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Hi James, Thanks for your answer and feedback! Very interesting to know that you are using a similar solution yourself. I agree that Google should be able to recognise them as part to providing product info, or enhancing UX, was simply unsure if that is really the case, or if Google would not regard them as carrying as much SEO value as if they had been "normal" product pages. Both yours and Tom's response comfort me into trying the product pages as overlays, it will be nice to try something a little bit different and test if we improve on conversion as a consequence. Regarding overlays/modals as marketing tools hurting SEO, what I was trying to say is that all the literature or cases I could find on the Internet was about overlays and modals as marketing tools - but could not find any relevant case dealing with overlays/modals as UX tools only. Therefore all the literature I could find generally considered overlays/modals as negative for SEO (since the assumption was that they were a marketing ploy). Hope this clarifies my thinking... (for ex., this WBF https://moz.com/blog/popups-seo-whiteboard-friday , or this case https://edgylabs.com/3-rules-seo-friendly-modal-windows/ , or again this case focussing on mobile https://www.keylimetoolbox.com/seo/mobile-site-use-overlays-know-issues-google-organic-search/ ). Thanks again for taking the time to answer!

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!

Hi Lysarden, Good point. No not in my opinion. If your content is valuable to your target audience and has an additional value for them its very much OK like this. I can think of some kind of summary with curated links as being something very helpful actually. Its a sign of quality contents that is also links to other (authoritative) sources. Some might visit these links but thats OK, thats part of the game and also what they are supposed to do actually. But they will come back and stick to your blog/content if its worth something for them. You will pass equity juice to the sites you link to and yes you will help them rank (but they would probably would do anyway also without your link as I think of them of being authoritative sites in the given topic already), but you will also position your blog posting topic wise in the right area and again to link to (maybe not to many) good authoritative sites in the corresponding field is good practice, something you should do. If your posting is a kind of list of helpful links for this topic also many links pointing out would be OK. Cheers, Cesare

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.

Albeit your answer is correct, Google itself states in its guidelines page about Multilingual and Multiregional websites that - due to the diffusion and mainstream use of cloud hosting - that the physical localization of a server is not anymore considered as a prominent geotargeting factor. Therefore, I would consider having a server in a hosting located in the same country we are targeting, if the latency really may mean the difference between a slow and a fast website. If it doesn't... I would not worry about its location.

Hi Bob, Gaston has linked to a good resource regarding migrating to HTTPS, which has been made into a "moment of truth" for businesses who don't follow Google's lead on this in 2017. For more on this, I recommend: http://streetfightmag.com/2017/10/02/the-impending-httpstrophe/ Regarding your other questions, if your business is digital/virtual, you don't necessarily need an address, but it's a trust signal to have one, and you should at least have a phone number if you want customers to feel you're a real company. If your business is local, a physical address (even if it's your home address) and dedicated phone number are prerequisites. Without them, you don't really have a local business, and won't be able to fully market your company as one. Hope this helps!

Hi James, Thanks for the reply, I have checked the speed and clearly the speed could be better but in the UK it does seem to be there or abouts within the range. Also 404? those two pages are working perfectly for me. Would you suggest anything else?

How can you submit them to Search console if they don't live on your root domain? I understand that you can reference the cloud sitemap URL it in the robots.txt but without it being in Search console you lose visibility to errors and indexing issues.

Hi, We are still waiting for the developer to make the change. I will certainly post the answer when we know for sure! Thanks

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

I found the answer to my question on my own by reading a related blog post here on MOZ. Its very simple basically. Just add your own params to your local pack URL (Google Custom Campaigns) : https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/, so you will be able to distinguish the local listings from the other organic SERP's on the same page. Thats it.

Yes! We've had this ability since day one Just click "create or upload a new list" and you can create a list of hundreds or even thousands of keywords for analysis and comparison all at once.

Google probably isn't going to distinguish between "co op" and "co-op" for ranking purposes and, as Thomas said, case-sensitivity shouldn't matter. You might still see some issues with "coop" as one word vs. two. Actually, digging in, it looks like searches for "coop insurance" (one word) return "co op" and "co-op", but searches for "co-op" don't return "coop". You've also got the confusion that "coop" is a word (although low-volume -- not a lot of chicken coop content, relative to some other topics). I'd personally pick one version -- inconsistency can look weird to visitors and unprofessional. My gut feeling is use "co op" or "co-op" (i'd lean toward the latter, but no solid data to back that up). If your logo is "CoOp" and you use "co op" or "co-op" in content, I think that's probably fine. Keep in mind, though, that I'm only speaking from an SEO standpoint. I don't know the brand or history, from a business standpoint.

Hi Russ, Thanks for the clarification. I've attached links to two images. I see the link listed as an unlinked message when I use Open Site Explorer. When I view the metrics in the campaign, it says there all mentions are linked. J38nT egSMNuX

Okay, I'm finally seeing some movement! Hooray! So the answer is, it just took time for the site to re-index after being switched from a custom top-level domain to a .com I appreciate all the help!

Hi xdunningx, You can use them and they could have a positive impact on SEO if they are not duplicates of the Category taxonomies. So for instance you have an eCommerce site that sells sports clothes and you have categories for fitness, tenis, golf, soccer etc.. . than you could have tags for leggings, t-shirts, tops, etc... Many times though they would be subcategories as well so you would have a subcategory page for leggings e.g. sports.com/category/fitness/leggings and a page for the leggings tag e.g. sports.com/tag/leggings.  Both these pages would be competing for search queries related to leggings and therefore have less of an impact (as its not a clear statement of your site to google as to which page should rank) compared to one unique page on your website ranking for that query. In general i would stay away from tags (woocomerce or others).for ecommerce unless they are very tightly managed and are for terms with sufficient search volumes and relevant for your business, and dont duplicate your categories. Hope this helps