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Category: On-Page Optimization

Explore on-page optimization and its role in a larger SEO strategy.

  • dgalassi


    I have a client that recently read an article that advised him to break up his website into various URL's that targeted specific products. It was supposed to be a solution to gain footing in an already competitive industry. So rather than company.com with various pages targeting his products, he'd end up having multiple smaller sites: companyClothing.com companyShoes.com Etc. The article stated that by structuring your website this way, you were more likely to gain ranking in Google by targeting these niche markets. I wanted to know if this article was based on any facts. Are there any benefits to creating a new website that targets a specific niche market versus as a section of pages on a main website? I then began looking into structuring each of these product areas into subdomains, but the data out there is not definitive as to how subdomains are viewed by Google and other search engines - more specifically how subdomains benefit (or not!) the primary domain. So, in general, when a business targets many products and services that cover a wide range - what is the best way to structure the delivery of this info: multiple domains, single domain with folders/categories, or subdomains?  If single domain with folders/categories are not an option, how do subdomains stack up? Thanks in advance for your help/suggestions!

    | dgalassi
    0
  • CMC-SD


    I'm not looking for a precise number, obviously. I'm more interested in a general range. More text means more long-tail and synonym opportunities, but of course you don't want too much copy above the fold, pushing your products down. Maybe you can get away with a short paragraph or two at the top of the page. You can always put more copy below the products, but in a recent SEOmoz e-commerce webinar, the presenter seemed to think that was silly and unnecessary. He even suggested that the algo might intentionally ignore text below products, since it's clearly not intended to be read. What do you think?

    | CMC-SD
    0
  • truckguy77


    Hi, I'm just curious what the majority think of what's the best way to start a blog on your website for SEO benefits. Is it better to have it under a sub domain or a directory? Or does it even matter?

    | truckguy77
    0
  • CMC-SD


    Our site has a number of, shall we say, unoptimized URLs. I would like to change the URLs to be more relevant; if a page is about red widgets, the URL should be www.domain.com/red-widgets.html, right? I'm getting resistance on this, however, based on the belief that you lose something significant when you 301 an old URL to a new one. Now, I know that if you have a long chain of redirects, the spiders will stop following at some point, and that is a huge problem. That wouldn't apply if there's only one step in the chain, however. I've also heard that you lose some link juice in a 301, but I'm unsure how serious that problem actually is. Is it small enough that we'd win out in the long run with better-optimized URLs?

    | CMC-SD
    0
  • VinceWicks


    I want to remove this category http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ and all the pages in that category (e.g. http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/7386.html ) from Google's index. I used the following string in the "Reomval URS" section in Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/* is that correct or I better use http://www.webdesign.org/web-design-news-all/ ? Thanks in advance.

    | VinceWicks
    0
  • IBMEMM


    Hi, I have a paragraph of text contained within a Div container ( )..  Is this readable by a search engine spider.  Or is it better to enclose it within ? Thanks for any feedback.

    | IBMEMM
    0
  • Jungles


    Hi all, It is widely known fact that you will be a bit in trouble if you will need to do SEO for luxury brand that is not willing to sacrifice design, layout etc. for SEO purposes. So basically - there is no content to optimize and there is almost no keywords to rank! 😉 Just wondering - how would be the best to approach such kind of terrible situation? Regards, Jungle

    | Jungles
    0
  • sub9090


    I don't want to over optimize by doing 1 keyword per 1 page, but then if I do more, seomoz on-page tool report doesn't give an A grade for each keyword I optimize. I usually optimize for max 3 keywords that are very closely related, meaning they use the same words.  Ex. dentist los angeles, los angeles dentist, dentist in los angeles Am I on the right track or what's your recommendation? Should I create different landing pages for each keyword?

    | sub9090
    0
  • Kwilder


    Can adding multiple locations on a single page be confusing to Google? Is using "LocalBusiness" with "branchof" the proper way of doing this? Does anyone know of any resources that go into this type of thing in more detail? I've read everything Google, Schema and SeoMoz seem to have on this topic. Thanks.

    | Kwilder
    0
  • mj775


    I know that creating original product descriptions is best practices. What I don't understand is how other sites are able to generate significant traffic while still using duplicate product descriptions on all product pages. How are they not being penalized by Google?

