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You will want to be selective with the categories and tags that you use. If you have multiple tag index pages with the exact same content you may be at some risk of serving nearly identical pages. It's still not a huge SEO issue as Google will likely just prefer one over the other.

If it does become an issue where multiple tags or categories are identical you can block indexing as you described.

Tags are primarily a feature for users to navigate subjects on your blog rather than a method to improve SEO.

The content quality and title of your posts is much more important in terms of optimization. We recently discussed ways to optimize content for search rankings just yesterday on our blog. I would recommend you focus on your content and keyword targeting as described there.

Hope this helps. Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions.

Devon,

Having multiple images linking to a site is not a problem at all, actually this is a very common way to build links to a site. As always it helps if all the tags are included in the image when it is posted (ie title, alt img). To make sure these are included it is often easier to send these sites the code to add to their blog, or have the code available for copy and paste. It's fine that the image is hosted in one place, the 'juice' will be passed from the site that has the image link.

Hope this helps.

Nick

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.

Gotta agree with Logan, just don't do it! Even if it's tempting. There's tons of great ways to build back links, you shouldn't need to resort to buying them. Sure there's tons of sites that still offer paid links and never get dinged by Google, but as we have seen over the years Google is always watching and penalties can be incredibly harmful. Currently, I've been working on a travel site and have ran into the issue of 75% of blogs expecting payment for links. We have changed our approach to the link building process and have managed to see some success. Be creative, you'll still be able to build links organically.

Chris

Adficient.com

This is cause for duplicate content concerns unless you specifically have tagged this type of page as no-index or included a rel-canonical tag pointing to your homepage. You would not want a 404 page being indexed.

I think your best option is to create a functioning 404 error page without your homepage content or to designate the pages no-index with the following tag.

Hope this helps.

From the perspective of search engines your examples would be virtually identical. The first one with the dash is the most common usage and easy to read.

Each year will be a unique term in each of your examples except that in your second example you wouldn't rank for "2017".

The characters you must avoid are the ampersand (&) and underscore (_) which will combine terms.

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.

Hello,

As long as the content is well written and the site is related to his site, a simple link to his homepage will be fine. You don't need to worry about anchor text or anything like that if the content uses specific keywords. Search engines will draw connections between the content and the link.

It is best to have some internal linking on your posts and static pages, don't over do it. Also, mix up your internal links, point to specific category pages, or items. If this article is primarily focused on this other person's site, don't worry about internal linking.

Here's a related article https://www.searchenginejournal.com/co-citation-and-co-occurrence-the-next-big-thing-in-seo/60724/

As long as you implement the correct 301 redirects and keep your original domains live (redirected) you should have minimal impact on your rankings. You will start to see the new pages indexed and ranking in place of the old sites.

Be sure to bring over the content in it's entirety and link to the new page URLs going forward and correct other backlinks if possible.

Your lower authority site should receive a good boost with the redirects to it. Your overall traffic may take a hit in the short term, but merging properties of the same company and focusing your efforts on one site is a good idea in the long run.

Best of luck moving your sites.

Hello,

I would recommend using a canonical tag on your duplicate page. Point the tag at the original blog. This will tell search engines where the original source of information is without penalizing the site. For more information,

https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

Regards,

Nick

www.adficient.com

Searching Google Maps directly is a little different than traditional SEO, mainly because the users location plays a role in the results that appear. If their location changes, listings adjust to the businesses closest to them.

However, there are some steps that can improve your specific listing for maximum exposure on Maps listings.

1. Verify all info is correct and the same business name is being used on major data providers such as Yellow Pages, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Yahoo Local, etc. And be sure they are linking to your website. Here is the full list:
   https://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us
2. Make sure your full address is mentioned on your website contact page.
3. Get quality backlinks from related websites and include the city(s) name in the anchor text.
4. Use a local phone number area code and keep it consistent
5. Possibly have your smaller offices identify themselves with a specific location in their name
6. Get more positive Google reviews for your office
7. Include location and business keywords in your Google Maps description

I hope these suggestions help you top the rankings.

Leszek,

This is a very common question that comes up with many clients. Realistically you only need one site, this site should be your main focus with optimization, linking, and content. I would suggest having your exact match domain redirecting to your branded website. This way the exact match domain is still in use, but your company's name is associated with the main site.

Many people think they need their exact keyword, or keywords, to be in their domain, which is not true. Many sites (Google and Moz for example) do not use keywords in their domains, yet rank very well in their industries. Now these are extreme examples, yet if you create a well thought out marketing campaign you can rank any domain for just about any keyword.

I hope this helps, if you have additional questions please let me know.

