@BlueprintMarketing

It’s essential to clarify that unless your URLs are exceedingly lengthy, Google won’t discern any difference in how it processes the URL structure. Nonetheless, it’s vital to acknowledge that most individuals don’t retain the ‘.html’ at the end of URLs. So, if they remember the link, that particular segment may elude them. While this confers a minor advantage, it merits consideration. The significance of this aspect is contingent on your situation; if you possess very long URLs, addressing this could be worthwhile, yet it’s imperative to adhere to the guidelines delineated above should you opt for alterations.
Furthermore, remember that it’s feasible to enforce a trailing slash / or opt for no trailing slash. It’s your choice. The paramount concern is ensuring 301 redirects and uniformity in the URLs and reflected accurately across the canonicals, XML sitemap, and the browser.

Google's preference doesn't lean towards having the ".html" extension in your URLs. While removing it may tidy up the links, the SEO impact is negligible. The removal process is fairly straightforward, depending on your CMS and server setup. Employ regex for creating redirects if you proceed, but ensure to implement 301 redirects to avoid harming your site.

For instance, https://example.com/example-subfolder.html must 301 redirect to https://example.com/example-subfolder/

Decide on enforcing a trailing slash like “example-subfolder/” or removing it "/example-subfolder", aligning this with your rel canonicals and XML sitemap.

General Considerations:

• Maintain URL structure consistency to avert duplicate content issues.
• Always execute 301 redirects for updated URL structures.
• Align your rel=canonical tags and XML sitemap with the new URL setup.

Server Configuration:

Apache:

# To force a trailing slash:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*[^/])$ /$1/ [L,R=301]

# To remove .html extension:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L]

Nginx:

# To force a trailing slash:
rewrite ^([^.]*[^/])$ $1/ permanent;

# To remove .html extension:
location / {
    try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/ =404;
}

• For Apache, input in .htaccess.
• For Nginx, input in nginx.conf.

WordPress (via Redirection Plugin):

1. Install and activate the Redirection Plugin.
2. Set up redirects:
   • To force a trailing slash:
     • Source URL: /^(.*[^/])$
     • Target URL: /$1/
     • Regex: Enabled
   • To remove .html extension:
     • Source URL: /^(.*)\.html$
     • Target URL: /$1
     • Regex: Enabled

Canonical and Sitemap Updates:

Before:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/example-subfolder.html" />

<url>
  <loc>https://example.com/example-subfolder.html</loc>
  <lastmod>2023-10-01</lastmod>
  <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
  <priority>0.8</priority>
</url>

After (with trailing slash enforced):

<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/example-subfolder/" />

<url>
  <loc>https://example.com/example-subfolder/</loc>
  <lastmod>2023-10-01</lastmod>
  <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
  <priority>0.8</priority>
</url>

@JessicaSilver
Please excuse my extremely long delay. If you use in ternal linking correctly, you can benefit from Google finding pages that it would not find under certain circumstances. Please see.
https://www.oncrawl.com/solutions/seo-challenges/internal-linking/
Another extremely helpful thing to gain traction on Google is to use semantic Contact with co-occurrences
https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/importance-quality-thresholds-predictive-ranking/

I hope this is of help
Tom

@JessicaSilver
I apologize for my extremely late reply.

https://www.oncrawl.com/solutions/seo-challenges/internal-linking/

Also, adding a semantic content network with co-occurrences will make a huge difference

https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/importance-quality-thresholds-predictive-ranking/

@tunnel7
There are one of two possible reasons for this to be happening. Your site was hacked, and keywords were injected into the HTML creating this problem.
Or, your content needs to be improved, and you need to create a semantic content network with Query and Document Templates.

it's either malware or
You have to create higher-quality content than the other guy.

This is a list of what needs to be done to improve content drastically.
How to exceed quality thresholds?
To exceed quality thresholds, implement the methodologies below.

• Use factual sentence structures. (X is known for Y → X does Y)

• Use research and university studies to prove the point. (X provides Y → According to X
  University research from Z Department, on C Date, the P provides Y)

• Be concise, do not use fluff in the sentence. (X is the most common Y → X is Y with D%)

*Include branded images with a unique composition.

• list item Have all the EXIF data and licenses of the images.

• Do not break the context across different paragraphs.

• Optimize discourse integration.

• Opt for the question and answer format.

• Do not distance the question from the answer.

• Expand the evidence with variations.

• Do not break the information graph with complicated transitions. Follow a logical order in the declarations.

