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Nope - I would always defer to what is better for the user. Remember that whilst there are many components of the algorithm that analyse the page there are also parts that look at engagement - if the changes have a positive impact on engagement and UX as suspected then I would not fear some algorithmic punishment. Always, always test. Roll it out. Decide on your metrics and test the results by those measurements of what success looks like. If it has a negative impact on ranking or engagement then reconsider - you can always roll back. It's very easy to get into analysis paralysis when worrying about the search ranking algorithm - do what is right by your users first and you won't go far wrong. Hope that helps Marcus

Hi Laura, Welcome to the Moz community! Without a domain to do some further investigation, these types of questions can be some of the toughest to answer because there are so many variables that could be causing the problem. I can't comment on your current site but what I can say is that from experience, if this is happening it's typically going to be one of three things (maybe a combination?): More links pointing to the individual product pages than to the category pages Either no or low quality content on the subcategory pages; basically just showing a big chunk of products and nothing else Poor internal linking with more internal links pointing to those products, the category pages in a separate section of the nav, no category breadcrumbs etc. URL structure ties in here in much the same way. If we think about typical user behaviour, it makes perfect sense that your product pages would be getting more backlinks than the categories. If we're talking about real users in a forum and they want to reference a product you sell, they're going to link straight to that product and the same can be said in most other contexts too. This isn't a problem at all - real backlinks being earned in a natural way is always good. It just means you may need to put some effort into driving strength to the category pages too. Content is a topic that gets so much attention in this industry that I don't think I really need to elaborate here - just make sure there is a decent amount of high-quality content on the pages, styled in a way that doesn't bury the products. UX first! Finally, the internal linking. It's very hard to give advice on this part without seeing the site but basically, search engines tend to look at your nav to get an indication of which pages are likely the most important on the page from left to right, top to bottom. If you have an unusual structure where the category pages are buried down in the drop-downs (or - gasp - not even in the nav because there are buttons on the home page or something!) then you're missing an easy win there. Don't forget that breadcrumbs and URL structure should ultimately match this same layout. Something like website.com/category/product. This is all quite vague but hopefully it makes sense to the site you're working with now. Always happy to take a closer look if you'd like to share the URL here or in PM but I completely understand if you're not comfortable with that too.

I believe it depends on the user visibility of the H1 tag. It's fine to make H1 tags smaller and in odd positions - it would be difficult for Google to be overly punitive on creative design of this sort. I've created H1's smaller than H3s on many occassions. The question for me would be - is the new H1 the same or very similar colour to the background? Is it in an incredibly small font? Google is wise to attempts to "almost hide" content. I would ask why the SEO can't be more creative and make the content more visible. If h1 tag and keyword in it isn't appropriate there is something wrong with the overall content or keyword choice for the page.

Hi, You'll likely be charging them for the click, however Google does have tools in place to identify invalid clicks - i.e. multiple PPC clicks from one IP address. They'll likely be picking up on the number of clicks you're making in a short period of time and it's likely that your competitor may not be charged. There's more information you can find here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/42995?hl=en-GB I hope this helps, Sean

Thanks for the response. Users are not actually spamming but using our pages as their platform. But the keywords are spammy keywords in internet world. Those pages are ranking good for certain keywords. So, I am confused whether to delete the spammy content pages or let it them being well-ranked pages.

Thanks Sean, It's a Shopify site, so I don't think the dev has access to server logs. I think the alternative approach might work though. I'm not sure if they have a URL export, but if they do I'll suggest they use the list function. Thx again.

It helps! Thank you!

I think that's a great answer from Chris - invest in some analysis. Figure out what you need rather than go with X, Y or Z. Base the spend on your requirements and defining those requirements if needs be. Hope that helps!

I don't think 404 vs 410 is the answer here.The basis for this thought is the following: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2340728/matt-cutts-on-how-google-handles-404-410-status-codes ======== "if we see a page and we get a 404, we are gonna protect that page for 24 hours in the crawling system, so we sort of wait and we say maybe that was a transient 404, maybe it really wasn’t intended to be a page not found.” “If we see a 410, then the site crawling system says, OK we assume the webmasters knows what they’re doing because they went off the beaten path to deliberately say this page is gone,” he said. “So they immediately convert that 410 to an error, rather than protecting it for 24 hours." ======== I'm thinking the deeper issue is why the 301s are not being respected. If a link points to http://domain.com/badpage  and we use a 301 to point to https://domain.com/badpage - shouldn't the crawler (Google or otherwise) respect the 301? Why still index and serve up a page that responds with the 301? To me, this is baffling.  If we serve up a 404 or a 410 - either way we are saying "this page is gone" but we're still seeing the original http://domain.com/badpage in the index? Does that make sense? Or is there more clarification required?

The correct way to get .co.uk to rank the in UK and .com to rank elsewhere is to use Hreflang tags, but only if content on the two sites is different. If it's the same content i.e., it has not been localized to UK, then you are better off using only 1 website. Google often ignores Hreflang markup when it encounters duplicate content. So you have 2 options: Retire 1 of the websites because it's useless to have duplicate content. Use Hreflang and make sure that content is NOT duplicate but localized for at least 1 of the sites.

Just checked GMB this morning, and all the data is there now! Looks like it was just a hiccup with Google.

Thank you SO much for raising this question! The Beginner's Guide To SEO is currently being updated and will address exactly this. Google's John Mueller has stated in the past that it's ok to put a link on a client's site back to yours as long as it's rel="nofollow". When I was previously self-employed at Pryde Marketing, and heard Google state this, we instantly changed our client footer "Made by Pryde Marketing" links to rel="nofollow" and almost immediately saw organic improvements. I can't say for certain that changing our client > Pryde links to "nofollow" 100% caused this, but it didn't hurt. My personal opinion is that you can benefit from clients linking back to your site in a credible way (ex. If you built their website) and have a rel="nofollow", you will be fine. If you reverse engineer any of the top web developer's sites, you'll likely see quite a few "built by xyz" linking back to their domains.

Have you reached out to plugin support people?

Yes, this makes sense! Big thanks for sharing your insights, Kevin!

Hey Arnold Ambiel, cheguei a esse tópico porque estava tendo um problema como o seu. O tráfego orgânico e direto foram revertidos. Vi que você tinha esse problema em 2016 e o ​​meu ocorreu em junho. Você encontrou alguma solução para esse problema?

directory links are still a very much required part of the deal for major directories to say the least. Sure, a lot of them do not pass any link juice or Google may discount a lot of those links in its ranking factors, but you just want to be present where people actually check and where data aggregators grab their source data from.There has to be a reason why Moz local still is as service that charges people for exactly these "directory" listings...

How is it that signed in and signed out users get different urls for the same page, I have never actually seen this practice in any CMS I have seen or used before. Client should not decide these things... you as the developer or the seo should provide the right way of doing things and explain to them why. To say the least you are dealing with duplicate content as as risk and in that case you can use canonical tag to specify the primary page. But I would not listen to the client for what they demand, a lot of times clients have no friggin clue about this stuff and ask the vendors to shoot them in their own foot... good vendors will counter with proper reasoning and explanation and if you are the SEO in charge in this case, know that their insisting decisions will have major implications in the results you get and the treatment and longevity of contract you get from these clients... just my 2 cents from few years of doing this as a freelancer, but now I am running my own team and agency and client says this does not mean anything to me anymore when it comes to technical decisions. I ask them about their end goal and find the right way of achieving that.