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Can't see anything wrong with this at all.

It's a page designed with the user at heart.  The first view keeps this concise and lets the user select the style they want, after which they can click for more information if necessary, rather than having an information overload.

Just because text is being hidden to begin with doesn't make it a bad thing.  I find this very similar to the FAQ pages that you get with the sort of accordion style (click the + sign, expand for more information).  I think it works well for a product page and I'm surprised it hasn't been done more.

Completely "white-hat" in my view - the only grey area would be if those descriptions are being lifted from the original page, might be a weeny bit of duplicate content in that case.

Hey there

Having a self referring canonical tag, as it were, is something I'd recommend for a couple of reasons.

As you have pointed out, canonical tags can help remove the chance of other duplicate pages getting indexed.  However, Google will indexes URLs and one physical page can have a number of different URLs.  For example, if your website has a search function of anything else that might produce a query string (like domain.com/page?query), these URLs can also be indexed and would be seen as duplicate content by Google.

There would not be a physical page to apply the tag to, but if you add a self referring canonical tag, any dynamic URL that is generated by your CMS should not be indexed, helping to limit the chance of any duplicate content penalty.

Furthermore, I believe that having a tag on your page protects you somewhat from scrapers and people stealing your content.  If your page is indexed first with your tag, any syndicated or duplicate versions from 3rd parties in theory should not be able to rank that content.

You look at places like Search Engine Land and they have these self referring canonicals too.

Hope this helps. Enjoy your weekend!

Hi Laura

Both options are feasible really.  301ing the domain will pass the link equity to the shed finders site, which in turn may help it to rank for that keyword.  It may warrant a bespoke landing page for the keyword, in which case creating a URL for that keyword and then redirecting the root domain to that page would be a good solution.

However, you or your client may prefer to rank for the keyword for this microsite - if they feel that site better suits the purpose of the keyword.  In this case, carrying on your link building and inbound marketing efforts for that site should inevitably help it rank for that keyword.  You would want to make the site as informative as possible, while also making it as authoritative as possible - which may include guides, articles, videos and other rich media, social media integration and so on.  Creating this 'authoritative status' could help it rank quicker, as Google does give favour to those sites that can be recognised as a brand.

If you do all of that, you would feasibly be able to link the sites to each other - but do take care if you do so.  It could very easily look like a link network or scheme if it is overdone, while the reciprocal link itself could look suspicious to Google if it looks as though it is just there to pass PageRank and not direct the user to another authoritative website.  A recent Matt Cutts video on site interlinking may be of interest to you: http://youtu.be/x0-jw_PfwtY

Hope this helps Laura!

Hey there

As you'll probably be aware, we have just had the latest Penguin algorithm update, aimed at devaluing low quality and manipulative links.

Of the links pointing to your page, I'd say that probably all of them look manipulative and look to have been built for a search engine.

The sites in question look like link farms - a blog network that links out to a number of unrelated health niche websites (and some random ones).  There's very little value on show for a user, each article looks placed to provide an optimised anchor text backlink to a number of websites.

In addition, each domain looks like it has once expired and been bought up someone and turned into a blog network, probably on the premise that the domains were old and carried PR, DA and PA, so would pass decent link equity.  The anchor text pointing to your website all look targeted as well.

Basically, nearly every link to that page looks artificial, placed for a search engine and intended to pass PageRank, without offering anything for a user. It's exactly the sort of link that this Penguin update would try and target, so it's no great surprise to me that you have lost your rankings.

My advice would be try and get the links removed ASAP.  Last resort would be to use the disavow tool.  You may need to wait until the next algorithm refresh to see the effect of removing/disavowing the links take place - the last time Penguin refreshed was 6 months ago prior to yesterday, so we can only hope the new version will refresh monthly.

In the mean time, I would concentrate on earning links by offering quality content, resources or guides to your users.  Contact webmasters and bloggers in your field that could benefit from your expertise, or alternatively promote the content on your own blog and use marketing, PR and social media to attract attention to it.

Hope this helps.

Hi Eduard

First of all, if your site was effected by the Penguin 2.0 update, then your duplicate page content wouldn't have been the trigger.  That has to do with the Panda algorithm (which is now part of the main algorithm), so if the drop came during the Penguin update, you could have a whole number of different problems with your site as well.

My advice would be to run your site through the Panguin tool: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

This will line up your organic traffic with announced Google updates - see if your drop matches up with the Penguin update.  If it does, then you have a whole number of things to check about the inbound links to your website.

