Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi there

You should read this local SEO resource from Moz that takes you step by step what you should do to be successful from a local SEO standpoint. You can also reference this checklist.

Look into building citations through services like Moz Local and Whitespark that can help search engines verify and validate information about your business.

Make sure you check your on-site SEO as well - there are a ton of opportunities there for optimization and enhancing the overall quality of the website to gain visibility in search for what your users are actually looking for.

Some of this could be a little heavy lifting, so if you need a professional to help you, make sure you check Moz's Recommended Companies page. There are tons of people that can help you there.

Hope this helps you! Good luck!

Hi there

To me, this doesn't seem natural - I don't know too many bookkeepers or accountants that mention who they work with. I would consider that information private, and there may even be some legalities (I am not sure though).

If for some reason you go through with this, I would be extremely careful doing so and not go overboard because it could look spammy and manipulative. I would pay attention to Google's resources on link schemes and utilizing nofollow if need be. I would also make sure your branded link / logo link are nofollowed (don't worry - these links are still valuable), and mentioned in an organic, natural fashion or listed on a Partners-esque page.

Again, this doesn't seem like a natural link and could come across odd, but that's upto you and your team to decide. Just weigh the positives and negatives and use your gut instinct.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Chenzo

Check out these resources:
7 Best WordPress Backup Plugins Compared (Pros and Cons) (WPBeginner)
BackWPup Free - WordPress Backup Plugin (WP)
BackUpWordPress (WP)

Hope these help! Good luck!

Hi Emmett

Could you shoot me a private message and let me take a look? I think I am following what you're saying, but without a real life example, I don't know how much help I can be. I still stand by canonicalizing your main product pages, in my example...

www.example.com/products/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans

...for the other two pages...

www.example.com/collections/frontpage/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans
www.example.com/clothing/womens/blue-lowrise-skinny-jeans

So, these two pages above would have...

...in their . But again, if you could pass me a link or URL, I can see what's going on and be of more assistance!

Hope this will help you a bit better! Thanks so much!

Hi there

I am not seeing sitemaps for...

https://www.zenory.com.au/sitemap.xml
https://www.zenory.co.nz/sitemap.xml

Do you have sitemaps for these sites? Have you added each as their own profile in Search Console and submitted a sitemap? Google has a resource to help diagnose problems with your sitemap - have you looked into that at all to see if Google found any errors?

Let me know if this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

For my vote, you should do this, especially if you're dealing with local markets, products specific to those regions, or deals/sales in those area. This is something you should test, see how they perform, and benchmark.

I would also look into the following:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)

Both of the resources above will help you make sure you are targeting properly based on each site variation.

But, again, for my vote, yes, you should have local specific meta descriptions if possible, where necessary.

Hope this helps - good luck!

Hi there

For my vote, I say no.

The best way to assess potential backlinks are to ask the following questions:

• Does this link help my website?

• Does it send quality traffic?

• Is this link relevant to my website?

• Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?

• Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?

• If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

• Are the links from directory templates? (example)

• Inspect URLs with blatant spam words

• Free

• Porn

• XXX

• Submit

• Directory

• Paid

• Links

• URL

• Sex

• etc.

• Check for multiple domains and URLs on the same IPs

• This can usually show link farms or spam

• Don't be quick to discount nofollow links - nofollow's do provide value, so as long as they pass your sniff test, don't remove them simply because of this tag

If you have to question a link or if it's worth obtaining, it's probably not worth obtaining in the first link. It's hard to explain, but a good link is something you just know is valuable when you see it, or one that you know is relevant enough to your website and fits perfectly in the content that it's linking from.

Directories like those you linked to here are only built for the reason of gaming the search engines and build mass amounts of links as quickly as possible. Google, and other search engines, understand this and are actively putting a stop to it and deranking sites with backlink profiles that contain fair amounts of these links.

My vote - avoid them - and acquire links naturally, it will benefit you so much more in the long run.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would put the content through a content audit. What's relevant? What's not? What can be updated? What can be consolidated? Going through this exercise will help you prioritize your plan of action.

From there, I would make sure you take a look at Moz's migration guide, as it can help you set up the transfer of your content to the other website - this includes URL mapping, redirects, sitemap considerations, as well as measurements.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

If these files are no longer relevant and have no where to go on the new site - make sure these files and pages have a custom 404.

Here are some suggestions on what to put on your custom 404.

You can also list these pages in your robots.txt file.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you need anything else - good luck!