    | mj775
    0
  • rohanarora536


    My website is related to education. We have created sub domains for all major colleges, universities & Entrance exams like Gre, Toefl ETC. for eg:  amityuniversity.abc.com (Amity is Name of University ) Now if have to mention city name in URL as well (college is located in multiple locations) amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
    amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com Now my Q is can we use hyphens in sub domains if we have to add city name or shall we create without using any  hyphens. In Directory  structure we can always separate words with hyphens, can we follow same practice in subdomain as well Which is a  best URL for subdomain amity-university-delhi.abc.com
    amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
    or amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com

    | rohanarora536
    0
  • novellseo


    We are getting reports that there are too many links on most of the pages in one of the sites we manage. Not just a few too many...  275 (versus <100 that is the target). The entire site is built with a very heavy global navigation, which contains a lot of links -- so while the users don't see all of that, Google does. Short of re-architecting the site, can you suggest ways to provide site navigation that don't violate this rule?

    | novellseo
    2
  • BistosAmerica


    Hi All of sudden, my category links are not working. Any tips on figuring out what's causing this? Looks like permalink problem with newer wordpress version. I turned off all the plugins see if this cause any problems.  Still not being able to find any option. Here's my site http://www.hibebefetaldoppler.com/fetal-doppler-questions-and-answers/ Thanks in advance

    | BistosAmerica
    0
  • GOODSIR


    I didn't see this topic specifically addressed here: what's the current thinking on using content aggregation for SEO purposes? I'll use flavors.me as an example. Flavors.me lets you set up a domain that pulls in content from a variety of services (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, RSS, etc.). There's also a limited ability to publish unique content as well. So let's say that we've got MyDomain.com set up, and most of the content is being drawn in from other services. So there's blog posts from WordPress.com, videos from YouTube, a photo gallery from Flickr, etc. How would Google look at this scenario? Is MyDomain.com simply scraped content from the other (more authoritative) sources? Is the aggregated content perceived to "belong" to MyDomain.com or not? And most importantly, if you're aggregating a lot of content related to Topic X, will this content aggregation help MyDomain.com rank for Topic X? Looking forward to the community's thoughts. Thanks!

    | GOODSIR
    0
  • danlae


    Simple question i think. Ive started adding alt tags to images using the slice tool in photoshop. This takes up a menu were the last part of is alt tag: This way to add alt tags does work right? I used SEO-browser afterwards and couldnt see the tag. There are maybe other better ways to see if your tags are in there ? Dan L.

    | danlae
    0
  • JohnTulley


    Hi guys, we have 41 links on our holiday(vacation) rental website, this seems too many when looking at best practice. 24 of these are links to community pages while 8 link to activities pages. The community and activity pages are also accessible from links on the top menu so they are not strictly necessary but do get 10% of site clickthroughs according to Google in-page analytics. I therefore do not want to remove the links if there is no good evidence that google will penalize us for this. What do you think would be best for our site? Thanks, John Tulley. footer.jpg

    | JohnTulley
    0
  • cbielich


    My question is I noticed today that the snap shots of my main pages were outdated. About a month. Then I clicked on the "Learn More" link about cahced images and Google says "Google crawls the web and takes snapshots of each page. When you click Cached, you'll see the webpage as it looked when we last indexed it." I know this sounds really dumb, but does that really mean the last time Google indexed that page? So the changes I have made since then have not been taken yet?

    | cbielich
    0
  • TP_Marketing


    Hello, On a E-commerce site with multiple buy buttons on the page (11 by Default).  Should I be blocking the alt. img on these? when I use the seomoz toolbar and view my page I see this Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • Buy Now • along with other alt imges on page, Thanks

    | TP_Marketing
    0
  • csmithal


    I have a client who is a business broker. I have just begun working with them, and they are trying to determine the best domain name to use - they have several. business-broker-alabama.com vs businessbrokeralabama.com Which one of these has more value? I know that search engines have somewhat devalued keywords. The first one probably has a little more SEO value, but is going to be a drag in terms of marketing -- saying "business hyphen broker hyphen alabama" is going to get old for them. Thanks!

