Hi,

Have you done (or thought about doing) any testing and looking at stats to see which would work best for you?

Personally, I would be quite wary of just changing to a new form structure without doing a level of A-B testing first of all. You want to know for sure, which is going to work best for you.

I understand the points about drop-off but those that don't, you get a higher level of enquiry, but can you do better than this? Is 1 question per page too little? Could you get away with 2 and halve the process? How about 3? How about just 2 pages, one for personal and one for requirements?

There is a lot to think about here but please don't try to make the decision yourself as this isn't necessarily what other people want.

Head over to Hotjar  (or something similar) that will allow you to watch how people actually interact with your forms. Setup goals in Analytics so that you can see where people are dropping out. Tie all of this in together and use real visitor numbers to help you with your decisions.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

Hi,

As long as everything works and the slides are used to enhance the page and get important points across, then there are no reasons (technically) why it should be considered bad. Test in different browsers and mobile devices to ensure there are no problems.

However... On a mobile, I don't actually like sliders and much prefer just a static image to speed up the load times. Most will give you the option to do this. Speed is probably one of the main reasons I am cautious with them because they can add a lot of size to the page, which results in increased load times.

Just try and keep in mind to use it as a way to enhance the page rather than for anything to do with SEO.

-Andy

Absolutely agree with Egol. This might not help with the SEO per se, but such a big SEO factor is how happy people are on the page itself. You might find by adding important bullets that you retain someone for longer, make them want to read further and then go on to make a purchase.

Make the pages as good as is possible.

-Andy

Hi,

No, there is no good reason to do this. For linking purposes, this will do absolutely nothing for you. Sitewide and Footer links are mostly just ignored or devalued by Google, but could end up with you looking spammy.

Rand actually did a Whiteboard Friday about this very subject last year.

https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo

-Andy

Hi,

One way to do this is to decide which site is going to be the main site (site A) sat on C and copy this data over. If you are bringing in site B, then this can sit at another structure level - you will end up with this...

Site A --> Site C, main pages
Site B --> Site C, product pages

That then brings in everything from both sites to the new domain.

You then want to redirect both of the old sites to the new one, but don't redirect everything to the root. That isn't a good use of 301 mapping. You need to be mapping on a page level so that you will see...

www.sitea.com/about us -301- www.sitec.com/aboutus
www.siteb.com/newproducts/hammers -301- www.sitec.com/newproducts/hammers

There can be differences in the URL's - you don't need to stick with the same structure as the other sites if it doesn't make sense, but always map pages to something very similar.

Page level is the only way to go if you want to maintain a seamless transition for users as well.

Also, don't expect to hit a switch and do this all at once. You can do this over a period of time because to the user, they will just be redirected to the new pages. You will retain more link juice like this.

This is quite a lengthy process and I am sure I have missed the in-between bits, but this is the basis of what you want to be doing.

Others might chip in with other suggestions for you.

-Andy

There really isn't a right and wrong answer to this, but I will say that the content has to be long enough to answer the question that the page is answering.

In some circumstances, this might mean a short page with just 200 words - other times it might be more. 5000+ sounds a bit insane and like they are trying to over optimise, in which case would make me wonder about the phrase itself - is it low search volume?

There are so many variables that come into play with ranking pages that it would be impossible to say with any degree of certainty what is going on without actually seeing it.

From a usability view, this also sounds very excessive.

Make your pages clear and straight to the point without any waffle - and with 5000+ words, I would be surprised if all of that was really needed.

-Andy

You're very welcome

This is what you're looking for:

• https://support.google.com/business/answer/6088158?hl=en

Report incorrect business descriptions

Google tries to show accurate, up-to-date short descriptions for businesses. We don't remove descriptions for being unclear or negative. We only remove the following:

• Keywords and review snippets that have been associated with an unrelated place.
• Editorial summaries if the information included describes services that the business doesn't offer.

If you’d like to report a description that you believe fits one or both of these cases, contact us so that we can review it.

I hope that helps

-Andy

Hi,

Occasionally you might see Google does this where they will return a URL and as part of the description, show a hashed anchor - but they won't show just an anchor as a result in its own right. It will always form part of the page that Google returns.

Worth doing if you think it might help usability but it wouldn't fit for every page and circumstance. Have seen it used to good effect, but am seeing less and less of these.

-Andy

Hi Justen,

It wouldn't make a huge difference in terms of what it will do for you. Irrespective of language, Google will look at where a link comes from and it might do something for you (but it might not as well), but I really wouldn't worry.

If these links are being earned as opposed to you going out after them, then sit back and watch them roll in. If you are going after links yourself, then as long as some (most?) of the sites make sense to your audience, then again, you are good.

