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Hi there

I recommend taking a look at Rand's Subdomains vs. Subfolders, Rel Canonical vs. 301, and How to Structure Links for SEO - Whiteboard Friday. It's a great resource on this subject!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

1. Yes, and go through a backlink audit - what needs to be removed / disavowed?
2. I used this combination of information (as well as Majestic / Ahrefs) for multiple audits / manual action clean ups
3. You can use tools like LinkRisk to assess your backlink profile and score individual links.

All in all - the best way to define a bad link is to use your own intuition and common sense:

• Does this link help my website?
• 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?

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Here are a couple of great posts:
Stop Thinking Keywords, Think Topics
Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer's Guide to Smart Keyword Research

I wouldn't focus on specific keywords solely - I would look at variations and topics that are relevant to those keywords. I would build out as much content as you could that is relevant and useful to your audience, and at the same time, relevant to your business model. Never build content for the sake of building content - it's a slope that doesn't lead to anything except wasted time and efforts.

You should never run out of ideas either. Your entire team is full of content ideas. Brainstorm as a team, talk to each other, ask each other questions, etc. I would check out this piece from Search Engine Land called Making Customer Support Part Of Your SEO Program. You could also interview your customers or survey them as well on what they'd like to see from your website! This will maximize your potential for picking up long tail search as well.

I wouldn't worry about having a smaller backlink profile and a smaller domain authority. While you work on your content buildout I would also do some competitive analysis to see what competitors are doing and how you can implement (tweaked of course for your business - you're unique) some of the tactics you find there. There are always opportunities, especially if you have a local SEO element to what you do.

Hi there

I personally love Majestic - it has a ton of great features and analysis, giving you a truly in-depth perspective on your backlink profile.

Now, that said, you should always be checking multiple sources for backlinks, as no one tool is going to capture your entire profile. Some catch links others missed and vice versa. Here are some other tools to check out:
Ahrefs
Kerboo Google Search Console

Each of the tools mentioned above give a different insight and data set, so make sure you check as many as you can for what you need to do.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I wouldn't be too alarmed, you will find this with some searches for email providers:
Yahoo
Hotmail
AOL

I noticed you don't have a sitemap, I recommend creating one and give the most priority to the homepage. From there, I would upload those to both Google and Bing. This will help crawlers understand the website in importance.

I would also take a look at your backlinks - your site (especially your homepage) seems to be getting quite a few spammy backlinks - example. Look which ones can be removed or disavowed.

Try this method and let me know if you see any changes. Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

I would first read the duplicate content resources from both Google and Moz so you can spot check your pages.

Also, I would read the following resource from Google, that states:

"Avoid errors: use absolute paths rather than relative paths with the rel="canonical" link element.

Use this structure:  https://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendresss.html
Not this structure: /dresses/green/greendress.html." You are currently using the second structure in your canonical tags. Try switching to an absolute URL structure and see how that works.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Did you have any site changes on that day? GTM installed? Pages removed or updated? CTAs added or internal linking changes? Anything?

Read the following:

• This is Why Your Bounce Rate Dropped in Analytics
• Explanation for a Dramatic Drop in Bounce Rate

They discuss theories such as:

• Multiple pageviews triggers firing (being sent to Analytics) on a single page

• A duplicate installation of Google Analytics code

• Google Tag Manager installed along side of Google Analytics code

• Event is being sent to Analytics after pageview

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would check your meta tags and robots.txt to make sure pages aren't accidentally blocking crawlers.

I would also check make sure your organic traffic isn't going down as well, especially to pages that you are seeing aren't being indexed anymore.

Lastly, I would check Google's algorithm history, and see if any of your index / traffic drops correlate with changes in the SERPs. That can give you insight if you need to do a content audit or backlink audit. Also, make sure your sitemap and internal links are up to date.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would submit the site move in Bing and make sure your sitemap has been submitted. I would all make sure the following is taken care of:

• Make sure all non www URLs 301 redirect to www URLs
• Make sure all http:// 301 redirect to https://

I would also check your internal links and sitemap to make sure that URLs are listed correctly there. Remember, traffic takes a little while to come back sometimes, so don't be completely discouraged. Make sure you covered all of your bases.

Another thing I would do - check your backlinks and make sure you update the valuable ones to the new URL structure and remove any spammy or irrelevant ones. This can help build back the equity.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

I highly recommend looking into Inbound Writer. It's a newer tool that helps you estimate content performance before you write it and post it on your site.

I highly recommend looking into it and seeing what it can do for you.

Beyond that, real time efforts, I would include looking into trending data via social media and focus on what people are talking about, as well as the influencers that are talking about news - you could utilize that both from the content standpoint and interviews or opinions to include.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Take a look at Google's resource on robots.txt, as well as Moz's. You can get all the information you need there. You can also let Google know about what URLs to exclude from it's crawls via Search Console.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

I would recommend using Search Console. This is the most direct way to see how you are ranking in Google's eyes, and also helps you break down rankings by mobile and desktop. You also get pretty in-depth reports for crawl issues and errors that Google finds. It's very comprehensive - that's where I would start!

Let me know if this helps! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

Cyrus gave a great answer to this a few years back. You can read that here.

That being said, some people think Whois data is used as a ranking factor (6, 8, 9, 63) or at least used in some ranking factors.

Matt Cutts has stated as well:

"…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so."

In my opinion, it's better to be open than hide information. But that's upto you to do the research and see what best suits you.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

No problem! Good luck!

If you need help, don't forget Moz has a great recommended partners section. Some of this stuff can get tricky.

Hi there

If you have a search console profile for that .net URL, you could use the Change of Address tool to let crawlers know the site has moved.

I would also check this migration guide to see if there are any loose ends that may still be indexing those pages. Sometimes you can have internal links or sitemap issues that may still contain old URLs.

Lastly, there is the remove outdated content from Google tool, but I would make sure that your new URL / domain are appearing for all searches that you need it to be, and that the .net address isn't.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Yes, definitely use the Change of Address resource provided by Thomas above. I would also make sure that you develop a redirect file so old URLs make there way to their new URLs, and update your sitemap XML / internal links. Here is a resource for Google Analytics.

These steps will help Google find your new URLs so much easily and quickly. Let me know if this helps! Good luck!
P

Hi Kayleigh

This happens from time to time. Sometimes I will pull the URLs I get those 0 status errors for and recrawl them. It's no big deal, sometimes you just have to mess with the configuration of your crawls.

ScreamingFrog offers some tips in their FAQ section, you can read those here.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions or comments.

Definitely true! I was just stating it for the reference of Matt talking about Whois data back then to reference information.

Hi there

Here are a couple of great review lists from Software Advice and Capterra.

We have a few customers that use Zendesk and absolutely love it.

Are you also looking for a CMS to run your site? From the sounds of things, it look like you may be looking for that as well. Let me know, unless I am not understanding.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Sometimes data collecting can take upto 24 hours. Don't worry. This is normal. Crawlers take a little bit of time.

If you don't see your data after 24 hours or so, take a look at the Moz Help guide, or reach out here.

Hope this helps! Good luck!