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Hi Justin

Probably the easiest way to eliminate these cross references is to ask your programmer to put all links as relative links rather than as absolute links. Relative links have the disadvantage that they can generate endless loops if something is wrong with the HTML - but this is something you can easily check with Screaming Frog.

If you check the .com version - example https://www.zenory.com/blog/tag/love/ -it's calling zenory.co.nz for plenty of links (just check the source & search for .co.nz) - both the http & the https version

You can check all these pages by hand - but I guess your programmer must be able to do this in an automated way.

It is also the case the other way round- on the .co.nz version - you'll find references in the source to the .com version

In screaming frog - the links with "NZ" are the only ones which should stay absolute - as they point to the other version

Hope this clarifies

Dirk

Hi

Both questions are not completely related. Technically it is possible to have different hosts for different folders - so it's possible to have yourdomain.com/fr/mypage hosted in France & yourdomain.com/en/mypage in the US (see also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1848605/can-a-website-subdirectory-be-served-by-a-different-web-server)

If you have to choose between folders / subdomains - go for folders (see also this post: http://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating)

If you check the signals Google is using to determine which country you are targeting (check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192#2)

• 1: geotargeting - it's perfectly possible to activate two webmastertool accounts for yoursite.com/fr targeting the French market & yoursite.com/us targeting the US market

• 2. server location - is used as a hint & became less important with the use of CDN's (mainly important for performance reasons). If you use a CDN there should be no problem even when the "main" site is hosted in France.

-3. other hints like address, use of local language:  it's probably a good idea to use the content-language metatag in the head of your HTML. If identical pages exist in different language versions - it's probably a good idea to use the hreflang tag to make it obvious to Google which part of the site is targeting which audience. For hreflang - this generator can be useful: https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool & this tool to check if everything is implemented as should http://flang.dejanseo.com.au/

In your case - I would go to

• separate folder - geotargeted in Webmastertools
• hosted in US - if this not possible: use CDN
• if different language versions of the same page exist across the site: hreflang to make it obvious for Google which part of the site is targeting which language / country - use content-language metatag.

Hope this helps

Dirk

Hi,

The url https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=41 has https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum  - however this canonical url doesn't exist - it's redirected to https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/

If you update the canonical to https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/ you should be fine, there is no need to redirect the url's.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi Pete

Even if you don't make the videos yourself, it still ads value for your visitors if you use videos from Youtube and/or add additional info from suppliers. Engagement & time on site should increase - so indirectly it will have a positive impact on SEO.

It's not really necessary to make the external links nofollow - normally Google advises only to put nofollow on commercial links / links to low quality. Of course, if you are linking to competitors, it's better to put a nofollow (you don't want to reinforce their position).

rgds,

Dirk

According to Google: "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar."

The example you give is a bit in between: it contains a part which is unique - however the tabulated content which would appear on each page contains more content than the unique part. Personally I don't think that these pages would be considered duplicate content. However, if you want to be on the save side you could make a separate page with all possible configurations. This would also have the advantage that you could do without the tab's (end of of 2014 John Muller indicated that hiding content under tabs is not the best seo strategy (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html).

I wouldn't go for the iframe solution - it's a bit an outdated way to present information.

Hope this helps,

Dirk

Michael,

It's the same - just the wording is different. For some reasons Analytics prefers to use sessions instead of visits.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi,

It will not work when you put it in the body - check mistake 5 on this page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html

"When we encounter a rel=canonical designation in the , it’s disregarded. "

rgds

Dirk

Hi Darcy,

If you apply the strict definition of Google, you are "inserting text or keywords into a page only when the User-agent requesting the page is a search engine, not a human visitor" - even if you don't do it with the intention to trick search engines (the inserted text = text which is invisible for non-registered users).

Is there a way to show the same content to both bots & humans, and still keeping the page

• attractive enough for search engines
• teasing enough for humans to register

It's difficult to guess the level of risk you're running - but once penalised, traffic drop is huge & recovery takes normally a long time (with no guarantee of full recovery)

rgds

Dirk

Hi Darcy,

When people click on the results in Google  - do they see the normal page (the one that Googlebot saw) or the version for the "new" users. If it's the second case - you are indeed cloaking according to Google's definition (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355).

If you're listed in Google News - you could participate in "First Click Free" (https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40543?hl=en) - which basically allows you to hide your content behind a registration wall but still be indexed as long as you provide at least 5 pages (articles) /day

Not all participants to First Click Free are playing according to the rules (http://searchengineland.com/google-fails-enforce-first-click-free-203078) - but I guess your site isn't the Financial times.

You could continue what you're doing now, but you certainly run the risk of a penalty in my opinion

rgds,

Dirk

Hi Pete,

I assume that with h tags you mean H1, H2, .. tags? There is not really a need to add these to the links. Adding theme based crosslinks will probably a better strategy.

You could also consider syndicating content - I've seen quite a lot of examples where DIY stores or fertiliser companies created content, both text and video (how to paint the ceiling / how to keep your lawn in top condition / ...) that was distributed on 3rd party sites (with the same topics). Even if the links on these pages are sometimes nofollow - it still creates brand awareness/trust and probably leads/sales as well.

If I take the sample product page - I would however put some intro text at the top of the page. I guess most people who want to hire a tool like a pressure washer have a certain task in their head, but wouldn't directly know which type to choose. I would add a kind of guide at the top of the page (which type of pressure washer do I need) - you have an article about it, but the title is only about the pressure you need ("Pressure washing guide - Which psi do I need?"). Same applies to "Power cleaning techniques using a pressure washer" - people look for "how to use a pressure washer". Videos on how to use these tools are also great (it always seems so easy to use them until you try yourself...).

