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I can't think of anything specifically. In my industry, the manufacturer provides search volume information for us.

In GWT, total impressions for the week or month might give you some kind of idea. I know that it is only impressions attached to the search queries listed on the page, but this is the only place I can think of to find high level data like that without looking for search volume on every key word individually.

Sorry!

If I understand your post correctly, domain.com/de/default.html has a 301 redirect to correctly direct traffic to the appropriate home page for their language?

If that is what you are saying than the chances are the the domain.com/de/default.html  is no longer being indexed because of the 301 redirect. That redirect tells the engines that the page has moved, so they stop crawling it. I am not an expert on redirecting home pages, but maybe look into Ref lang tags and REL canonical tags in place of the 301 redirect.

301 redirects would be best practice. A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect and it tells the engines to continue indexing the old URL. A 301 redirect will tell the engines to send all traffic to the new URLs because the site has permanently moved.

PS, Migrations turn everyone's brains into mush at one point. Hang in there!

I think you have the jist of it. Ryan did a really good job of breaking it down and making what I was trying to say a little clearer. Without knowing specifically what your domain is I cannot tell you whether or not I think it is best practice. And at the end of the day, you have to make the decision that best suits your business and strategy. I only recommend, like Ryan said, using the name on your business cards and letterhead. Branding is very important.

Take a look at the competition here. There are far more qualified domains, that should out rank feedthehungry.org. The reason they don't is because "Feed the Hungry" is the brand. If you look, there are other relevant sites that appear with this query, but no where in the title can you see the exact match to the query. If you want to compete on a branded key term like this one, it is going to take strategic back linking and great on page content so that the engines can equate your domain as relevant to the topic.

Yes, they show because that is the name of their organization. It is their brand, not their key term. Does that make sense? That is an extremely competitive term. It is a branded key term as well, making it even more competitive because you have to compete with the actual brand name. So if you wanted to compete with them on that phrase, which has only about 700 searches per month, you would need to work extremely hard to get your brand associated with that topic.

Anytime!

No worries. We were all beginners once.

I would say your domain name should be the name of your company, your brand. Your key terms will be included in the URL for your categories and products. Stuffing the URL with key terms will not help you rank. Take the baby powder example. If your domain is babypowder.com and your category page is Baby powder, and your product page is entitled baby powder for infants, your URL would be www.babypowder.com/babypowder/babypowderforinfants which is not best practice.

If you make your brand johnsonandjohnson.com, your URL becomes www.johnsonandjohnson.com/babypower/babypowerderforinfants.

So, to answer your question, no having the keyword in the URL several times does not help you rank. Having a naturally flowing URL that contains your brand and key term is what will help you rank. Having the space in the domain name is frowned upon, it generally isn't best practice.

You want to avoid using the EMD, your domain should be your brand name, or business name. An EMD is a domain that exactly matches your key term, like babypowder.com.

I would only use the Canonical tag if you don't want these pages to rank for anything in particular. When you set the authoritative page, you are eliminating the ranking potential of the non authoritative pages. Is it possible to get user generated content for these pages? Like reviews?

Hi there,

If you have a lot of HTML coding on pages, with no content, your HTML coding is what is triggering the duplicate content. Because you have no content, the HTML is all the bots see and if it is really similar, there is nothing to tell them that there is anything unique on the pages.

Take a look at this article about domains. It is very high level, and it breaks down the importance of brand vs. key term. Hopefully it can explain it a little better than I am doing right now, lol.

I disagree. I think that if there is any short term value it will be exactly that, short term. There is not enough value for the short term. It will eventually make it harder to rank and then you will have to start over. EMD (exact match domains) have lost significant ranking value. It is what comes after the .com that is important, what products are in your URL, what key terms you use, not what your domain is. It is too easy to manipulate, which is why it has lost its value.

The difference is web mentions vs Backlinks. If someone mentions your name, Blue Widgets Foundation, that is valuable in its own way, where as if you were using anchor text it would more likely be for a term you are trying to rank for, like a product or converting term. Not that you couldn't link to your name, because you can. Web Mentions are kind of how engines gauge the popularity of your brand name, and back linking is used to increase the rank of a particular key term and domain authority. Does that make sense?

So, it would be like saying "You can find household widgets (Backlink using key term) crafted by the Blue Widget Foundation (web mention - increases brand value and awareness)"

I agree with Ryan. I would just add that the value of an exact match domain is no where what it was 3-4 years ago. The way that Google is evolving its algorithm encourage sites to have a "brand" and not a domain that has a highly competitive key term instead of the name of the business. It would be the difference in www.babypowerder.com or www.johnsonandjohnson.org. Baby powder might get more searches, but Google with associate JohnsonandJohnson.org with that term because they are related. Does that make sense?

This is one of my favorite SEO topics. Link value is determined by 2 things (with a bunch of other small things as well, but two major things), traffic and the authority of the site directing traffic to your site.

So, think of the site's DA as its numeric reputation. Obviously the higher the DA, the more reputable and trustworthy the source, in most cases. I have come across pay day loan sites with DA of 70+, but the general atmosphere of the site was extremely spammy. The value of a link with a DA of 80 is far better than having 10 links to sites with DA of 8. The same number, but diluted value and obviously less reputable.

The link juice is generally passed through traffic, which is why links with images and videos that encourage a click are more valuable than just text at the bottom of a page buried in content. If you have a video on a page, above the fold, from Vimeo or YouTube, that would be considered an amazing link, because it will have a high CTR, drive traffic and is from an extremely reputable source. Link building is not about the quantity as much as it is the quality of the link. This is why content linking is important. Granted, that can't be your only form of back linking, it almost insures you will have relevant links to sources that can generate traffic to your site.

You back links are the highways and byways between Google and your Site. They show the engines that you hang out in good neighborhoods and you aren't trying to manipulate your site's value by creating "short cuts" through dark alleys with less reputable company.

Hope that helps.

Have you thought about reaching out to Bing? They have a team of specialists that you can reach if you have set up a Bing Webmaster Tools account. That might be a really helpful resource in solving this problem.

Usually, you wouldn't 301 redirect this, you would use a canonical tag. If the value of the URL has a ton of negative link juice, is there any reason you can't 404 the page and start fresh on a new URL? That would be my advice. Even if you redirect the link, these are technically the same page, and the negative link juice will be passed through. I would cut my losses, get rid of the bad pages and start fresh.

No problem! Glad I could help.

Unfortunately, you will have to create different campaigns. That is the only level you can select options to geographically target.

Hi there,

I am in a very similar situation with multiple manufacturers on my EComm site. You are absolutely correct in adding uniquely valuable content to the category pages. You can use the category pages to target key terms and engage users. Content on category pages is especially useful for targeting branded and long tailed key terms.

In this case, the Canonical tags will not help you, because the duplicate content is not on pages within your domain. If you had the same product description on two products on your site, then the canonical tag would be appropriate. However, when you use that tag you are telling the engines that the authoritative page should be the page that ranks, which means there is a chance the other pages won't rank. If you use the "no follow" tag, your pages will not be crawled by bots, which means you have 0 chance of that page actually showing in search results.

I would also suggest getting some user generated content on the product pages. Customer reviews and comments will eventually leverage the duplicate content. Aside from that, reviews are uniquely valuable to searchers, in my opinion, they are the holy grail of content. What consumer doesn't value an actual person's opinion of a product above a carbon copied description?