Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Category: On-Page Optimization
Explore on-page optimization and its role in a larger SEO strategy.
-
SEO for Online Auto Parts Store
I'm currently doing an audit for an online auto parts store and am having a hard time wrapping my head around their duplicate content issue. The current set up is this: The catalogue starts with the user selecting their year of vehicle They then choose their brand (so each of the year pages have listed every single brand of car, creating duplicate content) They then choose their model of car and then the engine And then this takes them to a page listing every type/category of product they sell (so each and every model type/engine size has the exact same content!) This is amounting to literally thousands of pages being seen as duplicates It's a giant mess. Is using rel=canonical the best thing to do? I'm having a hard time seeing a logical way of structuring the site to avoid this issue. Anyone have any ideas?
| ATMOSMarketing560 -
How does Google Detect which keywords my website should show up for in the SE?
When I checked my Google Webmaster Tools I found that my website is showing up for keywords that I didn't optimize for ... for example I optimize my website for "funny pictures with captions", and the website is showing up for "funny images with captions". I know that this is good, but the keyword is dancing all around, sometimes I search for "funny pictures with captions" and I show up in the 7th page, and some time I don't show up. and the same goes for the other keyword. of course I am optimizing for more than two keywords but the results is not consistent. my question is how does Google decide which keywords you website should show up for? Is it the on-page keywords?, or is it the off-page anchor text keywords? Thank you in advance ...
| FarrisFahad
FarrisFahad0 -
How often should I update category and product content to keep it fresh?
I want to keep our site up to date and fresh with content. How often should I update categories and products pages with content? What angel should I take with categories (new products/services etc.) Thanks Craig
| Towelsrus0 -
Adding Tags in the blog is good or bad?
Hi Friends, In my blog I used to write unique content in between 300 to 450 words and add the related tags up to 15. When I research about adding tags in the blog I come across this video from “Matt Cutts” says Is it worth spending time on creating tags and categories? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A96yDPqa2rs Key Points from Matt Cutts Video are given below: No Need Tags - In general, Google figure out what your post is about, so don't worry too much about it. So my question is do I need to remove all tags from my blog or can I reduce the tag count to 5 alone? Currently I am using 15 tags to each post, is there any dis-advantage by adding tags like this? Let me know your suggestions? Thanks
| zco_seo0 -
Add content as blog post or to product pages?
Hi, We have around 40 products which we can produce plenty of in-depth and detailed "how to"-type pieces of content for. Our current plan is to produce a "How to make" style post for each as a long blog post, then link that to the product page. There's probably half a dozen or more of these kind of blog posts that we could do for each product. The reason why we planned on doing it like this is that it would give us plenty of extra pages (blog posts) on their own URL which can be indexed and rank for long tail keywords, but also that we can mention these posts in our newsletter. It'd give people a new page full of specific content that they can read instead of us having to say "Hey! We've updated our product page for X!", which seems a little pointless. Most of the products we sell don't get very many searches themselves; Most get a couple dozen and the odd few get 100-300 each, while one gets more than 2,000 per month. The products don't get many searches as it's a relatively unknown niche when it comes to details, but searches for the "categories" these products are in are very well known (Some broad terms that cover the niche get more than 30,000+ searches a month in the UK and 100,000+ world wide) [Exact].
| azu25
Regarding the one product with more than 2,000 searches; This keyword is both the name of the product and also a name for the category page. Many of our competitors have just one of these products, whereas we're one of the first to have more than 6 variations of this product, thus the category page is acting like our other product pages and the information you would usually find on our product pages, is on the category page for just this product. I'm still leaning towards creating each piece of content as it's own blog post which links to the product pages, while the product pages link to the relevant blog posts, but i'm starting to think that it may be be better to put all the content on the product pages themselves). The only problem with this is that it cuts out on more than 200 very indepth and long blog posts (which due to the amount of content, videos and potentially dozens of high resolution images may slow down the loading of the product pages). From what I can see, here are the pros and cons: Pro (For blog posts):
1. More than 200 blog posts (potentially 1000+ words each with dozens of photos and potentially a video)..
2. More pages to crawl, index and rank..
3. More pages to post on social media..
4. Able to comment about the posts in the newsletter - Sounds more unique than "We've just updated this product page"..
5. Commenting is available on blog posts, whereas it is not on product pages..
6. So much information could slow down the loading of product pages significantly..
7. Some products are very similar (ie, the same product but "better quality" - Difficult to explain without giving the niche away, which i'd prefer not to do ATM) and this would mean the same content isn't on multiple pages.