• Use shorter sentences as much as possible.

• Decrease the count of contextless words in the document.

• If a word doesn't change the meaning of the sentence, delete it.

• Put distance between the anchor texts and the internal links.

• Give more information per web page, per section, per paragraph, and sentence.

• Create a proper context vector from H1 to the last heading of the document.

• Focus on query semantics with uncertain inference.

• Always give consistent declarations and do not change opinion, or statements, from web page to web page.

• Use a consistent style across the documents to show the brand identity of the document.

• Do not have any E-A-T negativity, have news about the brand with a physical address and facility.

• Be reviewed by the competitors or industry enthusiasts.

• Increase the "relative quality difference" between the source's current and previous state to trigger a re-ranking.

• Include the highest quality documents as links on the homepage, so they are visible to crawlers as early as earlier.

• Have unique n-grams and phrase combinations to show the originality of the document.

• Include multiple examples, data points, data sets, and percentages for each information point.

• Include more entities, and attribute values, as long as they are relevant to the macro context.

• Include a single macro context for every web page.

• Complete a single topic with every detail, even if it doesn't appear in the queries and the competitor documents.

• Reformat the document in an infographic, audio, or video to create a better web surface coverage.

• Use the internal links to cover the same seed query's subqueries with variations of the phrase taxonomies.

• Use fewer links per document while adding more information.

• Use the FAQ and article structured data to consistently communicate with the search engine from every level and for every data extraction algorithm.

• Have a concrete authorship authority for your own topic.

• Do not promote the products while giving health information.

• Use branded CTAs by differentiating them from the main context and structure of the document.

• Refresh at least 30% of the source by increasing the relative difference. (Main matter is explained in the full version of the SEO Case Study.)

See: https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/importance-quality-thresholds-predictive-ranking/

Please let me know if I can be of help,
Tom

Moz & other third-party tools have a much better method of displaying your actual backlinks going to a domain or URL.

Google search console only displays a sample of known links, so remember it is not showing you all your backlinks or even. all of your data.

Here are some helpful URLs

"Google Search Console only displays a sample of known links, they update infrequently, and no preference to priority or weight is given."

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-tool-sample-data-13636.html

Google's John Mueller was answering questions around an old topic of Google showing only a sample of links in the link report in Google Search Console on Reddit. He said that generally, if the links are not shown in the tool, then they are "pretty irrelevant overall."

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-search-console-irrelevant-27342.html

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-console-guide/209318/

Require the www
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.askapache\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.askapache.com/$1 [R=301,L]

@sami1999 said in how to do seo audit:

https://bit.ly/3tVTfF7

https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-audit/
https://www.semrush.com/blog/seo-audit/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-audit/
https://backlinko.com/seo-site-audit
https://www.bluehillsdigital.com/articles/website-audit-checklist/

@alexhassimss said in Domain Authority Not Changed?:

I am also facing same issue on my atmc blog.

Domain authority is just a bunch of metrics collected about back links it’s not the most important thing in the world it really has almost no bearing on your site ranking and in all honesty it is a very outdated and isn’t not even a real metric that is used by Google.

I strongly suggest that you either start working with Pitchbox if you want to change DA but do it the right way. In addition if you want to get your site ranked quickly look at top topical authority in semantic SEO

Korey and Bill Slawski are close friends of mine that I do a Tuesday show with every Tuesday. Please look into this and consider implementing these practices if you want your site to rank very well.

https://twitter.com/koraygubur/status/1486650707780513794?s=21

Hope I was a help,
Tom

@himalayaninstitute said in WordPress Sub-directory for SEO:

WordPress can be installed in a subdirectory

I have done this a lot and I mean a lot what you want to do is set up a reverse proxy on your subdomain and this will allow you to not only bypass having to use multisite for subfolder but if you want to power it separately you can you do not have to it all. You should probably use your same server and power through Fastly our CloudFlare

once you set this up it is super easy to keep it running in your entire site will be much faster as a result as well

my response to someone else that needed a subfolder
https://moz.com/community/q/topic/69528/using-a-reverse-proxy-and-301-redirect-to-appear-sub-domain-as-sub-directory-what-are-the-seo-risks

please also look at it explained by these hosting companies is unbelievable easy to implement compared to how it looks and you can do so with Fastly or cloudflare in a matter of minutes

