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- When AI Sounds Confident but Gets It Wrong: The Mount Shasta Rescue
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- WPForms and Rank Math: Did These WordPress Plugins Create a Backdoor With Admin Access?
- AI Can Text Your Friends for You. Wait, Who Am I Talking To?
- Bill Gates Is Betting on AI to Help Healthcare – While Warning About What AI Could Do to Jobs
- Wix Says AI Website Owners Should Care About Portability. There’s Just One Problem.
- WordPress 7.1 Broke WP Rocket: The Fatal Error and the Plugin Problem
- WordPress vs. UltimateWB for an Artist Website: Which Should You Choose?
- Thinking About Switching From WordPress? What Should You Consider Before You Move?
- The Airtable Acquisition Raises a Bigger Question: Do You Really Own the Software Your Business Runs On?
- How to Use Google Search Console’s New Generative AI Data to Improve Your SEO
- How to Update the Same Website Content on Multiple Pages at Once
- Discovered vs. Crawled Not Indexed in Google Search Console: What’s the Difference and How to Fix Each
- The Small Business Guide to Auditing Google Ads and Website Costs
Categories
Tag Archives: duplicate content
Paying $10,000 a Month for SEO? Here’s How to Tell If You’re Getting Your Money’s Worth
SEO can be expensive.
It's not uncommon for businesses to pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars to well over $10,000 per month for SEO services. Large companies in highly competitive industries often spend even more.
So is that money well spent?
Sometimes, absolutely.
Other times... not so much.
The difference usually isn't the price - it's whether the work being done actually moves the business forward.
A recent discussion on an online marketing forum caught our attention. An in-house
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Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged authority, backlinks, bloat, clean code, crawl errors, duplicate content, fast website, google analytics, Google Search Console, high-quality content, internal links, keyword tracking, mobile usability, mobile-friendly, page speed, search intent, search intent match, seo, seo packages, seo pricing, seo services, structured data, technical seo, third-party plugins, user experience
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Why Google Deindexed 99% of My E-Commerce Site Overnight – And How to Fix “Crawled – Currently Not Indexed”
You log into Google Search Console (GSC) and see a vertical cliff. A WooCommerce (why didn't you use UltimateWB?!) store that held 5,000+ stable product URLs for months is suddenly down to just a handful of indexed pages. Your core catalog is completely gone. At least your homepage is left standing, you say to yourself.
You run the standard technical triage checklist:
- Robots.txt? Clean.
- Noindex tags? None. Everything is set to index, follow.
- Canonical tags? Correct and self-referencing.
Posted in E-commerce, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged 301 redirect, algorithm changes, algorithmic filtering, bloat, bottlenecks, canonical tag, canonical tags, core updates, crawl priorities, crawl stats, crawled, crawled not indexed, database bottlenecks, deindexed, duplicate content, fast website, google algorithm penalties, Google Search Console, Googlebot, gsc, hpos, html, http errors, indexed, indexing, javascript, malware, noindex, noindex tag, pagespeed insights, performance bottlenecks, quality content, rendered html, robots.txt, security flags, seo, server log, site-wide quality signals, sitemap, soft 404, submit sitemap, technical penalty, technical seo, test live url, thin content, time to first byte, ttfb, unique value, url inspection tool, visibility, woocommerce, WordPress
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The Danger of Premature Site Pruning
One of the biggest mistakes new website owners make is assuming that fewer pages automatically means higher quality.
They open Google Search Console, see warnings, discover that some SEO influencer recommends deleting "low-value" pages, and suddenly they're on a mission to clean house. Tag pages disappear. Archives vanish. They slap noindex tags across entire sections of their site.
The result is often the exact opposite of what they intended.
Instead of improving rankings, they erase the very signals that
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Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged 301 redirect, authority, backlinks, build authority, canonical tags, crawl paths, duplicate content, engagement, Google Search Console, Googlebot, internal links, long-tail traffic, low-value pages, noindex, search engine ranking, seo, site pruning, stability, topical authority, topical relevance, trust signals, user experience, visibility
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Why Does Google Search Console Say My Page Is Indexed, But It Won’t Show Up in Google Search?
“Ask David!” question:
I just submitted a new page URL to the Google Search Console URL inspection tool. Pretty fast, within 10 minutes or so, when I checked again, it says that the page is indexed. But if I search for the article in Google - even if I search for the exact URL - it says not found. What is up with that?
David’s Answer:
First of all - good job! You must have written some great content that
... Continue readingThe Right Way vs. The Wrong Way to Do Programmatic SEO (pSEO)
If you’ve been tracking digital marketing trends lately, you’ve likely run across the phrase Programmatic SEO (pSEO). The pitch is incredibly seductive: instead of writing blog posts one by one, you connect a database to a page template, press a button, and instantly deploy thousands of pages targeting long-tail search terms.
Traffic multiplies overnight, you dominate the search engine results pages (SERPs), and you win.
Except, that’s exactly how you get your entire domain penalized and deindexed.
