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Here is an update as to what is happening so far. Please excuse the length of this message. The database according to the host is fine (please see below) but WordPress is still calling https: In the WP database wp-actions, http is definitely being called* All certificates are ok and SSL is not active* The WordPress database is returning properly* The WP database mechanics are ok* The WP config-file is not doing https returns, it is calling http correctly They said that the only other possibility could be one of the plugins causing the problem. But how can a plugin cause https problems?...I can see 50 different https pages indexed in Google.  Bing has been checked and there are no https pages indexed there. All internal urls always have been http only and that is still the case. I have Google fetched the website pages and in the 50 https pages most are images which I think probably must have came from the Yoast sitemap which was originally submitted to the search engines (more recently though I have taken all media image url's out of the Yoast sitemap and put noindex, follow on all image attachments files (the pages and the images on the pages will still be crawled and indexed in Google and search engines, it just means that any image url's won't. What will happen to those unwanted https files though? If I place rel canonical links on the pages that matter will the https pages drop out of the index eventually? I just wish I could find what is causing it (analogy: best to fix a hole in a roof to stop having to use a bowl to catch the water each time it rains). ** I looked at analytics today and saw something really interesting (see attached image) - you can see 5 instances of the trailing slash at the home page and to my knowledge there should only be 1 for a website. The Moz Crawl shows just 1 home domain  http://example.co.uk/ so I am somewhat confused. Google search results showed 256 results for https url references, and there were 50 available to click on. So perhaps there are 50 https pages being referenced for each trailing slash (could there be 4 other trailing slash duplicate pages indexed and how would I fix it if that is the case?). This might sound naive but I don't have the skillset to fix this at this time so any help and advice would be appreciated. Would Search and Replace plugin help at all or would it be a waste of time since the WordPress database mechanics seem to be ok. I can't place any https to http 301 redirects for the 50 https url's that are indexed in Google, and I can't add any https rewrite rules in htaccess since that type of redirect will only work if a SSL is active. I already tried several redirect rules in htaccess and as expected they wouldn't work which again would probably mean that the SSL is not active for the site. When https is entered instead of http, there should be an automatic resolve to http without me having to worry about that, but I tried again and the https version with a red diagonal line through it appears instead. The problem is that once a web visitor lands on that page they stay in that land of https (visually the main nav bar contents stretch across the page and the images and videos don't appear), and so the traffic will drop off..so hence a bad experience for the user and dropped traffic, decreasing income and bad for seo (split page juice, decreased rankings). There are no crawl errors in Google Search Console and Analytics shows Google Fetch completed for all pages - but when I request fetch and render for the home page it shows as partial instead of completed. I don't want to request any https url removals through Google and search engines - it's not recommended because Google states that http version could be removed as well as https. I did look at this last week: http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/5-easy-steps-to-fix-secure-page-https-duplicate-content/ Do you think that the https urls are indexed because of links pointing to the site are using https?  Perhaps most of the backlinks are https but the preferred setting in Webmaster Tools / Search Console is already set to the non-www version instead of the www version; there has never been a https version of the site. This was one possibility re duplicate content. Here are two pages and the listed duplicates: The first Moz crawl I ever requested came back with hundreds of duplicate errors and I have resolved this. Google crawl had not picked this up previously (so I figured everything had been ok) and it was only realised after that Moz crawl. So https links were seen to be indexed and so the goals are to stop the root cause of the problem and to fix the damage so that any https url's can drop off out of the serps and the index. I considered that the duplicate links in question might not be considered as true duplicates as such - it is actually just that the duplicate pages (these were page attachments created by WordPress for each image uploaded to the site) have no real content so the template elements outweighed the actual unique content elements which was flagging them as duplicates in the moz tool. So I thought that these were unlikely to hurt as they were not duplicates as such but they were indexed thin content. I did a content audit and tidy tidied things up as much as I could (blank pages and weak ones) hence the new recent sitemap submission and fetch to Google. I have already redirected all attachments to the parent page in Yoast, and removed all attachments from the Yoast sitemap and set all media content (in Yoast) to 'noindex, follow'. Naturally it's really important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link back to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.  