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Hi Yes, there was an issue with my rank tracking software - phew Thank you

I would give it a couple weeks and let google fully recrawl and rerank the pages. This is not uncommon to see rank drops after an https migration but they are usually short lived. How are you monitoring the ranking of these keywords?

Hi Becky Concentrate on the on-page content. If H1 and H2 are properly aligned where H1 virtually copies the page title and H2 are reserved for headings just ensure that you write contextually rich content on the page. The more the better but don't keyword stuff or ramble on for nothing. A shorter page which is engaging, with images and maybe video is better than a long rambling piece that people will bounce off. Regards Nigel

Hi, We are on Magento and moving to https for all URLS soon as well. We have just had them on customer pages, checkout and admin but time to move on. Interesting to read about those database redirects also. We have thousands in place over years as we've tidied up the catalogue and they get automatically created. A few years back I deleted them on a site upgrade and we seemed to take a knock in rankings... but it could have been the new site source code contributing to this also. Things have settled and we have good seo ... but ive concerns over changing to full https...eekkk. What htaccess codes did you use to redirect all existing http urls to the https versions? Was it just something like? RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Your internal link structure does help your rankings, but the way I see this, there's not going to be any change to the pages that are actually ranking, right? If you remove the page that didn't rank for the keywords anyway, It shouldn't impact the rankings of the other pages. There are a couple of factors to take into account when you do this: Don't forget to 301 the link to, for example, the level above, in this case /key/, so that direct/referral traffic to that page doesn't get 404'd. Is there a lot of traffic on the /cupboards-lockers/ page now? If so, how does this traffic behave, does it flow towards the other pages before converting or do they convert on this page? How is the UX (bounce rate, time on page, exit rate etc.)? These factors can help you determine what you should do with which page. Make sure there are no other dead ends in your page: check the sitemap and scrape your site with, for example, Screaming Frog to prevent any 404's from showing up. Make sure there are no products assigned to that page specifically, creating an odd URL structure on product level or a breadcrumb with missing or dead links. Hope this helps!

They are actually upgrading our platform in the next couple of months, so I will be pushing this. Are there any areas (apart from TTFB) I should push? This is really not my area so I'm a bit lost with where to start. I know you mentioned the caching issue - I'll look for your comments and try to review this. Thank you

Great thank you for this! I'll take them on board Becky

Thank you everyone! I should have noticed this, so thanks for pointing it out. Thanks for your help! Becky

Thank you! I'll check this out too

Here's a good guide from moz on this topic. https://moz.com/learn/seo/search-operators

Hi Thanks for this! Yes speed I have also raised with our development team in France - again I have no control over when they work on this or how. I can only make improvements locally. Our site is Key.co.uk I want to get https implemented across the site, but again this relies on our dev team. For 2 years I've focused on properly optimising product titles/meta & descriptions & this has helped but I've hit a wall. Our competitors don't seem to be building backlinks, they don't have more content than us & I just cant find a reason for them ranking so well.

Great thank you!

Hi James, sorry I know we have another similar thread going about this! Not harsh at all - it's something I don't know enough about so need to brush up on. I will do some research on caching mechanisms. Why won't any of my other SEO matter? Becky

We publish all of this content on our own site. We don't syndicate, share, or guest post anything. Instead we promote the library of information on every page of our website, link to it in the persistent navigation, guide customers to it when they write to us for information, feature it in a newsletter that we send every month, and let industry groups know that it is available for viewing on our website. That's what we do.  Our customers and site visitors then share it for us.

In my experiece I created some brand pages related to one of my product, create some trending content and when the page is ranked I merge the old with the new one.

Hi everyone Thank you for your feedback this is really helpful! Is it worth having any placeholder information on the new domain to build up authority whilst we're in the process of the migration? Obviously we don't want it to be duplicate info however so it doesn't have a negative impact. Thank you

There could be multiple reasons for a drop if it is only a small few place drop it could be a competitor has been active recently and forced your to drop or maybe the search engine naturally reshuffling the order. For a larger drop, it could be a blip... don't make a knee jerk reaction and make lots of changes which could make things worse. Give it a few days to see if you bounce back. If you find you do not return to your usual ranking placement, then this could be caused by a larger algorithmic change. I would suggest you track how much you change for specific terms and which pages rank. Also as per Egol has another page replaced your current product - e.g duplicates etc. or has another site caused some sort of content cannibalisation by borrowing your content and replacing you.

Hi Becky It all comes down to intent. Whether you want to attract visitors to your page or your Youtube channel. There is no direct SEO benefit by having a Youtube video on your page, you are essentially adding an outbound link even if it's nofollow - however it does provide really valuable information for the user. If cost is an issue and you feel you have no alternative then I would use a Youtube video. The other benefit is that the video will be seen on that platform, the second biggest search network, and people searching for that product may click a link back to you. So if you are going to add videos to YouTube then make sure they are fully optimised. Fill in the description fully with the a link back to your product page in the first line (It won't help with SEO as they are nofollowed - but it may result in people following the link back to your site) Fully brand the video to heighten your own company's brand awareness - so maybe a 4 second sting at the beginning - then the video then a branded placeholder at the end. Also make sure all of the tags are filled in for search & location etc are filled in advanced options. MOZ use Wistia as a form of self hosting but do in fact put some videos on Youtube some months later. There is a new year video on Youtube - posted in May! (5 months later) - They title the two videos slightly differently so that they get two bites of the cherry for searchers. (Look up 'How To Create An SEO Strategy in 2017) Finally: Note that Zappos do not use Youtube - Kind of says it all really! http://www.zappos.com/p/rockport-essential-details-waterproof-apron-toe-dark-brown/product/8151504/color/325 I hope that helps! Regards Nigel  Carousel Projects

Hi Becky Essentially yes although htaccess is for Apache servers only so check with your developer/platform host that they have been inserted correctly. Then find a few old URLs and satisfy yourself they are redirecting to the new ones, Best Regards Nigel

Perfect, thanks for your feedback We have third party, but I have seen sites which use both third party and google customer reviews. The only thing I am unsure of is, if a customer gets sent 2 emails & ways of leaving feedback it may get confusing... will keep looking into it! Do you have organisation schema or are you just focusing on the local listing?