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Not a problem, happy to help

You might also want to consider repeat custom. Having a database of repeat customers can be huge for ecommerce. Increasing lifetime value is one of the keys to success here.

A few ideas (I am assuming the CD key selling is legal, of course):

• Loyalty programmes (buy 'x' products and get 1 free, such as buy 'x' CD keys and get a random free one, obviously work your pricing to be sure you're in good profit, the freebie doesn't have to be an expensive one).
• Consider cross-selling at checkout. By offering an additional, related game at a decent discount, you may increase the average basket value considerably.
• Run seasonal promos, check Google Trends and other sources for when hotspots are (Christmas etc) and ramp-up your promotions - mailing out customers in a 'countdown' style fashion to build the PR (but monitor open rates and unsubscribes to make sure you're not annoying them!).
• Just before big game launches, piggy-back on the publicity & PR that the game generates and run discounts or contests - tie these in with you doing a video review of the game and upload to YouTube (you have a branded YouTube channel right?). Mail out to your list with the review of the new/just released game.

Other than Lifetime Value increasing:

Have you considered Twitch? Why not run a Twitch giveaway - Try to team-up with a popular streamer (if you're not well known yet, don't go for top-tier streamers at first. Find well known but approachable ones) and get them to do a sponsored CD Key giveaway. You'd need to make sure you get good coverage from the streamer (links from their chat, link from their bio for 'x' weeks, stream uploaded to their YouTube channel too if possible, with a link to your store etc).

What about asking any YouTube game streamers if you can sponsor their channel? Obviously, the likes of PewDiePie would be a bit too expensive, but aim for niche gamers with a decent following, you may be surprised how cheap you can sponsor them (CD keys?!) for links/mentions etc.

Just a few more ideas for you there, hope it helps

Hey Adam,

As per my message above, if you can provide more info, I can take a look at this for you. Without seeing the Schema though, hard to help fix it.

Feel free to send me a private message here if you prefer not to give the info publically (click on my profile > 'Send Private Message').

Cheers

Yup, all looks good now - the page has index, follow

I'm going to send you a private message here on Moz with a Screaming Frog crawl export, which I carried out just to check there were no instances of 'noindex' left on any pages... All looks fine from the noindex standpoint.

Sorry for the late reply, checking now for you

Agree with Chris on this for sure. I'd also add that you should use relevant hreflang tags to differentiate between the sites (or subfolders if consolidating into a single domain).

ccTLDs are fine if done right, but be sure that there's a valid reason (targeting a country) and use hreflang. Remember that you can't specific a country on it's own, you can either specify:

• A language on it's own
• A language AND a country
• NOT a country on it's own.

So, if you do stick with the ccTLD tactic, add the relevant rel alternate hreflang tags to all sites (including each having it's own self-pointing tag).

Or, as Chris mentions, merge into one gTLD and then I'd use subfolders for the country targeting (either ccTLD or gTLD option is valid, so long as it's done well and for the right reasons)

Hope this helps?

Hi Gavo.

I think I've spotted your issue!

Looking at https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au/robots.txt I can see that you're all good now, HOWEVER...

view-source:https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au/ Check your source code and you'll notice an inline noindex tag!:

Also, checking another page: view-source:https://www.brightonpanelworks.com.au/services/ I get the same meta tag.

This makes me think it's sitewide... So, as you;re running WordPress:

• In wp-admin, go to Settings > Reading, then untick the box that discourages search engines.

Once you've done that, the following optional steps won't hurt and may speed things up

• Submit a new sitemap
• Use the fetch & render, as Kevin recommends
• Personally, and this is entirely conjecture on my part, I'd use Google's page speed & mobile friendly testing tools, as I find that 'seems' to help (I've not bothered verifying by running tests & checking the access log files to bot activity etc - as it only takes a few seconds to do so not worth the time. Maybe I'll check out of curiosity at some point though!)

** As there's been a couple of errors with indexing, once you've done this change, I'd recommend running a full site crawl (Moz's tools or Screaming Frog is cool too) and check for any other noindex pages!**

EDIT: In case you don't have Screaming Frog, let me know when you've updated the WordPress setting and I'll run a crawl for you and ping you a list of any pages that are still showing noindex tags, if any exist

Can you provide a link to the page this error is on? If we can see the code, will be easier to help

Edit: The 'Warning' ones are you not showing recommended fields, the image & name ones though, they are more urgent as they are required fields. My guess is that either the fields are missing, or are malformed somehow - would need a look at the code to confirm & recommend a fix.

Edited the above re: clarifying rel=canonical advice

Hmmm good question!

Caveat: I don't know your exact situation, but let's discuss the options a little (I'll provide some links to reference material and a useful tool too).

I've not had to do this personally, most of the international SEO I've done involved the site having the same service offering across different economic regions, so the subfolders were only needed in their specific language (e.g. /es for Spain, /mx for Mexico etc).

