Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Sohail

I am not happy.  Good question to ask.  If it works - do not touch it.  The first principal in SEO is do no harm.

I would consider terminating them... poor advice leading into the most important time for sales for you for the year. They sound like a web developer not an seo consultant.

Sorry I am a bit grumpy... but do not like it.  Your intuition is spot on.

Hi

Yes, usually to some extent, lets say targeting car insurance but want local volume.

Then track volume for "car insurance california".   Can get more specific and go city - "car insurance san diego" etc.  The volume will be far less but may be helpful.  Also if GMB is optimised may find some useful data in insights panel.

Is that what you are after?

Regards

No clear answer to that question. I would review why and where google is pulling the information from.  Then try and track down the issue from there.

Here is a great article on it which goes into a deep dive.  https://moz.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description

Hope that assists.

No the H1 is important for google.  It helps match a searchers intent with the page.  ie if looking for beds ... then ideally the H1 has the word bed in it.  Additionally it assists in comforting the customer they are on a relevant site if the H1 in some manner matches the keyword (searchers intent) that was typed in.

The H1 assists in telling google what you page is about especially if the content on the page is not clear. There impact has been reduced but I believe still significant and simple enough to implement and do properly. Each page should answer a customer query so consider them as content title tags that help tell google understand what the page is about.

Each page should have a unique H1 tag and only one that describes that pages content and contains the target keyword for that page.

Hope that assists. To clearly answer your query.  The H1 should not be your logo.. though there maybe rare page exceptions.

I am not 100% clear on the question. Forgive me if I do not answer directly. Moz has a great guide to keyword-research.

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research

Plus this link excellent.  http://backlinko.com/the-definitive-guide-to-keyword-research and, may assist on small volume:

https://moz.com/blog/keywords-to-concepts

It seems as you are querying which tools to use to find keyword traffic. The best tool I find is semrush.com and combine that with Ubersuggest.  Thereafter it is up to you to determine your strategy it maybe the case in highly competitive SERP's to chase long tailed keywords.  There is lot of information on this subject so maybe start with the above links and then ask away.

Hi

The seo implications can be significant.

The first step is to audit - search console probably easiest the organic traffic hitting that exact page.  The value of the page determines the content changes you may consider.

Thus if a page is ranking very well for a high-value target then the changes we recommend would be minimal, primarily CX focussed - enhance value. Enjoy no duplication, and not over optimised.

If the page is a poor performer with limited or no organic traffic, then there is little to no risk in a full content change.  If that is the case, do whatever you like... to improve the value of the page.  The only element to monitor is internal links from that page, again measure impact and audit.

Hope that helps.

Matt Cutts of google - answers that question in the following clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSEqypgIJME

It is enjoyable when you can go straight to the source. Hope that assists.

Moz provides a definition of Domain authority at this link.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority

It may take a little time to wrap your mind around Domain Authority.  But think of it like any sport except 100 is the maximum points you can get!  Your goal is to get your website as close as you can to 100. So a virgin domain, never played sport before starts with a domain authority of 1 - whereas google has the top Domain Authority of 100.

Some people cheat to try to get to a 100 - but google is hunting them daily and will penalize them, and likely kick them off the team (you do not want that) or you follow moz/rand - and you get there by hard work and training..  (and lots of training)

Let me know if this is as clear as mud!  or have more questions.

Hi

You cannot tell from that set of data what the issue is.

Have you used site: to check how many pages of your site are being indexed?  Does that number correlate with with the number of pages expected to be live on site?

I will answer your question indirectly.  Google foreshadowed a couple of years ago, to get your site in order for mobile. They raised it a couple of times, and then in April this year brought in a  penalty for not being mobile friendly.

I personally think exactly the same will happen with https - so I recommend implement https, iron out any bugs, page speed issues etc. and then hold on without fail. It will become a positive ranking factor at some point in time above the "all sites being equal a https site will outrank a a http site" - the case present scenario.

So I recommend if you are going through the effort now rather than query it make it a non-negotiable for the future.

Hope that assists.

It is a good list.  I would add or prioritize a page speed test, and mobile in the list.  Also there is a great blog post taking a deeper dive which may be useful to review.

https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

Another tact to consider is analyzing the keyword/page rank data from WMT's. I like to find weaknesses in reverse. ie if a page has a ranking of 2 but a CTR of 3.5% - an analysis should occur of that page to identify specific issues.  Why is teh CTR so low.

Hope that assists.