As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default to http when https isn’t configured, so I am confused as to where to take this especially as the host has given the WP database the all clear. It could be  taxonomies related to the theme or a slider plugin as I have learned these past few weeks. Disallowing and deindexing those unwanted http URLs would be amazing since I have so far spent weeks already trying to get to the bottom of the problem. Ideally I understand from previous weeks that these 2 things would be very important: (1)301 redirects from http to https (the host in this case cannot enable this directly through their servers and I can only add these redirects in the htaccess file if there is an active SSL in place).(2)Have in place a canonical url using http for both the http and https variations. Both of those solutions might work on their own and if the 301 redirect can't work with the host then the canonical will fix it?  I saw that I could just set a canonical with a fixed transport protocol of http:// - then Google will then sort out the rest. Not preferred from a crawl perspective but would suffice? (Even so I don't know how to put that in place). There are around 180 W3C validation errors. Would it help matters to get these fixed? Would this help to fix the problem do you know? The homepage renders with critical errors and a couple of warnings. The 907 Theme scores well for its concept and functionality but its SEO reviews aren't that great. Duplicate problems are not related to the W3 Total Cache plugin which is one of the plugins in place. Regarding addons (trailing slash): Example: http://domain.co.uk/events redirects to http://domain.co.uk/events/  the addon must only do it on active urls - even if it didn't there were no reports of  / duplicate errors in the Moz Crawl so its a different issue that would need looking at separately I would think. At the bottom of each duplicate page there is an option for noindex. There are page sections and parallax sections that make up the home page, and each has to be published to become a live part of the home page. This isn't great for SEO I understand that because only the top page section is registered in Yoast as being the home page the other sections on the home page are not crawled as part of the home page but are instead separate page sections. Is it ok to index those page sections? If I noindex, follow them would that be good practice here. The theme does not auto block the page section from appearing in search engines. Can noindex only be put on whole pages and not the specific page sections? I just want to make sure that the content on all the pages (media and text) and page sections are crawlable. To ultimately fix the https problem re indexed pages out there could this eventually be a case of having to add SSL to the site just because there is no better way - just so the https to http redirect rule can be added to the htaccess file? If so, I don't think that would fix the root cause of the problem, but the root cause could be one of the plugins? Confused. With Canonical url's does that mean the https links that don't have canonicals will deindex eventually? Are the https links giving a 404 (I'm worried because normally 404's need 301's as you know and I can't put a 301 on a https url in this situation). Do I have to do set a canonical for every single page on the website because of the extent of the problem that has occurred? Nearly all of the traffic is being dropped after visiting the home page, and I can't for the life of me see why. Is it because of all these https pages? Once canonicals are in place how long will it take for everything to return to how it should be? Is it worthwhile starting a ppc campaign or should I wait until everything has calmed down on the site? Is this a case of setting the canonical URL and then the rest will sort itself out? (please see the screenshot attached regarding the 5 home pages that each have a trailing slash). This is the entire current situation. I understand this might not be so straight forward but I would really appreciate help as the site continues to drop traffic and income.  Others will be able to learn from this string of questions and responses too. Thank you for reading this far and have a nice day.  Kind Regards,

Hi Logan, These pages will be eventually transformed into unique landing pages for each state so I don't want to get rid of them as of yet. I will try demoting them. Any ideas to how they are getting the anchor text of TX and NY? Thanks for your valuable time!

Hi xeonet32! Did Anthony and/or Peter answer your question? If they did, please mark one or both responses "Good Answer."

Great feedback, thank you! I'll try the tool you mention.

Personalized results would be my guess, too. Moz Analytics defaults to national rankings, so it won't take things like your location and search history into account.

Thank you for your input, your hypothesis that the initial increase to page 2 or 3 allowed the site to get traffic and gain traction through improved user engagement is an interesting one; however the traffic to those sites has been so minimal with the non top 10 rankings that I don't think it can be a key contributor. I continue to wonder why these recoveries happen so gradually; I also noticed that the higher the keyword volume for a key word the slower the recovery.

Here's Matt Cutts on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9Ka0fzyZbk His answer is basically saying that in almost every case you could not be affected by the fact that there were other spammy sites sharing your hosting. He said that there are really rare cases whereby if one host has a crazy amount of spammy sites they may take action on all of these sites, but he made a point of saying that this is really rare. So no, I'd be looking for some other cause for the rankings to drop.

HI Stephen, As somebody who has worked with eCommerce sites with lots of products I can appreciate where you're at and what you've gone through to get there. My next step would be to fill up the site with content that sets you apart from competitors. Really easy advise to give, hard to implement. What I like to do is take my favorite online shop and compare what I have against them. My goal is figure out what I could do that they aren't doing, or how in general I could compete with them. For me my favorite online shop for just about everything is Amazon (yours maybe different) , then I say why would somebody buy from me instead of Amazon. Since Amazon is my personal favorite site, it removes the bias I may have towards my own shop. Can I offer better prices or value? Can I offer items they don't sell? Can I offer better support? Can I offer faster or cheaper delivery? Can I show better content? Better reviews? Can I offer a better shopping experience? With these questions, most sites I come to the conclusion is Amazon has set the bar so high, it is very difficult to compete even if I have a huge budget. In your case, Amazon may have many of the items you sell, so you have to get creative on how you market them and make sure your content is on par with theirs. That means add reviews, add your own personal description of items, your own images, customer images, and make sure you are where your customers are (social media). I can't tell anybody how to run a business, but I can say that being creative when your up against such big money is the best way to make a name for yourself. Good luck, Don

Thank you, your responses have been very helpful. They have confirmed what I have been thinking. Regarding the Mac example I used, I had already been thinking about separating the "Mac" content publishing side, and I had bought a domain and put certain things in place. The truth is I am not looking to grow that business, I have actually downsized it on purpose, although I am reasonably competent and making businesses work, I don't play well with others, and although I have all the skill set to grow the business, I don't have the personalty trait to be dealing with the public. I am also at an age, where I no longer feel I have to, if that makes any sense. Lastly, you are absolutely write, even though this is a forum response, I have a bad habit of babbling on, and writing stuff long winded. I never ever thought my writing skills were any good. I would have have described it as poor, even though have formal education. I was never that good at it. However, I don't know how to describe it, but it felt like it was the right angle or topic or approached the right way. I suppose what I am trying to say is it felt right, rather then the writing style or grammer etc being good. Anyway, thanks for your input. Very much appreciated.

I'll be honest.  I do not build links.  Have not done it in many years. All of my retail sites have lots of content that engages people and gets spread without the need for linkbuilding, hiring SEOs or any kind of marketers. If I owned a forum, I would make sure that it is optimized properly, occasionally trim thin posts that bring in no traffic from search, contribute vigorously to threads that are about evergreen content topics. "hey, check out this cool discussion about this totally niche area of government regulation!"  So, by "good content," it can be super in-depth, opinionated, fact-filled and authored by folks who know what they're talking about. Does that qualify as good enough material for a reputable link builder to work with? In my opinion, your content might be good enough that it does not need a linkbuilder. Don't underestimate old geezers.  Many of them are more websavvy than you think.  Your visitors sound like influencers to me.  And they are not that old.  If they are about 50 years old then I was in college when they were born!

Problems like this can be really hard to figure out. But, in my experience it is quite uncommon for a site to get any sort of penalty or demotion for a particular keyword. I think that sometimes it can look like a particular keyword is demoted when the page previously had rankings that were propped up by the power of links that are now being detected as unnatural. Sometimes when there is just one keyword that is not doing well, I look at the possibility of keyword stuffing. The keyword stuffing algo runs continuously and can indeed cause a particular page to not rank well if it thinks it is keyword stuffed. And in my opinion, it's not always consistent how Google determines keyword stuffing. There are plenty of keyword stuffed pages that still rank. And often two pages that look similar can be affected in different ways. But still, this is something to consider.

That's OK, You have done enough. i really appreciate the help.

This is fine, as long as you don't want to exclude robots from crawling any part of your site.

Hi, Thanks a lot for your help. I will then use one hreflang per URL. Cheers,