A tool like MOZ or SEMRush will show you where the backlinks were pointing or you may notice a difference in the page rank or traffic to a page if it lost a valuable link.

If the links all look to be of low quality I wouldnt worry to much if you have a good overall link profile. But I would keep monitoring to make sure it is not a trend that is going to continue.

https://blog.pagezii.com/how-to-check-backlinks-in-google-analytics/

The above link may also help. You may need to add a secondary dimension of landing page. Sorry brain not working quite right its been a long day.

Hi again,

I have just checked and you have a redirect chain which is not good.

Status Code URL IP Page Type Redirect Type Redirect URL
301 http://blog.example.com/  server_redirect permanent https://blog.humankinetics.com/
301 https://blog.example.com/  server_redirect permanent https://humankinetics.me/
200 https://example.com/  normal none none

I have removed any identifying data but trust me it's from your link.

I would work to get the 301 pointing straight from both the first two links to the third so there is no extra step in the middle required.

and now back to your original questions.

Did the links I provided earlier help with the UTM question?

As for adding DA/PA to your blog have you seen any increase since you made the change? You may get some from it but as I said earlier I don't think you will get much. Monitoring is the only way you will know for sure.

Without seeing the data it is hard to say.

If you have a few years of data take a look back and see what fluctuations you have had previously.

Also, check the pages that the links were pointing to on your site make sure they haven't been removed.

If its a small number of links compared to your overall backlink profile then I wouldn't worry to much if its a big percentage of your overall backlink profile then I would be digging into it to see if you can stop it.

Is there any pattern to the links as I asked in my first response? are they all from one type of site? do they all link to old content?

There could be any number of reasons for this.

The domains linking to you are clearing up old content and removing it from their site if they no longer see it as valid or valuable.

The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now.

Old domains disappearing off the web completely

For a more specific answer you  will need to provide us with more info, such as how old are the links, are they all from one type of websites such as directories or blog sites

Steve

Hi JabeKay,

Apologies for the delay in replying its been a busy day.

I need to have a read over the info you have provided and digest it, I will then come back with what I can to help.

By the way, you may want to check the link at the bottom of your last post

Steve

I'm not sure but if you type the newly created subdomain URL into a browser it redirects to the WordPress blog at its usual address.

Does it show the new URL in the browser or the original URL when the page has stopped loading?

I don't think so. Wouldn't that create some kind of loop where the new subdomain redirects to the usual blog URL then that redirects back to the new subdomain?

It depends on which method you have used. If you have done a DNS mapping for the new subdomain then redirecting the old URLs will be fine in theory. If when you load the page you see the original URL then there is no need to do this. (see my earlier post for info on things to be aware of when redirecting).

If you are not sure if it will create a loop test it on one URL that is nested deep in your site and has little to no traffic.

It all depends on the setup that has been put in place. If you can find out the answer to that then I can give you a clearer answer.

I can't see much point in redirecting the new subdomain to the original URL though, I wouldn't have thought much link juice would be passed via this method. I could be wrong it's not a situation I have found myself in. I would definitely advocate lots of monitoring and testing to see the results.

I haven't tried it but I am pretty sure you can run Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. You may have to use subfolders but that would be better than a separate domain.

If you can't run the two together, running it on a subdomain is ok, but it will probably be treated as two different domains by Google. When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?

If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.

See my responses here for more on large redirects https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirects-large-htaccess-file-question

I haven't really looked at UTMs on internal pages, however, subdomains are normally considered separate domains as far as I am aware.

These links may help

https://moz.com/community/q/subdomains-or-separate-domains-for-dealers

https://chrisberkley.com/blog/subdomains-for-seo/

https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/transfer-utm-parameters-google-tag-manager/

https://www.bounteous.com/insights/2016/08/11/two-steps-correctly-tracking-subdomains-google-analytics/

https://penguinwp.com/common-utm-campaign-url-tracking-mistakes-to-avoid/

Hi JabeKay,

Is there a reason the blog is on a different domain?

It seems to me like you are working to build the strength of two separate domains when you could put all your efforts into one.

I would seriously consider moving the blog to the e-commerce site domain and 301 redirecting the old blog domain to the e-commerce domain.

