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Hi, I believe 4SEO has started working for us now, recently received a couple of congratulatory emails from Google search console, most hits etc.
The current site IS a mess though, so Solidres built a replacement for me over the last few months, (Joomla, Solidres site, just a v5 and different template), what would be the best way to make the move with your component please?
Best regards
Miles
Apologies, haven't managed to be specific above. I've read your documentation again, still a bit much for me to mentally digest in one go
I notice the documentation mentions installing 4SEO on development sites (either in computer or at alternative URL) acceptable as long as I remember to update the necessary settings when publishing to it's intended address. Understood. However I'm unable to discover which would be the recommended course of action: would it be betrter to install, activate & attempt to iron out any wrinkles / issues before moving the site to it's final resting place?
Thanks in advance
Miles
Hi
First a word of caution - unrelated to 4SEO:
so Solidres built a replacement for me over the last few months, (Joomla, Solidres site, just a v5 and different template),
When you do that, there's 2 things that must absolutely NOT change at all:
- the URLs of your page
- the content at each URL
If you change a page URL, you instantly lose all and any ranking you may have in Google for that page.
Now about 4SEO, there's nothing special about it:
- install
- apply same configuration as you have on the other site - except for
- the website main home address
- connection to Search Console (because if you are connected to search console, and enabled sitemaps, then 4SEO will submit the sitemap to the search console, and we do not want to inform Google about a copy of your current site living at another location
Then use 4SEO normally: you can do a full analysis for instance, but maybe you have added robots.txt exclusions or meta noindex while on the development address, so analysis won't be that useful.
In any case, once you have made the move to the new site, you'll:
- update the site main home address
- connect to search console
- Do a Reset analysis and then a new full manual analysis so that 4SEO updates its data
Best regards
Yannick Gaultier
weeblr.com / @weeblr
Thanks very much indeed Yannick, especially for the words of warning!
To be honest I lost 15 years of 1st page ranking with Google when changed to this site, this being just under a year? Maybe I should be more concerned but the current site has brought us absolutely nothing in the way of business. Plenty of visitors but the only enquiries received have been spam.
I've asked the Solidres guys if they performed a straight copy/upgrade, hopefully that's the case - would be the easiest way for them I believe
Thanks again, will get on with your recommendations. As far as I'm aware they haven't put any robots.txt limitations on. I usually set noindex nofollow in global settings but I noticed that's been lifted. I was going to set it again but apparently 4SEO relies on it? Not worth producing a sitemap either I assume.
Best regards
Miles
Hi
To be honest I lost 15 years of 1st page ranking with Google when changed to this site, this being just under a year?
I can't speak about that of course, but when redoing websites, the first fail is usually that URLs are changed. If you have a example.com/Guides/How-to-do-this page ranking well, and after the rebuild that same page is at example.com/guides/how-to-do-this page, then you instantly and for ever lose any ranking you may have. The new page (because it has a new URL, it's an entirely new page) starts from zero.
Some of it can be recovered or prevented with redirects, but not if you change 1 a thousand pages at the same time.
If it's been a year, and you had such changes, then I'd say it's likely too late to do anything about it.
As far as I'm aware they haven't put any robots.txt limitations on. I usually set noindex nofollow in global settings but I noticed that's been lifted. I was going to set it again but apparently 4SEO relies on it?
4SEO does not "rely" on it, it complies with it. You can instruct it to bypass the robots and noindex configs under Pages | Site analysis. Scroll down and you'll see a bunc of options to toggle compliance with robots and noindex.
Not worth producing a sitemap either I assume.
No, you want to do that when you're back on the live site. Note that you do not really have to worry about it in fact. Simply disconnect the Search Console to be sure any sitemap update is not submitted to Google.
Best regards
Yannick Gaultier
weeblr.com / @weeblr
Thanks very much for your assistance Yannick, I've just finished updating the site to Joomla 5 so now ready to start with 4SEO.
I'll have a look through all the URL'S and see how close (or not!) they are first, in all honesty I started redirects with the current one way back when, and then managed to screw it up so left well alone from then on.
