Welcome to the Q&A Forum

No-index your pages and you will be fine for the quality score All the best Richard

You mention not chosen your preferred domain - I assume you mean in Webmaster tool

Setting it to say 'www' will mean if Google finds links to the non-www then those will be attributed to the www version.

You do need to registrer your ownership of both www and non-www in Webmaster tool to do this.

Consider carefully whether you pick www or non www if you do mobile / social where every character counts.

In terms of 301's - do you expect to hit targets over your busy period if you do nothing else to sort the problem? If so then perhaps focus your time on conversions of existing traffic, then do the rest when things are not so busy.

Nigel

Hi You mention rebuilding on another platform - I assume you made sure if pages changed URL you put in redirects. A blog will tend to have a higher bounce rate as it is something people read and then go. Try adding in more useful links within the content to get people to click through your site. Have you checked the keywords your blog is attracting? Maybe they are not aligned to the blog content. Unless your blog is accounting for the majority of page views and visits I don't think the bounce rate is likely to be your main issue. A high overall bounce rate tells Google people don't find what they were looking for - thus is a contributing factor to search results. You don't mention your website so can't give specific suggestions but have you checked your moz rank / compared to your competitors - that might indicate what else is wrong. All the best Nigel

Hi Sara

If the non branded website is identical to the main website then you could use the canonical tag.This way Google would pass the seo benefit onto the main website.

You could also ensure the robots.txt is used to stop the search engine bots. For more info on this look in your google webmaster tool.

All the best

Nigel

Hi Eric

I agree with Moosa the days of simply using Google Analytics to see a good picture of keywords is gone.

Have you looked at your Google Webmaster Tool?

In Webmaster tool goto 'Traffic' > 'Search Queries'. Here you will find useful information in terms of search terms, clicks, click through rate and average positions.

Here it is recommended you review the query list for expected keywords. Also compare impressions and CTR to identify how you can improve your content.

On the left hand side of this Webmaster Tool page click 'Search Queries' for more detailed info.

Hope you find it useful

Richard

Hi For 1: I would suggest a custom friendly 404 page. This means the user sees a page saying something like 'Sorry the product / page you were after no longer exists. Here are some useful options ( then list a handful of popular page links). You could even includes a site search or your tel number / email to contact. This means the user knows what has hppened, had somewhere useful to go but it returns a 404. For 2: If the page is being moved - use a 301 redirect on the existing page. If you are simply not selling that product anymore than do a 404 as above. In both cases monitor your GA and GWT for 404s and fix where applicable. All the best. Richard

Many thanks for the quick replies guys. That's a great help!

All the best

Richard

Hi Scott Take a look at this http://wordpress.org/support/topic/duplicate-url-in-posts All the best Richard

Hi

Have a look at this very recent Webmaster video from Matt Cutts.

http://youtu.be/hy3_Rjc0Tso

Hope this gives help!

Nigel

Hi, sorry its a Friday question...

Page A: www.example.com/house/

Page B: www.example.com/house/kitchen

Can I 'no_index' page A without it effecting page B being indexed?

Views?

Many thanks!

Hi

Your website is indexed for about 140 pages - try this in the Google search bar: site:www.award-certificates.com

Are you a Pro member? If not then I suggest sign up for free trial and check the reporting for issues.

If you search for Badminton Certificates in Google you appear on the first page.

Decide on your keywords and track their ranking position. It maybe some of your keywords have very little demand so your search traffic will be small no matter how good you are.

You dont mention what you have done so far for SEO, so it maybe wise to buy a book on SEO or look at some of the useful reports on this website and start ticking off what you have / have not done.

Best of luck

Hi Cale, just to clarify re picking either www or non www - if you have a long domain name than having an extra 3 characters (www) just makes it even longer.

So if someone tweets or you do a say a newspaper advert then generally the shorter the 'address' is the better due to the physical limitations of characters.

Hope your busy period goes well!

Nigel

Hi Cary, you are getting that message as the subdomain cannot be reached by Google.

On the Google Webmaster 'Home page' click the dropdown on the right - there should be 3 options.

First click 'Add or remove users' to ensure and deal with users you no longer want.

Then click 'Delete site' to remove the subdomain (make sure you delete the right one!)

Other things you may want to consider:

Check your main site has the right users accessing it.

Did you have Google Analytics on the subdomians - that data will still be there. You may want to consider who has access to that in future.

Check if the affiliates had any access to email, documents, regular reports or other tool you may want to lock down on.

All the best

Nigel

Hi I would not worry if you have 2 links to the same page, especially if one is in your global nav. You can add a no follow however I would not worry about it. Many websites have the contact us in the global nav - Google knows about navigation items so instead pays more attention to links in the body of the pages. Google will only follow one instance of a link so it won't double up on the link juice being sent to the next page.. Finally dont have too many links on your home page - the page only has a certain amount of link juice so you end up diluting the juice too much if you have loads of links. All the best Nigel

Hi

Within Google Webmaster Tool 'Crawl errors' report by clicking 'Not found' it shows 404 errors its found.

By clicking any column headings and it will reorder them.

One column is 'Priority' - do you think Google is telling me its ranked the errors in priority of needing a fix?

There is no reference to this in the Webmaster tool help.

Many thanks

Nigel

Hi Abi Don't worry about the left hand side or global navigation items - Google will focus its attention to the copy and links within the main body of the page. You are correct - if the body copy has two links going to the same location then only the first will count. Links nearer the top of the copy will get more link juice than those further down the page, so put the important stuff nearer the top. The more links you have the more diluted (less effect) those links will have so don't try and cover everything - for example if you sold many different types of cars you could have a 'BMW cars' link, then on the BMW cars page have links to the different models. Make sure you have copy referring to your location / zip / postcode. Have a contact us page with your full address and map. Make sure you have listings / links on local websites.... All the tells Google your location. Finally check Google Webmaster is targeted on your country. Best of luck Nigel

Tom is very right - you cant have the best of both worlds with your current set up.

Your partners need to attract visitors on their site through content they write and publish - not yours.

All the best.

Richard

My pleasure.

To answer your question - the post code does not need to be a link to the contact us page - just have a link called 'Contact us'

The contact us page should have tel, your full address and postcode and good idea to imbed a google map.

I have not tried it but there are some wordpress plugins that allow for multiple addresses in one map.

By the way on your home page your heading 'Looking for a expert locksmith? Welcome to Lock City.....' is currently a H2 - it should be a  H1.

It could be cut back and more focused eg Expert Locksmiths covering Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire' ... even that is a mouthful so consider do you really need to mention all locations?

I would also suggest adding in a paragraph of home page copy - maybe this could include reference to the locations (so you can get the H1 back) and end with the 'Contact us' you asked about.

Also give your images alt text which makes reference to location. The urls for the images could also include a location.

Hope this helps

Nigel

HI Abi

Well done, much better and visually looks good to.

One thing though.... you still have two H1's on the home page. It looks like the rogue H1is related to your logo. Look around line 139 in the source code.

If you are a pro member try running the SEO web crawler (goto Research Tools). Its a good way to pick up other things. Otherwise drop me a line.

Enjoy!

Richard