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That's really helpful

Many thanks for taking the time

Ash

Hi Roman

Thank you for your help.

Im looking at the speed issue as well.

None of our pages have the canonical tag on them - why is this so important?

Ash

Thank you for your detailed answer, its much appreciated.

Our site is www.over50choices.co.uk is well established with a national presence.

We have 5 or 6 "cornerstone" products and until recently have been successful with most of them through natural search, we do v little PPC.

We have seen "funeral plans" and "over 50 life insurance" rankings drop from top half of page 1 to bottom/page 2 positions which of course impacts our earnings.

Our site has always been set up in the way that you suggest, so the reason for my questions are because we have been looking at ways to squeeze every last bit of juice we can and more  recently have read about the importance of internal links, so was keen to understand whether the sidebar site wide links was not the most effective way to structure the site going forwards?

They have always been there but if google has changed the rules recently i was wondering whether this is what could be hurting us.

We have started a review of internal links for these products as we have so many and the early findings are that we could do with some tidying up but nothing major.

All of our other long tail keywords are still performing well, so its just the big keywords that generate a lot of our income that have dropped.

Does this info help shed any more light on why they may have dropped?

Thanks

Ash

Hi most of our pages are rated as "medium" for optimisation by the google page speed tool and with an average speed of 2.5 seconds compared to my competitors whose pages are rates as "fast" and have a speed of less than 1 second!

We use the DNN platform & my web dev has said that he cant squeeze anymore from the platform and that to get the same speed as my competitors will need a platform development which it out of our control.

My question is, is it worth moving our site to another platform that can achieve these fast speeds or is the difference between medium and fast not worth it - i am mainly looking at it from a google ranking signal perspective.

Ash

Yes its in the sidebar.

Just to clarify then, having say 300 links all with the same anchor text and most with an exact match to the main keyword/product is ok ?

Also if say i have an internal link in the main body of content for one of the pages linked that is also in the sidebar which will google take as the primary link eg sidebar link is "over 50 life insurance" and link in page content is "compare life insurance" both going to the same page?

Ash

HI Roman

Thank you for your answer.

We also have site wide "Quick Links" boxes on most pages where we have a list of anchor text with links eg

• Equity Release Calculator
• Compare funeral plans
• Affordable Health Insurance
• Over 50 Life Insurance

These are in addition to on page text links.

So google will see hundreds of links coming in to these key pages all with the same anchor text - should we continue with this or remove them?

Regards

Ash

Hi our site is set up typically for a key product (money page) with 6 to 12 cluster pages, with a few more associated blog pages.

If for example the key product was "funeral plans" what percentage of the internal anchor text links should be an exact match?

Will the prominence of those links eg higher up the page have an impact on the amount of juice flowing?

And do links in buttons count in the same way as on page anchor text eg "compare funeral plans"?

Many thanks
Ash

Hi

Just using the new Moz Link Explorer which has revealed a load of spammy back links at 70% plus that we know nothing about, here are just a few:

http://rre.eiftcom.press/files/images/sunlife-insurance-logo.html

http://zsa.eiftcom.press/files/images/sun-life-insurance-logo.html

http://www.hak660.com/quotesquotesscottish-funeral-quotes.html

http://picphotos.net/life-insurance-in-your-50s/

When you visit these pages they all say site unavailable.

Will this be hurting our site?

How do i remove them?

Many thanks

Ash

Thanks Umar

It would appear looking at the threads you provided that I cant use the Trustpilot review scores in schema mark up as they are from a 3rd party & google only allows onsite reviews to be displayed via markup................doesnt explain my competitor at Golden Charter is displaying stars in SERPs as they have no onsite reviews!

Which means that i will have to set up a separate method, which will duplicate the Trustpilot work, to capture directly reviews from customers.

Why is like never easy!!

Ash

Hi we have excellent Trustpilot reviews & want to know if we can include these in schema markup in order for the results to show in SERPs?

The Trustpilot results show in PPC but not SERPs.

A competitor looks to have no Trustpilot or other independent reviews but is showing 5 stars in SERPs, i also cant find any customer reviews on their site, it looks to be just coding that is driving the SERPs view?

Their site is goldencharter.co.uk

Any thoughts much appreciated

Thanks

Ash

Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs?

I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site.

Thanks

Ash

Hi Andy all pages indexed, i have set up a new alert for this one, so will be interesting to see when it pops up!

Thanks for the advice

Ash

Well i checked this and nothing i showing and yet i created a link about 4 weeks ago - perhaps it needs a little longer!

Thanks Andy, Would you expect pages to have been crawled that were linked 4 to 8 weeks ago or is that still in the hands of the spiders?

Ash

Hi I know that GWT's will not show all my links but is there a 3rd party (other than Moz of course!) tool that will?

And how quickly should they show up?

Thanks

Ash

Hi Kristina thanks for your response - looks like i will just have to be more patient!!

Thanks

Ash

HI thanks for this - i have tried all of that stuff!

I was hoping that as the meta title was being found as "form" instead of the correct meta title that this was indicating something technically was wrong?

Thanks

Ash

A week ago i accidentally changed this page settings in my CMS to "disable & dont index" as i was going to replace this page with another, but this didnt happen, but i forgot to switch the settings back!

http://www.over50choices.co.uk/funeral-planning/funeral-plans

Anyhow in an effort to get it back up quickly i submitted in GWTs but its still not indexed.

When i use several SEO on page checking tools it has the Meta Title data as "Form" and not the correct title.

Any ideas please?

Yours frustrated

Ash

Thanks David

3 to 1 is a massive difference, certainly confirms i need to do it!

Ash

The blog is part of my business site, but are my personal views and advice for the target market I am in.