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Re pointing to a different page. Ultimately does not matter where it was pointing before. If you can point it to the most semantically relevant page with the 301 (and the page is worth 301ing for the reasons above) then you are good.
Re pointing to itself. If it points to itself, you probably should not be redirecting it with a 301 as it is its own canonical page. If that was an error to point to itself and you need to redirect it, then use the rules above.
The On-Page report is simply that - an "On-Page" report. By definition, it does not check things that are outside of the page in question. What you want to look at is a ranking report to see how a page is ranking.
On-page are just some of the 200+ things that Google looks at - so you have to look at the whole picture. If everyone could just use a simple tool to reverse engineer the Google ranking algo, then I bet Rand would charge way more than $99 to access it!
On-page factors are SEO 101 though, so to delete it would be extreme. I think people don't write about them as much as they are pretty well established (and straight forward) and so they do not need to be rehashed over and over again.
If there was not a tool, you would still need to read some Blog articles to find out best practices for on-page optimization. You could still obsess over the details and implementing them for hours on end. You would still end up in the same place that you are right now.
Do you make money / get conversions / have persons take preferred actions on your site if people find your images via Google? If the answer is yes - then it is worth spending the time to put together an image sitemap, otherwise no. Even though you are not an ecommerce site, you still have to do something to make money. If images help you do your thing, then go for it.
Cheers!
When the server 301 redirects a page, the page that used to have the canonical link on it ceases to exist. The server simply routes the user to the new page without ever showing the old one.
What they are talking about in the chain situation above applies to rel=canonicals and 301s regardless and has nothing to do with your point about removing the rel=canonical off the page before you 301. It is completely different.
Ideally you would not want to not rel=canonical page1 to page2 and then rel=canonical page2 to page3, it would be better to rel=canonical page1 to page3 (go direct avoid the chain).
in the same way you would not want to 301 redirect page1 to page2 and then 301 redirect page2 to page3, it would be better to 301 redirect page1 to page3 (go direct avoid the chain).
in the same way you would not want to rel=canonical page1 to page2 and then 301 redirect page2 to page3, it would be better to 301 redirect page1 to page3 (go direct avoid the chain).
Agreed. Plus, the shorter the URL the better. Helps out in emails etc. Easier to remember.
The authority of the current domain of 36 is better than the new domain that would be 0 and you can always work to improve the authority of the domain that you already have.
Working on the authority of the current domain is a better use of your time.
Cheers!
Your problem is with the robots.txt file. You are blocking the URL
thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/index.php?id=13
That URL 301 redirects to the correct URL of
http://thewilddeckcompany.co.uk/products/bird-hides
Google cannot "see" the 301 redirect from the old "bad" URLs to the new "good" URL.
You have to let Google crawl the old URLs and see the 301 redirects so that it knows how things need to forward.
I would do this for all the duplicate pages, make sure they 301 to the correct pages and do not put the "bad" pages in robots.txt - otherwise the indexing will not be updated.
Something separate to check. We have seen Google taking a while to acknowledge some of our 301s. Go into your GWT and look at your duplicate title reports. You may see the old and new URLs showing as duplicates, even with the 301s in place. We had to setup a self canonicalizing link on the "good" pages to help get that cleaned up.
You bet! If you don't mind, please mark this as a good answer then.
Cheers!
If you paginate an article then you can also use the rel=prev and rel=next to help Google crawl the pages in an article.
I would be careful with UGC. You may have someone with a list of 100 songs, but then they only comment on 20 of them. Is it really worth showing all 100? Seems like you would be ripe with duplicate content with all the repeated titles of songs. Why not show the top songs with comments or maybe most played with comments? Put the other 80 on a next page and then canonical link the additional content to the main page.
I would worry less about length and more about quality and originality.
Cheers!
Background:
Our devs have been talking about changing some of our websites so that all pages are https vs just those that are a part of our logins and shopping carts.
From what I have read things that need to be done as a part of this are
There is an old MCutts video that says essentially, "works for Pay Pal" and "you can try it, but test it on a smaller site first" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeFo4ytOk8M
The comments below the video are all stories about loss in rank and traffic with some coming back. Not sure if these folks did the move correctly, but still, you never know.
