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I tend to use the base domain as the site's 'home' language (e.g: if the blog was first conceived in the UK and the authors live in the UK, then I'd use "/" as en-GB). I only create sub-folders for the 'additional' languages (e.g: "/nl", "/de", "/fr" etc) Even 301 redirects can dilute SEO authority a little (or a lot, under the wrong circumstances). Since lots of webmasters and editors will just 'lazy-link' to the base domain (or because it makes the link look cleaner / more legit within their content) I'd have your primary language deployment at the base domain, then all the rest in sub-folders This is my go-to approach and to be honest it's never failed me yet

Hello there, Thanks for your suggestions and sorry for the late response. In fact, I also left an inquiry with the Bing Webmaster Tools mail support (I did not even realise they offered this service), and they answered within one day. They confirmed that the site runs without any errors and that the sitemap has now been submitted successfully. Upon checking I can confirm this (the sitemaps URLs have finally been submitted). Therefore, all is in order now. I still do not understand why prior to this the JA sitemap URLs were not being submitted (for weeks), even though I tried to make Bing Webmaster Tools re-crawl it by re-submitting the sitemap. In any case, I guess this is one of these episodes where the problem simply fixed itself. Kudos to their support though... Thanks everyone

Search Console's reports (Webmaster Tools) do include SEO data (organic) yes

Hi Joe, So canonical tag if the pages have the same (or very similar) content. The page for each location would have different content (adding as much value as possible to the user). So it sounds like I'm on the right track. Thanks for your help. Justin

First of all, I notice 2 main errors the first one is related to the installation of the snippet code, you have repeated the local business schemas. I assume that this is generated by 2 different sources. Checking your code the error is created by the overlapping of the SEO Yoast plugin and Review plugin. The second error that I notice is the JSON-LD code generated by the review plugin which generates 22 errors "Multiple reviews should be accompanied by an aggregate rating". so basically there is no rating on the JSON-LD I strongly suggest you read this documentation https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/review-snippe https://schema.org/Review Also is important to be familiar with the JSON-LD syntax https://json-ld.org/spec/latest/json-ld/ I worked on several projects integrating schemas. So in my opinion, the best way to do that is by using **Google Tag Manager+ Custom Code. Why? because that gives you full control over your schemas  **

Ok, it is difficult without a full set of data. But if traffic has dropped and not rankings, then it is seasonal.  Mortgage Broker is a big term, so if that is still ranking 1 then sounds ok. What does sound concerning, is it now sounds like you have a number of sites and they could be interlinked ie a PBN.. so have to factor same in. It is tough to advise, but my view is if rankings have remained the same and online visibility if you are tracking - then all is good.  If rankings for mortgage broker and visibility have declined then it is a problem and site audit should be undertaken asap. Not sure that helps,  as data sets not great, but hopefully a starting point. Regards

Ta One element to check is causation of why the duplicates.  Solve same as otherwise it maybe an ongoing problem. Good luck.

The same thing I have noticed with my website https://www.techtricknews.com/. I have disavowed several backlinks and updated theme few times. And guessing that this might be the reason for dropping DA from 15 to 12.

Hello, I'd say not, in the same sense that having a NAP in the websites footer doesn't have any negative effects on a website SEO ranking, in this specific content its the opposite

Thanks for the solid advice, I really didn't know what to do. Your explanation of canonical and 301 and how they really work was clear and very helpful. Thank you for your response!

Hello Yes, Google Ads Keyword Planner allows for quite granular search volumes to to be displayed

You will place the same canonical tag on both pages... The page at www.domainintheserps.com/product-a/ will appear in the SERPs. The page at www.othersite.com/product-a/ will not appear in the SERPs (if google finds and obeys your canonical tag) The value of all links (including internal links) that point to www.othersite.com/product-a/ will be transferred to www.domainintheserps.com/product-a/       All of those links will show in your Google search console backlinks. If your pages are not identical or if Google doesn't like one of your sites or one of your pages, it is possible that Google will ignore you instructions.  Canonical tags are suggestions not commands.   Also, Google can be very slow to find and obey canonical tags.  It can take months. Your page at www.othersite.com/product-a/ will sometimes appear in the SERPs for any of the following queries site:othersite.com site:domainintheserps.com site:othersite.com product-a site:domainintheserps.com product-a So, your competitors can figure out if you are doing this stuff. I forgot to answer one of your questions... "Does it still index"?       Maybe.  It will likely be indexed upon discovery.  Then, at a later time, the canonical will be obeyed and it will drop from the SERPs.

