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It sounds to me like the site where the links are coming from could be at fault.

Do you know if they have made any changes recently? It is very easy for bad coding to produce thousands of pages that the site owners aren't even aware of (speaking from past experiences here). When you look at some of the pages where the links are coming from, do they look like nonsense pages?

It's a little difficult to tell exactly what is at fault without actually looking in more detail, but as this is just one site, it shouldn't cause you any issues - if it were an attack of some kind, then you would be seeing links from different domains, rather than just the one.

-Andy

mywebsite.com/essays-writing than mywebsite.com/student-help/essays-writing

The structure of your site is unlikely to make a big difference, but where possible, smaller sites where there is no required structure, should try and opt for a flat site, as in your first example.

I would only post in a structure like option 2 if there is a benefit to users (and Google) by doing so.

-Andy

Ah no problem at all.

What I would suggest, is having a look at the following articles:

http://sproutsocial.com/insights/facebook-advertising-guide/
https://adespresso.com/academy/guides/facebook-ads-beginner/
http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/01/30/facebook-advertising-tips

Each will give you some valuable information and you can take it from there.

-Andy

Hi,

Without looking at these issues in more detail, it can be awkward to see exactly what is going on.

That said, if you are looking to exclude pages from Google via the sitemap, this won't do an awful lot for you. You will need to noindex the pages, or better still, use rel=canonical tags to tell Google which pages are duplicate and which ones they should reference.

Remember that the sitemap and canonical are only suggestions to Google and there is still a chance that they can bypass them, although that isn't the case the vast majority of times.

-Andy

A 301 is the way to go then. This helps Google understand how pages have moved.

-Andy

Keyword strategies are quite in-depth when you get started so it's good to know from the outset, what you are trying to promote from that page.

From your examples, both phrases give a very different set of results, so I would be looking to create 2 different pages for these. However, you will need to do some research on how to make these pages more targeted for Google.

For example, for Made to measure furniture, I would be looking to add keywords and phrases that you know Google associates with them, such as:

• We make it to order
• Furniture we make to order
• Custom made furniture
• Bespoke furniture
• Contemporary furniture maker
• Bespoke solid wood furniture
• Bespoke fitted furniture

Depending on the pages you are looking to promote, you could add some of these as headings or talk more about them as part of the page content.

But as always with keywords, make sure it all makes sense and don't just drop keywords and phrases into a page without giving them a reason to be there.

Such a big subject, but I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

Avoid spinning content at all costs. By all means read articles, understand them and re-write them from scratch, but don't copy snippets or sentences otherwise you run the risk of coming under the watchful eye of the Google Farmer algorithm - and you definitely don't want that!

Regards,

Andy

Would you like to PM me the details so I can see exactly what you mean Polly? It's a little awkward to advise without examples sometimes.

-Andy

What is the reason for doing this? What are you wanting to achieve?

Imagine if you are Google - ask yourself "does this look natural to me?"

As a one-off site, then not much of a problem - but 100+ sites? Especially when you look at the sites themselves - as you say, all keyword rich. I can't imagine Google would look at this and consider it natural.

-Andy

Hi,

Google is pretty smart, so it knows that when someone types 'Voucher Codes', that is can also mean 'Coupons', 'Promo Codes', 'Discount Codes', et al.

I would be looking to create as much great content as you can and in that content, do some keyword research and use these variants to help Google understand more about the page.

That is a very simplistic way of looking at it because you also need to look at primary and supplementary content and how you distinguish yourselves as a specialist site.

Have a look at MOZ's Keyword Tool to help with the keyword research.

-Andy

Amen to that!

Click on my name and then use the 'private message this user' button towards the bottom on the left.

-Andy

The hash tag means that the page wont be indexed by Google and therefore, carry no page rank. It is like it is invisible. Just launch the new pages because Google will have never seen the current ones.

-Andy

Hi,

You never want to create multiple pages that are too similar as this will probably result in a penalty.

The best way to do this is to create your main page and then talk about the different aspects of the content and you can use these variants in there - but don't keyword stuff. Use a word or phrase if it fits, but never just try to shoehorn it in.

However, if they are very similar, you might not even need to do this because Google is good at knowing which words are similar and if your pages are good enough, it will see this.

-Andy

Move on or find one who takes bribes

To be honest, I have had no job getting sites in there for a long time now. Plus, it isn't the authority it once was.

Andy

Hi David,

Very difficult to say with any degree of certainty. There is so many reason why this could be but if you are seeing the drop in rankings on a desktop machine rather than mobile, it won't be the mobile algorithm.

When did you first see the drop? What are you using to do your tracking? Have you made any changes to the site recently or undertaken any off-site work such as link building?

Cheers,

Andy

That will teach me to skim read

Perhaps trying a different 301 plugin will help? Alternatively, you can pretty much redirect anything from within .htaccess.

This page on Webmaster World might be worth reading.

-Andy

I would check to make sure there is nothing else that is leaking non-www pages through. It does happen if an .htaccess rule isn't correct, for example.

Do you have Screaming Frog? Download it and just run your site through it to see if you can find anything.

-Andy

I tried to become an editor some time ago and never went anywhere - this was mainly down to the fact application mails bounced.

Hi Christian,

It's a little difficult to say what might be going on without being able to actually see the site. You are welcome to PM me this or post it here and I will gladly take a look for you.

Should I fear that this will harm my SEO efforts? It all depends. If your site has indeed been hacked, you need to find out what has happened (and how it happened). What did you build the site in?

-Andy