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An error in the crawler is a possiblity. Although i'm not that familiar with the MOZ-crawler so i have to be careful

Have you considered issues where the URL is not actually written back to back in the code where you can see it? But where the crawler might get the impression that it has to written back to back? For instance in JavaScript/jQuery or similar techniques?

Good luck!
Bas

Hi Paul,

I agree with Nicolas: not reaching the desired results in the SERP's can be quite a few things.

Also: you wrote that the site is has no penalties because you don't see any in the Google Console. Is there a chance that you might have had a penalty? If it has been your site all the time you should know i guess.

Why not turn this around: start over, read up on SEO-blogs and sites like this. See what is necessary to get your site te rank high in the SERP's.

Create kick-ass content
For instance: Start by creating VERY cool landingpages for long tail keywords. Wait some time and see what they do: are you able to rank that way? Not: then figure out what might be the cause of that. Maybe you do have a penalty..

In case you start moving up in the rank, copy the concept and create more unique and cool landing pages. For long tail keywords and this time for competitive keywords as well.

Links
Also: check your link profile. Make sure you can be found where your potential visitors are looking for you. Create backlinks. NOT in a spammy way! Just make sure you haven't missed a webpage that would make sense for you to be mentioned as well.

Social media
Every time you have created cool new content, make a very cool post for social media. Share it on Facebook and make sure people will share your post as well.

Hang in there!
Keep this going for some time and you will see result. More direct visitors thru the links, social media mentions and Google of course.

Just a couple of tips that you maybe able to use.

Good luck and: have fun!
Bas

Hi Chloe,

I agree with Tim: concentrate on producing awesome content for the main site.

Just redirect the other domains to your main site.

Greets,
Bas

Hi Derek,

Could you please tell us if i have answered your question? If so, please mark the answer. It's nice to get some credits for the work

Thanks very much.
Bas

Hi Marc,

Could you please tell us if Caro of i have answered your question? If so, please mark the answer. It's nice to get some credits for the work we've both put into this

Thanks very much.
Bas

Hi Kjersti,

Ok, so: Google likes unique content that is original and has added value. This content is probably the same for all installers. Perhaps they have placed to logo of the installer in the top.

Copying it to your domain doesn't make it different from all the other installer-pages on the original domain. If that is the case, i would leave it at that domain. It has no positive effect on your client's site.

What you can do is write great articles on the domain of your client. Take the pages from the supplier as an example and write articles that are much better. More added value, easier to read AND: fun or exciting to read.

That way, you produce original content that visitors will want to read. Word for word. Perhaps they will even share it on their social media accounts. This way: you make this site stronger and will almost certainly improve the position in the SERP's. If people are actually starting to share these articles in social media, you will also improve the local visibility of your client.

Greets,
Bas

Hi Jason,

Could it be that someone accidentally has written the URL this way? Perhaps you have someone working on the content for this site who wrote the URL this way?

Do you also have this error in other tools, like Google Webmaster Tools?

Greets,
Bas

Hi Kjersti,

Since the content of the microsite is not on your domain, Google won't credit you for that content. Meaning: you don't have to expect your site to get a higher ranking due to this content.

As long as you don't have the same content on your own domain as well, you won't get a penalty either.
So: all in all, for now i cannot see how this content will impact your search results. In a positive or negative way.

If you wanted to rank higher you would have to have this content on your domain.
Please pay attention: make sure you only hare original content on every domain you work for! Just copy this content and place it on the clients domain won't work and might even backfire.

If you want, you can read an article i've recently written. The article is my analysis of what great content nowadays is. It's in Dutch so i can image you'd have to use Google Translate.
https://www.3pix.nl/e-commerce/website-optimalisatie-2016-prikkelindex/

Does this help you?

Greets,
Bas

Try to put that .htaccess on the old site. It will rewrite the asked URL before it can be processed by the server. It will rewrite the request to contain the new domain.

On the new domain, you already have the code to process these requests.

Try that and report back. It probably works after that.

Ok, just to be sure: you have placed this .htaccess on the old site. Right?

If that is the case and you've pasted the exact code i mentioned, then something else might be causing the issue.

Also: be sure to try this with a browser that hasn't visited the site in a while. It happens to me sometimes that the browser will simply remember the redirect and not follow the .htaccess.

Hope any of this helps!

Andrew is right: Yoast uses different code for breadcrumbs.

I would start searching inside the theme-files for:
"void(null);" or "void(" or "ilny-breadcrumbs"

That should give you a clue to where the code actually is inside your theme.

To show the difference: Yoast's plugin produces code like this:

NAME OF THE PAGE

Hope this helps a bit as well.

