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I think this page is a bit over optimised - the word locksmith appears 62 times on the page. The text seems to be written for Search Engines rather than human beings. I would make the text shorter & more to the point, and don't repeat your keywords too much.
Also watch out for duplicate content - http://24hourlocksmith.com.au/tag/dimple-lock/ ; http://24hourlocksmith.com.au/james-bond-lock-picking-tool/ http://24hourlocksmith.com.au/tag/dimple-key/ seem to be identical.
Hi,
Did you properly configure your Analytics - normally someone who goes from the main site to the subdomain should not be measured as a bounced visit. If you are using Google Analytics, you can find here how you should change your trackingcode (if you use the async version) - here if you use Universal Analytics.
As google is not using your analytics tool to determine the bounce rate but uses it's own sources, this will have no impact on your rankings.
Apart from this issue, in general it is better to have everything on the main domain. You could check this presentation of Rand on this topic. You should check with your technical people if it wouldn't be possible to move the Magento to a directory of the main domain.
Plenty of sites are using different technology on different parts of the server, without it being visible to the visitors. As long as the user experience is not affected this should not be a problem - so there is no reason to put everything on one technical platform.
rgds,
Dirk
Could be that the problem is only occurring in Moz and that in the "real" world there is no issue. Did you see these 404 errors as well in Google Search Console? You could try to visit the "old" url with js disabled & with the Moz user agent ( rogerbot/1.0 (http://moz.com/help/pro/what-is-rogerbot-, rogerbot-wherecat@moz.com) ) to try to simulate what's happening.
Other way of checking could be to check your server log files for rogerbot & try to check there where the 404 response is coming from. A basic guide on how to do that can be found here: https://moz.com/blog/technical-seo-log-analysis)
Without actual url it's difficult to figure out what the problem could be - if you don't want to publish it here you could send it in private message.
Dirk
It would be better to indicate the "nofollow" on the level of the link rather than on page level (as it will only impact the paid rather than all the links) but if this is not possible, the tag you want to use is ok.
rgds,
Dirk
I agree with Ryan - there is something fundamentally wrong with the way your page is build. I checked the speed of a productpage with Webpagetest.org - http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150311_PM_15Z8/1/details/ - if you look at the number of items loaded, it doesn't correspond with what is shown on screen.
I am not an expert in Javascript, but your HTML page is filled with it, and it seems to be loading much more files than you actually need. There are 412 image requests (!) for a total of 2105075 bytes, 21 HTML requests for 1593795 bytes, 18 javascript requests (326065 bytes)
Your developer did something really wrong here, and you need to correct this asap. In my experience, it's not normal that you loose 90% of organic traffic. I did several migrations over the last couple of months, of very big sites with no loss of search traffic.
Apart from this urgent problem, I would also block your shoppingcart and review links for indexing - they generate an enormous amount of 302 redirects Example urls: https://www.jmac.com/reviewhelpful.asp?ProductCode=HONEYWELL-ADEMCO-747F&ID=39994&yes=yes - http://www.jmac.com/ShoppingCart.asp?ProductCode=SILENT-KNIGHT-PS-DA - put a nofollow on these links or block them in robots.txt
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Agree with Daniel - according to John Mueller from Google the location of the server is (almost) irrelevant - it's mainly the performance and the user experience that counts. Quote :'For search, specifically for geotargeting, the server's location plays a very small role, in many cases it's irrelevant'.
I guess it used to be a more important signal but currently is no longer the case - check this article on Webmaster support: "Server location (through the IP address of the server). The server location is often physically near your users and can be a signal about your site’s intended audience. Some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so it is not a definitive signal."
Google is quite capable of determining based on your content (address, etc) which audience you are targeting so go ahead and move your server to California.
rgds,
Dirk
Hi,
If it's just a new template and all the other factors remain the same - you should have no (negative) impact. If you switch to a mobile template, don't forget to also test the speed of your pages & the size of your images - it's nice that the site is responsive but if you have a lot of very heavy images, and the sites loads slow on mobiles, the gain will be minimal.
The traffic drop related to site migrations is very often related to changing the structure, generating a lot of 404's when not all the pages are redirected. Google seems to be cautious when suddenly there is a spike of 404's and reduces the traffic for a while. Once everything is back to normal, traffic (normally) returns.
rgds,
Dirk
Hi,
It seems that you're pages are extremely heavy to load - I did 2 tests - on your homepage & on the /moti-sot page
Your homepage needed a whopping 73sec to load (http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150312_YV_H5K/1/details/) - the moti-sot page is quicker - but 8sec is still rather high (http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150312_SK_H9M/)
I sometimes noticed a crash of the Shockwave flash plugin, but not sure if this is related to your problem;
I crawled your site with Screaming Frog, but it didn't really find any indexing problems - while you have a lot of pages very deep in your sitestructure, the bot didn't seem to have any specific troubles to access your page. Websniffer returns a normal 200 code when checking your sites - even with useragent "Google"
So I guess you're right about the firewall - may be it's blocking the ip addresses used by Google bot - do you have reporting from the firewall which traffic is blocked? Try to search for the useragent Googlebot in your logfiles and see if this traffic is rejected. The fact that some sections are indexed and others not could be related to the configuration of the firewall, and/or the ip addresses used by Google bot to check your site (the bot is not always using the same ip address)
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Hi
You can check the implementation in Webmastertools https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/ - or in a tool like https://webmaster.yandex.com/microtest.xml
I checked a branch page - for Yandex some of the fields are not correct (url / local address / local phone missing) - but most of it seems ok. For Google everything was ok.