Apart from the keyword research already mentioned, ask the sales persons in the stores what the typical questions are that people have when they come to the shop - these questions are excellent titles for your articles.

rgds,

Dirk

Also be careful with the hidden text at the bottom (Read more about our Pressure washing services) - in 2013 Matt Cutts indicated that this was ok for SEO (http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-on-hidden-text-using-expandable-sections-youll-be-in-good-shape-167753) - however end of 2014 John Muller indicated that it's not the best strategy (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html).

Even the volume is not abnormal - suppose you have a Italian restaurant & take-away in Manhattan, then you would probably appear on pages on restaurants, italian restaurants, mediterranean restaurants, catering, take-aways in Manhatten, New York,... - all these lists are indexed in Google and all these pages would have links to your site. Depending on your business & region - you could appear in an awful lot of combinations of (sub)categories & geographic locations.

rgds,

Dirk

These are normal 404 errors - the :443 after the url just indicates that it's using the https port (you can add the 443 after each of your https urls - they redirect to the normal ones); Don't know why wordpress is adding the :443

Check your site if you have internal links to these 404 pages (try Screaming Frog or another crawltool. These pages seem to have existed in the past: check this example http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_M5jZnMoFmcJ:https://www.compleetverkleed.nl/hoed-al-capone-panter-8713647758068-2/+&cd=2&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=nl

If no internal / external links to these pages exist - this problem should disappear after a while.

rgds,

Dirk

Normally the links from yellowpages are of type "nofollow" so they do not need to be disavowed.

Apart from this fact, given the fact that most businesses are listed in the yellow pages, these links don't seem to be very unnatural to me.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi,

The reason why you have these duplicates is because the different domains you have all point to the same server - as a result the content is available on all these different url's.

To solve this - choose one principal domain (the one you want to keep)

Option 1: Edit the htaccess file and redirect the other url's to the main domain: to do this add these lines

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The second line checks if the request url is has the form www.example.com

If not, the 3rd line is rewriting it to example.com

Suppose the site is called using www.test.com/article.htm - it fails the test on line 2 - it will be rewritten to www.example.com/article.htm

Option 2: Alternative is to choose "domain forwarding" - this a standard option most registrars provide to forward a domain to another domain (check with your registrar how to do this - make sure you choose a 301 type redirect & that the url changes to the destination url)

Hope this helps,

Dirk

Replace www.example.com by your main site & you should be fine. The emails won't be affected - that's something which is defined on

Hi Pete,

These pages are not really duplicates, but they do not add a lot of value either. For these kind of pages I would use "noindex, follow" attribute. If I look at them, I really have difficulties to imagine for which kind of query these pages could provide a suitable answer.

Each of the articles mentioned in these list seems to contain useful content- but grouping them by date of apparition is not really adding value. If I were you - I would rather try to regroup them in logical themes (Taking care of your lawn / Painting / Maintenance / ...)

Put yourself in the mind of your target audience - they need to solve a certain problem & they probably need one of the products you have for hire. How would they search? What is the info they need? How can you help them? Many of the articles I see on your site are a bit too generic ('How to take care of your lawn in spring'). To be honest - that's a question I would never enter in Google. People are searching for things like "how to get rid of moss in lawn" - your site doesn't really seem to have a specific answer on this topic. It would however be an excellent opportunity to promote your lawn scarifier.

On first sight, it looks that your site has a lot of interesting content, but it's not really organised around themes, doesn't always answer the right question & links in a bit arbitrary way to the e-commerce part.

Try to do some keyword research (nice article here: https://moz.com/blog/keyword-research-in-90-minutes - a lot more resources here: https://moz.com/ugc/category/keyword-research) - to find out how your target audience is searching & optimise your content according to this;

Try to create smart internal linking using topical hubs  (I love this WBF of Gianluca : https://moz.com/blog/topical-hubs-whiteboard-friday)

Hope this helps,

Dirk

Hi Justin

Google doesn't seem to be figuring out (even with the correct hreflang in place) which site should be shown for each country.

If you look at the cached versions of your .com.au & .com versions it always the .co.nz version which is cached - this is probably also the reason why the meta description is wrong (it's always coming from the .co.nz version) and why the % of url's indexed for each sitemap (for the .com & .com.au version) is so low.

Try to rigorously eliminate all cross-references in your site - to make it more obvious for Google that these are 3 different sites:

• in the footer - the links in the second column are pointing to the .co.nz version (latest articles) - change these links to relative ones

• on all sites there are elements you load from the .com domain (see latest blog entries - the images are loaded from the .com domain for all tld's

As long as you send these confusing signals to Google - Google will mix up the different versions of your site.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi Justin,

If you want to redirect to home I guess you should just put / as the destination url (as told - not really an expert in Yoast)

I think the rule should look like

Redirect 301 /folder_to_be_removed/ /

Could you give it a try?

rgds

Dirk

Hi Jamie,

The link in your profile looks ok (it's not a "nofollow") - I guess that the issue is more related to the data delays of Moz OSE.

rgds

Dirk

Hi Ravi,

Looks ok now. Did you already see changes in WMT (number of url's indexed). To speed up the process you could do a "Fetch as Google" in WMT for the sitemap & submit it to the index.

rgds,

Dirk

Hi

When I look at the source the href's are missing - see attached screen copy.

rgds

Dirk

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