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Hi,

First of all I would really take care of that Panda issue you have there: http://screencast.com/t/SzbL6hTFwWr

To answer your questions:

• Is this possible?

They can't rank both. You need to decide canonical version - the one to rule them all

• Do we need to add any tags (e.g. "rel=canonical") to one of these so that we're not penalized for duplicate content? If so, which one?

There are no duplicate content issues but yes, it's best that you chose and don't let google do that for you. Add rel canonical.

• Can we just change the meta data structure of the stand-alone websites to skirt around the duplicate content issue?

That won't help.

Overall you got hit by Panda already - you should take care of what content you push into the index as that's not the way to recover. before pushing more content into the index you should clean the site for all issues related with Panda.

Cheers.

Give it some time. It's usual that a high domain authority link will "sunk" the target for a short period of time. Google even has a patent related with this. It should pop back up - it can also take 30 days or so you still have some time to .. just wait.

That's just one response for this - it coud be somethig else too though ...

Hi,

URL format and length it's a ranking signal - that means shorter URLs are "more important" but only if there is a taxonomy in place. If all your URLs are directly on the root - then this doesn’t play any role. So if your domain has a lot of content and some or most is structured domain/folder/ and domain/folder/folder etc - then moving from /blog to the root will bring some signals that this content might be important.

But note that having short urls on the root directly it's not a roadmap to good rankings

On the user side - if the content is "blog related" - blogging, articles, opinions etc - then I would keep it on the /blog/ as it can influence the CTR in SERPs - that also depending on the queries of course and if it will match what users are expecting - a blog thing or some other resource ...

Hope it makes sense.

Cheers.

Hey,

Each year the highest search volume on this topic is related with the same questions (keywords combinations) :

How to do a long pass ball in fifa 20xx ? How to score from free kicks tips fifa 20xx and so on.

There are tons of resources out there  - it's hard to find something new and the differences that fifa2015 will bring, like you said, they are not available at this stage. So if you want to be in shape by the time fifa 2015 hits the shelves get the best resources and present them in a nice friendly format, a "topic page" type as there is no resources like that so far for fifa fan boys (and girls of course). There are also tons of video but you need to dig for those - if you know your stuff, find those and bring them all together but don't focus too much on Google as that will follow if you do everything very user friendly. I would love to see a resource like that online and I am sure a lot other will too. Just capitalize on what's available: resources, videos and focus on the questions that people will search for related with fifa 2015...

Cheers.

Yes, adding noindex to all profile pages will solev any current or future issues you might have. There is no point in having those pages into the index if the "actual" content is anyway invisibile. There is no point keeping over 100k pages in the index with only boilerplate on them.

You should no index all profiles asap - there is no value from an organic point of view there and if you do lose some traffic from those - the risk - reward  (risk - losing some traffic / reward - keeping your domain overall safe) is without question towards the reward side.

Cheers.

Hi,

No - that's not a problem. Anyway google is good at determining how things are even if you have a lot of duplicate content. And it's important to mention that there is no such thing as a Google duplicate content penalties - manual or otherwise.

Panda dose target "duplicate content" but Panda is not a penalty is a filter and it's more complex, way more then "duplicate content" .. but that's a story for another day - anyway with a 500 pages site you are probabaly safe from panda even if you would have a lot of Panda signals...

Cheers.

Hi,

Are you talking about the crawl rate from Web master tools ? Can you share a screenshot inlcuding all 3 areas in the crawl section ? (time, kb and pages)

Cheers.

Can you share the link ? (to see the format, approach and the organic visibility of the domain that is hosting the article.)

Cheers.

LJDigital is spot on.

First you need to create a web master tools account - if you don't have one already.

Here is how: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592?hl=fr

After that look into Web master tools -> Search Traffic -> Manual action and see if you have something there.

That would be a good start.

Hi,

No, transfering (and by that you probabaly mean redirecting ) old authority to the new site will also transfer the manual action

Just make sure the disavow file is correct - make sure you use domains not links (as the disavow file is "sensitive" to duplicates: www vs non www, http vs https, slash at the end vs non slash at the end etc)

Cheers.

Hi Sandra,

Greetings from Austria !  - as I see you are in Germany

Just a few comments related with your post:

1. The organic visibility dose indeed shows some drops that overlaps with both panda and Penguin. However you should also overlap the visibility with GA data in order to see what you rank for but you don't get any traffic - as this is a strong panda signal.  Organic Visibility: http://screencast.com/t/0T0OdPBR As far as ranking distribution - it looks bad but I've seen much worst so it's not a lost case. ( http://screencast.com/t/z1wfh0vEjNbK )

2. With Panda you need to identify the pages with issues. If you do improve some pages (Made new, fresh, longer and much better texts for a few hundred pages) that's fine but it might just not do the trick. First you need to slice the site down and split it into chunks of type of pages (thin content, idle pages, low ctr & very high impressions, ratio of boiler plate vs content, downstream traffic etc). Then improve or delete or noindex those. After that consolidate as much as you can the rest. new landing pages are good - as it can change the threshold for Panda...