Bas

Ok so i had to test this one because i wasn't sure but you would have to remove "$1" from the last line.

That piece actually will add the file path of the original domain and add it to the domain you are redirecting the visitor to.

So this "www.myoldsite.com/my-page/"
Will become "www.mynewsite.com/my-page/"

Since you want it this way:
Old URL: "www.myoldsite.com/my-page/"
New URL: "www.mynewsite.com/"

Removing the "$1" should do the trick.

Is this an answer to your question?

Bas

Well: like i said: it's better to have 'natural anchors'. So, yes, you can score with a different anchor text.

Say for example: you wouldn't tell anyone to which page they would have to link to and what anchor or IF they need to use an anchor text. In this case: the inlinks and anchor texts would probably be very 'natural'. Meaning: all different.

In that you will very probably gain DA or PA with these inlinks.

It's not only the anchor text, or the source URL, or the relevancy of the content of the linking domain to your domain: it's all these and much more combined. The anchor text is only a part of the complete 'calculation'.

To come back to your question if such a link will give you a boost: there is a high probability that it will, no matter what the anchor text is. Since the site that is linking to you is about a similar topic, i would expect a positive effect. Whether you can measure the effect or not depends on a lot of other elements that we (in this forum) don't know.

Of course: a link with an anchor text containing the keyword that you chose to the page you've chosen would be perfect. But that doesn't mean all other combinations are useless. Maybe less effective towards to your personal or business goal. That might be the case.

Does this help you?
Bas

Hi: best to have natural anchor texts. Rand said in one of the Whiteboard Friday videos that it's better to not have all anchor texts the same. That's not natural. Have some variation in anchor texts.

As long as the anchor texts resemble the content and your chosen keyword(s), the anchor text will still push you in the right direction.

Hope that helps.

Bas

Hi Marc,

Changing a URL is like moving your house or office: it can definately be done but you need to think it through. If you just move and don't tell anyone it will be a matter of time before some trouble might start.

Do you have anything in place that will tell Google that you have changed the URL/URL's? Otherwise it will consider the new URL as a completely new page, with a lot less trust than the old URL probably had. The value of the old URL will be lost. Essentially, Google will think you now have two URL's: the old and the new. It won't all of a sudden realise those are the same.

If you have anything in place to tell Google that you have changed the name of the page, the process will go smoother and much better. As soon as Google will visit the old URL, it will be informed of two things:
1. The old URL has been replaced, does not exist anymore and needs to be replaced in the index
2. It knows the new URL right away and will start to replace the old with the new URL and transfer the value of the old URL to the new URL

Every time a page is being loaded, the server will send - amongst others - the source code. And a header code: 200 is everything is OK, 404 is the page cannot be found, 500 is something is wrong with the server, 301 is the URL has changed to something new, etc.

If you don't do anything, Google will read a 404-code and thus think there is an error in your site.

It's better to send a 301-code because that will tell Google that nothing is wrong; you've just changed the URL. It will also tell what the new URL is.

Check out this page for more information about 301 and 302 redirects:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

Does this help you?

Yours,
Bas

Hi,

You have 2 methods that i would use:

Method #1: using .htaccess

Option A: redirect one specific URL to a new specific URL:
_Redirect 301 /old/old.html http://NEWSITE/new.html_

Note: 'old/old.html' has to be without the domain name: so just the directory + page.

Option B: redirect an entire directory to a new specific URL:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^OLDSITE.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.OLDSITE.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://NEWSITE/$1 [L,R=301,NC]

Note: the second line of that example has to be without 'www'.

Method #2: using PHP

If you have one header-file, you can place this code in the top of that php-file:
header( "Status: 301 Moved Permanently" ); header( "Location: http://NEWSITE" ); exit(0); ?>

Would that provide an answer for you?

Yours,
Bas

Indeed: thanks for the update. AngularJS is a great technique but relatively new and so much different from the techniques we've gotten used to working with in the past couple of years that this is an interesting case.

Good luck with the project and cool to see more people using AngularJS!

Hi Robert,

They don't hurt so leave them in place for some time. It might be quite some time before the index is completely as you want it to be. So just let the redirects to their thing just in case Google, Bing, etc keep indexing the old URL's.

Hope that helps.

Bas

Not for me but curious to hear what you are looking for exactly.

Bas

Hi Michael,

Is a .htaccess an option? Mention the URL's by hand or with wildcards and give an 410-header code to make sure search engines know these pages are really gone.

These links might get you started:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33247849/using-htaccess-to-410-any-wildcard-url-that-contains-a-question-mark
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2014/11/http-410-error-pages-htaccess/

Hope that helps.

Bas