Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Have you tried SEMrush and Sistrix? Both offer very usable data.

I'm sure there are others but these are the two that I use right now.

-Andy

Quite honestly, I would never use a canonical to point to a page that no-one can navigate to. If I were Google, I would look at this and wonder if it was a recommended page, why then was this not the one people can just click on.

Andy

"My gut tells me no because helping people with student debt is what we do"

Well, is it being done for links? This is something that is quite a common link building tactic, so Google are probably already on to it. That said, you can always request any links to be nofollowed - that should stop Google seeing it as a link tactic.

It does fall within the darker side of link building as it isn't really an editorially gained link - other sites have been penalised for 'buying-links-in-a-not-really-buying-links' manner before.

-Andy

Hi Bob,

The best strategy is to have something that people want to link to. Give them a reason to talk about and then reach out to those who might be interested.

However, don't be put off by no-follow links, as they still provide a benefit - just not link juice.

You could also look at cocitations, mentions and social sharing. All will be a huge benefit to anyone looking to gain more exposure. Do you have a product that is only sold to a particular demographic? Look at how you can tap into specialist sites, magazines and look to create studies or articles that either haven't been done before, or make a past study even better.

There are so many things you can do, that it makes it a little awkward to list them all here, but I hope this will be of help.

-Andy

Hi,

Absolutely! If you think about it, if you see a title that doesn't fit and you only see half a message, then you are unlikely to click on it. You can miss off important messages to help people make an informed decision and pass up opportunities for SEO.

-Andy

If you have a chance to request a few deep links, then this is always a good thing. Just make it worthwhile for visitors and try not to have keyword rich anchor text pointing back.

Andy

Hi,

With it having been a manual link penalty, I would say that you need to concentrate on some new quality links, rather than op-page items. However, just make sure you don't fall into any dangerous traps - you don't want to risk any more penalties.

-Andy

Hi,

First of all, you should be aware that SEMRush changed their algorithm a week or so ago and a client of mine also saw the same issue. They have really set the bar low when it comes to showing this factor now, to the point I don't agree with it.

However, I would use this as a signal just to allow you to see if the content is lacking a little on the page, rather than worrying if it will affect SEO. Of course, if you have a page with no content, this is bad for both usability and SEO, but text / HTML ratio isn't a direct ranking signal. See it as more of an indicator to see if the code can be cleaned and to help increase page load times.

There is never any harm in trying to speed up your pages either. If you think that some of the code is slowing things down, then look at how this can be improved. You can always do more to better the user experience, and with that will come indirect SEO improvements.

Write amazing content for your pages (where possible) and don't worry too much about text / HTML ratio. I know which one Google will be paying more attention to

-Andy

You are fine using any of them and it's down to personal preference, although I use a pipe because it is clearer when looking at the title. It also depends on the Title as well - sometimes a pipe won't do the job and you need to use a comma.

Also, including current month and year with Title tag and it will change every month. Its means every month our title is changed

I would try to avoid this. You don't want the same page title to keep changing. By all means add something to the page that states when it was last updated, but I wouldn't use the Page Title for this.

-Andy

Something of a sticky one, because Juhn Mueller said:

“We don’t have a duplicate content penalty. It’s not that we would demote a site for having a lot of duplicate content.

So to answer your question:

I was wondering if there are actually any penalties for this

No - there isn't one.

This doesn't mean that duplication is not going to result in a penalty for another reason though. Too much duplication may result in a page quality issue that triggers a different penalty. Too much is also not good for a user experience, but that all depends on where / what content is duplicated.

Have a read of this article over at Hoboweb as there is a ton of great information there.

-Andy

Hi Patrick,

First of all, visit Google and follow their guide. This will provide you with everything you need to know and there are even more very good considerations here.

Check everything and then check it again. Make sure with Wordpress that images reference https, not http, as this is a common issue. I have also seen the same with how Google Fonts are referenced.

Going to be purchasing a Domain Validated SSL... Is there any advantage to an Extended Validated SSL in Google's eye/mind?

No, nothing in doing this.

Should we expect rank decrease or increase?

You should expect an increase, but there is absolutely no guarantee of this, and if so, by how much.

When the move is complete, check your pages that show (if any) a warning triangle as this denotes a page issue. You find this in the developer console in Chrome (Inspect Element --> Console). This will tell you where issues lie.

Finally, make sure you set your site to https://www.site.com from http://www.site.com

-Andy

So, site 1 redirects to site 2 at the moment, and they want to relaunch with site 1 again? Well, there is no reason you can't do that - just remember to remove the redirect from site 1 to site 2 before swapping them about.

You will also want to tell Google about the change of URL with their Change of Address Tool. Remember to redirect internal pages too.