This might get confusing, so I'll use some examples

One option would be to use subfolders for country, then language. This is a more complex scenario, so would need good planning of course, but by way of an example...  A section of your website targeting Spain (as a country) could be:

https://domain.com/es

Now, if you wanted a translated copy in English, of this page, you could do:

1) Query string (urgh!)

https://domain.com/es?lang=en

2) subfolder-subfolder

https://domain.com/es/en

An example when 'deeper' into an international subfolder, say the visitor is on the 'widgets' page, on the Spanish (Spanish country folder, showing Spanish by default, translated into English)...

https://domain.com/es/widgets/en

To add a little more complexity (sorry!) it'd probably be wise to set a rel canonical tag from the translated copy, to the country-specific version. So in the above 'widget' example, the page https://domain.com/es/widgets/en would have:

Then, on https://domain.com/es/widgets/, I'd set the hreflang to be self referencing, and I'd add a hreflang to the other country versions too (country versions in their own languages, rather than translated version of this one):

So on the above, as the english translation of the Spanish page is unlikely to want to be indexed (google.es should only have the Spanish version, google.co.uk, you'd want to index the English site, not the English translation of the Spanish site!), I'd rel=canonical it to the original Spanish page. But on every page that isn't rel=canonical'd to another pre-translated page (so, the ones we want indexing in their own country & language), I'd add hreflang tags to self and all other international sites, with their own language code.

Some reference material for hreflang (set to open in a new tab so you won't lose your place :D):

• https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/09/unifying-content-under-multilingual.html
• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077
• http://www.rebelytics.com/hreflang-canonical/ (VERY strongly recommended read on not creating confusion between hrefland and rel=canonical)
• http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/international-seo-tools/hreflang-tags-generator/ (a generator for hreflang, but DO check it's output!).

Note: I'd still target the first subfolder from root (/es in the above example) to the specific country (Spain) in Search Console).

Of course as an alternative, you could do ccTLDs (.es/.co.uk etc) and then have a single subfolder for the country (domain.co.uk/es, for example).

UX Conisderations:

(You may have considered this already, forgive me if that's the case! Only adding here as I've had conversations on this in the past and have seen it cause confusion).

One realllllyyyyy important consideration here is how the visitor makes the switch from languages and also to a different country site. THIS is key.

Seriously. If the visitor gets confused and exits because something they didn't expect happened (switched to another country version of your site when they wanted a translation - this becomes worse when you have a considerable amount of country-specific content, such as guides etc), all the technical SEO work behind the scenes for the international SEO set-up is kinda wasted.

What I mean by this is (and this is true regardless of if you go down the ccTLD or gTLD with subfolders routes)...

When a visitor lands on your site, let's say domain.com root/homepage, how will they:

1. See this page in another language

2. Switch to a different country page?

A better example. Say I'm in Spain, you sell widgets and I search Google.es for 'best widgets for under €250' - you've done some awesome International SEO, so your site shows up high and I click on it. I land on:

https://domain.com/es/widgets/

Now, I'm on the **Spain **(country) version of your site, in Spanish (language), how would my journey be (in terms of clicks), if I wanted to:

a) View the English version of this page (domain.com/es/widgets/en)

b) Switch to the English site (domain.com/en/widgets/)

c) Switch to the English version of the site, but view it in Spanish (domain.com/en/widgets/) < Likely 2 clicks needed for this of course.

If you're adding to your site, the ability to both switch to another site country AND translate the current page into English (for non-English pages), it needs to be really clear to the visitor how to do either, so they don't click on a country flag and get a result they were not expecting.

Again, the above is true regardless of the gTLD or ccTLD issue. Good planning & labeling can help with this, just make it damn obvious to the visitor what clicking a flag will do and make sure they know how to 1) Translate the current page vs 2) Switch to another country-version of your site.

Whatever you decide, once you've worked out how you want it to work, I'd:

1. Role-play it yourself, visiting the site (mentally or on pen & paper if it doesn't exist online yet!) and try to 'be' the visitor in different scenarios - Is it obvious to get to where you want both country-wise and language-wise?

2. Once the site prototype is built, repeat the above, but on the actual site.

3. Write 2 or 3 scenarios (seriously, it will only take 5mins each!) and pass them to work colleagues - Ask them to run through the scenario and see if they get stuck).

4. If you want to really push the boat out (I recommend this!) use an online UX testing service:

• https://usabilityhub.com/ < Cheapest option of the two, with a few different tests you can do. Personally in your situation I'd probable have them open a country-specific page and ask them to switch language to English, then run a separate test asking another bunch to switch the country to England (or whatever countries you serve, but you get the idea... Ask one group to switch language, another group to switch country - check they do it right).

• https://www.usertesting.com/ < More expensive, but worth getting a small number done. Here you set a series of tests and a screencast of the user trying to carry out your tasks, whilst they talk into a mic.

