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Can I ask why do a redirect from MRL to GBL and not the other way around? I think there is more value in the MRL domain, so if it is an option to keep it I would.

Hey there,

I was wondering if anyone here in the community has experience using Google's Custom Search options on your site. We are thinking that it might be a solution for our site simply because we have to identify our search terms individually by product, which would take us a very long time to do. The custom search seems to use meta data as the parameters for search, which would be ideal.

I was just wondering if anyone had any insights as to how this might have affected your site's performance and customer experience. Our clients are not the best when it comes to technology, and from what I can see, this might be confusing for them, just because the results look like an actual Google SERP. I am not sure if that is something that can be customized either.

Any input would be appreciated.

If you have more than on canonical on a page, Google will ignore them all. Pick the page that will be the canonical and add the same tag to the subsequent pages with duplicate content.

www.site.com = canonical

the canonical tag on all subsequent pages will be link link rel='canonical' href='www.site.com'

Is this WordPress or some other platform? Do you have access to your CSS and HTML files? The template of the site? The ahref is just not done correctly for the contact us page.

Moz

GWT/GA

Screaming Frog

Majestic

WebCEO

You will want to do the 301 redirect. That is the best way to address a domain name change. You would use a canonical tag if you were keeping both sites live, which isn't best practice. The canonical tag is not necessary when you use the 301 redirect. You will use the canonical tag to set the correct version of your URL, for example, if your set version is abcde.com and not www.abcde.com you will add a canonical tag to the page for abcde.com.

Moz has the On Page Grader. You can also use the "analyze page issues" function inside your campaign. Go to Search in the left nav menu, click on crawl diagnostics, and then a drop down will appear that says "analyze page issues". You can type in a URL there and get some more information. I use both of these tools and find them to be extremely helpful in catching anything I might miss.

WebCEO uses a lot of information from Alexa.com. I like it because I can run KW reports anytime that I want to. It accumulates information from different sources so it is a good way to verify what I see in Moz. The page issues are precisely displayed and really easy to use. It is an older tool, but I still find it valuable.

Is the 302 redirect the only way to get users from one page to the other?

The difference between the 301 and 302 is that the 301 will remove the page from the index over time. The 302 redirect is more of a fork in the road allowing the other page to remain indexed. It should really be your decision, if you want the page to remain indexed then don't use a 301 redirect, keep the 302. If it is irrelevant or if there is duplicate content it might be better to use a 301 redirect.

Do you use any site review system now? I use YotPo and it is really effective for measuring where traffic came from, what their experience on the site was and I even customized it to poll visitors on why they chose not to shop with us.

If people are placing orders on the site, you can also make it a required question on an order form. That would give you basic information as well.

Duplicate content is duplicate content whether you cite the original author or not. I would immediately reconsider your blogger's approach.

Depending on the citation they are using, they are actually creating backlinks from your site to the original source. That can help them, but, link juice doesn't work both ways.

All of your content should be unique, expertly written, trustworthy and authoritative. You want to sound like an expert in your field, not duplicate someone else's expert opinions. Content is king, and duplicate content will definitely effect your SEO rankings.

I agree with the Zen Agency. They explained it perfectly! I have seen a significant growth in my CTR, which has affected my overall KW rankings, after implementing the Schema.Org markup.

I am not sure of the kw you want to rank for, but the on page optimization on the second page is much better than the first, while the layout of the first page is way better than the layout of the second page.

According to Moz (the fancy Moz Toolbar) these pages are very similar. A test you can do is to swap the Meta Data on the two pages, wait about 2 weeks to make sure they get crawled and then see what happens.

You can also optimize your internal links a little to put more juice to the page you want to rank. Depending on the keyword, this can help. How old are these two URLs? The difference could just be the age.

If you intend to permanently get rid of that second page, you can redirect it and the added juice might push the second page up to where you want it. However, if both of these pages serve a purpose somewhere I would not do that.

