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You absolutely do not want to use the remove URL tool in Search Console!! Since those old subdomain pages have been ranking and earning traffic and authority in the SERPs, it would be a huge mistake to just throw that all away. Instead, you must use 301-redirects to point those old page URLs to the new page you've created on the main site that you now wish to earn that traffic. The authority and ranking power of the old pages will transfer to the new ones. It's like being told you can choose to start the race from the starting line, or you can be given a 25-yard head start with a tailwind. Take the head start - redirect the old pages. A side effect of the 301 redirects is that after a period of time, the search engines will stop indexing the old pages, so they'll drop out of the SERPs eventually. Hope that helps? Paul

Hi there, Apologies on the delayed reply! It's hard for me to say it is keyword stuffing without seeing the content of the page. In all honesty, I feel you will be better off building out an internal page with targeted SEO content. I don't think the homepage is the best place to present this sort of information, I feel that should be more about your brand and an overview of the services you provide. Even if you take a look at the first page of search results for "SEO", you don't see homepages ranking. You see content-heavy, internal pages being returned (see Moz and Search Engine Land results). My suggestion, move that copy to a new 'SEO' targeted internal page. Make sure the page title, header tags, copy, internal linking, alt= tags, meta description etc. are all optimized for SEO terms. Expand on the copy that you currently have to be more valuable and/or informative (not to say it is not already valuable). To do so, look at queries that are returning instant answer results and look at the 'People Also Ask' recommended questions provided by Google. Include answers to these questions within your copy under header tags that essentially mimic the question. Remember, long-form content tends to perform better in organic. From there, work on promoting this content and pushing natural links to this page from authoritative, relevant resources. Hope this helps!

Well the general answer is... yes, that can hurt you for sure if you're trying to rank. There's MANY ways duplicate content can hurt you. We had a competitor duplicate our content recently... we sent a well written letter informing them they had 48 hours to take the website down or we would take legal action. They took that website down in about two hours and apologized, stating it was a developer they hired that used our website as a template. If multiple partners are using the same content and your not currently ranking... your best option is to write fresh unique optimized content. If you're ranking with your current content... then going after every partner duplicating your content might be the better option.

It's probably correct, but in the long term you probably still want to make sure the product term is ranking. Although in the end it's all about the bottom line just to make sure you're getting more conversions.

Agree with Tom re getting it done with 301 redirects. The other thing to be very careful about though is that the newly acquired websites don't have major quality issues, especially spammy, manipulative backlink profiles. If the infringing sites were using inappropriate SEO methods and were coming under algorithmic pressure/penalties as a result, those issues will also be passed to your "real" site. Paul

Hi VTMOZ, If there is no issues with the domain, as you indicate,  than do a auto redirect 301. greet

Actually our sub domains are ranking for brand related queries like "nike shoes" or "nike sports wear" (brand + keyword) and they are generating good traffic. I just wonder if we employ same landing pages on our main website (branded site); will it help my main website to rank for related keywords? And this traffic on sub domains generated from organic traffic is helping my main website or not?

It looks like you are doing some "Onsite" optimization, but you may need to concentrate on doing some "Offsite" seo. Try to get a few good articles written and posted on "High" value sites and have better "DA" Domain Authority scores than your site does. High-quality backlinks will really help your rankings as long as they have real value and are not Spammy. The search engines will reward you even though it can take some time and a lot of work. Remember even if you get a few good links from strong sites, there are many other factors to consider. Here is a link to a good article about "Offsite SEO". Best Regards.

I would think of these as keyword first, and use the general topic to inform what should go on that page. You'll also need to separate the purpose of the page versus the intent of the keyword. For example, let's say you sell payroll software. A few of the keywords you'll encounter might include: payroll payroll services payroll software free payroll calculator how to do payroll Each of these keywords has a different intent - so I would start out by identifying what the user should likely find if you were magically ranking #1 for that content: payroll - this is a "split intent" keyword and the user could be looking for a number of things. Let's set this aside for a moment, but most likely only your highest linked pages will rank for a head term like this, so your goal is to either get your homepage ranking, or get your "payroll guide" type of content ranking. payroll services - this is going to be a features/services type of page or even a homepage, since the user is looking for someone to take over their payroll. As a software company, you may want to build this page and tell users how your team handles payroll (if they do) or how the user doesn't need to hire a full service because your software makes it so easy. payroll software - this user likely wants to do their own payroll but automate the process with software, maybe even making it a one-step process. That deserves a feature/product type of page experience selling them on what your software offers. free payroll calculator - this user is most likely already handling their own payroll and just wants to use a quick tool to spot check their numbers. You should built a tool that does this for the user, and then have a call to action on the page that says you can save them a lot of time by just using your software instead. how to do payroll - this user is early on in the process of hiring employees or managing payroll and wants a complete guide to make sure they're doing it right. This type of query deserves a long-form guide, similar to the Beginner's Guide to SEO. On each of these pages it might be natural to talk about taxes, W2s, benefits, deductions, etc. But you're going to talk about them different on each of these pages. Yes - you will want some body content on every page you publish that is intended to rank for something, but you can talk about the topics differently on every page. Does this process help you in figuring out what type of content to put on each page? I can keep going but want to make sure that this is helping.

1) Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Depends "blog.yourwebsite.com" is not the same "yourwebsite.com/blog/" the first will count for Google as a different website. In fact you can check it on Google Analytics you can create 2 tracking codes and you will see that there is no relation betwen the 2 websites. In the other hands the sencond option "yourwebsite.com/blog/" will count as an internal page so all the traffic generated by the blog will count for the website. In my case I use subdomains for Landing Pages such as "promotions.mywebsite.com" to avoid orphan pages errors and "mywebsite.com/blog/" to generate and rank content 2) Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? It’s confirmed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine whether or not people visit a site (and how often). Sites with lots of _dir_ect traffic are likely higher quality than sites that get very little direct traffic. But this not 100% True. I have several websites with thousand of visits per day generated by ads networks, affiliate networks and they doesnt have a good rank.....Yeah I know sounds contradictory? the point is that those websites were builded for make money, and drive sales or leads, not for SEO. This are the Most Important Ranking Factors, According to SEO Industry Studies Content Backlinks Mobile-First User Experience Other Technical Factors 3) Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? In my experience google classify by content or topic not just for keyword, as an example I will mention one of my websites, a product named phen375, is weight loss pill, normally an affiliate create a post or article to promote it, usually the create somethig like "definitive guide about phen375" or "truth about phen375" and this affiliate is ranked in first place with keywords like "phen375", "phen375 reviews", or "how to take phen375" .....Why? because Google always try to define the intention of the users and if a website meet that intention then Google rank that website. How? the affiliate made I really good job creating an article that meets those criteria. Create Links, Onpage Optimization, Good Content ect ect ect Sources https://www.searchenginejournal.com/4-important-ranking-factors-according-seo-industry-studies/184619/ https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors

Hi Igor, Thanks for the response. I have a confusion with your answer. Could you please clarify? > How can they affect your rankings if you don't have pages optimized for these queries on your main domain? As Google considers sub domains as different websites, related traffic is getting taken away from main website. It it don't hurt, at least main website get benefited with receiving this traffic IMO. > Is your goal here getting relevant traffic to your website or ranking for more keywords with your main domain? Both. I think these are vice-versa. If we rank main website for more keywords, relevant traffic n will be increased automatically right?. All I would like to know is, if our website traffic increased by 30% for branded & relevant keywords, will it benefit our website in rankings?, especially for non-branded organic search.

Thank you! I'll check this out too

So you are looking for some statistic website such as Statista right?

Hi  jgodwin, I think the default search engine on Safari would still be Google Search so you would be all right there.  And as ios and android  cover more than 99% of world wide operating systems (https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14634656/android-ios-market-share-blackberry-2016) that would leave under 1% not covered. For the few Microsoft phones out there, in this 1%, you can off course optimize for bing https://ignitevisibility.com/how-is-bing-seo-different-than-google-seo/ Good luck, hope this helps

Well it would aid in relevance which could impact on rankings.  But the degree of impact depends on a lot of other factors http://searchengineland.com/seotable

Hmmmm - that is interesting then I'd of done exactly what you've done. I take it you mean you're home page has dropped in rankings? Are the sub domains outranking it? How's your internal link structure/navigation back to the home page. As I say I don't think you've done anything wrong - A link building campaign to the home page might benefit you but even then I'd be tempted to ignore it and focus on the sub domains - ask yourself as a user - When was the last time you used a home page as a landing page as opposed to a page that served your specific request?

Hi Vtmoz, Couldn´t agree more with you, they are a pain in the ... specially when they have sound and i have no idea where the vid is.  As Google rolled out there mobile interstitials penalty at the beginning of this year and this is also a usability issue, who knows... Apparantly John Mueller from Google also said he didnt like them and asked if they should penalize. Would surely be a game changer.

Thanks, James Wolff. I appreciate your suggestion and will do so. It is interesting that many have commented here: Add Trailing Slash to the End of the URL with .htaccess Rewrite Rules "The URL for a "page" should NOT end with a trailing slash. URL ending in trailing slash denotes a folder or the index page of a folder." My issue is not that it fails to redirect; it is that I have too many redirects in the process.

Hi James Please, can you explain to vtmoz what LSI means as he may not be familiar with the acronym? He was talking about paragraphs, not titles. That much was clear. You have repeated exactly what I told him and it's not clearer. Kind Regards Nigel

Hi, Thanks for the replies. All the file names and alt texts are almost same. No other changes have been made around the dates. Drop is definitely post the image replacement and directly associated. I am not sure if reverting back to old images will improve rankings anyway. And that's a lengthy job.