Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Make sure the redirects from http --> https are 301 redirects Make sure the canonical URLs have been updated to https Make sure your sitemap URLs have been updated to https

I've seen that happen before Martin. Is it possible the old (.nl) version of the site is still sitting on a server somewhere and getting accessed (and indexed) by Google?

I see your point: nicely done for UX because you see the different colors in small squares already on the category page. For now we don't have this option, I will see with our webmaster, it's quite interesting. Isabelle

The answer here is: it depends. Are these links a little bit shaddy? Or they are just generic web directories. On occasion number #1 I would disallow them. On Occasion number #2 I would not. It is never bad to have more links as long as they do not negative-seo you

Hi Lida, This is a great question and surprisingly not one that I've seen before too much. I've been on both sides of this question before. Once as a small business in the hospitality industry trying to outrank Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) on non-brand keywords, and also once where I was running my own startup which was an aggregator/marketplace. Having given a little bit of experience here, I can tell you that aggregators tend to focus in on fat keywords, which creates tons of opportunity for an individual business to focus on long tail keywords. As a smaller business, I had literally no chance to outrank an OTA on generic keywords. Heck, even trying to outrank them on my own brand-reviews keywords was a challenge. Instead of competing with the OTAs head-on in the fat keywords, I spent quite a bit of time to put together a list of long tail keywords that were ultra relevant to my business. Once I had that, I began optimizing and creating content targeted at these long tail keywords and I saw results almost instantly. The big benefit of targeting long tail keywords ignored by the aggregators is that there is little competition on these keywords, hence you're able to hit them fast, rank and move on to the next keyword to focus on. That was my strategy as a small business. During my time in my startup, where I was the aggregator, it finally made sense to me exactly why the OTAs focused in on the fat keywords. As a small business, I had maybe 100 or 200 pages indexed. As an aggreagator, I had over 2000 pages indexed in the first month. I had almost no way of optimizing that huge amount of pages for the most relevant keywords for each of them. I chose to focus in on the more powerful 'category' pages which targeted the fatter keywords. I can say though, if I had the time and the resources, I would have done a much more thorough job and eventually gone through that entire index and done the keyword research properly before optimizing each and every page. If that had happened, there was no way I was going to be out-ranked by one of the smaller sites I was aggregating.

Thanks for the addition thoughts Mike. I'll check out that article and continue with the plan to see if these initial "test" redirects affect the site overall. I'll share my findings down the road...

Think holistically. Think strategically. For example, if I was a supplier, I wouldn't want a link profile that consisted largely of customer footer links cause those can be manipulated and carry less weight with the search engines. As Martin and George have pointed out, you could create goodwill with valued suppliers and perhaps some leverage for yourself if you were to follow those links and position them higher on the page with surrounding text. Follow links pass link juice. It's a currency you can sometimes use to your advantage.

Start a blog on a subdomain of the main domain. It is hard to do content marketing without a blogging infrastructure. You could easily install WordPress on a subdomain and brand it like the business. If you a curating content for both locations the key is to not duplicate the content exactly. So if your are creating a post as to what ATV is best. Make sure the title and the content are different between each site. The concept can still be the same. Split the testimonials by business location. They are technically 2 different stores anyway. As long as you are not copying word for word you should be fine!

Hi! Martin is correct in saying that it is likely that Google will be able to understand what your company does based on links and content outside of your brand's name.  Also, I would suggest focusing your keyword targeting on actual content on the page rather than in your company's name. Like, a title tag on your homepage or page could read " Widgets for work | BetterWidget " (just an example). This would communicate both what your keyword research suggests is the term your users search for as well as your brand. Also, I like BetterWidget the best as well. Hope that is helpful!

Hi there, Kristina from Moz's Help Team here. First and foremost, I'd recommend checking out this article & video that our co-founder Rand wrote on our Spam Analysis tool (they're absolutely the best way I've found to understand this metric) - but I'll also be happy to add some key takeaways from these resources, as well. Article: Spam Score: Moz's New Metric to Measure Penalization Risk Video: Understanding and Applying Moz's Spam Score Metric - Whiteboard Friday Essentially, Spam Score is an aggregate of 17 different flags we set up to identify traits that correlate with measured Google penalization. The higher the number of flags on a link, the higher the chance that it's spammy. The flags represent a wide variety of potential signals ranging from content concerns to low authority metrics. Since this is just based on correlation with penalization, rather than causation, the solution isn't necessarily to change these factors on your site, but it could be worthwhile to consider them! I hope this helps answer your questions around the Spam Analysis tool, as well as how to decipher what the scores mean. If not, or if there's anything else I'm able to assist with - please don't hesitate to ask!

Many thanks, Donald - hugely appreciated!

Thanks for the info but my site is not powered by Wordpress  

If the links are of quality, it is always good to win new ones

As Martin has said (and others in the helpful link he provided), it's perfectly normal for fluctuations to occur. Before you decide that it's a problem with your site or page, you should check to if your competition is experiencing similar fluctuations. Check out Mozcast too. There has been a lot of fluctuation in the SERPs lately.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what your question is. The subdomain will still be under your domain. It will be the same website but a part of it will be on a different server. The traffic will count for the domain. Even if Google would see this subdomain as a different site (which I don't will be) you still don't have what to worry about because you would have used 301 redirects and all the links will point to the new subdomain. So all you really have to do is change all the links that you can (which lead to the login page) and then do a 301 redirect from the old one to the new one. This is safe in terms of SEO and you don't have to worry about losing your position in the SERPs. Hope this helps!