Ellie

Very difficult without the url.  The site structure is very important.  Assuming it is a new site, so no pages have been penalized, i will make an educated guess and go with page authority. The site structure and paradigm you set up is integral to success. There is a great article by Bruce Clay and though aged it is still current today so in any redesign i Would have an eye to bruce's suggestions.  http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm

I would try and identify the key issues before a re-build, rather than hope the rebuild will just fix the problem. See  https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 for more info.

Hope that assists.

I like this one - but a personal choice.

http://beginnersbook.com/2012/11/lsi-keywords-for-better-ranking/

There is methodology to linking, however it usually flows naturally from the website structure. The below link is a great article that may assist - old, but still v relevant today.

http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm

Also check out the thewhitecompany.com - they do an awesome job and offer a great template.

Hope that assists.

Every Channel is different.

We benchmark at 6% for 1 company and are wrapped to hit 1% for another. We have a niche product/client at 14%.

If there was a standard - I would suggest in the range of 2-4%.  All that said it really comes down to on site behavior - where are they dropping off?  Is it the landing page - Why ? Is it the checkout page? Why? I would be very very carefully monitoring each page interaction.  Find out what makes them click and what does not. Then make adjustments accordingly.

Have you considered Optimizely or Unbounce? Not a fan of either but they are good at promoting themselves and many do rate them.

If you have the budget I would spend some time trying to find out why people drop off, via survey and analytic's.  Some very small improvements can make a massive difference. Nice little article.  http://tinyurl.com/nomws53

Hope that assists.

Hi

Never going to disagree with Rand. The first analysis is the actual SERP you want to rank on. So audit the SERP.  What are the Title tags that are ranking? What is the content that is working? So start there on your Title tag. That should make it an easy decision.

WordPress only auto populates if you want, can set as per your requirements.

Confused on menu title.. is that the navigation?

Patrick is correct above.

With a limited budget and time you might also consider going to GA and studying customer behaviour.  Find out what pages customers like, and the stickiness & find out when and at what page the customers leaves the website.  There is a retail site in India called Jabong - comparable problem.  They have millions of hits a month except there BR was in excess of 90% when it started. Slowly work through it page by page, improving each page where customers drop off, until the conversion rate goes up.

Also by finding out what your customer is up to, by reviewing the pages that they like and do not like - you can identify trends. It may also assist in creating content.  I often find customers are drawn to 1 or articles consistently - perhaps expand on those articles. GWT's will also in identifing the pages / keyword process to focus on.

It is a great problem to have lots of traffic - now need to tweak away until you make them a satisfied customer. Platforms like unbound and optimizely may also be of assistance.  The good news is and it is gold - you are collecting lots of data - and with data you can make informed decisions on what to focus on in the value chain.

Let me know if need any more clarity on any point.

Possibly as Google may ignore the canonical - however, if the money site is the one you are pointing to, it is worth doing.  It does sound like a disconnect, as would expect both features to be on same site  - assume a "buy now" - CTA and click onto a separate site has also been considered..

There are two fundamentals that need to be addressed:-

Page speed - I just ran a test on webpagetest and your loading time was 33 seconds. Your repeat view was 30 seconds. That is actually the slowest I have ever seen.  I would imagine 70% of your problem is there.

Secondly CTR is not a factor however what customers do after they click through is a factor. I imagine the other site has a better/easier user experience. It looked slightly better from a quick look.

It appears you are are looking for short cuts and doing things quickly. Stop!!  slowdown and tackle each element properly and meticulously. Richard has made some excellent points and if true that is not great. So I urge you to slow down - go through a proper audit of your site and actually check each element and then tackle it properly. Go back to the fundamentals, just because you spent 5 minutes on it does not mean you have done it properly.

Apologies if a bit blunt but the page speed result was a shocker - I believe that is an indicia for a patches rather than solutions.

In summary - firstly echo effectdigital on Shopify.  It is an interesting platform sold very well by Shopify zealots - but we have had to bend too many times to Shopify platform limitations to believe it is the right answer for most.  It is awesome if your a bikini start-up with no CRM or ERP - however the moment it comes to a decent integration - it often gets ugly quickly.

On to your query - the shortened version to the answer is no-one knows.  Why? because the algorithm treats subdomains differently for different sites. https://moz.com/blog/interview-searchlove There is a good piece on subdomains v subfolders in this WBF.  In summary a good discussion on subdomains.

The click through to the subdomain should be a normal step, ie so assuming on the subdomain your landing on the relevant contextual page within the funnel to transact.   That is normal for some back ends. You are correct ideally in my view all on the root domain.

Overall if the subdomain pages are critical and you want to rank, then need to treat subdomain for SEO as a separate site.  However, if the subdomain is just the end part of the sales funnel.. then may not need to rank..

Hope that is helpful.

Regards