Hi Joel,

Yes, you can use multiple h1 tags across a page. From what I've seen, it doesn't have much, if any, impact on your search performance. As for HTML5, it is completely valid to have multiple h1 tags or to structure it with an h1 per section.

All that said, I still prefer to have only one h1 tag per page. Realistically, each page can only have one heading that is the most important. However, this isn't about search or usability or programming requirements, it is just my preference because it helps me prioritize my content.

Thanks.

Hi Brett,

The reasoning behind combining CSS files is to reduce the number of files that need to be requested when the page is loaded. If you load one CSS file instead of five CSS files, your page should load somewhat faster. This is especially true when dealing with larger CSS files (for example, five large CSS files combined to one really large CSS file will usually make the site load faster). I'd recommend combining CSS files if you can. Depending on what system you are working with, and how much control you have over the code, you may not be able to. What reasons were given to not combine files?

Matthew

Hi Brett,

Poorly written CSS selectors do not have much, if any, impact on site speed. I've never seen an issue where bad CSS changed the load of a page I was working on. That said, writing clean CSS can be helpful in a lot of other areas, including code maintainability.

There is a good article on this that you might find interesting: http://css-tricks.com/efficiently-rendering-css/

I hope that helps.

Matthew

Hey Marie,

If it wasn't for the Panda situation, I would say you should 301 redirect the subdomain back to the main site. I've had to do that more than once (unfortunately) and a redirect has worked every time to remove the development subdomain from the search results.

However, because of the Panda flag, that may result in both the main site and the subdomain site getting flagged by Panda and thus both sites falling out of the index (which might make it even harder to regain).

Here is one thought. Is it possible to redirect a few pages on the subdomain and put a canonical on a few other pages on the subdomain? That way you could see what happens with those pages. If I were you, I would test out both options before applying to the whole site and I'd test on the most insignificant pages there are on the site (privacy policy, terms and conditions, etc.)

This is a really interesting question and I'll be anxious to hear what others have to say. Please let me know what ends up happening and how you go about fixing this.

Matthew

Hi Johan,

A 410 response code is perfectly acceptable for expired pages. With a 410, you are communicating that page is "gone" and expired content usually is "gone", so it fits. However, with 410 you are going to see that page fall out of the index and that page will lose traffic (assuming it would get any given that some expired content likely won't get any traffic since it is no longer timely) and, more importantly, lose link value (if you had any links to those pages).

As for 301 redirects, I'd start tracking visits to the 410 expired page and links to the 410 expired pages. How much traffic are you getting? How engaged is that traffic? How many links are there and are they good quality? Links are easy enough to track in OSE and for tracking traffic you can use Google events (http://antezeta.com/news/404-errors-google-analytics).

When I see a lot of links or a lot of traffic (especially traffic that leaves), I've converted a 410 page into a 301 redirect that goes to our best (programmatic) guess. For instance, 301 redirect the user to a search for the properties in a similar location or similar price range (or etc.). What I've often found is that when I get the the user redirected to the best page, I'm more likely to see them engage and use the site. Along with the user benefits, I've also see that help with overall organic performance when there are a lot of links back to these pages.

Hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

Hi, 1. Your redirect to www should work. If that isn't working, that might be a sign that mod_rewrite is disabled and in that case, I'd check with your hosting company to verify the server config.

2. As for the index.php, I wasn't able to get your code working. Here is a code snippet that should remove index.php from all your URLs. It is similar to what you are using, but matches in a different way.

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.index.php\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L]

Hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

Hi,

First off, even with a canonical, I'd suggest you have a unique title tag if for no other reason than users. Changing the title, even slightly, can help. For my clients, I usually suggest something simple like adding ", Page #2" after the main title. Google may or may not index the page, but that way if a user bookmarks the page (or shares it), the title is different.

Second, you need more than a canonical link to correct this problem. You are dealing with a sequence, which means you need to use rel prev/next as well as the canonical. (For example: on page 2 of your jobs, the canonical would be /jobs/2, the rel prev would be /jobs, and rel next would be /jobs/3.) Treating these pages like a sequence will help explain this group of pages more effectively. And, that means...

