Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Vicky

Yes, you will completely destroy all local sites and the main site if you get this wrong.

1. The local sites should all be subdirectories of the main site so, for example, website.com/uk, website/com/fr etc.
2. Each site should be a unique entity, all support pages should be duplicated locally as well as listing of all products and services (local and global), with no links back to the mother site apart from maybe one in the 'about us' to show that there is a link between the two sites.
3. Add hreflang directives on every site page to its other versions (all of them) and an hreflang="x-default" to the main site. You need to do this so that Google does not consider each one a duplicate of the other.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

These will specify the location and language of the local sites.

The proposal that there will be multiple links back to the mother site will create an SEO nightmare - just don't do it. (Also, Imagine a basket with multiple items in, some from a local site and others from the mother site! - nightmare)

I hope that helps

Regards Nigel

Hi iHasco

Neither seem to rank.

What I think

Your sitemap has the wrong URL in it - with a trailing slash at the end: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-training/
The website has a version without a trailing slash! https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/manual-handling-training

This means there are effectively two versions of this page so you have perfect duplication as both are regarded as different by Google.

The Solution: 1. Remove the trailing slash version of the page.
2. 301 redirect the trailing slash to the non-trailing slash in htaccess
3. Check for other problems in the sitemap - eg you have a page https://www.ihasco.co.uk/terms-and-policies/terms-and-conditions-of-use/ in the sitemap which redirects to **https://www.ihasco.co.uk/terms-and-policies. **If there is a redirect or a canonical in place DO NOT put the original URLs in the sitemap!
4. Put a general directive in htaccess 301'ing all trailing slashes to non-trailing slashes to avoid any further problems.
5. For a quicker result go to Seach Console and physically remove the trailing slash version of the page. It'll be gone tomorrow. At the same time to a Fetch Google for the correct URL - you will be back at number 1-3 within a week.

You basically have a situation where you have duplicate content, Google doesn't know which version to rank so ranks neither. You also have a problem where Google does not trust your sitemap so make sure the sitemap is a pure reflection of what is on the site. If you don't then Google will not trust your 301s or canonicals and could end up ranking other spurious pages.

I hope that helps

Regards

Nigel

Hi Vtmoz

It's probable that you have a new plugin which is conflicting with this one. A simple solution is to disable the newer plugins one by one and keet testing the 301 redirect plugin, clearing the cache after each disable before you do.

If nothing works and updating the plugin doesn't work, copy all of the redirects in two columns into a spreadsheet. Then add 'Redirect 301' in the first column and then add them to the htaccess file manually (The best way anyway) like this. You will need ftp access or server side file access to see the htaccess in some cases.

Redirect 301 /old-url https://yourdomain.com/new-url

Note the source URL has no http and the destination one does!

So try the first solution and if it doesn't work do the second. It should be quite straightforward to copy and paste them.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Roadmedia

More like a large site with many out-links and very few backlinks and skinny content.

Build the site up and scale high-quality content with fewer external links. It's not so much about lack of renewed content or internal links although they are important they won't lead to a high spam score.

Regards

Nigel

Hi Michel

I work with eCommerce sites so have a lot of experience in colour and size split pages.

If the exfoliating cream comes in only one size you would be better having the first option. Write a really strong product description 150 words plus along with technical details.

If the cream comes in various sizes then have them as a drop-down variant on the page. So you would have a single product with a strong product description and then a drop down box so that the user could choose the size of tube/bottle they needed.

The reason is that if you don't do this you will end up duplicating the product descriptions. So say you have 3 sizes then the URLs would conceivably be like this:

https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser-240ml
https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser-360ml
https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser-480ml

This would mean that all three would share the same product description and the only thing separating them would be the size. This is bad for SEO as Google doesn't rank pages with duplicate content well. In fact, it could end up that none of them ranks in the top 5 pages.

Keep it simple - one product - size drop down.

Successful stores do it this way.

I hope that helps

Regards Nigel

OK, Paul, I hear what you are saying. It's a very open and obvious diss.

I'm not sure what you are saying makes any difference to the argument that the canonical way here is not the way to go. I was explaining in the simplest way, I would not want, and I'm sure you would not want either, a live page like this - the home page, live and canonicalised.

(It's a given that the canonical works like a 301, passing link juice to the preferred version.)

So thanks but it makes no difference - delete & 301 every time.

Google is heightening its distrust of canonicals - the new Seach Console tool reveals which pages are the preferred canonical and it's something of a surprise to SEOs!

If you feel like playing top trumps again then why not PM me? - it's so much better and the uninitiated do not need to see it!

Cheers Nigel

Hi Dale

It is not necessary to change the Meta for these pages as you will find that they will form part of a rel/prev pagination sequence for Google which starts at the non-paginated version.

