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Let's say they do, but does that mean you stand a better chance to rank higher than a competitor who uses hyphens? If hyphens represent spaces, and a user searches chanel number 5, doesn't that mean a website that has the url chanel-number-5.html might rank better than chanelnumber5.html.

Similar to a human, it would be easier to read chanel-number-5 than chanelnumber5.

So even if the bot reads a url without a hyphen, a competitor with a hyphen might edge out.

That's my two cents

• Have you seen websites use double dashes?

A single dash has become norm and users read it and use it that way, but a double dash is outside the norm in my opinion and you could end up with a lot of incorrect backlinks. A customer might type the URL with a single dash and end up with a 404 page for instance.

Absolutely, as Don and Monica have raised, your unique content is outweighed by your "duplicate" content.

Get some more rich text. For instance, put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think about content that would make you buy the product with NO DOUBTS!

• Things like testimonials/reviews will aid the user
• Why not introduce some protocols or tips to make the content different?
• More images with optimised file names and alt tags (don't just name images 187041111-370_370.jpg!)
• How about a short description of the product on top under the title and then a descriptive unique one further into the page? It helps spiders crawl your keywords early, it sells the product in a instant to users and it enriches the page.

It's no different to real world. In the real world a user might do research before making the purchase instore, why not offer that research on your page itself to re-affirm this is the product you want and in turn make your page a more optimised one?

When it comes to backlinking, I can offer a suggestion. Get a list of competitors and use opensiteexplorer. You will be able to see what websites your competitors have content on and are generating backlinks from.

Now go through that list and identify the top level domains and see if you can also produce a high quality content they would link to. A great inforgraphic, or top tip article, something users will find relevant and useful.

I would suggest that as a start, It's something I've started doing but the key in my mind is not to spam but build reputable links that resonate with your company.

How the hell does a tool like similarweb pro work though, it says it will show you organic keywords that drive traffic.

Moz does offer a report I find useful, it's the landing page report. Search>>Landing Pages. You feed keywords and Moz will tell you which URL and how much traffic your keywords might be driving to that page.

It's a great way to find out what keywords might be driving traffic and then "optimize" your page for that keyword.

Thanks EGOL, I didn't think about using rel=canonical on htaccess. Great idea

I don't think see my PDFs show up for a search term when my HTML pages are being displayed.

However, there was a situation when a PDF was displayed and I created a HTML page of it and set up redirects from the PDF to the HTML page. I followed that up by reuploading the PDF as a new URL and offering to download. That way I transfered the rank juice to the HTML page.

In a nutshell, no I don't see my PDFs outranking my HTML pages, but I do know my PDFs are indexed and I don't know if they show up  for a different search term.

I guess my main question is, would not indexing them open up the chance for more backlinks to your HTML page and not the PDF? And in Google's eyes, it won't debate over which to display, the HTML page or PDF as both have the same content.

Maybe I'm over thinking and the straight answer is, if a HTML page exists, Google won't give preference to the PDF but in the event there is no HTML, the PDF is shown

Yeah, we offer the same. The user is able to download the PDF or have it open in a new window. I haven't seen Google automatically present my PDF and so far my searches have shown my HTML page, but my question to Cole remains, could Google be comparing the PDF and HTML page with each other? What if in a search situation it would prefer showing the PDF higher than the HTML page?

On your next question, I don't get duplicate warning for PDF. I believe the PDFs are indeed being indexed as the text is readable. How well are they being indexed? I've got close to 22,000 search results for my subdomain so yeah, they are indexed.

I do have rel-canonical tags on the HTML page, but can't appear it on the PDF as it's a file and not a page.

Thanks for the replies

Cole - Google indexed our PDFs though. I tested this by doing a site:domain.com search term, and then a site:static.domain.com search term search.

Result:

site:static.domain.com search term

Google showed me the PDF document that is available for download from the HTML page that ranks high for that search term search.

So Google is indexing both the PDF and HTML. To answer your question as to why I don't want them indexed.. Well, my thinking was. If the PDF appears and if someone backlinks to it, I rather get that backlink to the HTML page. PDFs are hosted on my subdomain and I don't want the subdomain to get the rank. Back of my head, I'm also debating, whether my PDF and HTML are competing with each other?

