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Hi!
what information do you seen in search console?
Assuming that you have already tested all of your old URL's and the redirection paths points correctly to the new URLs, does Google Search console indicates any problems with the number of URLs submitted to it?
canoncals? are they in use? pointing to the correct version of the site?
Just to put things into perspective,
if these URLs are all already indexed and you have used "noindex" on those pages, sooner or later google will re-crawl these pages and they will be removed. You may want to remove them from the index ASAP for some reason, but it wont really change anything. Because Google will not deindex your noindex pages just because they are in your sitemap.xml.
Google deindexes a sie only when it is time to re-crawl the page.
Google never recommends using noindex in sitemaps, and google wont suggest that in their blocking search indexing results guidelines. Also Google indicates the following:
"Google will completely drop the page from search results, even if other pages link to it. If the content is currently in our index, we will remove it after the next time we crawl it. (To expedite removal, use the Remove URLs tool in Google Webmaster Tools.)"
But hey! every SEO has its own take.. Some tend to try outsmart Google some not..
Good luck
Hi
The reason you submit a sitemap to a searchengine is to ease and aid in crawling process for the pages that you want to get indexed. It speeds up the crawling process and lets search engine to discover all those pages that has no inner linkings to it etc..
A "noindex" tag does the opposite.
So no, you should not include noindex pages inside your sitemap files.
In general you should avoid pages that are not returning 200 also.
Good luck 
Hi
Probably you have already set the country settings in Google Search Console.
+++ And made sure that all of your hreflang codes are set-up properly to let Google know.
(if you did, are you able to see them under Search console?)
This being said, unfortunately as opposed to PPC, you have absolutely no control over sitelinks except demoting them in search console.
You will always have pages like "login" or even "forgotten password" pages which you never choose to showcase but you can get rid of them. They will be replaced with others as Google sees appropriate.
You can still try to influence it by increasing inner linking and page authority.
Good luck
In summary, there are no TLDs that Google finds preferential to others; they are all treated equally in rankings. There are some geo-specific TLDs that Google will default to a specific country and use that as an indicator that the website is more important in a specific geographic region. But all TLDs are treated equally.
Here are the FAQs Google published on this topic:
**Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search? **
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com and .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it’s generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
source: searchengineland article
Well in theory it looks good except:
Why do you use id tags in canonical code and why your code doesn't start with rel="canonical"?
Of course you can use canonical tag alongside with other tags, such as hreflang ( i use it and it works perfect but i start my "<link" with="" canonical,="" than="" hreflang="" and="" then="" the="" url="" in="" question).="" but="" still,="" to="" my="" knowledge="" you="" should="" start="" link="" statement="" a="" canonical="" tag...="" <br="">i would always start with: Have you checked in various SEO tools if they can find that you have canonical code in your page? </link">
Maybe someone can enlighten me if i am wrong
Wix always had and always will have problems.
They are slowly trying to understand the importance of SEO for their users.
They do a wonderful job giving you a "DIY" site creator which is super easy to use and setup but for that you comprimize a lot of other things.
What Dmytro mentioned about funny #! characters in the URLs was actually Wix users nightmare. Around last october (2015) majority of Wix sites got deindexed just because of poor development QA and laziness of Wix programmers. They assumed whatever they want to assume to cut corners with Google Ajax issue. IMO Wix never was good enough SEO wise.
Yup.. also don't forget that robots.txt is just a "recommendation" for robots. they do not obey it
Basically Google does what ever it wants to
Also if you want to block a folder so its inner content wont be "accessed", in case anylink will point to this page, even if its coming from outside of your domain, it will be indexed.. Although the content of it wont be shown on search results but it will show up with a notice stating that the site content is blocked due to the sites robots.txt..
best of luck!
Hi!
As others above me stated, it is perfectly fine to use disavow tool regardless to penalties, in my niches we tend to get a lot of negative SEO efforts against our sites, mostly from adult and pharmaceutical-remedies type of rubbish sites.
But again, it is a wild-wild expertise area where most of us has fixations including me
good luck..
Well, i had a problematic case in my previous position where we had a main/big niche site ranking nicely to many sub-niches. lets call the niche "xxx" and sub niches "yyy xxx" , "aaa xxx" etc..
To cut down on maintenance we have decided to migrate all 5 sub-niche (micro) sites which all had 1st page rankings for the majority of their respective keywords. Similar to your case, the main and niche sites the had same categories and sub pages.
We chose one domain to see if everything goes smoothly, we have done the URL mapping while keeping URL renaming to minimal on the main site.
Almost on every single page the content on the main site was better, indepth and fresh.
It was a hard debate, but after some trial and error we decided to go with minimal changes to the main site.
Our keywords for the merged pages mostly got better rankings (however we saw some fluctuations like -20, +10 etc for a while.. and all got stable after 2-3 weeks).
For pages that didnt existed on the main site, after the redirections in most cases our losses were between 3-10 rankings. Some of them we managed to recover with regular SEO efforts and some are still moving randomly between spots/pages..
go figure
Hi Will
There are some concerns that you have which I do not understand.
Why you want to block News & Events page? If it has unique content and on top of that if it is updated regularly, you have no reason to block access to the page. If it is "relevant to potential customers who want to book a demo" its great. I would definitely keep it indexed and followed.
Google explicitly states that you should not block access to a page if you simply want to de-index it/remove it. If the page should not be indexed publicly you should remove it or password protect it (a google suggestion).
About tags, i assume you are talking about meta tags, correct?
There is no need to use any kind of meta tag to signal search engines that they need to index or follow the page, you use it only when you want to limit them not to take certain actions.