However, I can't say with any certainty, what will happen with search positions after this has been done. Google may have no problem with it, or there may be some movement while everything is being crawled again.

-Andy

Hi Kosta,

You have to understand that all metrics that belong to MOZ, will have no bearing on search results that you see in Google. Just because a site has a higher DA / PA or features well in the page grader, is just MOZ telling you, based on what they know, how you are doing. It gives you a very good grounding into changes on your page that should be made, but this is far from the final stroke in being listed.

You will find that so many other aspects will be coming in to play, such as content, brand / site trust, use of keywords, etc. Then you also have to consider why Google isn't favouring your site as much - any penalties, poor backlinks, poor content, poor trust, etc.

You also have to look at the other sites that are competing for his phrase and understand what they are doing and why they are featuring above you as well.

Not an easy one to just say "do this" because I doubt very much it is just one aspect.

-Andy

I wish to add my two-penneth in here...

Link building has changed hugely over the last few years and to the point, I am actually going to be dropping this as an offering within my consultancy services. Link building should really now be tied in to a bigger service / article marketing production plan.

Of course, there are some sites / areas where you might still be able to go out and build natural links, but these are going to decrease over time. Google now wants to see a fantastic site with outstanding content. The happier your visitors, the happier Google will be.

Content, content, content - focus heavily on creating something not seen on your competitors sites and market that through as many channels as you can.

-Andy

Ah sorry, I missed that bit Marco.

When Google drop pages from the index, it can be for a whole host of reasons. However, Google never indexed 100% of pages (or very, very rarely). If you were at 95% and now at 75%, then this would suggest to me that Google has either lost some level of trust in the pages or you will just have to wait until the pages are re-indexed and Google has decided what to do with them again.

I would be tempted to wait for a little bit as over time, you should see pages being re-indexed again. If you have already re-submitted the sitemap, just make sure there is no problem with that - rebuild it and then re-submit if you haven't already, just to be sure.

-Andy

Matt Cutts (from Google) actually said on video that links like these are the sort of links that they don't want to see from sites. A link should have a reason to be there and Google's algorithms will have ways to determine which these are.

You might also want to watch this new video from Matt on paid links.

-Andy

Hi Oxana,

It is best practice to focus one page to a keyword. This is what will prevent you falling foul of issues.

However, I wouldn't use the same phrase for everything. When crafting a good page, you need to take an informative view of the results in the SERPs. When someone sees the page, the title should tell them exactly what they can expect to find. If it is information on a gold iPhone 6, then say this. If it is to try and get someone to buy one, say this.

• Buy 24k gold iphone 6 | Site name
• 24k gold iphone 6 information | Site name

You get the gist.

Then look at the description. Remember to keep this informative as this is often the precursor to someone clicking on your link.

Within the page, don't use the exact same phrase (24k gold iphone 6) as an H1 or as the ALT tag. You can get caught out for boilerplate template if you carry the same across other key factors, and Google will be watching for this. There is no harm in mentioning a gold iPhone 6, but be descriptive in how you do it.

Use it in the content, but don't overuse it. Google is very good at understanding what a page is all about without them having it stuffed down their throat.

Remember, you are writing for the visitor, not Google. There is a lot more to the visitor experience than SEO alone.

-Andy

No problem with doing this at all. I have also worked with a client who had a large number of pages and they came down from about 170,000 to just under 2,000 and the result was a good one. This was also to combat Panda.

However, when redirecting, take care not to just redirect every one of the 3m pages to the same places. If you can't find a good and relevant match for a 301, then just 404 it. it is much better to have a 404 than poor redirects. I would also review your 404 page to make sure it is user friendly and helps people navigate to something better.

Best of luck.

-Andy

Hi Kay,

If you want to disallow access to a page, then add the following to the Robots.txt file:

Disallow: /quickView

Then test this in Webmaster Tools.

If you want to tell Google not to index a page, then you need to do this at the page level using Meta Robots. However, don't do both (at least not at the same time). If you disallow access to a set of pages via Robots.txt and then at a later stage you Meta Noindex, Google won't see this because of the Disallow in the Robots.txt.

It really depends what you are trying to achieve, but it sounds like the Meta Robots is the way to go for you.

-Edit... here is an interesting read for you.

-Andy

Hi,

John Mueller from Google recently answered this question at a Webmasters Hangout and his view was that if you have a few of the same brands, like 4-5, that are all related, owned by you and you are just showing people your own network, that there isn't much of an issue doing this at all. Add the links into the footer was also not a problem, as was not needing to add no-follow to them.

However, problems might occur if there are more if it looks like they were being done to try and gain SEO benefits (i.e Link Building).

-Andy