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There are a lot of variables in your question.

There are different sorts of duplicate content, for example the same product may appear in different pages on the website that is ok.  However, if you are talking about long form content such as a blog copying and pasting this will definitely get you in trouble sooner or later.

Aside from Google at very least you will have a copyright issue, the original creator of that content owns it where ever it is published and it is a breach of copyright to reuse or publish without their permission.

The reason they haven't been penalized could well be Google hasn't found it yet or it could be they were the original creator.  Google is very clever working out duplicate content the most likely thing you will notice is the page simply will not rank in Google.
If you repeatedly, copy content Google will eventually see your site as 'no value' and you could encounter a penalty or at very least a downgrading in ranks across all pages.

I wouldn't divert them to the homepage, the content has to be relevant.  As Tim says keep them or redirect/create a page that does have relevant content.  
Like Advice/comparisons/alternatives

You need to be aware DA is secondary to your question, that is DA has to do with back link quality and URLs have to do with the search engine and users be unable to find what they're looking for.

The URL structure should be clean easy to read and easy to navigate.  I won't be overly worried about the length although keep it to a minimum where possible like the following: www.domain.com/products/air-conditioning/portable-air-conditioner-unit

According to Google search console between 18th of May and 21st of May. We had a temporary big position drop, with apparently no change in traffic volume but CTR seems to have dropped a bit and not recovered.  Ever since then the graph is quite choppy compared to before but avg position & CTR seem to remain fairly constant.

Crosschecking to traffic in GA this month's traffic compared to last has dropped by about 5% but that could be related to seasonal changes.

With regards to positions I normally monitor weekly to cut out some of the noise that happens with Google these days.  What do you use the daily tracking?

Didn't actually mean to close this off yet, but hopefully people continue to comment.

Appreciate the input so far, I'm continuing to look into it from the stats that I have my end and can't type to any think that we have done.
We're pretty clean on SEO, we don't go in for buying links or any think of that sort.

Negative SEO could be a factor but we do keep an eye on that. So that should show before long.

But it definitely looks like the something going on with the rankings and not relating to black hat stuff just poor law-abiding citizens losing their traffic

Maybe Google got it wrong this time!

Have seen a fairly substantial drop in Google search console, I'm still looking into it comparing things, but does anyone know if there's been a Google updates within the past few days?  Or has anyone else noticed anything?

Thanks

Apologies, I'm not entirely sure of got your point.  Do you mean you want the URL locked away so only a favoured few can access it?  I.e. not a general website login.

If you use 301s highly likely Google will find the new login page, If that answers your query?

One point like to throw in here that a penetration tester will tell you that obscurity isn't security.  Meaning that just puting the login form on another URL/Website/IP won't increase the security very much, if at all, especially if someone is determined.

Definitely check the Lost & Broken links in ahrefs.

Interested to know the outcome, I have the same question myself.

Keep us posted.

If you 301 properly and phrase the page properly with text and tags it shouldn't be a problem, you may see an initial drop but should recover again.

With branded queries you are normally pretty safe, especially if you have a strong online presence.

Subdomains can cause a bit of a headache if they're not done right, there seems to be a bit of a trend to move away from subdomains of late in favour of putting everything on one domain. Google will sometimes see subdomains as a separate website.

According to Miles Rank tracking I have a keyword that is fluctuating by 5 or 6 positions in a 24-hour period every time it goes 10 down to 15 and back to 10 again with very little stopping point in between and keeps fluctuating like that.

As far as I know the website is stable it uses Magento 1.9 and is a fixed category page.

The page URL is relatively new as we migrated from an old site with a different URL structure I added 301s at server level from the old page URL to the new one.

There is only two things I can think that can be the problem -
1. Lack of links directly to the page (there is literally only one or two)
2. Loading speed problem

But I don't see any of these would cause a 5 position fluctuation regularly every day.

But do you have any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Interested to know people strategies for detecting and mitigating negative SEO.

