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Hi There

As mentioned above - it would be optimal to see an example - or if you can't share the site, just a generic example. It may be that wordpress is adding feed URLs where they don't need to be, so we'd need to take a good look.

David

It's hard to tell from that image if the SVG title is nested like in this example: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/title - can you let us know?

Thanks!

Hmmm ... I think the more important question here is - would it be possible to not have URLs changing like that? I'm not 100% sure I follow the reason why it's set up like that?

Alternatively, could the URL change with ?parameters instead? That way you could set a canonical to point to the main URL and the parameters could achieve the changes you need.

Thanks for the info via direct message. As far as I know, those /feed/ URLs should not return 404's. I checked my site for example;

http://www.evolvingseo.com/2014/08/15/hiring-evolver-number-one/feed/ - and that returns a 200 OK.

I am not sure why WordPress would be doing this to be honest. Do you have a developer working with you? Or if it's a Theme you could contact the theme vendor about it.

Hi

You are most likely still seeing "A description for this result...." etc in Google because they may not have re-cached the page yet.

If the site is crawlable with a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider, or a header checker like http://urivalet.com/ - it's also accessible to Google, you just need to wait for them to re-crawl.

Let us know if you need more help!

a) What does he mean by that?

I am not entirely sure to be honest - but I think it's besides the point either way (keep reading)

b) Can it truly just be that simple?

What Andy said - nope, there are much bigger factors at play

c) Can I use the same layout when some pays and just chance the button direction?

d) If there is anything else you see that needs changes. I will be forever grateful.

Absolutely - here's some blunt high-level advice:

• The design could really use some work. This could just be my opinion, but users really want to trust websites. Design can convey (or hurt) trust. The site looks old and outdated, and I'm just not sure users will trust the content, and further really enjoy and like the site. The design needs to reflect the quality and recency of information you have and the overall brand experience.
• Expand into other marketing channels - what else do you have going on besides SEO? You want to become a known "brand" that when people think of 'film crew jobs" they think of going directly to ICREWZ instead of Google. Be better than Google for users to find these niche listings. This might take (aside from a design upgrade), other marketing - anything - be where your target audience is - maybe that's social (instagram??), podcasts, video is a huge one - I'd expand beyond two YouTube videos and do way more there. Maybe it means also facebook ads and/or PPC.  In other words - build an audience somewhere/anywhere. You're posting just basically a feed of job listings etc on social - instead, do that only 20% of the time and the rest of the time work on building engagement and an audience .
• You actually have people using the site yes? Leverage all those relationships and customer base to promote your site. Maybe they have websites, blogs, channels, YouTube shows etc etc - how can you partner with them to get in front of their audiences. I'd also ask your existing customer base about problems they are having and then creating that blog content for them to help solve their issues.

All that stuff - and much more I didn't mention - will feed back into your SEO success much more than scrolling

Hi There

While the CSS isn't ideal, it's ranking impact is likely in the .01% range of factors. There's lots of other things much more important.

Did you see a drop in rankings or traffic when you installed the new theme? Or are you just afraid it will hold the site back from further in increase?

I'd look more heavily into "local SEO". Here are a few sites and resources;

• http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/
• http://www.localseoguide.com/
• http://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo

Local SEO involves getting your local listings in order, acquiring reviews etc. Moz also has a new Local service: https://moz.com/local/overview

You can also check out something like http://www.whitespark.ca/ - they have some of the best Local SEO services.

Secondly, you'd want to make sure your content is the BEST and most authoritative source of info about your industry in your general area. For example this page kind of just talks around the services, http://orange-restoration.com/services/san-diego-water-damage/ but if I were to be honest it feels as if it was written just to have content on the page for search engines. (ie: "san diego" and "san diego water company" appear over and over again. ) Instead you can focus the page as best as you can on helping to educate and inform the user. What would you teach a customer about water damage if they were standing right in front of you looking for help?

Hi Steve

Yes, it sounds like if you're looking at pages showing in search for only one query they may be ranking interchangeably, or simultaneously.

Have you manually performed searches in Google (de-personalized etc) to see if you have multiple pages showing, or if they are switching? Also - do you track daily rankings for these keywords? That's another way to see what's ranking there - rank trackers like Authority Labs will show you all URLs ranking for a query.

Would there be any other reason two different users might get a different page? Location, language?

How specific is the search query vs. how targeted/focused are your pages? Or is there overlap in content? It really depends on the types of pages and content as far as determining your next step. Normally, we do see secondary pages occasionally ranking for one query, but your percentages sound high (unless you are getting two results a page).

I see what you're getting at. This wasn't a "normal" redirect old page to new page situation. The page being redirected to existed all along, and then they decided to 301 pages to it that were not related topically or by page type. The page with redirects pointed at it dropped in ranking.

