SEO dealing with a CDN on a site.
-
This one is stumping me and I need some help. I have a client who's site is www.site.com and we have set them up a CDN through Max CDN at cdn.site.com which is basically a cname to the www.site.com site. The images in the GWT for www.site.com are de-indexing rapidly and the images on cdn.site.com are not indexing. In the Max CDN account I have the images from cdn.site.com sending a canonical header from www.site.com but that does not seem to help, they are all still de-indexing.
-
In my experience Google does a pretty good job of applying the rankings to the CDN version of the image if you follow those best practices.
Good luck!
-
They were being de-indexed until I did this, http://moz.com/community/q/would-this-be-considered-cloaking-and-would-it-be-a-bad-move
The images are not dynamic at all, they have static urls. The only thing that was being changes was the sub domain from www to cdn. When that happened the images started to de-index on the www sub domain, even though the cdn sub domain image had a canonical header pointing back to the www domain. You are welcome to check it out in action, the site is https://www.redwrappings.com.au/
-
Very odd, then, that they're being removed from the index. Do you think it's possible that the images have different URLs depending on which server they're cached on? That could definitely do it. I'd have a friend across the country pull them up and see if the image URL changes.
I'm assuming that the image has some dynamic characters on it, which is pretty common with CDNs under certain configurations. Unfortunately, I've never used MaxCDN. If the image is just cdn.site.com/image.png - I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea why they wouldn't be re-indexed. I have similar CDN images that pull in fine.
-
That article touches on a lot of the issues. Here are my thoughts and you can tell me if I am incorrect in my thinking. For a couple of years the images have been on the www part of the domain, now they are on a CDN sub directory. I was trying to keep them indexed under the www part of domain so that they would keep the authority of the domain. My thoughts were if they are de-indexed under the www and re-indexed under the cdn they would have to climb their way back in the image search rankings. Basically that is what I was trying to avoid.
-
They are static. It is a passthrough CDN that basically strips off the www of the image url and replaces it with cdn.
-
Hello Lesley,
Here is an article that may help, or provide some links to other resources at the bottom: Four Best Practices for Using a CDN .
Are you keeping the same filenames or do those change?
What is in the robots.txt file on the CDN?
Have you set up and verified the CDN in Google Webmaster Tools? If so, have you submitted an XML Sitemap?
-
Hi there,
Could you tell me whether the URLs on your images are static on the CDN sub-domain? Or do they change regularly?
-
Christy,
Sure thing, this is what is in place now, http://moz.com/community/q/would-this-be-considered-cloaking-and-would-it-be-a-bad-move
-
Thanks for the update, Lesley. I'm sorry to hear that you haven't found a solution you're happy with. Let me see if any of the other Associates can help you troubleshoot this. In the meantime, are you able to to share the details of your workaround?
Christy
-
None of the answers really applied. I did a work around that I am not too happy with at the current time.
-
Hi Lesley, what is the current status of this issue? Were you able to resolve it, or are you still having problems? We'd love an update, thanks!
Christy
-
I have not actually set up the robots.txt in maxcdn. But the cdn is not indexing, which is what I am wanting, doing the site: search for the cdn shows no results. For the main site though the images are falling out of the index, even though there is a site map for them and they are still accessible from their normal url.
-
I am not using Wordpress, the site is using PrestaShop, so it does not have those plugins.
This is how it is set up.
cdn.site.com is a cname of www.site.com so images are accessible from www.site.com/image.jpg and cdn.site.com/image.jpg but when they are served from the cdn.site.com/image.jpg they have the canonical header that points to www.site.com/image.jpg I cannot understand why that would de-index all of the images on www.site.com though
-
I had this problem.
Are you using W3 Total Cache... if so you should activate the Yoast SEO extension (presumably you use Yoast, and their sitemaps). You will find it at Performance -> Extensions in the W3 Total Cache admin area.
In addition, with the robots file in Maxcdn you should have something like:
User-agent: *
Disallow:/
Allow: /wp-content/
Allow: /wp-includes/You will find this under the SEO settings of your Pull zone in MaxCDN. Make sure you have robots & canonical header ticked as well.
The W3 Total cache extension will sort all the sitemap problems with pointing to the right URL and canonical. There is no need to do anything manually as some of the articles suggest.
-
I have no problem helping you look into this. I can play with it more tomorrow morning. I have a few more questions though. Did you setup the robots.txt in MaxCDN to point to the origin directory of the images? What happens when you search site:cdn.domain.com or site:www.domain.com in Google?
There are a few ideas that I have into why this is happening but I would like to test them prior to posting.
-
It is a pull zone.
-
Are you currently using a "Pull" or "Push" zone on MaxCDN?
