EGOL was right asking more information also for one precise reason: in some website a "thin page" maybe the best thing the same website can offer to a visitor because that page answers exactly to what the user needs from it.

That is why so often the Googlers say that thin content per se it's not a problem.

It's a problem if it is due to some technical issue or because of bad on-page SEO (i.e.: a page with a photo and no caption and written description of the photo).

So, to better answer your question, we need to know more about the nature of those thin pages you are talking about.

p.d.: using "noindex, follow" is not anymore suggested by Googlers. In fact, few months ago, John Mueller declared that if Google sees a page with a noindex,follow for a long time, then it will start considering the "follow" as a nofollow", so the original reason of its use won't be satisfied.

Hi... I'm sorry to tell you that the answer offered by Gaston is not totally correct.

So, in your Spanish page you have these hreflang and canonical annotations:

This is not correct because you are not adding also the self-referential hreflang annotation

Google is very precise about this, and it states its need in the help pages as well in many Googlers tweets and webmaster office hangouts.

The rel="canonical" is correct. Remember that the self-referential and the alternative href URLs must always be canonicals.

Finally, regarding the subfolders blocked via robots.txt, yes! that's totally incorrect:

if you're blocking Googlebot from accessing the Spanish, French and Italian subfolders, then Googlebot won't be able to parse the code of their pages, hence it won't be able to see also the hreflang annotations... with obvious erroneous consequences.

Your question is quite convoluted, so I hope to answer it correctly :-).

My first thought when reading your question was: "Why do they want to associate two so different set of products?".

I mean, I fully understand that you are moved by SEO consideration, but - honestly - SEO should not enslave business considerations and logic.

Widget and Gears are two totally different kinds of products and, especially, they have very different kind of buyer personas. In other words: the buyer personas targeted by the widgets website not necessarily are interested in gears.

Plus, also on an entity level, there's no connection between widgets and gears, hence also for Google would be hard to start understanding for what entity set is relevant the website if it is not presenting itself as a broader ecommerce store.

So, strategically, I would not start with SEO (bear with me...) as the main channel for the new gear website, but on branding, creating a dedicated website in a dedicated unique domain name.

Hence, I'd create campaigns to support the launching of the new website and line of products, so to create a solid backlink profile from the start, which will obviously help in rankings.

Said that, I would take advantage of the visibility of the Widget website for announcing the new Gear one (I suppose the widget site has a news section and an About Us section, under which you can create a landing page explaining what other "companies/websites" are part of the "Businesses company owning the Widget website".

Your question is not very clear, sincerely.

if the product pages that marketing only the USA users iare the only ones existing of those products (aka: there aren’t Uk product pages for those same products), then you must not implement the hreflang.

The hreflang is a rel=“alternate”, which means that it must always show an alternative URL to the current one. In the ISA product page it should signal as alternative UK users the UK ones, and viceversa.

so, if no UK product page exists, then the hreflang does not have an meaning to exist.

regarding your second question, if the USA market is very important for you and you want to market it differently thean you are marketing the UK one, then it may be a good idea to create an USa version of your site.

Despite the efforts, this answer do not respond to the question

I see a lot of confusion in all the answers :-).

The .ie domain is never treated as a generic domain name by Google. It's the country code domain for Ireland. Stop.

A country code domain name is geo-targeted by default on its corresponding regional version of Google, but Google doesn't "block" its visibility also in others Google (i.e.: Google.com or Google.co.uk), however, a ccTLD will have more difficulties in ranking higher in another Google than its own.

In other words:

1. domain.ie is targeting by default Google.ie;
2. but, it can be shown in Google.co.uk too;
3. however, for ranking in Google.co.uk - because of its geo-targeted nature - it must have stronger signals like mentions and backlinks to justify its visibility than a domain.co.uk or domain.com.

I suspect you didn't understood the question.

MTBE was asking if schema.org structured data items must be in the language used in the subfolder.

For instance, in www.domain.com/en/, will be the items written in English and in www.domain.com/es/ in Spanish?

The answer is yes.

Beware with LSI, which is mostly a myth.

