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**What happens if we canonical from A to B and set redirect from B to C? ** Keep in mind that rel=canonical is optionally obeyed by Google and some people would say that it is recognized by Google by chance.  So, when you place that on a webpage Google might honor it or they might not.  How they honor it today might be different from how they honor it tomorrow  ---  and Google often changes their mind about such things without telling anybody.  And, so far, they are not telling anybody EXACTLY how they treat 301 redirects and because of that, in my opinion, anyone outside of Google who gives firm answers to how rel=canonicals work knows not that he knows not. If you want these pages associated with one another then you should use 301 redirects and not canonicals.  301 redirects are on your server and they force visitors and Google crawlers to your intended page.  Still, Google might not give full credit for them (but they say that they currently do), however, if you want to pass value from one page to another, a 301 redirect is the most assured way to make that happen, in my opinion. I think that your  **What happens if we canonical from A to B and set redirect from B to C? ** is looking for a far reaching answer.  Nobody can tell you with assurance what is really gonna happen.  And, again, what happens can be changed by Google at whim and without no notice.

Thanks for the answers and suggestions. I have more questions raised in my mind and I put them in the below different thread very clearly. Please reply there. https://moz.com/community/q/what-happens-when-we-canonical-and-point-to-a-page-which-has-been-redirected-to-another-page-google-response

The semantic purpose of a header tag is to mark a collection of words as a header introducing a section of descriptive content. If what you have instead is a series of headers with no content in between, you're defeating the purpose. There's no "reason" to mark those list elements as headers. If you're using because it's an easy way to create the styling for those terms, you should get out of that habit. There's no major damage done by having headers follow each other, but there's no real benefit either. And for what tiny value those headers bring for helping search engine crawlers better understand your page content, you've thrown that away. In other words - don't do it. Hope that helps? Paul

You have to decide how important the new pages are compared to the old ones. If you really want the new pages to beat the old pages, you should 301 the old pages to the new ones. (You could even make another new page, "old guides," that you could link to from the new page, if there is enough demand for the old guides.) If you are trying to move authority away from the old pages and onto the new pages, the old pages won't be as findable in search. You have to decide whether this is important. Yes, canonicals do pass page rank though (as with many things in SEO) there is debate about the details. Yes, you could do that, but it is sending Google mixed messages. First you tell them to ignore the old page and look at the new page, but then the new page points to the page you said to ignore. (Take a look at Pete Meyers' Whiteboard Friday for more on this.) The other problem with this approach is that the old content would still be out there, potentially getting links or other recognition that you'd rather have for the new page. (Even though page authority can be passed in various ways, you always lose something during transfer.)

Nigel's suggestions are right on. We redirected subdomains into folders on the main site and the results were KICKASS.     KICKASS.  We started producing a lot more traffic and making a lot more money.

Google's goal is to have the most relevant information possible, so improving and updating your content won't get you deindexed—quite the opposite. When you say you dropped in rankings when you added new content, what do you mean? The pages you changed dropped down? Or dropped out of Google's index? It is hard to say why that would have happened without seeing what changed but if you are sure that your changes made the pages better for what they were ranking for, it is likely that they will come back. In the meantime, be sure you didn't change something you didn't intend to change like the index/noindex status of the page. (It seems obvious, but sometimes these things can just slip through!)

If a page has no links and has not been submitted another way, Google won't see it.

Hi vtmoz, OK. You can upload a file containing all the domains you want to disavow you don't need to do that one by one. To check thousands of links is not something one wants to do for sure actually... How you could do it: Disavow them all (from Webmaster Tools you export them all to a file) and then you delete a couple of dozens you know are strong and valuable domains. Cheers, Cesare

I agree with seoman10 in that it is often difficult to get accurate results, especially when a client is out of state and you are trying to replicate what they are seeing. One saving grace is that some tools, like SemRush actually allow you to set where you want to search from ex: if your client is in Little Rock Arkansas & you are located in NYC you can set your rank tracking from Little Rock and it is actually pretty accurate. Nothing is 100%, but we have found this is pretty reliable. Cheers, G

