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According to Google you should put your site in quarantaine (status 503) and make it available again when it's cleaned (in your case - relaunched). Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2600719?hl=en.
Personally, I would also consider the option to clean your current site: 3/4 weeks is a very long time and it could have a negative impact on your rankings.
Dirk
Hi,
Could you explain what exactly you want to achieve? Do you want to validate that the Zopim script is present on all pages? If the script is embedded in the HTML - the easiest way to check if it's present on your page is using Screaming Frog (you need the paid version to do this if you want to crawl - if you have the full list of url's of the site in z .txt file , you could also use the trial version by using it in "List Mode"). Before you crawl the site - make 2 custom filters:
=> crawl the site (if you only need to check if these scripts are present on the page - in Configuration>Spider uncheck the boxes for Images, CSS, Javascript, External links)
=> after the crawl - select the "Custom Tab" - applying Filter 1 will show you all the pages that contain the script - Filter 2 the pages that don't contain the script.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Hi Donna,
The general principles are also applicable for Drupal - which normally is quite flexible to fine tune in terms of SEO. It is however a bit more complex to setup & configure compared to a Wordpress site.
You should check the tools mentioned in this article https://www.acquia.com/blog/4-steps-optimize-your-drupal-site-increase-traffic (step 2 list some modules that can help - the rest will be quite obvious for you). Acquia is the company founded by the guy who started Drupal - so the modules that are suggested should be ok.
We use Drupal as well - but as it's implemented by a technical partner we just give the requirements, we don't know which modules they use to deliver what we ask.
Hope this helps
Dirk
You can combine them, but not in the way you are actually doing.
If I take your example: page: www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=2
=> with this set-up you are basically telling Google 2 different things:
The canonical indicates that http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=2 is in fact a duplicate of http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ so Google should index http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ instead.
With the rel next/previous you tell Google that http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ - http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=2 & http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=3 should be considered as one page rather than 3 pages.
As these messages are in conflict this set-up is not going to work. If you want to use both - the canonical can only be used to strip additional info from the url like sort order, number of items on page, etc. Check the link Dimitri gave for an example from Google.
An example from your site: http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?dir=desc&limit=24&order=price&p=2 would have this configuration:
(please not that the first url is http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/ & not http://www.rococlothing.co.uk/boys/boys-suits/?p=1 )
Hope this clarifies
Dirk
No experience whatsoever - but you might want to check this guide https://builtvisible.com/baidu-seo-guide/
Dirk
Hi Justin,
I assume you already validated webmaster tools for all three domains. Generating the sitemap: it depends a bit on the situation. I guess you have only 1 site (the .com.nz version) and that you point the .com & .com.au to this version. In that case, it's probably difficult to generate the xml for the other version via the CMS you are using. What you could do is, on a regular basis (e.g. once/week) copy the existing sitemap & do a simple find/replace of the .com.nz & then save the sitemap as sitemap_us.xml & sitemap_au.xml. In webmaster tools you delete for the .com & .com.au the current entry & replace it by the correct version.
The sitemap just helps google to find the url's on your site - so don't expect miracles from it, as Google is perfectly able to crawl your site & find all the url's.
On the longer term, it's probably better to create multiple versions of your site to fully adapt to local requirements (the prices are listed in NZD & I guess English in NZ is more related to British than to American English).
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Hi Donna,
Will check with them (hope that they didn't program everything from scratch) - will be for beginning of next week, weekend already started in Europe...
rgds,
Dirk
Personal experience - redirecting from subdomain to main domain shouldn't have a big impact (maybe some temporary fluctuations).
Changing the design can have a huge impact. We did a relaunch recently where both url / ux where changed and we had a massive drop of traffic - even when all url's where properly redirected. We did notice however pageviews/visit go down & bounce rate increase which indicated that our visitors had issues with the new (responsive) design. It took us about 4/5 months to return to previous traffic levels - but we still haven't recovered some of our top positions for very competitive keywords.
