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Roman-Delcarmen

The rel=canonical element helps us determine which version of a URL is the original when multiple version of a URL returns the same content. This can happen when, for example, you append a tracking notation to a URL. Two discrete URLs then exist, yet both have identical content. By implementing a rel=canonical, you can tell us the original one, giving us a hint as to where we should place our trust. Do not use this element in place of a proper redirect when moving content.

Take for example the following URLs

Each URL is referring to the same page content for Legal Services, however, the URLs themselves are slightly different.

This can be an issue for search engines because the engine itself doesn’t necessarily know which page should be the source of truth, and it may just choose a canonical URL algorithmically for you.

In other words, if you have a web page accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content (ie. separate mobile and desktop versions), you should specify to a search engine which URL is authoritative (canonical) for that page.

In the Google Search Console, you can find the option to set URL parameters, once your website is verified. What this does is give you the ability to tell Google which parameters you would like to consider passive. What this means is that you can tell Google, “whenever you see this URL parameter, just treat it like it doesn’t exist”.

These are 2 good sources of what I'm talking about Google and Moz

Roman-Delcarmen

Site: https://www.over50choices.co.uk/ “funeral plans”
Checking on Google there are 1,430 results for that keyword on your site
So that is starting point easy and fast

Internal Links

Input URL: https://www.over50choices.co.uk/funeral-planning/funeral-plans
Total links: 124
External links: 19 - (15%) of Total links
Duplicate links: 45 - (36%) of Total links
Empty anchor: 0
No alt tag: 1
Nofollow count (Line-through): 1

According to the On-Page Grader Tool
https://analytics.moz.com/pro/research/page-grader

These are some basic points to improve

Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword Placement in Page Title
Optimal Use of Keywords in Header Tags
Includes a Rel Canonical Tag ----> This is very Important

Roman-Delcarmen

That is usual on Google you need to build some trust when you have a new website/domain so usually google put new websites in a sandbox, So need to focus on creating social signals and brand name back-links just to build trust

Roman-Delcarmen

I made a quick audit of your website and will make some assumptions

This is your flagship page
https://www.over50choices.co.uk/funeral-planning/funeral-plans

As I see you already have a good backlink profile but suddenly you have been losing ranks these are some advice to you

check the spam score of all your backlinks (Here on Moz is called Spam Score on Semrush is Called Toxic Score)
build internal links (I will assume that you are working on that right now)
disavow all the useless links
build new backlinks

Also, I notice a Drop on ranks on October (Ahref rank) keeping in mind that you are in a competitive niche all the details are important

You need to figure out how to improve your user experience, making a quick test on PageSpeed there are several small tasks that you can perform to improve it (Enable the compression, Leverage, Browser Cache) By itself will not show a big impact but the summary of all of them can show a big impact. AMP can give you more visibility on mobile devices

Roman-Delcarmen

Yes that is right if you go to your keyword explorer and research the term Manzanas you will get this results

Difficulty 40
Organic CTR 41%
Priority 19

Hope this info answers your question and if my answer were useful do not forget to mark it as a Good Answer.....Regards

Have a nice day

Roman-Delcarmen

Just to clarify then, having to say 300 links all with the same anchor text and most with an exact match to the main keyword/product is ok?

I will assume that you want to rank your site for the keyword funeral plans
I'll explain exactly what I would do

But first, you need to be clear in some basic concepts

The structure of a website and your internal link is of great importance for its
chances to rank in search engines. For two main reasons:

1 A decent structure and internal linking make sure Google ‘understands’ your site.
2 A decent structure makes sure you do not compete with your own content.

Important terms and definitions that you have to keep in mind to understand what I'm doing

Keyword research (I will assume that you already did it and you know what is)
Long tail keywords in your case these are some examples

prepaid funeral plans - Volume 100 - Keyword Difficulty: 08
cost of prepaid funeral plans - Volume 50 - Keyword Difficulty: 07
low-cost funeral plans - Volume 40 - Keyword Difficulty: 04

Landing pages are the main pages through which visitors enter your
website.

In this case, I will assume you are a local business
so one of your landing pages will look like this

All depends on your site structure and your content

Cornerstone contents are the most important articles or pages on your website.