This way new content is in the right place and building traffic for the place you want it.

If this is not an option let me know.

Steve

Sorry I meant to add some links that might be useful.

here they are

https://moz.com/community/q/will-301-redirects-slow-page-speed

https://moz.com/blog/heres-how-to-keep-301-redirects-from-ruining-your-seo

https://moz.com/community/q/massive-301-permanant-redirects This is an older question on here but may have some useful insights.

https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/113246/does-too-many-301-redirects-harm-serp-rankings

http://www.thesempost.com/best-practices-for-301s-in-large-htaccess-file/

https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/301-redirect-lessons

Hi Leadforms,

Interesting question.

Having lots of redirects will slow down your site.

There are different ways to implement your redirects other than .htaccess but I believe this would be the best method for you.

Is there any way you can group some of the redirects? maybe part of the URL is the same for all the pages you want to send to a certain folder then the match may work?

If not then I think you have a massive job on to redirect 5k pages and manage the redirects afterwards as well.

I would look at the pages and judge the value of a redirect on that page. If the page has no external links pointing to it and it has a low PA then do you need to redirect it?

You also need to keep in mind a few other things:

1. You need to make sure that the page you are redirecting to and from are similar in a boolean context - that is that a machine will see them as the same content and not just a person

2. you need to avoid redirect chains - that is a redirect to a redirect and so on

3. If you have redirects in place at the moment from HTTP to https you need to redirect these separately otherwise you will generate a chain

4. I would amend all your internal links rather than relying on the redirect otherwise again you will create a chain

Once you have implemented the redirects you will need to monitor them to see how much traffic they are generating, if after a few months a redirect is generating no traffic and all the traffic is going to the new URL then you will need to consider the benefit of keeping that redirect in place or removing it to improve site load times.

I hope this helps,

Steve

Hi Niaokun,

First, of Disavow the spammy links will help with how Google sees your website.

But to reduce your spam score on MOZ etc... you will need to contact the sites that have links you want removing and ask them to remove them. This can be time-consuming and doesn't always have a high success rate.

No MOZ and Google do not share data.

I hope this helps

Steve

Hi Luke,

Moz Pro has a good backlinks tool.  https://moz.com/products/pro

Also, Ahrefs has a pretty substantial backlinks tools https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker

As does Majestic https://majestic.com

For free tools you can use SEO Powersuite which you can run locally on your PC. I would make sure you check the settings on this though and read the user guide. It is a pretty powerful suite of tools. https://www.uk.link-assistant.com/features-and-editions.html

The hoth also lets you check your backlinks for free, this is powered by Ahrefs I think. https://www.thehoth.com/backlinks-checker/

I hope this helps.

There could be any number of reasons for this.

The domains linking to you are clearing up old content and removing it from their site if they no longer see it as valid or valuable.

The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now.

Old domains disappearing off the web completely

For a more specific answer you  will need to provide us with more info, such as how old are the links, are they all from one type of websites such as directories or blog sites

Steve

Hi Ben,

Have you tried increasing the font size? It may sound daft but normally the obvious is the simple answer.

Most CMS have an easy option to change the font size across the whole website and you can test it to make sure it does not have an adverse effect on larger screens.

The other point that springs to mind is to make sure you don't have any really small text on the page, check your footer for one, but also if the domain has spammy text hidden with really small text size that won't help.

It might help if you could share the text size you are using if none o the above help.

Steve

Have you done an analysis to see if there is any difference in mobile and desktop? I ask as the main reason for shorter URLs is to make them mobile friendly as far as i am aware.

I think as long as you are consistent across all of your URL structures and the information and pages are in an organised manner then you will be OK.

I am not totally convinced that removing the lawyer from the URL would have much of a negative or positive impact on the results you are seeing. Unfortunately without testing fully there is no way to know. And I wouldn't want to test something like this on a production site that is starting to see traffic.

Side note: it is good practice having the keyword in the URL where it naturally makes sense

Also another consideration is do you plan on adding a lot more pages in the future? if you do then you need to consider the benefits of organising the site now before you add those pages against leaving as is.

I am not that familiar with Umbraco unfortunately.