    | csmithal
    0
  • Gardengirl


    I searched and couldn't find an answer, so I thought to ask. I use Weebly and it's all drag and drop features. Reading through all the information here, I see it stated over and over again that the use of frames makes it hard for search engines. Are Weebly's drag and drop boxes what is referred to as "frames"? Here is what I created. www.vermontapron.com

    | Gardengirl
    0
  • DavidLenehan


    Hi Just wondering what people think of using mega menus for navigation? We have used them on our new site http://nicontrols.com/uk/ When I run the site through the excellent SEOMoz campaign tools I see that we have too many on page links. I now believe the menu is good for customers but maybe not for link juice. Anyone got an ideas? Do I remove the mega menu or just reduce the number of links? Many thanks David

    | DavidLenehan
    0
  • CyrilWilson


    We noticed that our website is accessible on: http://www.example.com and https://www.example.com Both the versions have page rank of 4. Though on https version we have added canonical tag indicating http:// version as preferred. Is this fine or we need to use 301 redirect and let the site be accessible only on http:// version??

    | CyrilWilson
    1
  • TheSEODR


    How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.

    | TheSEODR
    0
  • RobWillox


    After updating areas highlighted in the On-Page Optimization report even after clicking the [Grade My On-page Optimization] the results don't refresh or reflect the changes eg The h1 tag does include the exact search term and there is bolded examples of the keyword phrase but report says not! Is there a way to force an update or is it a time related issue?

    | RobWillox
    0
  • ribandhull


    Why is it that when you google a domain like yahoo.com you sometimes get a main SERP and 6 sub SERPs below it. This concerns the 1st position.

    | ribandhull
    0
  • CommercePundit


    I am working on my website to edit structure with help of Google's search engine optimization starter guide. There is really good instruction to define URL structure which help us to perform well over Google's organic search. I have resolved issues regarding category pages but, I have confusion to define best URL structure for product pages. My website's product page URL structure is as follow. http://www.vistastores.com/marketumbrellas-californiaumbrella-slpt758-f13-red.html http://www.vistastores.com/homefurniture-winsomewood-93630.html URL structure is constructed with following terms. 1. Root Category Name (Market Umbrellas or Home Furniture or ....) 2. Brand Name 3. Manufacturer Part Number I am not happy with this structure and also not performing well over Google's organic search. I am thinking to include product name or title tag in URL after root domain. But, it may create very long URL and create issues in organic search display. Does it really matter to perform well over Google's organic search? How can I define best URL structure for product pages?

    | CommercePundit
    0
  • 678648631264


    Hello, I wanted to know what should I put in the image ALT and title text for blogger. I've read so many damn articles about ALT text and Title text for blogger; nothing explained what I put in it though. What am I supposed to put in it that will help me with my on page optimization? (Stuff like do I use spaces or dashes, do I put my keyword in there, how many characters should I not exceed, do I put one word or two words?) If I have a picture of a backpack, what should the alt text be? What if I have 10 different pictures of backpacks on 1 page? How about if I had a backpack next to a tv in an image? A specific answer or a detailed one is nice!

    | 678648631264
    0
  • mullsey


    Hello, For those of you who use Magento you will know it is not SEO friendly. When you create a category or product, the name of the product or category then becomes the H1 tag.  We sell mens business shirts.  For example we have a product called 'White poplin classic fit' this is also the H1 tag, nobody is ever going to search for that term so I have had my developer create a new attribute that allows me to keep the product name as it is and let's me create a new SEO friendly H1 tag, for example 'White business shirt'  However, placing 'White business shirt' on the page to be visible by the visitor does not look good on the page. My question is.  Can I place the H1 tag anywhere on the page?  I have some tabs like below.  I am thinking of add a tab in between delivery and returns called more info and placing more seo keywords including the H1 tag in this tab. Will this be OK or will this be seen as black hat technique?

    | mullsey
    0
  • elaineryan


    Hi all, I'm using Yoast's SEO plugin and when I run a On Page report card here on SEOMOZ it says there are 2 descriptions tags I've been trying to fix this but can't (I'm new!) Anyone any ideas on this? Thanks Elaine

    | elaineryan
    0
  • cschwartzel


    Is it damaging to have TOO long a title tag these days? i.e. well over character limit. I learned that title tags should be around 70 characters. I am new at this, but have a client that has three times that, with the same three keyword phrases repeating 3-4 times. And then NO h1's or h2's in the text......advice? Rookie here 🙂

    | cschwartzel
    0
  • Aftermath_SEO


    The index page and the targeted landing page for that keyword. They have different content, title, meta but I am competing with myself for the main keyword in the industry. What is the best way to fix this? 301 the keyword page to the index page?