• https://servebolt.com/help/article/cloudflare-workers-reverse-proxy/

• https://kinsta.com/blog/reverse-proxy/

• https://support.pagely.com/hc/en-us/articles/213148558-Reverse-Proxy-Setup

• https://pantheon.io/product/advanced-global-cdn

• https://wpengine.com/support/using-a-reverse-proxy-with-wp-engine/

• https://thoughtbot.com/blog/host-your-blog-under-blog-on-your-www-domain

• https://crate.io/blog/fastly_traffic_spike
  *https://support.fastly.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4407427792397-Set-a-request-condition-to-redirect-URL

• https://coda.io/@matt-varughese/guide-how-to-reverse-proxy-with-cloudflare-workers

• https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cdn/glossary/reverse-proxy/

• https://gist.github.com/LimeCuda/18b88f7ad9cdf1dccb01b4a6bbe398a6
  I hope this was of help
  tom

you should definitely allow Google to index your privacy page. The reason being is Google wants you to have a privacy page and if they cannot index it it will not realize that your site has a privacy page best you must allow them to index it.

I hope I've been of help,

sincerely

Thomas

20 min.

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-website-redesign-checklist

http://searchengineland.com/8-necessary-seo-steps-during-a-website-redesign-65470

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2070968/SEO-Website-Redesign-Relaunching-Without-Losing-Sleep

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2158206/-checklist-website-redesign-migration

if you are or not switching hosting providers it is always a good idea to put this information down on a piece of paper like this

http://netdna.copyblogger.com/documents/WordPress-Emergency-Checklist.pdf

here is more on the checklist for hosting

http://www.copyblogger.com/wordpress-emergency-checklist/

I hope the SEO checklist along with hosting is helpful.

Sincerely,

Thomas

Okay, I'm assuming that you are using a .com domain TLD?

If so, there are two choices number one you could purchase the .ca version of your domain, and 301 redirect each page over. This will let Google know you wish to target.you want to geo-target Canada

Or in Webmaster tools/search console

Go into Google Webmaster tools now search console and add the www. & non-www. To your search console. Once you have done this click on geolocation and target Canada as the country, you wish to geo-target.

• See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
• Or
• http://webdesignfromscratch.com/seo/geotargeting-with-google-webmaster-tools/
• https://blog.kissmetrics.com/geo-targeting/

List off TLD's you can geo-target  (Remember .ca does this automatically.)

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1347922?hl=en&ref_topic=6002454
• it's never a bad idea to host the site in the country being targeted.
• (even though Google says IP's don't matter)
• I honestly think they do to a small amount.
• Make sure the site is fast in Canadia
• Ensuring that you are using the various language differences between Canadian English and American English. Is a must!
• I recommend Find FAST hosting in Canada e.g. Peer 1 and speedy rails as great hosting companies in Canada.

I hope this helps,

Tom

affect SERPs the 303 redirect remains fairly unknown because it is rarely used.

I came across a website linking to one of my sites with a 303 but I could not find a definitive answer of whether or not this link passed any PageRank. Information online about this was scarce and the only information I found was from people saying that only 301 redirects pass PageRank.

When I checked the status code for 303 redirect at w3.org it was “See other” . The description reads as follows:

“The new URI is not a substitute reference for the originally requested resource. The 303 response MUST NOT be cached, but the response to the second (redirected) request might be cacheable.”

This sounds very black and white and I my initial guess was that Google does not flow PR for 303 redirects. But I was curious, how was Google treating 303 redirects?

I set up an experiment to check how Google was handling the 303. Results below:

*Note: The translation for this keyword is NSFW

Google will show the search result with the URI that is initially requested. It will then show the Page Title and Meta Description (or other descriptive snippet) for the redirected page but it will show the URI from the redirecting page. It is caching the text from the final page but assigning it to the requested page.

How Google caches 303 redirects

Page A 303 redirects to Page B

Title: Page B

URI: Page A

Meta Description: Page B

Since page B does not rank for this keyword it is confirmed that the 303 redirect does not flow PR.

How did I set this test up?