You absolutely do not want to use the remove URL tool in Search Console!! Since those old subdomain pages have been ranking and earning traffic and authority in the SERPs, it would be a huge mistake to just throw that all away. Instead, you must use 301-redirects to point those old page URLs to the new page you've created on the main site that you now wish to earn that traffic. The authority and ranking power of the old pages will transfer to the new ones. It's like being told you can choose to start the race from the starting line, or you can be given a 25-yard head start with a tailwind. Take the head start - redirect the old pages. A side effect of the 301 redirects is that after a period of time, the search engines will stop indexing the old pages, so they'll drop out of the SERPs eventually. Hope that helps? Paul

Well the general answer is... yes, that can hurt you for sure if you're trying to rank. There's MANY ways duplicate content can hurt you. We had a competitor duplicate our content recently... we sent a well written letter informing them they had 48 hours to take the website down or we would take legal action. They took that website down in about two hours and apologized, stating it was a developer they hired that used our website as a template. If multiple partners are using the same content and your not currently ranking... your best option is to write fresh unique optimized content. If you're ranking with your current content... then going after every partner duplicating your content might be the better option.

It is possible for Google to index content within an iframe. There are some solutions to stop it indexing the content, if possible I would get your partner to add a canonical to your page to stop the content competing. However, this really depends on what the purpose of the page is and what you are able to do technically. This is a really good case study explaining the different ways to index iframes by search laboratory.  https://www.searchlaboratory.com/2017/09/iframes-and-seo/

Hi there, Apologies on the delayed reply! It's hard for me to say it is keyword stuffing without seeing the content of the page. In all honesty, I feel you will be better off building out an internal page with targeted SEO content. I don't think the homepage is the best place to present this sort of information, I feel that should be more about your brand and an overview of the services you provide. Even if you take a look at the first page of search results for "SEO", you don't see homepages ranking. You see content-heavy, internal pages being returned (see Moz and Search Engine Land results). My suggestion, move that copy to a new 'SEO' targeted internal page. Make sure the page title, header tags, copy, internal linking, alt= tags, meta description etc. are all optimized for SEO terms. Expand on the copy that you currently have to be more valuable and/or informative (not to say it is not already valuable). To do so, look at queries that are returning instant answer results and look at the 'People Also Ask' recommended questions provided by Google. Include answers to these questions within your copy under header tags that essentially mimic the question. Remember, long-form content tends to perform better in organic. From there, work on promoting this content and pushing natural links to this page from authoritative, relevant resources. Hope this helps!

Agree with Tom re getting it done with 301 redirects. The other thing to be very careful about though is that the newly acquired websites don't have major quality issues, especially spammy, manipulative backlink profiles. If the infringing sites were using inappropriate SEO methods and were coming under algorithmic pressure/penalties as a result, those issues will also be passed to your "real" site. Paul

It looks like you are doing some "Onsite" optimization, but you may need to concentrate on doing some "Offsite" seo. Try to get a few good articles written and posted on "High" value sites and have better "DA" Domain Authority scores than your site does. High-quality backlinks will really help your rankings as long as they have real value and are not Spammy. The search engines will reward you even though it can take some time and a lot of work. Remember even if you get a few good links from strong sites, there are many other factors to consider. Here is a link to a good article about "Offsite SEO". Best Regards.

Actually our sub domains are ranking for brand related queries like "nike shoes" or "nike sports wear" (brand + keyword) and they are generating good traffic. I just wonder if we employ same landing pages on our main website (branded site); will it help my main website to rank for related keywords? And this traffic on sub domains generated from organic traffic is helping my main website or not?

1) Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Depends "blog.yourwebsite.com" is not the same "yourwebsite.com/blog/" the first will count for Google as a different website. In fact you can check it on Google Analytics you can create 2 tracking codes and you will see that there is no relation betwen the 2 websites. In the other hands the sencond option "yourwebsite.com/blog/" will count as an internal page so all the traffic generated by the blog will count for the website. In my case I use subdomains for Landing Pages such as "promotions.mywebsite.com" to avoid orphan pages errors and "mywebsite.com/blog/" to generate and rank content 2) Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? It’s confirmed that Google uses data from Google Chrome to determine whether or not people visit a site (and how often). Sites with lots of _dir_ect traffic are likely higher quality than sites that get very little direct traffic. But this not 100% True. I have several websites with thousand of visits per day generated by ads networks, affiliate networks and they doesnt have a good rank.....Yeah I know sounds contradictory? the point is that those websites were builded for make money, and drive sales or leads, not for SEO. This are the Most Important Ranking Factors, According to SEO Industry Studies Content Backlinks Mobile-First User Experience Other Technical Factors 3) Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? In my experience google classify by content or topic not just for keyword, as an example I will mention one of my websites, a product named phen375, is weight loss pill, normally an affiliate create a post or article to promote it, usually the create somethig like "definitive guide about phen375" or "truth about phen375" and this affiliate is ranked in first place with keywords like "phen375", "phen375 reviews", or "how to take phen375" .....Why? because Google always try to define the intention of the users and if a website meet that intention then Google rank that website. How? the affiliate made I really good job creating an article that meets those criteria. Create Links, Onpage Optimization, Good Content ect ect ect Sources https://www.searchenginejournal.com/4-important-ranking-factors-according-seo-industry-studies/184619/ https://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors

Hi Igor, Thanks for the response. I have a confusion with your answer. Could you please clarify? > How can they affect your rankings if you don't have pages optimized for these queries on your main domain? As Google considers sub domains as different websites, related traffic is getting taken away from main website. It it don't hurt, at least main website get benefited with receiving this traffic IMO. > Is your goal here getting relevant traffic to your website or ranking for more keywords with your main domain? Both. I think these are vice-versa. If we rank main website for more keywords, relevant traffic n will be increased automatically right?. All I would like to know is, if our website traffic increased by 30% for branded & relevant keywords, will it benefit our website in rankings?, especially for non-branded organic search.

I would think of these as keyword first, and use the general topic to inform what should go on that page. You'll also need to separate the purpose of the page versus the intent of the keyword. For example, let's say you sell payroll software. A few of the keywords you'll encounter might include: payroll payroll services payroll software free payroll calculator how to do payroll Each of these keywords has a different intent - so I would start out by identifying what the user should likely find if you were magically ranking #1 for that content: payroll - this is a "split intent" keyword and the user could be looking for a number of things. Let's set this aside for a moment, but most likely only your highest linked pages will rank for a head term like this, so your goal is to either get your homepage ranking, or get your "payroll guide" type of content ranking. payroll services - this is going to be a features/services type of page or even a homepage, since the user is looking for someone to take over their payroll. As a software company, you may want to build this page and tell users how your team handles payroll (if they do) or how the user doesn't need to hire a full service because your software makes it so easy. payroll software - this user likely wants to do their own payroll but automate the process with software, maybe even making it a one-step process. That deserves a feature/product type of page experience selling them on what your software offers. free payroll calculator - this user is most likely already handling their own payroll and just wants to use a quick tool to spot check their numbers. You should built a tool that does this for the user, and then have a call to action on the page that says you can save them a lot of time by just using your software instead. how to do payroll - this user is early on in the process of hiring employees or managing payroll and wants a complete guide to make sure they're doing it right. This type of query deserves a long-form guide, similar to the Beginner's Guide to SEO. On each of these pages it might be natural to talk about taxes, W2s, benefits, deductions, etc. But you're going to talk about them different on each of these pages. Yes - you will want some body content on every page you publish that is intended to rank for something, but you can talk about the topics differently on every page. Does this process help you in figuring out what type of content to put on each page? I can keep going but want to make sure that this is helping.

Hi vtmoz, I see you have posted an updated question on this issue separately - regarding the spammy inbound links pointing to this subdomain. That is a more likely problem for your site. That said, the more spam that shows up on that subdomain, the more likely Google is to seeing your site as part of a "bad neighborhood" of the web, and this could risk the organic visibility of your root domain. There is no documentation on "how much spammy content is too much" - generally, some spammy content on a subdomain doesn't negatively impact the entire domain. However I have seen cases where an entire domain was negatively impacted by a very large number of spammy pages on various subdomains. It's a matter of scale. If your rankings and traffic on your primary domain are important, my advice would be to mitigate the risk by either policing the content on your forum subdomains by bringing in admins, or shutting down the forums entirely. Best, Mike