As Bill Slawski wrote in Inbound.org back in 2014:

_Latent Semantic indexing was invented and patented in 1990 before there was the web. _

_It was developed to help index small (less than 10,000 documents) databases of documents that didn't change much (like the Web does). _

_There have been a number of companies that started selling LSI Keyword generation tools that promised that they could help identify synonyms and words with the same or similar meaning. _

Where those fail is that the LSI process requires access to the database (of documents) in question to calculate which words are synonyms - and the only people with access to Google's database to do that kind of analysis (which isn't possible anyway since Google's index is much too big and changes much too frequently) is Google.

A much better metric is TF-IDF, albeit always being conscient that it is still a metric... not the bibie.

Keyword Density is a myth as it has been demonstrated for several years !!! Please, don't spread myth in the Moz Q&A.

Some sources:

• https://moz.com/ugc/seo-myths-that-persist-keyword-density;
• https://moz.com/blog/keyword-targeting-density-and-cannibalization-whiteboard-friday
• http://www.alessiomadeyski.com/seo-myth-keyword-density/
• https://plus.google.com/+BillSlawski/posts/F9h4pVSXapT
• https://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/how-search-really-works-the-keyword-density-myth.html
• http://resources.spyfu.com/4-seo-keyword-myths-you-shouldnt-buy-into/
• https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/seo-myth-busting-01-keyword-density.961827/ (I mean, even black hats say it's a myth!)
• ....

This answer is good, because of the tools that are shared.

However... creating unique content doesn't mean your site will start earning links like crazy.

Umberto Eco once said that there are thousands of exceptional books that nobody ever read. The same can be told about all the "great content" published on the Internet. If you don't

If you don't put the same effort you put in creating your "quality content" into promoting it, then you're not going to obtain any backlink at all.

Therefore, more than thinking about what tool to use for creating content (please, don't confuse content with formats), I think it's better to suggest checking out the posts here on Moz under the Link Building category.

To make rest a project after a while. That pause will benefit your creativity, because your brain will work on it in the background without stress. When you return to the project, it will seems new somehow and those ideas your mind was breeding will come out with force.

I not a great fan of press release sites, as I think they are not giving a real personalized (is it correct this word?) service.

If I was you I would try to convince your clients to transform those press release into posts creating a blog. Then I would use the newsletters as a way to promote the blog with Media and contacts in Media.

That way it would be possible to create a more personal relationship between your clients' sites and the media, and from there more interesting linking opportunities.

Ciao Mike,

first of all my compliments for having "A" grade on every page of your site.

And now I will try to answer to your question.

• When it come to PPC, is not really necessary to create one Ad Copy for keyword and, therefore, one Landing Page for Keyword. The Ad would have to be written in order to well respond for a semantically related group of words. And the same it for the Landing Page.
• Landing Pages for organic traffic are very different from Landing Pages for PPC one (or Social Media). So they must be planned (and tracked) differently. Therefore, I would not do any external SEO for a PPC Landing Page but yes I would pay attention to some basic On Page factors (Title, URL, H1).
• From your last phrase, I see that you are going to use the Landing Page as a step to the real Landing... I wouldn't  do that. Remember, a commercial lead is something that can be a succes or a fail in question of seconds, so I would not make think the user that have to click to discover more about the service/product and then, maybe, again in order to contract/buy it. So, try whenever it is possible to make the conversion take place in the same landing page.
• PPC landing pages are usually the most bounced LP of all. In order to obtain a valid goal from the visit (and so give a profit to the visit), I always offer a second conversion objective. It could be a subscription to a newsletter or a like/follow me. Most of the time people don't buy the first time visit you, but yes, probably will sign to your newletter or social media profiles in order to stay informed about your products/services. This is an old marketing tactics whose purpose is to not loose the contact with a potential customer
• Finally I give you the link to a wonderful Unbounce post: http://unbounce.com/landing-page-examples/your-landing-page-sucks/ where are described 10 great example of landing pages and that can be an inspiration for yours.

Good luck with PPC, it is a great marketing tool, but can be a real pain in the... if not well planned.

Hi... I'm sorry to tell you that the answer offered by Gaston is not totally correct.