This is the content that exactly reflects your business. These articles
should be relatively high in your site structure. In most cases, the
homepage directly links to these pages or articles

In affiliate marketing, this content is called Money Pages
Definition: A piece of content that is monetized in some fashion, such as
promoting products as an affiliate, capturing leads to sell them to a
3rd party or heavy advertisement.

Here on Moz is called 10X content
https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday

What is cornerstone content?
https://yoast.com/what-is-cornerstone-content/

So instead on focus on anchor text or internal links or link counts
the first question and the most important that you need to answer is

What is your main content?
What is your business about?

So if you provide funeral plans on a specific location
all your business needs to be focused on that ( SEO, PPC, Social Media) all your internal links will be focused on those pages. You don't just start to build internal link just because you read an article about it. **I need to have a goal in mind **

Example

Title: Affordable Funeral Plans Miami - Title
URL: wwww.yourwebsite.com/funeral-plans/

So this what I would do on your case

**Define your cornerstone content (Your internal links will point to these) **
**Make a keyword research looking for all closed related term of your main keyword **
Building internal links to those pages using the keywords above (main+secondary)
Make almost perfect On-page optimization
Add Schemas to that page to add even more visibility
**Add Amp version of that page **
**Finally, build some back-links to those pages **

Hope this info helps you to answer your question

Roman-Delcarmen

Hi Thomas, select the right author is crucial I mean the difference in performance between a good author/ copywriter is not 10% or 20% or even 50%. In my opinion is 1000%. Of course is not cheap, and is not easy. These days the word SEO means nothing without content

Roman-Delcarmen

This my own workflow to lunch small niche websites that rank quickly and fast

Research ( Keyword, Competition, and Content)
_Structure design _
_Content Creation _
On page optimization
Internal Linking
Schemas integration
_AMP Integration _
Fix all the technical errors
Link building

When I was starting on SEO I had the same issues so basically, I repeated the process over and over again until dominating it

Roman-Delcarmen

I'm assuming that you are talking about a widget when you say "Quick Links Boxes" in the sidebar or in the footer or any other specific area. There's no need to remove them but you need to keep in mind that all those links will make those pages outstand over other pages.

So your main question is this. Do you want to make those pages your **10X content (Most relevant pages) **If the answer is positive keep the Link Box if not just remove it.

Roman-Delcarmen

Question we seem to see people ranking better naturally when they have the SEO term in their title. That's right a basic on-page optimization rule say that you need to have your main keyword in Title, Meta Description, URL and also on the content

Say we were optimizing for "red buses". Our company was called Diamond. We are using Diamond.co and have a DA of 32 (Page Title Diamond Red Buses | Bla). Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword -Brand Name

**Should we buy diamondredbuses.co.uk? Is it best to continue on our domain and redirect? Or move domains? How much would it affect? ** Migrate your website is not a simple task even worst if you have a website with traffic and rankings. In fact is a risky process if you don't know what are you doing. So keep your website as it is.

Roman-Delcarmen

If for example, the key product was "funeral plans" what percentage of the internal anchor text links should be an exact match? there is no static rule about it, so your starting point will be your own Search Console Account and your GA Account

Unlike external links, where over-optimization of anchor text is manipulative and can lead to penalties, internal links should have optimized anchor text. Using keyword-rich anchor text is helpful to both search crawlers and users clicking the link.

My advice is to select all your target keyword and all the close variation and start to create internal links on this way

**Check your most relevant pages **

1. Pages that had high traffic and PA. You can find these in Google Analytics, Search Console and Ahrefs
2. Pages where the keyword already existed unlinked. You can use this query to find such pages: Site:[yoursite.com] “funeral plans”

In your case, searching for “funeral plans” will show you a number of mentions
After making a list of these pages add internal links by hand. (This is my personal option other people use tools, plugins or whatever) These new links from established posts showed Google that you thought of this page as “important.”

Will the prominence of those links eg higher up the page has an impact on the amount of juice flowing?

First and foremost, internal links are important because they help search engines better understand your site.

A large number of internal links pointing to a specific page signal that page is important and helps search engines determine which pages to return in their search results.

Sometimes a broader category page will rank above a specific product page for a query about that specific product — this is less than ideal.