Regards,

Chris

www.adficient.com

Hello,

You are not being penalized for these crawl errors, but it's important to monitor these. Continue to mark them as fixed and double check to make sure there are none that are broken. Many people have encountered the same issue you are mentioning, it seems to be inaccuracies within Google. Another option is to 301 these 'fake' URLs, however this may be time consuming for you. Also I would double check your sitemap, and make sure the links are not in the sitemap.

Hope this helps.

Chris

Adficient.com

Hi Cedric, You're right to be concerned about duplicate content. I recommend that you take a few more steps to be completely sure that your site has a chance of performing well and being indexed and not penalized.

• You should write a unique title, the titles are much too similar
• You should write a unique introduction before quoting the article and additional unique content after the quote
• 300 words is too much for a quote from another article -- consider doing 150-200
• Consider using just 1 image instead of 4

Because you are only partially copying the article and linking to the original source there is very little chance that you will be penalized. However, your copied article will not be considered valuable because it doesn't have any original content. Just a few tweaks and a little original content should help and give you a chance to be indexed/ranked. Best of luck with your site and keep up the great articles.

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.

Option 3 seems to be the most aesthetically pleasing to the eye and shortest option. For SEO purposes the shorter URL is often the best option because the keywords would potentially be displayed in the URL preview and be highlighted in bold. It's also not advisable to repeat keywords as in your other options. Leaving out the .html extension is the most common practice today and makes your website look more modern. Hope this helps you make a decision.

Hello Rita, You're correct that you can't copy the review itself.

If you are inclined to do so, you can take a screenshot of the review and post it with no issues.

It's also possible to create a graphic that shows "Rated 5 Stars on Google" and link it to your reviews directly (in a new window.) You can use this link generator tool to create a direct link to your Google+ reviews.

Hope this helps!

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.

Hello,

A simple solution would be to add a robots.txt that will close the page to bots. This is typically for pages you do not want search engines to crawl, however if it is spammy and it's just 'fake' traffic from bots this could cut down on it.

If you would like it to be removed from your analytics you can add it to a removal page. Essentially, it will not show any traffic that goes to that page.

Hope this helps.

Chris Hickman

Adficient.com

Finding a high quality content writer can be difficult, but it's important to find the perfect fit. I would recommend staying away from Fiverr for content, you can find other skills from the site, but I would recommend hiring a well-known writer.

It depends if you want them to work in house, but usually you can find a decent writer on Craigslist, just make sure they provide examples of their work. Another example would be using LinkedIN, the quality of writer you receive from these two sites will be much higher than Fiverr.

Bad SEO can be really disruptive to your ranking performance. It sounds like this person may have been using black hat link building techniques and decided to remove them once you parted ways.

There are ways to monitor and remove bad links that may negatively impacting your rankings. We have done this for many clients at GetBackOnGoogle.com to recover rankings after bad SEO work. It involves identifying incoming negative links and strategically requesting removal. In some cases you may need to disavow backlinks through Google Search Console, but the best option is to get them removed manually if possible first.

You can use the Moz Open Site Explorer to review and monitor inbound links.

If you truly think someone may have done something malicious, I would also recommend a full SEO audit to see if the setup of your website or SEO plugins have changed in any way and to make general improvements since your rankings have dropped. You'll also want to start working on content and building legitimate backlinks of your own from related sites in your industry.

Mark / AdFicient.com

Ken,

Is this for your Google local listings? I've never heard of this happening, but there are ways to get the images removed. I would suggest marking the images as inappropriate. Technically the images do not match Google's guidelines of 'Represent the real-world business location'. Google will review the issue and confirm if the images are accurate or not. It's not a full gurantee the images will be removed, but it's an excellent place to start.

I hope this helps.

-Nick

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.

Finding keywords is a really popular problem, as they mentioned before there are a lot of tools dedicated to this. The most popular tool is Google AdWords keyword planner. This will provide related keywords based on a list you provide and can be ranked by popularity.

A new tool I've found to be very useful is http://answerthepublic.com/ which provides results based on the most popular questions people are asking related to your industry. This can be great for blog post ideas or content for your pages.

Also, a recent article answered this same question with a great list of resources: 
https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/24/what-people-search-for-most-popular-trends-keywords-topics/

As for the second part of your question, the only free way to see who is performing best for specific keywords is to type them into search and look at the ads yourself. Be sure not to click on the competitor ads, as you probably already know it's against the terms of service.

As Samantha mentioned, the Spam Analysis tool is not a 100% accurate tool, it's more of a 'helping tool'. With the tool its best use is to get some ideas on what poor links are pointing towards your site. Even then you need to take the results with a grain of salt. The tool may give you a spam score that is not entirely accurate, you need to examine the links and make sure it is actually spammy. You'll also notice that the tool doesn't pull all the back links to your site. Moz doesn't have the capability that Google does to crawl that much quantity. To get a complete list of your links go into Google Search Console.