Also there is no difference between a static or dynamic page when it comes to tag usage. There is no rules for that. A page perfectly be static for years and still get indexed and ranked very good. (but, well we all know that updating the site is a ranking signal)
If you believe that certain page should be tagged "noindex" it is not because it is not updated within the last month or year. Just for an example: contact us pages, about us pages and terms of use pages. These are super static pages that in many cases probably wont be changed for years.
best
Yossi
Hi Ali,
Well i think that the answer to this question is really simple...
User.. User.. User... Do you think that putting the brand name at the end of each title will add a value?
Or will it increase CTR?
Does your brand that much well-known and popular that you believe that if you add it to the title your CTR will sky-rocket?
If you can answer yes to one of these questions, i think you should do it.. otherwise i am not sure
In terms of SEO, you will gain absolutely nothing (well but if it increases your CTR.. you might get more rank boost from google)
P.S.: google is running a test to increase the serp area from 500px to 600px.
which roughly translates into 70char increase from 55..
Hi
Well it is a practice done often, but do not expect to get the same rankings as you had with the micro-domain, you will see some drops. Some will gain their rankings back and others will need SEO push. The time it takes depends on many factors such as domain authority, site freshness etc..
Whenever i go and merge domains or incorporate them, i try to find the best user-friendly category architecture. First it should make sense to the user (how everything is lined up) and than to google.
IMO, if all the redirections are done correctly, the only problem that you might have is with the pre-existing categories. I would double and triple check all URLs, run extensive crawls on the site with Moz Crawl (limited no# of URLS though.. ) DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog etc. and look into the URLs. Its amazing how one program cant find some URLs and others do.. You will want to avoid duplicate content issues
Of course i don't even mention how closely you need to monitor everything.. I would do a list of the most important URLs to be transferred, and closely monitor them. Also i always suggest to go with very minimal content changes(also meta changes to minimal).. keeping it as close as to original and only then, after everything is good and healthy, i would go and start making improvements on the content..
I know how much time consuming robotic job it is so good luck
P.S.: Also it's a good and common paractice to go ahead and contact site owners for the relevant good and natural backlinks that you have gathered over time..
Yup.. also don't forget that robots.txt is just a "recommendation" for robots. they do not obey it
Basically Google does what ever it wants to
Also if you want to block a folder so its inner content wont be "accessed", in case anylink will point to this page, even if its coming from outside of your domain, it will be indexed.. Although the content of it wont be shown on search results but it will show up with a notice stating that the site content is blocked due to the sites robots.txt..
best of luck!
Hi Jay
Actually ScreamingFrog does that perfectly. It depends how you have configured the tool.
I can successfully see all external images within the report. (see attached screenshot)
Have you checked your spider configuration?
Well, i had a problematic case in my previous position where we had a main/big niche site ranking nicely to many sub-niches. lets call the niche "xxx" and sub niches "yyy xxx" , "aaa xxx" etc..
To cut down on maintenance we have decided to migrate all 5 sub-niche (micro) sites which all had 1st page rankings for the majority of their respective keywords. Similar to your case, the main and niche sites the had same categories and sub pages.
We chose one domain to see if everything goes smoothly, we have done the URL mapping while keeping URL renaming to minimal on the main site.
Almost on every single page the content on the main site was better, indepth and fresh.
It was a hard debate, but after some trial and error we decided to go with minimal changes to the main site.
Our keywords for the merged pages mostly got better rankings (however we saw some fluctuations like -20, +10 etc for a while.. and all got stable after 2-3 weeks).
For pages that didnt existed on the main site, after the redirections in most cases our losses were between 3-10 rankings. Some of them we managed to recover with regular SEO efforts and some are still moving randomly between spots/pages..
go figure
Wix always had and always will have problems.
They are slowly trying to understand the importance of SEO for their users.
They do a wonderful job giving you a "DIY" site creator which is super easy to use and setup but for that you comprimize a lot of other things.
What Dmytro mentioned about funny #! characters in the URLs was actually Wix users nightmare. Around last october (2015) majority of Wix sites got deindexed just because of poor development QA and laziness of Wix programmers. They assumed whatever they want to assume to cut corners with Google Ajax issue. IMO Wix never was good enough SEO wise.
Recently i a had related issue with a top ranking website for very competitive queries.
Unfortunately the product department made some changes to the content (UI only) without consulting SEO department. The only worth to mention change they made was to move the first two paragraphs into a collapsible DIV showing only the first 3 lines + a "read more" button. The text in collapsible div was crawlable and visible to SE's. (also it's worth to mention that these paragrap
But the site lost its major keywords positions 2-3 days later.
Of-course we reverted the changes back but still two months later, the keywords are very slowly moving back to their "original" positions.
For years i believed in what Google stated, that you can use collapsible content if you are not trying to inject keywords or trying to inflate the amount of content etc. Not anymore.
I believe that placing the content under a collapsible div element, we are actually signaling google that this piece of content is not that important (that's why it is hidden, right? Otherwise it should be in plain sight). So why we should expect from google to take this content as a major part of our contents ranking factor weight.
Jacob, as Logan wrote it looks like the canonicals are good to go.. (i just did a small sampling though..)
Not sure how your URLs are set but if the "sku=XXX" parameters are used only for color variations of a specific product, then you can use the URL paramater setting in Google Search Console.
This will make your life easier, and it will ensure that no duplicate content is crawled by Google. But URL parameters must be used with caution
good luck
Yossi
Well sometimes it takes from a few days up to a week until you see data showing up on search console.
But you wrote "a while back" and to me it sounds more than a month
Have you submitted a sitemap? link
can search console read your robots.txt? link
can you see any data under Fetch as google? link
