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Just to expand, it may also have an ever so slightly increase on page load time, as the browser tries to download this file. (probably only about 10-50ms or so), so if you can't remove it then it's not really a major concern.

I've had a look at your site (it's in the htaccess)

I've run a crawl on your site, there doesn't seem to be any redirect chains, which is good, so you've got no issues with what you have above.

However on a side note, I wouldn't rely on 301 redirects, you still have a lot of "old" links that are going through 301 redirects, I would update these so they don't need to pass through a redirect.

Hi EcommerceSite,

Can't see an answer to your question so far, are you still having issues?

If you want to send me a pm with your url then I'll have a look at this for you.

Tom

Going by: "First, the hreflang tags are implement properly. UK page pointing there, US page pointing there. Further down the page, there are canonical tags - except the UK canonical tag points to the UK page, and the US version points to the US page. "

It looks like you're doing it fine, however just use the chart on the site Nikhilesh linked:https://hreflang.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/mobile-hreflang-canonical.png

I would personally link your logo to the canonical version of your homepage (which would commonly be abc.com) As you want to pass as much "juice" directly to the canonical version of the homepage.

Just to expand on the other comments, the tag is used for styling, (http://www.w3schools.com/TAGs/tag_small.asp)

So the h1 would still apply, it is just styled different to the "standard" h1 style.

Just to echo what Laura has said, if you can share a URL that would be great so we can help you get to the source of the problem.

Try running a tool like screamingfrog (https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/) to check the issues above that Laura has mentioned, as doing a lot of those by hand can be quite time consuming.

Also, do you have a drop in rankings with your pages falling out the index?

Just spent a few minutes, stumbled across this page too, not sure if this is related to affiliate or not, found via here: http://dannybrown.me/2015/04/01/sorry-affiliate-bloggers-but-your-about-page-disclosure-doesnt-cut-it/

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2013/03/ftc-staff-revises-online-advertising-disclosure-guidelines

https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-releases/ftc-staff-revises-online-advertising-disclosure-guidelines/130312dotcomdisclosures.pdf

The key part I can see is this

"In addition, it is important for advertisers to draw attention to the disclosure. Consumers may not be looking for — or expecting to find — disclosures. Advertisers are responsible for ensuring that their messages are truthful and not deceptive. Accordingly, disclosures must be communicated effectively so that consumers are likely to notice and understand them in connection with the representations that the disclosures modify. Simply making the disclosure available somewhere in the ad, where some consumers might find it, does not meet the clear and conspicuous standard."

My concern with having the H1 in the logo, is actually that it may devalue the other h1 tags on the site. As they would then be duplicates. I haven't really done any research into this, would be interesting to see what would happen.

Very few people will be typing https://www.me.website.com, so I believe that you will be fine with https://me.website.com.

Expanding on what Tymen has said,

This could be a good strategy, but why would you not just 301 redirect the whole site to a page on your own site (explaining that they don't exist anymore). This way I see you getting more value to your site (one hop through the redirect instead of one hop from the redirect and the link)

Also, something that may be worth looking into is if they have any high value links, seeing where they come from and explaining the company is not existent and trying to get the links that they once had.

Have a listen to this, it summarizes duplicate content quite nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxWo4ttPgAc

Something i'd never thought about: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/anchor-links.html

So looks to not have an impact according to that article.

An answer from one of the founders (no longer in the company) who I have on skype, I stripped out a couple of things from the chat (my posts and a couple of irrelevant bits):

[16:08:31] A Founder: that's a difficult question to answer really
[16:08:43] A Founder: is it worth £80 a year ?
[16:08:51] A Founder: I would doubt it to be honest
[16:10:07] A Founder: apparently I cant reply anyway
[16:10:37] A Founder: I aint a pro
[16:11:09] Me: If you want to write it out I can reply for you
[16:12:48] A Founder: well if you want to tell him scoot also offer a free listing and I am happy to talk to him but cant as I aint a pro
[16:13:08] A Founder: and yes I was one of the 3 founders
[16:13:27] A Founder: ya they now bulk list you
[16:13:46] A Founder: 500+ directories, that to me sounds so spammy
[16:14:13] A Founder: I would claim the free listing and say thanks but no thanks to the rest
[16:17:36] A Founder: but feel free to post my thoughts if you want

Hi Aleyda,

The reason we want to merge to one domain is because the higher ups want to, so that's what is happening.

Anyway, thank you for your in depth reply unfortunately having suggested that the site merge and https goes live at the same time development won't be able to achieve that.

I do only have one question left really, if a page doesn't have an equivalent on one site. What does the rel alternate have to be, is it left blank or does it go to the main language url?

Thanks,

Tom

Have you got a link to your site? I'd happily have a quick look around your site if you want from an on-site perspective? (If you don't want to post it publicly please do pm me it)

As the moz index grows in size, Moz may have crawled some lower quality sites that have actually lowered your domain authority.

Have you seen an actual drop in traffic? As whilst Moz is a useful metric, the truly important metric is rankings/traffic.

Load time isn't that much, same domain redirects only take 16-25ms. I would be more concerned with cross domain redirects.

It'll vary because of the crawlers, each company will have a different amount of sites in their database, and they will also have a different process to get their data live in their console. Honestly I would take each with a grain of salt and just try and use them as a rough guide.

Was it this: https://moz.com/content/