If you're seeing your rankings and domain authority increasing this is a good sign Google noticed your disavow.

Hope this helps.

Chris

Adficient.com

Can you please provide the actual URLs or replace the domain with X's but keep the structure.

The structure of the URLs in your examples are not valid addresses so it's confusing. Thanks.

Hello,

A simple canonical tag would be sufficient. You can keep the content the same and not have to take the time to re-write the article.

Chris Hickman

Adficient.com

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

We have had this issue with a client of ours and it's easy to change, but there are a few hoops to jump through. What we had to do was call Google and have them manual set the address. The address we wanted could not be set by us alone, since it was a hyphenated unit number. Try contacting Google through here, https://support.google.com/business/contactflow?hl=en. It only took a day or two to get changed for us, they are pretty good with responding in a timely fashion.

Regards,

Chris Hickmana

Adficient.com

Bob,

There's lots of options for you to write about, however, many of the topics have already been covered. What would be unique is to offer some case studies. Use some of your experiences to share what type of work you do and the results you get. This can help people relate to the problems they are having.

Hope this helps.

Chris

Adficient.com

Thank you for clarifying. Nice looking website. This is a pretty common issue. If you plan on creating content in the near future on that page you can do a 302 temporary redirect to your page "How Fundraising Works" this would be the most relevant page, not your homepage.

It's never good to leave a blank page on it's own.

Also, I'm noticing a few other minor issues such as double backslash in your footer links and "Hello World" blog post is published. This can be a target for spammers and hackers.

Hope this helps answer your question.

Hello, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like your website has been hacked or compromised. I've done some Google searches and one of the first items found was one of your portfolio items which has a redirect to a deceptive site. The portfolio item in question is titled "Callidus Consulting."

The hacker has likely redirected or altered some of your content without your knowledge and it has caused your listing titles and descriptions to be thrown off.

I recommend you do a full security audit and clean up. To start, install the Sucuri plugin to scan, lock down and harden your site against future hacking attempts.

Also, you should consider redirecting https to http because these URLs are indexed. Setup temporary redirects to your homepage for the broken URLs that are indexed so that you don't lose any traffic. Best of luck.

Hello,

If your links are from the navigation don't worry about having too many internal links. The Moz tool is more of a suggestion and will not differentiate between navigation links and other on page links. Ultimately you do not want to have a page that appears as an internal link farm, and search engines will distinguish between navigation and other links.

Hope this helps, if you have more questions just ask.

Chris

Adficient.com

Hello,

My first suggestion would be to use Google Analytics, it's typically the go to for any tracking. Can you elaborate more on the issue with GA? Are you getting different results? Do you need to create a custom URL for tracking?

Chris

Adficient.com

Susannah,

As Sean mentioned, it is possible to get in contact with GMB, but it can be tricky. We have ran into similar issues, we had an issue where the suite number was a letter then number, for instance C 109. We contacted the GMB team, left a message with contact info and manged to get a call back the same day. The changed the issue over the phone.

I would suggest getting in contact with GMB and describing your issue with the team. Talking with Google will make the process much easier.

Start by reporting the problem here, https://support.google.com/maps/answer/3094088?from=cuf

Hope this helps.

Chris Hickman

Adficient.com

All you need is a hosting account and to point the domain to a specific directory containing your .htaccess file.

Place your 301 redirects in the .htaccess file and you will be good to go. No WordPress install is necessary.

Like EGOL mentioned it is considered spammy if a website hides and text or images for that matter. Cloaking text can result in a manual penalty from Google which can be terrible for a site. I would suggest putting in an h1 tag that mentions your brand and a keyword you hope to rank for. If you just have the brand name you want to rank for (and no keywords, which I can't imagine anyone would want to do) you can provide an h1 tag that mentions what the product or service is.

Overall, no, don't hide text.

Chris Hickman

Adficient.com

Jordan hits some very good points. Realistically you're not going to be pursing just one keyword for a website. Look at variations of your focused keyword, and any other keywords related. Really you should analyze about 100 different keywords.

Are you familiar with the industry? If a customer calls or emails about a technical question on the product are you able to provide a valid answer? If you are creating content on the niche are you familiar with what issues people are having? You can always hire someone that can handle these issues, but it's always a plus to have some knowledge of the industry you're working in.

Chris

Adficient.com

As Gaston mentioned, SEO is a long process that won't happen over night. You'll need to develop a well planned out campaign that you can track and monitor. Here are a few steps to get you started, you can get more information on each one with some of the guides mentioned above.

1. Site Errors
2. Optimize your site
3. Create Content
4. Build quality back links

These steps are vague, however once you get a better understanding of SEO these will make more sense. Continue to move the graph in an upward trend. Review what your competition is doing and see what works for them.

