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I would start with contacting the developers and ask them if they have any clue about it Daniel. Failing that, without having a good root around, it's hard to say at a glance what is going on. There certainly are a lot of more general site issues.

-Andy

Hi Rich,

Don't nofollow for the sake of it. If a link is paid for, then yes, you should nofollow this, but that is probably one of the very few occasions i would suggest you do it.

Perhaps if you have written a blog post and then were asked to inject a link into it, then I would be tempted to nofollow that, but I wouldn't do it to try and retain link juice - that isn't really a tactic these days.

Google wants to see you link to sites externally, as long as it is called for - this will help show your authority as well.

-Andy

Yes, the common thing to do here is noindex the page but leave is set to Follow.

That said, you shouldn't get a 404 unless the page actually doesn't exist. Can you browse to the category on their website?

There is absolutely no harm in updating those old articles Joris. It is probably still indexed by Google and allows you to easily add in more up to date data.

There are some nice tips in this article here.

-Andy

Confirmation from Google here to limit the links on a page to 3000

https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/news/google-webmaster-hangout-notes-friday-8th-july-2016/

I would consider that to be a lot though

-Andy

Have a look in the header of the category page and see if it says "noindex, follow".

A simple way to check if a page is indexed, is to type    site:www.siteurl.com/category   or whatever the URL to the category page is.

The 404 might just mean the page wasn't available when it was crawled, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. The main thing is the page with your content on is indexed.

-Andy

HI Charles,

If you run down the route of adding additional subfolders, you are very likely to be caught by the new Doorway Page algorithm. if you have pages for pages sake, then it could get messy.

Here is what Google has to say about them.

Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages:

• Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?
• Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
• Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
• Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?
• Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

By the sounds of things, I suspect you would fall into at least one of those grey areas. if they were to be produced, you would have to be able to justify them very well with lots of supporting content that was genuinely useful.

-Andy

I honestly wouldn't worry Becky. The page looks fine, the links look fine and it is certainly not what you would call spammy,

Link crafting was a 'thing' a number of years ago, but today Google pretty much ignores this, as has been shown many times in testing.

However, you can benefit from internal links, but that is a different discussion. Read this if you are interested.

If you are interested, there is a round-table discussion on eCommerce SEO hosted by SEMrush on Thursday and that could be useful to you? Myself and 2 others will be talking on a number of issues.

-Andy

All is fine then. Category pages are very often noindexed to reduce duplication issues, so really don't worry about this. It certainly doesn't sound like there are any penalties going on there.

That said, do a little social activity around your post as well and get it promoted.

-Andy

What you have there is a perfect example of a doorway page and absolutely against Google TOS. Give it time and Google will do something about it.

I would strongly advise against this practice.

-Andy

Hi Dave,

I'm struggling to understand your scenario. So are you looking to have all searches result in landing on pages within one domain, or will they remain on their respective domains?

-Andy

Hi James,

I would never advise that you no-follow internal navigation links to primary pages (main or sub-cat). To things like the contact page, that is fine, but remember that Google wants to be able to navigate cleanly around your site. There are times when you would want to no-follow paginated pages, but this isn't in every circumstance.

Beyond this, it is a little awkward to advise too much more as I would need to be looking at site hierarchy and architecture in more detail.

-Andy

Hi Marco,

It all depends on what you were tracking as phrases before, and now after you have made the changes. If you were tracking for the phrase "Red Sneakers" and changed the title to "Blue Sneakers" then you would expect to see a drop with your original phrase. Have you updated your tracking to compensate for the changes?

-Andy

Hi Chris,

AMP isn't intended for this use. It is only for the likes of blog posts and news articles.

If you want to speed your internal pages up, then you will need to run your site through the Google Page Speed Insights and follow those recommendations.

-Andy

My rule of thumb for guest posting...

If you start with the intention of adding in highly targeted anchor-rich links, you will fail at the first hurdle. You can get away with a URL link, click here, co-citation, but I would only guest post now if I were getting credited as the author. This link would follow through to my Author page on G+.

Co-citations are great you can add surrounding text to a link, but even though the link isn't live, there is still a benefit, and one that isn't going to see you get a penalty.

-Andy

Should I proceed with back linking and adding new content yet (one blog a week and a new review) or hold off for a couple more weeks?

Content - Content - Content...

I have a client who is in the eCig market at the moment and I can tell you that Google doesn't like traditional backlinks for these kinds of sites. This comes from having worked with others in the past too.

You need to be getting inventive and getting some up to date content on there. Setup some alerts from Google based around eCig new, and when it comes through, hop on to your blog and get started with your own version of the news.

Give insights - be controversial - write how-to guides and try and create an air that says "amazing content, oh, and they sell a product", not the other way around. You will be chasing your tail.

Also, don't stop at 500 words - you need to be putting some real time into creating content that will make others (and Google) sit up and take notice.

Then share the sh*t out of it in as many ways as you possibly can. I don't mean spam though - create a few well-thought-out call to actions and use these as a hook.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Hi Brett,

Don't forget to add an images sitemap, as Google is pretty hot on those, and make sure you do some good image marketing as well.

But what you suggest is absolutely fine. From the main Sitemap, Google will find all of the others as well.

Just as a note, do make sure you know which pages need more crawling through using the last modified date. This will help them know which pages they should be recrawling more often.

-Andy

I honestly wouldn't look at PR services to build links Brandon. Google is well on to this one and it could do you more harm than good.

For links, there are hundreds of available tactics that can all help you, without penalty, and like you say, if you build something that people want, you will build links more naturally. Everyone likes a good tool, but the same is also said for great articles, studies and research that might have been done, but perhaps that you can improve on.

The only limitations here, are how creative you can get

-Andy

Hi Becky,

You aren't likely to be penalised for this, but the benefit you can derive from ALT text will be lessened. If the picture is of a floor fan, and the ALT tag says this, there is no problem.

However, I would be saying something like "Metal Blizzard Floor Fan 12" 55W with tilt". It will help because you have more of a chance of it turning up in image searches = more traffic.

-Andy

Hi Ricky,

how can they keep BOTH sites without damaging their SEO efforts

The simple answer to this, is that you can't. If Google catches on with what they are doing, they are likely to get a swift boot. In Google's eyes, they ask they question:

"Why have you got 2 sites when you can say all you need to in just 1?" Keeping both is only to try and game Google and they won't like that.

OK, you could make sure that all content is unique and hope for the best, but long term, this isn't much of a business strategy for them.

Sorry, no solution to this really - at least not a particularly good / safe one.

-Andy