1. I chose a rare keyword that had very few pages ranking for it.
2. On www.a.com I created two pages containing the keyword with the same exact content (www.a.com/a.htm .com/b.htm)
3. One page (www.a.com/a.htm) was linked to internally multiple times
4. One page  (www.a.com/b.htm) was linked to externally with 303 redirects only from two domains (including www.marketingchip.com)
5. The 303 redirects were created on the external pages (www.marketingchip.com/special-doors.html -> 303 -> www.a.com/b.htm)

After a few days neither www.a.com/a.htm nor www.a.com/b.htm appear in the results. However the number one listing for this keyword was forwww.marketingchip.com/special-doors.html but the meta title and the meta description are taken from www.a.com/b.htm. I acquired the information from this URL and would agree with Wesley definitely 301 redirect the link to not use a 303 and less you are trying to accomplish something similar to what it's shown above or in Wesley's comment. http://www.marketingchip.com/seo-experiments/how-does-a-303-redirect-affect-seo/ Sincerely, Thomas

303-redirect-results2.gif

Hi

I think Yoast makes the best WordPress SEO plug-in by a lot. The second best would be the All in One SEO Pack

each offer a Pro version I would use Yoast

I  agree with Rob and strongly recommend Dan Shure's excellent article on setup WordPress for SEO success there is some fantastic information in their and he is a true WordPress expert.

http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

If you are going to be moving it like you said to a new plug-in preferably Yoast use this plug-in to keep your existing settings like your title tags and Meta tags it will save you a lot of time.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-data-transporter/

if you are going to switch your current plug-in for a new one I to recommend WordPress SEO by Yoast

https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

If you run NGINX to use your XML Sitemaps with NGINX, Here are the rewrite rules you'll need:

# Rewrites for WordPress SEO XML Sitemap
rewrite ^/sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 last;
rewrite ^/([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 last;If you feel that you're going to have trouble with settings even though there are quite logical in my opinion. I recommend purchasing the premium plug-in as you will get access to Yoast support in addition to connecting to Webmaster tools and having a very capable 301 redirect plug-in built into the Yoast WordPress SEO premium versionYou can reach out to Yoast for support at any time the cost is $89 for the first website and there are bundles  discounts course afterwards.

https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo-premium/

The support you get

https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo-premium/support/

This is a good example of how in-depth Yoast support is compared to other plug-ins

http://kb.yoast.com/article/77-my-sitemap-index-is-giving-a-404-error-what-should-i-do

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Yoast

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

All in one

https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Good guide for the all-in-one plug-in

http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/users-guide-for-all-in-one-seo-pack/

Sincerely,

Thomas

No .co will not help you rank in the state of CO

its Columba but was made to work for everyone.

Hope  that helps,

tom

Hi Tim,

I think you did a great job of writing everything out. Would you mind sharing your URL's with me via private message if you are uncomfortable sharing it here?

I would be very hesitant to tell you to merge sites without knowing what type of content they have.

However having said that Granger.com is a good example of a site that sells just about everything. The only common theme is industrial products. But those range so vastly that you can understand what I mean.

as far as the best way to do it take the domain with the most authority and keep that domain 301 redirect the other domain page by page to it.

Here is some information

• http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
• http://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-subdirectory-to-new-domain
• http://moz.com/community/q/which-page-should-i-301-redirect-to-the-other

let me know if this is enough information I'd be happy to field any questions.

All the best,

Thomas

I would personally still noindex because  I would never recommend deleting something that I have not seen when it comes to site architecture. This way you really are not lose anything and you revert if you need to.

You may find that the lack of drops you down in ranking I doubt that will happen I really doubt it but I would not want you to delete having not seen your site.

Hopefully That helps,

Tom

"Honestly, I find wordpress to be a nightmare for SEO, if you crawl a wordpress site they are inherently bad, themes make things worse and the more plugins the more problems.

I don't know a CMS that is perfect for SEO, but I think wordpress is the worst."

I am certain Alan is joking to say WordPress is the worst of all CMS is that is really far fetched and not true at all.

However there is another CMS I can think of that is reasonably priced and might be right up your alley. It is called HubSpot.com it is a fantastic CMS and has 24 seven support they are a great company and might be your next pick. However keep in mind that you could have just bought a theme that was very well thought out when being built and therefore made your experience rough. This can all be fixed http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

Alan,

I respectfully disagree.

WordPress is something that if you use the wrong plug-ins and code it improperly yes you can cause problems. Howeverthat is the case for all websites minus the plug-ins. If you code and HTML site poorly it will run poorly. WordPress is in my opinion one of the most search engine friendly CMS is on the planet it would not represent almost 20% of the web if that were not the case or have Matt Cutts use it for his own blog over blogger (a Google tool)

I do agree that there are different levels of code.

For instanceI would simply use Genesis framework and make sure my plug-ins are high quality. Or use as few plug-ins is possible.

I respect that you have an opinion that HTML just HTML only sites in are less buggy.

