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It sounds like you have done all the right things.  I agree with Vettyy that you should use something like Screaming Frog to crawl all the old URLs just to double check there are no hanging 404 pages or missed http pages.  Switching to 301 will take a few days to filter through, so you could run cache:domain.com in Google on your most important pages to monitor when they are being crawled.  Also do you have a mix of http and https in Google in present?  It may very well be something to just wait and monitor.

A good tool for sniffing URLs headers is Fiddler.

Name, Address, Phone - you should provide comprehensive contact details.  Part of your service could/should be to double check their details on their site and make sure it identically matches on your listing.  Businesses are still lapse in this, or try to extend their address to capture more than one county, as if it will somehow do them good.

They also need to give you fresh new content about themselves, not some default directory description.

IMHO directories in the main are dead.  Where they do succeed is when they are very niche and actually human managed.  If you have the skills and passion in your niche then there is a good possibility you will make it work and become a valuable resource.  Using NAP in the detail will provide valuable citation for the business listing.  SEO impact will be minimal, but for the business it is still a movement in the right direction.

You'll need to heavily market the directory to the business customer base as an invaluable one stop shop for their needs.  That will then drive referral traffic to the listings and allow you to charge a reasonable fee for inclusion.

The site has 2 main categories for scooters.  One category is Type of Scooter menu item with nested types and the second category is Manufacturer menu item with nest makes.  So all the scooters can be found in either of these categories depending on how you search.

The Manufacturer category is mainly thin content and set as noindex, as well as the nested makes categories.

However when searching for products Google is invariably using the breadcrumb for the Manufacturer category rather than the Type of Scooter category, which is indexed.

Should this be of concern Google using breadcrumbs of non indexed URLs, even if they are followed and therefore the site navigable?

Have you implemented hreflang to all domains and URLs to indicate to Google your intentions with the domains/URLs?

Also have you checked Analyics >> Audience >> Geo >> Location of www.example.com.au for a period prior to your implementation to see if you have excluded a section of traffic?  I know you said ranking but maybe you refer to traffic.

yep, without giving the site it's difficult to exactly describe.  No it's not breadcrumbs, or on-page links.  It's a secondary menu option to the same page they have historically had problems with.  That I understand as there are valid ways to lead to the same page and arguably show importance to that page.  But in this case it seems to be a secondary menu link to the same page just for the sake of another sitewide menu link that isn't really helpful to the visitor.  But I might have a little "anti-over-optimising fever"!

I'm working on a site where there is a top level menu with a dropdown off a couple of the main headings and subsequent dropdown from one or two of those dropdowns.  Usual stuff.

The main problem we are having is the ranking of one of the main menu pages, some of which is historical stuff we have cleaned up and waiting for Penguin.

My question is whether the following is a prudent step.  The main menu option/page and keyword is something like "Green Widgets" but this activates a dropdown where there is a link to 'Types of Green Widget', then again there is a dropdown with several pages to different types of Green widget.  The two menu items "Green Widgets" and "Types of Green Widgets" both link to the "Green Widget" page.

As the "Types of Green Widgets" link is sitewide and not really in the right flavour for the "Green Widget" page would it be prudent to remove the link element of that menu item or set it to /#

From my understanding if you have hreflang=“en-gb” then that/those pages are targeted at the UK.  If you wish to target any  English speaking countries then you add hreflang=“en”.  But if you wish to target specific English speaking countries then you'd use hreflang="en-ie", hreflang="en-gg" etc.

What you are doing is giving Google information, not a directive, as to what pages are targeted for where.  Google could ignore and it's not a ranking solution.  You are just giving Google the heads up of your intentions.

I would go further than that and check the link profiles of all the domains.  Any sign of spam, unnatural anchor text etc then do not redirect as you'll inject that problem into your site.  Even if you believe them to be dormant and never used I would just check in case you were not the original owner.  Always worth doing that check.

Hi Kristen,  I sent you a PM.

This is the thing, it passes as mobile friendly but the screenshot shows the page 80% to the right.  All physical devices tested load the page ok.  My worry is that googlebot may not favour the page if this is it's perception of a true view.

So the website is displaying correctly in mobile devices and online tools.  However, when using Google Page Speed Insights mobile or fetch as mobile in Search Console the page always loads as if it has moved 50% of the screen to the right - so whitespace on the left then 50% of the page in on the right side.

I've been ignoring this.  The site loads fine in devices and i've put it down to a glitch in Google, but at the same time it's been bugging me.  Has anyone else seen this and should I ignore?

I have had similar issues with a client.  Take a look at all the information on this thread https://moz.com/community/q/hreflang-for-multple-countries-but-single-language  It might help you to start untangling your particular issue.

Hi Nikhilesh,

as a matter of interest is your tool crawling as a google bot, rather than some IP?  We have now set to deliver TLD depending on IP but the tool reports the following for the hreflangs not on the same domain

• Could not load this page. Server responded with HTTP Status code 301. Expected HTTP response code is 200 OK.

thanks.  I'm taking a look.

This is a bit difficult.  All 3 domains are bringing in some good diverse country traffic as is, but Google has said it will now ignore hreflang until resolved.

So for example, .com  brings in traffic and sales from Chile, Mexico and Bahamas.  So if we removed the 'global'  for .com are we not risking dropping the traffic for these locations.  Or will Google ignore anyway and serve?  There are too many countries getting traffic to implement each one as hreflang and remove the global en, it would be massive.

But having said that if the server was setting the TLD to be served depending on location it would then be adequate to just use the 'global' hreflang's to hreflang="en"?  Is that right?

I'm working on a site that has implemented hreflang.

The site is all in English but has slight differences and breaks down to separate domains, so

• example.co.uk
• example.eu
• example.com

the hreflang implementation targets specific countries per domain.

This was tested using http://flang.dejanseo.com.au but Webmaster Tools has thrown up errors.  For example,

**URLs for your site and alternative URLs in 'en_GB' that do not have return tags.  **But every page refers back.Any ideas what's going wrong?

ScreamingFrog gives all the data you want.  Tools for the purpose of a creating a sleek report usually don't give the full picture.  It's those issues you draw out yourself that makes a difference.

You'd do best by using ScreamingFrog to check any outbound links.  If they don't exist don't worry about it.

"sponsored" = paid for.  Therefore if you don't want to break G's webmaster terms any links must be no-follow.  But taking look at the first one you wouldn't tell straight away it's sponsored.  But now you have posted here and told Google