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Hello Murray! Do you have any specific advice for sites on Shopify? It seems they made the decision to move to https in 2016 and just leave a swaythe of small site owners to sort out redirects etc after it happened Sorry, i've little to none experience in Shopify. Can't help here. One 'gotcha' that I keep finding is with backlinks. When the site moves to https, backlinks that were previously set up to point to http are not recognised as backlinks on https, which appears to impact backlink profile and domain authority on the new https version. Does this make sense? Therefore, all the old backlinks need to be changed to point to https. Is this correct? Here there are 2 points make. On one hand, if the redirection to https is done correctly with a 301 all the backlinks will point to the last page. On the other hand, IF, only IF, you have some way to change the URL in the backlink, it could be a nice idea. I'd prefer assuring a correct redirection rather than changing the pointed URL in old backlinks. Remember that non-google backlink profilers (such as Moz, ahrefs, magestic or others) will take some time in collecting all the information in the HTTPS site. That is simple it is a whole new site/page for them. I typically use the Traffic Control app to redirect URLs, but they seem to use relative links. So how do we redirect http to https? Don't know how large and/or complicated is the site. I do handle (or say to the IT team to handle) the redirection strictly with 301 redirection rules. Most of them with some sentences in the .htaccess file or with a plugin if Wordpress is used. Hope i've helped. Please feel free to ask more if i haven't answered you or if I haven't explained well. GR.

Thanks for the helpful answer. While I apologize for not having any experience with Flat CMS, here's what I can tell you about Local: You'll need to break this down for the client into 3 interrelated components: local, local-organic and (possibly) PPC. On the Local Front - you'll want to be sure the website is properly optimized with the client's contact info in their city of location (header/footer, contact us page, in-text mentions etc), you'll want to build citations for the physical location and manage their accuracy/quality, and you'll want to earn and manage reviews on all citations that included a review component. The goal here is to show up well in Google's local results and organic results for terms relating to the city of location as well as being present across the major citation platforms. On the Local Organic Front - The most typical thing to do would be to develop additional content for customers located in cities B and C, be sure these pages are internally linked to well from the navigation and elsewhere within the site, and then earn/build links to those pages. This part of the project should only be undertaken if the client can commit sufficient resources to developing really good landing pages. There must be a reason for these pages to exist beyond impressing search engines - they must contain unique content that truly helps customers from the targeted location. The goal here is rank in the organic SERPs for terms relating to the service cities. On the PPC Front - Much can be done with the above 2 components, but where there are gaps in visibility, a supplemental PPC strategy targeting the service cities (or even the city of location) may remain a requirement, depending on the competitiveness of the client's unique geo-industry situation. Hope this helps! P.S. You might want to check out Moz Local for the citation component of this, and you might also like a recent post by Phil Rozek that outlines some of these components of work: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2017/01/27/relationship-between-local-and-organic-seo-a-simple-diagram/

Awesome breakdown and many thanks for your insight! After checking out what you suggested it became very clear what the 411 was! Lots of good links in comparison to my 1 good link vs 23!

Hey there! Without looking at the listing in your account it's hard to tell what exactly might be happening here. If your client is currently managing their listing on Acxiom, Moz Local will not be able to update it on your behalf, which may be why it's not appearing there. Ideally the client would release their listing, allowing us to update it. Feel free to reach out to us at help@moz.com if you want us to take a closer look into the account!

In general that kind of implementation is correct. I do something similar for a client, who has a similar problem but more on the logistic side (different warehouse depending on the continent). Said that, considering that some products are only for the European market, I don't see useful to use an hreflang like the "de", which would target all the German speaking users no matter from the where they are... I mean, if they are in the USA, I believe that they are not allowed to buy products that are meant only for the EU geography even if they are German or Austrian. Regarding IP redirection, it's not an alternative... moreover, it's not an alternative obliging people to be sticked to one country/website because that it not allowed by legislation now. For instance, if someone from the USA want to see the EU site, he should be allowed to do it (this is also valid - obviously for Googlebot, as it is a user at the end). What you can do is working on the basket process, and there using the IP recognition for allowing or not a bought depending from the country someone is trying to buy a product or not. Doing so, you will also avoid the frequent dumping issue (e.g.: European buying in the USA because it is cheaper).

Hey there! We have resources on the impact of duplicate listings available here: https://moz.com/learn/local/why-duplicates-matter And some general local SEO resources that might help you get started: https://moz.com/learn/local-marketing https://moz.com/learn/local If you are looking for consulting advice about your particular local SEO situation we also have a list of recommended companies!

It is indeed. One the one hand, err on the side of caution - on the other, links are required, but with that many affiliate links, I would have though Google was ignoring them. -Andy

I am using MOZ for my website itslaptop SEO. It is the best SEO tool but not for all factors. For Keyword search Volume you should use Keyword Everywhere and for Keyword difficulty you should use MOZ.

Thanks Andy, I'll take a look.

I have a client who has dropped from DA16 to DA1 and lost the few links he had he's NOT happy!! Haven't just spent a few weeks impressing upon him the importance of building up his DA, it's been pretty hard trying to pacify him over this. Great explanation from Rand, but c'mon MOZ when are you going to fix this? And when are you going to enable tracking of DA? AuthorityLabs and others can do it for keyword ranking. I'm sure you can do it for DA and PA. It appears their primary competitor has maintained their DA of 19. So can someone please explain this added twist?

If you haven't already, be sure to check the Mozscape API updates page, here: https://moz.com/products/api/updates. As one went live the day before this post. I'd second what Gaston says about advising against this (and similar metrics) as a KPI.

Brilliant thank you I always get this flagged in my audits & just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything.

The actual reason why we opted for this idea is the way our website and sub-domains built. We have nearly 10 sub-domains with thousands of pages. These are killing us not to rank better with several issues like broken links, internal redirects, link juice dilution, etc. We cannot really control all the pages in sub-domains as they all have thousands of visits. So, I am thinking the other ways to influence the website rankings with same sub-domains. Can you please tell me how this gonna work. As I told in my earlier post, I will make sure this optimisation will look natural to the possible and doesn't affect usability. Finally, I would like to know what's the impact of bad sub-domains on website if they are not well optimised?