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Hi Joshua

In my opinion, yes the blog should be consistent with the theme of both the website and the brand. Users can get thrown off by different visual cues and it can create a less than ideal user experience. While the blog isn't going to be sales driven, it's important you give user's a consistent user experience. That's how brands are built and how your audience will remember you. Keep in mind - this will be the first time some of your audience will access and interact with your brand. First impressions are the most important.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

I stood and applauded.

Hi there

I would do the following - check your internal links, check your sitemap, and create a custom 404 page. You're going to want to make sure that you're not linking to these pages through your links and sitemap, and you're going to want to make sure that users have a way to navigate out of 404 pages or find what they are looking for.

I agree Mark that if there is a relevant page for those pages to be redirected to (category page or content relevant to it), then see what opportunities you have there.

Keep in mind that if you can find patterns in the URL structure, you have the opportunity to block these pages with your robots.txt. I would be careful, however, because this could easily backfire if you don't know what you are doing.

Remember - Google in Search Console puts these errors in priority order, so run through those, see what kind of pages they are, where they live, and look at the resources above to see what kind of opportunities that you have to remedy the issue.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi again

According to Google's resource:

Blocked - Your robots.txt file blocks Google from retrieving this URL. - This is a common problem that you can fix by updating your robots.txt file. If your site address is at the root of a domain (for example, www.example.com and not www.example.com/my_site/), you can use the robots.txt Tester tool to diagnose why the URL is blocked from Google.

There's also a comment in this thread that references AdWords with responses afterward that may be able to give some insights.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

No, there isn't an issue here, since the videos are on topic with the content and going to trustworthy domains (YouTube).

I would read through these external links best practices from Moz and make sure that you don't go too crazy. But other than that, no, this is not an issue - if you can't create these videos yourself, by linking to relevant videos you're providing value for your users.

You could also look into embedding the videos on your page, giving the proper video owner credit as well.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Shalin

Check out this resource from wpbeginner called How to Properly Move Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org - quite a bit of information but this should answer your question!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

This is pretty common. Google sometimes shows varying numbers in Webmaster Tools and what actually appears in the index. When did you submit your sitemap?

Here are some reasons that Google may not index all of your pages.

Check your robots.txt to be sure, but give yourself a bit of time for the indexing number in WMT to update. The good news is that you are seeing your pages in search - so that's a positive.

I would also check to see if you have any duplicate or thin content on the website, dynamic URLs in your sitemap, check how deep your pages go (this is especially important due to crawl budgets), and also your website's canonical tag situation.

These are some things I would look into. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

A rebrand is a business decision. I would take advantage of all the information from Umar as well as a few more points for good measure:

Content Audit - Find what current content can be updated, consolidated, removed, and migrated to the new website. What other opportunities do you have for your content?
Website Migration Guide from Moz - This will help make sure that your transition to the new website will go smooth and cover your bases.
Backlink Audit - This will help you on a couple of fronts. First, you will find backlinks that you will want to update to the new domain once it is live and ready to go. Second, you will find links that you can eitherremove or disavow so that when you redirect, it won't be a factor.
Change of Address - You will want to use this so that Google knows your site moved to a new address. Google also has a resource for when you move a website.
Local SEO - If you have listings or citations, make sure those are updated. Perform an audit so you can make sure that any mention of your business is corrected and now points to a new domain.
A/B Test - Make sure that you test new designs and usability to make sure users like what they are seeing that engagement maintains or increases with changes.

There are a lot of opportunities in rebranding, but you want to make sure that you take care of everything that you can to help users and search engines see that your site has moved and you are now a new brand.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Google has resources on this - check out Tracking Multiple Domains - Web Tracking (ga.js).

Also, Moz has a great resource called How to Quickly (and Correctly) Track Google Analytics Across Multiple Domains.

Hope these help! Good luck!

Hi Peter

Have you checked your Mobile Usability notifications in Webmaster Tools? That's a great place to start because it looks at your whole site rather than just a page like the Mobile-Friendly Test.

Also, just because your User Experience is a 99 doesn't mean that there are not Speed issues listed - you should make sure those are taken care of as well and your site as close to optimized as well. I would also check your mobile organic landing pages pre and post Mobilegeddon to see what pages lost transaction and how those line up with any notifications in WMT.

