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Issue 1:

I think your intended ranking page is not indexed.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=site:http:%2F%2Fwww.localsearch.com.au

It's probably because, as Donna indicated, you have so many pages. This happens when you have what are essentially search pages that are indexed. Stuff happens like having a page for plumbing and plumbers in the same city, for example.

In the short term, you can make sure that non-indexed pages are linked to across the site. Long-term you're going to want to think of a way to organize your site to make sure Google and users can find the most important pages. For example, add breadcrumbs back to the city page, and have the city page linking to your most important types of pages (even if they're still searches) for the city. Right now your city pages are just more search pages, which is a big wasted opportunity to layout which pages you most want people to find. Also make sure  you figure out what's going on between these two "types" of the exact same page. There should only be one for the same results where possible:

http://www.localsearch.com.au/Gosford,NSW

http://www.localsearch.com.au/Search?where=Gosford,NSW

Issue 2:

Look at the "linked from" and figure out where these bad pages are linked to on the site. Google wouldn't make up a URL if someone wasn't linking to them, and my guess is your site is causing them. With a highly-dynamic site like yours it's usually either a crawl trap or a combination of dynamic URLs through a particular path that the server wasn't expecting.

Alternatively, and maybe more likely, Google has been trying to parse Javascript lately, and doing a rather poor job of it. I've seen Google try to find links in Javascript that were never intended to be links. You can either ignore these errors and wait for Google to get better, or you can dig into the JS with a dev and see what's causing Google to interpret something as a link. There's usually another way to put the code together where Google understands.

Be careful about posting articles for the sake of link building. Domain authority matters, but I've seen a lot of people get off track and work towards getting links - when they could be getting links, customers, and industry awareness. Work instead to find your customer and write things that would be useful to them. For example, if you're trying to sell fitness products and supplements, think about where the customer is found online. I'm sure there are lots of fitness blogs.

What about getting in touch with them and doing a sponsored giveaway through their blogs?

If you're an expert on the topic, you could also get in touch and see if you could contribute regular content about supplements to help their readers understand which ones to use, why, who should use what, etc.

Definitely don't add that line to your robots.txt. I think it could have unintended consequences, like your entire site dropping off Google search.

Let me also say not to worry too much about duplicate content. It's good to avoid, but unlikely to cause big problems. That said, I would probably disallow site searches, because it can look to Google like you're trying to rank for all types of keywords with the same products. Use categories instead to show up for product types.

Disallow: /catalogsearch/result/

Because these pages all appear the same, you don't necessarily want Google to index the pages each time:

Disallow: /sendfriend/

If everything in this folder is behind a login wall:

Disallow: /customer/account/

And it's just my personal preference to avoid using tags on posts unless I want to tie a recurring concept together. 99% of the time people aren't using tags to any real benefit. You could also disallow them if you wanted, but I'd rather you just not use them until your content section is larger and you've figured out topics that people would actually want to jump to.

Let me also add that it'd be better to noindex these pages, but that's a little bit more difficult to do with Magento. If you have the skill or a developer who can do it quickly, I'd noindex these pages instead, and then down the line add them to the robots.txt. If that's difficult, though, you will be fine by simply blocking the content with robots.txt

Hope that helps - let me know if there are any other concerns.

I was actually trying to give you the tools to figure out what's cached and indexed. You can just run a site search for the content and look at the cache, though. For example:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wIHvFryFPo4J:www.kingskolacheny.com/%23!cateringandcontact/c1d94+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

If nothing shows up it's probably not indexed.

Every image I saw on the site was indexed in the large versions. I imagine you got this solved already, but let me know if there are any questions.

When it comes to any directory, you probably want a nofollow link. It's not technically against the rules to pay for consideration to a directory, but that's usually just code for "pay for a link."

Unless this has a high traffic/monetary value to you, it's probably not worth going for.

You've probably solved this already, but you first need to figure out whether it's a Panda or a Penguin penalty. This is probably a link-based penalty, but I can't say without seeing the site. If so, you'll want to work on link removal. A good place to start are on links with a high spam score. Try to get them removed, and add any spammy/purchased links to a disavow.

Let me know if you still need some eyes on it.

Generally I'd avoid hashtags or hashbangs if you have large amounts of content you want indexed behind a hashbang. Use pushState instead whenever it makes sense for the user to actually change the URL.

The general rule is that if you can see the content in your page source (ctrl+u version), it's probably being indexed. That means that client-side AJAX behind hashbangs is generally not indexed, where server-side will generally get indexed.

If for some reason you must use hashbangs, AND you must use client-rendering content, create an HTML snapshot of your page for Google. Generally, though, that's more effort than changing one of the above.