Question:
Have any of you done a technically "correct" move of an entire site from http to https using the suggestions above? What was your experience? Any gotchas? Just to be clear, I am not talking about setting up a site from scratch, but wanted to know impact on an established site.
Thx
Agree with the points above with one exception. Yes, you have to find a way to deal with duplicate and quality content at scale. Yes, Robots.txt, nofollow links and index sitemaps are your friends. I would not use rel=canonical unless I had to. Better to get those extra pages de-indexed and then not let Google crawl the urls with the extra parameters to start with. Why waste Google's time in crawling pages that are just resorted versions of another? If you use the directives wisely you probably "only" have 200,000 pages worth crawling if you have that many sort parameters.
Good luck!
Why not have the infinite scroll, but always have a link that goes to Page 2. That way the bot can crawl to Page 2 and then get a traditional layout and find the additional content and a user could click the Page 2 link and get into that mode as well.
May also want to consider that the infinite pagination is on sections that you keep the bots out of using robots.txt and then leave the pagination option open to the bots.
We do this for site search and if there are any sort options of a basic paginated version of the pages. Once the user does a search and/or tries to re sort a paginated layout, we push them to a /search/ url with parameters and then hide that with robots.
Another variation is to use a hash off the paginated page to let the variables be passed while keeping the base URL the same.
Rand has a really nice WB Friday on this - really neat trick - it is from 2009 but it is still relevant
http://moz.com/blog/whiteboard-friday-using-the-hash
Cheers
I agree with EGOL and was going to suggest the same thing rel=canonical
Just like you want to have a single title tag you want to optimally have a single H1. Use of the H1 (and H2 H3s for that matter) helps Google to understand the hierarchy of information on your page. By having multiple H1s you are potentially not giving as clear of a signal of what text is most important on your page. It is also good for users as they can clearly and quickly see what your page is about and increase the chances of staying on your page, thereby reducing bounce rate and potentially increasing conversion rate.
That said, regarding rankings, this all depends. I can't promise that if you fix your H1 that you will rank #1 - there are just too many other factors to consider. Can you rank well with having multiple H1s, sure. Google still may be able to "figure it out".
Still, best practice is to have a single H1 as far as what most SEOs (and SEOs that I respect) recommend and this is what I do on all of my sites.
Some other posts on this topic that are of this ilk:
https://moz.com/community/q/h1-tag
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/in-2014-how-important-is-an-h1-tag-for-seo/
https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-peroperly-use-h1-h2-and-h3-tag-on-your-website
http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/01/heading-elements-and-the-folly-of-seo-expert-ranking-lists/
I agree with Takeshi, couple additions.
If you do go the route of changing your search URL structure etc. I would not deindex your old search pages, I would 301 redirect them to the new pages you are creating. I would then setup new search pages behind a folder that you disallow in robots.txt to keep Google out of those results and into your more important pages.
The apples to apples comparisons make sense too. Product pages always convert better as it is the page where the product "lives"
I can see why Google ranks your search result page for "RevoStock Fishing Boat" as it gives users the best options for accessing all your fishing boat videos.
http://www.revostock.com/SearchResult-Empty.html?text=fishing boat&cat1[]=1
If you look at any of your fishing boat video pages on that search result page, they are pretty much identical examples I see at least 40-50 product pages like this
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Video-Footage/229719/Fishing-boat.htm
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Video-Footage/229730/Fishing-boat.htm
http://www.revostock.com/Stock-Video-Footage/229746/Fishing-boat.htm
same URL, title tags, h1, even the slug at the end Fishing-boat.htm etc just the variation with the ID in the middle of the URL and on the page.
Google is looking for the authority page on your site for "Fishing boats", but with all the product pages almost the same, I can see why it would point to the search result page as it is a major hub for your content You also mention that "On the product pages, we do show the keywords related to the item and then link back out to the Search Results pages from these. " This is another signal to Google that those search result pages are important.
Getting back to the conversion point again, you still should look towards using a category page to rank on your head terms vs the product pages due to your inventory. Lets say you wanted to rank for "Fishing Boat Footage". What product page would you send someone to? You have a ton of choices on your site and so seems to make sense to have a great category page to get people to the site on a given KW and then make it easy to then let them browse your inventory.