... Continue reading
Posted in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged algorithm changes, authority, automated page generation, bloat, core web vitals, database, duplicate content, google algorithm, google algorithm penalties, Google Search Console, google search engine ranking, indexing, long-tail keywords, organic traffic, plugins, programmatic seo, pseo, scalable, scaled content abuse, search engine results pages, seo, serps, spam, thin content, third-party plugins, trust, trustworthy, url structure, visibility, webflow, WordPress
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Why Have My Indexed Pages on Google Decreased? (Real Causes + Fixes Most Sites Miss)
Seeing your indexed pages drop in Google can feel like your website is quietly disappearing.
One day everything looks stable… the next, your index count is down - and you’re left wondering if your rankings are about to follow.
If you’re asking “Why have my indexed pages on Google decreased?”, here’s the reality:
This is common - but it’s not random.
Google doesn’t just “lose” pages. When your indexed count drops, it’s almost always the result of a decision
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Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged broken links, cannibalization, canonicalization, crawl efficiency, crawlability, crawled, disallow, duplicate content, engagement, google search engine ranking, indexed pages, indexing, internal links, keywords, noindex, noindex tags, not indexed, redirect chains, redirect loops, redirect url, relevance, reliability, robots.txt, search engine optimization, seo, sitemap, slow website, target keywords, thin pages, trust, user intent, wasted crawl budget
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Google Algorithm Penalties Explained: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How to Recover
Google doesn’t like surprises. Website owners, on the other hand, often get one they didn’t ask for: a sudden drop in traffic, rankings vanishing overnight, and pages that once dominated search results quietly disappearing.
In most cases, that shock traces back to Google algorithm penalties.
If you’ve ever wondered what Google actually penalizes, how algorithmic penalties differ from manual actions, or whether recovery is even possible, this guide breaks it all down - clearly, accurately, and
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Posted in AI, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website Traffic
Tagged ai, AI content, AI-generated content, auto-generated content, backlink cleanup, backlink profile, backlinks, bounce rate, content depth, content quality, core web vitals, crawl, credibility, duplicate content, E-E-A-T, engagement, engagement signals, experience, expertise, fast-loading website, google algorithm, google algorithm penalties, Google algorithm update, google core updates, google panda, google penguin, Google rankings, Google Search Console, helpful content, high-quality content, keyword stuffing, layout shift, link spam, low-quality, mobile-friendly, page experience, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search intent, search intent match, seo, seo guide, slow load times, slow website, spammy, thin content, thin pages, trust, user experience, ux signals, visibility, website optimization, website traffic
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Blocking Copy/Paste or Right-Click: Will It Hurt SEO or Just Frustrate Users?
Many website owners consider preventing visitors from copying content or using right/left mouse clicks. At first glance, it seems like a way to protect your work - but is it worth it? Is it a good idea? And could it hurt your SEO or the user experience on your website?
How Search Engines See Your Content
Google and other search engines don’t care if visitors can copy your text or right-click on your pages. Crawlers read your HTML source code,
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Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged accessibility, batch watermarking, block copy paste, bounce rate, canonical tags, content protection, copyscape, duplicate content, engagement, html, indexable, right-click disable, search engine optimization, seo, SEO impact, usability, user experience, user-friemdly, view page source, watermark, watermarking tool, website usability, website visitors
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Subdomain vs Subfolder: What’s Better for SEO and Your Website Setup?
Deciding between subfolders and subdomains for your website structure
When expanding your website, you might face a classic web architecture question:
Should I create a subdomain (e.g., blog.example.com) or a subfolder (e.g., example.com/blog)?
In the past, many SEO experts recommended subfolders because they were thought to inherit more SEO authority from the main domain. However, Google has officially stated that it does not inherently favor subdomains or subfolders - both can perform equally well for SEO if implemented properly. The
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Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged analytics, architecture, authority, backlink profile, backlinks, boost seo, branding, domain authority, drive traffic, duplicate content, faster indexing, internal linking, internal links, organic traffic, plugin vulnerabilities, regional content, search engine optimization, security risks, seo, seo authority, sitemap, sitemap generator, subdomain, subdomain vs subfolder, subfolder, targeting, user experience, website setup, website structure
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Can Technical SEO Issues Trigger HCU Penalties? Here’s What You Should Know
When Google rolls out a major algorithm update like the Helpful Content Update (HCU), many websites see fluctuations in their rankings. While HCU is mostly designed to reward content that is written for humans, not for search engines, some technical SEO issues can inadvertently make your site look less helpful to users - and that could get you caught in the crossfire.
After analyzing several SEO case studies and forums, and from personal experience fixing penalized sites,
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Posted in Ask David!, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tagged .htaccess, 301 redirect, 404 errors, broken pages, core web vitals, crawl, crawl errors, crawl traps, crawlability, defer js, duplicate content, fast loading times, free ssl, hcu, hcu penalties, helpful content update, high-quality content, htaccess, htaccess redirects, internal links, javascript, meta robots, mobile-friendly test, noindex, outbound links, redirect loops, rich results test, robots.txt, screaming frog, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, seo, seo issues, speed, ssl, technical seo, thin content, trust, user experience, webp, webp converter
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