Previously I've used link monitoring tool and kept an eye on all new back links coming in to any page on the site.  I have then manually assessed each one again using some tools and actually visiting the website.

However, this always leaves me with one dilemma.  Regardless of my assessment how do search engines see that link?

I run three lists a white list, grey list and blacklist.

• White list - very relevant and have a lot of authority.  I.e. leading industry blogs and forums.
• Grey list - out of topic/industry, directories
• Blacklist - sites de-indexed by Google, illegal content or absolute spam (i.e. one page filled with hundreds of links to different domains)

1. Do you have any thoughts?
2. How do you assess if link is bad?

Keyword stuffing doesn't work any more, the entire page content needs to be relevant to the searcher intent (i.e. a keyword that your customer uses).

You should incorporate a few of your main keywords in the title.  Remember often the page title will be displayed to the searcher, if it isn't relevant or looks spamy, people aren't going to click on it.

Keep in mind CTR when it shows in the Google search results.

Imagine you are searching for "premium holidays in the UK".  But if your page is optimised round price and contains text something like "low-cost value for money self catering holidays in the UK" this clearly doesn't match your search is intent.  They are searching for a "premium", not a "cheap".  So both from a user and Google perspective your page won't match the searchers request, even if it did come up in the search results CTR is going to be low.

Is it advisable to use only one H2 tag?

The template designs for some reason is ended up with multiple H2 tags, I realise if any think it's that each one is that are important and it is all relative.

Just trying to assess if it's worth the time and effort to rehash the template.

Has anyone done any testing or got any experience?

Thanks

Yes, interesting I did wonder as much.
We identified that the menu bar may be at fault, so we A/B tested and noticed a substantial increase in conversions.  Unfortunately, we have now put live and conversions of dropped again!  
There is a slight change in the URL structure, but everything is redirected as far as I can tell.

Wondering if it's just Google getting its head around it again.

If the drop was late January to early February most likely related to Google's PBN update (blog network).
A lot of sites have been hit, some cases badly.

It is most likely stopped counting the blog network links that were keeping the site at its original position, Google is probably now ignoring or even penalising some or all of these links.
The caveat is, due to the nature of the update it is unlikely that disavowing the links will help, probably the best option is to build some new and better ones.

I would certainly avoid it unless you have a specific purpose.

If Google can see the site it will certainly index it.

Domain structure is only a small element of the ranking signals.

If you have links pointing to the domain you will need to set up redirects to maintain your link structure, you may lose a small amount of authority losing a 301 but not much.

Hope that helps

All the best

Open Site Explorer doesn't seem to be working for me.

Any one else got the same?

Need to do advanced image optimization in Magento.

I would like to be able to load an initial very, very low resolution picture followed by the full resolution on page completion or maybe scroll.

Properly similar to lazy loading, but with a difference in that an initial low resolution picture does appear.

Does anyone know of any plug-ins or what the technology is called?

Thanks in advance.

As I understand it, there is two aspects to 301 redirects.

1. User experience
2. Organic search

Matt Cutts says, there is no limit the number of 301 redirects, unless they are chained together. (ie. start_page > page1 > page2 > proper_page)

I don't expect it will impact on site speed much, nothing you couldn't regain with a bit of speed optimisation.

From a user perspective if you have moved an old page that has high traffic or some good quality links on it. It is very important to ensure that traffic N is back on the right page using a 301.

From organic search perspective (especially Google) again if you are using 301 is it will eventually update its own index to include the new page indicated.

There are two things you should be aware of: -

• By using a 301 from an old page, you could resurrect a bad back link
• A small amount of link authority is lost (only very small)

Have just migrated current and active site to Magento 1.9 and a new hosting package (dedicated and reasonably powerful for what we need).

But we seem to have had a drop in conversion rate.  I don't really know whether it's anything to be concerned about the moment.

I've set up extensive server level 301 redirects for old pages.

Would be glad of any thoughts?

Thanks you