Good Luck!

Chris

Adficient.com

In terms of SEO, there are no penalties for using a gTLD. Technically you have an equal chance of ranking well for a keyword than those with .com domains. It comes down to preference, marketing and the SEO work you put in.

I can see the .training domain working well for marketing to a younger audience, it may be appealing and seem more modern. An older audience may be more accustomed and feel that .com domains are more professional.

Exact match keyword domains gained notoriety because they would often get great anchor text when people linked to their website. I don't see why you would have an issue with that because I would naturally link to the site as "Foo Training."

To answer your question plainly, no it won't be seen as spammy but the .com may seem more professional and credible to some users. I hope this helped make your decision easier.

If blogger outreach is not working, I would consider re-focusing your efforts on the client's own blog and publishing high quality, compelling content and news that will naturally attract links. You should use charts, images, infographics or slideshows to make the post more authoritative and attractive to other content creators.

Hope this helps. Best of luck.

As Matt mentioned above, this is very vague and would require a good amount of research. There are many tools and blogs available that help new and old sites begin the process of optimizing a website. I can give some advice on what I would do to get the initial setup going.

• Site audit - Run a site audit and find where issues may be. This means search for broken links, broken images, missing tags, duplicate content, etc. To begin ranking a site it's important to make sure the site is running on search engine's requirements.
• Review your link profile - Do you have spammy links to the site? Is the competition blowing you out of the water when it comes to links? Given your niche, there's going to be lots of competition, chances are you are far behind in the link area.
• Blog - In many cases this is a given, however, many people don't understand the importance of this step. Add new, compelling content people will want to link to. Research long tail terms people may be using to find products. This will give you a better chance of ranking rather than generic terms like 'guitar' which will have incredibly high competition levels.
• Syndicate your content - You've posted a blog, now what? Get it in front of people! Share it on social media and social bookmarking sites.
• Back link - I don't need to go over the importance of this step. Just remember, quality over quantity.

I hope this will help you get started, there's lots to do, but stay vigilant.

-Nick

Hello,

Is everything on your site properly optimized? For instance, is your site speed scoring well? Often people will leave a site if the page is loading too slow. Research shows it's often after 2 seconds.

Are your landing pages associated with the terms or queries that are bringing users to the site? People will often bounce from a page if it's not related to what they searched. However, it often takes more than a second to realize the page you're on is not related to the search though.

Where's this traffic coming from? Search, direct, social media? If it's direct and only a second, then a bounce, that would strike me as spammy.

Hope this helps.

Chris Hickman - Adficient

Hello,

Keep in mind the spam score is more of a helping tool, rather than a complete tool. In other words it's there to give you an idea of how your link profile appears, more than telling specifically which links are harmful. I believe the tool will be going away soon, so don't look too far into it.

Also, different tools, such as majestic and AHREFs are great for monitoring back links, but are not always 100% accurate. Sites like these, and even Open Site Explorer, don't have to the resources to scan the internet like Google does. With that being said, go to the source. Review your link provide within Google Search Console. Rather than using a tool, do it yourself, the results will be much more thorough.

I hope this helps, if you would like more information on reviewing your back link profile please ask.

Chris

Adficient.com

As Dmitrii mentions, disavowing links isn't going to change your rankings, especially overnight. Removing poor back links is an excellent first step, the next step is to get a well balanced SEO campaign planned out. Start creating some entertaining, helpful content pieces, then get that content in front of people. Build some high quality back links to the site, and continue doing it. Show the search engines you've made changes to move in the proper direction. It'll take time, but it'll be beneficial.

Chris

Adficient.com

I wouldn't go beyond 2 levels deep on any sub-directory except on rare occasions when it's still a short URL. The directory structure does not matter so much for SEO if done correctly. However, with WordPress, the breadcrumbs, navigation and site-wide links will end up with poorly prioritized interlinking. This could be bad if you do have important pages in sub-directory structures such as yourself.

For example, your 1st level directory pages such as /guides/, /treatments/ and /social/ are cannibalizing page authority simply because they are linked to more (and in better positions) than your Men's Guide page is linked to. I recommend beefing up the internal links to the Men's Guide page and improving a lengthening the content on that page as you mentioned you plan to do.

Instead of linking to the page with the anchor "Introduction" use "Men's Hair Loss Guide."

It's a good idea to keep URLs as short as possible so that your keywords have the opportunity to appear in bold in the URL of a search listing. This makes the listing more attractive.

You may also want to consider placing the Men's and Women's Guide at the top level of your menu instead of the sub-menu if possible.

I've also noticed you have a lot of old content being indexed with a different website design, such as the About Us page. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but I would suggest migrating it to the new design or redirecting where appropriate.

I hope these suggestions are of some use. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to discuss this or more advanced SEO further.