Google wants you to leave these as they are in a sequence. Check out here: https://yoast.com/pagination-seo-best-practices/

I hope that helps

Regards Nigel

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 Dre

If you just do a canonical then the page will still be live, you will just be telling Google not to rank it. Best practice is to remove it all together and 301. It is bad practice having more than one version of your home page, (any page) live!

Regards Nigel

Hi Nick

Whilst there is best practice for the whole website and certain things do impact on rankings, in this case, you only need to worry about pages you want to rank for. The site is not going to be penalised just because a few pages miss off the H1 so just don't worry about it.

I hope that helps

Nigel

Hi dre

Your site really shouldn't be generating an index.html in the first place but if it is you must make sure that there is a 301 in the htaccess file sending all traffic to the single homepage URL as Lynn correctly points out this will be a permanent redirect.

It is very simple to do. Both versions are treated as separate pages (as http and https) so you are essentially showing a duplicate site to Google so your rankings will be terrible until you change.

Regards Nigel

Hi seoman

Canonicalisation was set up by Google originally to deal with pages which were basically the same but had two different URLs so for example:

website/cycles/racing-cycles
website/cycles/productid=123

If the URL contained content that was the same then you would add a canonical on the second one pointing at the first. The second one would then drop from serps and the first one would be allowed to breathe and in most cases rise because the duplicate content was taken away.

People then started to use it in a more sophisticated way and as your example shows you could canonicalse 'second-hand racing cycles to racing-cycles.  This would only be in a circumstance where you believed that the content on the second-hand page was so similar to the racing-cycles page that you would find it really hard to rank for both.

So you canonicalse second-hand cycles to racing-cycles which could be a good move. The thing is that Google won't combine content from both pages it will simply rely on the content of the racing-cycles page to rank it. You must make sure that the racing-cycles page contains everything you would want both pages to be found for.

Now here's the problem.

If you canonicalse second-hand cycles to racing-cycles and the two pages are very different then Google can start to distrust your canonicals and show the page in serps anyway! (serps = search engine results pages - so they have to be very similar. It would truly be a disaster if you canonicalise one to the other and they both still ranked (badly ) but I have seen this happen.

So the rule is:

1. Only canonicalise if both pages serve the same user intent 
2. Make sure that the two pages are very similar otherwise Google can ignore the canonical
3. If they are just not similar build-up the content on second-hand cycles to take it away from just racing-cycles and have it as a separate page or sub-page of racing-cycles.

The conclusion is that if you want racing-cycles to rank for all the keywords and phrases that second-hand cycles does, then include them and synonyms on the page.

I hope that helps

Nigel

Hi

It's a huge question to come on and ask - 'what is wrong with my site'. Usually, people ask one or two things, however since you have provided the URL:

You do rank for some keywords - SEMrush suggests 10 but I have found Black PVC strip rolls at position 11, Blue PVC strip Rolls at 5, so you are definitely ranking and Google is showing 153 pages in its index.

You do have a lot of duplicate page titles which won't be doing you any good (90) and descriptions (90) and even if the titles are not identical they are similar e.g. many pages have ' PVC Strip Curtains' in the Meta title.

Whilst we can all advise on bits on here I would suggest engaging with an SEO expert to carry out a full SEO audit because whoever built the site didn't pay much attention to SEO.

Regards Nigel

Hi Will

The only problem I see here is why you are writing these articles in the first place. It's not uncommon for an eCommece site to write helpful articles about problem-solving then offer a solution by adding a link to one of their products or services.

If the article is well written and optimised then it makes sense that if ranked for a particular problem the addition is a link could drive traffic to your money pages.

However, equally valid is you building a reputation for problem-solving without trying to sell at every opportunity. We SEOs post on MOZ, in forums, in our own Facebook groups and other places, but very rarely will you see a direct contextual link back to our services. Building a reputation takes time and effort and it needs to be done gently without feeling the necessity to sell a product or service at any opportunity.

The upshot is that I would temper this activity. Produce genuinely interesting and useful content and your reputation will grow. People will then want to follow you because you offer sound advice. If one in four articles have internal links then cool, but presumably if they are on your site reading your stuff they are aware that you sell as well.

Retail sites can be really bad at this - blog post after blog post just sharing products - complete waste of time, they never rank and only work for email purposes, well you know what - stick them in an email - tell your acolytes but don't clog up the site with tosh.

Anyway that's my spin - if you try and oversell you can end up not selling - people get bored very quickly and a post with buy-me written all over it is doomed to fail.

