Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Claudine

When you say that you have just changed your website for a new one, did you also change the domain name to a new one? If so, that is the likely cause as a new domain has no basis to have been awarded any authority.

Also, it is a new domain, what did you do with the old domain and the pages on the old site? Have they been 301 redirected to your new site and pages?

Peter

[Edit]: Just checking the domain you have listed in your profile: exomarketing.biz that shows as being around 4 years old and in Open Site Explorer it has a domain authority of 31 so I assume this is not the site you are referring to?

Hi Pete

I would think the web company would have corrected the problem by adding rel="canonical" code to point to the correct page where duplicates occurred. The only thing I can think of is maybe the code has accidentally been removed.

You really need to check the source code of some of the reported duplicates to check to see if the canonical code is there.

Peter

You're welcome David.

Peter

Hi Mirabile,

This is a difficult one. My understanding would be to use the hexadecimal encoding of potentially unsafe characters (of which a square bracket would be) in a URL (i.e. %5b instead of [ ), but I think assuming the URLs are the same, then it makes no difference.

But that said, whilst Google might read the URLs as the same, that's not to say another search engine will do that as well. And then, what about how a browser might interpret a URL encoded differently but being effectively the same?

Probably, the main danger is that the search engine or the browser won't be able to follow the link with unsafe characters in at all.

I'm not sure that is the full answer you were looking for, but maybe someone with more expertise will be able to shed more light on this for you.

I hope my answer helps at least in part.

Peter

Hi

For pages that continue to exist obviously you need to redirect them to the new page URL.

For pages that you are removing, first off try to find the best match page to what they were about and redirect them.

For pages for which there is no obvious replacement, I will still redirect them anyway, but maybe to the home page of the site.

Google will re-crawl all new pages even when they match, to check content. In the context of a complete change of content for a page, very little if any SEO value will be retained but at least if someone is clicking an old link left on the web to a page which no longer exists they will be taken to a useful navigable page on your site.

Although you can no longer use .htaccess redirects, you can still do 301 redirects in Adobe Business Catalyst. Please see the documentation here: http://helpx.adobe.com/business-catalyst/partner/redirect-page-urls.html

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, OK, I understand a bit more now.

These types of pages are automatically by the Content Management System (CMS) on which the site is built. I'm not sure you will have much control over the Titles, but it depends on the CMS used. Wordpress, Joomla?

There may be a plugin or extension you can use to fix the automatic titles generated for these even if to only add a Page 2 or Page 3 etc to the end of the title. In terms of optimising them beyond that as there not a lot you can do if the content is being generated dynamically and the pages presumably contain lots of links to other articles so in a sense you should not consider them as landing pages to appear in search engines but as signposts for search engines to build links on your site.

Peter

Thanks to all of you for your answers and with the clarity of your responses which make total sense. Blogging on the blog it is.

Much appreciated.

Peter

Hi Iris

Is it in the anchor text column that you can see the web address of your site?

If so, that is normal if the anchor text of the link and the URL link are the same. So on the list of inbound links it is not your site linking to your site, but the site in the column to the left that is linking to your site.

I have just had a look at your site in Moz's Open Site Explorer and I see the same. I have attached a screenshot so you can see.

The first column shows an inbound link from: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-is-blurring-images

The second column shows that the anchor text of the inbound link is: http://villasdiani.com which just so happens to link to http://villasdiani.com

A screenshot of the site the inbound link is coming from is also attached. It is cropped to show the blog post that contains the inbound link to your site and you can see that the anchor text is the same as your website address.

Does that make sense?

Peter

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Hi Rob

To be honest I don't know how long it will be before it has an impact. I would have thought less than 4 weeks thugh so it could impact your domain and page authority negatively. In addition of course if visitors click on links in SERPs meantime they will get 404s which won't help.

Is there not a way you can keep the second set of pages live during this transition? Or better still, not launch the site at all until you have have all pages ready and have remapped everything?

Peter

@Jeff - sorry was obviously writing my response when you had posted yours. Almost a snap!

Peter

Hi, I cannot see that this would benefit your site. If you want to attract people to your site then give the people visiting Hacker News the catchy title as the anchor text to the Google friendly title on your site. Then you can do both from the outset.

But in truth whilst smart headlines may increase clickthrough what both human and search engine visitors want is smart content.

Hope that helps

Peter

Hi Bob

I'm not sure any tactic as far as the search engines are concerned can be considered to be 100% safe forever. Looking at how the tactics around SEO have had to change over the last 15 years or so leads me to think that anything that could be perceived as even slightly "off-white" could be under threat. I would say this tactic falls into off-white group.

Google outlaw that type of thing with their Google Adwords program for advertisers with their policy on "Social interaction incentives" saying that an advert that encourages someone to click a +1 "isn't allowed because it offers incentives in return for clicking on the business' +1 button" - see: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/1187836.

Whilst I would say I think there is no doubt your proposed incentive is a whiter shade of grey than that (because you are bearing the cost of the +1, Like etc not a third-party), it still has that element of doubt for me.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Iris

OK, I think I can see what you mean. About 20 lines down there is a block of inbound links showing as coming from your domain. Is that what you mean?

It's a good question. I think this is to do with the fact that you use absolute URLs in the links on your website and not relative URLs.

An absolute URL to a page is like this: www.mydomain.com/mypage.html whereas a relative URL is like this /mypage.html

If you use absolute URLs to link internally then because they have the full path including the domain then I think that is being seen as an inbound link, whereas if you use relative URLs that don't include the domain they are not seen as inbound.

