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Hi there!

Let's say that you have website A, with the domain aaa.com ...

Backlinks: Any link that points to a page within website A is a backlink (at least it is from YOUR point of view). These links could come from other websites, but also from within website A

Referral Links: A referral can be a link that isn't from a crawable web. For example, a link in an email or from Facebook.

Outbound Links: Outbound links are links that are meant to take you elsewhere. These are links that are going to direct you to another specific webpage or website altogether. Most, if not all, websites have outbound links.

**External Links: **External Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source). In layman's terms, if another website links to you, this is considered an external link to your site

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Hi,

What is the main reason for you to upload the sitemap to a new location?

I also found an article on sitemaps that might help. It says: The XML sitemaps protocol defines that XML sitemap files can not contain URLs from different domains. This includes subdomains and other kinds of variations. You have to keep all URLs to a single domain per XML sitemap.

Taken from this site https://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/multiple-domains-xml-sitemaps/

This includes tutorials on different types of sitemaps.

Hope this can help further.

Thanks,

Ian

Hi,

I Believe it's compulsory for a sitemap to be at abcd.com/sitemap.xml.

Here is a guide on sitemaps and their format for future references: https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html

You tend to only have one sitemap, unless you have a large site then you will need divide the sitemaps across different pages, a general rule of thumb is to keep the sitemap below 50,000 URLs. I'd say one sitemap at abcd.com/sitemap.xml should be enough for a standard website.

I'm unsure of Question a) if you could repeat that in more detail please.

Finally, there are two ways to submit a sitemap,

1. Directly within Google Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) using the 'Test/Add Sitemap' feature, by adding /sitemap.xml and testing it before submitting it.

2. Insert the your sitemap line anywhere in your robots.txt file, specifying the path to your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://example.com/sitemap_location.xml

You can also find more information and guidelines on sitemaps here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en&ref_topic=4581190

Hope that helps.

Ian

Hi,

I think there is only 1 redirect chain happening and that seems to be from the http://stickylife.com URL which redirects to the https://stickylife.com and then redirects to https://www.stickylife.com

Could you place a redirect on the http://stickylife.com URL to redirect straight to the https://www.stickylife.com URL?

Here is a more detailed article into how to fix redirect chains https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/heres-how-to-keep-301-redirects-from-ruining-your-seo

If one URL is gaining a higher page authority than the other, have you considered placing a canonical tag to said URL explaining to Google what URL you want to rank?

Hi,

I've put the URL into a redirect mapping tool and I can see that the redirects are happening to send all users to the secure version of your site.

In my opinion this is a good thing as everyone who visits your site will reach the secure version, and you redirect all different alterations of your URL so that would avoid duplicate content.

If you had a http:// and a https:// version of your site both accessible that could be seen as duplicate content, so directing all users to one version of the site will help.

For future reference check out this handy tool to see the inforgraphic I see, when I inputted your URL.

https://varvy.com/tools/redirects/

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Ian

Hi,

With Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .com Google use something called geotagging. In Google Search Console, you are able to select 'unlisted' within the international targeting option. This means that Google will determine what country the user is in and decide whether the site should be shown within this country.

However, you would need to specify a language within the URL or the sitemap of the page.

For example, if https://www.babyment.com was unlisted in Google Search Console and it was searched for in Malaysia, you would need to specify the country and the language so Google understands that this page can be used by the people in Malaysia.

In my opinion, the best URL to have in this situation would be https://www.babyment.com/en/my which indicates 'en' the website is for English speaking and 'my' is the website is targeted for Malaysia.

Alternatively you can specify the language and country of the page within the source code of the page using hreflang="en-my"

Hi,

Yes I believe they are important, if the page title is too long, Google will typically truncate the title to fit within the guidelines (Around 50-60 Characters).

If this happens, then you run the risk of losing out on important keywords, or having a page title that doesn't really make sense.

If the page title is too short then you'll be losing out on valuable space where you can include important keywords or your brand name!

Page titles in my opinion will always look better, and entice CTR if they follow a similar fashion to my example below:

Keyword | Brand Name

However, I would say don't be too strict on the page title length, for example if you have one that is 48 Characters or 65 Characters long, I wouldn't worry. It's the page titles that are 20 Characters long, you're under utilizing or 90 Characters long that won't be displayed correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean, if Google index keywords beyond 60 Characters, Google will index pages, and the content within it. Page titles are generally used for the link you click within your search results. Hence why they are so important as they should do everything possible to encourage CTR.

Thinks of the page title as the first thing a user will see/notice when looking through the results page.

Hope this helps!

Ian

Hey There!,

Deleting a page of a site is always tricky, so I would always consider looking at other factors that may be causing this page to still show in Google results.

Firstly I would check the sitemap. The sitemap is an easy way to tell Google what pages you want indexed.  I would remove the page in question from the sitemap if you haven't already, then I would log into Google Search Console and upload the new one. This should provide Google with a fresh new sitemap without the 404 Page hopefully preventing the page being indexed.

Another consideration when removing a page from the site, is to ensure there are no other sites still linking to that page, if Google can access your site from another page or another site, chances are it will index it.

For this I would implement a 301 re-direct to redirect users(and bots) visiting that page to a relevant equivalent.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Ian

Hey,

Interesting question!

What channel of search traffic is dipping and by what percentage?

I would filter the traffic by channel to see what exactly is dipping. For example, if your paid search channel is dipping in traffic over the weekend it could be that your budget isn't quite high enough and your ads are not appearing as high as they may be during the week.

What other factors could be driving brand awareness? For example, are you posting updates across social networks during the week, but not on the weekend?

This could be impacting who organically searches for your brand after they've seen a tweet or a Facebook status.

I would also check percentage that's dropping over the weekend, if it's consistent over the past 3 months, then it could be normal behavior and I wouldn't worry.

Hope this helps!

Hi,

I wonder if other sites are still linking to your old pages. Have you checked in analytics if you're receiving any traffic?

As far as I'm aware Google will index pages if they're crawable.

Have you considered adding no index tags to the pages you no longer want indexed?

Another tip is to submit a new XML sitemap to Google via Google search console. This should essentially tell Google what pages are preferred in your site.

Hope this helps.

Hey!

Thanks for posting, that's a really good question,

Google will typically create a meta description based on the content of that page, in this instance if the meta description is completely missing Google will use an algorithm to pull through keywords that it deems relevant to the user's search query, directly from the copy of the page.

One negative of this is, you will have a lack of control over what is displayed in the SERPs about your brand.

If the meta description is pulling through an incorrect phone number, this may be caused by a hidden piece of code on the page, that Google deems relevant.

Do you have an the page URL as an example?

That being said, when you come to update the meta description, as long as it contains relevant and up to date information based on the content of the page and it's within Google guidelines, (150 - 160 Characters) then Google should not find the need to create a meta description, and the bogus number should no longer be displayed.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,