places on the homepage increasing the amount of internal links pointing to this other landing page Best, Daniel

Thanks, Logan!

If it's an off the shelf store software that you're using, they mostly let you choose the location that you want your store to sit in, so be sure to check that out. Alex

You could try http://mysiteauditor.com/ I've used them quite a bit. Also maybe try SEMrush.

Hi, There are many reasons that can cause Google to remove a page/site from its search index. First you need to review your page’s content yourself. If a site has content that is illegal and harmful, then Google will not include it in the search results. Check the page with Google Search Console Google allows webmaster to see how Google sees their websites with Search Console (formerly webmaster tools). After logging into your Google search console account, there are two main sections where Google will directly inform you what’s wrong with your page. Crawl errors: Security: also check for malicious code Hope this helps. Thanks

When researching TTFB slowness for WORDPRESS I always start here: https://varvy.com/pagespeed/ttfb.html It's a great illustration on things you can control (beyond server) and I use it as a checklist ... I always seem to forget something simple.... like an edit in .htaccess.

IMHO, if somebody is paying us for SEO, then our GOAL is to get the homepage to load in a second or less.... especially if most of the users are mobile.  If it's mid 1 second, then we can grudgingly live with that. I'm glad you asked about server response times.... for most sites, after the content is optimized ( smaller images, clunky code, etc...) the initial server response time is usually the culprit for getting over a second.... as long as the rest of the home page is "light".  Light to us is under 1MB.  Depending on your CMS, there are a variety of ways to get the response time to be 200ms or less. Google Pagespeed, as David said, is a good measurement, but it's not the holy grail of measurements.  We use it only to identify areas that need improvement.  Waterfalls tell us what's taking so long and what's heavy. You didn't ask about plugins - which is a major culprit to caching, minify errors, conflicts, speed and weight.  We limit all active plugins to TEN (including caching, SEO, security).  For some sites, plugin clean up is the easiest way to speed up a site. At the end of the day, nothing beats clean code, light images and a lightening fast server.

Spacecollective, Ah, got it. Re this question: "I was worried that because Google indexed thespacebazaar.com (and subsequently all of its content) before it was transferred over to thespacecollective.com, would Google think thespacebazaar.com was the original author of the content and see thespacecollective.com as copying." People change domains all of the time. They rebuild their site structures, too. Since you have the old domain rolling over to the new one, AFAIK the Google search engine bots will figure out your site has moved and you have a new structure. AFAIK, you're good. As for the SEO work, I'm sorry you have had those experiences. To some extent, SEO is both art and science. There is snake oil out there, but there are also a lot of knowledgeable people. Feel free to ping me if you put another question here on the forum. I have over 20 years experience in IT, and I am a doctoral candidate. I'd be done if I hadn't started my own company! My academic background means I am happy to teach and do a certain amount of service work when I have a moment. (Moderators, please let me know if I am not allowed to say that; I'm still new to the forum. I'm happy to edit this response.)  -- Jewel

First I think it will take time for Google to completely disassociate the old domain from the new domain. With that being said have you tried to disavow all the spammy backlinks on the old domain? You could also meta no index the entire site and get it You could also either meta no index the entire site and get it de index from Google or block it from being crawled within its robots.txt file. That is probably the closest you could come to deleting the domain. I hope that helps some.

Bee159, I would look at two aspects. (1) How much content do you have? Does the amount of content you have point to one page, or two pages (or more)? (2) If this is a new build for an old site, what of your target market uses smart phones versus desktop/laptop browsers? If this is a new website, what is the demographic of your target market, and are they likely to use smartphones or desktops to find you? Why does this matter? Outside of the fact that Google has put the mobile index first, you want to keep your interface as simple as possible for the users. If they primarily use a cellphone to access your website, then you will want to have longer, scrolling pages. If they have to click around a lot on a cell, it can be harder for them to find and read your information, and that can affect your bounce rates. If your clients/customers are primarily desktop users, then I would focus on what makes sense in terms of your site structure to put on one page or more. I'm not trying to hedge my answer, but I know you could have a huge site, or a small one, and those inform the site design and taxonomy, along with the target demographic for your site's users. When it comes to SEO and taxonomy, I would opt for KIS (keep it simple). What makes it as simple as possible for your users to find the information they need? What is logical in terms of bigger topic ==> more granular. When it comes to naming your URLs, if you decide the content is small enough to put on one page only, you can always do: .com/dental-services/whitening-assessment-treatment .com/dental-services/straightening-assessment-treatment I do think when you use subfolders, you should try to keep the names unique (think unique identifiers, even though it is a folder) when at all possible or if it makes sense. Why? Because it reduces confusion for people and bots. So per your .com/whitening/assessment .com/straightening/assessment .com/whitening/treatment .com/straightening/treatment Has a lot of the same words used again and again. Instead, consider something like: .com/teeth-whitening/unique-keword-here-assessment .com/teeth-whitening/more-keywords-treatment .com/teeth-straightening/another-unique-word-treatment .com/teeth-straightening/different-keyword-now-assessment Using 2 word mid-tail keywords or 4 word long tail keywords can you help you rank better and improve the logic of your taxonomy. To summarize, base how much content you put on one page on how your users read your material (mobile browser or desktop or both) and by how much content you have. And how to judge that, I don't know how to tell you without seeing it. However you organize your pages and taxonomy, do your best to give the subfolders unique names even when they don't have the same parent. The caveat is if it is not logical to the human eye and understanding to use 2-4 word phrases, then don't. You don't want to overthink or over optimize it. Some other thoughts...keep to web conventions, as people are used to HOME SERVICES ABOUT CONTACT (etc.). The slugs you can name using more detailed keyword phrases. If you have older clients (50+), then I'd stick to a very explicit taxonomy and navigation. If you have younger users, you can be a little more creative, like use the much-maligned hamburger menu. Does this all make sense? -- Jewel

I would focus on the overall Information Architecture, and lay out the content in a way that makes sense for the people reading the information. So, in that sense I think a one page site is appropriate for what you describe. You can work on building backlinks to improve the SEO, as well as ensuring the freelancer is listed in local directories, social media, et al., plus doing other types of marketing.

Can anybody respond to my problem

SF finding 'useless' links is actually part of its purpose, if you believe they're useless you should be asking why they're there. Your XML sitemap should have nothing but clean URLs; 200 response codes and not canonicalized to another URL. The problem isn't that you have category URLs, it's that those (like the one in my previous example) have a canonical tag that points elsewhere. Anytime this is the case, the URL is considered un-indexable. You can see the proof of this by doing a Google search for "https://www.interstellarstore.com/meteorite-jewelry/meteorite-necklaces", I just checked and this URL isn't in the index. You mentioned the age in your original comment that your XML sitemap had been submitted for well over 6 months, that's where I got the age from, maybe I misunderstood? You have no reason to not trust SF, it's one of the most valuable tools in an SEO's toolbox. I've used it for 5+ years to create hundreds of sitemaps and countless other SEO tasks with no problem in providing reliable, accurate data points.