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It is important to internal link with your content.
One, like Nikolas said, it will help improve your pages for search engine and it helps search engines crawl your other pages with fewer clicks. Furthermore, with a detailed anchor text, it tells search engines what the linked page is about.
Two, it also helps visitors to navigate your site easier, increase your other pages' exposure and keep visitors to stay on site longer.
Hi Donna,
What your client is doing will cause duplicate content issue. Hopefully nothing happened to the ranking yet. I would suggest you use cross-domain canonical tag to tell Google which version of the article you want to show up on the search results.
Instead of sharing the same article on three sites, your client can increase the exposure by sharing it on Social Media platforms or send the article to subscribers on that topic (if it applies).
There are many ways to increase exposure but sharing the same article on multiple site will only cause harm.
Hi Chris,
Google Webmaster has a tool that helps identify duplicate HTMLs and maybe you can use that to see if the 11,000 pages are duplicate. IF they are, I am assuming they should have the duplicate Title Tag and etc. which the tool may discover.
Hi Daniel,
From what I know, I don't believe their is any risk at doing all the domains at once. Furthermore, you are not doing to the same page but from geodomains to different geo-subdomains. I've read about people redirecting 50,000 pages in comments and I don't recall anyone mentioning their is any risk.
The only risk I can think of is it might take longer for search engines to recrawl all the pages. Maybe someone can show some light in this.
You can tell your client that suffer a few drop in ranks in the short run for success in the long run.
Hi Daniel,
Using 301 redirect is definitely the best bet. 301 redirect usually transfer 99% of the SEO to your new page so I don't believe there is any risk other than making a mistake while setting it up.
When you are redirecting make sure that eacy specific page is redirecting to another specific that is similar. You don't want a visitor wanting to learn something specific and you redirect them to the home page. You are losing opportunities there. So redirect home page to home page, topic A to topic A, topic B to topic B.
After setting up all the redirects, it might take a while for Search Engines to recrawl so don't fret when you still don't see any effect after a week or so.
SEOmoz wrote a SEO Redirection Best Practices Article, hopefully it will help!
Hi,
Like some mentioned in their answers, you should mix and match.
I would use the keyword that you want to rank for in the end (the competitive keyword) as URL and Titles and use the less competitive keywords in the content. If you use the keywords you don't want to rank for in the end in your URL and etc., once the website has been around and start getting daily visitors, I don't think you want to change the URL to the more competitive keyword.
Hi Jason,
What you have right now is a continous loop. With the canonical tag you are telling Google that the old page is the preferred page you want to show; however, then you have 301 redirecting to the new site. It will only confuse the Google bot and won't help you website at all.
Solution: Remove Canonical Tags from the new pages.
Hi Erin,
I believe that if you have a .uk ccTLD and do some minor changes to the content such as price and spelling to target your UK audience, I believe search engines will see that the .uk website targets the people in UK and the duplicate content issue can be avoided.
The following links will be very helpful!
international-seo-dropping-the-information-dust international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
Submit Sitemap to the search engines and make sure to inter-link within your website so that it will be easier for bots to crawl.
I agree with Randy that you should first go through your website and change all the Title Tags and Meta Descriptions. Once you are done, you might want to go through your website again and try including keywords related to that page in the content area and also add the keyword in the H1 Header (usually Title of that page). Furthermore, you might want to fix up some internal linking anchor text on your website.
The next step might take more work. If the URL is not well formatted; meaning you have signs and numbers in your URL, you should 301 redirect all the pages to a optimized URL page.
As for optimizing the videos, I suggest uploading it to YouTube and embed it on your website. Optimize the Title and Description with keywords.
Thanks John for the answer.
I know that using 302 redirect seems strange but due to time and budget restraint, creating a new websinte on .hk will not be possible.
Therefore ABC Company plans to use 302 temporary redirect for now and direct people to .com website and hopefully create a new website later and remove the 302. However, the thing I want to know is will the .hk domain with 302 redirect and no content be seen on HK search engines and will search engine see it as it is targeting people in Hong Kong like a real .hk website.
So you are saying that if ABC Company create an exact duplicate of the .com website (Same content) with the /hk subfolder/subdirectory and use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and geotarget, then duplicate content is not an issue. (I believe that is true based on few articles I've read but I was told that it doesn't so I want to make sure)
Hi Craig,
Why not create an awesome kick butt 404 page with links that can direct people to pages that they are looking for? This way, if your audience is interested, they can continue to navigate your site from your 404 page and you keep all the link juice to your 404 page. Your 404 page might be one of the top visited page so you should take this opportunity to include links to direct people to the right pages they might be looking for.
One reason 301 redirect may not be good is because if someone clicks on a backlink to your stie and you redirect all your 404 traffic to your home page. It might turn people off for sending them to your home page when they thought the link is directing them to something they are interested in.
Hi,
I agree that the second option of removing the category makes your website looks "flat."
I would go with the third option by creating an actualy page for the category. If anyone clicks on the category of simply visit the category URL, you can promote or display all your Natural Stones products. Furthermore, you have more page for bots to crawl on keywords that you might want to rank for.
Hi Gary,
What you mentioned is correct. You should either go with 301 redirect or use canonical tags to avoid duplicate content URL issue.
Regarding to your second question, your are also correct that the correct URl should be www.bobbyvans.com/park-ave.html. This URL is clean and easier for bots to crawl. 301 redirecting all the old URLs to the new URLs will definitely be the best action you can take and I don't believe it will hurt your ranking. However, keep in mind that you should not redirect everything to the home page but rather redirect it to a similar page.
The only problem with 301 redirect is that it make take a while for Search Engines to crawl. So don't fret when you still don't see your old ranking after a while.
Attached is a video by Matt Cutts explaining redirection. Hope it will help.
I've watched Rand's Whiteboard Friday video on How to Host and Where to Host for International Websites and read Gianluca's article on International SEO; however, I am still unable to find an answer or solution to this.
ABC Company is a US based company with the website www.abcexample.com and plans to target people in Hong Kong. Therefore, they purchase .hk ccTLD. However, with the time restraint and budget limit, ABC Company is unable to create a completely new website under .hk ccTLD.
Scenario 1: ABC Company plans to create different pages for each service offered in HK and 302 redirect .hk ccTLD blank service page to www.abcexample.com's same service page.
Quesiton 1: Will this have the same benefit of creating a .hk website? Although ABC Company is redirecting, does the .hk ccTLD still tell Serach Engines that we are targeting people in Hong Kong? Will this solution harm or help with SEO with other search engines in Hong Kong?
Scenario 2: ABC creates a /hk subdirectory under www.abcexample.com and have exactly same content in the same language as www.abcexample.com but use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and use Webmaster to Geotarget Hong Kong.
Question 2: By using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and geotarget, will this avoid duplicate content if ABC Company has exact content in the /hk folder?
Please let me know if my questions and scenarios are unclear. I understand that these are not best practices. Please advise the best way to work around this.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!