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Hey there! The link you have shared shows a bunch of subdomains. Is it safe to assume that you did not create these? By chance did you recently purchase the domain or buy it within the last 3 years?

Thanks!

John

Hey Ryan!

These are author and tag pages in WordPress. There are plugins such as All in One SEO that allow you to no-index categories and tags by default. The Yoast one may have this too.

In the meantime, you can go into the search console and ask to have those pages removed from the index (do it in Bing too). I would install or modify a WP plugin to no-index these author and tag pages and you should be good to go.

I hope that helps!

[All In One SEO screen shot](All In One SEO screen shot)

Hi there! Can you expand on what you mean by Knowledge graph box?

Thanks!

John

Yeah - you are fine. Whenver you get a chance to. We've redirected URL's for websites that we switched 3-6 months prior to us working with them and the equity was transferred over. I hope that helps!

One thing that you may want to try is to sync up a Google Search Console profile to that subdomain and then ask Google to remove the URL's from it's listing to help speed up the process.

Google treats domains and subdomains differently. I wouldn't worry about redirecting the subdomain beta URL's to the main site as they were just indexed and have no value. Just focus on the no-indexing and you should be fine.

Also, I'd check and see if the dev site got indexed in Bing and do the same thing with Bing Webmaster Tools.

I hope that helps!

John

Hey there! Is the beta site on a subdomain or in a subdirectory of the new site? We typically build our dev sites on subdomains. If you do, I have some good feedback for you on this. Let me know! Thanks!

Hey there! I would still 301 redirect the pages. Even if the pages do not have any external links, Google may value them from the number of inner links pointing to them and the age of the pages. Google also sees a high 404 page ratio as an indication of an unhealthy website.

Thanks!

Hey Drew,

I would try the inner linking to see if that helps first. If that doesn't work, I'd build links to the https://3fconstruction.net/chicago-general-contractor/ page. I don't think you are being penalized but I'll defer to the other SEO gurus who help on the Q+A.

Thanks!

Hey Mike,

I would publish content right away on the new site. You can also share in social to help get more inbound links and shares to the new site.

Thanks!

John

Hey there! Is it possible to share the link to your site so I can explore using a few other tools that I have?

Hey Ryan! Can you paste a few examples of pages that Google is displaying?

Thanks,

John

Hey Irene,

Here are a few things to take a look at:

1. Internal linking structure (see image attached via screaming frog) - the homepage is the 5th most internally linked page. Increasing that, should help with ranking it

2. Have you done local SEO work in Austrailia - claimed locations via a tool like https://www.yext.com

3. Build links from .com.au sites to help Google see where you are located.

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Hey Mike,

It sounds like you've done all the right things. If you are seeing 404's for elements or pages that you don't believe have value, then you can request them be removed from the Google index via the search console. You may want to do that. You are welcome to paste them in here for me to see just in case.

It's more or less a waiting game now. The good news is that you've done all the right things.  If you have time, I would start building links or social shares (anything natrual and not fabricated) to the new site to help with SEO while the redirects fully kick in.

Thanks!

Hey! Can you provide a bit more detail and even share the URL of the site? It sounds like you launched a new site at a different URL and 301 redirected everything (page to page). You'll typically see a drop in traffic/rank for 30 days - how dramatic of a dip will vary from site to site. A few things to review:

1. 404 errors in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

2. Going through each of the 301 redirects to make sure they work (tedious but necessary)

3. Submit sitemap from new URL

If you can provide any more details on things you've reviewed that will be helpful. I'll keep an eye on this thread.

Honestly, if the client is already on you about not losing SERPS, I'd just leave the structure as it is. Preserve it and move it over to the new site. It's not as clean as you would like it, but it does contain the blog title in it and that should contain relevant keywords/subject matter.

Can you expand on the 404 issue with Hubspot scheduling? Have you talked to them about this issue? They're pretty adaptive and I'm surprise their scheduling structure would produce 404's ahead of the post being published.

I hope that helps!

Hey there! You'll want to set up 301 redirects to redirect the non www to the www and the http to the https. You can do this via the htaccess if you are technical and have the means to do so. If not, your hosting company is your best friend.

Most times, the hosting company will walk you through and implement it on your behalf so I would give them a call.

If you need more details on the 301 redirect via htaccess as I described above, let me know and I'll be happy to provide you with more detail on how to troubleshoot.

Thanks!

John

Hey Drew,

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble. I suspect that the issue relates to your inner linking structure

https://3fconstruction.net/chicago-general-contractor/ (3 inner links pointing to the page)

https://3fconstruction.net/how-to-apply-general-contractors-license-chicago/ (135 inner links pointing to the page)

One of the things that will help will be to increase the amount of internal links pointing to the chicago-general-contractor page.

Hey Kyle! Roman had a great answer to this when he answered a previous question - https://moz.com/community/q/do-long-utm-codes-hurt-seo - take a peek.

Hey Kyle,

Another side question before I answer (sorry for the delay). Have you moved your site to https and have you changed the admin parameters to https in property settings and view settings?

Most change the former but some miss the view settings. We saw similar things with organic traffic over this year and the issue was that the view was not set to https.

Let me know and I'll give you feedback on the link question after.

Thanks!

John

To add to what Roman posted - I would also encourage you to set up Google Search Console to review how this has changed the number of pages indexed. You have a good head start by using the WP plugin but I would take this addition step.