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If it's only about the H1 - if you look at the source the H1 tag is commented
Example; http://runforcharity.com/start-to-run/get-off-that-couch/getting-fit-for-a-marathon - H1 tag in source:
Seems more an issue with your developers than content.
The main title on that page is GETTING FIT FOR A MARATHON - which is the H2 title. I would change this to the H1?
Dirk
Hi Ruben,
You could translate the full site or only part of it (focussing on the most important parts). Only putting a translated homepage is an option but will not help you much in terms of SEO & isn't really great for user experience either.
You shouldn't worry about duplicate content if you translate the content to Spanish (and certainly don't put canonicals to the English version). In multilingual countries (like mine) it's more or less the standard approach. If you want to make it very obvious for Google (and the other search engines) you can use the hreflang tags. Check here for more info https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en or here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
Personally I wouldn't put the Spanish version on a brand new domain - as it implicates that you'll have to build your reputation almost from scratch - rather use a folder on your main domain (domain.com/es/ ) - this way the Spanish pages will benefit from the reputation of your current site. You could use the Spanish domain as vanity url & redirect it to the Spanish version
Would also add a link on each page - pointing to the version of that page in the other language or (if only partially translated) - to the homepage of the other language.
If you have questions let me know.
Dirk
The domain you are using is .com.au - which is by default geo targeted to Australia. It's not possible to change that. Geo targeting is only possible for generic top level domains; check the list here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en
Edit: The general info on geo targeting in the search consolecan be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
The way you implemented the link to the mobile site is wrong: you have just put a plain
rel="alternate" href="http://mrnutcase.mobi/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/"/
It should be like the example here https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
On your desktop site put:
href="http://mrnutcase.mobi/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/">
On your mobile site put:
Additional issue is that for the page you put as alternate (the mobile version http://mrnutcase.mobi/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/) gives a 404 - so you should correct that. This is probably the main reason why the page is no longer ranked.
Dirk
Found this one recently - look promising: http://kwgrouper.huballin.com/
You could launch it on the .com.au extension - but I fear that the geotargeting resulting from the ccTLD is a much stronger signal for Google than the ahfref tag.
Not sure if this link is still valid but it states:
Q: Does “rel alternate hreflang” replace geotargeting?
A: No. This link-element provides a connection between individual URLs, and only allows Google to “swap out” the URLs from your site currently shown in the search results with ones that are more relevant to the user. It does not affect ranking, as geotargeting would.
Check this video from Matt Cutts (2013) on how Google deals with ccTLD's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJqZIH_0Ars
If your dot.com domain is not available - try if some of these generic tld's is available for your domain - and redirect to the .com as soon as you can. It's not optimal - but I honestly think that the .com.au/us/ solution is not going to work.
Dirk
Becky,
It sounds a bit silly to state here - but actually we don't do a lot of backlink tracking and/or link building. The sites I work for are quite old (10+ years), with an excellent backlink profile. We are in the publishing industry and attract a lot of links in the 'natural' way. For our purpose the backlink tracking in Moz & Semrush is sufficient. Heard a lot of good stuff about ahref - but haven't used it myself.
Dirk
I use Semrush mainly for keyword tracking / analysis - not as much for backlinks. It's a great tool to check competitors as you can check keywords they rank for & your site is not ranking. Basic subscription is not that expensive and it's one of the tools I use almost every day.
Don't know Majestic personally - for backlinks I heard Ahref is a great tool.
Dirk
You can use Screaming Frog for this (and much more). It's not free but is great tool to check the SEO health of your site as well.
Trial is free (up to 500 url's).
To generate the sitemap - crawl your site with following settings:
Configuration > Spider > Advanced tab: select:
After crawl - under the Sitemaps you can create the XML & image sitemaps.
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
@Seoman10 - don't really agree with your answer:
1. Targeting the us market with a .com.au extension doesn't make sense (source https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399)
"If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, you can help us determine which countries are most important to you. If your site has a country-coded top-level domain (such as .ie or .fr) it is already associated with a geographic region (in this example, Ireland or France). If you use a country-coded domain, you won't be able to specify a geographic location. "
2. Duplicate content on different TLD's if they target different countries / languages can be handled using hreflang tags (check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077) in combination with geotargeting (check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#2)
Dirk
Hi
Did you check the http response of domain.com/old-boring-url/ with a tool like web-sniffer.net? It could very well be that you are being redirected when you try to access the url in your browser but that the header is giving a 404 reply.
If Moz only sees a 404 on that url - the backlinks of domain.com/old-boring-url/ will not be counted as backlinks for domain.com/awesome-url/
Dirk
This the community part of Moz - if you want to be reimbursed please contact Moz directly https://moz.com/about/contact.
