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Hi Anthony,

There's unfortunately no setting in Google Webmaster Tools for this.

Your best bet is to use IP detection logic to either totally block (return an error status code and no content) or serve a simple "our content is not available in your country" error page to all requests from IP addresses in the UK.

You can do this by building your own reference database or using a service - there's also some freeware). (FYI: anyone on a proxy network can get around this.)

Google does use "locale-aware" crawling, including appearing to crawl from other countries than the US (most likely through a distributed computing network), and the UK is likely high on the priority list for that.

Google should pick up on this over time and stop including your pages in search results. But it may not be immediate.

Best,
Mike

Hi rswhtn,

I can't add much more than others have here already.

Are sliders in general bad for SEO? If they diminish the user experience or slow down the page, they could hurt more than help. Technically speaking, speed is a potential reason. Since Google responds to signals of a satisfied user (and uses quality rating in their algo.), anything that impacts the user's impression of the value of a page is a potential factor for SEO.

Is Revolution Slider specifically good/bad for SEO? We have no indication Google has targeted specific WordPress plug-ins for security warnings / similar. If a site gets hacked and Google detects malware, different story, but there's no indication an unhacked Revolution Slider instance would impact SEO.

I think I'd consider UX here before SEO - are users engaging with the slider? Would they engage more with another layout? Split testing is easy and free with Google Optimize these days. Security may be an issue, but that's a valid concern with any plug-in.

Best,
Mike

Hi rswhtn,

We have not seen proof of structured data having a direct impact on general organic rankings. However, we're confident that clickthrough rate does have an impact on rankings (see Rand's Whiteboard Friday on this here, as well as Larry Kim's post). Since "rich results" (rich snippets) can impact clickthrough rate, the should then have a secondary impact on rankings.

That said, it doesn't sound like your homepage had a rich result from this use of structured data. It's also not clear whether/how Google uses this postal address data. Since it's not likely been implemented at any significant scale across the web, I'd be dubious if it were a useful ranking signal for them. It's possible, but I'd call it unlikely.

We have seen rankings fluctuate significantly across client accounts even when the pages in question have not been updated. It seems that Google's AI/Engineering team iterate on search results frequently.

So, in short, I suspect this has to do with something other than structured data.

The significant changes to the homepage may be involved (UX can have a significant impact on rankings), but these changes could very well have generated a net gain in terms of overall traffic/results in spite of this lost head term position.

Unfortunately I think easy/clear answers on this will prove evasive. If you have the data (via Ahrefs or otherwise), I'd recommend reviewing the "flux" in the top 10 search results for "clothing manufacturers" around this time. If yours is not the only result that shifted significantly in this time frame, it's like part of a larger shift in Google's ranking algorithm.

Best,
Mike

Hi Adam,

It's best to consult with your web host on this one to ensure you're working within whatever restraints/quirks their system includes, but generally speaking, a single type A name record with the host @ specifying the domain including www subdomain should take care of it.

But again, you're probably best off following instructions from your web hosting provider and/or consulting their tech support team.

Happy Holidays,
Mike

Hi vtmoz,

I see you have posted an updated question on this issue separately - regarding the spammy inbound links pointing to this subdomain. That is a more likely problem for your site.

That said, the more spam that shows up on that subdomain, the more likely Google is to seeing your site as part of a "bad neighborhood" of the web, and this could risk the organic visibility of your root domain.

There is no documentation on "how much spammy content is too much" - generally, some spammy content on a subdomain doesn't negatively impact the entire domain. However I have seen cases where an entire domain was negatively impacted by a very large number of spammy pages on various subdomains. It's a matter of scale.

If your rankings and traffic on your primary domain are important, my advice would be to mitigate the risk by either policing the content on your forum subdomains by bringing in admins, or shutting down the forums entirely.

Best,
Mike

Hi Robin,

There's no indication Google is having any trouble picking up the separate URLs and their associated Titles and Descriptions properly - a site: search for your domain returns all pages I'm able to find manually, and each page has a unique and accurate Title and Description snippet.

ReactJS is one of the most commonly used JS platforms, with a lot of momentum in the development community especially on high-traffic sites, and Google has innovated their crawl tech to include JS-support (they crawl with a headless version of Google Chrome) to adapt to this platform.