If there's still room for using 4SEO on the original site for redirects (there are 4-5 URL's for each page due to multiple menus/categories) might it be worth ensuring those are done first, then I can be sure to redirect the new site's URL'S in the same manner, if possible.
I'll be the first to admit this always starts off easily enough, but never takes long before I get bogged down and very confused! By those very categories I mentioned, quick query therefore;
For example let's say currently can become pretty complex with https://site.com/style/location/booking type/category /tour name/tour#, bloody long-winded IMHO. Our previous site was simply https://site.com/tour name
Should I be working on making it as simple as possible first? I've not managed to find a single tour with less than three steps away from the site's basic URL, so how would I achieve this please?
Best regards
Miles
Hi
If there's still room for using 4SEO on the original site for redirects (there are 4-5 URL's for each page due to multiple menus/categories) might it be worth ensuring those are done first, then I can be sure to redirect the new site's URL'S in the same manner, if possible.
That's usually something taken care of with canonical tags, not redirects. And if this is regular Joomla articles, then 4SEO should be able to automatically add canonical tags on duplicates.
If a user is in category A, and they click on a link to a tour, they kind of expect to "stay in the same category", not be redirected to another category. That's why usually no redirect happens, but instead a canonical tag in injected in the "duplicate" article, pointing at what's considered the "main address" of that article.
For example let's say currently can become pretty complex with https://site.com/style/location/booking type/category /tour name/tour#, bloody long-winded IMHO
Which is totally fine.
Our previous site was simply https://site.com/tour name
Which is a bit of an issue long term, because without categories, it's hard to apply things like redirects, canonical, noindex or other SEO-related tags.
The only way to redirect /tour to something else is to painstakingly add one redirec for it. If you want to noindex, redirects, etc 100 of such pages, you'll have to add 100 redirects, one by one.
If you have 100 products in the /europe/tours (with URLs such as /europe/tours/first-tour) and you want to express that the main URL is in the /tours/category (ie /tours/first-tour), then you can add a single canonical rule that says:
to all pages in the /europe/tours category, add a canonical to the same URL but in the /tours category.
I've not managed to find a single tour with less than three steps away from the site's basic URL,
Which 100% fine. And like I said, likely preferred in terms of management. URLs with 2 or 3 categories segment are fine, and they won't hurt your SEO results at all. URLs are just identifiers.
You are confusing 2 entirely different things:
1 - The URL structure (/europe/tours/first-tour vs /tours/first-tour): no problem, even recommended
2 - The "click-depth": that matters but is not related to URL.
Click-depth is how many click I need to get to your page from home page. Nothing to do with the URL. This is about your menu structure, and whether you directly link sub-categories from the home page menus, or from a second page.
Google does not care at all if your URLs are like /cat/sub-cat/sub-sub-cat/tour (well, don't have URLs with 1000 caracters!). What's important for them is whether a user needs to click through 20 times from home to get there.
Their theory is: things that are easily reached are likely more important. Things that are 20 clicks away, the website owner consider them less important, so we're also going to consider them less important (and maybe down-rank them, or even just not crawl/index them at all).
It's the clicks that matters, not how many segments you have in your URLs.
Best regards
Yannick Gaultier
weeblr.com / @weeblr
Thanks EVER so much for the explanation and examples Yannick, so much appreciated, and I'm sorry for troubling you, having been out of it for so bloody long I believe is worse than being a total newcomer! Used to be simplicity was key, now it's the exact opposite. I suppose a dozen alternative methods to reach the same page gives us a dozen different links on the search engines eh?
Yes I WAS getting confused between redirects and canonical, still only half understand how the latter works but I'll get there.
Solidres have basically made a carbon copy of the original site and installed it on Joomla 4, I've just updated to Joomla 5. Consequently URL's remain the same. They'd also copied 4SEO over and all it's settings (the amount of different warnings in the first 30 seconds!!) I've been trying to alter everything to suit the temporary URL but believe un/re-installing will be the way to go.
Current site's 4SEO really messy too. Says I'm not connected to Google, I've tried the disconnect / reconnect trick which seems to work for maybe a day? Also, I'm assuming tackling tips/errors in the order they appear is the correct way to go about it? Damn there's so much and back out on tour next week for 3-weeks, will just have to wait eh.
