Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Becky

One was called Pigley Stairs (Social Media), the second one Carousel Projects (Digital Marketing). I was able to merge the two together.

They are completely different!

I hope that helps

Regards

Nigel

Anyone have any more thoughts on this please?

Hi James

Please, can you explain to vtmoz what LSI means as he may not be familiar with the acronym?

He was talking about paragraphs, not titles. That much was clear.

You have repeated exactly what I told him and it's not clearer.

Kind Regards

Nigel

I did this recently and changed the old business page to match the other. Then I merged them when the change had taken place. Be really careful that you choose the right one to merge to. I mean, get them the right way round.

Hi Clair

There are different attribution models that can be set up in Adwords: there is more here: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6259715?hl=en-GB

Kind Regards

Nigel
Carosuel Projects

Hi Alix

It will solve your problems as long as you make sure all Meta is completed and that content is separated and those pages noindexed and removed as I said. This is what is causing your duplication.

Glad to help

Regards Nigel

Hi Alix

Just go to Google and type in site:firstcapitol.co.uk/ and you will see all of your pages that are indexed.

It's pretty easy as there are only 46.

1
Go through them and noindex the payment pages, author and category.
Delete sample blog page
Delete /hello-world
Delete /london-office

Then write unique content for what is left. Your London page (/london-collection-agency/) is a duplicate of the home page and should be canonicalised as it offers no value. You also have a contact page and a London contact page so get rid of the latter.

Write unique Titles and Description using 60 character and 140 character limits respectively - make sure they are unique.

This is very easy to fix.

Regards Nigel

Hi eyeman - I think what Chrisy means that if that was the best answer please hit the 'Best Answer' button - all contributors like to see that, it's a confirmation of our valuable (and free) help  

I'm so glad you are going this way - you won't regret it!

Best Regards

Nigel

Hi vtmoz

I assume you mean in the content on the page. It is vitally important the content contained within in paragraphs contains contextually rich writing. If your subject is on for example, 'fish tanks' then the content of the page must contain all of the major keywords and phrases on the subject.

So take 'Fish Tanks'

Go to MOZ keyword explorer, Google AdWords tool and Google search bar and you will find:

Cold Water Fish Tanks
Fish Tanks For Sale
Fish Tanks UK (because I'm in the UK)
Fish Tank

So you can start to write compelling and interesting content surrounding the main key phrase. The trick is not to overstuff your content with the main key phrase. You must also remember to use 'child' key phrases or 'baby anchor text' to surround the main subject. So in this example, you would include:

Water filters
Water filter
Gravel
Bubble
Aquarium
Ornaments
Lights
Stand
Types of fish? guppy etc

All words that make for a more contextually rich piece of writing. A clever writer can incorporate all of these words and phrases using singular and plural versions to make the writing completely relevant to the subject.

Combine this style of writing with matching H1, H2 and possibly H3, broken up into relevant sections and the whole experience of being on the page is heightened. That combined with the correctly formatted META nails it for SEO.

I hope that helps.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Kenneth,

I think it depends on whether you truly operate as a local business within that city location.

If you intend to advertise to a specific city then the intent changes from finding you on a national level to finding you at a city specific level. If you truly operate (and you haven't said) from that city location then you could really optimise the page as city specific so would rank highly in that local area.

You could make the page different from the national page by including photos of the city with appropriate Alts and a little about the city itself. You'd find it relatively easy to rank at a local level for the page.

If you do not operate at City level (with a local office) and are a national company simply targeting a specific city to sell to then I would canonicalize the page back to the generic. It begs the question though why you would want a city focused page in the first place and why the national one wouldn't suffice.

I hope that clears (and not muddies!) your thinking!

Regards

Nigel

Good advice. This is also better from an SEO point of view as the main Keyphrase is now at the beginning of the title. i.e. Towing Services Alberta is more likely to be searched for than 'Jack's towing'.

I would also experiment with putting two key phrases at the beginning with your name at the end. Which is what Google will often do if your name is missing.

so: Towing Services Alberta | Tow Service | Jack's Towing

This allows two contextually strong key phrases to be hoofed into the title. Frankly, I would put the phone number in the description, not in the title as it will not be searched for. Use the title only for keyword rich information that will be searched for, then flesh it out with a strong call to action in the description along with phone number.

Regards

Nigel

OK, thanks for that - I'm still a bit cynical about that amd am pretty sure that doesn't go for a redirect chain but: The reason I asked for the person answering to read the question properly was so that I wouldn't get half an answer

please could someone read it all the way through and give me their thoughts?

Thanks.

This is quite advanced so maybe Rand can give me an answer?

I often have seen questions surrounding a 301 chain where only 85% of the link juice is passed on to the first target and 85% of that to the next one, up to three targets. But how about a canonical chain?

What do I mean by this:?

I have a client who sells lighting so I will use a real example (sans domain)

I don't want 'new-product' pages appearing in SERPS. They dilute link equity for the categories they replicate and often contain identical products to the main categories and subcategories. I don't want to no index them all together I'd rather tell Google they are the same as the higher category/sub category. (discussion whether a noindex/follow tag would be better?)

If I canonicalize

new-products/ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 to

/ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217

I then subsequently discover that everything in kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 is already in /kitchen-lighting-c17 and I decide to canonicalize those two - so I place a /kitchen-lighting-c17 canonical on /kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217. Then what happens to the new-products canonical?