Finally, the rel prev/next would also help those second, third, fourth, etc. pages  from falling out of Google's index and allow Google to find those jobs listed on those subsequent pages. Instead of telling Google that the subsequent pages are duplications (which is what you are saying by having a canonical referencing the main page on each subsequent page), you instead would be saying that these pages are grouped together as a sequence making it acceptable for Google to crawl through those pages.

I hope that helps. Also, I'm not sure how SEOmoz handles the canonical in regards to duplicate content.

Thanks.

Hey,

Yeah, I'd say those are nearly-duplicated enough where you might not get decent rankings/traffic of these pages. If you are already starting to see a decrease in performance as you add more, that is a pretty good indicator that you have a problem.

Your idea of a master page might make sense and might give you a way to create more unique content. For example, maybe you have a page about airports in the New York area with unique content for that area and then provide the lists of transportation services based on an airport filter.

Here are a couple of other ideas:

Can you add in any unique content to these pages? Right now, you have the same sentence on each page: "Guide to all the Limo/Black Car services, taxis, airport service shuttles, shared ride vans and public transit to [airport name]." Could you make that more unique? Even something like testimonials or photos could help make this page noticeably different than the other airport pages.

Can you get (good) links to these airport pages? I've seen some cases where having many good links to a duplicated (or near-duplicated) page still ensures the page ranks and gets traffic. I'm not sure if making a page unique or getting links is harder though.

I hope that helps. Thanks, Matthew

I'd argue in favor of creating different, unique, targeted pages for each OS. That way each page for each OS can be indexed by Google/Bing and target different words, giving you more ways to attract traffic into the site. Plus, any time you route traffic differently based on user agent you open yourself up for a lot of potential problems.

Also, you might consider doing some JavaScript cookie-based detection and default people to one OS page or another, but still give users/search engines a choice to access the other OS pages (in case that detection was wrong or users are interested in another OS).

You do have two h1s. Your logo is in an H1 as is the page title:

[http://www.absolutepower.nl/](<a class=)" title="Sportvoeding en Voedingssupplementen - Absolute Power" style="height:100px;">Sportvoeding en Voedingssupplementen - Absolute Power

and

class="line">Proteine Shakes

I wouldn't say it is a huge priority, but if possible I'd remove the h1 from your around your logo if you can and keep it around the page title. From a quick glance at your site and css, it doesn't look like you are depending on that h1 tag for formatting. Again though, I would place that at a much lower priority.

I wouldn't redirect just bots to http instead of https. That is a lot of work and honestly not worth the effort. I have worked on plenty of sites that require https across the entire site and Google crawls those with no issue.

As for your website, I wouldn't worry too much about http v. https for the canonical. However, if you can I would keep it consistent on a page level. It would be fine to say that the canonical for the about page is https://www.domain.com/about but the canonical for the home page is http://www.domain.com. I've had to do this on a number of ecomerce sites where the product pages are https but the rest of the site is http.

I hope that helps.

How much traffic do you get to those duplicated pages right now from Google/Bing? Are all of those pages indexed? Can you tell if you are losing out to the manufacturer websites? If the pages are indexed, you are getting traffic, and seem to be "beating" the manufacturer's website, I wouldn't worry too much. On sites I've worked on, I've seen duplicated pages get no traffic (or only one page gets traffic, but not all pages) or they get some traffic but the manufacturer's website ranks considerably higher. That is when you know you have a problem worth correcting. Another way to approach this would be to take a sample of ~50 products that get some traffic from search right now. Take unique pictures and write unique content for those products. Then, measure the results. Did organic traffic increase after 30, 60, 90 days? If so, you know that you've got a problem with duplicate content worth correcting. I hope that helps.

What is the point of creating this kind of microsite? Is it for search or for another subset of users (for instance, you want to drive ads to the microsite instead of the main site)?

If it isn't for search purposes, I'd disallow access to the site to prevent Google/Bing from crawling and prevent issues with duplicated content or spammy links. This way you avoid all problems and won't impact your main website in any way (where search engines are concerned).

If it is for search purposes, why build what sounds like virtually the same site? That seems like it could do more harm than good. If it is for search purposes, you'd probably be better off putting the same effort into marketing the main site. Possibly consider A/B testing new content that new content within the current site.

