Simple questions about SEO

[Divvy]

Hi guys,

Since I had a huge traffic drop in February, that I'm having difficulties in recovering it.
I tried almost everything, but without success.

I have some more things in mind, maybe someone can help me with that!? Or giving me some lights...



1- In google webmaster tools I have this message in "HTML Improvements". How to fix that?

I have the same website translated in 5 different languages. Could be this the reason of the message above? But I'm using this code:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr" href="http://fr.domain.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt" href="http://pt.domain.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.domain.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="it" href="http://it.domain.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="http://ru.domain.com/" />

Someone suggest me to use canonical pointing, could this work?
If yes, how to use in my case? Should I keep with hreflang or replace them with canonical?

2- My website main page have lots of external links, should I use a nofollow tag to all of them? Could be this the reason of the traffic lost?



3- I have hundreds of affiliate links (urls with my id), and I use them like that:

http://www.domain.com/link/sitename.php

Could this harm my website traffic?
Here is the code inside the php file:
[PHP]<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://join.affiliate.com/track/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" );
?>[/PHP]
Or is better to add the original URL instead of this 301 redirection?


Waiting for your replies and help, thank you guys!

Best regards

[edited by: aakk9999 at 11:30 am (utc) on Oct 27, 2013]
[edit reason] Unlinked URL [/edit]

[aristotle]

In google webmaster tools I have this message in "HTML Improvements".

What does the message say?

[JD_Toims]

Someone suggest me to use canonical pointing, could this work?

I wouldn't recommend it with language variations -- The testing I've seen causes only one of the variations to be indexed and it looks like your use of alternate is correct and last I checked it's in-line with the recommendations for use provided by Google in their help section.

My website main page have lots of external links, should I use a nofollow tag to all of them? Could be this the reason of the traffic lost?

I doubt it's the issue, but even if it was then I would recommend removing them [or moving them to another page] rather than nofollowing, because even nofollowed they will still dilute your internal flow of PageRank.

I have hundreds of affiliate links (urls with my id), and I use them like that:
http://www.domain.com/link/sitename.php
Could this harm my website traffic?

You could be on to something there. If the links to sites you're an affiliate for aren't nofollowed or the php redirect is not disallowed in robots.txt I can see those links being an issue -- I'd start there personally.

[edited by: JD_Toims at 10:33 pm (utc) on Oct 28, 2013]

[Dymero]

Are you sending the affiliate links to a php file that's redirecting them to another site entirely?

Also, you mention that you have a lot of affiliate links. If your site is primarily about the brands you're an affiliate of, then it's not likely to rank well in the Panda era.

[Divvy]

Thank you guys for your replies.

aristotle, sorry, I forgot to copy past the message.
Here it goes:

We didn't detect any content issues with your site. As we crawl your site, we check it to detect any potential issues with content on your pages, including duplicate, missing, or problematic title tags or meta descriptions. These issues won't prevent your site from appearing in Google search results, but paying attention to them can provide Google with more information and even help drive traffic to your site. For example, title and meta description text can appear in search results, and useful, descriptive text is more likely to be clicked on by users.
Last updated Oct 28, 2013

JD_Toims, about the affiliate links, I disallow them through robots.txt last month by adding the following line:
Disallow: /link/
I'm working in change all these links, to appear the original URL instead of the php redirect. Do you also suggest adding nofollow tag to them?

Dymero, yes like I said in question 3.
My website is some kind of sites directory. (some sites have affiliate urls)

[JD_Toims]

Do you also suggest adding nofollow tag to them?

Absolutely.

BTW: Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

[Divvy]

Thank you buddy :-)

[aakk9999]

Hi Divvy, with regards to your #1 and the message shown, the beginning of the message says:

We didn't detect any content issues with your site.

This is a good message - the one you want to see! It means there are no problems :)

If there are problems, you would not see this message, instead you would see a list of duplicate titles or duplicate meta descriptions.

[Divvy]

aakk9999, ohhh didn't knew! Thank you buddy :-)