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Hmm, well in my experience the larger ecommerce/brick stores usually have a single product page. They then allow you to set your store location and the stock is updated based on that user preference. E.g. If I go to walmart there is 1 product page and if I select My Store the product inventory will adjust to show if it is in stock near me.

If you cannot invest in a system like this AND the product pages are duplicate content, you'll want to set 1 product page as the canonical page to prevent duplicate content issues. I suggest adding the locations to the main product page, so users can easily view their location and inventory status - since a single product page location should rank highest in the SERPs.

That would make me feel more confident of a false error being reported. Time to closely monitor the crawl logs, look at server stats, and keep an eye on GWT for a change in the reporting/indexing. I would also go into the GWT forums and post, see if anyone is reporting a similar error these past couple days.

FWIW, I think you executed appropriately. I would have redirected 1 -> 3 and 2 -> 3 just as you did. It is going to take a while for the authority to catch up to the new (#3) domain and I would expect a lot of that authority coming from 2 -> 3 since 1 -> 2 has had a lot of time for its authority to pass to the #2 domain.

To add to what Massimiliano said - once you change the URL to be more descriptive and you have 3 pages, 301 the /av to the closest related new page. Then, add internal links to the 2 other new pages that target their primary term/topic. This way you have the authority from /av going to 1 of the newly created pages and then the other 2 new pages have a clear internal link structure so Google understands they are a higher authority for the new topics they are targeting.

Can you post your domain? Manually checking the robots.txt file would help.

I've checked many of my GWT accounts and I am not showing a sudden robots.txt error. It could be a false error, but I would take anything with the robots.txt file seriously. You'll want to make sure that it is in fact accessible to all the crawlers desired.

Hi Alex - Are you saying that you want your www.domain.com to resolve to www.domain.com/devs/ ?

If so, I would highly suggest that you consider using www.domain.com as your primary location and URL - unless your website is somehow targeted to 'devs' and it make sense to keep it in the URL structure. If not, it is preferred to have the shorter, more concise URL.

Making this change depends on your host environment and website setup. Are you using a custom web app or something like WordPress?

Well, that depends on the structure of your website and how you want to use category pages. For example, I manage an ecommerce website that sells Widgets. I have a high ranking XYZ Widgets product page. It sells amazing and since my price is so awesome, people link to it from their blogs and such. However, XYZ widgets just became discontinued. When the product page disappears, it creates a 301 to my main Widgets Category.

My Widgets Category page isn't going anywhere (not being removed from the site anytime soon) and ranks high in the SERPs. All those 301'ed product pages help improve its authority and allows me to rank high for a broad industry term - it also acts an efficient landing page.

That's just one store setup though, it could be that your category pages do not add value and you use a different page for that type of use. If you're not using your category pages to rank in the SERPs, then I would find which broad pages you do want to rank and have the product pages 301'd to those pages (to save any authority gained).

In terms of Internal linking, since I want my category pages to rank, a clear internal link structure helps that case. It also ends up that my category pages have a higher internal link count because of the structure I have in place. That all contributes to the category pages ranking higher for broader terms and allows my product pages to rank higher for the specific terms.

It looks like the 301s were meant to force a trailing slash at the end of the URL. This would be done to prevent duplicate URLs. However, rather than add each URL manually, you could replace it with a regex

Example:

<code>RewriteRule ^(.*)([^/])$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1$2/ [L,R=301]</code> 

If you have implemented 301 redirects properly, then the old URLs (the ones redirecting to the new site) will naturally drop from the search engines as Google deems appropriate. There are a number of factors that influence when a page gets deindexed, such as the crawl rate for a website and how many links it may have.

If you really desire the pages to be removed, then as you've suggested you can ask for their removal from GWT. However, there is no harm is allowing them to stay indexed and waiting for Google to adjust appropriately.

You do want to have a good balance between keyword rich URLs and friendly URLs - shorter is more friendly.

I'm inclined to prefer the first choice. Usually apartment complexes have an 'apartments' in the name - e.g. Lakewood Apartments. You could keep that keyword to the property name itself and keep the more finely tuned structure of the first URL.

Googlebot won't be able to see the full community member profiles, since it is hidden behind a user login wall. However, the duplicate content error is an issue you want to correct.