For example, a company that sells different types of bats could see their general “Bats” category page ranking above their “Softball bats” page for the query [cheap softball bats]. Internally linking to the “Softball bats” page could help Google recognize it should be returning that page for the given query.

And do links in buttons count in the same way as on page anchor text eg "compare funeral plans"? It will help you to pass link juice to your page but it will not help Google to understand the content of that page (It will not help you to rank for your target keyword)

** I hope this info helps you to answer your question**

Roman-Delcarmen

Keri gives you a good answer, just to add some useful tips just go to your On-Page Grader tool and check your pages for your target keyword. These are some recommendation probably not all of them apply to your case but is a starting point

Exact Keyword Used in Document at Least Once
Broad Keyword Use in Page Title
Exact Keyword is Used in Page Title
Keyword Placement in Page Title
Use Keywords in your URL
URL Uses Only Standard Characters
Keywords in the Meta Description
Keywords in the Meta Description
Keywords in Image Alt Attribute

Also as I see you have your main domain and a subdomain

And both have different metrics as a domain rating and as URL rating. So a good advice for you is starting to build some internal links to your local pages

Roman-Delcarmen

100% agree

Roman-Delcarmen

https://www.massagepeoplelondon.co.uk/

Ahrefs URL rating 31
Ahrefs DR rating 19
Referring Domains 319
Moz DA 33
Moz Linking Domains 316

https://massagejoy.co.uk/

Ahrefs URL rating 26
Ahrefs DR rating 1.7
Referring Domains 99
Moz DA 22
Moz Linking Domains 105

So I as see both are local business related to massage, keeping in mind that I don't have anything to compare I will give some checkpoints

First of all, you need to check your link profile, how many links are pointing to your site, what kind of links, what is your most common anchor text, are your anchor text related to your main keywords.

The second most important point is the performance of your listing assuming that you have been working in your local listing, how well is your accuracy? how many local mentions do you have? how many local backlinks do you have?

What about your map pack, have been working on building social signals to your site

Just to give you an example of what I'm talking about, these a link intersect report. These sites are pointing to your competition (this is a quick overview). So the first question that comes to my mind is how many of these are actually pointing to your site?

When you start to answer those question you will start to understand what is happening to your site

IN SUMMARY

Check your link profile
Check your business listing and local mentions/citations
Check your maps
Check your On-page ( I assume that you made your KW research but is still important to mention it)
Another good point is to check your schemas massagepeoplelondon.co.uk has schemas for an _organization, local business, header, website, footer, breadcrumbs and site navigation _

I hope this info will help you to answer your question

Roman-Delcarmen

can you share the URL of your competitor?

Roman-Delcarmen

So as the title implies does building backlinks work in improving the rankings in Google? At the end of the day, Google is just a crawler who follow and classify links/ web pages. Links still matter, what has been changed is the way Google evaluate those links but still are one of the primaries sources to Google.

But how about other backlinks that are of higher quality? Well build backlinks is one of the most time-consuming tasks these days on the SEO world, is not something that you make after ending the On-page optimization. In fact, in my case, it is a Full time tasks with its own budget, tools, schedules, providers, and calendar. So a simple example for that if I want to build a backlink for a page a do not just send an email for outreach ( that is for newbies) I have been built my own database with categories, tags, niche, topic, requirements ( every webmaster/blogger has its own requirements)

Tools and services that strongly recommend you

Buzzstream or Ninjaoutreach
The Hoth **** -----------> (Link Building Services)
Authority Builders ** --> **(Link Building Services)
Gotch SEO ** ----------> (Link Building Services)**

So if you have the budget and the resource the best way to do it is create the content lets take an example. You want to launch an article about "how to make money online". The first thing that you need to do is create an outstanding article ( minimum 3000 words ) and then create an outreach campaign about that specific topic this can be

_How to make money with Upwork _
How to make money with affiliate marketing
_How to make money with Google Adsense _

So basically you need to publish that content on third party websites pointing to your target page "How to make money online" also to keep you safe you need to invest on social signals ( shares and so on) to give credibility to your site (trust). If you keep in mind all the budget required to do that, you will realize that is not cheap or a secondary tasks

These are some basic numbers

Buzzstream payment --> $99
Content Broker or Constant Content --> 20 to 50 per article (in the best scenario)
Infographics or Media Assets --> 20 to 50
VA for permanently or part-time outreach ----> Depending on the experience can be from 600 to 1500

As you will notice is not cheap or easy and if you want to make it like a pro you really have to start to see it as a project, not as a task.

