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Random guess is that you are HTTP pages in your top pages report that are 301ing to the HTTPS versions. If that is the case, it's not an issue.
Hi Zack,
Considering there are multiple decent options available, consider going with the one that will be easy for your team to implement and maintain over time.
Removing the pages will cause them to 404. Google will not instantly remove 404 pages, as sometimes website servers have issues and incorrectly return a 404 status on pages that are meant to be valid. As a result, Google will re-visit this page over a period of time and after seeing a repeated 404 is will remove it from its index.
The easiest option to speed this up, should be to use Google Search Console "Temporarily Hide" option in Google. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/url-removal
Pages will disappear quickly after using this and my guess is it won't come back if it's still returning a 404 status. If it's easy for you, you could turn the 404s to 410 (forever gone).
If you have concerns, I strongly recommend using Google Search Console to test URL use cases against your existing robots.txt file and before you do potential edits.
You do not need to make sure the login page is the only page that exists on https. Just make that page automatically redirect to the https version. Other pages can render in both http and https versions, just be sure to link internally to the one you want and make sure you have proper canonicals set.
This is just a login page with no SEO value/competition for this branded, specific page. Do not worry about sitemaps, and all the extra details. Just 301 the page to https and keep an eye on the rest of your pages to make sure they remain as is.
No one really knows how Google treats individual links and this should not be anything to worry about.
You won't really be able to see how much of it is direct. If someone clicks an external link pointing at the old site or types the URL in the address bar, they both would go through the same redirect process.
If you wanted to get some general tracking on people hitting old URLs, you could have your redirects go to the new site with utm parameters on the end of the URL.
Something like: old-domain.com -> new-domain.com?utm_source=old-domain&utm_medium=redirect
Decreasing will not negatively affect your organic traffic.
Here is what I think you should do.
Find those blog posts that get little to no organic traffic. Look for opportunities to combine/merge similar posts into one new, better post - then republish them. When you encounter old posts that you can't imagine having any future value, consider removing them completely.
*edited to correct a typo
As others have mentioned, simply commenting on a blog post does not directly help SEO and if done for the sole purpose of dropping a link it is basically worthless spam.
Leaving a thoughtful, intelligent comment that furthers the conversation started in a post can be a great way to build a connection with the author. If you do this regularly on a site, your chances of securing a future link to your content can be significantly increased.
Hi,
If your site is crawlable and the on-page optimization is spot-on, link building might be the answer.
First, make sure your content is fantastic. When you look at the other pages in the top 10, can you honestly justify why your page deserves to rank there? Once you get your content to this level, link building becomes a whole lot easier because you have created a linkable asset.
As for link building strategies or plans, I recommend taking a link at these two links.
Hi Dan,
DA is a fantastic metric to compare domain strength and judge their overall backlink profile and ability to rank. However, it is not a good metric to Trend to show domain improvement. Simply put, the metric data set is different with every Linkscape update.
If you go to the Open Site Explorer homepage, you will see that the recent crawl contains 104 billion URLs. That's an amazing number. Their next crawl could theoretically cover 107 billion URLs. You may have hundreds of additional backlinks found in those extra 3 billion pages crawled. Your DA goes up, despite you doing nothing to the website. Most likely, your competitors DA goes up as well.
The next update may only crawl 103 billion URLs. It doesn't crawl 100s of pages with your links. Your DA goes down. So do your competitors.
Simply put, it is a sample size of backlinks. It is great for comparing one domain to another, due to the data being based off of the same sample size. It's great for competitor insights and analysis.
When your DA goes down, that doesn't necessarily mean your site is less authoritative. If you still have links pointing to your website, you don't lose that equity because Moz had a smaller crawl. Remember, DA is a marketing metric, but not a Google ranking factor.
Can you share some details why you want to "move" the store locator to a subdomain? That makes me think it is already operational in a subfolder at the moment. In general, I would recommend not moving content unless there is a very good reason for it.
This type of fluctuation occurs all the time. Google results don't stay static for long.
How do you get back on top?
Make sure your website is the best page on the web for that query. Truly think about how can you make it better for your users, not the search engine? Does it need to be updated regularly? Do visitors to your page show good engagement - can you improve it? Can you get your site to load faster?
Get positive signals pointing to your page. External links being the most important, social signals won't hurt.
Duplicate content is going to be on your website. The key is to keep it out of Google's index. That is why using Google tools is very important. I find that using Google Webmaster Tools (duplicate page titles) and most importantly Google search as the best way to identify these problems.
This article is absolutely fantastic and there is a section titled "Tools for Finding & Diagnosing Duplicate Content" that explains exactly how to use Google and Google Webmaster Tools to find your duplicate content.
Hi Jenni1,
You are right to be concerned. Do not use the canonical tag like you have described above.
I would recommend putting that content on it's own unique page. Then, pull in the content to your product pages via a an ajax request to pull that content into the tabbed area. This would make the content visible for the user but not a part of the page html for the search engines.
Majestic SEO has a historical link index. SEOmoz/Open Site Explorer does not at this time.
No, you do not have to pay for link removals. Document the request, note they asked for payment, and then disavow the site.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-link-payment-17387.html
This is a technique I would only consider if your clients site is already highly authoritative (high PR, DA). Essentially, your splitting up one domain into a handful different subdomained websites.
When you have a very strong site and you split it into subdomains, you increase your chance of getting multiple spots in the SERPs. When you split a weak site into subdomains, you water down your authority and it will take extra link building to get each subdomain to rank really well.
Perhaps a better strategy would be to do a bit more keyword research and figure out what keywords to really go after with the current URL structure. Instead of going after something like 'bathroom remodeling' maybe you would be better served going after 'bristol custom bathroom remodeling' or something more specific. Sometimes you have to carve out a niche and get some links before tackling a more difficult keyword.
Technically, it doesn't necessarily matter. However, it matters to you for these two reasons.
Losing link juice: probably negligible but why risk it
I would change the canonical link. It should not be a difficult switch.
9/10/2015 The author's small test seems to confirm Google's affinity for fresh content. You might consider a similar experiment for your site.
2/19/2012 Today's post is about broken link building. It's been a popular topic in the industry, but I also noticed that SEOmoz didn't have a lot on the subject, so I thought it would be nice to write a kick-ass piece for the large SEOmoz community. Now, on to the post.