Hi there

Have you done any link building in the past? Or have you had any SEO companies do work for you?

With the 2 sites that are linking to the other sites, are there footer links or site-wide links of any kind?

I would run through a backlink audit and look into removing any potentially spammy backlinks or disavowing.

If you feel your site has been hacked, you can look into this resource from Google about what you can do to remedy the situation.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Nathan

The content is still on the page and readable by search engines. Therefore, your move is totally fine from an SEO standpoint.

Sorry I wasn't clear in my answer!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I wouldn't worry about this. It looks like a way to track and show users ads. Forbes does this as well.

It's not an issue, as Google has stated they will follow redirects and it won't have much of an impact (using this as it shows that one redirect doesn't effect value too much). However, if you are seeing that redirects more than one time (creating chain redirects), then yes, update it as soon as you can, as each redirect depletes value and equity.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would check out the answer I put in this Q+A about starting a blog first.

From there, looking into brand building through these paid opportunities:

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Pinterest

• LinkedIn

• Also look into posting on Linked with a tagged URL giving credit to the original post on site

• Reddit

• Stumbleupon

• BuzzFeed

• Outbrain

• Taboola

That being said, ALWAYS utilize relevant social platforms and partnerships from the organic standpoint (not buying ads, just posting). To answer your first and third questions:

1.) Yes, also see if any of that content can be repurposed or updated as well.
3.) I actually do go through all relevant groups and post. Make sure you tag your URLsso you can track your performance across social platforms with your distribution.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi David

Have you considered A/B testing? I am assuming here that you are going to be testing design or layout changes and want to see how users take on these changes.

If so, have you considered trying:
Google Experiments
VWO
Optimizely You can test layouts without having to do redirects via a Javascript snippet that is put on the page in the code.

If not, a 302 could potentially hurt your page's search engine visibility. The redirected page will still retain its PageRank, MozRank, Page Authority and Traffic Value – and the detour page will not accumulate any (source); thus, you won't rank until you bring that page back (and even then, it's not promised). That being said, if you do use a 302 redirect, be EXTREMELY careful and have a backup plan. Don't use this redirect extensively. It should also be noted that 302 redirects that are in place for a certain amount of time WILL be treated as 301s by Bing. If you are testing out page elements, remember you have options above. Here is more information on redirects.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!

Hi there

Do you have any access to Analytics or Webmaster Tools? Reason being, you can line up traffic / ranking drops to algorithm history and go from there.

I would definitely go through a backlink audit and remove & disavow bad backlinks.

As far as redirecting a site, there are differing opinions. Google says it likely won't be negatively affected but then say it might, so there's really no straight answer. I always assume it will.

The best option in my opinion is to assess what data you do have and ask what's the best course of action. I personally would start removing backlinks, make sure the on-site SEO is on point, do a content audit, and start benchmarking traffic / rankings - also, make sure you are annotating analytics.

Whether you attack the problem or start from scratch to build the brand, it's going to take time and money. I would just weigh the options with what data you have present.

Let me know if this helps - good luck!

Hi there

I would focus on your competitive landscape and the size of their sites/content landscape (and if they are missing any opportunities). You know your audience and industry better than anyone, so the amount and quality (MOST important) is completely up to you and the demand for it.

A SearchMetrics Ranking Study for 2014 says longer content and more content ranks higher, but I have to stress that this is NOT universal or telling that your site will rank higher if it has those two things. So take those studies at face value - you need to test assumptions or hypothesis.

I would research your industry and make sure that you are building content for relevant searches and user goals. If you can align that up with your business goals, you should know the exact amount of content to write - there is no right or wrong answer to your question - completely depends on the industry and searches.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Okay cool - didn't want to give you information you didn't need. I'd also take a look at the Moz SERP analysis - tons of great information there that can help guide you in the direction you should take with your efforts.

Good luck!

Hi there

I would make sure you mind your canonical tag, but I would also look into opportunities that search engines provide such hreflang and language tags. If you have translated variations of your site, you can also look into country targeting for both Google and Bing.

Here's some more information on international SEO if you need it.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

What you can do is setup specific profiles for each subdomain in Webmaster Tools and take advantage of geo-targeting in WMT.

You can do the same in Bing Webmaster Tools.

If the content is the same on these two versions, you can also take advantage of hreflang.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Jeremy

I understand - that can definitely be an issue. Have you looked into SEMRush? You can line up historical data to see where traffic and rankings began to fall and pinpoint it from there.

That will definitely help out a bit! Let me know!