"View Source" is no longer valid for interpreting page code as Google will render it - they crawl with JS support, so JS interactions and modifications of source code are visible to Google. Using "Inspect Element" in Chrome shows a more accurate representation of what Google can crawl/render.

In short: I see no negatives for SEO here, and I expect at this point your analytics and Search Console data will show that your pages are indexed and eligible for traffic (potentially already getting traffic) from Google.

Best,
Mike

Hi Chris,

It's not entirely clear how this will impact SEO, but there is some indication hidden content could be weighted lower by Google.

Google has said in the past that such hidden content will not be weighted equally to visible content. In the early part of this blog post there's a helpful summary of Google engineering statements on this issue: https://www.freshegg.co.uk/blog/technical-seo/google/how-does-google-treat-hidden-content

It's at least somewhat likely that content contained in lightboxes will be weighted less than visible content. So while I'm not certain there is a downside, there could be and it's worth consideration for your new site design. There wouldn't be any kind of "penalty" for pages containing hidden content, but rankings for keywords/language contained in that content could be lower than they otherwise would be if the content were visible by default (without user interaction). I'd recommend planning for that.

Best,
Mike

Hi D,

As per Martijn's response, this example is a JS asset required by your WordPress theme. It's unusual that this would end up indexed by Google (even more unusual that any users would inadvertently stumble upon it - is there any indication of that?).

It sounds like there's a lot of this going on, but one thing I'd suggest initially is first verifying whether these URLs are actually getting impressions/clicks in search results via Search Console's "Search Analytics" report.

I suspect Martijn is right in that this isn't an issue worth much time/attention (a huge portion of the web runs on WordPress, Google has no trouble sorting out actual pages vs JS resources and similar URLs that shouldn't be served to users), but if there are really "a ton" of these URLs showing up, it might be worth verifying search users aren't actually seeing/clicking on these URLs so you can rest assured it's not a high-priority concern.

Best,
Mike

That's a very strange behavior I have not seen before (and I've had plenty of experience with GoDaddy and their domain forwarding).

The query workaround is interesting/clever - but I'd also be inclined to want to sort out why this is happening at all and stop it vs reworking all the domain forwards around this symptom.

Have you contacted GoDaddy's shared hosting support? I'm not the biggest GoDaddy fan overall, but their tech support team can be quite helpful in tracking issues like this down.

Hello,

As Martin suggested, it seems any option will require time and effort.

Are you sure these pages are causing an issue with duplicate content? Are they ranking and pulling traffic/sales?

I'm dubious these pages are having a negative impact. I would want to verify that as much as possible before expending the resource to canonical or take other action.

That said, canonical would be the recommended solution here - and should take no more effort than the "noindex" tag.

Best,
Mike

Hi vtmoz,

I would not fear a negative impact on the main domain from linking to poorly-optimized subdomain pages. Negative impacts from linking to "bad neighborhoods" are limited to cases where you're linking to true webspam (some examples from Google here).

At worst, you're linking to pages that won't rank well because they are not well-optimized for search, but the main site and pages will not be negatively effected.

Hope this helps clear things up.

Best,
Mike

Hi Alexandre,

Google should have no problem indexing URLs with Cyrillic characters, but it could be the mix of language that is causing Google to attempt to decode those characters.

But even if that were the case, this should not result in a 500 error but a 404 (not found) for those resultant decoded URLs.

It looks like there are 301 redirects in place for these URLs now, pointing to their EN counterparts - has that resolved this issue? Perhaps it was faulty redirect logic in the first place that caused the 500 errors?

Thanks,
Mike

The question of relevance vs authority in what makes links valuable is an interesting one and has recently been covered on Search Engine Land here: http://searchengineland.com/relevance-vs-authority-link-value-part-two-274417 (part two)

I tend to agree with those who value authority over relevance, as I've not seen any real proof that "relevant" links drive more power, but I have seen that links from off-topic sites improve rankings and traffic many times.

Obviously there's a great deal of context I don't have about how related the two sites appear to be to users that could be adding to the mess, and it does sound like the authority you have isn't quite driving the business you want, so no big pushback on the 301s - I'd keep an eye on your rankings and organic traffic though, it could cut authority to the point where you see a drop.

Best of Luck,
Mike

Hi Doug,

I'd be dubious about associating the old posts with the lack of traffic/rankings for the new store pages.

If you were to redirect those old posts to another domain, at best I'd expect no impact, at worst the loss of PageRank will cause the store to lose some the traffic/rankings it has now.