If you don't have the money, the time or the resources you can use some of the services that I mentioned above such as The Hoth.

Another factor that you need to keep in mind is the competition level of the topic that you want to rank for. A local website for a plumber it's far easy to rank if you compared with an Affiliate website ( in weight loss) or a dropshipping website or even worst a Shopping website

Hope this info will help you

Regards

Roman-Delcarmen

From my research it is best practice not to use the whole: .com/en/ .com/ru/ style of denoting languages, is this correct? Well I, not I agree with that as long as you set up correctly the language, sitemaps, canonicals and so on you should not have any problem I will give you 2 good examples

If you notice both of them use subfolders for language and region

Based on my experience I avoid creating subdomains because basically, prefer to build authority for a single domain rather than build authority for several subdomains. Both strategies have pros and cons and all depend on the size of the project. I mean a big brand can choose subdomain even when is going to manage several link building campaigns for several subdomains (keep in mind that Google will treat every subdomain as a single independent website).

In my case I build authority for the main version of my website www.mycorporatewebsite.com --> English version andwhen I need to launch the Spanish version, this is going to rank a little bit easier mainly for DA that I already built

In your case, if you selected a subdomain as your option no matter the reason, this can be technical reasons or maybe it was a client requirement (Russian and China). Well, the steps to follow are these ones.

create the subdomains
migrate the content
redirect the old pages (not delete)
submit the new sitemaps to GSC

I will strongly suggest you make the process as much gradually as you can to not hurt your main website

build a map of all of your internal pages
divide it into small categories/tags/taxonomies or whatever you want
migrate this small pieces gradually

I hope this info will help you

Regards

Roman-Delcarmen

If you are working on International SEO you need to keep in mind 2 things, the language, and the region. If you are running a research on Mexico the terms "Apples" and "Manzanas" needs to be treated as 2 different keywords. Probably the Volume of the terms Apple reflect all the search volume of People who speak English and Spanish so is usual for them use search query in both languages also reflect the people who are English speakers such as tourists, expats or businessmen, who are located in Mexico but they use their own language to use Google.

On the other hand, "Manzanas" is for sure that is used for Spanish speakers who are using that specific query. In my experience working on multilanguage websites, this terms or keyword probably can share the same keyword intent in some cases but in other cases, they don't share it. There is no static rule about it. (you need to speak both languages to understand the difference)

Example of that can be the term "apple computer" for Google the intent behind that query is the brand Apple (computer) and Google will return the URL for that brand, but Google will select the user preference to present the best possible result

So for English speakers, Google will show www.apple.com and probably for a Mexican the result will be www.apple.com/mx/ againalways based on the user preference even when both used the exact same query "apple computer" and even when both are in the same location

Roman-Delcarmen

First, of all, you need to understand the difference between a subdomain and subfolder so

cars-movie.disney.com ---> this is subdomain
disney.com/cars-movie ---> this is a folder, subfolder, internal page or whatever you prefer

As I see in this case we are talking about

language subfolders
international SEO

So answering your questions

"I take it this means that we have to create a copy_, meta titles and descriptions for each of the languages even if the page is the same but in a different language?"_ Yes, that is correct, you need to optimize every single page for the specific language you choose it Titles, meta descriptions, all the On-page stuff. Also, you need to keep in mind create a sitemap for each language, set up the canonical tag and language tag for each page.

Here you can find some useful articles from Moz you definitely should check

To avoid duplication of content would you suggest canonical tags to be put in place? Yes that also correct this how is going to looks like your canonical tags

Home Page - English Version
URL -> http://example.com/

Home Page - Spanish Version
URL -> http://example.com/es/

To check hreflang mark up, I couldn't find anything in the code which makes me thing a script is automatically translating this? Well, all depends on the platform or cms of the websites, in WordPress, there are several plugins which will help you a lot such as WPML or Polylang.

Roman-Delcarmen

The Crawler looks for content not for design technically you are talking about how to style your H1. That is a CSS topic you don't have to worry about that as long your tag and your content is relevant.

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Roman-Delcarmen

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