Is it the same rule - does it pass 85% of link equity back to the non new-product URL and 85% of that back to the category? does it just not work? or should I do noindexi/follow

Now before you jump in:

Let's assume these are done over a period of time because the obvious answer is:

Canonicalize both back to /ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17

I know that and that is not what I am asking.

What if they are done in a sequence what is the real result?

I don't want to patronise anyone but please read this carefully before giving an answer.

Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects.

Hi Tej

Maybe spend some time looking at how many times people search the term brand/product/colour - From my experience, it is extremely low and the benefit of the higher ranking on the broader term massively outranks the slight drop you will experience not having colour in the title.

I have tested this with so many clients now - it really is the only way to go.If in doubt go look at Zappos!

Best of luck!

I'd love to hear how you get on.

Nigel

Hi Mkyhnn

I think your problem is stemming from the fact that in Wordpress and other CMS systems that the title is auto generated and is appending itself to the end of all the URLs on your website. This will, for example on a page like a contact, create a title that is 'contact - Planit NZ: New Zealand Tours, Bus Passes & Travel Planning' so of course most of the short titled pages you have are being swamped by the main site title causing duplication.

If this is the case then:

Home page: Planit NZ: New Zealand Tours, Bus Passes & Travel Planning

This is fine

All other pages - write unique titles that relate to the content on the page. Using Yoast or similar you do not have to have the main title append itself to all the pages. You can write them uniquely and then just add 'Planit NZ' at the end to stay within the 60-70 characters that Google recommends.

This way will fix your problem.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Wagada

I ran an online shoe shop for many years and we occasionally got sales from Australia - it was appealing of course as the seasons are opposite to ours, so selling boots in our summer would have been a massive boon. The other advantage, of course, is that there is no VAT for a UK company selling into Australia - (I'm not 100% certain that there wouldn't be if you breached a certain threshold but it was the case for us).

The problem for us was that our pages just did not rank at all in Google.com.au. When we tried marketing through Google AdWords, sales were terrible and we had to switch the ads off even though we were offering free shipping. When they saw the .co.uk floods of doubts about shipping time and reliability were clearly as an issue.

My view is this. If we had bought an Australian domain  - .co.au then we would have started to rank for many of the products that we were attempting to sell over there. We couldn't have got around the shipping issue as it would still have taken 7-10 days to get the items there, but I'm certain our sales would have been substantially higher.

You can try a subdirectory that might work after a fashion. You could even try a subdomain like au.sitename.co.uk. (But frankly, if you are going to go that far I would set up a simple Australian website).

I think you know though that the only true way to appeal to the Australian market is to set up an Australian version of the site. Maybe you can get someone to build a simple Wordpress version, highly optimised for SEO?

So

1. Best way - set up an Australian version  (you should own the domain name anyway as later the decision may be easier)
2. Compromise - sub-domain
3. Weakest way - sub-directory

Your biggest challenge is, of course, marketing the product - who am I to say that if the media picked up on it in Oz and you got a 'heap' of backlinks from Australian news agencies that your page wouldn't rank, it might... but then again...

Playing devil's advocate - if you lack the money to set up the Au site then that may suggest that you need to maximise sales in the UK first before thinking about tackling a country 10,000 miles away.

Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects

Hi

As the SEO I would be telling them exactly that. Why would they want to create invisible content that will not be found in the search? In fact, the more glib, unfocused they add to the site, the less it will look relevant. To me, this is just lazy content creators who say they don't have time to do a tiny bit of keyword research. I'd give them a kick up the bum or get new ones!

Regards

Nigel

Hi

I don't know anything about your website but it looks to me like the links on the page do not have https://www. in front of them and are therefore appending themselves to the page they are on instead of creating a link to another page.. So look at the links on the page:

If the page is

https://www.atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use/

and you add a link to that page thus:

atouchofrust.com/vendor-news

Then the result will be a concatenated string thus:

https://www.atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use/atouchofrust.com/vendor-news

Which will 404.

If you change the link on the page to

**https://www.**atouchofrust.com/vendor-news

Then the link will resolve to the page it is meant to.

I think that is your problem. Go through all the cross site links and add the https://www

Regards

Nigel

Carousel Projects.

Hi There,

I see outbound links leaking juice away from the page. There are benefits from outbound linking to a trusted source as Rand explained in the last Whiteboard Friday. You are strengthening the trust of the page by linking to highly regarded and high DA or PA resources. For example to a newspaper article about a subject, a .gov on a patent website, Wiki, or some equally regarded page.

If the outbound link is just to other websites or blog then I would be careful linking to them with a follow link. I certainly wouldn't do it to expect a link back as this kind of reciprocal linking went out with the ark.

If it was my website I would check the outbound page - if it's a trusted source then leave it. If there are a bunch of other links then nofollow them. You will certainly not be penalised by having the nofollow link on your page but the page may well be enhanced by limiting the dofollows to run so so pages.

Regards

Nigel

Hi vtmoz

You should definitely have pages that target brand related queries and this is not spam. I don't know what you sell. But you should have 'landing pages' I prefer to call them 'categories' for all the 'things' 'services' or 'product categories' your company covers.

Make sure that the pages are tight and succinct, have 300-1000 words content and are highly contextually targetted to the different categories you cover.

This is not spam, it is normal site structure and you will not be penalised.

Regards Nigel