I have done some more digging and found some more pages that may help.

https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-friendly-urls/

https://www.searchlaboratory.com/2016/02/do-keywords-in-urls-still-have-an-impact-on-rankings-experiment/

https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

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

I know i seem to be sitting on the fence here, I am not really sure which is the best way to move forward.

If you are planning on adding lots more pages or categories then i would seriously consider tidying the URLs up with 301 redirects to save on work in the future.(again this needs considering against the potential affects on SERPS and traffic)

If you are not planning on adding lots more pages then I would leave as is.

Without seeing the data it is hard to say.

If you have a few years of data take a look back and see what fluctuations you have had previously.

Also, check the pages that the links were pointing to on your site make sure they haven't been removed.

If its a small number of links compared to your overall backlink profile then I wouldn't worry to much if its a big percentage of your overall backlink profile then I would be digging into it to see if you can stop it.

Is there any pattern to the links as I asked in my first response? are they all from one type of site? do they all link to old content?

Hi JabeKay,

Is there a reason the blog is on a different domain?

It seems to me like you are working to build the strength of two separate domains when you could put all your efforts into one.

I would seriously consider moving the blog to the e-commerce site domain and 301 redirecting the old blog domain to the e-commerce domain.

This way new content is in the right place and building traffic for the place you want it.

If this is not an option let me know.

Steve

Hi Leadforms,

Interesting question.

Having lots of redirects will slow down your site.

There are different ways to implement your redirects other than .htaccess but I believe this would be the best method for you.

Is there any way you can group some of the redirects? maybe part of the URL is the same for all the pages you want to send to a certain folder then the match may work?

If not then I think you have a massive job on to redirect 5k pages and manage the redirects afterwards as well.

I would look at the pages and judge the value of a redirect on that page. If the page has no external links pointing to it and it has a low PA then do you need to redirect it?

You also need to keep in mind a few other things:

1. You need to make sure that the page you are redirecting to and from are similar in a boolean context - that is that a machine will see them as the same content and not just a person

2. you need to avoid redirect chains - that is a redirect to a redirect and so on

3. If you have redirects in place at the moment from HTTP to https you need to redirect these separately otherwise you will generate a chain

4. I would amend all your internal links rather than relying on the redirect otherwise again you will create a chain

Once you have implemented the redirects you will need to monitor them to see how much traffic they are generating, if after a few months a redirect is generating no traffic and all the traffic is going to the new URL then you will need to consider the benefit of keeping that redirect in place or removing it to improve site load times.

I hope this helps,

Steve

I haven't tried it but I am pretty sure you can run Shopify and WordPress on the same domain. You may have to use subfolders but that would be better than a separate domain.

If you can't run the two together, running it on a subdomain is ok, but it will probably be treated as two different domains by Google. When you say mapping I assume you mean via DNS so that the subdomain for the blog is pointing straight to the host server and you are not redirecting?

If you have done this have you redirected the old domain for the blog to the new subdomain with 301? if not you need to do this to preserve what you can of the link juice.

See my responses here for more on large redirects https://moz.com/community/q/301-redirects-large-htaccess-file-question

I haven't really looked at UTMs on internal pages, however, subdomains are normally considered separate domains as far as I am aware.

These links may help

https://moz.com/community/q/subdomains-or-separate-domains-for-dealers

https://chrisberkley.com/blog/subdomains-for-seo/

https://www.analyticsmania.com/post/transfer-utm-parameters-google-tag-manager/

https://www.bounteous.com/insights/2016/08/11/two-steps-correctly-tracking-subdomains-google-analytics/

https://penguinwp.com/common-utm-campaign-url-tracking-mistakes-to-avoid/

Hi,

When I use the keyword tool, as you can see in the image attached the search results for both the keywords you have mentioned have a monthly volume that is very low.

Either 11 - 50 keywords for recruitment agency north-west or 51 - 100 for recruitment agencies north-west.

The results for the keyword you enter are directly under the keyword with the graphs.

I would revisit your keyword research and see if you might be better of targeting different keywords.

The MOZ tool you are using is excellent. You also have the below tools you can try

https://app.neilpatel.com/en/ubersuggest/keyword_ideas

https://www.wordtracker.com/

These are just a couple, but I find them an excellent place to start.

Steve

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