To answer the questions you posted:

1. That should do the trick - the only problem is that by setting a canonical version you are instructing Google not to rank or consider any of the alternate versions. A more ideal solution in my opinion would be to rewrite the content for the other sites, ensuring no chance of a duplicate content penalty and giving the other sites a chance to rank.

2. I've seen this be a problem with Penguin before and every time I've seen it fixed the links have either been removed or have been made nofollow.  You may want to limit the amount of pages the footer links appear (just core landing pages) and also make them nofollow.

Hope this helps

I'm fairly sure that the Googlebot ignores those

title elements, so I can't imagine this having any positive SEO effect.

The worse case scenario would be that if its got a lot of keywords in the title tag, it could be seen as keyword stuffing and we know that Google can penalise sites for over-optimisation on its content.

However, like I said, I believe the bot ignores these elements.  To be safe, just make sure that each tag is relevant and not overdone or stuffed.  Keep it natural to the reader and there will be no problem.

Yeah, that definitely looks manipulative.  Wouldn't be advocating that.

As for why they haven't been penalised - clearly the site hasn't been manually reviewed/penalised, so it's up to the algorithm to flag the page.  You look at the rest of the homepage and, while it looks a bit crude, it serves the user pretty well.  Nothing else on there looks manipulative, it's relatively clean etc - so you'd say 90/95% of the page, for a user, is helpful.  With that in mind, it's a bit easier to see why it may not have been flagged and penalised yet by the algo.

Rest assured though, it it was detected, it would be penalised for that stuffing.  It's not a massive offence, mind. The irony though is that the ramifications of any penalty would be much larger than any SEO benefit those keywords are having.

Purely on the ratio - no. It's no problem at all.  I very much doubt your followed vs non-followed ratio is a ranking or negative ranking factor.

However, all of those no-followed links will not be passing link equity and - I'm very much generalising here - a few spammy links are generally nofollowed, such as blog comments.  I'd just quickly review the links that are there and make sure they aren't spammy, but other than that having a larger amount of nofollow links won't be a problem.

Hope that helps.

The Google AdWords keyword tool only provides an estimation of monthly search.  The figures are rounded up/down, so it's very unlikely that both would have an identical number of searches.  In addition, the number is based on PPC data (although you would still suspect that the user behaviour would be the same for organic).  Incidentally, Bing's keyword research tool provides exact figures.

The general takeaway is that there are roughly the same number of people searching for both terms month on month.  That's all you can really take from the keyword tool, as competition relates to PPC as well and not for the domains currently ranking on page 1. There is usually correlation between an increase in monthly searches and the competitiveness of the term, but sometimes you might just unearth a diamond in the rough.

Hope this helps to clarify some issues.

In theory, absolutely. I just think the disavow tool and its effectiveness is a bit of a grey area.

Call me paranoid, but I'd rather not associate any old domain that has had a penalty, lifted or otherwise, with a new domain in any way shape or form.  Like I say though, that could be overkill.

Hey there

Something like SEMRush, KeywordSpy and KeywordEye should be able to do what you're looking for.  Can do it for your site and competitors too.

All three come with a free trial, so it's worth checking them out.

Hope this helps.

Any time! It's definitely wise to err on the side of caution. If you ever want to chew the fat on SEO/digital stuff I'd be happy to help.

Hey there

I'll run through what I do to get an idea of search volume.  Your mileage may vary, but all in all I've found this to be pretty accurate.

The first step I take is to use the Google Keyword Tool.  It does look at paid data which is a pain for sure, but it's a great starting point.  A feature that's been added to the new keyword planner is search volume for that keyword over the last 12 months.  This is particularly useful as you can see if the keyword is gaining or losing interest, which is a good way to look at whether it is worth targeting.

The second step is to use Bing’s organic search volume tool for the last month, which you can find here: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/keywords.  This appears to have many advantages over Google’s mechanism, as it is based on monthly data, it doesn’t provide rounded up results and is based on Bing’s organic search volume – all of which would make it more accurate than Google in theory.  However, the sample size of searchers in Bing is obviously significantly smaller and with anywhere between 85-95% of searchers still using Google, we cannot rely on Bing’s data too much.

I then aggregate the two scores to get an average search volume, then I look at relevancy once again.  I refer to Fresh Web Explorer (http://freshwebexplorer.seomoz.org/), which I use to measure the relevancy of the term in recent search activity.  The higher the score, the more that exact term was picked up by the tool over the last 30 days.  The tool does have some limitations, as it works on a limited base of RSS feeds that it has identified as following (there are notable exceptions), but it provides us with another indication of the keyword’s relevance over recent search.

