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Thought in general you could use canonical tag cross domain too http://moz.com/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday

If you can get a better domain name, I'd do that because whatever domain name you go with will be referred to all over the place and if the name isn't a great fit with you, it isn't ideal.

Useful tool I found recently: http://httpstatus.nl/ - showed a few redirect chains on our site

Great tool Paddy - now bookmarked.

We have a CMS that automatically generates the meta description and keywords for our pages and I hate it.

Not sure why we even have it and can't get around it.

We have to override it each time to get sensible tags, therefore it isn't worth having.

Avoid it and write your own tags manually.

You could also list 'related posts' or 'you may also be interested in' posts which link to your conversion posts.

Hi,

How do we 301 an https version of a domain to a page on another website when the security certificate has run out?

We have 301 redirected the http version but IT stuck on how to do the expired https.

Thanks

Might be worth checking that if they say they are going to link to you that they actually do so and that they leave it up. Hopefully if they are decent enough sites they wouldn't do that though...

As others have said, definitely only link with decent sites and only if it would make sense from a human point of view to do so.

Might be worth checking in GA to see if the site then refers you good traffic. It may help you decide which ones to link with in the future.

I wouldn't go mad with exchanges though.

Why the thumbs down when I said the same as Kate?:

"Ensure you have it on your site first"

I would make sure if you also have the press release on your website that you have it on your site before you send it out to others. This makes you the source of the news.

You could build a link campaign entirely around OSE but I would also look at other options too that competitors haven't thought of.

Just looked at our account and its the same date as you said - Jan 1st 2013.

Thanks again.

At https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44231 it says:
"Generally, once you have verified one version of the domain, we can easily verify the other using the original verification method. However, if you've removed the file, meta tag, or DNS record, you'll need to repeat the verification steps."

However, I can't see a way of Google verifying the non www versions using the same code. When I added a non www version to WMT it gives me new code. The www. site has meta tag with verify-v1 but the new code generated for the non www. is meta name="google-site-verification".

Do I just try and verify the non www. as if it were an unconnected site?

Thanks.

We have stopped using a few old domains which are the ones I am trying to change the address of.

The new domain is one we were already using anyway.

How do I now verify the non www versions of the old domains? What do I need to ask IT to actually do?

Hi,

How important is it to submit a change of address in WMT?

I say that because I am having problems doing it so wondered if it was worth the hassle in trying to fix it.

I am getting the error: "We couldn't verify website.co.uk. To submit a change of address, website.co.uk must be verified using the same method as www.website.co.uk. Add website.co.uk to your account and verify ownership, then try again."

I have looked on the web to try and find an answer and have come across 2 suggestions:

1. You might have lost the verification with the redirect. If you used a metatag on the home page, the home page is now redirecting. If you had uploaded a verification text file, that file is probably now gone and redirecting as well. You probably need to re-verify the site. Either re-upload the text file and configure it not to redirect (may be difficult) or use the DNS server verification method.

2. You need to verify the non www. version of the website because that's the way Google like it.

Not sure why solution 2 would be necessary but it does seem to be what WMT are getting. Because the site already redirects, 1 would then come in to play.

Is it worth persevering with because IT will be getting a long list of stuff to do from me as it is....

Thanks all

Thanks. Not sure what a "theme=default" version of a page is though. Is it one humans need to see like the print or text only version? I need to know so that I can do the right thing for the page i.e. canonical tag or 301.

Thanks for the meta robots tip - was just looking into that and it would have been my next question....

When you refer to stringent decisions for 301's, what would you do for the pages we may then decide not to 301?

Sorry for all the questions and your help is much appreciated Tom.

Hi,

Our crawl report is showing duplicate content. some of the report I am clear about what to do but on others I am not.

Some of the duplicate content arises with a 'theme=default' on the end of the URL. Is this version of a page necessary for people to see when they visit the site (like a theme=print page is) in which case I think we should use a canonical tag, or is it not necessary in which case we should use a 301?

Thanks

Thanks.

Just had some light shed on matter though - the GA code was only partly correct. There was one lot of code on some pages and another on the others. Unfortunately the majority had the wrong code and it has now been updated. I found the missing traffic on one of our old GA numbers.

Still working on redirects though but they can't be done through our CMS - it's an ancient version of Alterian and one we are locked into for some time :(.

Thanks Ergol.

The site is indeed a candidate for lots of problems (poor meta data, duplicate content etc) but they will have to be sorted in time. Roger Bot is crawling as we speak and I'm sure he will be deeply unimpressed!

The IT dept have only done a few redirects and these seem to be a bit random in the choice of which to do and where to redirect them to! I would love IT to sort the redirects as soon as possible and if I can prove that the lack of them is very detrimental then they may do them quicker....

Obviously there can be other reasons for a traffic drop but I guess I need to know whether the GA code will be affected by where it is and whether it is reporting true stats or not. If the position of the code doesn't affect the stats very much, I can assume the redirects are a major contributor. If the code is not collecting data properly, it will be hard to go to IT and say their lack of redirects are affecting the visitor numbers adversely.

Hope that makes sense...

Hi,

We have recently moved a few old websites to an existing one and redesigned the existing website too.

The visits in Analytics have fallen though the roof in the last few days.

I would expect the traffic to have gone up because visitors from the old websites should now be on the redesigned one.

Not sure what the problem is entirely.

GA code is on the site but not before the closing head where I asked for it to be put. It's just before closing body tag. Does it make a difference? (It's a CMS site). GA code must be working because visits are being recorded (tens rather than the expected hundreds).

Redirects have not been done properly - not sure what IT have done there. Would the lack of proper redirects be the sole reason for the drop? I am still hassling for 301's to be sorted.

Thanks all