    | Aftermath_SEO
    0
  • Audiohype


    Is there a disadvantage/advantage to using commas to separate words in the title tag. Which will be more effective as a title tag: "keyword1 keyword2 - Brand" OR "keyword1, keyword2 - Brand"?

    | Audiohype
    0
  • BeautyStop


    On 4/19/12 I began changing the link title tags in an effort to further optimize my website. I thought they were excessively long and it would be beneficial to make them more concise. On 4/26/12 my website traffic began to fall drastically and I'm not sure if it is from google's penguin update or from changing the link title tags. I started looking into the sudden drop of traffic and realized that when I run the site explorer tool on all of the pages I changed, the URL is redirecting. It appears that the backlinks are not passing through to the new URL. Before I Changed the Link Title Tag: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm **After I Changed the Link Title Tag: ** http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.beautystoponline.com%2FAndis-Clippers-s%2F102150.htm So my questions are: The above example shows that the old title tag (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professional-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 43 backlinks and the new one (www.beautystoponline.com/Andis-Professiona-Hair-Clippers-s/102150.htm) has 0. Will the links eventually be attributed to the new URL. I understand that the user will still be directed to my website they click the any of the backlinks, but will the link juice pointing the old URL pass through the new one? Would it be better, in the long run, to continue optimizing the link title tags.

    | BeautyStop
    0
  • VivaArturo


    Hi I am developing an ecommerce site and want to place text on all category and home page. The challenge is that 300 words of text for the pages does not fit into the design appropriately especially on the home page. If I were to use a show/hide element with javascript would this be seen as spam or a trick to the search engines. I do not think it is spam as it will be actual content for the site and the visitor can view it if they click on the show button. Would love to hear your thoughts?

    | VivaArturo
    0
  • david305


    Hey guys quick question, when I am analyzing/ doing word count for a particluar key word and I want to make sure that i am no where near Keyword stuffing, does Google consider the alt and title tags keywords of images as part of the KW count when looking for on page Keyword stuffing. For example. let say I have a page that i just created with 1000 words. and Only 2 of the words are my target Keywords. Then, if i add a picture and add the keyword to both the alt and title tag and description of the image, does google now consider the "page" to have a total of 5 keywords? Also, a lot has changed recently since penguin and panda, is there a good rule of thumb for what ratio to stay under as far as keywords to text.?

    | david305
    0
  • HalogenDigital


    So as of late I have been on something of a mission to mark up my news website with as much accurate and detailed Schema and Open Graph data as possible, in order to not only allow the search engines to understand my content properly, but also to ensure everything appears in the most ideal fashion when linked to from Facebook, Google+, etc. Here is an example of a typical article page: http://www.nerdscoop.net/technology/video-games-459 As you'll see I currently have news posts marked up as article because that is essentially exactly what they are, but is there a better way to emphasise that they are news rather than just generic articles? My second question is regarding the category pages and the home page. How would be best to mark these up? With OG the task is fairly simple, because I can specify the homepage as being a website, but not so with Schema from what I can see. Either way, this is an interesting subject to me and I look forward to any discussion as a result. Thanks for looking.

    | HalogenDigital
    0
  • DisMedia


    When we create client websites the urls are client.oursite.com.  Google is indexing theses sites and attaching to our domain.  How can we stop it with robots.txt?  I've heard you need to have the robots file on both the main site and the dev sites... A code sample would be groovy.  Thanks, TR

    | DisMedia
    0
  • dawsonski


    HI Guys, We have just developed a new website and I'm looking to add meta descriptions with relevant key words to the pages . As the site has over 80 pages it is quite an undertaking and i was wandering if pages, such as  the shopping cart  and FAQ's etc,  need meta  descriptions as well? Thanks in advance : ) Pete