If the duplicated content is only part of the overall page, and the rest of the page is basically unique and different, I wouldn't worry too much. That said, watch rankings and traffic to these pages. If it seems to be lower than expected or it seems that it isn't growing as much as other parts of the site you might want to make it more unique.

Hi,

In general, yes, duplicate content is not good and can be harmful to your site. There are many reasons why this is true, but in terms of search it can be bad because it can divide the focus.

Let's say those four pages that are duplicated on your site are really important pages. You want those pages to rank and get traffic. By having duplicate content, you are dividing the focus across multiple pages. You'll have links going to all those pages, instead of all those links going to one page (internal and external). The same is true of social shares (to whatever extent that influences search). This makes your job that much harder to optimize those pages because you are dividing the focus across all four pages when really you should put all the focus behind one page.

Obviously, there are other issues beyond search. Duplicated pages can be bad for usability and can be a sign of an architecture that needs to be re-worked.

Hope that helps.

Hi Larry,

Ah, the age old question of subdomain or subdirectory. You are right, there really isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. From what I've seen, I think the subdirectory is usually a better answer for SEO but I don't think the subdomain is a horrible answer.

A subdomain is really a different site with only limited connections. It might have a different branding or a different focus than the main site. If your point is to create a really separate website, then using a subdomain makes sense. However, if it really is a separate site altogether, I'd opt for a separate domain so you can make that intention of treating these as different sites crystal clear.

If the sub-site is a part of the same site (same company, same brand, it connects to content on the rest of the site), then I would opt for the subdirectory. This makes it easier to keep all the content connected within the site and any links or social activity you get to pages in that subdirectory is more likely to help other parts of the site. So, for that reason I would opt for a subdirectory instead of a subdomain.

I hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

Are you referring to the ratio followed vs. no followed links? There are some good answers about that here.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-the-ratio-of-external-nofollow-links-to-external-do-follow-links-matter-in-terms-of-serps-ranking

Yeah, h1s really aren't that important for search. I'm sure they have some very insignificant benefit so removing them or not won't affect much. I still recommend using them for accessibility reasons though.

I guess it really depends on why would you do that. Typically, the H1 tag should appear toward the top of the page since it is the title of the page. Anything other than that would look weird and could be considered spammy, especially if it looks like you are trying to hide keyword rich text somewhere where only robots can see it.

I've not tried what you are suggesting specifically but I have had pages with multiple h1 tags and Google seems to ignore those multiple h1s (to whatever extent h1s influence rankings). As a result, I would suspect something similar would happen if you were trying to hide the h1 in the footer.

All that being said, if as part of the design you have selected to put the h1 page name in a footer but still make that h1 page name a prominent part of the page, then I suppose it wouldn't be too big of a deal where search engine spiders are concerned.

Really though, it depends on intent. Are you trying to hide the h1? If so, don't do that because that is the point at which you cross into black hat territory and risk a penalty.

Yep, all of those tactics will be considered black hat and those tactics will not be likely to work. Google can see hidden text and can easily detect those kinds of tactics.

Here is an article more about the hidden text and other black hat techniques. Don't do any of these!
http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/tactics/black-hat.htm

Hey Andrew,

Yeah, I've seen the same kinds of issues where that seems to be somewhat inexact. So far, I've not been able to find an explanation. In terms of the large drop off, I did see a similar drop off on one of my sites shortly after correcting a duplicate content issue.

However, like you said, you need to watch for things out of the ordinary. For now, I'm not worrying too much about the graph. It is interesting, but I'll pay more attention to the graph in Google Analytics telling me how much traffic I have from Google. If I see a large drop there, then I'll worry.

Matthew

Hey,

Those two pages are not identical but they are nearly identical. I've seen SEOmoz's tool trigger these types of duplicate content before. For example, both page headers and titles are "Misc. Spare Motor and Pumps", both contain nearly the same equipment description, and the same links to the right of the buttons. That is normal on product sites, but that is probably why they are considered duplicated.

When I've seen this happen on my campaigns it almost always follows that Google has only indexed one of those pages and not the other. Is that happening to you as well? Or, has Google indexed both pages (and ranking both pages and sending traffic to both pages)?