Cheers Nigel

Hi Neil

That's really interesting and I have seen similar things happen. Google is determining user intent from each keyword and phrase typed into search, so the results will vary considerably with each semantic search. There is also a possible a stuffing issue, not just between identical keywords but semantics that we may need to consider. If adding that single word overplayed the whole piece, then the probability is that you were trying just that bit too hard. The whole thing has become very flaky and I have seen wild movements up and down which then appear to find a level after a week or even two.

For some clients I have seen wild movements for pages I haven't even touched - literally from position 5 to 83 and then back again within a week. Whatever Google is doing is unsettling - wrong even. It's hard enough for experienced SEOs but if you are a website owner with no experience of SEO it must be rather disheartening to experience the madness and start scratching your head looking for an explanation when there really isn't one.

Hi adleverage

Just verify your domain in Search Console (was Webmasters) and you will see a large proportion of the sites backlinking to you.

If you need a more comprehensive list then maybe SEMrush or MOZ would be a good option to pay for.

Start with Search Console and see how you get on,

Regards

Nigel

Hi Harshal

Let me be a bit clearer

1) Make the page more user-friendly

Enhance the page to best serve user intent. Add semantically related keywords eg engineering/engineer - services/resources/service. Ensure content is nicely structured with H1 having the primary keyword or semantic and sections separated by H2s

2) Add in images to the page

Yes - a primary or feature image with the alt text the same as the primary keyword. Other images surrounding the keyword will also help.

3) Create a single blog post which will link to this page

Not necessarily but if you do write blog posts around the subject, don't duplicate this page title. If you must mention engineering services then link back to this page

4) Get an interlink from home page to this page

Yes of course, but I assume this would be in the menu anyway? Also interlink from other service pages back to this with varying semantically related keywords. Check out our 'Service for Outsourcing engineering design'

5) Create 2-3 guest posts on other website and link to this page

Be very careful doing this. Make sure that the site you are writing for is related to your industry and make sure you are not reciprocal or 3 way linking. If it's an engineering website with a good Domain Authority (DA) and is not spammy then OK. Place links carefully and use varying semantically connected keywords/phrases

6) Try and create a video on youtube and embed it on this page

If you place a video on Youtube then the Youtube page will come up first. Better to use Wistia (4 free ones) or another content delivery network (CDN) to host your videos. Videos will increase dwell time and bounce rate - people will spend longer on the page which is great for SEO.

7) Put more efforts on on-page on SEO for this page

For sure but don't keyword stuff! Make the page easy to read as I have this post!

I hope that helps, regards Nigel

Hi Jon

Do you have the pro version of AIO? Apparently, if you do then the correct translation is sent to each of the language versions of a page or post.

https://wpml.org/documentation/plugins-compatibility/translating-all-in-one-seo/

Maybe it doesn't work with teh unpaid version?

Whatever you need the meta titles and descriptions to be in the correct language - little point having them in English.

Regards Nigel

Hi Conversal

I remember you asking this before. It's common for Google to take time to rank new websites. It can take a year to fully optimise all of your search positions so I am not surprised at all. Even scanning the site with SEMrusg give sthis information:

"Sorry, we haven't found any information related to your request in the google.co.uk database.

There are some reasons why this could occur:

• 1. The domain name was mistyped. Please make sure it is spelt** correctly.**
• 2. The website with this domain name does not exist.
• 3. This is a new website and we don't have it in our databases yet.
• 4. We haven't noticed this domain rank in Google's top 100 organic or paid search results for keywords from our databases."

You really need to be patient and in the meantime maybe use pay per click or other means to get traffic.

Some sites can get lucky but they are few and far between:

https://ahrefs.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-rank/

Just make sure your site is the best it can be and be patient. Follow every SEO tip you can, meta titles, descriptions, images, H1, H2s, on page content and make sure each page has its own unique theme and user intent and the traffic will come.

Regards NIgel

Hi Harshal

I have a lot of experience working with sites that have become bloated with blog posts which cannibalise internal content. They say, 'we used to rank well for xxx keyword, but for some reason, it's all fallen off a cliff. Well, the answer is invariably that they have published content which duplicates the theme/intent of the main money page.

If you have a page which is doing well for 'Outsourcing Engineering Design Services' then beef up that page rather than adding more posts which cover the same topic.

Stick to one page-one theme and you will not go wrong. By adding additional content to this page including images and possibly self-hosted or CDN hosted video you will see the [age gradually increase in rank.

Make sure that the title tag is concise following - Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Company Name and that the on page is strong with H1, Image Alts and semantically connected contextually written content which is separated by H2 If you do this and don't use copied content or start writing blog posts which cover the same theme then you will shine! If you have related themes which have their own pages then cross-link to this one using a variety of semantically connected anchor texts.

Best Regards

Nigel