8. By my understanding, this would be better for Google Authorship/Publishership.. Con (Against blog posts. For extended product pages):
1. Customers have all information in one place and don't have to click on a "Related Blog posts" tab..
2. More content means better ability to rank for product related keywords (All but a few receive very few searches per month, but the niche is exploding at an amazing rate at the moment)..
3. Very little chance of a blog post out-ranking the related product page for keywords.. I've run out of ideas for the 'Con' side of things, but that's why I'd like opinions from someone here if possible. I'd really appreciate any and all input, Thanks! [EDIT]:
I should add that there will be a small "How to make" style section on product pages anyway, which covers the most common step by step instructions. In the content we planned for blog posts, we'd explore the regular method in greater detail and several other methods in good detail. Our products can be "made" in several different ways which each result in a unique end result (some people may prefer it one way than another, so we want to cover every possible method), effectively meaning that there's an almost unlimited amount of content we could write.
In fact, you could probably think of the blog posts as more of "an ultimate guide to X" instead of simply "How to X"...0 -
Selling Products with a similar meta description
Wondering if anyone can help when selling similar products with very similar meta description and product descriptions in general. Have around 500 products - a lot of products have around 10-20 products which are very similar only different is sizes and a maybe a few lines of text if that. Is this a problem in search engines? How does other ecommerce stores selling similar products solve this problem...
| royRR0 -
Pagination for product page reviews
Hi, I am looking to add pagination on product pages (they have lots of reviews on the page). I am considering using rel="next/prev, to connect the series of review pages to the main product page. I unfortunately don't have a view-all page for these reviews or the option to get one - the reviews refresh on the same product page (by clicking whatever number page of reviews). This means each page has the exact same description content and everything else, but with different reviews. In this case is rel=next a good option? The format currently would be: On example.com/product link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p2" On example.com/product?review-p2 link rel="prev" href="http://example.com/product, link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p3 etc. Would this be a good format for product page reviews? I see rel=nextprev commonly used on ecommerce category/list pages but not really on the paginated reviews on product pages, so I thought I would see if anyone has advice on how best to solve this. I'm also wondering if it would be best to not combine this with a canonical tag on all the different review pages pointing to the product page, seeing as the reviews are actually different (despite the rest of the content being identical). I am hoping to pick up longer tail traffic from this, I figure by connecting the pages and not using canonicals that this way I could get more traffic from the phrases used in the reviews. By leaving out the canonicals, is it possible a user searching for phrases that might be deeper in the series, to land on, say, ?review-p4? Any thoughts if this would drive more traffic? Thanks!.
| pikka0 -
Duplicate Content when Using "visibility classes" in responsive design layouts? - a SEO-Problem?
I have text in the right column of my responsive layout which will show up below the the principal content on small devices. To do this I use visibility classes for DIVs. So I have a DIV with with a unique style text that is visible only on large screen sizes. I copied the same text into another div which shows only up only on small devices while the other div will be hidden in this moment. Technically I have the same text twice on my page. So this might be duplicate content detected as SPAM? I'm concerned because hidden text on page via expand-collapsable textblocks will be read by bots and in my case they will detect it twice?Does anybody have experiences on this issue?bestHolger
| inlinear0 -
Do Parent Categories Hurt SEO?
I have parent categories and subcategories. Will it be harder for the subcategories to rank well because they have a parent category? The URL is longer, for one. I am just wondering if I should not have parent categories. I have one category page doing really well and I am trying to boost the others (most of which are subcategories) and this is a concern for me. Thanks! Edit: I also have a category that has 2 parent categories. I want it automatically in those 2 categories and one of its own. By itself it is very important keyword. Is this ok or should I have it be a parent category?
| 2bloggers0 -
ALT tagging images with keyword. What is too much?