3. Over optimization is not a panda issue - you can focus if it make sense to improve overall and you might overlap with some panda signals but my personal opinion is that is not the main focus now.

4. Panda is "mainly" on page: by mainly I don't mean links I mean it's a bigger picture as it's about serps, it's about competitors. It's about being better then the other sites that are targeting the same terms - it's not about being perfect. Penguin on the other hand is about spam: on page and off page (un-natural links). If you do clean your link profile make sure you clean it base don some good metrics. Also include the links you remove in the disavow file. The disavow file will be processed only when Google will roll out Penguin again. Until then don't expect any changes (unless you also have a manual action and when that is processed then the disavow will also be processed.

I would say Panda is easy to fix in your case - as it anyway doesn’t look like a "kill shoot". Penguin on the other hand will probably be harder but since soon we'll see another update you should hurry and hope you get on this train as otherwise you might need to wait for months and months....

LG

***I bet some US folks would think that those (LG) are my initials

Hi Rob,

You can check in Web master tolls the exact source (as exact urls) for the source of the links. if all are coming from the same domain - there is a problem there. If you think those links are bad for you - just disavow the entire domain, one line - and problem solved.

If you need links from this domain, but "not that many" you should take it up with them to solve it.

However - for this "boiler plate" type of links - I wouldn’t worry that much. If there are some issues with the links, google will just ignore and won't count them.

Cheers.

If it's six months old - they yes - it might be a reason for concern as users might be set to the old domain. Can you check and see if you are blocking with robots.txt the old domain some how ? Since if that's the case the bot can't reach the old pages and see the redirection and if those pages are already in the index they will stay that way.

Alternatively check the logs and see if google bot did hit those pages in the last 6 mo - although I doubt it didn't - it's safe to check.

Cheers !

tough call indeed. There is a lot of boiler plate and diffrent content so they might be consider un-related - I can't say though. You will see them in WMT as soft 404 and you can roll back if needed - I would say it's a common practice.

Hi Luke,

You can redirect as many pages as you like. There is no filter or penalty from google related with redirects. I've seen millions of redirects tat didn't make sense on a single web site and nothing happened. Google also went on record on Web master central channel and said there is no limit for redirections.

The worst thing that can happen is that if the content is not similar or "connected" in any way - from Google's perspective - they will not pass any link equity with the redirects and they will treat the old pages as soft 404s - so the value that those pages used to hold will be lost - but again - there is no risk in getting hurt here.

Cheers.

Don't redirect or remove - even if "outdated" the content still can provide some value. Just add a note on top of it and / or add a feature so someone can signup to get a notification when things will happen again or a reminder.

Cheers.

Hi,

As long as the response code returns a valid 404 code - it doesn’t matter how the page looks like or if they are different. Actually having custom different page not found it's a good usability thing - so it's great - but they need to return a valid 404 response code.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

Although you are right, "real estate" / placement of the content (above the fold, bellow the fold ..) it's important for ranking - it's not what makes your page rank or don't rank that high - for the ones you've sent as examples. The quality of the content (duplicate or unique), competitors, metrics, on-page approach you are taking, keywords targeted, format of serp for some of the keywords there are way more important then placement ....

Thanks.

Hi,

Google's crawler is fetching the source code. if the content in the slider is visible in the source code - then the content is visible to google. There are a few "extra" factors related with the "real-estate" of the content that comes into play - but the bottom line is : if it's in the source code, the Google can see it.

Hope it helps.

Hi,

If you got malware Google will at some point, beside providing the message in serp (eg: this site might be hacked and so), start deindex your pages. This type of "action" from google's side is either manual (so someone actually pushed a button) or algorithmic. If you don't see anything in Web master Tools - then it's algorithmic and the only way to get back is to clean all the pages and wait for google to re-crawl.

If you see the message in Web master tools - after you clean all the pages then you can submit a reconsideration request - it helps

There is one issue though - some times Google already de-index some pages affected so you can't find those using serps. Best way is to look "in the files directly" or use Bing to look for spamy words injected in your pages.

A good start would be to run some site:yourdomain queries. Here are a few samples bellow.

site:yourdomain.com (pharmacy|cialis|viagra|xanax|levitra|tramadol|prescription|casino|gambling|software|loan|credit|) but of course you need to go broader then that ...

Hope it helps.