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Your dev is right on the specific question of whether the additional GMB profiles are necessary for Google to understand which is the primary version. This is not essential as long as the proper redirects are in place. It's a "belt and suspenders" approach. If there's no way for the search engine crawlers to ever reach anythig but the primary version, then there's no way for them to get it wrong. You're using the GMB info to reinforce what the redirects are already doing. (That said - it's trivial to reinforce the redirect process with the declaration in GMB, so best practice is to do that as well. You need the GMB profile to properly manage the other aspects of marketing the site anyway, so...) Put another way - declaring the primary version of the site using the alternate GMB profiles is Google's way of allowing those who might not have proper dev access to sites to at least partly accomplish the same thing from within GMB which they can manage. The real value to verifying the other versions in GMB is so that you can monitor to make certain that those non-canonical versions of the site are in fact definitely not getting indexed or ranked. This is essential after an HTTPS migration, for example, as you should see the HTTP profile showing a steady drop in indexing while the HTTPS profile shows the steady increase. A periodic check of the non-canonical GMB profiles will alert you immediately to any newly discovered issues Google's crawlers may be encountering (like a sitewide redirect got accidentally removed or changed, for example.) Make sense? Paul

Yeah, that's the next step. The robots.txt file is blank!

In fact, what the client really wants is this... ... any user in the UK who: clicks on a link from social media (which goes to domainname.com) searches google for domainname.com types in the URL domainname.com ... ALWAYS be redirected to "domainname.co.uk" so they only see what the client sells direct from the UK. This sounds to me way beyond just hreflang. This sounds like it might need some kind of redirection based on IP?

If you are using hidden pages to manipulate google, yes this is very black hat. You should only no index pages that you do not want to come up in search results. Examples would be a thank you page after filling out a contact form, a login page, and shopping carts.

Hi Muzz, No need to use hreflang if you only have your content available for a single region/language.. If you eventually have your content available in other regions/languages, whether it's on the same domain or a different domain, you should definitely use hreflang to ensure the locations are being served the most relevant version of your content. Cheers, David

Hi Logan, I've read the MOZ guide but it doesn't answer one question and I cannot find an answer anywhere else... Can hreflang tags be used to specify just ONE country (eg. "en-au"), or does it only work as an alternative to another language/region variation?

Thanks Lydia. I will expand on the internal links. I'm assuming: Links from within body copy (eg. product descriptions) is better than any kind of nav link? Anchor text needs to be mixed up and not all 'exact match' text? Thx

Don't really know if redirects were in place. Only just taken over the management. But from what I can gather, Shopify moved all sites on its platform from http to https. The URLs do all seem to redirect. But the URLs within backlinks all still point to http. If I run a report in ahrefs, the http version might still have hundreds or thousands of backlinks, but the https does not. At the same time, I have seen MOZ domain authority plummet. I just manually updated a bunch of backlinks for one site to point to https. Now ahrefs is picking them up as backlinks in their report.

I can confirm that Shopify records the source of the FIRST click to the site and does not update it. I can also confirm that (by default) Google Analytics records the LAST source in a session which results in a conversion (ie. Last Click). So in some cases it will be the same (eg. the user first comes to the site from a Google organic search and decides to place an order during the same session). But in other cases, the user may first come to the site from (say) a Google Ad, perhaps sign up for email, then return some time later via the email, or direct, or from an organic search, or whatever. In this case, Shopify will have recorded the initial source (Google Ad) and Google Analytics will have recorded the last source (or Last Click). There are a few edge cases where GA does not capture the conversion (eg. if the users transacts on Paypal, but does not return to the site, therefore does not trigger the 'thank_you' page or the conversion tracking). I find it useful to know BOTH: which traffic source initially acquires the customer, but also which traffic source results in a conversion Does this make more sense James?

Hi, I wouldn't consider this is a big issue for now. This would only matter probably if you're in a very heavy competition and this is one of the few differences that you have compared to other sites in your same industry. Which basically never happens. Also in this case the URL structure is pretty optimized for SEO. That's why I wouldn't worry about it too much. Unfortunately, as far as I know you can't turn off the alerts for this though. Martijn.

Thanks for the answer - allbeit not the answer I wanted to hear!

All sorted. Thanks!

Phew, what an adventure a user must be going on each time! Now the horror part of the adventure - audit! - ARGH! That fun time in an SEO's life when they get elbow deep into numbers etc. The best strategy is to find all the links and rejig them  rather than have link to link to link etc. just cut out the middle man and go direct. Assuming that the link is even worth doing that for! but to directly answer: 1. The original domain is still there so the value is still there, it's just going to a dead domain, if you repoint that should still work but this is a bit of a grey area! 2. Same as if they went to a 404 on a live site, they are still there just not going anywhere, you resolve it the same way if you had a 404 page with a redirect that can benefit a user looking for a resource. 3. Yes, you just need to go to the original source and ensure it points to the correct place. Its all a bit of a grey area and may  do more harm than good especially if the links are a bit dodgy but you can still move a link that points from A to B same as you would an internal link with a 404.Hope that helps and good luck! (formatting edit, seems to have gotten lost!)

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?

Hey Andy, Somewhat heartening to know we're not alone, but I share your pain! My client went from a Domain Authority of 16 in December to a DA of 1 after moving to https. They have finally bounced back to 11, but it has taken 3 months AND they still only have 2 referring domains linking to the https version. There are 53 referring domains still linking to the http version. In fact, this has risen from 40 referring domains in the last month. So how can the number of referrers to http be increasing, when there is an https verion? I just don't get it! Anyone know (a) how this can happen and (b) how to address the issue?

thanks mate!

Sounds like solid and wise advice. Thank you!

Howdy, I assume that in your case it doesn't happen automatically. In this case you'll need to use an IF statements in the head/header file. Basically, it would be this: IF current page url = url you want THEN display canonical tag with wanted url Repeat that for all needed url and you are good. If there are many of those, CASE might be better.