If Google is performing okay with these pages (the pages rank for relevant terms and you get traffic), I wouldn't worry too much about the duplicate content errors in your campaign. However, if Google hasn't indexed either page (or one but not the other) you should find ways to differentiate these pages.

To make these pages unique, formatting changes won't do it because the content will still be the same. You would need to add content that is truly unique. For example, you could add a short paragraph about each product to each page. You could make the title tag and header more unique. Or, you could try adjusting your alt text (right now, the alt text on the main image is the same on both pages).

I hope that helps.

Hey,

Should that second URL be www.sub.domain.com/collection/adresboeken.html?whatever=something If so, then by using /collection/?* you are saying that anything within /collection/ with a query string should not be indexed. If adresboeken.html always has a query string, it may not get indexed.

The other options I'd consider before using robots.txt are telling Google to ignore dir=desc&order=color in Google Webmaster Tools parameter handling. This is the best way to handle query string issues. (Assuming you are trying to influence Google. Clearly Google Webmaster Tools won't affect Bing!)

Another idea is to set a canonical URL on /collection/adresboeken.html referencing /collection/adresboeken.html without the query string. This tells the search engines that the query strings do not make a unique URL. (adresboeken.html?dir=desc&order=color is the same as adresboeken.html?dir=desc&order=price is the same as adresboeken.html?dir=asc&order=color is the same as adresboeken.html, and so on).

I hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

Hi,

Here is an article explaining how to do this in robots.txt:
http://sanzon.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/advanced-usage-of-robotstxt-w-querystrings/

Depending on what you are trying to do, it might also be worth investigating parameter handling in Google Webmaster Tools:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687

Thanks,
Matthew

You can do this via RedirectMatch statements. There is an example of different match types you could use here. Basically, you create a pattern and then the code is smart enough to redirect based on that pattern.

http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/301-redirect-with-mod_rewrite-or-redirectmatch.html#301_Redirects_RedirectMatch

Your redirect might look something like this though you might want to adjust the pattern match the directory in between /reviews/ and /item/. Mine is just a basic alphanumeric catch all.

RedirectMatch 301 ^/articles/reviews/([-A-z0-9]+)/item/(.*)$ http://clients.qwconsulting.com/reviews/$1

I hope that helps.

Yep, on two different sites we did thousands of redirects at a time with no issues. In one case it was annual and the other it was quarterly but I don't see any reason monthly would be any different.

Definitely post your findings after implementation or maybe even write a YouMoz post about what you find out!

I guess it depends on what is the intention behind these pages? Are you attempting to get more traffic for search? Or, are these pages simply for people visiting the site? If it is more about people and not search engines, I wouldn't really worry about the duplicate content issues (provided the pages make sense to users). Adding a nofollow to the links referencing these pages (and a noindex,follow on these pages) will prevent Google from crawling unnecessary pages and indexing unnecessary pages.

I've had similar situations come up (it always seems to on large sites). Typically what I've tried to do is identify which pages have the best shot at getting activity within the search results (based on keyword research, link research, etc.). On those pages, I do everything I can to have really unique content that sets those pages apart (I'm talking bigger scale changes, as opposed to geo-targeting changes). For the other pages where there isn't such a great chance with search engines, I use the nofollow tag to prevent Google from accessing those pages. That seems to help keep the focus for SEO on the right pages.

Hey,

In general, I would opt for option 1 as that would be the most scale-able solution. Whenever I've done this, I've not seen any issues with having lots of 301s appear. Given the shorter life span of those product pages you probably won't have lots of links going to those pages (or social, etc.) and I think that helps explain why I've not seen issues redirecting this many pages.

That being said, if you do have lots of links or social signals referencing a certain product page, that is when I'd opt for the custom page listing similar products. I've had success doing this for high-traffic product pages that have been removed as it can help maintain the sale.  In terms of the signal, it really depends. If you are still offering unique content relevant to search queries and links referencing that page, I'd deliver a status 200 (it is still a good page worthy of attention). If the content isn't all that unique, and it is more for people (to maintain the sale) as opposed to search, I would have that page deliver a status 410 (saying it is gone).

I hope that helps!