I would also advice you to remove the password you published. You can already cancel your subscription - go to https://moz.com/subscriptions and click "Cancel Subscription" to avoid that you get billed for the following months.
Next time you take a free trial make sure you read the text properly - it clearly states:
"Your 30-day free trial begins once you click "Start My Free Trial!" below. We perform a $1 pre-authorization to ensure your credit card is valid — we won't actually charge your card until the end of your trial. If you cancel your subscription in your first month you will not be charged. If you don't cancel by day 30, your card will be charged for your first month of service. You can cancel your subscription at any time."
Dirk
It's not as much performance driven (Google doesn't really care about the extension) - it's probably more about separating url's from the underlying technology. If you don't use the extension - you can change from html to .php or .asp without having to rewrite the url.
Having url's without extension also increases readability zalando.nl/shoes is easier memorise than zalando.nl/shoes.html
The reason why product pages are with the .html extension is probably because the cms they use is generating it like that by default & they didn't rewrite it.
Advice from Google: "A site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organising your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers)."
Check also the answers here: https://moz.com/community/q/removing-html-extension-from-url-benefit
Dirk
Hi Chris,
You have 2 issues here:
1. It doesn't make sense to put the us version on http://www.camilla.com.au/us/ - .com.au is an Australian domain extension and therefore geo targeted by default to Australia. If you want to have a us version you'll have to put it on a generic domain extension (.com / .net / .org / etc geo targeted in search console to the us) or use the .us extension
2. Hreflang is on page level - not on domain level - on all pages of your site you put the hreflang pointing to the "us homepage". What you should do is for each page on your site (both us & au version) you will have to put at least two hreflang tags:
Example http://www.camilla.com.au/collection/my-wandering-heart-resort-15 & http://www.camilla.com.au/us/collection/my-wandering-heart-resort-15
On both pages put:
<link rel="alternate" href="http: www.camilla.com.au="" collection="" my-wandering-heart-resort-15" hreflang="en-au"></link rel="alternate" href="http:>
If you want to have one version as default - then also add
(if it's the us version you want as default - check http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html)
The message "reciprocal not found" indicates that you only put the hreflang to the us version - and that on the us version there is no hreflang link to the au version.
You can scan all the content on Moz on hreflang - but useful links are:
https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/ https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Dirk
Hi,
The Moz suggestion on the canonical is to put a self referencing canonical - not to put a canonical on the subpage to the homepage (or the other way round). Canonicals should only be used to avoid duplicate content - which is I guess not the case with your homepage/subpage.
The fact that Google prefers to show your homepage rather than your subpage is something which isn't really 100% under your control - without the actual site it's nearly impossible why this happens. My guess would be that your homepage probably has a higher authority (more incoming links) which Google could prefer over optimised content. If you browse the q&a you'll notice that you are certainly not the only one in this case;
Dirk
If Moz is crawling them it implies that somewhere in the source of your page you are linking to these url's. Try crawling your site with a tool like Screamingfrog & check which pages are generating these links. Then look in the source of the page - it should be somewhere in the code.
It would already help if you would put a canonical url like http://www.example.ch/de/example/marken/brand/make-up/c/Cat_Perso_Brand_3 on the page.
Dirk
When I try the url mobile.gardening-services-edinburgh.com/index.html it seems it's being redirected to http://mobile.gardening-services-edinburgh.com/Mobile/ which is generating a 302 to the lost page.
Could you try to take out the last 2 lines - they don't seem to work (adding the trailing slash) and I fear that they are generating this issue.
Like most people on this forum I am not really an expert in regex - you could always try to put your question on a forum like stackoverflow - which is much more technically oriented.
Dirk
Hi
You didn't answer the first part of Zoe's question - are you sure that your site is crawlable and that there are no issues with the robots.txt / noindex tags, ip detection systems, canonicals on all pages pointing to the home and so on. It's not because you can see all pages of your site in a browser that they are accessible/crawlable/indexable by google.
Try a crawl with Screaming Frog and user agent Googlebot to see if your pages can be crawled and indexed.
Backlinks are needed to have your site ranked for keywords - but it's not a prerequisite to have your site crawled. (noticed that a few times when a dev site was indexed by accident)
Without the actual url it's impossible to give a more detailed answer.
Dirk
The biggest problem with duplicate content (in most cases) is that you leave it up to Google (or search engines in general) to decide to which version they are going to send the traffic.
I assume that if you have a site in https you would want all visits to go to the https version. Rather than using a canonical url (which is merely a friendly request) I would 301 the http to the https version.
Dirk