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It's all about the linking structure anyway. Google doesn't actually know that /rain-boots/ doesn't actually live in the /shoes/folder. It's bots don't get inside your CMS to see where every page resides. It just crawls your pages through the links within your site.
Here is a great resource to answer your question: https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt.
We just searched "blowfish seo" and see your twitter profile at #1, your about page at #2, and your home page at #3.
How long ago did you notice the change in which page ranks for your branded search? And has the about page consistently been showing up since you first noticed it or does Google switch back and forth between the two from what you have seen?
Britney Muller, with Moz, did just that when she meta noindexed over 70,000 low quality profile pages created by users. As a result, Moz saw an increase in organic users, almost 9% the following month and then they saw a lift of 13.7% year-over-year for organic traffic the following month.
You can read all about it or watch the interview about it here: https://www.getcredo.com/britney-muller/
We think it's worth a try for sure.
I agree with EGOL, if you have the choice, use subfolders instead of subdomains.
I know sometimes, there are development reasons why a company decides to move forward with subdomains. And those can rank just fine too. It's just best to let decision makers know that the SEO department is voting for subfolders.
Also, although I would also be curious to know if a subdomain inherits DA from the main domain, it probably doesn't need to be a part of the decision making process for choosing between subdomain and subfolder. As EGOL said, "ranking ability and DA are different things", so the DA passed through or not passed through to a subdomain will not be the reason for ranking well or not in Google.
There is no penalty for using the same keyword twice in a URL, especially if it's part of your domain name.
There are many examples of sites that have a sub folder that contain the same keyword as their domain name that have no problem ranking including your competition:
**Ranking the correct page: **
Whenever you have an issue with the wrong page ranking better than the one you want, you just need to work on tweaking your onsite optimization for those pages. (And you may have to continue building more links to the page you want to rank.)
Here is a list of things that I'd make some test changes to: (Keep in mind that you can always revert things back if a test makes rankings go down.)
After you make a change, you need to wait until Google re-caches that page and sees the update (which can take a few days or more sometimes) and then check your rankings after that to see if there was any movement or not.
Boyd
I wouldn't go the route of creating new root domains. I wouldn't want to worry about having to renew all those domains each year.
I always advise to go with subfolders if you can for SEO purposes if at all possible but I understand that sometimes for technical reasons, subdomains are necessary.
I've seen many subdomains rank just as well as subfolders so I wouldn't worry about it if you need to go that route.
Since it is effectively the same content you should be able to rank the same page for both phrases.
You just need to include the new keyword within the existing content and test out a few title tag variations to find one that helps you move up the rankings for the new keyword without dropping your ranking for the old keyword.
The first thing I'd test would be to change your title tag from "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory?" to "Replacing Conservatory Roof with Solid Roof - Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory?". Wait until Google re-crawls the page and check how your rankings fared. If you lose your snippet or drop in rankings for the low volume phrase you can always test out the reverse, "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory? Replacing Conservatory Roof with Solid Roof", and see what happens then.
Don't be scared to test many variations, even long title tags that seemingly don't follow best practice. You can always change it back to the original and your rankings will go back to what they were before you tested (assuming your competitors didn't gain some awesome back links to overtake you).
Don't mess with the section of content that is being pulled into the featured snippet though so as not to lose that snippet.
We like to think of all pages written around a specific topic as a content silo. Many of these pages will include the same keywords for sure. The key is to choose which page is the "head" of the silo and should rank for the main phrases assigned to that silo. Then you can use all the other pages in the silo to internally link back to the main page with the proper anchor text, thereby helping the main page (and correct page) rank for the keyword.
To sum up, you might end up with many pages that all include a specific keyword but you're going to internally link all of them to the main page using the keyword as the anchor text which is basically telling Google that all your pages are saying that the main page is the most relevant for that keyword.
There is no need for concern. It's not going to forever taint your site. I've had many pages over the years with no content or with lorem ipsum content get indexed before I was ready to launch. You don't get a penalty, the page just won't rank for anything while it looks that way because it's a crappy page.