Spending a few $ on user tests can be VERY useful for identifying where users may be getting confused, resulting in a much better user experience which, let's face it, is key not only for SEO these days, but also for conversions and £, $, and €

Phew!  long-ass post that may raise more questions than it answers I guess?! I don't know your exact situation so it's a tough one to advise on, but hopefully the above is some food for thought

I can't help with the Moz tools as not a mozzer But do you have rel tags on the pagination links (rel next/previous/view all)?

Personally I wouldn't do it. No way. At the end of the day this would be very clearly against Google's terms (not to mention low-quality work), so effectively you'd be placing a bet with your site's reputation on if Google's engineers successfully catch you.

If it's a business that wants to do well in the long term online, I wouldn't take the risk of a bet like that against someone like Google, who have 'one or two' decent engineers actively trying to catch this sort of thing.

Pattern spotting is likely to catch you out and end up with you in hot water, it's just not worth the risk (in my opinion).

As John points out, for a churn & burn website this may work I guess (not something I'd be involved in tbh!), but at the end of the day if you get caught, you're a bit screwed... Plus it'd just be contributing to more crappy content out there on the web - not something any of us need!

This is good advice, but as far as I'm away if you have a ccTLD (.com.br) that you cannot change the international targeting away from the country of your ccTLD, you can only do this with a gTLD.

Tricky one to answer without knowing more details really to be honest, but here's some things to consider:

• Do you have many backlinks from decent, Spanish websites? If not, I'd have a think about how to get some (don't go for low quality of course!).
• You say you're not a bricks & mortar business, but do you have a Spanish address & phone at all? If so, do you have any citations? Are there (again, decent/quality) sites you can get the site listed on?
• How's your international SEO set-up? For example, geographical targeting in Search Console for the domain or subfolder/subdomain (/es set to Spain, unless Spain is the default, in which case Spain set as the target for the entire domain), hreflang settings...
• How well is your Spanish SERP snippet (title & description) optimised for CTR? Can you make any changes (without negatively affecting SEO) to increase your click through rate from the search results? (Think good, enticing wording in your < title > tag, a decent meta description that pulls-in folk's interest).

Just a few thoughts

One difference is targeting options.

With a ccTLD (country code top level domain), you're not able to set the target country, it defaults to the country of the ccTLD. With a gTLD (generic top level domain), you can set your target in Google's Webmaster Tools (okay, Search Console).

I guess there are branding considerations and possible effects on CTR of having a .us domain - perhaps (100% conjecture here!) some folks would be more likely to click, due to confidence the site is targeting their country (though lots of variables here, for example with a SaaS business that is global, such as an SEO tool, prob less important than, say, a clothing company that only ships to one country!).

Personally, I prefer gTLDs in MOST situations, primarily because:

• You can target the country of choice
• It's easy to target a wider, international market in the future (domain.com/es. or domain.com/mx, /it etc)
• In Search Console, with a gTLD, you can even target different countries for different subfolders (or subdomains, but I'd usually recommend subfolders).

As for Google's preference/SERP advantages? Personally, I think that using a gTLD that has it's target set in Search Console to USA, VS a ccTLD (such as a .us domain) have no advantages either way in terms of USA ranking from an algorithm standpoint - OR at least any algorithmic advantage will be negligible.

Plenty of other factors to focus on, so I'd go with your preference, but if there's a chance you'll want to target internationally in the future, think now if you'd prefer separate ccTLD domains for each country (domain.us,  domain.es, domain.it etc) or a gTLD with subfolders (domain.com/ domain.com/es, domain.com/it etc).

Others may have a differing opinion though

Hi Tomasz,

Loading with a delay may alter the effect of what a tool reports I guess (though the tools may wait until the page is fully loaded/DOM ready or something?), but I don't think it'll solve the issue as such to be honest, as the dupe content would still be on the page.

If you don't like the idea of a link opening in a new tab, there's always the option of an iframe I guess, on the relevant tabs? Though it'd be a bit of work to make it responsive.

I checked part of that message in Google translate (had to type out what was in the image so didn't do it all!).

Point 2 in the list "use the details in the Manual Action Viewer to resolve outstanding issues"

Any such wording, I'd click the link, see what it says. copy/paste the text into Google Translate and paste here, explaining it's via translate and may not be quite right.

That should help folks to help you

PM sent with the code (in case you're okay making your own .htaccess file) or a link to a zip file that has a ready-made .htaccess file if you prefer.

Note: This will only work if you use Apache and have htaccess & mod_rewrite enabled... If you're on a linux host, chances this is okay but if in doubt, my contact details are in the PM.

Once done, feel free to email me the list of all error pages if you still have it, I'll paste into Screaming Frog in list mode and check that all the error pages now return 301s for you.

Sending you a PM with the file now

Thanks I didn't intend it to be that long, but at the same time, didn't want to leave anything out!