Oh, I remember why Google's not syncing correctly with the current live site - due to them taking a carbon copy of it... the Google AdWords and Search console plugins were live on the replacement site! Disabled those but damned if I can remember where I ended up pasting that snippet of code in, as when used the alloted field for it in the template, didn't work. Googled the issue and tried a few alternatives until managed to send data to Google but that was a couple of years ago and I might as well have been pinning the tail on the donkey.
If they've copied absolutely everything, doubtless copied all my mistakes over too. Defeating the object of the exercise.
Looks like will be starting over, again... Used to be an 'erroneous code cleaner' which would tidy everything up before taking a site live, are they still available you know?
Hi
Used to be simplicity was key, now it's the exact opposite. I suppose a dozen alternative methods to reach the same page gives us a dozen different links on the search engines eh?
Not at all. It's only Joomla creating different links for the same page depending on how you access it. On most CMS, the same page always has the same URL, regardless of how you navigate to it.
But even if you end up with several URLs to the same page, due to navigating to it in different ways, that's where the canonical tag should be used to tell Google which URL is the "main" one for a given page.
Yes I WAS getting confused between redirects and canonical, still only half understand how the latter works but I'll get there.
Lucky for you I have blog post/podcast episode on just what canonical tags are.
I've been trying to alter everything to suit the temporary URL
If you change the URL of a site to a temporary location, there's only one single option to change in 4SEO.
to alter everything to suit the temporary URL but believe un/re-installing will be the way to go.
Uninstalling/re-installing will have exactly no effect on 4SEO data and settings, that would be too dangerous. You can drop all the data and settings by checking this option before uninstalling.
Says I'm not connected to Google, I've tried the disconnect / reconnect trick which seems to work for maybe a day?
This happens but has nothing to do with 4SEO. It's Google rejecting your credentials and asking for logging-in again.
Of course, if you are on a temporary URL, you should not use the Search Console at all, as it's linked to a domain, and you can't use it from your temporary location.
Also, I'm assuming tackling tips/errors in the order they appear is the correct way to go about it?
They don't have a particular order, except that the ones under "This requires your attention" are more important than the ones under "Things you may consider".
Used to be an 'erroneous code cleaner' which would tidy everything up before taking a site live, are they still available you know?
I'm not aware of such tools and I don't see how they could operate, know which code is good and which code is bad.
Best regards
Yannick Gaultier
weeblr.com / @weeblr
Hi Yannick,
And thanks very much for clearing everything up there, much appreciated.
Apologies I didn't specify which site for "says I'm not connected to Google etc", that's for the original example.com site and URL. Your response still valid "It's Google rejecting your credentials and asking for logging-in again" and since I disabled 4SEO on the replacement site at temporary URL the issue now rectified. As I mentioned, Solidres made a carbon copy of the site, settings, warts and all, and somehow ALL components/extensions were now live, even those I thought I'd uninstalled long ago?!
Attempting to complete the to-do list on the original site (figured might as well have a practice?), must admit it's a struggle but only because I'm not used to the methodology yet. I read the help files, but implementing the practice it appears the order of the steps is reversed? Probably me, doubtless experienced developers work in that manner, have made a mental note to emulate in future.
Thanks again! Bloody steep learning curve and I'm taking a screenshot literally every 30 seconds, help me remember WTF I did when I come back to it next month. Out on tour for a fortnight now, everything will have to wait I'm afraid, run out of time.
All the best, thanks again for all your support, you've been a massive help! If I don't manage to get back to you beforehand, wishing you a very merry Xmas and happy new year!
All the very best
Miles
Hi
somehow ALL components/extensions were now live, even those I thought I'd uninstalled long ago?!
Then obviously a/ something's wrong in the process to rebuild the site (started from an outdated backup?) , and b/ they were not uninstalled (either you only disabled them, or they used a backup that pre-dates the uninstall of these extensions)
I read the help files, but implementing the practice it appears the order of the steps is reversed?
Don't know what you are referring to, please advise.
A bit ahead of time for merry Xmas and all but hey, why not ;)
Cheers