You could literally do nothing except add the content that you want to the homepage and when Google crawls your site again they'll put the new content in their cache and everything will be fine.
But you might as well go to Settings > Reading inside wordpress and check the box next to "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" and hit Save. This will add name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' /> to all your pages and will cause Google to deindex your homepage the next time they come crawling.
Just make sure to uncheck that box when you're ready to launch your website.
Meta descriptions do not affect your rankings whatsoever. Well...at least not directly. Some argue that higher click through rates can increase your rankings.
Whether that is true or not, you want to write meta descriptions that do entice people to click on your listing so that you get more traffic from the SERPs and a lot of times including a call to action can increase your click through rate.
My suggestion is to test different meta descriptions on pages that have good rankings until you find the one that has the highest click through rate. You can monitor a specific page's click through rate in Google Search Console.
Keep track of when Google re-crawls your page so you know what dates to analyze when trying to figure out the CTR of each meta description test. Keep in mind that title tag changes will affect your CTR as well so only change one or the other at a time to get an accurate reading.
After looking over your site's situation, I have a few comments and suggestions.
Many times I see that not following a keyword map precisely, is part of the problem. What I mean is that you should have a keyword map that lists all your URL's and assigns keywords to each URL. You want to be very clear which page you are trying to rank for each phrase. The map then guides all of your optimization efforts including: title tags, page content, alt text, internal link anchor text, backlink anchor text (although don't over do it), etc.
Your site is doing mostly just fine following a keyword map but it could do better when it comes to the divorce phrases.
Current homepage optimization:
Current Divorce page optimization (https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/orlando-divorce-lawyer/
Suggested changes based off of the above bullet point lists:
Other suggestions:
go through all of your blog posts and make sure any existing links link to the proper page based off of the anchor text and the keyword map.
Example: https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/average-cost-of-divorce/ links to homepage with anchor text "the average cost of a divorce case" which is what this post is optimized for, not the homepage. So I'd remove that link and link some "divorce attorney" phrase from this page to the Divorce page.
add more internal links from within your blog posts using the right anchor text to the Divorce page and other pages your working on
deindex your blog tag pages and archive pages (this is easy to do in wordpress)
Obviously track your rankings for all your keywords and to monitor what effect these changes have to the divorce phrases and the family law phrases at the very least.
Finally, these suggestions all assume you want the Divorce page to ultimately rank for divorce phrases and not the homepage. If after making these changes, the Divorce page doesn't rank as high as the homepage did and the homepage no longer ranks, it'll probably be because the homepage has more backlinks, and therefore, authority. In this case, I'd actually consider optimizing your homepage for the divorce phrases and pushing that to page one while still link building to the divorce page and then down the road trying again to get the divorce page ranking. That's all assuming that your divorce page will have a higher conversion rate from site visitor to call-in/form fill out. But if your homepage converts the same or better, maybe you just push that page because it's already top of page 2. But keep in mind that it could hurt your family law phrases if you push the divorce phrases too much on the homepage.
Effectdigital is right in looking at your analytics and backlinks to help make this decision.
In the Moz case study we referenced earlier, they were getting rid of pages that didn't provide value at all to anyone. Those pages probably didn't have any links pointing to them at all. So it made sense to get rid of them.
Since your pages are providing value (it seems) and your getting 1/3 of your traffic coming into those pages, we would tread carefully on meta noindexing them.
You might only consider meta noindexing a group of them that haven't brought in any traffic this whole year and that don't have any links pointing to them. That way, you won't lose any existing traffic that your getting but you can see if the trimming helps your site's overall traffic and rankings.
You need to do a few things.
If there are no backlinks to any of those 30 pages then it doesn't matter if you decide to create new URL's or use the existing ones for the reworked content.
If there are backlinks to some of those 30 pages, you should just update the existing content and keep the original URL's so that you retain the link juice.
First, the correct answer for each page is to test different title tags over time to see which version gives you the best rankings for a handful of phrases that are mapped to that page along with the best click through rate.