Matthew

Hi,

The position of (main) text on the page doesn't affect the indexing or crawling of that page. From a user's standpoint, you probably want to position the text higher on the web page to make it easier to read. When it comes to choosing the position, I'd go with what makes the most sense for the overall design of your site.

If you meant the location of the text inside the HTML of the page, I don't think that really matters. Good coding practices would keep the HTML as simplistic as possible and put the content in a logical location. But that is more about coding practices, not SEO; I've seen sites with really sloppy HTML get crawled and indexed.

Hope that helps!

Hey,

You can do cross domain canonicals. Google does support that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6L2N4A0hA) and the one time I had to use that, it did seem to help. That being said, I'm not sure if Bing supports that or not.

Hope that helps.

Hi Omar,

The URL structure really won't hurt you. In fact, your product-level URLs are better than most since they use actual keywords in them. Any more, Google and Bing do a good job of understanding all kinds of URLs. If you had a brand new site, I'd say go with the URL you suggested in (a) but for an existing site with thousands of pages, you won't see any noticeable impact by making this change.

With your URLs, you want to make sure your internal linking structure makes it clear what pages are first, second, third, etc. in the hierarchy (how and where you place links). You also want to make sure Google and Bing are indexing all of those pages (meaning, Google and Bing can find all the URLs). So long as those two things are happening, you really do not have a problem.

I hope that helps. Thanks,

Matthew

Hi,

There are a few different ways to answer your question...

First, those pages are technically duplicated. If you go to either URL they return the same content with a status 200. That should be easy enough for your programmers to correct. They need to detect if the URL contains "php"  and, if so, 301 redirect to the ".html" version. Remember though that it isn't just the extension that is different. In the HTML version you have dashes and underscores in the PHP version. However...

Second, the real question for duplicate content isn't "do I have it?" but "where are the multiple URLs?" You want to know how SEOmoz found that ".php" version if you haven't linked to it internally. The way to do that is to download the CSV file in the upper right hand corner of the duplicate content page. Column L (the duplicate page content column) tells you "TRUE" if that page is duplicated and column AM contains the referral. You want to check that referral source to see how they found the link.

Finally, check to see if Google and Bing have indexed these PHP pages. Also, check to see if you've gotten traffic to the PHP pages. If they haven't been indexed and you don't have any traffic, you probably are okay. But, I'd still investigate to find the source and then redirect the PHP version to the HTML version. (Edit: check external links to...is anybody else linking to these ".php" pages?)

I hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

This URL contains some advanced tricks to specifically prevent prefetching by Firefox. I've only tried to the htaccess mod_rewrite technique. However, I modified that technique to send prefetch attempts to an empty file instead of the normal 404 page (saving resources): http://www.petefreitag.com/item/312.cfm

I would avoid only showing tags to Googlebot. It does look a little spammy and like cloaking but more than that, adjusting content for Google can be an involved coding process that comes with risks (accidentally showing something else to Google, etc.).

Hey,

I don't think you are safe from an issue with cannibalization just because the one tool says you don't have that. From the situation described, it sounds like you do have issues on your site with overlapping content and that could be hurting your ranking (as could other factors too, obviously). The best way to find out is to remove the content that you think is overlapping or self canabalizing and then see if you regain rankings.

I'm not certain how the cannibalization check happens in SEOmoz's on page tool, but I have seen instances where cannibalization is missed if those pages are not linked together. As I understand it, that on page tool checks only the one page as opposed to an in depth site crawl.

Hope that helps.

Matthew

Hey,

The same basics apply but I've found that links to the domain and authority of the domain matter more than page authority. In terms of fast indexing, make sure you have an RSS feed. Also, if you are trying to get accepted in to Google News, do make sure you have met those requirements: http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40787. Having a news specific XML sitemap is also helpful: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74288

Why would you remove the content a day or two after publication? If you have an online newspaper, that content may still be relevant for some time after the original publication date. I've tended to keep news content around years after original publication and still gotten some traffic to those articles.

Given that, I've not has experience removing content that quickly but when I have removed content from news websites, I try to redirect the old url to the most relevant new article (if possible) or news category page (usually easier to do). This preserves link value, which is obviously important. For really old stories that don't have links or traffic, I set the article to return a 410 status on that URL to signal that page is removed permanently. Again though, I'd default to keeping the article around as long as possible.