• https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/member/1041/
• https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/member/2373/
• https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/member/1301/

All of the community member pages produce an error, if viewing logged out. Unfortunately, the URL remains the same and only shows an error, it does not redirect the user to an error page. This results in all of the community member profiles having unique URLs, all with duplicate content.

You should add a noindex tag to community member pages and, if possible, redirect the user to an error page rather than the unique community profile page for those viewing while logged out.

Hi Christian,

That highly depends on the new website itself. If the site quickly gains popularity, engagement, amplification, and backlinks, the DA/PA will increase much more quickly than a new website that has not.

Moz generally updates their authority scores monthly, so you may see some movement in the scores as little as a month. However, it generally takes a long-term outlook when growing authority - concentrate less on this number and more on your SERPs rankings and how you can be a better quality resource for the terms your visitors are finding your website for.

Moz local is a subscription that is billed annually. Yes, I believe that it does auto-renew every year.

Hi TorontoV,

In practice, I believe 98%+ of a page's authority is passed successfully through a 301 redirect. The page's authority is a combination of factors, like the social signals you've mentioned, so the gained authority should pass to your new domain/page URLs.

Make sure to have the 301 redirects implemented properly. The new domain will require its own social proof (get those likes, +1s, ect), but the authority that was gained from the old domain will pass to the new domain.

If you've developed a page that is highly related, but with fresh, unique, value-added content then I would feel comfortable 301'ing the old page to the new page. The new page will get the old page's authority, over time.

If youre going to be updating your URLs for best-practices, I would incorporate the conversion to https as well - do it all in one shot, as you've said.

Just ensure you're implementing 301 redirects properly. Not doing so can have disastrous results.

I say to put all those comments on a single page. If I'm searching through comments, I hate skipping through multiple pages.

If comments are increasing your page load speed, then pagination may be the solution, but I would try to solve the performance bottleneck first. You would want a proper canonical tag and use prev/next rel tags.

Well, that puts you into a tricky situation. Google's goal is to best understand the natural language and semantics behind the user's search query. However, it is a very difficult task since natural language is widely different among humans and locations and intent is whole other issue that Google is trying to solve.

So, yes, Google does understand words like 'and' and how they impact a query/content. Those words are commonly called 'stop words.' Google understands the relationship of stop-words and keyword terms. However, it is an ongoing improvement process.

In your situation, I still think Google has a hard time equally weighing the titles you've exampled. While **Industrial and Electrical Supply **is more natural and fluid, Industrial Supply and Electrical Supply will probably help the overall rankings for both terms. However, it may be best to include the natural language in the title and add headings/content targeting both specific terms. It's something you should consider for your readers and continue to experiment with, tbh.

The benefit in the ranking influence for http / https sites is still unclear. Many SEOs are still holding off on this conversion to see what its impact, hopefully measurable, may end up being.

Moz has a great post on Https necessities and practices here: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl

If it is going to be an intense project (costs an mount of money that makes you question its worth), I would hold off until more information is exposed about https as a ranking factor. If the conversion is easy, then I would get it implemented now and reap any benefits that come from https.

do logged in-user and anonymous user should have the same behavior ?

For the most part, yes, however it depends on the forum you are running. The important piece to understand is that whatever is hidden behind a login wall, remains hidden to the search engines. So, you have to weigh that factor when deciding which content to display to everyone versus the content to display to only logged in users.

How do you suggest handling canonical in a UGC world ?

Canonicalization isn't too hard to manage. Your forum software should include canonical URLs, but if not you will want those implemented into the template as soon as possible. The use of the rel=prev and rel=next tags are highly recommended. This allows you to keep the main forum thread as the canonical URL and Google understands that the subsequent pages are related to the main page and how they add value.

Do you have specific editorial guidelines enforced on UGC ?

Again, that's up to you and your community. What work editorially for one forum may not be the most desirable for another (e.g. the use of profanity). As long as the content being added is of value, then I consider it good content. With forums, you can be a lot more loose with the guidelines and allow users to interact as they desire.

Don't let your forum become infested with Spam, obvious self-promoting threads, and make sure all links are nofollow. Many forums implement restrictions on users in regards to links and only when they prove themselves can they add links to their posts. Link and Spam management are very important for forums.