I think you're probably right that the site has been hacked, but I'm not seeing where. It's clear that the ranking site, waldorf.org, has a redirect pointing to http://www.cheapsoccerjerseyhd.com/

Were you able to find anything about WHY the home page http://www.uksoccershop.com/ wasn't ranking, though? I don't see any redirects, links, noindex, or canonical tags on that page. It's live, so I can't figure out why it won't show in Google. Ran header checks looking for x-robots or something, still can't see problems.

Do you see anything in Webmaster tools? Warnings, pages that have been removed, change of address filings, or that someone's checked the option not to index the site?

Edit: Looks to me like you're just being outranked by a hacked site. I'd expect you'd still show up for your domain, but I guess not. Still Check WMT.

Hi Nick,

Regarding the path, you will need at least a second variation URL in step 2, but it does not need to be live. At the end of step 4, make sure there are no errors. The most likely error on step 4 is that the code is not on your page. You wouldn't want to click "start test" if the pages weren't live either, obviously.

Now to the question of showing the same page throughout the journey. Experiments does not do this by default; it's more of a landing page tool. There is a way to make it happen, and that's to change the navigation on the test version. I've seen companies either clone every page that links to the test with links to version 1 and 2 (yuck) or use a cookie that switches out all links to the original with the test version if a cookie is fired from the test version. The difficulty of doing this will vary based on your developer's skills and the CMS you're using.

These work-arounds are not ideal, and they introduce more potential errors - as all complexity does. It really only works for small sites and landing pages with limited paths in and out. If you're looking to keep the experiment consistent and run a lot of tests I would strongly recommend checking out a tool like Optimizely.

I've worked with Optimizely in the past, and had nothing but great experiences. Just make sure to test multiple screen sizes before you launch.

Also make sure that no one in WMT has checked the box to remove the site from Google's index. Doing so will usually result in a warning, so it's unlikely you wouldn't have seen it. The only thing you mentioned that I'd look into more would be the hosting change, but that impact should have been more or less immediate.

Are you receiving any organic traffic from Google? A huge drop could mean a lot of things, but 0 traffic usually means a technical issue is to blame. If you've just lost most of your traffic, it's possible that it's a penalty or algorithm adjustment of some sort. There are a few directory links that I'd be concerned about, and I'd disavow any questionable sites with sitewide links (I saw at least one). It could also be a Panda or a "Payday" adjustment.

Check the algorithm history and see if it aligns with your drop in traffic:

http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

It's highly unlikely that someone using your content would outrank you for your own content in English in the US. It usually works the other way around - others are commonly filtered out in favor of the original publisher.

You could, in theory, use hreflang tags. This isn't really the intended use, so I'm not sure what the results would be. In order for it to work, you'd both need to reference all the other versions of the page from every pageeither in a sitemap (better idea) or in the . E.g. you point to them as en-cn and they point to your page with en-us and en-ca. Unless you have some extraordinarily savvy partners, this is probably going to be a mess.

Your partners can help avoid the mess above if they go into Webmaster Tools under "Search Traffic >> International Targeting" and choose a location they want to target. All of this is likely unnecessary if they have (for example) a .cn domain and you have a .com domain. Google will probably figure out the most relevant page to show on its own. That's what you're looking for, if I understand correctly.

If you have US/CA partners, your options are more limited, and there's less room to mutually benefit. You can request they canonical back, but that completely eliminates their ranking ability. You could request a link, but even that request might not go over well. (I wouldn't do it) Amazon often outranks the original product sellers - and that's just the price you pay sometimes when you sell through others.

Yes, the dashboard you mentioned is for 10+ locations. Larger clients generally keep a spreadsheet or database of locations and upload it every time it changes or periodically. You can still manage and upload with the tool, but you'll probably be better off managing the locations individually.

https://www.google.com/local/business/?hl=en

Click "get your page" and create a new listing - from the sounds of it, it'll be a new storefront. Managing the pages separately shouldn't be too much of a hassle.

Hi Daniel,

Sorry for the delay in getting to your question. TL;DR I would not recommend using a canonical to point paginated content to page 1.

Rel next and prev (or are more appropriate for this situation than a canonical tag. If you use a canonical tag it probably won't hurt you, but Google will likely ignore it because the content is not the same at all. There have been cases where the content on pages 2+ is completely ignored because you're telling Google to only look at P1, so you have potentially useful content that doesn't help you. Long story short, I'd create a version with all of the content (I prefer this) to canonical to OR use next/prev.

My guess is that Google already understands pagination on your site, with or without rel="next" and rel="prev". You can test by Googling the exact title of your blog post with the site: command to see whether all three pages show up. It's probably only the first page that shows up, but you may as well add the tags to make sure things are working correctly.

If you do have links sending traffic, those should be the first to update to avoid the slight but unnecessary burden and delay of a redirect. For Google, though, it doesn't really matter. As long as you 301 the whole site correctly to new URLs and change the address in Webmaster Tools, there will be no additional load time.

