Welcome to the Q&A Forum

A client has just given me a list of redirect URLs as requested of them. However, they're wanting to redirect a bunch of pages to various anchor points within the same page.

• For example: /pages/about might redirect to: /pages/our-story#our-mission
• And: /pages/history might redirect to: /pages/our-story#history

Is there any problem with this? I've never seen or been asked to redirect like this before.

Picture this - if you have a spirit for adventure!

1. Client builds Alpha****Domain.com
2. Then builds a number of backlinks to Alpha****Domain.com
3. Client also creates a number of 301 redirects from several older domains to AlphaDomain.com
4. Client then changes Alpha****Domain.com to Beta****Domain.com
5. They create 301 redirects from Alpha****Domain.com to Beta****Domain.com
6. But then... they 'park' Alpha****Domain.com (ie. no longer accessible)!
7. About one year later, client changes a whole bunch of URLs on Beta****Domain.com without keeping track of changes. Thankfully, the hosting service (Shopify) automatically creates some redirects, but it's more by accident than design!

Questions:

1. After step 6 above, are the 301 redirects created in steps 3 and 5 now totally redundant and broken? If AlphaDomain.com no longer exists, surely all redirects to and from this domain are broken? Or can they be recovered?
2. What happens to all the backlinks originally created in step 2?
3. Finally, can anything be done to recover lost URLs in step 7?

Yes. What a mess!

has anyone discovered this bot in their robots.txt file?

User-agent: MJ12bot
Crawl-Delay: 10

Good or bad?

This issue just keeps getting murkier and murkier...

Even though ahrefs 'overview' reports 104 backlinks from 46 domains, when I go to The Best Pages by Backlinks, it says there are 691 results with a 429 Too Many Requests error.

Anyone know how to fix 429 errors on Shopify? Or even what causes them?

I have a client who appears to have taken a big hit in a few areas recently:

• MOZ Domain Authority has dropped from 16 to 1
• In ahrefs, their http version has 103 backlinks from 46 referring domains, but the https version shows 'no data' for backlinks or referring domains
• Their 'average position' in SERPs has fallen from around 32 to 43 in the last six weeks

Ininitally, I thought this might be due to the MOZ indexing problems last month.

However, I now suspect this is connected to their switch from http to https, which occured in mid December. Although all the http pages appear to be redirecting, it looks like the backlinks are not being associated to their https version.

Anyone had experience of this and/or now how to remedy?

Definitely looks like something to do with http/https...

Just checked the domain in ahrefs (http and https):

• The http version has 102 links from 45 referring domains
• The https version has 'no data' for backlinks or referring domains

I also noticed in ahrefs:

• The http version has a Domain Rating of 28 and a URL Rating of 20
• The https version also has a Domain Rating of 28, but a URL Rating of only 3

Although all the http pages appear to be redirecting to https, it seem that the backlinks have been lost.

If this is the case, can they get them back? And if so, how?

The challenge is I've only just started with this client, so I don't really know what has/hasn't been done over the last few months.

What I can see is:

• They moved from http to https on 18 December 2016
• A number of keywords then lost their rankings, but almost immediately returned on the https site
• Although there were ups and downs, looking at a sample of 20 keywords, on average they moved up 1.5 ranking positions

So does it sound plausible that the switch from http to https could also affect DA?

Yes, I read that post before.

Unfortunately this client's primary competitor has maintained their DA of 19. So I suspect (the client is certain) there is something else going on. So I need to know where to start digging!

I have a client who has dropped from DA16 to DA1 and lost the few links he had he's NOT happy!!

Haven't just spent a few weeks impressing upon him the importance of building up his DA, it's been pretty hard trying to pacify him over this.

Great explanation from Rand, but c'mon MOZ when are you going to fix this?

And when are you going to enable tracking of DA? AuthorityLabs and others can do it for keyword ranking. I'm sure you can do it for DA and PA.

It appears their primary competitor has maintained their DA of 19. So can someone please explain this added twist?

I have a client who has reported a drop in Domain Authority from 16 to 1 in a matter of a few weeks. Also, MOZ was reporting links, but now none!

I know there were some issues with the recent MOZ index update. However, this sounds like something else. Anyone got ideas on where we should start looking?

Hey Miriam,

I'm currently doing an audit for a client and would like to include domain age in comparison to competitors. Can you recommend a reliable source?

I have used this site (http://checkpagerank.net/index.php), but I've noticed at lot of sites coming up blank for domain age recently, which I'm guessing is related to PageRank data no longer available?

Would also be interested in what other high level domain/link authority metrics you would recommend? I currently use:

• MOZ (DA and PA), as well as root domains and total links, plus
• ahrefs (DR and UR), as well as referring domains, backlinks, keywords and organic traffic.

thanks mate!

I'm doing some competitor analysis for a client. I'm looking at the client's title tags and meta descriptions for specific search results, in comparison to their main competitor. I'm trying to establish if the client is ranking higher due to better relevance, or just because they have higher PA and DA. It appears to be the latter.

Observations:

• For both the client and their competitor, their home pages appear in the results much more frequently than specific landing pages
• The meta description Google chooses to display in the search results for the home page does not always match the ACTUAL meta description for the page and appears to vary depending on the specific search query

Questions:

• Does Google create meta descriptions on the fly?
• Is this an example of Google using semantic search?
• And if so, why are we bothering to type customised meta descriptions for specific pages, if Google is just going to recreate them anyway?
• Is Google displaying results of the home pages simply because they cannot find pages more relevant (ie. if we produced landing pages more relevant to these specific search queries, would Google rank them higher)?

Sounds like solid and wise advice. Thank you!

Interesting.

So what is the value of the daily rankings? And at what point should we be worried?

Sorry, I should have been clearer...

• These are not Search Console average positions I'm talking about (I understand about the flux in that tool).
• These are the average rankings of 92 keywords tracked daily using the SE Ranking tool.

I have a client who has just seen his average page rank creep up from around 39 to 34 over about two months, then it appears to have dropped back to position 40+ in the space of a week.

I believe he's made a lot of changes to targeted keywords, so I'd like to think it's simply because his old targeted keywords are dropping and new keywords still have to build their rankings. But I'm also worried in case he has over-optimised and might get getting penalised.

Any advice on where to start digging?

I don't believe this is the answer. I have several other clients on Shopify who do not have goals for macro conversions, but we are seeing conversion data in GA.

Besides, I was always under the impression that if you have ecommerce enabled, it's better not to use goals for transactions as it might duplicate. Is this not the case?

I know how to check whether the code is there. But how do you check whether or not specific pages have been indexed by Google?

As far as I can see Google Search Console only reports on the number of pages indexed, not which pages have been indexed. Is there any way to get an actual list of indexed pages?

I know running a site: query will show up all the results, but I just want a list (eg CSV) of the URLs indexed.

Are you familiar with Shopify?

I have another issue where GA tracking code is not firing on the Thank_You page. I have double checked GA config with the GA implementation twice! But the problem seems to be with Shopify, since this page sites on their site (checkout.shopify.com) and they seem unable to fix it.