Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Arpitibs,

Moz's metrics are updated almost daily. 
If you dont see any change is because there were no changes on the backlinks that point to that page, or no new backlinks. Keep in mind that if any of your existing backlinks decrease/improve on its metrics, its possible that your metrics change too.

If you want more information about Page Authority, here the official Moz's resource:
Domain Authority | Moz resource center.

If you want to improve your metrics, here some insightful resources: 
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide - Google Search Console Help
- The Beginner's Guide to SEO - Moz
- A Complete Guide to SEO: What You Need to Know in 2019 - Search Engine Journal
- A Simple 7‐Step SEO Tutorial for Beginners - Ahrefs

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hello,
What do you mean by when I checked this on the browser its OK?

Keep in mind that these two backlink checker tool have their own way of checking and analyzing backlinks. There is a huge possibility that when their robot checked those websites your links weren't there or there were some other parameters, tag or anything that make the tool think these links were removed or shouldn't be counted anymore.

Also, another point to consider is that ahrefs and Moz are private tools that try to imitate how the google algorithm sees backlinks. By no means, you should consider what they show as the last word.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there!

Would you mind explaining a little bit more what is the issue? Probably with a screenshot of what GSC is reporting you
I'm seeing that all those pages have a self-canonical correctly set up.

If you have a site with, at least 30k URLs, looking at only 300 keywords won't reflect the general status of the whole site. If you are looking for a 10% loss in traffic, I'd start by chasing the pages that lost more traffic, then analyzing whether they lost rankings or if there are some other issues.

Another way to find where there is traffic loss is in search Console, looking at keywords that aren't in the top300. There might be a lot to analyze.

It's not a big deal having a lot of pages blocked in robots.txt when what's blocked is correctly blocked. Keep in mind that GSC will flag those pages with warnings as they were previously indexed and now are blocked. That's just how they've set up flags.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi Frankie,

My guess is that the traffic you were losing was because of its traffic driven by /search pages.

The questions you should be asking are:

1. Are those /search pages getting traffic?
2. Are them important to users?
3. After being disallowed, which pages were losing traffic?

As a general rule, Google doesn't want to crawl nor index internal search pages, unless they have some value to users.

On another matter, the crawlability of your product pages can be easily solved with a sitemap file. If you are worried about the size of it, remember that it can contain up to 50k URLs and you can create several sitemaps and list them in a sitemap index.
More info about that here: Split up your large sitemaps - Google Search Console Help

Hope it helps.
Best luck,
Gaston

Hi Andrei,

Found your issue: There is an already blocked in robots.txt parameter added when redirected from www to non-www.
I'm attaching an image so you can follow me better.
I used this web: whregoes.com
To solve this issue, I'd try to figure out why that parameter is being added, and remove it or allow its crawling.

That parameter it's blocked in the 2nd line of your robots.txt:
Disallow: /*?

Another way to check what's going on is via the inspect URL tool in search Console.
1- Log in to the www property
2- Inspect URL, only the home page (https://www.probike.ro)
3- Ask to check the live version
4- (wait a few seconds) Google will tell you what they are seeing
--> I guess here you'll find the message that it's being blocked in robots.txt

Also, checking your declared sitemap, it goes to a 404 page. You'd want to take a look here: https://probike.ro/pub/sitemap.xml

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

eCTinIP

Looking a little further, you only have 2 redirect hops. As I said earlier, there is no big of an issue. And, you won't get any improvement in rankings, nor will impact your crawling (you only have 1 page).

It looks like you have 2 different rules:
1- http:// -> https://
2- non-www -> www

I don't think that your hosting provider will help you with these redirects. You'd have to do it yourself via .htaccess file.
Here you have the htaccess documentation, if you want to know more.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi Simon,

Yes, redirect chains are an issue and should be resolved. Google has said that they can handle well up to 4 redirects. When the 5th occurs, Googlebot stops crawling.
On another note, your site is indexed (check this image) and if you have removed a noindex tag recently, give google some time to process your site.

A tip that could help you rank, at least for your brand name (assuming its Costwold Flat Roofing) is adding it to the H1 tag.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi mmdemadi,

If you want to prevent the whole subdomain from being indexed, there are a few actions you can do:

• Prevent Google from crawling it, via a Robots.txt disallow rule. Remember that this only prevents Google from seeing your content, but if there are any outbound link to that subdomain, some pages might get indexed.
• Meta tag robots noindex or x-robots, in HTTP header, noindex. This tells Google not to index, yet pages will be crawled. Here what Google says about noindex
• If that information should not be public, then hide it behind a login. Google states that its the most effective and simplest method.

Apart from these actions you may do, keep in mind that they work differently.
As the easiest to do is to block in robots.txt, keep in mind that this won't remove whats previously indexed.
In the case you want to block the whole subdomain and remove pages already indexed, I'd often suggest these steps:

1. Don't block in robots.txt what you want to remove
2. Add robots noindex tag and, if there are just a few, use the URL removal tool in Google Search Console
3. Wait a few days and check that those pages don't appear in search
4. Block that directory/subdomain in robots.txt

Some further information:
Robots.txt FAQ - Google Search Console Help
Robots Meta Directives - Moz Learning Center
Robots.txt best practices - Moz Learning Center

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there!