It's true that you want to avoid big .htaccess files, redirect chains, and inefficient redirects, but that's a rule for live sites. For example, if you were wanting to maintain the domain but move the entire category around, you wouldn't want to add 3000 lines to .htaccess. You should still write a rule rather than going line by line, but it doesn't really matter if it's on an old site that's moving. Search engines will only have to access it once per bot before they get the message and start crawling the new site.

In any case, redirects from the old site to the new won't impact load time unless the redirect is happening all the time, which should never be the case in a site migration. Do make sure to get the right redirect rule and check that it's working, especially on your most-trafficked pages.

The best advice I can give you is to check the 301 redirects. Also keep in mind that location and personalization could change the results. Try it on a few different incognito windows in Cincinnati just to be sure that it's actually lower.

I know this is late, but it's also possible that Panda is moving this page lower because it looks a little templated to me. The top image looks a little bit like a stock image, for example, and I can't see a next step in the content section. If I were you, I'd insert more examples of your residential work in the page (this goes for commercial, etc. too) and try to get a call to action in the content. A large form might not be ideal, but maybe a button above the fold telling the user what to do next.

I Googled text from a few of your articles, and found tons of duplicates. See, for example, this search. Are you actually writing your own content, or is this sourced from someone else? I also noticed a lot of non-standard and incorrect grammar across multiple articles, which isn't going to help in a panda-type penalty.

Google is getting better at measuring users' reactions to your content, and they've even begun to dig into factors that cause users to leave a page and seek another result. Whether or not Google can  determine the quality of language, users can, and they don't react well to language that doesn't flow.

Here's what I'd do:

• Make sure your content is unique. If you're sourcing it, make sure it hasn't been republished in part or in full.
• Ensure your content is written by someone who can really engage the audience and sound like an expert writing in English (or whatever your sites' languages are)
• Really try to hook the user right away. Make the posts as visual as possible, avoid large first paragraphs, and make sure the user knows why they should care right away. You need to elicit an emotion early on in your audience: fear, anger, amusement, interest, surprise, etc.
• Use tags sparingly, and only when it makes sense. Avoid tags with only one tagged post.
• Credibility: add dates and authors to articles backed by full bios.

The way to get out of this penalty is to really add value on each of your pages.

I think there's an underlying assumption here that duplicate content will harm your site, and that's not necessarily true. There's no "duplicate content penalty" - it's more than a filter. Google is better than most at recognizing this, especially with common CMS like Magento and WP. Google attempts to look at the links going to both pages and understand their authority together.

Duplicate content is more of an issue if you're pulling content that others are using as well, e.g. on product descriptions provided by manufacturers and other types of content. Google won't "penalize" you, but they will sometimes filter your site out in favor of the most authoritative site with that content. It's also an issue (mostly for Panda) if you're creating keyword pages that contain duplicate of even very-similar content just to rank for a bunch of very similar keywords.

So my first bit of advice is, "don't obsess over intra-site duplicate content."

That said, it's best to reduce and avoid duplicate content 1) for less-sophisticated search engine, 2) for the sake of your own analytics data integrity and simplicity, 3) just in case Google doesn't get it (very rare).

Set the categories up however you think is best for the user (generally just the product name without categories), double-check the canonical URLs, and wait for Google to catch up on the canonical and noindex. It can take many months depending on your site's authority, but it's unlikely to move the needle either way. Keep in mind that Google may keep pages in the index even if they are honoring the canonical tag - they'll just show the canonical version but keep both indexed. That's working as intended - don't worry about that

It could just be Google re-shuffling things and fine-tuning who gets stars and who doesn't. Here are a few things that have helped in my experience:

• Don't go crazy with the schema markup, especially for stars. I see people adding ratings to blog posts just to get stars, and those are all gone now. Add them where they make sense and are conventionally used (e.g. on product/place pages, not on category/type pages).
• Avoid re-using the same aggregate ratings or reviews that go into aggregate ratings on multiple pages.
• Make sure you've nested the right tags in the right orders according to the latest rules - they change sometimes. Sometimes the snippet tool will say something's correct when it's really out of order.
• Tag entities, not keywords. E.g. don't tag the entity as "The Marriottt Inn, Resort, and Spa in City, State" - tag it as "Marriott" or "Marriott Hotel" and list the location separately.

If you're doing all these things it might just be a matter of weak entity association, borderline user metrics, or insufficient site trust.

This often happens when a site has been compromised. Spammers will use a legitimate site to post links to their even spammier site, then build anchor text links to the legitimate site in order to build up that links' authority. In other less-common cases users will be redirected, or different content will be served to international users.

Check out the URL that links are pointing to and analyze the source closely, and make sure it looks the same from far-away IP addresses.

If you're not being hacked and your client hasn't commissioned any link-building of this nature, you probably don't need to worry. Google's really good at sorting out spam attacks from link-building campaigns, but in the unlikely event you do get an unnatural link warning you can usually get the penalty removed. You could, for example, show them this Q&A