Hi Mike,

That new tool is very revealing and supports my experience that you can't dupe Google into ranking a different page just by canonicalization. Thanks!

Nigel

Hi

Exactly. When I say 'tight contextual content' don't use keywords you want to rank for on other pages. Don't mention them even once.

Cannibalise - exactly that - spewing keywords all over the site instead of focusing on a tight contextual group for each page.

If you are disciplined you will be amazed at the results.

Regards

Nigel

You can have related topics on the page as long as they don't swamp the main keyword, making it invisible within the text. If you are going to do this then have a heading for each and continue like this.

"Barolo, set in the heart of Piedmont in the province of Cuneo is the perfect place to pack up your trail bike and hit the road. There are miles of country routes to choose from..........."

So you are weaving a story about how great these areas are to cycle in whilst occasionally mentioning the region and province, all of which are important baby anchor texts.

I am not saying 'don't' mention the towns - I am saying that if you do make it clear where they are and don't swamp the main keyword - i.e dilute it too much on the page. And, if Barolo is very prominent maybe consider a page for it.

You could end up with a category killer page of 1000 words + but remember that this pages need to keep the attention of the reader so pepper them with a nice balance of text and images.

In terms of the MOZ keyword tool.

Enter the term 'Piedmont bike tours' and filter by medium lexical similarity. You will see words like 'Cycle'', 'cycling routes' 'rental' ' trail'. Weave these into the sentences that you are constructing. It takes some skill to write in a fluid manner without repetition - make it for the reader, not Google - make it engaging so that people will read it - make sure all pics have different Alt text.

Regards

Hi

There is no website there. Or you have given us the wrong URL. You can't rank staging sites, they need to be live.

Regards

Nigel

cbc8bbca-1c38-4fef-9bad-a93da3ab8085

Hi Baggyt

I think you probably need to right consultants to look at it.

You have a few problem in my opinion.

1. The website is a sub-domain of uk-directory.com - which has other directories on its domain as sub-directories. I think you would benefit from moving to a simpler UK domain of your own

2. Your home page has little to no content with an overly contrived title and descriptions - this goes for all pages.

3. Content. The biggest problem is that you are not being found for example - Camping in Kent or Kent Camping. This is because you have completely muddied the content of those pages by adding every village in the area that has a campsite.

In my opinion, you need to start deleting all the muddy content from those main county pages and write purely about each county.

Then create separate pages for all of the villages and have them as a sub-directory of those pages.

You are just trying to rank for too many search queries for each page.

4. You have a mix of HTTP and HTTPS pages so the sooner you 301 all the old pages to the new SSL secured site structure the better. Your home page is http by the way so something odd is going on.

There are a lot of problems - it's a bit of a mess.

Whoever you have been paying needs shooting in my opinion.

Kind Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects UK

Hi seoanalytics,

Haha, perfectly OK

That's completely OK, in fact, 'stop' words like 'the' 'of' 'it' and 'and' are generally ignored anyway. It also reads much more naturally so not only will you keep Google happy, the reader will prefer it!

Kind Regards

NIgel

Hi Jens

You can't add a noindex in the Robots.txt file.

Firstly you need to add a noindex tag to all of the pages in the /node/ directory.
Then remove the nofollow directive in the Robots.txt

You need to do this for Google to see the noindex tags!

If you have a noindex tag and a nofollow then the directory is blocked so Google can't see the tags!

Once all the pages have gone from search then add the nofollow back to the Robots.txt file so that Google doesn't waste crawl budget trying to index them.

This will solve your problem.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Lindsay

If these are internal links then I would not be concerned as Google takes far more notice of external links. The number you quote is partly a metric of how your site is structured and partly an indication of how important the page is, and for me, the 'compare rates' page satisfies user intent far greater than any other page on your website.

I would even consider bringing the whole Get A Quote >Compare Rates section to the home page as this is clearly where the site can earn its money, so is to be the most important page on your website.

I actually had to dig around a bit to find Get A Quote - To you, it seems obvious as it's on the top bar but for me, I had to flick around a bit to find it.

If a user were confronted with a highly visible section where they had to enter their sex and DOB then this would increase the interaction with the home page, cause less pogo sticking (jumping back to Google for alternatives) and lower the whole site's bounce rate.

I would also address the problem of the slow site load as well - the background comes up quickly but the content takes a few seconds.

Regards

NIgel

OK

Yes, keep it fluid, there is no need to group them together. Make it read naturally.

The best way to format the Meta title tag is like this

'Main Keyword - Related Keyword (or higher category) - Company Name' so

'Piedmont Bike Tours - Cycling in Italy - Company Name' (keep under 60 characters)

Meta description: Make this your call to action - it does not help SEO per se so don't fill it with keywords.

'Book a thrilling bike tour of Piedmont in the sunny hills of Northern Italy - unbeatable prices from company name - call us on 12345678 or book online here!'

Keep it under 140 characters or Google will add an ellipsis at the end ' ...'