I was wondering about the best practices of ALT tags in images. Say if you have an eCommerce site and you're on a product page. This product page has 5 images of the same product (different images), should you give every image an Alt tag with the keyword for that page? Or, is that keyword stuffing, and it would actually be best practice be to provide alt tags on just one image?
| John_Francis0 -
Meta Geotag - two locations on one website
I have a client that I would like to do a Meta Geotag for. They have two locations. Am I able to do two meta geotags on their website? Thanks!
| OOMDODigital0 -
Does the link title attribute benefit seo?
Hello, Anyone could tell me the benefit SEO of link title attribute. Is **Link Title **ranking factor? Thanks
| JohnHuynh0 -
Review my website and guide me what can do for top ranking.
Hi Guys, I really need your advice for my website (bmgapt dot com). I'm loosing ranking on (Buffalo Apartments) keyword. Two months ago my ranking number is 3 but now loosing to 15 number. What can I do for get again top ranking. Thanks in advance. John Smith
| KLLC0 -
Can I use the same text in my meta description as I put in my post excerpt?
Hi, I'm just trying to understand the right way to optimise my blog posts and this is likely a dumb question... but to what extent should the text in my meta description differ from the text in my post excerpts? cheers, Andrew
| seowhiskey0 -
Page rank check
Hello everyone, How long should I wait to see if page rank for optimized pages have improved? cheers
| PremioOscar0 -
Question about url structure for large real estate website
I've been running a large real estate rental website for the past few years and on May 8, 2013 my Google traffic dropped by about 50%. I'm concerned that my current url structure might be causing thin content pages for certain rental type + location searches. My current directory structure is:
| Amped
domain.com/home-rentals/california/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/home-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/apartment-rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/
etc.. I was thinking of changing it to the following:
domain.com/rentals/california/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/
domain.com/rentals/california/beverly-hills/90210/ ** Note: I'd provide users the ability to filter their results by rental type - by default all types would be displayed. Another question - my listing pages are currently displayed as:
domain.com/123456 And I've been thinking of changing it to:
domain.com/123456-123-Street-City-State-Zip Should I proceed with both changes - one or the one - neither - or something else I'm not thinking of? Thank you in advance!!0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
| smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5 -
Rich-Snippets with Sitelinks. How-to?
Quick question with a hopefully easy answer (and to get away from all this Penguin 2.0 talk). Does anyone have any tips for activating Sitelinks for landing pages other than your homepage? I've attached a screenshot to better illustrate what I'm hoping to achieve, but basically I would like our SERP to have the same extra links under our meta description as the #2 result. I haven't been able to find any direct information as to how to achieve this. Is their markup code involved? Another one of those things that Google just randomly does? The keyword in questions is, "teaching jobs abroad" FYI Any factors that would point me in the right direction would be very helpful! Andrew qmK77hq
| dunklea1 -
The word "in" between 2 keywords influence on SEO
Does anybody know when you have the word "in" between two keywords has this a negative influence in Google? For example: "Holiday Home Germany" is the search term in Google
| Bram76
"Holiday Home in Germany" as h1 on our website or do we have to use "Holiday Home Germany" on our website?0 -
Does css float affect SEO?
It is generally believed that the closer the content is to the top of the page, the better it is for SEO. If that's incorrect, please let me know. I have a 2 column site where the left menu is navigation and right side is content. Obviously, the left menu appears in the code before the content does, but I can flip them around via css float. If I do that, the content will appear on the left visually, even though in the code it still comes after the left side navigation. Do either positions affect seo?
| cmp1010 -
Using phrases like 'NO 1' or 'Best' int he title tag
Hi All, Quick question - is it illegal, against any rule etc to use phrases such as 'The No 1 rest of the title tag | Brand Name' on a site?
| Webrevolve0 -
Are there any SEO benefits changing the default home page filename (index.htm) to a keyword rich filename
II'm a newbie. I have a website using the default home page filename: index.htm. I have total control over the web server. I was wondering whether I can get any SEO improvements for my main keyword if I change the default filename with a filename that contains the main keyword, like our-main-product.htm (doing the 301 redirect and changing the server search order, of course)?
| Grafimart0 -
Reducing number crawl-able links?
Hello, I just like to ask for best practice when it comes to reduce number of internal links on a site with a mega menu. Since the mega menu lists all categories and all their subcategories it creates a problem when all categories are linking to all categories directly.. Would the method below reduce the number of links and preventing the link juice flowing directly from category to category? [(link built with JavaScript and the html5 "data-" attribute) Thinking of using these links to categories in the menu not directly below the parent category.](#)
| AJPro0 -
If I enbed the same video from my YouTube account on two different websites, will I get a duplicate content penalty?
