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I would not deindex anything. The search rankings are the bread and butter. The question is how do you leverage current traffic and use it to boost personal injury.

I would start by curating new content that  aligns with the criminal justice content. Then take the criminal justice content and redirect it to your new content.

If you deindex, traffic will drop considerably and it will be like starting from scratch. If you redirect you may be able to pass link juice to your new pages while rankings start to increase for personal injury.

Hi Bek,

You surely would not have to add meta descriptions to all 700, however i would look at the posts that get the most traffic and are still relevant and find ways to improve the technical seo to these posts. You may also try to update non-performing posts with meta descriptions and technical seo if you feel they are important to the brand.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

You would definitely have to set the canonical link to the original content.

You are best to set the link as no follow

Hi Ali,

It is considered bad practice to have followed links in a clients footer. Google considers this span since it will essentially be a link on every page of a clients site. Also many of these sites may not have anything to do with your company making them not as relevant to begin with.

I have read some articles in which tests were done trying to confirm that a site could not rank by doing this. However they found out that in the early game these links indeed helped a new site rank quickly. But they still highly advised against this form of link building because it was against googles link building policy.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

Yeah exactly,

But with headings and such you could probably test and tweak. Run it with hyphen see how traffic is then change to no hyphen see if it drops or increases. It really is going to be based on the specifics of the hyphenated word and may require some testing. Can you run an a/b title test on your blog?

My experience is that most of the time the hyphen does not matter so much, but i tend to leave them out in the main technical seo.

Thanks,

Hi SallieJ,

The problem with hyphens is not how google sees them but search intent.

Most people are not going to add the hyphen in when searching. One of the main focus points of seo is answering the search intent of the user. so if the user is not likely to use a hyphen then maybe you should not use a hyphen in the main technical seo points of your content. However, I do not think this should apply to the body of your content on page. This refers more to content descriptions or page titles. Proper use of grammar can be used for what is seen on page.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

Hi MrDeeBee,

I think you answered your own question. "Also out right deleting the content would go against our openness and transparency of past selections advised."

So you could no index the older posts or if they bring in any traffic leave them as is.

Also you could start 301 redirecting old posts to newer posts within the same categories or events. This could be useful if the content is about the same sports team or player.

This way you still get the traffic but it is directed to newer more relevant content.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

This is essentially what i was thinking too.

i was hoping to get a few more responses from the community, but i value your input. I have already started moving in this direction.

Thank you,

Good Morning everyone,

I am trying to decide how I am going to handle an issue on two WordPress websites.

I recently acquired 2 new clients that used to do business with the same SEO company. Neither of the clients know of the other but both had the same story about said SEO company. The usual complaints, I wont get into details.

My issue is the old SEO company basically was spamming keywords and utilized tags to do this.

For each of these clients they had very thin spammy blog posts written and then had a multitude of spammy tags used as keywords here is an example

https://captainjacksboatingschool.com/middlesex-county-boating-safety-class/

Each one of these tags is creating duplicate content. How do i properly handle these tags? Do i delete? Do i need to redirect into one main page after deletion. I much rather use plain English and authoritative based Categories. In fact I never use tags, only categories. They do not seem to have much seo value.

Both clients who were with this company have the same Tag setup... Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I do not want to loose the customers current rank because i want to do things my way

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

There should be some sort of contract.

You are sharing your private information with the agency and vice versa. Also the contract will govern what services the agency provides and what you can expect from their services. If they write content for your site, the contract will govern who owns that contract.

It is my opinion that you may want to get out of this deal before you are in to deep. They are already shady with a backlinks report. This is only my opinion.

Thanks,

Don

Hello,

You can use moz's link explorer to reveal the back links https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/home

If they are good quality they usually show up in the index but not always. Another area you can check is google search console.

I do not think it is common practice to give a backlinks report upon request. They may not want to reveal their sources. But this information should not be private to a client. The contract should govern any information that is shared.

Thanks,

Don

Hello Sharon,

I can tell you from experience as a digital media/marketing/SEO company in NJ, it is hard to rank and stand out. But you guys offer SEO, you should be able to exploit your strengths to rise above your competition. Understand in New Jersey, 8 months is not enough time to rank without putting in considerable amounts of effort to build links. My suggestions would be to focus on your local market. Build your google reviews. As your start generating a client base. Start doing off site marketing and community building.

It make take you a couple years but you will get there.

Thanks,

Don

This basically means your website has been hacked in someway. You must remove all malware or malicious code. Many times hackers will setup skimming pages. Its a page that looks like for example a bank login but in reality its a scam trying to get access to someones info. After you remove this content then you have to tell google that you removed it in search console. Once they see it is gone they will lift the warning.

Thanks,

Hi Emnma,

Yoast does not do seo for you. It gives guidelines to follow. When you insert a keyword in the keyword slot, the software only matches the seo suggestions based on the keyword. If you want to check 3 keywords. Change the keyword you put in the keyword box.

Those keywords are not added to meta data or anything like that. The upgrade of the plugin gives you a couple extra perks, but all the main stuff is available for free! Being able to add 5 keywords to optimize for allows you to see how your content matches up. You will have multiple keywords that do not get a green light and they shouldn't

The other advice big advice i can give you is do not optimize your content for green lights. If you are trying to optimize for green lights much of your content will not be organic. It will be produced to meet the minimum requirements to get the green lights. Here is an interesting article by yoast on it https://yoast.com/want-green-bullet-wp-seo/

Let me know if you have any further questions.

I would start with some market research. If you are in a competitive arena the sales growth from the SEO campaign will be less then a non competitive arena.

Do you have any case studies that could support your finding and make a case for future financial gains? (Previous clients in the same niche). Is the client willing to put x amount of dollars into a campaign to see so much growth. If the client does not have the budget to reach your goals, or if your determining what the budget should be. Basing financial growth upon a specific budget will give more credibility to your analysis. If using an arbitrary budget that a client is not capable of meeting your data will be skewed.

This is where i would start.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

My only question would be the speed of the redirect. Over 5 seconds. Maybe loose some potential customers who do not want to wait. Is there a reason you cannot 301 the url that is giving the 404?

Thanks,

Don Silvernail

Hello,

I have personally found sliders to be ineffective, not bad for seo but bad for the user experience. If you have 8 seconds to capture a users attention the first time they come to a website why hide all the information on consecutive sliders. Most people never see the second or third slider. So to increase conversions why not sell then above the fold with one good piece of information.

That's just my two cents,

Don Silvernail

If you are comfortable using your home address that is what would do. In fact that is what i do and i am in the same business as you

Thanks,

I do,

Pages are static and have detailed information posts are dynamic,  time based and run chronologically within a blog. 
If you make your main information a post it looses some value as these pages are cornerstone content that the rest of the site builds off of. It more of a user experience situation.

Thanks,