You can then use all the videos/product pages themselves to focus on the long tail searches. You need to work on differentiating the videos. They need descriptions and more information around them. I can see the differences in the videos by looking at them, but Google will not due to the lack of text. Outsource some writers to work all of this up and it should not only be good for Google, but for users. All of the detailed descriptions around the videos would help for those longer tail searches and you could end up with more search volume long term. I help run a site where we have "contributor submitted content" as a part of information about their products. The stuff we got submitted sucked. Poorly written, typos, not helpful, etc.
We hired some contract writers on the cheap and they cranked through stuff and the site is doing much better for having clean up to date content. I know you are saying, "That is crazy" but it is just the thing that will also differentiate your content from others and ultimately gain more customers (IMHO).
My best advice is to read everything that Adam Audette has ever written. I kid you not. He gets into details around pagination and structure for exactly the type of questions you have.
This article should nail it right on the head for you
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/site-search-dynamic-content-and-seo/01032013/
An oldie but a a goodie
Cheers!
The page is not invisible, it is responding to the 301 redirect you have in place.
If this is Page/URL A and you used to get the response with the content. Then if you put a 301 in place, there is no "content" on Page/URL A, there is just the redirect. The response from GWT is good in that it can see the 301 redirect.
If you setup a 301 redirect from page A to page B. Enter the URL for page B to see the content of the page. The Googlebot, when crawling a website and indexing page will follow the redirect. I am not sure that the fetch as Googlebot does this.
#Update#
According to this page the fetch as Googlebot tool does not follow 301 redirects
http://www.webnots.com/what-is-fetch-as-google.html
Cheers!
You need to create other social profiles or websites that talk about Blatt Financial group and get them to rank above the page in question. You essentially need to crowd them out as your main option.
Select the URL address where you have the 404 so that it is highlighted in the main section.
At the bottom of the screen, there is a tab "In Links" Click on that.
It will show you a list of "From" pages on the site that link to the 404 address above. You can right click that from URL to either copy the From or open the From in your browser and see the page that you need to correct.
You can also go into the main menu under Advanced Export and export the Client Error (4xx) and get everything in a csv file that has the same details.
FYI - I am using version 2.20 (just updated) but previous versions would work similarly.
Just to verify, is that the URL you are submitting to GWT? Has that changed?
Agreed. Keep it. My only other question would be - do you have any internal links on your site that link to the non-slashed version of the folder? Get those fixed/cleaned up wherever possible. Your Moz crawl report should find any of those for you.
I think you are on the right track. You just need to be more descriptive in your Title tags (and meta descriptions). If the page ranks, then a better description in the Title will help the user know what to click on and potentially can increase your CTR. I went to your website and on the Celine Bags page http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-celine/bags you do list things on a bag like the pattern or year or color, etc. Those are things that can help make the title tags unique, just keep on expanding on those ideas.
You may want to consider this. As Google only shows 70 characters, setup your title tag so that it is descriptive but then just to make sure that the title is unique add something like Item #74747 at the very end and use the item id from your system. This can also help the user if they are emailing or calling you to have the item number and eliminate any confusion about what product they are asking about, plus it will always make the title tag unique. Also, if it is after 70 characters, then it will (generally) not show in the SERPs. We have used this in the same way in the meta descriptions to make them unique as well. I help run a site with over 5,000 items that we have used this approach with much success in keeping our titles and descriptions helpful and unique! It looks like you are doing this with the URL already so would not be a big step to put into the other slots.
Just to be clear, I would make the title tag more descriptive to help make it more unique, but then just as a fail safe add the ID number on at the end. It seems that you do not have a huge inventory of these bags and so expanded details on the product in the title tags may be enough - you will have to experiment.
Something else to consider, but it looks like you do not have enough inventory to justify it, if you had a ton of "box bags" I would potentially set that up as a cat or subcat. This way you have a page that will be dedicated to that KW to help with ranking. The transitory nature of your products will make it hard to have a product page that will rank as it seems they are changing. Just something else to consider.
Cheers!