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Your hreflang markup looks correct. As far as the _ga query string parameter is concerned, what you want is for Google to ignore it. For that you can use canonical tags. So make sure https://example.de/?_ga=1.16730294.1000579032.1461248919 has the following markup in the HTML :

Hi Jessica, Use many tools from MOZ, ahrefs, SEMRush, and the list goes on. My favorite is Searchlight. Many reasons, but the platform allows you to go from the eye of the eagle to the eye of an ant across your sites. Too many features to write about but I did write a detailed review here: https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/conductor-searchlight-2015-09-25-08-43-15 The customer service is amazing. They are very helpful and proactive. Not unusual to get a note about a new feature that they not only know I'm interest in but they then help me build out for my business. Hope the expanded review helps! Josepf

Great, thank you for the insight, Eric!

I don't see a specific reason why this page should not rank, but I did notice that the sitemap referenced in your robots.txt file goes to a 404 page.  You should also look at crawl efficiency and see if that can be improved.  If you haven't done so already, you can use the "URL Parameters" tool to tell Google not to crawl all of the parameters associated with the filtering. Those URLs are canonicalized to the main category page, so there's no reason Google needs to crawl them. Another issue I notice is that most of the unique content on the page is hidden to the user unless they click "read more." This is not necessarily a problem, but Google probably won't give the hidden content as much weight as the content visible when the page loads.

Does Google ding a site that uses the Yoast News Plug-in when it is not a news site?  Are there any other precautions to take in using this plug-in?  Like not posting too many stories as "news'?  One of our competitor's uses Facebook as their publisher.

Is this here to stay, do you think...? I'm so wary of Google's changes, I don't think I'll be lengthening my titles to make better use of the width until the dust settles a bit. EDIT: http://www.thesempost.com/new-title-description-lengths-for-google-seo/ (inb4 Google rolls back to the previous layout in one week's time.)

Hi Peter! Keyword Difficulty takes into account the Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA) scores of the results ranking on the first page of Google for the given query, as well as modifying intelligently for projected click-through-rate of a given page (putting more weight on higher-ranking, more visible pages and less on lower-ranking, less visible pages). The formula also accounts for newer pages on powerful domains that may have DA scores but have not yet been assigned PA values. I hope that provides some clarification!

Hi, I work for a client who have a purpose-built CMS but they have done a pretty decent job of it. Things they looked out for and integrated plus some new stuff I suggested they add: Ability to quickly and easily remove pages and set 301's Page title and meta description fields Self canonical by defauly but ability to override Helpful 404 pages that don't leave people stuck Content block areas with dedicated H1+content & H2+content zones Custom footer areas Ability to add to the default Default GA code Those are just a few of the key points that allow them to put together nice sites that follow a logical theme throughout. As for the second part of your question "how easy is it to rank a site?" the CMS is actually only going to play a part in this becuase ranking a site isn't based on on how good the CMS is, although the points above help to create a pleasing customer experience. Ranking a site comes from much more than the CMS - the majority of your gains are going to come from your content, backlinks and how well your pages answer customer queries. Get these right, and you are starting on the right track. -Andy

Hi, Linkbuilding is about the most awkward part of SEO, which is why it is so easy to get it wrong, which many do. In order to create something that people are going to want to link to, you need to have linkable assets that are going to engage people. Imagine for a moment that you are contacting a blog owner who talks about home & DIY hints and tips. There is absolutley no point in just going in there with an e-mail and asking for a link - you need to engage with people - you can't just go in there unless there is a value-add for them. One thing I would suggest, is looking at the speed of your site. I ran this quickly through Google Page Speed Insights, and it is very slow. This won't help your SEO efforts. My honest suggestion is to first of all sort out your site speed and then get your local SEO in order. I would imagine that most people using you are going to be locked out and need to use their mobile to get to you? If this isn't in order, you could be wasting time and money on areas that won't help immediately. Get reviews from the likes of Trustpilot and get yourself on to sites like Trust a Trader. I hope this helps. -Andy

Thanks a lot Gianluca, I thought we were limited to languages existing inside the targeted country. I'll try it and check if there is any kind of ranking boost. For now, I have nothing set in "webmaster tools" or on the code.

Hi Kevin! Did Miriam's advice help? And if so, mind marking her response(s) as a "Good Answer?" Thank you!

Thanks Martijn. That makes a lot of sense. I'm working with small websites, but hopefully I will be moving on to bigger fish

Hi, You should find your answer in this link: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/enhanced-ecommerce#overview But essentially you will have to use something like: ga('ec:addImpression',{            // Provide product details in an impressionFieldObject.   'id':'P12345',                   // Product ID (string).   'name':'Android Warhol T-Shirt',// Product name (string). **'category':'Apparel/T-Shirts',   // Product category (string).**   'brand':'Google',                // Product brand (string).   'variant':'Black',               // Product variant (string).   'list':'Search Results',         // Product list (string).   'position':1,                    // Product position (number).   'dimension1':'Member'            // Custom dimension (string).}); But you need to specify the Field Object in the top line. Read the link I sent you and should be all self explanatory. I hope this helps Issa

Eric is completely right - Google does not list algorithmic penalties in GSC. Definitely try using Moz's Google Algorithm Change History to see if you can match an algorithm change to the drop in traffic. That said, you said that the rankings drop happened when they revamped the URL structure. It'd be surprisingly coincidental if an algorithm change hit them at the same time that they updated their URL structure. Here's what I'd do to figure out if the new URL structure could be the cause: Get a full list of inbound links from a site like Majestic or Ahrefs, specifically broken links (I wouldn't recommend getting this from Moz, because their lists of links aren't as comprehensive). See if they have a lot of now "broken" links that used to boost rankings of key pages on the old structure. Can you put in 301 redirects to get them to the right page? Can you reach out to those site owners and point them to the new versions of the pages? See if Wayback Machine has a copy of what their website used to look like. Is the internal linking structure really different? If it is (or if Wayback Machine doesn't have a copy of their old site), definitely do an internal architecture audit. It's possible that this new version of the site doesn't link internally as well as they used to, which has weakened their important pages. See if they had a web analytics software set up before they made the switch. If they do, find out what their top organic pages were before the change. Does the new site have a new page that answers the same questions that their old site did? It's possible that they removed key pages that were bringing in a lot of traffic. Or, possibly changed them, weakening their relevance to the keyword and ultimately losing their position. This may be more than you were originally asking for, so I'll stop there. Good luck on your search! Kristina

Hey, this is Russ here at Moz. Do the redirects point to the homepage or to the current URL? For example, does the http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html redirect to http://newsite.com or http://newsite.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html If it does redirect to the same URL on newsite.com, I would try using wildcard robots.txt entries to simply block the offending content altogether. For example, if all the spam is off the styless.asp page, you could simply block styless.asp?* in your robots.txt and prevent Google from ever crawling those spammy links. However, if you are redirecting everything to the homepage, I think you will need to go back to the old webmaster and figure something out. While Google is great at detecting spam, once you are under a penalty it can be difficult to recover. No one is perfect, including Google, and you don't want to be one of their "mistakes".

been there done that but you should not have problems finding references for that all over the web.. Although i must admit, most of my knowledge on GTM is from Simo's blog.and this one can help you out too. As i have mentioned earlier, as long as your user is coming form a browser newer than ie7 you should e fine. cheers

The most popular sitemap plugin for Magento appears to be this one: https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/xml-sitemap-generator-splitter.html, the XML Sitemap Generator & Splitter.

Hi, We have a paid account at https://www.serplab.co.uk/. They offer a free version too, I'm fairly sure that you can export the ranking data into excel, even in the free version.