Hope that helps.

Hi,

Let me back up a step. When you say remove duplicate content, do you mean delete the page? For example, pageA.html and pageB.html have the same content. In your example, are you asking do you delete pageA.html or delete pageB.html? I wouldn't delete either page as both pages likely have traffic, links, etc.

Instead of deleting, you want to pick which page is the canonical version of that page. More simply, when somebody Googles the terms that page is targeting, do you want pageA.html to show up or do you pageB.html to show up? If you decide you want pageA.html to show up, then you need to redirect pageB.html to pageA.html. That way, if somebody goes to pageB.html they end up on pageA.html. If you delete pageB.html and somebody goes there, they'll end up on an error page.

Now, on where question...in terms of deciding what version is canonical, I would suggest you look at authority first and foremost. If the domain authority in OSE is higher for pageA.html than it is for pageB.html, keeping pageA.html makes sense. Things like URL structure are only mildly important, especially when making decisions like this.

Hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

Ryan's answer is correct. I just wanted to jump in to say that I know from first hand experience that Google and Bing are both able to read the sitemap file even if it is a different extension and even if you can't name it sitemap.xml.

Hi zmbatt,

URL masking is not an ideal solution for SEO as it masks the URL for subsequent pages of the site which can create perceived duplicate content. Here is an article with a little bit more on that.
http://webenso.com/domain-forwarding-seo/

In your case, the ideal solution is to setup a custom domain for your Blogger.com blog. Here are the instructions on how to do that. Click "Host my blog on a URL that I already own" then click on "Yes" for the "hosted at GoDaddy" question.
http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1233381&page=ts.cs

Doing that will let you have individual URLs appear in the address bar. As for the canonical URL you were asking about, it is best practice to use them if you can. They are only essential if you have problems with duplicate content. Here is an article discussing how to set them up in Blogger.
http://www.mybloggertricks.com/2012/02/solve-problems-related-to-blogspot.html

I hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

Hi Jacob,

You do want to include a canonical on page 2 but you want the canonical to reference page 2. This confused me at first but the reason is that you want Google to see page 2 as something separate from page 1, but part of the same series as page 1, page 3, etc. So, for that page 2, your should have:

I look at it this way: the canonical says, page 2 is a page that Google can index but the prev/next links reminds Google that this page doesn't stand alone.

Here is more from Google. See the "A few points to mention:" section.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

I hope that helps. Thanks,
Matthew

Hi Paul,

I went through a very similar situation at the end of last year with a client of mine. That client's business broke apart into two other companies. It was scary because that old company's website had a lot of authority, ranked for many, many terms (long tail and head terms).

Adam's recommendation of getting links to the new domains is critical. In the case of my client, one of the new websites did have a few links (a dozen or so) while the other website had no links. The website without links did not perform as well. I would recommend you start that process now, even if those links point to a "coming soon" type home page on those new domains.

For the home page, we created a splash page that offered visitors a choice of going to one company or the other. We did put deeper links into both sites on this page, though that was more a usability consideration. I wouldn't redirect the home page to either website, unless there is a clear usability case to be made for doing so. That way the splash page acts a communication to users and Google about the new direction of the website.

Also, so that you know...Google still has that page indexed but after the first 2-3 months, that page started to lose rankings and traffic from search. I'm not sure if it lost rankings because of it being a splash page or because we started changing links (I suspect the links though the change in the content of the home page certainly played a role). Either way, that was the desired intention; you don't want the splash page to rank.

All the other pages on the site were 301 redirected to the appropriate pages of the new websites. We had no troubles redirecting to multiple domains. Adam is right though that this may be seen as spammy so be careful with this. We started out in small batches of pages as a test before going full on into the redirects. If you can, I'd start with that. Measure, test, repeat with another small batch, etc.

Finally, I will tell you that we did see a drop in rankings/traffic to the two new websites (that is, the total Google and Bing activity for the two sites was less than where we had been with the old website). We are now at the seven month mark and starting to regain steam. Not quite where it was this time last year, but I am seeing gains. SO, make sure that you brace for impact and plan for a slowdown when you do this.