You could potentially test this (redirect those old posts somewhere else, see what happens, then remove the redirects if you're unhappy with the result, or if there's no/positive impact, leave them in place).

Ultimately, the need to acquire new links (and traffic sources other than Google) will remain either way, which is probably where I'd be investing focus/capital.

Best,
Mike

seovp's advise is spot-on here.

I'd just add that "1-2 keywords per page" is really obsolete advice at this point, unfortunately. Google is doing a better job of every day of understanding synonyms and semantics and creating associations between language, pages and entities - this kind of granular keyword targeting is less impactful every day and also could flag you up for a Panda penalty.

You are entering a saturated market for sure. Outside of SEO, I'd be investing in creative ways to sell your products as well as get attention around your brand. Even in the long tail, you will find the competition fierce for these products, so you'll really have to find a unique way of doing things to get initial attention with a smart partnerships and promotions plan, which will translate into the links/shares/traffic that send the right signals to Google and raise your rankings across the board.

Best of Luck,
Mike

Hi Nick,

I think you've gotten some good tips here - I'd agree with Prestashop that the preferred solution would be to find where these parameters are being included in links to this page and remove them.

Failing that, zenstorageunits's advice to use rel="canonical" would be my recommendation - or a 301 redirect from the URLs that include parameters back to the core URL would work.

I wouldn't convert these parameters to subdirectories unless they are integral to the way your site works and pull up unique content - you called them "old parameters" so it sounds like they're not supposed to be there, so probably not a case where you'd want to convert these parameters to subdirectories.

Failing the above, you could utilize the Google Webmaster Tools "URL Parameters" interface to tell Googlebot to ignore these parameters.

Overall, your best course of action is to find and remove the links that include the parameters.

I'd also add that the Moz crawl report is highly sensitive to "duplicate content," and I often find it flags up issues has high/medium priority that are not actually going to have a significant impact on the site. You have to take the crawl report with a grain of salt - while duplicate content can be a serious issue for some sites (ecommerce retailers for example with duplication issues across a wide catalog of products), in most cases it has minimal impact and isn't something I'd hold up your site launch for.

Best of Luck,
Mike

I have not seen this particular problem with Facebook traffic before. You should only see Referral and Social traffic from Facebook.

Do you have any filters active on the Google Analytics profile in question that could be altering the Medium setting for this traffic?

Or is it possible that you have campaigns set up for Facebook traffic that have an incomplete use of UTM tracking parameters for Google Analytics?

One other possibility is that certain pages have been indexed by Google with the UTM tracking parameters included - this URL, for example, is indexed by Google, which is likely to be causing strange results in your analytics: http://www.wearyouwant.com/en/fb/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term=free+shipping&utm_content=landing&utm_campaign=Facebook%2Blanding

Best,
Mike

Hi Matt,

In general, my advice would be to achieve permanent 301 redirects at as granular a page/folder level as possible (prioritized by the current number of linking root domains - Open Site Explorer's Top Pages report is a great tool for this).

Where the rebranding & migration is concerned, I would strongly recommend reading through two resources here at Moz:  

1. Ruth Burr's overview of Moz's own fairly recent move (from SEOmoz.org to Moz.com) and
2. Aleyda Solis's handy "Achieving an SEO-Friendly Domain Migration" infographic

Between both, I think you'll have your bases covered.

Best,
Mike

Hi Matt,

Not sure I have a clear understanding of what you mean by "Could I do a 301 redirect for a couple months and then take it off and make the umbrella site?"

Any 301s you set up to pass link equity must be maintained permanently.

You can absolutely use 301s at the subfolder/page level, and if you can leave those redirects in place permanently this may be a solution for you.

The other option is to reach out to webmasters for your most valuable links and get those changed over to the new events site - can take a lot of time and isn't always successful, but it's often the best option to ensure link equity is maintained.

If you'd like to share more detail, I can circle back and provide more specific info. Hopefully the above helps to some degree.

Best,
Mike

I would recommend option #1.

It's common for sites without SSL certs not to resolve properly at the HTTPS version of their URLs, and Google handles this fine.

You could pull the log files and take a look at how often Googlebot / other users request HTTPS versions of that site A's URLs, to determine if that SSL/redirect set up is necessary. But I would not anticipate any significant negative impact on traffic letting the HTTPS version of site A kick a 404 or server error.