The report shows inbound links and not **internal **links so there is a subtle difference. If you run the same report on your site using Open Site Explorer that provides a filter which allows you to see inbound links that are only external or only internal. Using these filters hides the block of links you are seeing when filtering external only and shows them when filtering internal only.

See here: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?page=1&site=villasdiani.com

I need someone to verify this but I think this is the reason.

Peter

From the look of the info you have given about all URLs having /content/ after the domain name, I think you may be using Drupal as your CMS. If it is, whilst I don't know a great deal about Drupal, it may be worth looking at what extensions Drupal has for dealing with duplicate page issues.

Peter

Hi, I am not sure what to suggest to you other than to be cautious with the way you are optimising your site.

You have posted a few questions on this forum and you are obviously trying hard to SEO you site, but you could run into difficulty and put in a lot of effort with little or no results.

I had a look at your site: topnotchlawsuitloans.com and the tactics you are using will not work. For example, creating custom pages for Lawsuit Loans <city name="">or <state name="">(see attached screenshot) without local offices in those cities and states will not work and is likely to be seen as very spammy by Google.</state></city>

My best advice is to focus on creating quality content about lawsuit loans grow your business and website by doing that and through social media.

I hope that helps,
Peter

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Hi Charles

This may be something you have used in the past as well, but not mentioned in what you said. Have you created a Google Places/Local page for the business to sidecar off of their local website and web pages? Have you checked out https://getlisted.org/ ?

Additionally, Rand's Whiteboard Friday on Local citations may help you. See here...

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Bob

People will +1 because they think that something is remarkable, by that I mean that it is something that they want to tell others (i.e remark) about. Google themselves talk about the +1 button being for "w_hen you read a post that makes you want to cheer, +1 is your applause; when you watch a video that has you in stitches, +1 is your laughter; when you see a photo that perfectly captures that special moment, +1 is your 5-star review"._

In terms of how you can encourage people to +1, I think you need to think about where you place +1 buttons. If people read or see something that gets their attention enough to tell others and there is a +1 button adjacent, then they are more likely to click it.

With an ecommerce site it depends on what products you are selling in terms of determining what is "remarkable", but it could be alongside a snippet of positive media reviews, in response to a celebrity's endorsement, an engaging product video, or you could just display something like "if you love this product and think others should too, then +1 it!".

You could also create some very good value time-limited offers around a couple of sought after products which act as loss leaders. You don't necessarily have to make a loss on them, just a very small margin. The important thing is that they are seen as very good value by the consumer compared to where else the product can be bought. People like to tell others that they bought a bargain, so a +1 button alongside a very special offer could work very well.

Peter

Hi Christopher

If you go to bing.com and enter linkfromdomain:yourdomainname into the search box it will show you all of the pages the site is linking to but does not show the actual pages the outbound links are going from.

I have not used it but you could also use Xenu's Link Sleuth which you would need to download and install.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Roger

I don't think you should pay too much attention to optimising for plural versions of keywords or the sort of variations you list.

For localised SEO the number of pages targeted at a set of keywords will be smaller anyway, so search engines will have less to pick from, meaning that they will spread their net wider to provide a set of results that are relevant for the search entered.

Also, these days, search engines are sophisticated enough to understand the variations largely mean the same thing. The focus of Google when returning their search results is increasingly to understand the searcher's intent, i.e. what the person is looking for and answer their query accordingly.

Google also includes personalisation in its search results, so these days it's likely that someone typing "magician for parties" for example who lives in say, Southampton, will see a set of search results which will include magicians local to them in the Southampton area or nearby.

Google's personalisation of search results is defined through a range of criteria including the IP address of Internet connection where the search is entered, hence Google interprets that if you are searching "magician for parties" then it is your intent that you are looking for a magician who is local to you.

Personalisation may even work for the single word search "magician" but in that case the search results are likely to also contain results from pages from Wikipedia and the Magic Circle. I tried it for where I live in Bournemouth and I get exactly that type of mix of results.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Prince

My best advice for SEO is as I said before: focus on creating quality content about lawsuit loans grow your business and website by doing that and through social media.

SEO tricks and tactics won't help the site and will quite possibly hurt it. SEO today is not really about tactics but being strategic and is about having a high quality content strategy that engages with the information people are looking for and not gaming keywords.

The problem is with your pages in general. The inside pages of your site look like they contain a lot of duplicate content, e.g.

http://www.topnotchlawsuitloans.com/lawsuit-funding-lasvegas.html v http://www.topnotchlawsuitloans.com/lawsuit-funding-cleveland.html

and

http://www.topnotchlawsuitloans.com/lawsuit-funding-cleveland.html v http://www.topnotchlawsuitloans.com/lawsuit-funding-columbus.html

You have sentences like: _In Cincinnati, the process of lawsuit is often very time consuming and long. _Is that really true and unique of Cincinatti? Surely that would be true of most places.

If I am honest it looks like you have used a content spinner to generate the content on the pages on each of the cities and states. For example on the Columbus page it says: If any plaintiff’s need money and cannot wait to get money from the lawsuit, Lawsuit Funding Cincinnati is here for help.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time Prince. I understand you want to do the best for your client and your client will require you do the best for them. That best is not using the tactics you are now because as I say, these tactics will not help your site to rank for local search in these cities - speak to Miriam Ellis on Moz as she is an expert on local SEO - and at worst you will get hit my warnings from Google.

Sorry, but I hope that helps.

Peter