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Hi Stephen,

Great that you've probably found the cause - this will absolutely cause mass de-indexation. I had a client a year ago canonicalise their entire site (two sites, actually) to the home page. All their rankings and indexed pages dropped off over a matter of about six days (we spotted the tag immediately but the fix went into a "queue" - ugh!).

The bad news is that it took them a long time to get properly re-indexed and regain their rankings (I am talking months, not weeks). Having said this, the sites were nearly brand new - they had very few backlinks and were both less than six months old. I do not believe that an older site would have had as much problem regaining rankings, but I can't be sure and I have only seen that situation take place first-hand once.

Hi Joost,

I don't have hard data on this at all; this is a what-I-know plus gut feeling answer.

Gary is right - multiple links from one page to another target should be treated more like one link to the target domain, but this might not be a uniform rule. In effect, two links from one page whether those links be site-wide or individual shouldn't have much more or less effect on the target website than just one.

That said, if Google felt that site-wide link or text blocks were being used manipulatively, there is no reason why they would not discount the value of those links altogether. It's interesting that you may have seen a correlation between multiple links from site-wide areas and poorer performance. It would also be interesting to see the data - you could put together a good blog post about it with enough data, for sure.

Hi there,

I would also seek a second opinion - there are many HTML issues that aren't troublesome enough to bother Google, and the claim that "the quality of coding makes it more difficult for Google to index the site and this may be detrimental to ranking" depends heavily on what those coding "issues" actually are. I'd rather see a list of what they say is detrimental than do a full code audit here - I'd be super curious as to what those issues supposedly are.

That list can be used as a starting point to get the second opinion of other development and SEO companies - I would certainly run the list by SEOs as well as coders, as each group knows more about their chosen field than the other. You'll get a good idea about a) what has been done sloppily and b) how Google might treat that sloppiness.

Agreed that going back to the original coders, especially for diagnosis, isn't the best idea, but if you have proof that something they did is sub-par, you might mention it to them. As DJ123 says above, don't expect a high receptive response if you do, of course!

It could be a legitimate point or it could be a way to charge for services - I'd get some full independent quotes. Perhaps even pay someone a small amount for a audit that does not come with it the chance of further work for that person. That is, the auditor has no financial incentive to find something wrong with the site.

Hi Matt,

If you 301 one URL to another, the majority of the metrics previously afforded to the old URL will be transferred to the new URL. Various evidence, some of it quite anecdotal, says that not all the authority passes from the old to the new, but it's certainly the best option you have if you want to change URLs.

If you are moving to a new domain, you can write a rule in your .htaccess file (if using an Apache server) or in your control panel (if using an IIS server) that transfers every URL to its new location. Even if URLs have no external links, this will simply direct any traffic to the old URLs to their new locations.

Hi Damien,

There are cases where subdomains are very necessary or inevitable, usually because of technical limitations (and even then, they can usually be worked around via practices like reverse proxy). When you see subdomains in the wild and aren't sure why they're being used, they will often just be legacies - old set-ups that no one wants to change because it would require redirecting old URLs, which is inadvisable if those URLs don't need to be redirected and if they rank well.

In this case, I'd be really interested to know why the SEO was adamant that the new structure should use subdomains and not subdirectories. Google is much better at working with new subdomains now than it was in years past, but if there is no good reason to use them, subdirectories are still the safer option for SEO purposes, and the content housed on subdirectories should automatically inherit authority from the parent domain. New subdomains seem to be far less likely to inherit this authority, as other responders have said above.

Find out exactly why the SEO wanted subdomains - if their reasoning isn't solid, you may want to place this content in subdirectories and place 301 redirects from the subdomains to the subdirectories. If you are going to do these redirects, doing them sooner rather than later is advisable as redirection usually comes with a short period of lower rankings / traffic.

On that note, redirection does usually result with that short period of traffic loss, but that should happen quite quickly and be fixing itself in 2+ weeks, not getting worse.

Hi George,

My first thought would be that the internal page doesn't have enough authority - from what I can see from OSE, it has no links from third party sources, only internal links: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.exhibithire.co.uk%2Fexhibition-services%2Fexhibition-stand-hire%2F&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=&target=page&group=1

This isn't to say that some sites rank internal pages that have no third party inbound links, but they're generally very strong domains to begin with, e.g. a site like Debenhams having an internal page about (say) pink swimsuits ranking for [pink swimsuits]. I made this example up, checked, and indeed Debenhams does rank for that query, and the page has no inbound third party links. But it's on debenhams.com, and that's the "trick".

What does your competition look like? The domain itself only has a 29/100 domain authority, which can be fine in an uncrowded market but might not be enough for internal links to extent much authority to the desired page. Your home page is also pretty darn relevant to the original query: the site itself is about exhibition hiring, and you mention "stand" once on the home page where that text does not link elsewhere. I would say that the combination of the home page being very relevant for the query and the internal page not having high enough authority are causing this to happen.

