Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Rich,

WebGnomes have a pretty nice list of website analysis tools: http://www.webgnomes.org/blog/10-seo-analysis-tools/

I test ran most of them, but I still find myself going back to Woorank.

Hope this helps.

Hey Gagan,

Indeed, if the Tag pages don't have any unique content on them (like unique descriptions), it is usually better to 'noindex' those since they add little value from a search engine perspective.

Cheers!

A 301 redirect would typically pass the old domain's link metrics to the new domain (and any penalties if they exist). Theoretically you would get a boost to the Dutch website.

However, there are a few things you should be aware of:

1. You won't be able to use the international version of the website again. Also, a 301 means "permanent redirect", so Google will likely deindex the old domain, and would be hard to get it back up if you change your mind later.
2. You should redirect page-to-page instead of redirecting all of the old domain's pages to just the homepage of the new domain. Otherwise the redirect will have a smaller effect.
3. A .nl domain is a ccTLD geo-targeted domain. You won't be able to rank as well for international queries (e.g. english) as you did with the .com gTLD. Consequently, some of the websites linking to you might also remove the links if they notice the website is now in Dutch.

Hope this helps, cheers!

It can harm you only if any of the kw rich domains have been previously penalized by Google, in which case 301 redirecting it will likely pass the penalty.

Otherwise, it's just like using the same tactic to redirect typo or vanity domains. Won't harm you, but it won't help you with ranking either, regardless of the domain name or keywords used.

Cheers!

Hey Shayann,

What errors related to rel=canonical do you get in your Moz report?

Inside the Crawl Diagnostics Summary, the rel=canonical tag is listed inside the Notices block. That means it's just a count of how many pages have this tag implemented, and doesn't imply there are any errors with it, but simply that the tag is present on your pages.

Hope this helps!

A subdomain isn't always considered a new site / domain in itself. In fact, other than blog platforms or websites that offer ugc subdomains, most subdomains seem to be closely correlated with the main domain by Google.

There are many examples including the main domain taking a penalty, bringing all the subdomains down with it, or vice-versa. Or you can just search 'bodybuilding', and see how Google integrates subdomains into sitelinks, which is a clear sign that Google sees those subdomains as part of the same entity as the domain itself.

Of course, to be safe, you should always try to opt for a folder option instead of a subdomain, since, as Rand put it:

"Subdomains SOMETIMES inherit and pass link/trust/quality/ranking metrics between one another

Subfolders ALWAYS inherit and pass link/trust/quality/ranking metrics across the same subdomain"

If you have no option as setting it as a subfolder, the next best option is indeed a subdomain. A root domain is the worst option of the three.

Hey Francisco,

First and foremost, you should check why your traffic has dropped.

Check whether it has dropped on a certain search engine or on a certain set of keywords or landing pages, or is it a blanket drop everywhere.

Check whether your other sources of traffic have tanked as well (direct, referral, etc.) to see if you maybe have a website problem (Webmaster Tools can help you diagnose that as well).

Also check some of the Moz reports available. Moz cannot read Google penalties, so your Domain Authority (as well as your traffic) might have dropped due to a sudden removal of a portion of your backlinks.

As a side note, if your subdomain has been penalized due to spammy backlinks, there's a high likelihood your whole domain has been penalized as well.

Shayann, you should check which are the 2 Other URLs that create this issue, to check if they implement different rel=canonical tags.

Hey Harris,

Moz currently offers API access to their Mozscape (formerly known as Linkscape), which is what Open Site Explorer uses, and the Followerwonk Social Authority, used for measuring Twitter engagement. As per their documentation, using their Mozscape API will only allow you to get access to these resources:

• URL metrics
• Link metrics
• Anchor text metrics
• Top pages
• Metadata

As such, there's no Rank API available right now.

Hope this helps, cheers!

Hey Neil,

The pagination tags do have to be implemented in the section to be properly recognized by Google. Maile Ohye confirmed this aspect.

As for an example, here's one I gave to a previous related question: http://moz.com/community/q/pagination-for-product-page-reviews

Hope this helps!

Hey Kyle,

I think that your problem is that you have the same (duplicate) category meta description for all categories, so Google discards it as being irrelevant. Your product meta descriptions on the other hand are unique, so they show up fine.

The solution would be to create unique descriptions for each category and subcategory.

Hope this helps, cheers!

Hey scoutzie,

This is actually covered pretty well in Joe Robison's blog post on fixing Webmaster Tools crawl errors: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-fix-crawl-errors-in-google-webmaster-tools

I'll quote the related info:

"One frustrating thing that Google does is it will continually crawl old sitemaps that you have since deleted to check that the sitemap and URLs are in fact dead. If you have an old sitemap that you have removed from Webmaster Tools, and you don’t want being crawled, make sure you let that sitemap 404 and that you are not redirecting the sitemap to your current sitemap."

Hope this helps, good luck!

Yes it should. However, as Alan mentioned below, if you still have links pointing to the 404 pages, Google will always attempt to crawl them, and will keep you informed that you have errors.

If you do have external links to those 404 pages, you can 301 redirect them to an appropriate page using .htaccess. This way you'll keep the link value and also get rid of the Webmaster Tools error.

If you don't have any links to them, then yes, Google will eventually stop trying to crawl them.