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Hi there, if it's not on htaccess and you're on WordPress, check if you have redirect plugins? If not on those two, the redirect was probably done via code. I found this article, which may hopefully help you - https://www.webconfs.com/154/301-redirects-how-to-redirect-your-website/
Hi, adding a canonical tag to your main site should allow Google to tell which one to index, especially if your 301s aren't working. More info about it here: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical
There is also the option of adding a noindex tag to a page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en
Hope this helps.
Hello there, according to this article by Rand - https://moz.com/blog/what-if-my-competitors-point-spammy-links-to-my-site Google is pretty good at determining spammy links and if you have such pointing to your site, they should be able to discount these links. However, your site is clearly being affected by this as shown by your rankings drop.
Have you checked that your site isn't hacked? http://www.isithacked.com/
Have you checked that you don't have any manual actions on your search console?
Have you checked whether you have some traffic coming from weird locations? I ask because there was a time when a site we're working on published a harmless blog on children and the use of snapchat and there was a spike of visitors searching for explicit materials landing on that page. As a result, we suddenly had a ton of backlinks with explicit anchors that go to that page. Their rankings went down. The page was deleted though and all went back to normal.
This article might also help you: https://moz.com/blog/preparing-for-negative-seo
The author, however, said that for an attack with the same scale as yours, it is a good idea to audit your links regularly and submit a disavow file. Hope this helps.
Hello, the canonical should be enough in this case as it helps Google determine which page is the original out of the many duplicates. 301 is used if you want the duplicate pages gone and its link authority transferred to the original page.
From Search Engine Watch:
301 – Hey, Search Engines: My page is no longer here, and has permanently moved to a new page. Please remove it from your index and pass credit to the new page.
Canonical – Hey, (most) Search Engines: I have multiple versions of this page (or content), please only index this version. I’ll keep the others available for people to see, but don’t include them in your index and please pass credit to my preferred page.
https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical
Hi everyone,
We have a fully optimised client site with Moz optimisation scores of 95% and above. Each month we also create 1-2 backlinks. However, for the keywords we track, our client's site is stuck and no longer moving up at the bottom of page 1 and further down to page 2 and 3.
The keywords ranking on first page are also getting very low click through rates - between 1% and 3%.
The sites that outrank us are a mix of:
Is there a chance for us to outrank the type of sites above? Will persevering in link building do the trick? I understand this may take a while because we have a fixed time and budget for each of our clients. If we can't outrank these lifestyle and list sites, will beating just direct competitors be enough? However, this won't change the low CTR issue...
Another solution we're looking at is to change our keywords, which may be a bit tough because the current ones we track, even though they are a little broad, are exactly what the client offer and already have low search volumes. Going more specific will surely have lesser search volumes.
Thanks in advance.
Hi there, I found an answer to my question. Indeed, GMB and G+ are now two different entities and we no longer could create G+ from GMB. I found the following resources:
Use this link to start your G+ Brand page https://plus.google.com/brand
Manage G+ brand pages by switching from your avatar up on the right to "All your brand pages" or bookmark this link
https://myaccount.google.com/brandaccounts
Create and manage Collections for your brand. Here is a help article: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NinaTrankova/posts/EYY9iu2JZFx
Source: https://plus.google.com/+NinaTrankova/posts/S4Ca7QHHHRJ
Hi everyone,
I tried to create a Google+ account from a client's Google My Business, but found that 'Enable Google+' is no longer available on the sidebar of the GMB dashboard. I used this tutorial to do that before - http://onlineownership.com/create-google-page-connected-google-business-page/
An update on that article:
Update: 31st October 2017
Google My Business has confirmed that enabling a G+ business page will no longer be available. Users will need to now create a G+ Brand page for their business on G+.
My question is: If we create a separate G+ Brand page, are we still able to tie it up with GMB or are they going to be completely different platforms? On the dashboard for our older clients we have a list that goes like:
Your Business is Live on Google
In light of this new change. Do we still really have to bother creating G+ brand pages? It seems like the newly launched Google Posts is more user-friendly and easier to update. The posts could be created on GMB and it's going to appear on searches within the local knowledge graph. Thoughts?
Thank you, I think that having only 1 backlink on the homepage footer is the best approach. 
