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I give you a first very fast answer (I'm on mobile and cannot check tools properly), however at least for this URL http://bifold-hardware.com/ the error is real.
in fact, if the http://bifold-hardware.com/us/hardware suggests http://bifold-hardware.com/ as alternate for australia, then this last URL doesn't indicate the first as alternate, but http://bifold-hardware.com/us.
that means that the no-return error is real.
If you want to check who "copied" your content you can use - as told by the others - Copyscape.
Or, you can use Google itself.
Pro Tip:
As Alfredo wrote, one basic factor about GPL CMS systems is how big and active is the community grown around each one of them.
In this sense Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal are the ones I would consider.
Then, about how much SEO friendly they are, the first thing you have to know is that all of them have basic SEO features, but that for all them you have to implement new plugins, modules or components.
For instance, for Wordpress I would suggest the SEO plugin by Yoast, SEO Friendly Image and social sharing button (for instance Active Share by OrangeSoda)
Remember that Wordpress is a blogging system, even though it is possible to create more classic web sites with it too.
Joomla is interesting especially because of its community and the tons of devs that almost daily produce new plugins, modules and components for it. It is not so hard to learn too.
Its default SEO features are good, but it is better to install specific components that add more SEO functionality. The most popular are sh404SEF and JoomSEF, but I invite you to explore here to find other software you may need.
Drupal. Of the three is the hardest to learn, but many SEOs consider it best one. Regarding it I warmly suggest you to read this post on Search Engine Journal
Hi Kevin,
before entering into your question, it is better to precise that duplicated content is not cause of penalty. We talk about it in "penalization" terms because Google tends to filter pages with duplicated content, if they are in the same site and because duplicated content waste the so called budget crawl. But when it comes to content duplicated in several sites, then we don't have a rule, even though the scraper update was meant to give an order to this kind of situation.
In the case of 3quarksdaily.com, you have to notice:
The same could be said about http://www.thenewdawnliberia.com site, an online newspaper, that published too the same article here.
Personally, I don't think that this kind of content syndication has to be penalized.
But the most important thing to notice is that is the original source that doesn't rank first (it is 4th) for that same query! If i was its SEO I would start investigating why.
As stated by Google, it is better to have an IP of the country you are targeting.
This can be solved with one of this two options:
The second option is the ideal in these cases:
What is important to understand is that "where the server is located" is just one of the many factors of a good international SEO. That means that even if you have the site hosted in the targeted country, if you don't optimize factors like local link building, correct translation of the site in the country language (taking care also of the local slangs), localization signals (currency, address, phone numbers), that site could lost against a site hosted in a different country but targeting your same offshore market.
Said that, considering your specific issue, check out what sites like Bwin.com or Betfair.com do in your same situation.
Bwin.com, for instance, cannot use the .es ccTLD for legal issues, so it created a /es/ subcarpet in the .com site.
In that case remember what said above and start use the rel="alternate" hreflang tag.
Then ,again, your case is a little bit complicated, because you are targeting two countries (NL and BE). In this tricky situation I would create two subcarpets (or subdomains), addressing one to the NL Google and the other to BE one, use the rel="alternate" hreflang, but also add the rel="canonical", choosing one of the two as the canonical version of both.
For more infos, read these posts and the links in them:
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/a... << A post by Adam Audette, of which I suggest you read also the comments;
http://searchenginewatch.com/arti... << An interesting overview done in Search Engine Watch
I hope this helps you.
Hi!
First of all I strongly suggest you to check this wonderful deck on Slideshare by Fernando Maciá. That deck will answer many questions your asking.
Then:
No! You cannot. Consider to hire a native interpreter to help you, if not a good native SEO
2) How do you go about doing keyword research for a foreign language? What tools are available?
As Lynn said, Adwords Keyword Planner and (Google Trends) are a good start. But I would use these tools by Baidu, which is the most used search engine in China:
The best is using all three... and for that you need a native Chinese speaking person.
In this article you can find useful tips and links about keyword search in Chinese.
3) How do you know what search engines you should optimize for in a different country?
Use StatCounter.com for understanding what search engines are used in a specific country. The short answer is:
About SEo for Baidu you can check this guide, which is not perfect but could be considered a good start (aka: do your homework too!).
About SEO for Yandex, I suggest you to dig into this site by Anna Oshkalo. And don't forget to read everything of the Webmasters' Guidelines of Yandex itself.
As far as SEO for Japan, this essential guide can be a considered a good primer.
About Naver, check this great starter post on WebCertain.
Hi Ron10,
if you consider that this question as been answered, please indicate it as such.