Finally, I use another aggregator for the keyword’s recent mentions in the form of Topsy (http://topsy.com/).  This gives a more social media insight into the mentions of the keyword.  Again, the higher the number, the more mentions the keyword received.

Run these scores for about 20-30 of your prospective keywords and you should get an accurate idea of which ones will bring in traffic, plus an idea on which ones will bring in around the traffic number that Google and Bing advertise.

Hope this helps.

Hi there Chris

If I'm understanding you correctly, I also agree with your conclusion. If you look at JS loaded content like on the bottom of this page (click the "read more" at the very bottom), that is all content that Google can see and parse.

You can also put this to the test yourselves. If you go to SEO Browser, insert your URL and press "simple", it will show you how your page looks to the Googlebot.  If you can see that content that you talked about in the result page, you can be sure that Google sees it too. Definitely one of my favourite tools

Hope this helps!

The only thing I would ask is: What do you aim to achieve by deleting them?

They may not be 'optimised' posts, but if they aren't doing any harm - and by that I mainly been duplicate or thin content - then I don't see any reason to delete them.  There is a school of thought as well is that a site with more indexed pages will, roughly speaking, be seen more as an authority site (and we all know Google loves authority).

So I'd not worry about them and focus on your fresh content and just optimise them.  I'll just say as well, you don't always want to write with keywords in mind - your audience should be the primary goal, but of course it pays to have keywords in things like title tags, h1s and metas etc.  Just don't stuff the thing with the keyword throughout (I'm sure you already knew this).

TL;DR - No worries mate, just write away!

Hi there

It sounds like you've got all the basis covered.  To avoid any form of duplication, it is important to redirect the old version to the new URL as soon as possible, preferably simultaneously when the new blog is published.  That will ensure the two won't be indexed together, plus it makes sense that an updated would be redirected.

There are other methods as well - you could simply remove the old blog post page and return a 404 (which isn't a bad thing), update the canonicals like you say or add a robots instruction to prevent the page from being indexed.  But I think a 301 redirect here would be best, as it would pass on any link equity (no matter how small) the previous page did earn, it's one of the quickest methods to remove old pages from the Google index and for continuity's sake I think it makes sense too.

The fact that you're changing the old post in a substantial way might mean that you could potentially keep both versions on your site, but only you'll be the judge of how unique it is.  I think, to remove any doubt, you should use the 301.

Hope this helps.

Hi Kevin

The Keyword Planner does a pretty good job of this now.  If you select any of the options and type in your keyword, you'll get the search volume.

Next to the "Avg. monthly search volume" there's a little graph icon.  Hover over that and you'll get the last 12 months and the average search data for that month.  There you should be able to see any peaks or troughs.

Hope this helps!

Hi there

I think you're inkling is correct, this would be an old penalty.

The manual action tab is relatively new, coming up to just a year old this month.  Both myself and some agency buddies have seen sites that have had penalties in there when previously the site owner (and sometimes even the agency!) did not think there was a penalty.

If you have Webmaster Tools set up, you should always receive a message whenever manual action has been taken (bar a system error).  However, in the past, for example, you may not have had WMT set up when a penalty has been applied, or you didn't have access to the account then. Therefore, the message would not be there for you to read, due to it not being sent or deleted.  However, the manual action tab will show any penalties that the site has, regardless of when it was applied, when WMT was set up, or if a message was sent or not.

Therefore, if you're seeing a penalty notice in the tab but no message was received, I believe that means it would be an old penalty - as a new one would have also sent a message as well.

Hope that all makes sense.

Hi Ben

First of all, that's a good solid approach.  I like SEMRush a lot.

Just to clarify for you - the "competition" metric in the Keyword Planner tool is strictly for paid search competition.  The search volume is for all search volume (searches that resulted in a paid or organic click, or no click at all).

Moz's tool gives you a competition score based on organic competition, so it is a good supplement.

You might also be interested in Term Explorer - as it gives a topline competition based on organic competition and is a bit more indepth.  I'm a big fan of it.

Hope this helps.

Presuming your product pages sit under a /products/ subfolder, you could use this code in your htaccess file:

RewriteRule ^products/(.*)$ /anotherdirectory/$1 [R=301,NC,L]

Or to redirect all to the homepage:

RewriteRule ^products/(.*)$ /$1 [R=301,NC,L]

Obviously you can change the words "products" and "anotherdirectory" to whatever is applicable to you.

For more info on htaccess redirection you can read the Moz guide here.