However it does not appear to me that all the wonderful sites being run on WordPress that are ranking so well are having any issues why would it be so popular and I will give you a great for instance.

Yoast.com

it is run on a powerful server the coding is through Genesis, Web synthesis is the host, HTML 5 with CSS 3 and something that a regular 100% HTML website cannot do be updated easily from the backend.

Ghost is still just a blog and my honest opinion is it will stay that way at least for now and the next few years.

Berner I would suggest that you try using http://newrainmaker.com/pilot/

I will use it in front of the current varnish through port 80 configuration I would like to see how it works with the addition of fragment caching

Alan,

I respectfully disagree.

WordPress is something that if you use the wrong plug-ins and code it improperly yes you can cause problems. However that is the case for all websites minus the plug-ins. If you code and HTML site poorly it will run poorly. WordPress is in my opinion one of the most search engine friendly CMS is on the planet it would not represent almost 20% of the web if that were not the case or have Matt Cutts use it for his own blog over blogger (a Google tool)

I do agree that there are different levels of code.

For instance I would simply use Genesis framework and make sure my plug-ins are high quality. Or use as few plug-ins is possible.

I respect that you have an opinion that HTML just HTML only sites in are less buggy.

However it does not appear to me that all the wonderful sites being run on WordPress that are ranking so well are having any issues why would it be so popular and I will give you a great for instance.

Yoast.com

it is run on a powerful server the coding is through Genesis, Web synthesis is the host, HTML 5 with CSS 3 and something that a regular 100% HTML website cannot do be updated easily from the backend.

Ghost is still just a blog and my honest opinion is it will stay that way at least for now and the next few years.

I would suggest that you use rainmaker.com

The Yoast WordPress SEO plug-in along with scribecontent.com is included plus everything that authority.com from copyblogger.com has available.

Anything you can imagine wanting to do with site you can do there.

The biggest plus the plug-ins are already built-in. They are all high quality the caching the tedious things that bother people they are all taken care of.

If you try it you do not get charged after 30 days believe it or not it is amazing.

However why not use Genesys framework for your website instead of a code canyon theme you can do everything that your current theme does it just needs to be recoded in a faster better framework.

Now I am not saying what you are using is terrible. However code Canyon is hit or miss you do not know what your getting get until you get in to the backend of it.

You can have the developer create a replica of your current site or better yet: 99 designs or design crowd

have your dream site built for about 350 and up where they crowd sourced designers than have it coded on a very high quality framework like Genesis.

I think rainmaker will fix your problems and gives you a lot if you do not like dealing with the stuff but want all the ability of WordPress.

The other options I would look at our hosting your site with a managed WordPress hosting provider Pressable, GetFlywheel, web synthesis, WP engine, PressLabs, Pagely that way you are in good hands.

If you want to send me a private message I will offer you the ability to take away cashing issues and all that other stuff by migrating your site for free to one of the hosts above.

Once it is set up correctly you can actually talk to the hosting provider and figure out what is a bad plug-in and what is a good plug-in.

Flywheel offers free migrations and 15 days of staging server (a full copy of your site running on their servers)

to see if you like it. Why not try that and tell them the issues that you are having though I do not know what they are I can almost guarantee you that you will have no problem getting them fixed and when you want to do something that you cannot do with a static HTML site they can recommend whatever plug-in or coding is needed.

Last but not least https://www.authoritydev.com

and http://evolvingSEO.com

Each are able to make your WordPress problems look like no big deal. Then you can have a functional site that you will enjoy.

Sincerely,

Thomas

I don't know why you would want to create two stores on one website?

If you have a store that is selling vacuum cleaners hypothetically and another that is selling weed wacker's and you do not have any relevance between the two stores e.g. they are for a separate audience.

are you trying to reach the same audience use one website.

To websites even to subdomains

e.g. subdomain1.example.com & subdomain2.example.com will be treated as separate domains by Google.

There are some things you can do to tell Google this is one site and my opinion is if you are going to simply create a headache for yourself by using subdomains un less you have a very good reason?

I would suggest either combining these stores into one business if you are trying to get everything on one domain. Without knowing much more about the project I can tell you that subfolders  "example.com/subfolder" tend to work much better then subdomains for passing on domain authority.

You want to create separate businesses create separate websites.

If you want to create one website that sells everything use subfolders unless you are doing geo-targeting and or other reasons that make sense for The end-user who if you are trying to target different stores on the same domain they will get confused.

I hope that helps,

Tom