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In that case, I would probably just stay with the .org. Is being a part of the Apple affiliation program essential to your business? If so then I would consider trying to find a different domain.

You will probably struggle to rank in the main English language territories with a .io domain. I can't recall ever seeing one in the serps and hadn't even heard of it before this question was asked!

Don't be mistaken into thinking that 301 redirecting your old domain to the new one will instantly get the new domain to the same rank as the previous. It doesn't quite work like that. Of course, this will depend on many factors.

Can I ask, why are you looking at the .io domain extension? Why not a .com? Also what geographic region is your site targeting?

Personally, I would be looking at a .com rather than .io, unless you're business/site is targeting the British Indian Ocean Territory

I did a little digging around your mother's site (margaretterry.com) and I don't think you have been hit by the recent updates.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like the domain was created in February of this year and I assume the site didn't go live till even later?

Having looked at the site with opensiteexplorer.org, there are no links being picked up and the page (and domain) authority is 1/100. Basically your site has no authority behind it.

When you initially launch a new domain, it is not unusual to see it bounce around. I also believe that Google tends to give new domains an initial artificial boost to help get started. However after a period, the site will be expected to rank on its own. This means that if your site has no links, you will not be able to rank well.

My advice would be to start building links and authority to the site. I'm afraid it's not a quick fix but it looks like your only option.

I have found Search Engine Land's definitive guide to Google authorship very helpful.

It outlines all the steps you need to take in order to implement authorship markup.

Hope that helps,

Adam.

Why do you think there are too many 301 redirects? There is no limit to how many 301 redirects you can have and I'm not sure why you think removing them will 'ease download times'.

Your concern about the links is correct. If you remove the 301s then you lose the value that these links are passing through the redirect.

I'd love to know who these 'experts' are because I've never heard of that. Sounds completely made up and, to my knowledge, is incorrect.

I would suggest you take a look at Google's explanation about 301 redirects as it could prove informative to you.

Streamline is right that you should keep the 301 redirects in place so that any links pointing to the old pages pass value through the redirect to the new pages.

Is there a time frame after which Google does not need a 301 any more? For example if A is 301 redirected to B, does Google know after a while not to serve A any more, and replaces any requests for A with B?

Simply put, no. If you remove the 301 redirect then any requests for page A will return page A and not B.

How about any links that go to A?

These links will now be passing all their value to page A.

Or: Is the only option to have all links that pointed to A point to B and then the 301 can be removed after some time?

If it is possible for you to change all links that point to A, to then point to B, then maybe. However, it is very unlikely you will be able to do this and it will be extremely time consuming.

In short, your best option is to leave the 301 redirects in place as best SEO practice.

Hi Tim,

I generally prefer to go with the subfolder option (mysite.com/blog) rather than the subdomain (blog.mysite.com). The reason I prefer this option is because having the blog in a subfolder means that it will benefit from the value of the root domain. In other words, links that are obtained by the root domain will pass that value to the subfolders. However, a subdomain is treated as a separate site and therefore not much value is passed via the root.

Rand provides an excellent answer in a previous Q&A of a similar topic:

subdomains vs. subfolders

Hope that helps,

Adam.

Hi Kate,

Firstly, what do you mean by 'we can fix with a canonical'? If you are trying to solve the issue of duplicate page titles then I'm afraid you can't simply fix this with a canonical tag as this is not what it is designed for. The canonical tag is a way of informing search engines of your preferred version of a group of similar pages. It effectively acts like a 301 redirect. You will essentially be telling google not to index these pages, which unless you have a duplicate content issue, is not what you want to achieve.

The only way to fix the issue of duplicate page titles is to give each page a unique and descriptive title. If using a CMS, you can generate a template that will help to avoid getting duplicate titles.

Secondly, why do you think you have too many links on the page? You may find this blog post by Matt Cutts helpful. In it he explains that keeping links on a page to a maximum of 100 is only a rough guideline. The target was set primarily from a design and user perspective. In other words, if it makes sense to have more than 100 links on a page and it doesn't harm the overall user experience, you shouldn't worry.

Hope that helps,

Adam.

Hi Jasper,

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It really depends on what your intent with the pages is and which page is ranking higher.

If the most relevant page and the page you want to rank higher is indeed ranking higher then you don't really have a problem. Look at it from this point of view, if you can dominate a whole page of google with your pages (very, very unlikely to happen) it increases the chances of users visiting your site.

It is only really an issue if you are deliberately targeting the same keyword for different pages and want to rank for the same keyword on separate pages. If you are targeting different keywords for each page and they are ranking well for the keywords you are targeting, then it isn't a huge problem that they happen to rank for the same keyword.

Of course, if this is the only keyword that the two pages rank for or the page that is ranking higher is not the page you want to rank higher, then you do have a problem concerning keyword cannibalisation. In this case you will need to analyse both pages to see what is causing the problem. For solutions to the problem you should read Rand's article.

