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If I have an eCommerce website containing 10,000 product pages and then I add 10,000 new product pages using a bulk upload (with limited/basic but unique content), does this pose any SEO risk?

I am obviously aware of the risks of adding a large number of low quality content to the website, which is not the case here, however what I am trying to ascertain is whether simply doubling the number of pages in itself causes any risk to our SEO efforts? Does it flag to the Search Engines that something "spammy" is happening (even if its not)

Sounds very much like this fairly large change may be attributed to the alteration of your URL structure/process

Its weird that the number of pages has dropped, so it might be worth logging into Google WebMaster Tools and looking at the "Blocked resources" tab or using the robots.txt checker to see if you are preventing spiders from crawling your website (maybe the script you've added is blocking the search engines)

While you in GMT it is also worth looking at your inbound links to ensure these aren't spammy and double check that you haven't got any Manual webspam warnings (unlikely to be this but worth checking)

Hi Yusuf

Yes. Website B will now offer the same product as website A. Website A would also have repeat visitors.

Do you then think it would be a better bet to create a page on website B instead explaining that Website A is no longer in operation and redirect to this? I guess this may bring in branded traffic to website A using website Bs brand name?

Hi guys

Quick question about 301 redirection between domains.

I currently manage a website, lets call it website A.

Website A sells a particular product range, however the decision has been made by the powers that be to pull the plug on the business and sell the products previously sold via Website A via another website within the parent companies control.....lets call it Website B.

I need to make it clear to customers of Website A that the company no longer operates but want to pass the SEO equity that has been built up over time to the relevant pages on Website B.

My plan was to

1. 301 Redirect all key landing pages on Website A to the most relevant pages on Website B

2. Initially keep the website A homepage live but change the message to say "Website A no longer operates, but Website B can help etc. etc."  Remove all sub links from navigation.

3. Monitor referral and direct traffic levels and consider 301 redirecting website A homepage to Website B homepage in the long term.

My questions:

• Does this sound like the best approach? If not, what alternatives are there?
• Will Website A look like a link farm for Website B? I dont want this obviously!

I am considering moving 1 of our sites to a Magento e-commerce platform. If I went down this route we would be keen to find someone who we can hire in-house.

However I have never hired a web developer before. What should a developer with experience of launching and building Magento-based e-commerce websites have on their CV? What should I be looking for in terms of knowledge?

Any help or advice welcome!

Thanks Mike. It certainly sounds like moving all SKUs onto 1 page is preferable. I suspect that I may need to spend a bit of dosh getting the website's on-page structure amended if going down this approach.

With regards to point 1,  I assume the pages will still be crawled but any link equity would be passed to the canonicalised version of the page?

Thanks for the advice guys.

What do you think of Takeshi's advice below regarding adding canonical link to product page that points to a product category page

I.e. we have 20 of the same jumpers of different sizes, colours. A canonical tag is added to the product page that points to a parent page for the jumper, rather than the specific product page.

Thanks Takeshi - this approach sounds like something I can implement sooner rather than later.

Have you had success using it?

Thanks Mike - this certainly makes sense.

My product pages do not currently change the URL parameters depending ont he product sku the visitor changes , but the approach you've taken sounds perfect for your setup

Hi guys

Just keen to gauge your opinion on a quandary that has been bugging me for a while now.

I work on an ecommerce website that sells around 20,000 products.

A lot of the product SKUs are exactly the same in terms of how they work and what they offer the customer. Often it is 1 variable that changes. For example, the product may be available in 200 different sizes and 2 colours (therefore 400 SKUs available to purchase).

Theese SKUs have been uploaded to the website as individual entires so that the customer can purchase them, with the only difference between the listings likely to be key signifiers such as colour, size, price, part number etc.

Moz has flagged these pages up as duplicate content.

Now I have worked on websites long enough now to know that duplicate content is never good from an SEO perspective, but I am struggling to work out an effective way in which I can display such a large number of almost identical products without falling foul of the duplicate content issue.

If you wouldnt mind sharing any ideas or approaches that have been taken by you guys that would be great!

when this happens try appending /logout to the end of the moz URL -(i.e. http://moz.com/logout) this should help you to reload the main page again and then you can login as usual

Thanks Chris - yes I saw this and it was certainly very valuable. Was just keen to hear from any individuals responsible for UK based websites, as a lot of the tools & techniques were US based.

Hi Wiqas - I am just after any useful tools that can help to me to identify actions for local SEO

Hi guys

I'm looking for any recommendations for local SEO tools in the UK? I keep stumbling across a variety of different tools but they all seem to cater for the US market only.

Any tools or tips would be greatly received!

It can take some time for GWT to pick up on changes like this.

As an example Google Webmaster Tools was telling us that there were many thousands of inbound links from a staging domain to our main website.

We had to make a large change whereby we added a secure password and noindex tag reference to the staging website in question. I would say that the number of links referenced in GWT only decreased after approx 2 months.

Patience can often be the key - I swear doing nothing can often be more beneficial in SEO, rather than making knee-jerk decisions in a blind panic (very tempting mind!)

Sounds like you have been 100% validated in your decision to change SEO firm! Just imagine the tactics they were using when you were paying them

I would echo the comments above - stay vigilant for spammy link warning within Google Webmaster Tools and add any poor quality links that you find to a disavow file.

Its staggering that your old agency would rather put time, money & effort into harming an old client rather than finding a new one

Thanks guys - I'll keep persevering. Hopefully I'll sort this out shortly!

I work for a client who sell an online product across the entirety of the US and UK. They have no fixed address or phone number - all correspondence is done via email.

My question is with regards to Google Places for Business.

I am keen to promote our presence in the search results, even if just on branded terms.

I just wanted to check that it is possible to create a Google Places for Business profile for a company that covers 2 countries with no fixed 'walk-in' address.

I also wanted to double check that this would have a positive impact on our SEO.

Does anyone out there have any personal experience of a similar nature? Has this worked for you?

Thanks for your help guys.

The sitemap.txt file I have created uses the correct approach as listed by Google on this page - it isn't just a list of links in a Wordpad file:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80472?hl=en

I am just trying to eastablish how to convert it to an XML file. When I change the file extension it seems to break and when I export from MS Word it doesnt seem to like the parameter

Didn't think this would be so difficult!

I have created a sitemap file as per Google Web Master Tools instructions. I have it saved as a .txt file.

Am I right in thinking that this needs to be uploaded as a .xml file?

If so, how do I convert this to a XML? I have tried but it seems to corrupt - there must be a simple way to do this?!