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The new gTLD domain names are, in fact, treated exactly the same as any other TLD such as .COM, .NET, and .ORG by Google. They even wrote a blog post about it. However, we have been seeing very good results when it comes to using keyword rich new gTLD domain names.

What we recommend is that you concentrate on one domain name to build up that site's domain authority. The other domain names should be 301 redirected to that main site.  If you have domain names that are related to certain products or categories, you may want to redirect those to an internal page on your site.

What we have seen in the past is that if you have too many domain names pointing and redirecting to your main site you can run into ranking problems, even incur penalties from Google. So, I would limit the number of domains that you redirect to your main site.

If you decide to set up "micro sites" on those domains, keep in mind that they are going to need a lot of attention such as link building and social media marketing--it may end up hurting your main site if you were to have low quality or "think" content sites pointing to your main site.

Here is one: http://www.crimeflare.com/cfs.html there are others out there if you search for them

Like others have mentioned, if your site has both the "healthcare solutions" and "healthcare identity solutions" categories (category and subcategory), then it would make sense to keep it that way. We should be able to navigate to each of those pages in the URL.

If you just are referring to the URL, though, the keywords in the URL is such a small part of the search engine algorithms that it really won't make a huge difference--and I hardly believe you'll be penalized for it.

There are several out there, including Authority Labs, SEMrush.com, serps.com,and this one:

<cite class="_Rm">https://moz.com/tools/**rank**-tracker</cite>

While that is kind of odd to do, it should not have any effect on your site's search engine rankings or visibility. Simply providing a sitemap file is not going to help or hurt rankings in any way. It will help them discover and crawl pages. That's all.

A sitemap file is not required at all, and in fact some sites don't have them--they rely on Google's spiders to crawl their site through the links on their site. The sitemap is only a tool to help them crawl.

If you look at those links in Google Search Console (crawl errors), you'll see that there is a date there. If there are some that show up with an older date (than yesterday, for example), you can mark as fixed. If those errors are still there, then they'll show up again.

Generally speaking, if you think of the keyword set as part of a large "topic", then you should optimize your site's home page for the main topic in general--and then the sub-topic keyword(s) and the "sub-sub" topic keywords would also be pages, as well. The sub-topic keyword would be linked from the site's home page, and then the sub-sub topic would linked from the sub-topic's page.

I like to think of this as a theme pyramid approach

Main Topic
     Category
          Sub-Topic
     Category
          Sub-Topic

Generally speaking, this is normal, and you shouldn't have to worry about it. There's a Google Webmaster thread that pointed to this issue specifically, and Google gave an official response (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sitemaps-duplicate-16128.html)

"This is apparently normal if you submit Sitemap files with the same URLs listed multiple times. Since submitting the same URLs multiple times doesn't change anything with regards to your site's crawling & indexing, I'd just submit it once if you want the correct counts (alternately, if the count doesn't bother you, you can also just leave it like this."

Ben, I'm assuming that you have 301 redirects properly set up for all of those page. Then, make sure  you've used the Google Change of Address Tool to properly tell Google that you've moved from one domain to another. If you are consolidating domains, then you need to verify all of those sites in Google Search Console and then use the Change of Address Tool.

You don't mention how long it's been since you've set up those 301 redirects, but it literally can take months before everything is straightened out in Google.

One thing you can also do is to look at the site's log files to see if Google is crawling those pages--it could be that they're not crawling. If they have crawled, then it might just take time before they're indexed.

HDPHNS, it's quite possible that Google is doing that on purpose--that they see the product is out of stock so they don't rank it as high. Google wants to provide a good user experience, and it would be frustrating if someone went to Google, did a search, went to your site, and found that the product is out of stock.

Eric, you're right that you should be 301 redirecting the old page to the new one using a 301 Permanent Redirect. If Google Search Console is showing you that they're getting a 404 error on that URL, then they're getting it--it's not that they're telling you you no longer are getting any benefit from the 301 redirect.

I would check the redirect to see if it's still working. Use a server header check tool, or I like Rex Swain's HTTP tool: http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html

Also, you should use Google's own Fetch and Render tool to make sure that they can reach the page and they don't get a 404 error: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?rd=2

I have seen cases where we can get to a page or see the redirect but Google cannot. So you need to use the Fetch & Render to make sure Google isn't being blocked. I've see a case where users could get to the site but Google was being blocked and given a 404 error.

Simon, I'm not sure where you're seeing the duplicates, but generally speaking there are a few ways to deal with this:

• use the robots.txt file to disallow indexing of the duplicate URLs (keep them but disallow from being indexed if they're helpful for users

• remove the PortfolioIDs entirely from the site. If they're not needed and they're not helpful to users then I would remove them entirely.

• set up canonical tags so that even though they're crawled they will still pass on the credit to the main URL.

I'm not sure how you're blocking Google from crawling external links in the robots.txt file--typically you only block them from crawling internal pages on your site.

If you're using a script, though, to track the clicks on external links and that script is running your site (and you're blocking that script in robot.txt), then that still should be fine. You may want to add a "nofollow" tag on those links, though, so you don't end up passing link "credit" or "link juice" to those affiliates (unless you want to do that?).

As far as external links go, though, it's typically okay (and expected) that you link out to other sites.

As EGOL suggests, if the pages haven't received any traffic in the past year or so, then they most likely are dead weight and  you need to get rid of them. I would, however, do two things:

• Review all the links to your website and 301 redirect any news articles or URLs that have links pointing to them. You'll want to make sure that you keep any links that you have pointing to those pages.

• Rather than use a 404 error on those pages when you remove them, I would use a '410 gone' error to indicate to Google that they're no longer present, have been removed, and they need to remove them from their index.

Personally, if you cannot use siroccowebdesign.com, then sirocco-web-design.com would be preferred since it separates all of the words. I would, however, buy both and redirect one to the other.

Yes, it has the same result. One reason why we typically don't recommend editing the .htaccess file yourself in WordPress, for example, is that other Plugins may rely on editing/changing it. For example, security plugins like Wordfence may update it, and WordPress' permalinks, for example, need access to update the file as well.

On WordPress, we typically use the Redirection plugin without any problems.

Hi Inevo,

You don't mention which CMS your client is using, but if you mention "plugin" I'm assuming that the client is using WordPress. If that's the case, then they should use the Yoast SEO plugin, which will automatically generate the sitemaps(s) that the client needs.

Yes, this is definitely possible and typical on desktop results. When a page doesn't have a meta description tag or when the page's meta description doesn't match the search query, Google tends to pick text from the page that they feel is appropriate. So, yes, it's very possible, depending the search query/keyword used.

First time I've seen it happen on mobile or pointed out on mobile, but it "should" be happening, especially if the page doesn't have a meta description tag.

Sometimes Google just picks what they think is appropriate to show depending on the search query. We've seen this in the past, sometimes due to the fact that Google, for whatever reason, doesn't like the meta description tag. Sometimes it's too long, sometimes it doesn't contain the keywords or something similar than the search query, etc..