On the one hand, its completely normal to have a "low" DA, as your site is relatively new. In the short term, I wouldn't worry that much about PA or DA; I'd focus more on understanding your audience and creating great content and UX.

On the other hand, there are many parts of an SEO strategy. I'd suggest you to start taking a deep read to some of the best tutorials out there. Here I'm listing some of them:

- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide - Google Search Console Help
- The Beginner's Guide to SEO - Moz
- A Complete Guide to SEO: What You Need to Know in 2019 - Search Engine Journal
- A Simple 7‐Step SEO Tutorial for Beginners - Ahrefs

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi Rashmi,

On the one hand, you should not set DA as a KPI. Improving you DA won't assure you better rankings nor more impressions.

On the other hand, links are on one part of an SEO strategy. I'd suggest you to start taking a deep read to some of the best tutorials out there. Here im listing some of them:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide - Google Search Console Help
- The Beginner's Guide to SEO - Moz
- A Complete Guide to SEO: What You Need to Know in 2019 - Search Engine Journal
- A Simple 7‐Step SEO Tutorial for Beginners - Ahrefs

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there!

On the one hand, site: number of results is not the exact nor the current amount of URLs that Google has indexed. It's only just a way of seeing how much results there are. Google said that it's optimized for speed, that why it's an estimated number.
You should trust whats reported in Search Console.

On the other, it's possible that Google has checked an URL and considered as valid on one time and not index it, because of canonicals, similar content or any other reason. If you find some URL not indexed, yet reported as indexed in the coverage report, try checking it through the Inspect URL tool, then asking for the TEST LIVE URL option. There you may find some answers.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi Michael,

SEO Text book and best practices, if there are any, say that whenever there are multiple pages that serve the same content ,and you acknowledge that only one of them is critical: redirect other pages to the primary. Thinking like this: redirect /index.asp to the root page.

Just for the sake of clearing a little about the "there is some extra juice": Analyzing both pages through Moz's or any other private metric could lead you to wrong conclusions. Here, Moz creates its metrics with an algorithm taking into account links and some other magic.  Here some information about Moz's Page Authority
Thinking like that, its perfectly normal that some other page gets more links and have different PA, even though being canonicals of each other. It also reinforces the idea that it should be redirected.

On a side note, Google publicly said that doesn't use metrics like Moz's to rank a website/page. Just having a canonical is almost enough to transfer its authority.

Hope it helps.
Best luck
Gaston

Hi Simon,
I hope you are well.

Is that an error you're getting in Search Console?
I'm checking your site, and I can't replicate that issue you are having with x-robots.
I have tried with Screaming Frog and my command line. None of them returned noindex. In the image attached, you'll see what I got.

Also, I tried a site: search, and your website is indexed. You have only one page, is that correct? 
Other image attached

Hope it helps.
Best luck
Gastón

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Hi udaipabla,

You should always point your links to the final version you show users. In this case, you have all 3 redirected to https://www.remotebaba.com, then that should be the URL.

The thinking here is to be coherent on what you tell Users, other webs and Google. Don't waste Google's time making it go through redirections whenever you can avoid it.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Just here to add some to Will almost complete answer:
The 'site:' often shows results that won't be displayed in Google search results and don't represent the entirely nor precisely the pages that are indexed.

I'd suggest to you:
1- If those pages are already serving 404 or 410, then wait for a little. Google won't show them in search results and eventually won't be seen in a site: search. You can check whether those URLs are being shown in searches through search console.
2- There is a script made by a webmaster that helps you using the GSC URL removal tool for a big list of URLs. Please, use it carefully and try it first within a riskless GSC property

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there!

Improving Meta descriptions in order to get higher CTR won't be penalized by Google unless you do something black hat or include some forbidden words.
My experience showed:
1- There is always a set of title+meta description that can optimize CTR for a single page. Remember to focus on the main keyword, as a page can rank for several search terms.
2- Improving CTR doesn't always get better rankings, but hell it brings more traffic! That's what you should be aiming, not only better rankings.

As Nozzle said, experiment carefully and make one change at a time.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there,

Replacing a page without changing its URL is entirely normal. It's just updating its content :).
That said, I wouldn't remove the old page from google before updating it. Just update its content, template or whatever you are going to change, and that's it.

What could change in an SEO perspective? Google will recognize that it's a different page and will re-assess whether it's worth to be ranking on the same place and keywords as before. 
A simple example would be when the updated page doesn't have anymore one of the primary keyword stated in its content, Title, and headings. Google will understand that you don't consider that page to be relevant for that keyword.

Hope it helps.
Best luck,
Gaston

Hi,

Lets separate topics here:

• Prevent crawling is by robots.txt and won't index pages that are already indexed.
• Prevent indexing and de-index pages already indexed, is done by robots tag with a noindex parameter.
  Here, an article from google about that: Block search indexing with 'noindex' - Google Search Console Help

That said, another action you might take is adding a nofollow in pagination links. Nofollow only tells Google: "I don't want that page to considered as important." It will probably reduce its chances to rank high but won't prevent from crawling nor indexing.
Another way, yet a little more expensive in development, is adding a specific parameter in the URL when you know is pagination. Then you can block that in robots.txt. Again, this won't remove what's been already indexed.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston