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I'd maybe run some A/B tests with and without the plugin on your store, and see what happens to your conversions, including everything you'd want to track- sales, social shares, and any other important metrics. You could use something like Optimizely for this I believe, though I've not used it for testing plugins before. I'm a big fan of putting usability at the forefront of all of my marketing efforts, so I'd maybe consider finding out from some of your other customers their opinions, too. Is the share button on all of your website, certain pages, or just your checkout page? Is there a way to make it less intrusive, or easier to close/get away from, for customers who struggle? Have you conducted thorough browser testing to ensure the plugin isn't causing extra issues for those using certain browsers? I've had issues in certain browsers with other similar plugins before so it might be worth checking. Hope this helps, good luck!  Zoe

Hi Nik! Google's local results depend entirely on having a physical location in a specific city. Right now, you have a physical location in Sydney, so you're doing well for these Sydney-based-or-related searches. But, you don't have an office in Perth or Melbourne, so there is no reason for Google to rank  you locally for these cities. Simply stating in your Google My Business description or service radius that you deliver nationwide is not going to override Google's bias toward physical location. So, what this leaves you with is working to earn organic rankings for terms that relate to these other cities, and the main struggle here will be determine if it's logical for you to do so and then discovering content topics that make sense for the effort. Creating a bunch of pages that say 'we deliver to Perth', 'we deliver to Melbourne' will not be enough. It's not interesting and not a good reason to create a page. So, rather, you might need to think in terms of customer testimonials, stories about customers' use of your product, if you install your product then maybe video/text coverage of your installation projects, showcases of gardens in the different cities featuring your mirrors, contests in the cities, etc. You'll need to find reason for writing about these cities beyond simply delivering to them. Then, you'll likely need to earn some good links to these pages. And, hopefully, that will lead to some organic visibility for these other cities where you lack a physical location. Hope this helps!

Hmm, a main menu link is usually great. Have you double checked to make sure those links are in HTML, so Google can read them?

This is marketing blather.  Ask this person to explain it, in detail and keep saying "I don't get it.  How is this going to help me?" until they hang up.

Hi StratosJets, In general the more pages you have the more content you have. More content is usually a good thing. I think before anybody can give you a solid recommendation we would want to know why you are wanting to remove 10K+ pages from the index. You see, Google looks at your website like a splash of paint on white canvas. Your website in a whole is going to have a large splash around your main pages, then some secondary splash clusters around other content types. Just because these secondary splashes aren't performing as well as the main splash doesn't necessarily mean you want to remove them, as they help paint a picture of the complete site. If the purpose of removing pages that are driving "some" traffic is only to try and boost the other pages I would say don't do it. You maybe able to restructure your navigation so that these smaller traffic pages don't get as much link juice as some of your higher performing pages. I know this can be a bit challenging in some CMS suites, but removing pages that are bringing in traffic only to try and boost other pages is a very advanced SEO metric and should really only be tackled when you have gathered lots of data. Imagine you remove 10k pages that on average get 2 hits per month each, are you reasonably sure that the remaining 2k pages will generate 20,000 more hits once those pages are gone? Or is it more likely you lose those 20,000 hits along with the traffic patterns those 20,000 hits would normally bring in? That being said there are cases to be made for removing pages, specifically ones generated by CMS platforms. When is it okay to remove pages: The general rule here is if the page has no value or negative value for your viewers / customers. No value pages: These are pages that have been redone, or their content is also available on another page which is more in depth and/or more user friendly. (Thin Content type pages) Negative value pages: These are often generated by CMS sites, eCommerce CMS's may have auto generated pages like "Manufacturer Info" or "Item Review" pages, which you aren't using. Blog sites may have "Monthly Archives" or "Similar Post" pages which can create duplicate content if not used correctly. These pages can confuse your users and search engines as to what your site is really about. If you find your site has tons of no value pages and negative value pages I would say okay go for it, but be very careful look at your page metrics, be sure the pages you are removing are in fact useless and provide no value for your viewers / customers. If you decide to go the route of removal, the best way from my experience is to 301 pages which have correlating content on another page, and only 404 any page that have absolutely no value and page alternatives. If you 404 a page make sure you remove it from your sitemap and try submit it for removal. Lots of 404's isn't a good thing either... I hope this helps, Don

Hey Ryan, I agree with Josh. Best to start here: http://www.google.com/business/

Hey Matt, do you think you could do me a HUGE favor.  You said I have these low quality backlinks.  I am unable to see them or figure out how to generate a decent report to show those out-of-country backlinks.  Could you send me a report of these or potentially tell me how you saw them and where I could? Thank you!

Hi Antonio, Not sure which language you prefer - but you can find some sample codes here: https://developers.google.com/webmaster-tools/v3/samples - I tried the python example which was quite well documented inside the code, I guess it's the same for the other languages. If I have some time I could give it a try - but it won't be before the end of next week (and based on python) Dirk

a) Do not take anything Google says at face value. b) He should look at the brands that are ranking in his own algorithm. c) I guess he would suggest that all companies remove store locators from their websites.

You can also use Analytics now to get a rough idea of the search queries (impressions, clicks, positions and ctr). In Analytics go to Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Queries Otherwise you can still use WMT to see the query under Search Traffic > Search Analytics

I don't have much knowledge about GTM. I will have to test the way you've recommended and see it would work for us in order to track this type of traffic. Huge appreciated for investing time on this issue and provide valuable recommendations. Thank you so much.

Hi Dirk, This is why I love the Moz community.. Thanks you so much for the info, it works a treat. Have a great day T

Piggybacking on Kane - since these bad/phantom pages were in one folder, can you request removal in Search Console? It should at least speed things up. Unfortunately, the links can show for weeks or months after they're removed, even if Google doesn't seem to be caching them. If the pages aren't indexed/cached, and the numbers in the console seem to be gradually dropping, I'm not sure if there's a lot more you can do, unfortunately.

Hi Josh, Thanks so much for this link! Finally I was able to talk to someone who guided me what to do