I would also do a quick run through Google's Mobile SEO Guide to make sure that all of your bases are covered.

There are countless other factors as well include local SEO & audit, on-site SEO, content audits, backlink audits, and making sure your site is structured correctly. There are a lot of factors that can go into your rankings so don't just limit it to your User Experience being 99 (not saying you are, by the way!).

Hope this all helps - let me know if you have any more questions or comments - good luck!

Hi there

Look into hreflang attributes - if you have the same site with multiple languages, this is a best practice.

You can also look into setting up Webmaster Tool accounts for different sites (if they have different country codes or subdirectories) and geotarget those for the country they are supposed to appear to.

Does this help? Let me know - good luck!

Hi Jennifer

Take a look at the questions and answers here as this has been discussed and referenced a resource I would have posted.

http://moz.com/community/q/804-https-ssl-error

If crawlers see issues with your servers and protocol, that could potentially be a negative checkmark against your site in the SERPS. I would discuss with your web dev and SEO team how to properly implement changes to fix these issues.

Hope this helps! Good luck.

Hi there

While it may not hurt you in a lower search ranking, it will hurt you in the user's eyes. What I would suggest doing is adding a review feature to your website, focus on Yelp! or Google Reviews, and certifications like the BBB or other relevant industry certifications. These are usually where Google and other search engines will pull from and they are usually harder to manipulate. I would focus on reviews there and getting established on those sites.

Also, whether a legit review is good or bad, always follow up, thank the person, and see where you could be of more service. It's a good look for your brand and company when doing so.

Let me know if you have any other questions or comments, good luck!
Patrick

Hi D.R.

To answer question 3, I just realized I sent you Classic GA setup - my apologies. Here is more information on how to set these up:
Cross Domain Tracking - Web Tracking (analytics.js)
Set up cross domain tracking Cross Domain Tracking (Google Tag Manager)

To answer your questions:
1.) Yes, you can do that. Or you can break it down by hostname as well in your GA data if you don't want to create multiple views.

2.) I would keep it under the same property. It makes it easier to consolidate your data and you're not clicking back and forth.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would keep both if you serve two separate regions - that way you can build content and have sites directed to that target audience.

I would take a look at hreflang tags for Google and language tags for Bing. You are also able to country target for both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools if you have separate profiles set up for your sites (which you should!) You should also look into local citations for these websites - I like Whitespark, and it works for both Australia and New Zealand.

Another couple resources for your to check out:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)
5 Dos and Don'ts of International SEO (Moz)

There is a lot of information here but it will definitely help you. If you have two regions that you do business for and have unique value to add to each, then I suggest keeping both variations and making a targeted marketing strategy for both - this will help you rather than redirecting your New Zealand audience to an Australian site where it's targeted to Austrailians.

That's my two cents - I hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

If your site is on a template and you want to mark up product pages, it's not that difficult at all - it's just a matter of adding to the template.

I would have your web development teams walk through the process however and how many hours they think it would take.

I am not a web developer, but the product Schema I have added to ecommerce sites, as well as other sites, is not that bad of an implementation, but I don't know your website.

But again, have them break down their prices and processes and why they think the price is what it is. Price wise - the £100.00 sounds better, but again, there is some technical know how so you want to vet them properly.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

Do you have an example URL we can check? Did you only do this on the homepage and no other internal pages?

Also, did you set up your redirects properly? Check out this resource from Google.

I would read that through that and make sure your code lines up correctly.

Let me know - would love to help! Good luck!

No problem! Here is a pretty comprehensive list of resources. I personally use ScreamingFrog.

Good luck!

Hi again

If you want to focus more on the Australian site and the NZ site isn't where you want to place efforts, then you can redirect it - but I would URL map it properly so that pages on the NZ site find their corresponding pages on the AUS site.

But that is ultimately up to you to decide - if the return is not there and you want to focus on one site, then redirect and make sure all pages find their new home. I would also update relevant citations and back links.

I would personally optimize both and put efforts in if you think potential is there - it's just a better user experience - especially for different regions, local search, and audiences.

Hope this helps!

I wanted to attach this image - in my crawl, I am getting a "noindex,nofollow" but your code isn't showing it. I would check with your web development team to see what exactly is happening and how this can be fixed.

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