Hello John, interesting dilemma you have. I think you have a good idea as well. I would be interested to learn about the level of competition for this term, I imagine it can not be that intensive if your PDF is ranking #1.

My recommendation would be to build the landing page, but include some of the content from your PDF as a preview. You can then offer the free download sign up to continue reading. It's likely the PDF is ranking well because of the content.

Of course you will want to create a 301 redirect to the new landing page from the old PDF URL. Also, keep the same title tag or anchor text that people are using to link to the PDF or the title that Google is currently giving the PDF. I think you have a good chance of retaining the #1 ranking if done right.

You may also have meta information within your PDF that you will want to migrate to the landing page. We're a big fan of landing pages at AdFicient and this sounds like a promising opportunity. Best of luck.

Hello Michael, valid question. Unfortunately, the title attribute has no direct impact on search rankings. The title tag is primarily for usability purposes.

I'm not positive, but I believe there may be apps for the visually impaired that read the content of title tags and alt image tags. If you're using the same content on desktop and mobile devices I would go ahead and add the title if it helps clarify what the link is pointing to.

However, it is not recommend to use the title tag if it is the same as your anchor text. It should be unique and clarify what the link is. Hope this helps.

As far as Google is concerned these are valid titles, however they may be a bit lengthy. You'll notice there is a problem if Google starts to alter your title by using other content on the page. You can avoid this by making sure the content on your page matches well with the title.

For better readability consider changing the comma (or last comma if there are 3 items) to an ampersand (&). This gives the title a better appearance and reads more like a description instead of list of keywords.

Hi Myles,

Good question. The short answer is that it is not necessary for SEO if you have pages linked elsewhere (such as your menu and category pages), but it can be beneficial. The reason it can be good for SEO is to cover all the bases and make sure that even your least important posts and pages get some internal links to them and get crawled.

It can be a great resource for users to find things on your site. The main purpose of these pages is for users.

If your sitemap is going to be very massive I would consider using other navigation menus, sub-navigation menus or categories instead. Otherwise go ahead and add one.

Matt Cutts of Google has previously said that an HTML sitemap can be more beneficial than XML sitemaps for indexing. Both are recommended. Hope this helps and best of luck with your SEO efforts.

Hey there, in addition to Oleg's comment you can add an htpasswd file to your server to require a username and password to be entered before any users or robots are allowed to access your website.

You can find information on setting this up here.

The reason for the -2 added to the category permalink is because you have a duplicate name. Even if this category is in the trash it will cause the -2 to be added if a new category is made. Delete any duplicate names in the trash to fix this.

I would recommend using the shorter category "womens" and if possible shorten the "product-category" slug so that your keywords have a chance to appear in bold the search listing preview.

Usually your product category links and breadcrumbs will update automatically when the permalink is changed. If you have placed manual links to these categories you may want to consider adding 301 redirects to the updated URLs.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your updates.

Hello,

It won't have any negative effects on your site, I would suggest calling it a different section. For instance, you could have Blog, Expert Opinions, Breaking News, etc.

Going forward I would suggest making sure the URLs are set to what you would like, it will save time in the future.

What platform is this company using? You could integrate a Wordpress blog and create your own URLs through WP. It sounds strange that this company cannot create unique URLs.

Hope this helps.

Nick

Adficient.com

If there is any possibility of relevant backlinks to these missing pages I would recommend 301 redirects to your homepage or other related pages to pass on that link juice.

Hello,

There is no definitive answer, it really comes down to how you want people browsing your website. For instance, I would suggest a user stay within the same tab if they click from one blog article to the next. There's no reason they need to have a new tab opened. Now if they are on a product page and you have a suggested items section, once they click the suggested item should open in a new tab. This will let the user remember what they were originally browsing along with seeing additional products.

Also, I believe many users get suspicious once a new window opens when they click something. If they are expecting to stay within the same window or even tab. It can look spammy or like an ad/pop up, which could result in closing all.

Browse any major website, how often are you forced to open a new tab or window? Hardly ever, the only time it happens is when you are leaving the main URL.

I hope this helps.

Chris Hickman

Adficient.com