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It is still possible it isn't a penalty from one of the major algorithms and you may be able to solve this by creating a strong internal linking strategy. It helps to formulate one if you use something like MindNode to create an overview of the site and then you can drill in on the pages in questions.

It is possible that a noindex would cure this, but it all depends because even though you add a noindex tag to a page, Google can still read the page and apply the penalty. All it means is that the page won't be indexed.

However, if you are relaunching everything very soon, you might be as well to sit tight and not do anything too rash for a short-term solution.

-Andy

Ah sorry, I misunderstood the Title for meaning ALT text.

It is important to try and be as unique as possible with the page title. It can lead you into duplication problems, but more than that, you can fall into Keyword Duplication (cannibalisation) issues. This is where Google doesn't know which page to rank for a particular phrase.

The best way around this, is to come up with a naming strategy, where you can substitute words for something unique to the page.

For example "Buy Mona Lisa prints online" could be made up of "Buy <title>prints online" and you substitute the <title> for that particular image name.</p> <p>Of course, this just an example of how it works, and you can create a number of different templates to use. It is a good way to avoid having everything look and sound the same.</p> <p>-Andy</p></title>

That's something you want to avoid if you can. There is no substitute for an HTML based website.

Whilst we understand Google can see certain aspects of a Flash file, it will be a long way from what you can achieve if you avoid it.

Regards,

Andy

I have yet to see Google index every page of a site. They tend not to index pages that they don't think meet the criteria, so unless it was something like 90% weren't being indexed, I wouldn't worry about it. There are so many reasons that Google won't index a page.

You will also find that over time, if Google attributes more trust to the site, that more pages will be indexed.

Of course, you can do things to improve your changes, such as making sure Google can crawl all pages, check to see there are no bottlenecks anywhere and the big one - make sure your content is amazing. As long as the site is the best it can be, over time the number of indexed pages will increase.

Remember - the sitemap is not a guarantee that pages will be indexed. It just helps Google crawl your site.

-Andy

You don't need to worry about the page title and URL matching exactly. Google doesn't give any inherent SEO boost to sites that have URL's and titles that match.

That said, there are most certainly benefits to having a good URL structure. It will help with usability and can help with click through rates, which in a roundabout way, can impact your positions.

An an example, if you look at the following, what do they say to you?

• ../armani/emporioarmani/suits   <-- This tells me all I need to know about the page I am on
• ../product/cat63/23487HA.html    <-- This tells me absolutely nothing useful

"...am considering whether we need to get it locked down so that if the page title is amended (only in a minor way) it does not also change the URL."

This would be fine to do. However, you don't want to go changing your page titles frequently. Pick a format that you are happy with and try to stick with it. Only change this if something significant on the page also changes that would call for rewording.

-Andy

Hi James,

Thanks for clearing that up - I don't like to assume and get anything wrong

For this, you want to use rel="alternative" hreflang"nnnn". This will allow you to serve up duplicate content to different locations. Google goes into this in more detail here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

It has been introduced to help exactly this sort of problem.

I hope it helps.

-Andy

Hi Amelia,

Which version of the site is it that has been verified in Webmaster tools? Google will see each as a separate site, so my guess will be that you need to choose the https.

-Andy

Do you mean from a penalty point of view?

Google can still crawl and see what is on a page with a noindex flag, but it just won't index it. It doesn't guarantee that duplicate content won't still be an issue for you. This is one of those areas when it comes to Panda that people try. Some just noindex pages and have success with them, others need to remove them altogether.

-Andy

I would second Justin's recommendation of the attribution builder rather than using URL shorteners.

-Andy

Hi,

There is no problem with international SEO and duplicate content, as long as you follow the rules around this. Start by reading this checklist from MOZ as it will give you a great grounding.

I would also read this article from Google as this will walk you through what you need to do.

HREFLANG will be used to explain to Google about international pages with duplicate content.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

If your site is built in Wordpress, this is very easy to do as you set this in the advanced page options when using Yoast SEO's plugin.

If not, then you need to add the following code into the section of your site:

name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow" > or <meta <span class="webkit-html-tag">name="robots" content="index, nofollow" ></meta <span>

You can also find more help on this here

-Andy

You can prevent Google from crawling the site through the robots.txt rather than the .htaccess Will.

-Andy

Hi Tej,

Moz have a best practice guide on redirects here, but the general rule of thumb is that a 301 is used for most scenarios where a permanent redirect is required. This also passes more link juice than a 302, which is generally used for temporary redirects, and passes no link juice.

In terms of SEO, a 301 is almost always the preferred option because of the benefits in helping a site retain a more natural flow of link juice.

-Andy

The only think I can see that is missing, is a self rel=canonical to the home page. I would have this as a matter of course.

I also can't do a quick crawl on the site as I am getting a 403 Denied error.

-Andy

It's a pretty straight forward 'no' Tyson. If all that is used that is the same is the theme, there is no penalty to be handed out here.

If they are concerned about it, tell them to change their theme, but you don't need to worry about this at all

-Andy

Hi Aron,

I think I have misunderstood your question. Apologies for that.

It sounds like a bit of tweaking is required for the menu. Is the site built in Wordpress? I have encountered this as well and I had to set the menu links to custom URL's and then add some code to the .htaccess file as well.

Are you able to give an example of the URL after you click a link? If should (I assume) scroll down to that part of the page instead? PM me here if you wish and I will be happy to take a look.

-Andy

If it's that you have both www & non-www versions of your site, you need to do this through the .htaccess file. Have a look at this page for some info on how to create a bit of code to add in there. This link is assuming you want the www version of the site to be the one you use.

http://dense13.com/blog/2008/02/27/redirecting-non-www-to-www-with-htaccess/

-Andy

Should we even have a /en-us/ version when our root domain is the default version, in english, and targeted to US primarily?

Hi Andrew,

The general rule of thumb here, is if your target is the US and language English, then this should sit at the root of the site rather than within a location identifier - so from what you say, this is implemented incorrectly.

Correct this and it should correct your issues.

However, you will need to set some 301's so that any pages that are indexed under /en-us/ will forward on to the new and correct URL.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Hi Richard,

Currently all iPad's will be reported in that format. I am sure that Google will get around to changing this at some point, but for now, you can't tell orientation.

Also, unless there has been a very recent change, you aren't likely to see a different resolution either (1536x2048 for retina for example).

-Andy

Can you PM me the URL Aron? I could do with seeing exactly what is going on.

-Andy