The H1 does not help SEO on its own, only part of the keyword density on the page. It should sit at the top of the page and contain the keyword:

Piedmont Bike Tours

The H2 does not help SEO per se but is useful for breaking up the content on the page. It is usually only used to divide content - so if you do use it make sure that you follow it with a few paragraphs. Some people advocate a minimum of 300 but it, not the number, rather the way it's written. Don't overdo the keyword, think semantically.

eg:

Cycle Tours In Barolo

Keep it natural - I can't advocate that enough.

Regards

Nigel

PS when I say 'per se' I mean 'directly' - of course, a well-written description with strong headings will cause people to visit the pages and take action - the interaction through lower bounce rate and less pogo-sticking is good for SEO, obviously.

Hi Jens/David

You should not use a noindex in Robots.txt. You can put it on the page as a robots tag, but not in Robots.txt

I have never ever seen it used in the Robots.txt - I have seen it mentioned a few times on some questionable sites and the odd mention many years ago but it's bad practice in my opinion.

Read more about Robots.txt here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt

If you follow what I have said, that is the correct solution.

Regards Nigel

Hi Ryan

The further you go down in SERPS the more volatile the fluctuations. 14-21-15-22-12 is all pretty normal. I'd be more concerned if it were 2-21 or even 3-8 but these kind of movements are perfectly normal. I'd also be careful to clear your cache in the browser, or go incognito so that you get the true result and not one that is tailored for you.

Check out Rand's recent post on what to expect here

Ranking Fluctuations and what to expect: https://moz.com/blog/ranking-fluctuations

Regards

Nigel

Hi Lindsay

The quicker you can establish user intent and get them on that all-important journey the better. So personally I would provide them with either a search bar or a multiple choice box to get them interacting straight away. This would dramatically improve your bounce rate.

Best of luck,

Regards

Nigel

Hi Raymond

It's a standard approach for most eComm stores. I prefer 301'ing to the closest new style first but if there isn't one then brand or category is perfectly fine. If the product then comes back into stock then a return to a 200 is fine - Google will pick it up if the 301 is removed. Also, make sure it's back in the sitemap.

Regards

Nigel

Hi seoanalytics

I have spent hours trying to help you on this thread and the other two or three you have started! I have patiently answered every question you have asked, in detail. If you still don't understand what I am saying after acres and acres of help and advice then that's it from me.

https://moz.com/community/q/sentences-rdf-format

https://moz.com/community/q/asking-a-natural-question-in-h-tags

https://moz.com/community/q/bolded-words-in-search-results

https://moz.com/community/q/user-intent-and-ranking

This comment is simply idiotic, but more than that it is insulting:

"I have more chances of winning the lottery than ranking..."

Please don't bother me again.

Have a good weekend.

Nigel

Hi Jens

I don't know Drupal but if it's like Wordpress it will add a noindex tag to the page.

Do it for one page then take a look at the code.

Go to the page: right click > View Source

Then go to the three dots top right in chrome and search noindex. It will look like this attached. (ignore the red line crossed out piece)

Best Regards Nigel

x6DFb9q.jpg

Hi Doug

If you have duplicate content then you could add a cross-domain canonical on all the pages from site 2 to site 1. Then when it's dropped away just 301 everything,

That means you'd still get direct traffic to it but Google would rank the main site 1 and drop site 2 because all the canonicals would reference site 1.

You just put the 301s in the .htaccess file

I wouldn't do it this way - I'd just make sure all the content was on site 1 then 301 but I understand you might be nervous.

Regards

Nigel

Hi John

Usually, when this happens the page is being redirected to itself. If you have a redirection plugin then check the URL and make sure it is being redirected properly.

If it's redirected to itself then it will be in an eternal loop and will not work.

Regards

Nigel

Hi jasmin

You need a separate URL for each country otherwise what you are doing will make no sense.

KOREA   --  :    
CHINA  ---:

So you set up a sub-directory for each country and put the relevenat language version in there.

With the default set as https://www.COMPANY.asia,  where there is no geotarget.

It's really important you get this right and understand how it works, so take some time to understand it here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

Regards

Nigel

Hi John

If the pages are old and have had no useful visits then it would make sense to forward them to more relevant content. This would be standard SEO practice anyway. However, unless you have 1000's of pages then crawling and indexing your site really isn't a problem. If you had a very large site with frequently updated pages then it could be a problem. You can change the crawl rate but if it is 'calculated as optimal' then you needn't bother worrying. read more here...

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/48620?hl=en

Regards
Nigel

Hi

If you are posting content from Googlepaly then I assume this is duplicating their content which is never a good thing. they originated it, you are 'syndicating' it.

By keeping content on your site that had been removed by them, you actually managed to appear different as there was less duplicate content between teh two sites! - their's having been removed, so removing some of the duplication.

By removing that old content from your site you have made it more duplicative again! Maybe keep the old content if they don't have it as it was the one thing that was separating you from them!

I hope that helps,

Regards Nigel