So, in your Spanish page you have these hreflang and canonical annotations:

This is not correct because you are not adding also the self-referential hreflang annotation

Google is very precise about this, and it states its need in the help pages as well in many Googlers tweets and webmaster office hangouts.

The rel="canonical" is correct. Remember that the self-referential and the alternative href URLs must always be canonicals.

Finally, regarding the subfolders blocked via robots.txt, yes! that's totally incorrect:

if you're blocking Googlebot from accessing the Spanish, French and Italian subfolders, then Googlebot won't be able to parse the code of their pages, hence it won't be able to see also the hreflang annotations... with obvious erroneous consequences.

Don't take me as good example (I'm not).... in fact I use none of above (gfiorelli1)... but you know, when you have a nick attached to you since the BBS era.

Seriously talking... brand name is always better for the twitter handle of a company. For the "professional" twitter handle of an employer of the company, the best is Name-Brand.

Hi Kevin!

The first thing you must ask yourself is this one: why do I need to post articles in posts/articles directories.

Surely you'd like to do it for link building reasons...

But is it worth the time and bucks spent? I personally think it is not.

The fact is that article marketing directories give you an easy way to create backlinks is surely tempting, but they are bad quality links. As Rusty wrote, they pass very few PR because:

1. many of the article marketing directories have their PageRank discounted by Google;
2. you article with your backlink very fastly deepens in the archive section of the directory or in one of the many faceted pages, which usually have almost 0 PR

Secondly, the articles published in those kind of directory right now rarely are picked up by other webmasters in order to fullfill their content needs, therefore the original reason to be of those sites (publish your original content to see it redistributed with an attribution link) is totally failing and fading.

So... in order to see some kind of effect on your ranking thanks to this hiperspammed tactic (and I'm sorry to notice that Rusty practically suggest to follow this way) you would need literally hundreds if not thousanda of articles.

That means that even though article marketing at first seems fast and cheap, on a large scale it is not, all the contrary: it expensive, time wasting and overly distracting.

If you have the money and time to engage in that kind of big scale strategy, then you'll probably see still a good effect on your rankings, results that probably  will be blown away if only Google decide to put a final end to these kind of links.

I don't say you have not to use article marketing (or PR sites for press releases), but do it once in a while creating always original content, not respinning it all over the web and just to create diversity in your link profile.

But I suggest you to change your link building chip, and start using other more productive and effective ways in order to create link building occasions:

• spend the time in bettering your own blog, making it known through social media interaction with other bloggers and site owner;
• creating connections with other bloggers in your market in order to create guest blogging opportunities;
• invest your money creating amazing content, or simply very good one that people would naturally like to share and link to;
• invest part of the budget which would be spent in article marketing (37$ * XY article... ) in Adwords in order to make your site stand up in front of your potential users while you're creating a solid link profile which can help you ranking higher. That adwords will help you for branding and making your site known and, eventually, reviewed, linked to and shared, not just for monetary conversions.
• and so on and on.

I do really suggest you to look at this old (august 2011) Whiteboard Friday by Rand Fishkin:Article Marketing: Mostly a Scam

Ciao!!!

Hi Alan and Matt,

I am sorry to tell you that if you set up the hreflang for "Europe" as hreflang="en-GB", that won't work.

That annotation, in fact, tells Google to show the URLs having it only to users searching in English from Great Britain.

It would be better to use only "en" in European website.

Said that, this is not the best solution either, because it is telling Google: "show this to users searching in English globally (but not if they are in the USA).

If the European web site is meant to reach users who not necessarily are using English as default language (eg: Spanish, French, Italians, Germans et al), than a solution could be tagging the European website with the "x-default" hreflang.

Note, though, that this a quite extreme use of the x-default.

The big mistake, anyway, is creating an European website itself:

1. Google does not consider political regions like European Community nor continents and geographical areas like "Asia", "Middle East", "Europe";
2. Because of 1, you cannot geotarget a website but for Political States (Spain, UK, Russia...)
3. To think that not-English speaking users will use English for searching something it is not realistic, therefore it is correct what Matt says in his answer re: translated versions served in whatever format (ccTld, sudomain, subfolder) better fits your business needs.