Hi Christopher,

The set-up you have at the moment is actually fine for SEO - http://www.fdmgroup.com/ resolves the website. http://fdmgroup.com/ employs a 301 redirect to take users and search engines to http://www.fdmgroup.com/: http://i.imgur.com/et4AKYV.png

This is correct, http://fdmgroup.com/ would be seen as a separate "version" of the home page if it was allowed to load without sending everyone on to the "www" version via the 301 redirect. Furthermore, every page within the http://fdmgroup.com/ "version" of the website would be duplicated from the "www" version of each page.

If you want to change to use http://fdmgroup.com/ instead, using that both on advertising and having that be the version of the website that resolves for both users and search engines, you will need to reverse that 301 redirect. This will mean that when people try to visit http://**www.**fdmgroup.com/, they are redirected to http://fdmgroup.com/. This is a simple process.

However, it is inadvisable to go through redirection like this unless you really, really have to. When you redirect a URL with a 301 redirect, a large portion of the URL's authority is passed on to the new URL. Not all of the authority is passed though. As a result, your rankings and traffic can take a little hit for a short while. This is not usually a big problem, and usually resolves itself quickly but it is best avoided unless the redirection really has to take place.

I am tempted to say that "it looks cleaner" is not the best reason to go through this change when your current set-up is totally fine and correct for SEO purposes.

That said, you absolutely could reference fdmgroup.com in offline advertising for stylistic purposes. When people type that URL in, they'll be redirected to the www version just as they are now. This is pretty common because of the stylistic benefits of not including www in TV / print advertising.

Hi there,

Do the ~1300 pages that are not indexed consist of unique, otherwise useful content? If you're populating a sitemap with too much super-thin content, duplicates, etc. you can expect those not to be indexed. Google will use the sitemap as exactly what it is - a guide. If it can't find useful content on the actual website after following that guide, the pages won't be indexed.

Hey Joost,

That's a tough one because it probably should be subjective and depend on other factors about the linking site, the site it links to and how it links. If the BBC were to link to me twice, once to a new product page on my website and once to my home page, I'm not going to be concerned that the link is only worth the first link in the HTML code, and freak out if that's not to the page I'm interested in. Same thing goes for a lesser site to the BBC, but that would be a highly authoritative example.

That said, if you're counting links from c-classes or IPs, which is a very common way to assess backlinks, that page on the BBC is going to count as one "vote".

If I see a sidebar linking out twice to the same domain, I'm not going to be all that comfortable claiming that both those links are going to be any more useful than one would have been.

I don't believe Google would be simplistic enough to treat two links from one URL on bbc.co.uk to two different pages on one website the same way as it would treat two links on a blogspot blog to two pages on another website, if that makes sense.

Hi Patrick,

Interestingly, I do get those pages as indexed:

http://i.imgur.com/mtmu9UM.png

http://i.imgur.com/XarSYAI.png

Regardless, doing a site: search for a URL is not as accurate as looking at the results of an submitted sitemap, but I get 380 indexed results: http://i.imgur.com/WnfQK9J.png so clearly a lot lower than the total number submitted.

One of the reasons that competitor probably has a slightly easier time having poor-quality or thin pages indexed is because of the relative strength of both domains. Mandy.com has a domain authority of 64 to Icrewz.com's 27. This is a pretty big discrepancy and can allow the more authoritative site to "get away" with a little bit more. Mandy.com's metrics are overall a lot higher, with the exception of Twitter:

http://i.imgur.com/nK4py6C.png

http://i.imgur.com/KSePgVq.png

I'd say to your client that a good question is whether the indexation of those pages is actually going to help bring in traffic. What queries "should" they rank for? Or would filling Google's index with useless pages place the site at risk of attracting unwanted Panda attention due to having an unbalanced ratio of content-heavy to thin pages?

Third vote for using the site and not redirecting it here (pending a re-brand of sorts to suit the fact that it's now owned by your company).

You have the opportunity to take up a lot more real estate in the SERPs than you do now, whereas redirection at worst removes the old site from the results. At best, you might see a small improvement in your rankings, but you're already ranking better than that site to begin with. As EGOL says, PageRank is logarithmic so if you're dealing with what is a weaker website (whether in actual PR or toolbar PR - the latter of which is a fairly outdated metric but still gets used for basic comparison purposes), it may actually be many times weaker than your stronger domain.

At best, using both site might allow you to target different sections of the same audience, appeal to different needs from the audience base (very large clients versus smaller businesses, etc.), and for results where you rank top 10 with both sites, you're about 20% of the results, not 10%

Hi there,

I think what William is saying is that site B will receive the benefit of a new linking domain, but that linking domain (site A) is many times stronger than site B because of its extra backlinks. As a result, site B still gains a good amount from receiving the redirect.

There are different opinions on this, i.e. on whether a redirect seems to help a lot more than this, and every case in which this takes place seems to have different results, largely because of all the other metrics affecting both sites. It's obviously hard to test this in a controlled environment.

There is debate around how much of a boost a cross-domain redirect actually has on the destination website - certainly in days gone by, the site at which the redirect is pointed will receive the vast majority, if not all, of the redirected site's rankings. This can still happen if all of the content on site A's redirected pages is reflected on site B, or if site B's content is sufficiently the same. However, if you were just redirecting for the purpose of making site B stronger and there was no real cross-over between the content of either page / site, this process shouldn't have a hugely beneficial effect on site B.