Dirk
Duplicate content is determined on page level - just adding a few elements that are common on each page will not hurt, especially if it's content your customers are looking for on a page (I assume that the product description is present on the page and has a certain "body" - not just a one line description)
Putting it in Javascript wouldn't make a big difference - consider Googlebot as a small version of Chrome which is able to understand javascript (also the reason why you shouldn't block javascript resources for Googlebot)
Apart from that, duplicate content is not a cause for punishment (unless in extreme cases) - the main difficulty with duplicate content is that Google will decide which version of the content it will show, which does not always correspond with your preferred version.
Dirk
Hi Justin,
Do you regenerate the sitemap on regular basis - I am a bit confused when you mention that the guys who made it send you the sitemap. Normally the sitemap should be updated every time you add a new url to the site.
What I meant with find/replace - if it's not possible to regenerate the sitemap for the .com & .com.au domain automatically (and if the sites are identical for the other countries) - you could always take the .com.nz sitemap (which is currently sitemap.xml) - save it as sitemap_us.xml and then edit the file manually (can be done in a simple text editor:find zenory.com.nz - replace with zenory.com for us - idem for sitemap_au.xml - replace with zenory.com.au)
rgds,
Dirk
Unrelated to the original question - you might want to invest in a tool like Screaming Frog - there are several other issues with your site
rgds,
Dirk
You could block the site for all bots except rogerbot (
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; rogerBot/1.0; http://www.seomoz.org/dp/rogerbot).
Alternative would be to use a local crawler like Screaming Frog (and modify the spider settings so that it ignores the robots.txt)
rgds,
Dirk
Well it's quite difficult to judge the quality of the content as I don't understand what is written on the page. What I did notice is that each time I clicked on a link a new tab which advertising (https://trafficnado.com...) was openend (without me requesting it) or that a pop-up was blocked.
Google does consider this to be quite spammy techniques, so could be the cause why this page has suddenly disappeared from the results.
Not sure about the content - seems you are streaming series. Are you the copyright holder for these ? If not, this could also be the reason why your site did disappear from the results (DMCA complaint)
Dirk
Hi Justin,
Your sitemap should contain all the url's of your site. Most CMS have a function that runs every night & regenerates the sitemap, so that it always contains the most up-to-date info. If you haven't updated the sitemap since launch it will not be up-to-date.
If your CMS doesn't offer this function, you could always use an external sitemap generator which crawls your site & generates the sitemap for you. If you google for sitemap generator you will certainly find some examples.
If you are using Screaming Frog, it can also this. If you're not using it yet - it could be a (small = 99GBP/yr) investment worth considering as it gives a complete check-up in terms of SEO. In your case - you should generate it for each of the domains.
rgds,
Dirk
Hi Donna,
Didn't forget your question - however the first reply I got was a bit too generic (Drupal can do everything that Yoast does, and even better, but sometimes several modules are required).
Would it be possible to indicate for which Yoast functions you would need a solution - so I can be a bit more specific in when asking info from them.
Rgds,
Dirk
No need to set up a new analytics - the old one will work just fine.
If both the www & non-www would be active at the same time and if you would still use the previous version of analytics (i.e. not Universal analytics) - you would need to make a modification to your tracking code - but as far as I understand this won't be the case.
Dirk
Thanks for the compliment Egol!
In addition to the tools already mentioned - Semrush (paid version) offers the possibility to compare your site with the competition - and show keywords that generate traffic for them but not for your site.
Dirk
Hi,
Rand did a Whiteboard Friday on this topic (http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical) - and also answered a question quite similar as yours (http://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating)
=> advice would be not to use subdomains but rather to use subdirectories (which corresponds with the advice Tony gave you)
rgds,
Dirk
When creating a campaign by default it will track all subdomains. If you want to limit only to subdomain select 'Exclude subdomains to restrict this campaign to the domain you enter' under the advanced tab. If I'm not mistaken you have this option only when creating a campaign - you can't change it afterwards.
If need want to track all subdomains with a separate campaign - you will have to upgrade to the next tier.
Dirk