I had this problem.

Are you using W3 Total Cache... if so you should activate the Yoast SEO extension (presumably you use Yoast, and their sitemaps). You will find it at Performance -> Extensions in the W3 Total Cache admin area.

In addition, with the robots file in Maxcdn you should have something like:

User-agent: *
Disallow:/
Allow: /wp-content/
Allow: /wp-includes/

You will find this under the SEO settings of your Pull zone in MaxCDN.  Make sure you have robots & canonical header ticked as well.

The W3 Total cache extension will sort all the sitemap problems with pointing to the right URL and canonical.  There is no need to do anything manually as some of the articles suggest.

I have added an update here: http://moz.com/community/q/reviewing-category-tag-policy-update

Ok, so I understand Google doesn't use stopwords (like "a" or "the").

Therefore if I am optimize for a keyword phrase, and say find an opportunity for say:

"how to create stuff something"

But it actually reads better as (although doesn't sound completely out of place as above)

"how to create stuff in something"

Which is better for SEO? (ignore usability \ readability in your replies please and assume it reads reasonably either way as that was just an example)

Actually, many of the larger hosts using cPanel now do not require a dedicated IP as they use SNI technology that allows an SSL certificate to be installed on a shared IP.  However, there can be other benefits to having a dedicated IP such as being less likely to get caught on an Email blacklist etc.

Thanks, that was my impression of it as well.  Just wanted to check I wasn't overlooking something.

Is there any reason to use relative Urls from an SEO perspective?

Thank you.  The example page i linked  is actually a resource that helps with conversions. .  The content at the top will highlight the better posts rather than some of the fluff posts that I rel canonical  or no-index (i.e. old offers etc). The problem is that if I do more than 100 words, it would end up fluff.  I think it adds value by linking to some external resources and key posts, so I will work towards building that up over time.

But thank you for your indepth reply.  You are saying alot of what I was thinking, but not convinced enough to make the drastic changes I probably need to do.

I am tempted to remove tags.  I don't think anyone ever visits them.

Update:  I have now removed the tags.  I can always create one or two new categories if I need to in the future, but for now I think I have made the best decision for my site.  160 pages that were never visited and diluted link juice have just been deleted.

Neither have been indexed due to that very reason... duplicate content, poor quality \ thin content.

I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site.  Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes.

This is what I am planning:

• Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/).  With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important.
• Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries.  I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so.  I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site.

I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.

Not necessarily.  He could be using Nginx as reverse proxy.

He already said the http to https is working fine with my suggestion.  The problem is the redirect from one URL to another which what I gave him for the .htaccess doesn't address at all.

ie.

https://www.directtraveller.com/holidays/about-direct-traveller/british-travel-awards.asp
to
https://www.directtraveller.com/awards

Try this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off

First rewrite to HTTPS:

Don't put www. here. If it is already there it will be included, if not

the subsequent rule will catch it.

RewriteRule .* https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Now, rewrite any request to the wrong domain to use www.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.
RewriteRule .* https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

I always include the brand name where I can, but if it is too long because of that I do not hesitate to drop the brand name.

For the titles, whilst I think about it from an SEO perspective, it is also important to think of it from a CTR perspective too.  Sometimes you need that extra bit of description at the expense of the brand name.  To give an example, on some articles I find it better to put the month and year at the end instead of the brand name to increase CTR.  So basically, no I don't think it particularly matters, but it will vary on a case by case basis.

Actually, many of the larger hosts using cPanel now do not require a dedicated IP as they use SNI technology that allows an SSL certificate to be installed on a shared IP.  However, there can be other benefits to having a dedicated IP such as being less likely to get caught on an Email blacklist etc.

Is there any reason to use relative Urls from an SEO perspective?

Thanks, that was my impression of it as well.  Just wanted to check I wasn't overlooking something.

Aman,... well what you are doing is creating thin pages which over time might just risk a Panda Penalty.  You might want to at least no-index those blog pages.

Not necessarily.  He could be using Nginx as reverse proxy.

He already said the http to https is working fine with my suggestion.  The problem is the redirect from one URL to another which what I gave him for the .htaccess doesn't address at all.

ie.

https://www.directtraveller.com/holidays/about-direct-traveller/british-travel-awards.asp
to
https://www.directtraveller.com/awards

You need to be really careful doing this.  Whilst that used to be pretty much the industry standard, Google recently updated its guidelines to do with Doorway pages.  I am not sure that these new algorithm changes have been implemented but it is exactly this method that it will affect.

So, until we know what is up with that you will need to proceed with a bit of caution, and at least ensure that all content on those location pages are completely unique.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html

Are you able to share a link to the page in question?