-Andy

Hi Alick,

Traffic is always good and referral traffic would be quite interested if they click through from a product that is being offered.

I wouldn't worry about the number of links because I suspect they are nofollowed - and even if they aren't, you can easily disavow at a domain level if they are causing you concern. There you get the best of both worlds - no worry about unnatural links and still get referral traffic.

-Andy

I see what you mean Louise, but you need to be careful with category pages that they aren't seen as Doorway pages, that Google is clamping down on. Read more here.

**1) How significant is the text on a category page such as this to that page's Google ranking? **

It's not just about text, it's about usability and how useful the page is. If the page is only there to collect traffic for a search term and then fire someone off to other internal pages, you might fall foul of penalties.

**2) If we moved the text to an area that was hidden until clicked on, for example the 'Filter by' section that opens up when you click on it (see via URL above), would that negate the SEO benefit? **

There is no direct SEO problem with having the content hidden behind a tab, because the content is still there and Google can see it in the code as well. However, this wouldn't be my preferred option on it's own as that doesn't do much for the page and is only there to try and combat some SEO issues.

**3) Do you have any other ideas or opinions on how to resolve this? **

Usability and more usability. Make sure the page bring more than just some text and links. Think about people landing on there and what else they would like to see that would be useful to them. If you search for your key phrases, who is winning in the SERP's? How do they combat this issue? A little competition analysis can go a long way.

You could also do with focusing on keywords that bring people to that page. Rather than just focusing on "Green Tea", you want the people who are looking to "buy green tea" or for "Green tea suppliers". If you get the wrong people to the pages, this can also be detrimental.

I hope this helps

-Andy

Hi John,

As these are nofollow, I wouldn't worry about this at all. A nofollow flag is essentially what you get when you disavow a site through Webmaster Tools (Search Console).

There is no harm in disavowing these links if you feel there is a potential to switch to dofollow, but by the sounds of things, this probably wouldn't happen - even if it did, it sounds like a spammy technique that wouldn't cause you issues. Google would probably see hundreds (thousands?) of links all of a sudden appear with a dofollow tag and just ignore them.

-Andy

Hi Sandi,

It will be almost impossible to see who has done this, but you have two options.

1. Contact the sites in question and request that the links are removed, or
2. Just disavow them

Disavowing is the solution most will take because it can be a lot quicker than trying to get hold of people at sites like these.

It is something you will have to stay on top of though - keep a check in Search Console for any new ones that pop up that shouldn't.

-Andy

Hi,

While backlinks are a big factor, they are far from the only factor. It is as much about your content and usability as it is about links.

With the links, you could get just 1 really strong link that is much better than everything they have, and that might be enough - but I doubt it. It's just not that straight forward.

Best bet is to have a read though this MOZ guide on link building to get a bit of an intro into best practices and a more in-depth explanation.

-Andy

It's a suggestion, and just indicates to Googlebot how often they should come along. It won't do anything in terms of telling them more about the site hierarchy really, but will give them an idea about which pages are most important.

That said, you should try and follow the following structure:

Homepage: 100%
Internal Pages: 60%
Blog Pages: 30%

Or something very similar.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Hi Bejan,

Your chosen language should be sat at the primary domain.

For example, if your are a Saudi based site that wants Arabic as the primary language, this shouldn't be sat in an identifier. Ideally, you want to have a primary site language as this is how most will do it.

www.example.com (Arabic Language)
www.example.com/en/ (English Version)

Or...

www.example.com (English Language)
www.example.com/ae/ (Arabic Version)

You need to also remember to set these correctly by using HREFLANG. This is what will tell Google which languages should be associated to which pages. Moz have a couple of very useful pages on this here and here.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

Hi,

I don't know if it was just one post, but if you don't have permission and no matter what language you translate it to, that is plagiarism.

Even if you have their permission, Google is very good at translation so they are likely to know if this has been posted somewhere before.

You really need to be creating unique content rather than relying on what has already been said somewhere else before. This is not a practice that is good for SEO.

-Andy

You are fine using any of them and it's down to personal preference, although I use a pipe because it is clearer when looking at the title. It also depends on the Title as well - sometimes a pipe won't do the job and you need to use a comma.

Also, including current month and year with Title tag and it will change every month. Its means every month our title is changed

I would try to avoid this. You don't want the same page title to keep changing. By all means add something to the page that states when it was last updated, but I wouldn't use the Page Title for this.

-Andy

There have been some interesting articles surfacing recently on this with the last study I read (this week) showing that simply updating the date with "Last Updated" and updating the article, refreshed something that was a year old and that had dropped from the first page to the second, and had reached position 1 again.

This is definitely something that anyone with a blog should look to do.

-Andy