Common SEO Issues that I have Stumbled Upon
Being an SEO is a gift and a curse. Every time I am browsing on a website (or my girlfriend) I can't help but think about what the website is doing well or not well when it comes to SEO. I have found multiple issues from blocking Google from seeing there products to blocking Google from indexing their website completely. I wanted to put together a blog that highlights a few issues with some of the sites I have seen. There could be specific reasons these sites are doing this, so no shame to the SEOs or teams at these websites.
Mac Cosmetics SEO Issues
Issue
Mac Cosmetics has the incorrect canonical tag on their home page. It is okay to use the relative URL for the canonical tag but in this case they are telling google their home page should actually be the following, which is incorrect.
- https://www.maccosmetics.com/home
RECOMMENDATIONS
This is not a make or break for MAC because google is so advanced and understands this canonical tag is a mistake. I think Google is simply ignoring the canonical tag. For their home page they should set the canonical to the following URL:
- https://www.maccosmetics.com/
Issue
MAC has another interesting SEO issue they may or may not be aware of. They currently have two responsive/adaptive websites.
- https://www.maccosmetics.com/ - Desktop version of the website
- https://m.maccosmetics.com/ - Mobile version of the website
There is nothing that tells Google these sites are connected. There is no rel alternative tag on the desktop website and there is not a canonical tag on the mobile website that points the desktop verison of the website.
RECOMMENDATIONS
MAC should redirect their mobile website and all of the mobile pages to the corresponding desktop versions. (https://m.mac.com --> 301 -->https://www.mac.com). It appears this is hurting their performance for non-branded search terms but not in all cases. For example they rank on page 1 for the term "Lipstick" but funny enough its their mobile website. This might be a use case for Googles Mobile first index in the wild. Its a really good thing MAC's website is responsive or it would be a really strange desktop experience for the users landing on the mobile site on desktop. If they can not redirect the mobile website to the desktop version, they should at least add self referencing canonical tags on their desktop pages, rel alternative tags that point to the corresponding mobile pages and canonical tags on the mobile pages that match the corresponding desktop page.
Sun Bum
Issue
It appears Sun Bum has blocked Google from accessing their entire sub-domain and shopping website. By doing this Google will not rank or give preference to sun-bums product pages.
If someone searches on Google for "sun bum shampoo" they will see other e-retailers that sell their products ranking higher. This is a direct loss to Sub Bums profit margins since customers are not buying directly from Sun Bum.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The recommendations are easy, remove the following line from their Robots.txt on the sub-domain:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
They should also write compelling and descriptive title tags and meta descriptions. This will help them rank their own products higher and increase sales on their website.
Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing
Issue
This isn't necessarily an SEO issue but a spam issue that the security team should take care of. Spammers are trying to take advantage of Amazon's high domain authority and rank for people searching for "amazon prime support number", "Facebook support number", etc. If they are able to rank and someone calls the number, they will have their information stolen.
It is really hurting the KDP sub-domains crawl budget but this is not likely a big deal since they are just community help pages.
RECOMMENDATIONS
This would be a bigger issue if this was happening on Amazons own domain. I have seen other websites hit with this type of spam (Eventbrite, YouTube, Google Maps, and more).
There should be some logic in place to look for certain elements like "support phone number" on the thread page and either add the no index to the page or make the page status 404. Of course, the logic would have to be tested and refined but hopefully this would get rid of these spam pages.
KleintBoost
Issue
It appears that Klientboost.com migrated to a secure website but forgot to 301 redirect the http, www and http non-www version of the website to the non-www https version of the website.
In the screenshot above, both http versions of the website do not redirect to the https version.
This is super common when websites go secure. It is likely hurting their SEO performance for non branded terms.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Since Google sees these as different versions of the website it might be hurting their SEO performance.
They should implement the following redirect rules at their server level.
- http://www.klientboost.com > https://klientboosts.com
- http://klientboosts.com > https://klientboosts.com
This will combine any link equity they have built up over time and de-dupe the multiple versions of their website live in Googles index.
Thanks for reading, hope it made some sense and shows that even big websites sometimes have trouble with SEO. If you are looking for an SEO consultant in San Francisco, I can meet in person to talk search engine optimization.
Have any SEO questions about your website - I would love to help!