Finally, personally I would not suggest to a ccTld for targeting European users, because that ccTld would geotarget the site to its country (eg: .es to Spain). Better a generic domain name (.net or even .eu, which is a generic domain name and does not have any geotargeting power), or even a subfolder/subdomain.

Finally, when creating the different country sites, I remind you that in certain countries is spoken the same language. For instance Ireland and UK share English, but they have different currencies, obviously different postal system and phone numbers and, especially, a different culture, so that you should not think in having an European EN version serving all the English speaking countries, but localizing each one of them.

To not talk, and I really end my answer, countries like Switzerland (French, German, Italian and Romance), Spain (Spanish and Catalan), Belgium (French and Flemish), Ukraine (Russian and Ukranian).

Hi Vantresca.

I think it is better to clear thing about how International SEO works.

First of all I see a contradiction between your question (when you talk about geo targeting folders or better using cTld), then in this answer here above, when you talk about languages.

Remember: to target a country is not the same as targeting a language speaking population. The example you give (French) is quite clear about this difference.

That means that if you are targeting a language and the people talking that language, the first thing you must discard is the use of an Country level domain name, because that would mean you are targeting the country of the cTld (.es.> Spain - .fr = France...).

But that mean also that you should not have to indicate to Google to geo target any subfolder for any particular country. Ideally every language folder of the site should have to be crawled and shown globally, in order to be found by all the people speaking those language (i.e.: French, Canadians of Quebec, but also all the African nation speaking French..

More over, you cannot use any classic geo targeting signal, as currency, addresses or else.

And, also, you should pay attention to the version of the language used, as - for instance - the french spoken in Quebec is really different from the one spoken in Paris. In that case you should use the most "standardized" version of french, a neutral french.

So... if your site has French, Spanish,  English (or Russian I'll talk later), and you want those languages ranks well in every possible country those languages are spoken, the only tactic you have to use is link building, creating as much campaigns as the languages are and not thinking in outreaching sites from France, again taking French as an example, but from sites of every country were French is an official language.

About Russian, my suggestion is to prioritize the migration to an .ru domain if you think to compete in Yandex, as Yandex give a clear preference to Russian country level domains.

Related to your question about if it is possible to create a campaign on a subfolder level, honestly I cannot answer that question, as I've never had that need. But I would address the helpteam regarding this doubt, because they can tell you in details if Roger-bot will crawl your data (as you have requested) or not. You can contact them at help@seomoz.org

Hi  Alan!

yes, I was saying exactly that. If you're going for an international multi-country SEO and you have to deal with countries that share language, like in the case of Ireland and Uk, it is better to target them with two different "sites" (being a site in a ccTld or subfolder or sibdomain, depending on business convenience).

if you're doing multi-cointry SEO and one of your targeted counties has 2+ official languages, then the ideal solution is having a ccTld for that country and creating as many subfolder translated versions as are the official languages of that country.

For instance:

www.domain.be, with the French version appended from the root,

www.domain.be/nl/, with the Flemish translated version.

As alternatives be you can redirect 302 via user agent from domain.com to /fr/ or /nl/, while always letting users to eventually choose the alternate version via language selector.

Not so easy to answer, because definitely we are not talking just about SEO, but essentially of Marketing and Brand Marketing. I will try to give you my opinion, also basing it on my 11 years of experience in Media industry.

The choice, as an SEO, would be to have one site, as all the backlinks, citations and social buzz would pointing to just one domain. Anyway, I would wisely design the different communication areas in order they seems visually (and psichologically) different for the user. In that way you can maintain the essential difference between the three media (Newspaper, Radio, Tv), also because - as you say about the Radio - these media not necessarely have the same main focus.

My main concern as an SEO would be the indexation of such a big website, therefore I would put all my attention on the navigational architecture of a site that would include all the three distinct ones.

BUT, as Marketer and if the branding between the three Medium is very different, I would not put them under the same domain, but I would mantain them separate and croslink them editorially (for instance the newspaper using videos of the tv site). This could also better the construction of your News Media Group enthity.

More over, using three different sites/domains it is possible to strategy web marketing plan which complement themselves, in order to conquer three different range of searches and users.

In this last case, the real problem wouldn't be SEO, but the coordination of the tree SEO/web marketing plans.