You could check the other pages as well using these tools.
Dirk
Hi,
As far as I understand it's not really a question of duplicate content in the SEO meaning. Although all the definitions starting with M are on the M-index page this page is quite different to the pages that contain the individual definitions of the terms that start with M.
A problem on many sites is that the pages that only contain the explanation of one term are very light in terms of content, and that the page with is listing all these terms is generally not very interesting from a user (and search perspective). I don't know your site, so difficult to assess if this is the case
You could make the index page noindex/follow - and just list the terms, linking to the explanation pages. For the explanation pages which are probably the most interesting for users & search engines: try to enrich them by adding more content, like links to articles on your site that use the term, or have more information on the term
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Hi,
It's only a small detail & not important for your site - in the footer you have a link to "Elegant Themes" which is too close to the Wordpress links. You have a 99% score for Mobile experience so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Check the details on https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcarhire-southafrica.co.za%2Fcar-hire-durban%2F - the error is mentioned at the bottom of the page.
rgds,
Dirk
Location of your server isn't really important - check https://www.seroundtable.com/seo-geo-location-server-google-17468.html: "For search, specifically for geotargeting, the server's location plays a very small role, in many cases it's irrelevant. If you use a ccTLD or a gTLD together with Webmaster Tools, then we'll mainly use the geotargeting from there, regardless of where your server is located. You definitely don't need to host your website in any specific geographic location -- use what works best for you, and give us that information via a ccTLD or Webmaster Tools."
Similar message here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en:
Specifically on CDN's - John Mu indicated
"At any rate, while moving to a CDN may result in small temporary fluctuations, making your site faster will frequently help your site much more. Some studies have shown that the faster your site is, the longer visitors will stay, and that's generally a good thing :-). As I mentioned above, if you're seeing significant changes in ranking, then I'd look for the issues elsewhere" (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-cdn-13117.html)
Dirk
Hi,
Google's advice on this configuration is to use the "Vary HTTP header" to let the Google bot know that the same url is used for mobile/desktop. See also: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/dynamic-serving?hl=en . While Google strongly recommends responsive design - this option is also valid. Matt Cuts says the same in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6qtaiZRHg (it starts with all the caching stuff, the part which might be of interest to you starts at 3:38)
Hope this clarifies,
Dirk
Not sure about this specific message you got, but very often messages like this from Webmaster tools only include a few sample links, and then you have to figure it out yourself which the other pages are where the problems occur (Google wouldn't dare to make our lives too easy)
Hi,
If the Moz crawler is finding duplicate content it implies that there is duplicate content on your site, not duplicate content on social media.
You can download the csv in the crawl report (or click the + icon) to see which pages Moz considers to be duplicates. Comparing the pages can help you find a solution (like a canonical url, or a 301 redirect, ...)
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Hi,
Don't know exactly the technique they use - but they hacked the site - presented the content of your site to Google as you can see here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zFtvwoO5EhoJ:www.waldorf.org.za/foot.asp+&cd=1&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=uk - it's an exact copy of your site - so they present your site to Googlebot. It's not only the homepage - other pages are indexed as well: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jC3Etl7Fd2EJ:http://www.waldorf.org.za/foot.asp?products/28122.html%2Bhttp://www.waldorf.org.za/foot.asp&hl=nl-GB&gbv=2&&ct=clnk
They implemented a 302 on the page (I guess based on referrer that redirects you to the cheap soccer site) - if you visit the url directly you just get an innocent linux install page.
File a complaint @Google & warn the owner of the domain that the site is hacked (the hackers also inserted spammy links on the normal version of the site) - would start with Google so you have proof about what's happening.
rgds,
Dirk
Hi Olivier,
The question that Matt is answering is quite specific - is a "coming soon" page bad for new domains as Google seems to prioritize new domains. The answer is "no" for this situation.
The situation of your friend is quite different - he has an existing site which is generating some traffic. Unless your "coming soon page" is extremely interesting & rich in content, it will not rank for any keyword - basically you're reducing your site to a one page site, so bounce rate will inevitably be very high.
If you want to proceed, you just have to put up a redirect rule that is redirecting all url's to the index page of your site (which would then be the "coming soon" page).
rgds
Dirk
Hi Jonathan,
The rankings & competitiveness are checked for Google BE/ french so should be ok- the search volumes which are indicated are coming from Bing (which has almost zero marketshare for Belgium). Guess that's the reason why no figures are displayed.
For search traffic volume you can always try to the estimates on Google Adwords or tools like Semrush.
rgds
Dirk
Hi
Not sure if I understand 100% how the redirects will be implemented. Probably the easiest way to find out if it's going to work is to create a small test environment where you implement the solution (both scenario's) and then check with the Google Mobile Friendly test if Google sees the page as Mobile Friendly or not. If not, you'll have to find another solution.
rgds,
Dirk
I would make any link to a section that requires login of type nofollow, which according to Google is a acceptable reason to use "nofollow". (source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en). The pages behind the login are not accessible for searchengines so it makes no sense for the google bot to follow them. If the link is nofollow, you can use 302 or 301 as you prefer.
rgds,
Dirk