I have a YouTube video I want to show my B2B and B2C customers. But I have a different websites for each. If I embed the video will I get duplicate content strike against me?
| RoxBrock0 -
Bullet points good or bad for seo?
Hi Everyone, After a body of unique content of say 50 words, will Google then penalise you for adding bullet points which will then be duplicated across all those products (say 100 products)? http://www.polesandblinds.com/acacia-teal-roller-blind/? Look forward to your comments, good or bad, Thanks Jonathan
| JonnytheB0 -
Webmaster tools
Hi there, I have access to my sebsite writeing www.piensapiensa.es or www.piensapiensa.com. What domain should I add to the webmasters tools? Should I have to do some kind of 301 direction from piensapiensa.com to piensapiensa.com as the main market is in Spain? Thanks.
| juanmiguelcr0 -
Multiple Cities in Title Tag
My question is how to avoid having a spammy title. Currently I'm working on a project where a business serves four cities, but two of them are out of its home state. I'm trying to create a title tag that is appealing to the eyes, and meets what I need it to do at the same time. I was wondering what everyone though of this sample Brand X Dealer Serving Newark, DE; New Castle, DE; Glens Mills, PA; and Springfield, PA I know that too much repetition can be a bad thing, but this might not be a big deal since they are separate instances. Let me know what you all think. Thanks!
| OOMDODigital0 -
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K
| CKerr0 -
Navigation Links Causing Too Many Links Help?
Hello, I have read some SEOMOZ search results for this, but am still concerned that Google may see 4,500 Too Many Link warnings as a problem. This is caused primarily due to our header navigation, which is not intended to be keyword stuffing, but to provide all avenues for our breadth of content. site: crazymikesapps.com. Most answers seem to advise if there is no keyword stuffing at hand don't worry about it. Any help appreciated. thank you Mike
| crazymikesapps0 -
Has anyone had experience with the Wix platform and it's SEO qualities?
Wix offers an inexpensive, user friendly platform for building websites. Most of the site is flash, but Wix claims to be SEO friendly. I'm all ears for your feedback and experience with Wix.
| ksracer0 -
301 Redirect to product page or category?
We manage an ecommerce website that sells health products. A few products have now been discontinued. I’m just wondering what would be the best practice in this case. Should we 301 redirect to a similar product or to a similar category page? ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED!
| odegi0 -
SEO without CMS: Impossible?
Is WordPress the ONLY way to go for an SEO friendly website? Any REAL reason for using anything but?
| EliteErikSEO0 -
Are flip books - pdf readers on websites SEO friendly?
I have a client with bar, most of their content is menus that are displayed in a flip book format. Is this content indexed by search engines, and if so, are they of any value for ranking?
| SteveK640 -
How do I remove a Canonical URL Tag?
Some of my report cards say I have too many canonical URL tags. However, there is no information no how to delete one. Can someone give me a link or explain? Thanks.
| dealblogger0 -
Best Way to Use Date in Title
Hi, I do most of the current copy for our blog which you can find here http://appointedd.com/blog/ I believe having a regular blog structure with a mix of irregular ad hoc posts to go in around these. So, for this blog, I write an article on "Beauty Industry News" every week. Now, I don't want to use the same title for each post, so I've peen butting in the date after each one i.e. "Beauty Industry News - 24/04/13". Is this best practice or is there a better way of naming regular posts? Thanks in advance!
| LeahHutcheon0 -
Disabling archives in wordpress
Hi! Do you think it better to: a) have all archives crawled (date, time, category etc.) even though they create duplicate content,. or; b) disable crawling of all archives? Ideally, I'd like to set up just excerpts in the archives and have a unique intro for each, but I'm having trouble doing this just now so was wondering which is the smarter option in the meantime? Thanks very much!
| LeahHutcheon0 -
Are H1 tags important or influential?