If not, please ask for more specific answers
Localization of the content of the landing page (from IRL to title tag and meta description to text in the page itself.
Geotargeting the landing page: if it is in a separate subfolders and the domain is a generic domain name, then you can eventually create a Google Search Console for that folder and geotargeting to the intended country in the International Targeting Page of the prope itself.
An alternative to subfolser is having the landing page you want to geotarget in a subdomain and then geotargeting it as I describe above.
If you want to create a landing page in a separate domain, then it would be better a country code domain name like, for instance, .es for Spain.
if the landing page exists in different country versions, then it would opportune to implement the hr so to indicate to Google What landing page to show in the SERPS depending from where the searchers is searching from.
Finally, links from site targeting the country the landing page is targeting too.
having a hosting in the targeted country is not anymore and international seo ranking factor.
Dana,
just few tips about the view all option.
While it surely is the best solution, even when a real pagination exists, you should always remember few things:
In that case using a view all can be not the correct solution, because googlebot won't ever be able to go through all the code and give up following all the URLs present in the view all page.
in fact, the ideal should be having a view all page uploading completely within 4 seconds
for that reason, if the only solution you have is having a view all page, then you should seriously thinking in implementing the lazy loading for the images, so that the written content (links included) will have priority in rendering and Google will see them all, and images are uploaded only when needed (i.e.: when the users, scrolling down, arrives to the image that must appear).
Then, there's doubt - a big one: if the paginated list always have this URL http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher, how can you put as its canonical the view all of http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/audio-adapters-audio-connectors when it should have also as canonical http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/audio-technica?
Maybe the only solution you have is this:
forcing that the view all URL is the default one;
all the paginated pages (also the the first page) are noindex
Not really a wonderful solution, but - from what I understood about the stubborness of your bosses - the only one. But one that must be executed properly in order to avoid worse issues.
Why nobody is answering that the most normal thing to do should be redirecting via .htaccess the URL with the ending trailing hash to the one without (or viceversa)?
I mean, that's what I would do if it was just the case of the home page.
Said that, I would not worry that much, because that is one of those exact duplication cases that Google understands and solves with no problem.
To have the domain name hosted in another country than the targeted one is still a factor, even though - IMO - is a minor one.
It is a factor because it reinforce the geo targeting of a website and its local nature.
On the other hand, being you domain termination a cTld (.no), you know that Google automatically focus it for the Google.no index, no matter where the domain name has been actually registered.
Finally, as Richard Baxter made noticed in a comment to a Rand's WBF about International SEO, exist other method (Proxy) to avoid this location issue: http://seogadget.co.uk/proxy-caching-for-seo/
Hope this helps you
Cheers
Hola,
from your description yours is a case of multilingual SEO, not multi country.
that means that all your planned strategy is wrong :-).
if you geotarget both domains to Spain, you are telling google to geotarget them only to users searching from Spanish IPs, so you'll struggle targeting English speaking people in other countries.
Moreover, if you target languages only, then you don't have to indicate the country ISO code in the hreflang, but only the language one... and that means you are avoiding to fill your code with 100+ hreflang annotations.
also your idea of having two domains names seems wrong to me in your case. It is better having just a .com domain with English as main language and Spanish in a /ES/ subfolder. This way you can take advantage of content marketing and link earning campaigns for the English version also for providing authority to the Spanish one via internal linking (and vice versa).
if, then, you want the Spanish version to explicitly and only target users residing in Spain, you can create a search console profile for the ES subfolder en geotarget it to Spain (of you decide to do do, the hreflang related to Spanish URLs must have es-ES)
It always better to do a 301... also because exists also Bing as a search engine, and it does not know what you have done in GWT 
Keyword Density is a myth as it has been demonstrated for several years !!! Please, don't spread myth in the Moz Q&A.
Some sources:
Effectively it looks weird... from what I see, you have two breadcrumbs: - the first is the one just under the "cheap flight" menu (which, when you move your mouse over, shows itself correctly) - the second just under it and just above the body area. So, I wonder if the cheap flight menu is correct there, or would have needed to be a dropdown menú of a category "Cheap Flight". If I was you I would look that. And I would check also the breadcrumb module: are you using the Joomla original one (it seems so by the second) or are using also another module with the same function (at it seems from the first)... the correct one is the second, by the way. Finally... if the architecture of the site is going to flat as it is now (just one level), then the breadcrumb is not necessary. It is when the navigational levels are more (i.e.: home - category - subcategory - product/article).
More than BH tactics, they are stupid ones.