Not a problem

Oh lord I really don't like working with Shopify haha! Basically I avoid it like the plague, although I will admit it is slowly, slowly improving We have one or two clients who run Shopify and we absolutely do the best we can for them, but the truth is usually their results improve 'more' after they leave the platform. I can say that, Shopify is a good product for one-man-bands and people who 'just need a site' that looks professional (for their business cards etc) but no, it's not SEO-competitive (at all) I don't make a huge effort to keep up with all of Shopify's changes and stuff, because what I have realised is that the fundamental philosophy of the platform (which is unlikely to change) goes against the competitive art and practice of SEO. When the platform stifles and limits 'what you can do' - how can it ever be bleeding edge? You end up confined Email is on our Moz profile here if you want to have a chat about it. If you're moving 'away' from Shopify, there may be some pains there in terms of redirect limitations - but I'd need to look again and familiarise myself with what they can currently offer in that regard

That sounds like you could have a soft redirect issue of some kind. If the 'actual' redirects 'strip' the trailing slash, but the then non-trailing slash URLs canonical back to the trailing slash versions (which again redirect to remove the slash) then that's known as a soft redirect loop and yes it can adversely  affect SEO performance So let's have a look, using this URL as an example: https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/camping-tents-other-brands Status Code (200 OK) - but canonical tag is like: So when you visit that URL with the trailing slash... It does NOT 301 to remove the slash, so no you are not caught in a soft redirect loop and that is not the issue. However, be that as it may, having ALL the hyperlinks point to 'non-/' and then all the canonicals point to 'trailling-/', could be very confusing for Google. Does it go with the canonical URL, or the URL with the most links which is also a signal of, what page is legit? I would still get it seen to

I posted a bit of a Reddit rant here under my personal SEO alias of "studiumcirclus": https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/bgqelg/changing_web_host_will_it_affect_google_rank/em1m0cg/?context=3 (click "View Entire Discussion") Mainly these things vex me about the platform: "In basic terms, Shopify is limited by its vision. They want to make sites easy to design for the average-joe, which means they have to spend most of their platform dev time on the back-end of the system and not the front-end of the sites which it produces _ If they're always bogged down making extra tick-boxes to change things in the back-end, how can they be keeping up with cutting edge SEO? With WordPress you have a much larger dev community making add-ons, many of them completely free and still very effective. Because everyone is on WP, when new Google features, directives or initiatives come out they are quickly embraced (putting all sites on WP one step ahead)_ _ With smaller dev communities, platforms like Shopify or Magento lag behind. Why do people always expect that 'average' will rank 'well'? Ahead of the curve ranks well, average ranks averagely_ _ Also Shopify has some nasty Page-Speed issues which they won't acknowledge and they just argue about instead of fixing things. It's just not good for SEO_" Other "Shopify is bad" evidence: https://moz.com/community/q/main-menu-duplication#reply_391855 - just contains some of my thoughts on why Shopify isn't that good https://moz.com/community/q/site-crawl-status-code-430 - a relatively recent problem someone had with their Shopify site, scroll down to see my reply https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-in-shopify-subsequent-pages-in-collections - someone else having tech issues with their Shopify site. While my answer was probably right, they probably couldn't implement the fixes

Not a problem. Sometimes you just need a pro

I would have no issue with using rel canonical links in this kind of situation where you cannot control the underlying CMS to the extent that you would need to entirely avoid the duplicate URLs. The only real risk in my opinion is in the canonicalisation not being respected, but if these are essentially exact duplicate pages, I think the risk of that is low (and even if that were the case, the impact would be relatively low too). Good luck!

Intriguing question. In short yes there is a benefit - in so far as the three-panel reviews that appear are often manip[ulated by likes. So your liking a positive review may push a negative review off the SERP. However, should your staff write false reviews, 100% not, that would not good from an objective perspective?  In Australia it would be a disaster for staff and the business moral, effectively it is imposing your views on your staff on possibly private gmail assets and asking them to publish your views.