We are in the process of correcting our site in hopes that Google will rank us higher in the SERP. We have many pages that have multiple H1 tags or no H1 tag at all. How important is the H1 tag? Will it help us increase our ranking on Google? Thanks
| WebRiverGroup0 -
URLs and folder structure for an E-commerce
Hi there !-) I´m helping a friend who has a e-commerce about nail polish in Brazil. I´m a little in doubt about the urls and folder structure. Two questions: 1. There are 10 products per category and 50 categories. Should I put them all in the root folder or creat 2 major categories ( 25 sub-categories each one)? 2. Whats the better product page url ( the store has around 500) nailpolish.com/IMPORT/BRAND/NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT OR nailpolish.com/COMPLETE-NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT Whats the best recomandation?
| SeoMartin10 -
Sequence of heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc) important?
Meaning heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc) are a critical part of good on-page optimisation. Fair enough. It helps humans and bots make sense of a page's content. 3 questions regarding implementation of heading tags: Should heading tags appear in sequence in the HTML code. I.e. H1 first, then H2 lower down, etc.? Can the page contain more than one H1 tag? Can the page contain multiple H2, H3, H4 tags?
| AndreVanKets1 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
| HrishikeshKarov0 -
Is .PW domain is good for SEO?
I want to register .PW domain which has recently got live to register. I am in doubt should it is good for SEO or not.
| semmediapvtltd0 -
Can I use Same Keyword for Multi pages Title Tags?
Hello All, I am working on client website and currently they are targeting One Keywords for multi pages. As I have search with Allintitle: Search query and Google display around 37 pages of website which carry same keyword in "Title Tags". I have told to client to change the "Title Tags" but they want that keyword for all relevant pages. So I want to know is that harm in Search Engine Ranking? Note: They have not done the link building activities for multi pages with same Keyword, they are using only in "Title Tags" only
| jemindesai0 -
How do i block an entire category/directory with robots.txt?
Anyone has any idea how to block an entire product category, including all the products in that category using the robots.txt file? I'm using woocommerce in wordpress and i'd like to prevent bots from crawling every single one of products urls for now. The confusing part right now is that i have several different url structures linking to every single one of my products for example www.mystore.com/all-products, www.mystore.com/product-category, etc etc. I'm not really sure how i'd type it into the robots.txt file, or where to place the file. any help would be appreciated thanks
| bricerhodes0 -
SEO Optimizing in UMBRACO
Hi there, I am planning to use UMBRACO to manage my existing website, so my question to Seomozzers out there is what should I be aware of, how safe is it to have UMBRACO in terms of SEO. By using this software, would it be possible to get a positive or negative impact on my keyword rankings? Thanks!
| matti_wilson0 -
State Abbreviations and/or Fully Spelled Out?
Should State names be abbreviated and/or fully spelled out in title tags, meta descriptions and body content? Does Google know that VT = Vermont?
| lbohen0 -
Splash page - is it possible to rank well?
Hi there, I have a website with splash page - http://veda4.com/ . It's trully cool looking, the owner of our company wants the home page to be this way. But is it ok from SEO viewpoint? Can it rank well for keywords. All my SEO strategy were not using splash pages and I am not sure what should I change so it work with splash page also. I myself won't choose splash page but my boss trully liked it.
| HrishikeshKarov0 -
Dash or vertical bar in titles?
Hello. Should I use a dash or a vertical line in title tags? Thank you!
| nyc-seo0 -
Duplicate Content from on Competitor's site?
I've recently discovered large blocks of content on a competitors site that has been copy and pasted from a client's site. From what I know, this will only hurt the competitor and not my client since my guy was the original. Is this true? Is there any risk to my client? Should we take action? Dino
| Dino640 -
WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages
Hey, Here's my situation. I'm building a WordPress blog for product reviews of a certain niche. Current category setup is 4 main categories with 4-8 subcategories each. Each subcategory has a unique description that will help it become a landing page for certain keywords, after which it lists the posts from that subcategory. The posts will always be assigned to a sub-category, never to a main category. My issue is what to do with the main categories. They're fairly general so they're not really targeting any keywords, and don't have any unique descriptions attached to them. I was thinking of choosing between three options on designing the main category pages: List the subcategories + normal posts loop that bring the latest posts from the subcategories (may create a lot of duplicate content since the subcategory pages are also listing their posts) List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory) Don't link the main categories at all, instead only use them to create dropdowns for the subcategories So, what would you choose, and why?
| mihaiaperghis0
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.