I hope I was able to help you out. Thanks,
Matthew

What I've found is that it is okay to have text in JavaScript and Google/Bing will probably index that content if the JavaScript is not too complex. I've seen it not index more intense JavaScript or scripts that require user interaction. You can put alternative text in noscript tags and that seems to work okay.

Typically though, I recommend putting the super important optimized text in regular old HTML instead of JavaScript. That way you are 100% certain that Google/Bing can crawl and index that content. Plus, it is typically easier to manage content in HTML.

However, what you said about the clutter makes it sound like your JavaScript is adding effects to text already in the HTML. Is that the case? For example, you have a div on your page that contains some text. By default, it has the style attribute "display:none;". When a user clicks or takes some action, you change that display attribute to shows previously hidden text. Is that what you are doing?

If that is what you are doing, or something like that, then you have text in HTML not JavaScript. One easy way to check this is to disable CSS and JavaScript then load your page. You want to make sure you can see the content you want Google/Bing to index.

Hey, You are solving multiple problems. The code looks properly written to solve one of those problems--the naked domain to www domain redirect. So long as going to http://mydomain.com 301 redirects to www.mydomain.com, then you know that piece is working.

The second "problem" you have is that you can reach your home page with /index.html and without /index.html in the URL. So long as only one is indexed by Google, this isn't that big of a problem. You should however put in a canonical on your home page to make it clear which version you do want indexed. Then make sure all internal links go to that URL.

Alternatively, you can 301 redirect /index.html to the root via the htacess file. That code would go something like this:

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.index.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ /$1 [R=301,L]

The third "problem" is that your home page can be accessed with or without a trailing slash. Again, I wouldn't say this is a problem unless both versions are indexed. And, like the home page, you can fix this by adding a canonical element to the home page and link to that canonical consistently within your site.

However, this too can be fixed via htaccess. Here is an example of the htaccess code:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^.mydomain.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

Thanks,
Matthew

You've done the most important step (removing the noindex/nofollow) tags. The only additional thing I would do is submit (or resubmit) the XML sitemap to Google. Make sure that XML sitemap is perfect and error free so that you don't create any additional errors.

Google should be smart enough to recognize the dates. I've never had a situation where it was years between publish and index. I have however had situations where it was days or weeks in between publish and index and in those situations Google has recognize the date. I'd imagine the same is true here (assuming of course, you have the date in a recognizable format and don't change the date to today).

I'd be curious to find out what happens. Definitely update this Q&A when you find out what happens!

Yes...but, that rests on a couple big assumptions. First, that all 100 pages are equally important. Second, that all these websites you are blogging on are all equal (same authority, same relevance, etc.)

However, it is likelier that some of those pages are more important than other pages. It is also likely that some sites are more authoritative than others. Given that, you'd want to promote the more important pages more often. And you'd want to promote the more important pages on the more authoritative sites.

In addition to using the site operator or searching for the page, you can also check Google Analytics to see if your landing pages from organic searches include those new pages (or to see if the total count of organic landing pages has increased/decreased over some time period). This gives you two pieces of data. First it tells if the page was indexed (you wouldn't get traffic to that page from an organic result if it was not yet indexed). Second, it tells you if the indexing paid off (did somebody find this page in the SERPs and click to your website).

From the sounds of it, you need to set canonical URLs as there probably is no easy way to block the review or navigation URLs (since those are on a product-by-product basis). For example, on the review URL (blah-blahtext/reviews/category/categoryname) you would have a canonical tag to blah-blahtext.html. On the category URL, you could set the canonical to product-name.html. That way if Google/Bing see the URLs and the duplicated content, the canonical indicates that those URLs should be treated as an alternative version of the canonical URL.

Sadly, I think that is part of what you have to do unless you want to risk the paid link route.

Usually in these situations, I've tried to find alternative ways to rank in areas that the competitor with paid links is ignoring. For example, targeting the long tail searches is usually a good option as many paid link setups narrow targeting only a few keywords. Another route is to build up up social proof (including reviews on local sites if it is a local business).

While there is still a lot of work to do in those areas, that work can at least see returns as compared to competing against somebody with thousands of paid links.