Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Booedreaux

Whilst all of these issues are important I wouldn't have thought they would cause such a drop.

One by one:

1. Canonicals - each page should have a self-referential canonical - this stops utm versions created by apps such as Twitter being indexed. It's always better to have them. It also allows you to combine identical pages. Note if you have canonicals in place and the two pages are not the same then Google has recently started ignoring them and listing both URLs anyway so check in new Search Console what Google sees as the canonical.

2. Missing H1 - This helps Google understand the page content and should be a close variant or synonym of the primary keyword.

3. Long URLs - some just are and Google has a pretty high tolerance for long URLs - this often can't be helped with attributes being common on eComm sites.

For more, I'd need to see the URL.

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 Beck

Absolutely the correct approach. If you find any that simply don't match at all then you may consider gender, if that is appropriate or homepage if there is nowhere else.

Individual products need mapping as well, and if there is no close match for any of them then category>gender>home whichever is most appropriate.

Obviously, if there is no gender then just 301 to home but I work with a lot of fashion sites where it is relevant.

Regards

Nigel.

Hi John

What's the URL?

It's probably that the name of the town is in every title, some kind of duplication issue - let me see the site and I can tell you more.

Regards

Nigel

I think you are taking that rather too literally.

For example, as I said the .com could be the one targeted with an hreflang="x-default. A person in the UK would, by definition be served with the .com/uk version.

You wouldn't put a hreflang="x-default on the /uk homepage.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Becky

I can see chairs:

https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs

But the paginated versions above are not in there. (can you see them?)

All you need to do is remove this directive for pages without a page 2: rel="next" href="https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=2" > as there is no page 2 for chairs.

Regards

Nigel

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Hi David

I'd rather listen to John Mueller - he has specifically said to not use it:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html

I wouldn't be advising people to use it on that basis whether it has worked for you this time or not. It's not best practice.

That's all. (Sorry Jens!)

Regards

Nigel

Surely the x-default is, as the tag suggests, a default where no country or language is targeted? So if someone resided in an untargeted country and the site happened to rank it would be that one that came up.

Someone in the UK (which contained a UK target tag) would not go to default first, as you suggest, and then select their own country & language. That's misleading.

I agree that the subfolders would be used to target each country but you would still need both country and language. With Canada you may wish to target en and fr as both are relevant and each would reside in a different sub-folder.

The language is essential imho.

Regards Nigel

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 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 Alexis

If the third one is the default then you need a default hreflang tag.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

So the last one would have this tag pointing to it:

More on Google here:

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

It will then become the default site for all people not in England or Canada. Google will not see any of them as duplicate content.

Regards

Nigel

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

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Hi Kuldeep,

It is there. It was 6th for the search Blinds Online Shop and 10th for blinds UK. I agree that searching site:blinds4uk.co.uk doesn't bring the site up for some reason but for many other searches it is there.

There are a lot of short titles at product level which won't be doing the site much good. Around 40% of the site, some duplicate & missing descriptions

Some weird duplicate 'pages'

https://www.blinds4uk.co.uk/pages/about-us
https://www.blinds4uk.co.uk/about-us

You also have a slew of non-secure PDFs indexed - 162 of them

http://www.blinds4uk.co.uk/static/images/products/guide_temp/1427212718Traditions Aluminium Venetian fitting instructions.pdf

The site needs a full site audit.

Regards

Nigel

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Great stuff - glad we could help!

Please, could you mark as a 'good answer' if you felt it helpful?

It would be disastrous, to be honest. Not only would it completely confuse teh customer continually flicking from local to the central site, it would ruin the local SEO.

Good Luck

Nigel

Brilliant! good luck with it. Please do me a favour and hit the 'good answer' button thanks 

Hi iHasco

It doesn't only affect this URL. I only quickly looked at the sitemap (https://www.ihasco.co.uk/site-map/google) but found that other one as well. I don't know what the defunct page URL so have no idea why it is listing that but it (Google) is not listing the main one or the one with the slash. The fact is that both work so you need to get rid of one.

I can't possibly explain how your dynamic system has done this I can only illustrate the problem and give you a solution. I hope you deem the solution more than just 'an interesting point'

Regards

Nigel

Hi One2

the only problem I can see is that your title is too long. There is an ellipsis ... at the end of the search result (three dots) which means that the title is over the maximum number of pixels. (Usually about 580 or 70 characters.)

Try shortening, fetching Google and see if that helps.

I know of no other reason why it should do that.

Regards

Nigel