Google Places:
it is the same of the keyword stuffing the HTML title of a web page. It is not suggested in the Google Places guidelines;
That also is not allowed accordingly to the guidelines
To buy reviews is the same than buying a link when it comes to Places. That is not allowed too.
PPC/SEO
Stuffing keywords in classic no no in the Google guidelines. I don't know about Facebook, but I imagine it is not a suggested tactic there too
That is not expressly forbidden... in the sense that you can buy keywords with the brand of your competitors and if the competitors have not protected them (they could do it simply asking Adwords to do it). Surely it has to be seen what conversion rate that tactic gives to your affiliate, if the landing is not showing - how to say - a comparison between themselves and the competitors, that could be an acceptable way to promote yourself.
Anyway, considering all, I would give a shout out to the affiliate in order to make him promote himself correctly... it is your brand behind what he sells and promotes.
Hi Coolpink,
from what I've understood from your question the potential panorama for your client can be this:
If I was you, I would follow these best practices:
Note well: the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" is a "page level tag", not domain.
That means that the home page will have:
<rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://www.domain.us">(as seen above)</rel="alternate">
That page "A" will have:
<rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://www.domain.us/page-equivalent-to-A"></rel="alternate">
and so on.
Hi Manoj, in your case I suggest you to use the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" geotargeting tag, apart from targeting the subdomain to the desired country (and the main site set as "global").
The use of the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” is strongly suggested in the case a website as an “incomplete” international version for very different reasons:
But remember that Google suggests to use it also in the case the site content is fully translated (i.e.: all the Spanish version has content in Spanish, and so on).
This rel, then, seems very appropriate for the Sitecore site.
Two options:
In this case, for instance, in the section of www.domain.com we should add as many rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” as the different country versions are present in the site.
I.e.: http://es.domain.com” />
Please note that if exist multiple language versions (“set” in the Google slang), every set must include the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” to every other language versions.
I.e.: if we Global, UK and FR versions of the site apart the Spanish one, the Spanish version will have to include:
Obviously, every single URL must have the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” tag pointing to the corresponding URL of any other language version.
As it is implicitly said, this tag is used on a page level, not domain one. That means that every single pages must be correctly marked-up
If, as it happens in case, some pages show almost the same content in both the domain and subdomain, hence it is highly suggested to use also the rel=”canonical” in order to specify to Google what the preferred version of the URL is.
As Google itself says here, Google will “use that signal to focus on that version in search, while showing the local URLs to users where appropriate. For example, you could use this if you have the same product page in German, but want to target it separately to users searching on the Google properties for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.”
Don't forget
Don't forget that your main site is set a targeting all the web, also the country targeted by your sub-domain.
That means that if you will perform an active link building campaign for the sub-domain, in order to provide it of an equal if not higher strenght respect the main site.
Hi,
I suggest you both to give a read to this post by DejanSEO, which is quite clear and - IMHO - points to the right interpretation of a somehow confused best practice.
Hi Blaze,
the first sensation I have, but I urge you to not take it as it was a definitive answer, is that your site has suffered a Panda penalization.
What makes me think so, it's the extremely high presence of ads above the fold. And if this is quite evident for me with a screen resolution of 1920*1080 pixels, if you reduce to a more standard resolution, it is totally true.
For instance, take this post: http://amplereviews.com/hcg-ultra-diet-drops/
Well... the first bar from the left is all for ads, the second bar - then - has another ad block under the "Recent Posts" widget. Finally, the body have:
In a 1024*769 screen resolution (still the most popular), what can be defined as real "not advertsiment" content is reduced to a couple of lines...
Surely, this "ad pollution" is not enough to justify a Panda update penalty, but it is a strong Panda factor as it is well explained in these posts by Danny Sullivan and Adam Audette.
Said that, I tested with tools.pingdom.com the upload speed of your site, as I was founding it slow. And it is very slow indeed: almost 60'' to completely render in a browser page! I would check out if that is a template issue or an hosting one. Page Speed is one the ranking factors, even though not one of the top ranking factors.
Then, I found out a weird thing. If I click on a tag (for instance "hgc ultra diet drops") I'm not taken to the tag page (http://amplereviews.com/tag/hcg-ultra-diet-drops/) but to a totally different page (http://amplereviews.com/rushfit-review/), as if there was a 301 or 302 acting. Remember that filling a site of internal redirections is not the best way of treating Googlebot, as you are obliging it in spend more time than the needed to crawl your site, and this can consume the so called "budget crawl" with the result that your site may end with indexation issues.
Finally, I would also look at the nature of the domains linking to you (148 unique domains names accordingly to MajesticSEO, zero for OSE, which has not crawled it yet... ) Are they quality links, or for poor quality sites?