Hope that helps,

Adam.

Sorry Ben but I have to disagree with you here. That is very bad practice and also very poor advice. You shouldn't just ignore 404 pages from a site crawl.

Really the only time you should let pages just 404 is when Google has indexed them, there is no relevant page on your site to redirect them to, there are no high value links pointing to them and they are not being linked to from within your site.

However, in this case the 404 pages are being linked to from within the site. This means that value is being passed to these pages from within the site that could otherwise be passed to other pages.

Best practice in this situation is to fix the links that point to the 404 pages and 301 redirect the 404 pages to relevant pages on the site.

P.s. running a quick site crawl and fixing the 404s should only take minutes and not hours to do!

Hi Andrea,

If the crawl is returning 404 errors then this means, although you have removed the widget, the pages are still being linked to somewhere on your site.

My advice would be to use the Screaming Frog crawler or if you have access to another crawler then use that. Once you have crawled the site using a crawler, you should be able to find out which pages are still linking to the 404 pages. Once you have found these, you will get a better idea of how to fix the issue.

Remember, a crawler will crawl your entire site, including all links, and if 404s are found then these are being linked to internally.

Hope that helps,

Adam.

Here is SEOmofo's article on the (not so) recent change. It is safer to limit your characters to 70 rather than 77 as some titles that are 77 characters are more likely to get truncated in the SERPs. The SEOmofo snippet tester is good because it factors in pixel width rather than character length.

FYI

Google no longer limits titles by character length but rather by pixel width.

I use SEOmofo to craft titles.

Hi Robert,

Firstly, the SEOMoz on-page report is really only a guide and you shouldn't worry too much about using it. To be honest, I rarely use it and just follow best practices.

That said, there are still several alternatives you could try:

1. You do not necessarily need to have your company name in the title. This is a practice that is quite common place nowadays but realistically, unless you're a strong brand that has huge volumes of branded traffic, you don't need the company name in the title.

2. I would maybe suggest targeting the two keywords on different pages i.e. a Widget Program page and a Widget Software Page. This maybe the most user friendly option and probably the best option overall. Especially if the two keywords attract large volumes in traffic.

Hope this helps,

Adam.

Hi Imre, by all means if you'd like to send me more detais via pm so I can see what you are talking about exactly, then feel free to do so.

Although I feel that my earlier advice will still be true. The anchor (sitelink title) is automatically generated by an algorithm and not manually edited (as yet). I have seen some pretty random sitelink titles for other sites. I have even seen sitelinks where the title has been taken from some random piece of code on the site. Unfortunately, without knowing the exact details of the algorithm, there is very little you can do to influence the anchors other than what Google outlines in their guidelines (which is very little).

Like I said previously, if the title is that problematic and you want it gone, then your only option is to demote the whole sitelink.

Hi Imre,

Unfortunately there's not much you can do about the sitelink titles at the moment. They are fully automated by Google's algo and have no human input, that I'm aware of, as yet. All you can do is make sure your site architecture and linking structure is as good as possible. Google states that 'for your site's internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that's informative, compact, and avoids repetition.'

If of course you are completely unhappy with your sitelink then you can demote them.

Find out more about sitelinks here:

Google sitelinks

Hope this helps,

Adam.

Pranav, I suspect you are misinterpreting what has been said and you are also getting your words confused.

Characters are different to words. For example the url http://www.this-is-an-example.com has four words (this is an example) and 33 characters. What you have been saying is that character number 1 has more weight than character 33. This is inaccurate.

What I believe you are trying to say, is what Matt Cutts mentions in the interview you posted, that multiple keywords in a URL are given less weight after about the fourth or fifth keyword. I suggest that you read the articles you quote more carefully before offering erroneous advice.

You should read this really interesting post about EMDs by Dr. Pete:

Are Exact-Match Domains (EMDs) in Decline?

In your case I would just stick to a .com domain with your business name rather than a keyword rich domain. Also if you are competing in the SEO industry and you do not already rank well for your key terms, then you will find it hard to rank regardless. SEO terms are highly competitive and there are several sites offering this service that will have invested heavily in their own SEO, making it very difficult to compete.

In terms of your other question, it is generally best practice to separate words in a URL with a hyphen (-) rather than underscore (_).

Hope this helps,

Adam.

**1. If you see Google's blog you'll realize that keyword value decreases with each character in the URL. **

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/

Pranav, I fail to see where you are getting this information from. Firstly, the link you posted is not from Google's blog, it is a blog post from an SEO. Secondly, he does not provide hard evidence to support your claim that keyword value decreases with each character.

This information is misleading and inaccurate.

A search for [car insurance] in google UK returns a moneysupermarket page at number 1 that contains 39 characters in the URL. Looking further down the results there is a post office result with over 50 characters in the URL.

Also, your theory about the 'value of the keyword reducing with each character' is total nonsense.