-
That is actually what has been done, I have seen the article before. But there are two issues, one they are not indexing and it has been a couple of weeks. But the more major issue to me is that using the cdn url none of the link juice from the main domain is being passed to the cdn sub domain. I am trying to figure out why Google is not respecting the canonical header for the images. It would seem to me, that according to what Matt Cutts says that it would. But it is not.
-
I have had this issue in past as well when working with MaxCDN. I was able to apply a fix using some of the methods in this article to fix the issue.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Keyword Research
Is there a way to insert Google API into Excel? I want to have a search volume column that would automatically fill out with query Another question is that I have a list of keywords in one column in Excel with another column that have search volume. I then go and do some research on keyword groups with a grouping tool but if this tool doesn't find a group for a keyword it removes it. So then when I want to copy and past keywords and match keyword columns in excel that already exist with search volume I have to do it manually because some rows are missing. Is there a way this could be done automatically so that when I paste it in the column with keywords it automatically finds that the current column exists and adds a group column ?
Reporting & Analytics | | aliciaporrata10090 -
High Bounce Rate on traffic generating area of our site
Hi, Our eCommerce site currently includes a blog section known as Igloo which we have filled with unique and helpful content that is useful to a fair few people, not just customers of ours. It currently attracts a large number of visitors (more than the actual eCommerce side of the site in actual fact) organically who aren't currently customers of ours. Very few of these turn in to paying clients so it's not really a money spinner but it has worked quite well from a linkbait perspective / traffic generation perspective and undoubtedly a few of these people do end up making a purchase on the actual shopping end of our site. We're look at ways to encourage these people finding help on this free resource to take a look at our homepage and hopefully make an order but in the meantime I am worried that there may be a few downsides to us creating this content: Google may see us more as a help site than a shopping site. Since selling products is where we make our money this could ultimately be a bad thing. Our bounce rate is REALLY high (I'm talking around 94%) on the help site versus around 20% on the eCommerce site. I guess people land on the article they want, read it and then disappear. Would this bounce rate skew our entire site stats and ultimately result in decreased performance in the SERPS. I would appreciate your opinions and, in the event you do feel it may be hurting us overall perhaps some suggestions on how to mitigate the effects? Many thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | ChrisHolgate0 -
How is it possible that this site has a higher page authority than my site?
Judging by open site explorer, I'm crushing my competitor in every imaginable way. And yet, somehow they have a higher page authority than me and, consequently, are ranking higher than me. How is this possible? My site is on the left: 40atcpP.png
Reporting & Analytics | | ScottMcPherson0 -
ROI in SEO
Hi there! I'm just doing the SEO for a client and I just don't know exactly how could I estimate the ROI associated to the SEO actions that are taking place. Should I only consider the conversions made via organic search? Is there another parameter, metric or item I must measure? . Is there something "formal" to follow'? I think I'm missing something. Thanks in advanced.
Reporting & Analytics | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Why did my site go from 1,000 Impressions to 0 impressions over the past couple days
so we have been doing a lot of reconstruction our website the past couple days with our navigation and moving stuff around. Now bare with me because i am a noob to SEO and i am still learning. But we went from a steady 800-1000 impressions everyday to a 0 since the first. you can check out our site here: www.hidguy.net Not sure if its because we are moving stuff around or what. But we can notice that our conversion rate has dropped and we have had traffic but no conversions and no orders. Is what we are doing bad or is this normal?
Reporting & Analytics | | Dante130 -
Getting traffic for another site
Hi Everyone, Our website url/brand is very close to another website url/brand. We are non-competing entities. It appears as though this other company has begun a marketing program which has resulted in our traffic skyrocketing. However, it seems to have also resulted in our Pages/Visit and Visit Duration to decrease and our Bounce Rate to increase. Can anyone suggest how to deal with this type of scenario? Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | AC_Pro
Robert0 -
What is the best way to track mobile sites in Google Analytics?
Hello! I am wondering what the pros and cons of using the regular Google Analytics tracking code on a mobile site versus the tracking documentation from Google specifically on it found at http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/web/ which is still in labs mode. Does the mobile specific tracking have the same features as the regular one to be able to track events and report the same statistics? Thanks for the help on this one!
Reporting & Analytics | | CabbageTree0 -
Unable to use Open Site Explorer
I have repeatedly tried to use Open Site Explorer on a site. I always get the same response: No Data Available for this URL The site is 4 months old. It is listed by Alexa in 1.3 million page category. The site ranks well on numerous key terms for the industry it covers. OSE offers 4 reasons for not having data: 1. Recency of page creation. In the explanation offered 45-60 days is the longest estimate it should take. The site has been live close to 120 days. 2. Deep down in the web. The tool doesn't even have any data for the site's home page. 3. Blocked pages. The site is listed in Google and these pages are not blocked. 4. No links. There are plenty of links. Site url is www.terapvp.com What can I do to fix this issue and get data?
Reporting & Analytics | | RyanKent0