Our product pages generate a PDF version of the page in a different layout. This is done for 2 reasons, it's been the standard across similar industries and to help customers print them when working with the product.

So there is a use when it comes to the customer but search? I've thought about this a lot and my thinking is why index the PDF at all? Only allow the HTML page to be indexed. The PDF files are in a subdomain, so I can easily no index them. The way I see it, I'm reducing duplicate content

On the flip side, it is hosted in a subdomain, so the PDF appearing when a HTML page doesn't, is another way of gaining real estate. If it appears with the HTML page, more estate coverage.

Anyone else done this? My knowledge tells me this could be a good thing, might even iron out any backlinks from being generated to the PDF and lead to more HTML backlinks

Can PDFs solely exist as a form of data accessible once on the page and not relevant to search engines. I find them a bane when they are on a subdomain.

No problem, Moz can highlight duplicate content for you. Run a crawl diagnostic and review the report.

• Can you reduce the duplicate content by turning it into a footer link? For instance, you could move the entire 'about the company' tab to a link in the footer that links to an about us page. I've seen plenty of sites that focus on product pages that link out to specific pages like 'terms and conditions, about' and only keep what is relevant to the customer on the page
• No need to spam pages with content for the sake of content. It's about placing content that is relevant. Quality over quantity.
• Let the unique product descriptions, titles, headers, images, image tags, seo friendly urls, breadcrumbs and a good sitemap help you structure the pages correctly. You will start seeing improvements.
• Throw in a valuable blog focused on your area that users will find useful to build quality external links and you will further benefit.
• Better yet, look at moving your site to HTTPS, Google recently announced they value sites that move to HTTPS. You have an e commerce site, it will help

Sometimes google will change the description and title depending on the search term. I believe this is what is happening. You searched for the URL and it changed the meta description.

here's a screenshot of your page when I searched site:bestathire.co.uk 1648

http://imgur.com/kmfPcTC

As you can see, your meta description is appearing correctly. Google's Structured Testing tool is also showing the schema

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bestathire.co.uk%2Fproducts%2Fview%2F1648%2FCarpet_Cleaner_Domestic

What I also spotted on Google is duplicate content indexed in Google

• http://www.bestathire.co.uk/products/view/1648/Carpet_Cleaner_Domestic
• http://www.bestathire.co.uk/thanks/1648/8845/DIY_tools_equipment/Cleaning_equipment/Carpet_cleaners

Hope that helps. You can also tag your page using Google Webmaster tools >>Search Appearance>>Data Highlighter.

Hope that helps

Agree with Chris and Moosa's points. The following worked for me

• Schema
• Create meta descriptions that will encourage click throughs. For a product page, our meta description summed up what the product did  and the ranges we offered. It led to more clicks.

Thanks Everett,

• Rel="canonical" is in place, so that's covered
• The urls with the parameter are only accessible if you want to directly access a particular size. If you are on the default page and switch sizes from the dropdown, no URL change is presented.
• I have left webmaster to decide what should be crawled or not. The parameter has been mentioned though.

Thank you Celilcan2,

• I'll set it up as 'yes' and it  'narrows'  the page
• What is the perk of doing this though? Will Google not count anything after the parameter as something or value, it would focus on just the single URL?

I've been working on removing duplicate content on our website. There are tons of pages created based on size but the content is the same.

The solution was to create a page with 90% static content and 10% dynamic, that changed depending on the "size" Users can select the size from a dropdown box.

So instead of 10 URLs, I now have one URL.

• Users can access a specific size by adding an anchor to the end of the URL (?f=suze1, ?f=size2)

For e.g:

Old URLs.

• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size2
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size3
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size4
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size5

New URLs

• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size2
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size3
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size4
• www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?f=size5

Do search engines read the anchor or drop them? Will the rank juice be transfered to just www.example.com/product-alpha-size1?

Thanks Richard!

I used to have a chrome add-on to see the cached text version of a website. I lost it and was wondering if anyone knew an alternative or a good add-on

Cyto

The page looks to have loaded now, it was indeed a speed issue. It is loading quick now.

Thanks for fixing!