Hi everyone,
I'm just doing a backlink audit of our newly relaunched site and saw that we have about 9,000 backlinks. Unfortunately, we have neglected our own link building. About 8,000+ of these links are from the websites we have built - sitewide footer links. These are also exact match anchor texts i.e. website by Bambrick Media. Because of that, our referring domain is only at 200+.
Is this bad practice? Should we keep these backlinks / keep doing this for future sites we build?
We feel like our backlink profile, the above in particular, is affecting our rankings and traffic. We're not ranking very well for our keywords. Compared to our competitors who have a quarter or less of the backlinks we have, they're ranking better, have more organic keywords, and are getting more organic traffic.
Thanks in advance.
Thanks, everyone! We'll consider adding these canonical tags in the future, but won't flag it as urgent at the moment
Hi everyone,
One of our websites was changed to non-www to www. The non-www pages were then redirected to avoid duplicate issue. Moz and Screaming Frog flagged a number of these redirected pages as missing canonical tags. Is the canonical tag still required for pages already redirecting? Or is it detecting another possible duplicate page that we haven't redirected yet?
Also, the rankings for this website isn't improving despite having us optimising these pages as best as we could. I'm wondering if this canonical tag issue may be affecting it.
Thank you.
If you redirect a redirect, that's going to cause a redirect chain. Having too many redirect chains will result to slow page speed. For every step in a redirect chain, about 10% of authority is also lost. The best thing to do is a 1 - 1 redirect if possible. Have a read of this blog post about redirects - https://moz.com/blog/heres-how-to-keep-301-redirects-from-ruining-your-seo
Hope this helps!
Thank you! Yes, we have a feeling the phone number came from a hidden code somewhere. We asked our client if their website was built by the same developer that built the site of the business where the phone number goes to. If this is the case, then that solves the mystery.
We have a new client and they don't have meta descriptions yet. However, Google has assigned descriptions for them now appearing on the SERPs. The problem is that Google added a phone number that's totally not the client's and goes to a different unrelated business. Our plan is to update the meta to reflect the correct information, however, we're just perplexed as to how Google came up with the incorrect phone number. Where does it get its information from? The page currently has all the correct phone number, hours, and content.
I've read that Google sometimes also doesn't recognise our meta descriptions if it thinks they could serve up a better one. My next question is, what if Google insists on showing the incorrect phone number. Is there a way we can fix this? Thanks!
Hi Martin, thanks for sharing the article and for the tips on what to check! I need that article right now to help me calm down
Hi everyone, we noticed while doing last month's reports that even the best performing campaigns have a few keywords that slipped - some up to 10 positions down. We know keywords fluctuate every month, but May was just a weird month for rankings. While looking at possible issues that caused this, we noticed that these campaigns' clicks have gone up. So while keywords have gone down, their visitors seemed to be on the rise.
Is there a correlation? Maybe Google saw an increase in visitors and decided something's up and lowered the rankings (this sounds ridiculous - sorry! May just be pure luck, but thought I'd ask anyway). Has anyone seen a drop in their rankings for May also? I checked everywhere, and I don't think there has been a major update going on.
Thanks!
Hi, like what Bryan said, it's better if you could avoid having redirects. Because of the extra step, redirects can affect your PageSpeed. We've always used redirects however - it's difficult to avoid - and it's very rarely flagged as a major issue when running the site in Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. The one thing we found that really has an impact on PageSpeed is a redirect chain, which should be avoided. This happens when a redirect goes to another redirect. Example: non-www redirected to a www version of the site, and then later on redirected again to an https www version. PageSpeed sites flag this as an issue, and so does Moz.
Hope this helps!
Hi, I would wait it out a few weeks. There was one instance where we updated metadata and content on a page and the rankings visibly dropped a couple of days later. We thought it was because of this change, but decided to wait it out so we can be sure. A few weeks later, the rankings went up higher than where it was originally. Try resubmitting a sitemap in search console so Google can reindex your pages quicker.
Hi, I contacted Google about not receiving the pin after multiple attempts and they gave me an option to send photos of the place showing the sign and entry. Once you have verified this old address, you have to change the address to your current address and verify one more time.
If you absolutely can't verify the old address, there's also the option of creating a new Google My Business for your current location. Once that's verified, contact Google about merging the two businesses.
Here's also a post from Moz about dealing with duplicate locations - https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing
and from Google My Business help - https://support.google.com/business/answer/7005371?hl=en
Hope this helps.