Second, don't be scared of testing longer title tags. Google still reads everything after the ellipsis.
Third, I'm a fan of putting more keywords in a title tag wherever possible (or at least testing it). So for example, on a page that talks about drupal development services, I would test a title tag like, "Experienced Drupal Developers - Drupal Development Company & Services for Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York - Brand Name".
Now to answer your questions specifically:
I believe it is a waste of precious title tag space to include these words on all pages because there is only one page you are trying to rank for "Web Services", for example. It's better to include more focused keywords that are relevant to that specific page in the title tag than these generic terms. In my example title tag above, that page is now going to rank better for all of the following keywords:
drupal developers
drupal developer
experienced drupal developers
experienced drupal developer
drupal development
drupal development company
drupal development services
experienced drupal development
experienced drupal development company
experienced drupal development services
and all these phrases with those city names attached as well
Ah gotcha.
Well, rankings can fluctuate a lot when you're first starting out especially in the 50-100 range. I like to call it the yo-yo effect--bouncing from 90 to 40 to 74 to 38 to 100+ to 67 to 84 to 100+ to 58 etc.
As your site gains more authority and you optimize better for your keywords, you'll find that your rankings won't move around as much and also move up into better positions as well.
My immediate recommendations would be to add a few internal links within the content of your site linking your main phrases back to your homepage (or whatever page you are trying to rank for "Alabama land for sale" and "Georgia land for sale"). You can go to already existing blog posts and add one of those phrases to a post where it makes sense to a human and link it to your homepage.
Next, if it is your homepage that you are trying to rank for those phrases, then test out adding each of those phrases within the content at least once each to see if that helps that page rank better in the SERPs.
Finally, you need to build more links from other websites to your site in general to get more authority. Search Moz's blog for how to build links. They have a lot of great info on that subject.
DA is not a ranking factor but it is a nice metric made by Moz to help us get an idea how we're doing compared to our competitors in terms of quantity and quality of links. So having a higher DA doesn't automatically mean you should rank higher than your competitors.
Also, since the EMD (exact match domain) update back in 2012, sites can't rank better just because of the keyword in the domain name if their site authority and optimization isn't great.
My main suggestion for you would be to acquire more backlinks with "dental emergency" as the anchor text (making sure they are linking to the correct page on your site, of course). Obviously, don't over do this and build hundreds of links with exact match keywords in the anchor text but don't be shy about it either.
As an example, one of the owner's of my company has a personal site and I asked him to change the anchor text of the link in his footer to our company's homepage from "Nozzle" to "Keyword phrase - Nozzle". After Google recrawled that page, our rankings jumped up 10 spots. To be fair, I'm aware that jumping 10 spots while on page 3 is different than trying to go from #4 to #1 though. My point is to not be afraid to use exact match anchor text sometimes.
Also make sure that your page that is ranking #4 also has internal links from other pages of your website pointing to it with the keyword in the anchor text.
Test out things like moving that phrase to the front of your title tag and even trying to get it in there twice if at all possible. These will be tests and can be changed back if your rankings drop, so don't be scared to test. Pay attention to your CTR as well inside of Google Search Console to make sure you don't drop in CTR because of the changes too. Also, test out adding that phrase more times in the content of the page.
Good luck!
If it makes sense to a site visitor that you would be linking these articles together, then the answer for sure is yes.
Adding internal links from each of these pages to each other will help pass the PageRank around your site. Furthermore, if you use keywords in the anchor text, you could help the linked-to pages to be more relevant for those keywords.
I would suggest testing using a few variations of each keyword as the anchor text. For example, use the exact phrase as the anchor text from page B, C, D, E and F linking to page A and monitor your ranking for that phrase after all the changes on all the pages have been indexed by Google. Then change the anchor text on pages D, E and F to some variation of the main keyword. Once all those changes have been indexed by Google see if your ranking for the main phrase is better or worse off and also check to see if you rank better for the variations that you used on pages D, E, and F.