I suspect the redirects through off the topical understand of what the commercial page was "about".

It's a fascinating SEO test - but hopefully not something anyone would do for real. Rules of thumb:

• Try to get your URLs right from the very beginning
• Try not not change them unless you have to after the fact
• Definitely don't redirect from one page to another unless the content is an exact match (or really close) and don't redirect across page types (commercial to informational, vice versa etc)

The root of your issue is that there are links that are coded incorrectly

--> http://screencast.com/t/ndeKw3PL

which is resulting in infinite crawling of pages that do not really exist, and thus the same duplicate/long title tags.

For example this page is a good URL: http://northstarpad.com/category/business-portrait-metro-detroit/

But as shown in my screenshot the "Pet Photography" image links to: http://northstarpad.com/category/business-portrait-metro-detroit/pet-photography// which is a bad URL and NOT http://northstarpad.com/pet-photography/ which is where it should link.

Essentially your links should be "absolute" URLs (which show the full file path) not "relative"

--> http://screencast.com/t/koL5QX9B

You'll need to pass this to a web dev who knows how to edit your WordPress theme files.

You could take all of the suggestions above, but I would actually make sure redirection is the best choice. Watch Matt Cutt's video here about what to do with expired products: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tz7Eexwp_A - he explains that in some cases users may prefer to see a 404.

However, you should allow Google to crawl your JavaScript and CSS (which is now blocked). Here's some background info on that:

• https://moz.com/blog/why-all-seos-should-unblock-js-css
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/10/updating-our-technical-webmaster.html

I just wanted to clarify that the SEO plugin has nothing to do with this, and also turning all in one on/off will probably not fix anything.

Either you may have the free version of Screaming Frog which limits to 500 URLs, or you may need to adjust crawl settings - my crawl definitely was heading towards the 57k

Laurie

It should be clarified that Moz's Domain Authority, while a really solid metric, is not the metric Google has or uses. And domain authority can have a few artificial quirks. So I would not be alarmed at all.

That said - can you explain where you are seeing the two different number? I see a Page Authority of 39 for both http and https - and I see a domain authority of 27 for both http and https.

Now, even IF Moz has two different numbers for http and https, again, this is not what Google is doing, it's just an approximation.

Setting a canonical from https to http is just a band-aid and I would not recommend that approach. I would recommend having a site-wide 301 redirect so if a user lands on the https version of a URL it redirects them to the same version of that page on http. Or vice vera, whichever version you are prioritizing.

I have to respectfully disagree with Dmytro and Robert - as mentioned, Moz's metrics are not Google metrics - and the best action here is always to prioritize http or https with redirects.

Hello

I don't think any of those factors with the information provided could have had such an impact on the site. Especially not some simple title tag adjustments. It's possible that would happen over time as Google processes the new user signals, but probably not so quickly.

What type of keyword was it? What industry is the eCommerce site in?

Not sure if this came on your radar, but there was an unconfirmed Google update a few weeks ago:

• https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-no-21225.html
• http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/unconfirmed-google-algorithm-updates-2015/

If the changes you see match about November 19th, I'd check out Glenn's suggestions at the bottom of that second article. The site could have been caught in a content quality update.

I can point you towards the best places online to find wordpress developers;

• https://clarity.fm/browse/technology/wordpress
• https://www.odesk.com/o/profiles/browse/skill/wordpress/
• http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/find-wordpress-developer-designer/

Try those!

Hmmm ok. I'm going to suggest we pass this to the help dept at Moz instead.

Hello

There could be a lot of issues. It's possible the way you're handling URLs can be a factor.

What specific keywords are you seeing rankings down for? And what was the exact date?

Also, I think links could be a big factor here. There are many with exact match anchors (calling cards, phone cards etc) according to open site explorer. Some of them I checked, and they look like they are on spammy sites (like this for example thenewyorkads .com)

Have you done a link disavow and/or cleanup?

By block, I assume you mean not index them?

If you're using Yoast, all you need to do is select "noindex subpages of archives" under the Titles & Meta menu.

So if simply not indexing is the desired result, that's the easiest bet - and then you will not index all other subpages such as /category/page/2/ etc

Hi

From what I have seen, if the NEW structure is done well (good architecture, good on-page optimization, better navigation, better keyword optimization in the new urls - its all an improvement from the old navigation) and you 301 everything corectly - you should see an improvement in rankings.  Although this can take a week or two.

And of course submit a new xml sitemap.  I also block the old pages/directories in robots.txt (this may be a little overkill but I do it anyway).

One extra tip is to just do a site:www.mydomain.com search in google to uncover any pages in their index you may not know about, or have overlooked and be sure to 301 those to the most relevant pages as well.

-Dan