I just moved out of Volusion, and yes, there are some issues with that platform, specifically URL structure, that make optimizing a pain. Ryan gave you awesome instructions. I would just say do not use the custom meta tag field, it is buggy and creates issues sometimes.

URL text is what shows after the .com/ but before the p/1234.htm

Photo Alt text is your alt image tag

meta tag description is your meta description

The meta tags override is kind of buggy, I wouldn't use it.

There are no automated h1 tags on product pages, so I used to add them manually at the top of the Product Description box. I would just copy the product name and throw an h1 tag around it. The same for h2,3, and 4. For some reason Volusion doesn't automate that.

Hi there,

I often am faced with a similar issue on my site, apelectric.com. We have models that get discontinued and replaced all the time. We also have obsolete parts and out of stock inventory every so often. I think that your plan has solid strategy. The pages that still have value because they are old and have seen a good amount of traffic can be either repurposed or redirected to better suit your website. If you are ranking well on pages, don't get rid of them. Matt Cutts at Google has backed the 404 strategy when a product is completely discontinued with no hopes of returning. In this case, I don't think that is the best strategy.

What I have done in the past is re-purposed the page to offer similar products. This is great for the user, and in turn, great for your SEO. Having pages with nothing on them is never a good idea, so add relevant items like similar models or any kind of parts and maintenance if you provide those. You can also add some content about the product you don't have anymore to go with the similar products. Content is a great idea all the time.

I hope this helps!

I did that in my Volusion store. I also added ReviewNew.asp?ProductCode= as a parameter in Google Webmaster Tools. Do you have an enabled mobile site as well? If you do there are several 404 errors that you will start to see from there. Make sure you are adding parameters accordingly. I am not sure if Volusion has started offering their responsive templates yet, but if they have I would see if you can implement that over the mobile site.

Have you ever heard of the Google Dance?

I started working with a company in August and have been trying to fix some major SEO issues. What I noticed is that at the times I made several changes, 301s, on page changes, revising content, I would see a huge decrease in rankings one week and then they would start to level out over the next 2-3 weeks. This isn't atypical, it shouldn't concern you too much right now.

Here are a few suggestions. Google your keyword + the number of your company. There should be an arrow in the SERP next to your URL, click that and select "Cached". This will tell you if the engine has seen your changes yet or not. If it has been cached, just wait a week and see if it levels out a little better, or at least bounces back to where it was.

The second thing you should do is check your search impressions in webmaster tools. With the two big updates happening in the past 30 days a huge change in your search impressions could cause some of your keywords to move around until things even out. You want to look for search impressions that dip below your lowest average day before 10/17/14. This will tell you if Panda or Penguin are having an affect on your rankings. If they are, this could just be temporary as the rest of the penguin update unfolds.

I say give it a couple of weeks just to be safe. I wouldn't make any other changes just yet. You don't want to fall victim to over optimizing either.

Good Luck!

No you should be fine

My thought would be to swap the H2 tag at the top of the page with the "National Tool Hire" graphic you have at the bottom of the page. Doing this flip flop would help you a little.

Generally, I don't believe the positioning of the H tags makes a huge difference. However, you are using a lot of h2 tags on this page. I think that is going to get a little confusing. I would move that h1 up to the top if you can't decrease the amount of h2 tags you have on this page. I have seen other sites use links for their h tags, especially if the link goes to a form, a calculator or some other tool. I really suggest dropping some of the h2 tags, adding some h3 and h4 tags. I think no more than 2 h2 tags should be used. That is kind of the best practice I have learned over the years.

You can set up Canonical tags in your template. Usually the default is to canonical the page's URL, but if you create the canonical tag to the main page, you should be ok. It will help reduce duplicate content and tell google that you want them to pay attention to the content and structure of your main page.

I would also set parameters in GWT, this will help reduce errors, like 404 errors if product options change in the future. When you are using dynamic URL structure like this, it also helps Google understand and read them better. I would implement both of these changes. Depending on what platform you are in, you should be able to export the URLs to easily import the canonical tags.