This is a pretty old, annoying phenomenon called keyword cannibalisation. As DJ123 has said, Google can't work out which page it should rank for the generic term. It's incredibly frustrating when the signals are otherwise perfect to point out the right page.

I would add the "shoes" link--pointing to the main page--to all pages, not just the Sports Shoes page, e.g. from Hiking, Dancing, etc. as well, as is the case in this graphic. This graphic is from a very old blog post on keyword cannibalisation, which will read as pretty basic now but might be worth a glance.

This could be a risky idea, but if the metrics for the main shoes page are significantly stronger than the Sports page, you could consider canonicalising the Sports page to the main page for as long as it takes for Google to pick up the main sports page and "drop" the Sports page. Once that happens, remove the canonical tag and fetch as Googlebot from Webmaster Tools, waiting for the Sports page to be re-indexed. I doubt that the Sports page would take precedence over the main page again after this, but this is risky because it will force the Sports page out, and that page is currently ranking. You're taking a fairly confident gamble that the main page will take its place, but it's a gamble nonetheless.

Hi Devanur,

Just one more thing to add (and I am definitely not trying to insinuate anything here!) but one thing to keep in mind with third-party tools like Moz, etc. is that they have access to all the publicly available data about your site and your competitors' sites, such as how many links they have and from where, but they do not have access to Google's filters or "spam" / quality measures. As such, Google may be devaluing some links that other services are discounting. Moz and other providers work very hard to ensure that they count / discount links in the same way as Google probably does. And for the most part, they get this right. However, when all of your metrics across different tools show that you should be ranking better, and you are not, it is a good idea to manually analyse your links and content in comparison to your competitors' and see if you can spot any issues that are not showing up in automated analyses (e.g., do you have a very high number of links from one particular type of site, whereas your competitors do not, etc.).

Hi there, glad to have been of help!

As far as how long to wait goes, it really is hard to say but if you see nothing at all in a month, I'd consider other options like canonicalisation (or coming back here, showing what you've done and seeing what people say - as I am only one opinion! ).

Cheers,

Jane

Hi Jordan,

Yes, these are absolutely duplicate content. The vast majority of the text is the same, with some small additions and relevant city names changed. Google has been able to determine this sort of duplication for a long time. You do see some websites get away with this sort of content, but it's generally not something we'd recommend because Panda (and / or manual review) would pick this off as manipulative very quickly.

You would likely be a lot better off creating one page or one section of the website for brain injury rehabilitation in "the north east" with one copy of the relevant information. Additional pages can detail anything in particular about individual clinics, including unique contact information, testimonials, photographs, etc.

I don't believe that this content would come close to passing manual review as they are right now.

Hi Luke,

Noindex, follow will work fine for the duplicated tag pages, although you could consider canonicalising them or redirecting them to a more useful resource - if you can do this en masse in an automated way, or if you only do this manually for tags / topics of high importance.

302ing to the search pages isn't good for two reasons: one, search engines traditionally don't follow or pass PR through a 302, and they also prefer you don't include your own "search pages" in their indexes. The "easy" way around this is exactly as you describe: produce quality category pages in place of what was a search results page. You can probably get away with having search pages indexed, and many companies get them to rank, but what Google wants to avoid is the indexation of hundreds or thousands of random search results pages from a website, often with complex query strings that can result in almost infinite numbers of pages being created.

Cheers,

Jane

I didn't get the impression from this question that the old site / domain was penalised. Correct me if I'm wrong, zharriet, but I got the impression that what you're saying is that you changing domains, redirected www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com, but that at some point in the future, you want to use **www.oldsite.com **at some point in the future for another part of the business. As such, you want to know when you can "turn off" the redirect without harming the new rankings of www.newsite.com, using www.oldsite.comfor new content.

The answer to this is really hard to give: some sites don't seem to benefit much from having old domains pointed at them. Others benefit for a period before that benefit seems to disappear (meaning that you will have needed to build a good number of news links to the new domain).

It is impossible to say what the effect of removing a 301 redirect at some point in the future will be, but the safest way you can ensure that this doesn't harm the new site is by building a robust platform of good on and off site SEO for that new site so that it can withstand having any benefit of the old site's 301 taken away.

Hi Louie,

Has there been any improvement to this? If not, could it be possible given the query and the sites that do rank in the Sydney region, that the query is particularly competitive in Sydney as compared to other cities, and that the ranking sites have put any extra effort into that location?

I understand that it isn't a city-specific query, but is the service / product something that might be considered a more profitable query to rank for in Sydney?

Google doesn't support city-specific geo-targeting so it won't be something they've set up incorrectly in Webmaster Tools.

Is there any address or contact information on the client's website that might specifically indicate that they serve areas that are not Sydney?

Cheers,

Jane

The canonicalisation option would probably work, although I too wonder how necessary it is to create two totally separate websites. Unless it's really vital that the branding be very different, I would look at developing different areas on the same root domain so that you do not have to put 301 redirects in place, work on the link development for a new domain, etc. Canonicalisation is certainly a viable option though.