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With your .co.nl TLD, it's unlikely that you'd get much (if any) visibility in U.S. Google.

You could also do the following:

• Specify your primary country in Search Console
• Use sitemaps to identify targeted countries: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en

Hi,

In this instance, since you're targeting multiple countries but the same language, it's acceptable to only specify the language in the hreflang tag, and leave the country out. For example:

Hi Brendan,

Just as it can take a while to rank a brand new domain, it will take some time to recover from the penalty. The best thing you could be doing is working to get some good links pointing to the homepage to help outweigh those junk links.

Doubtful - since you've had redirects in place for so long, Google most likely dropped the old domain(s) from the index long ago.

That's correct. I started doing this as a way to determine which 301s can be removed over time, but I come across new uses for it all the time!

Not particularly, nobody really uses G+ anymore. Additionally, if you've gotten someone to your RFQ page, it's best to not distract them with outbound links.

Hi,

You're probably seeing this as direct traffic in Google Analytics - which is totally useless. The only way around this is to append UTMs with source/medium information to the end of the resolving URL. For example:

theDomainYouBought.com >>> yourCurrentDomain.com/?utm_source=theDomainYouBought.com&utm_medium=301

You can replace '301' and the source info with whatever you want, but the more specific you are, the easier it will be to go back and look at the data months/years from now.

Hi,

Moving website A to a sub-domain of website B is going to be counterproductive, in that search engines hold different metrics for sub-domains than they do for their bigger brother, the primary domain. It's near impossible to advise what to do without any knowledge of the client and their division. But strictly from an SEO perspective, you stand to gain more by relocating website A to website B, but as a sub-directory rather than sub-domain - so long as the migration follows best-practices for such a task.

Hi Trevor,

Unfortunately, with link building, the math isn't that simple. The litmus test you should use is to ask yourself "Would another person find this link useful?". If the answer is yes, then the link will be beneficial. If the answer is no, it means the link isn't worth your time and would mislead or frustrate people.

Lol, I was thinking the same thing as soon as I saw that first link....

Hi,

No experience here with Scrapebox, but if your goal with this is link acquisition, don't. Any link that is acquired that easily is more likely to hurt your efforts than help. You really don't want to have to undo any of that work, and you certainly don't want to have to explain to your client that their site is suffering from automated blog comments.

Will,

I'm not familiar with the CMS you're using, but to answer your question about rel=canonical, no, that is not an instance of when to use that tag. Canonical tags are used for times when duplicate content is unavoidable, such as sorting a product category page and having different URL parameters based on the sort type.

Hi,

It seems to me like you need cross-domain tracking. In the sequence you describe, when someone hits the subdomain first before clicking to the main site, it's coming through as referral traffic - at which point you're losing the connection (you can still get this data, but in a much more convoluted way). You should also be able to tag multiple domains with your email tool, so either (sub)domain you link to would have the same parameters, and with cross-domain tracking enabled, you'll have session unification between the 2 domains.

Hi James,

As with most things in SEO, the answer is 'it depends'. If the only service you offer is 'campervan hire', I believe the homepage for that would work. Then, as you've already mentioned you do, have pages built out for more specifics terms like locations.

I think there are use-cases for using the homepage for some high-level, top of the funnel keywords that broadly describe a business. But for the most part, I do agree with the Yoast article, as it can be difficult to put content on the homepage of a site while maintaining the aesthetics of a homepage.

Hi Juan,

You should also know that you can have multiple sitemap directives on one robots file. This is common among international sites and large commerce sites.

Hi,

It sounds like you might have some over-optimization going on. If this title tag formula "vintage insert designer skirt/dress/pants etc" means you're repeating the same tag on multiple products, you're triggering duplicate content red flags.

Keep in mind, there is a lot more to ranking with a website than just the title tags though. But since you're asking specifically about title tags, put Moz to good use and check your Site Crawl report to identify any duplicate issues you might be facing. I can see you've got some duplicate issues with pagination (i.e. http://irvrsbl.com/collections/outerwear?page=3), you'll need to fix that, along with any other duplicates due to multiple products fitting the same title tag formula you mentioned - your Site Crawl report will give you the full run-down.

Hi,

Since all of your sites share branding and the same template, and a good portion of your boiler plate pages even link back to Jacksonhole.net, I would definitely recommend rolling those up into one site. You've also got the navigation setup to point to the according sites, so your template wouldn't need too much updating in order to carry all the same content.

However, I'm going to recommend not using subdomains since search engines hold different metrics for them than they do domains (https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain) - which would not help you accomplish your goal.

Sorry for the confusion... I just meant that since that's your primary product, and at one point your only product, the page still has a strong focus on that topic. You need that baby headbands category page, and of course, you don't want to wipe all focus from your home page, so there's not a whole lot you can do here.

Some things you might try:

• update your home page meta data to focus on your brand and overall category (baby accessories maybe? sorry, not too familiar with your niche)
• move the content at the bottom of your category page above the fold
• in your home page paragraph, use 'baby headbands' as anchor text linking to the category page

Hey Tiffiny,

Typically your homepage is going to have much stronger PA than any other page, which means more pull on search engine algorithms. If your site started out selling baby headbands, chances are that was (and may still primarily be) the focus of content on your home page.Shifting algorithm focus to another page can be a lengthy and difficult process!

You've probably also got some links pointing to your home page with 'baby headband' anchor text - or variations on that - which is also contributing to your home page out-ranking your headband-specific page. As a whole, regardless of anchor text, you probably also have more links pointing to the home page.

I wouldn't worry too much about it though, if you've got 2 organic results for that keyword, you're even more likely to get the click!

Hi Jarred,

Issues like this are usually connected to hrefang tag. I noticed you've got those in place, but the country element is missing. Try updating your American (.com) and French (.fr) hreflang tags to the following:

The additional specificity might be what you need to override that mistake by Google and get your meta descriptions back to normal. Hopefully this works, as I didn't see anything else on either TLD that would cause this.