    | dawsonski
    0
  • Switch_Digital


    I've been having detailed discussions with a CMS provider on behalf of a client. Long URLs are the least of their problems however, the developer is arguing that Google has amended their algorithm and will now read URLs that are up to 255 characters long. I have stated that as far as I am aware, Google will still not read URLs over 115 characters... Before I stamp my feet, can someone confirm what is actually happening? SEOmoz still classes URLs >115 characters long as an amber issue. Thanks

    | Switch_Digital
    0
  • iwebdevnl


    Hi everybody, At the moment i'm creating several webshops and websites with the same layout, so visitors can recognize the websites are from the same company. But i was wondering: Does google look at the layout of a webpage that it's not a copy of another website? This because loads of website have the same wordpress/joomla templates etc, or doesn't this effect rankingpositions? Thank you,

    | iwebdevnl
    0
  • DocdataCommerce


    This may be a very basic question, but with all this talk about overoptimization I just want to make sure we get this right. We run a webshop for a manufacturer of leather products. Billfolds, iPhone sleeves, briefcases etc. Their company name (also the domain name at which the webshop is active) does not include 'leather'. Obviously, leather is an important keyword for these products, but having a category page with 'leather X', 'leather Y', 'leather Z' not only looks weird, it might even look spammy. The same, though to a lesser extent, is true for the category names. Do we really want to have 'leather billfolds', 'leather ipad sleeves' etc. at the top of every category? Can anyone give some tips, pointers, best practices perhaps for when an important keyword is basically true for every category/product/page of your site? How do you include it without overoptimizing?

    | DocdataCommerce
    0
  • dawsonski


    Hi Everyone he company I work for has  just built a new website  with approximately 87 pages/sub pages. Should i be looking to add keywords and descriptions  to all of these pages, via the allocated areas in the back end of the site?  I am using "google's key words" tool  to generate relevant key words. If any one has any advice it would be much appreciated. Thanks for you help Regards Pete

    | dawsonski
    0
  • Wallander


    Hello...I have written a bunch of content for my site using a useful tool called Scribe SEO which recommends keyword density at 5% if I remember correctly. So all my my newly written content is below this level but I am left wondering if by adding alt tags with my chosen keywords I will be considered to be over the limit and cause a red flag? Can anyone clarify this for me please?

    | Wallander
    0
  • NiallTom


    Hi There, Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English.  As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course. For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers.  So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that. The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products. My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it.  Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me?  If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly? Thanks!

    | NiallTom
    0
  • kicksetc


    What is the most SEO friendly shopping cart?  I have been using zen-cart for 6 years.  Seems Google doesn't like it as much as other carts.  I started a new site about 6 months ago using Magento.  When I build links to this site the terms move.  The terms are very similar.  So I would imagine the competition is the same.  I am curious if anybody has tried with different carts and found anyone to be better than the others.  Also the new site has about one tenth the amount of products but has a lot more pages indexed.

    | kicksetc
    0
  • jgmayes


    what is the best place to go to create a xml sitemap? I have used xml-sitemap.com but it only does 500 pages. Any suggestions? Does a sitemap have value on the SEO front?

    | jgmayes
    0
  • dgruhin


    my website www.totalmanagement.com fluctuates for the search term: web based property management software I have been using SEO Moz for a few months now and have managed to get to the top 5 and jump around between 3 and 5. Does anyone have any suggestions to assist me? Long term goal is also to really target: Property Management Software But I am still very new at this. Thanks in advance for the help!

    | dgruhin
    0
  • Earthsaver


    When typing in my website URL  www.earthsaverequipment.com  successfully re-directs to earthsaverequipment.com as specified in robot. However if you type http://www.earthsaverequipment.com it brings up a 404 error Is this a potential issue? if so is there a way to fix it? thanks

    | Earthsaver
    0
  • Jason_342


    Hi, I have a low PR site (PR 1) that I am starting to work on.  Ingeneral when you make changes to my site how long would it take Google to recognize and index those changes? The reason I am wondering is because the site I am working on had a lot of duplicate content (around 700 pages), I got rid of it all, but I wasn't sure how long it would take Google to spider all these pages and re-index them since the site is low PR. Thanks, Ken

    | Jason_342
    0
  • Kotkov


    What is the right way to completely block seo robots from my adword landing pages? Robots.txt does not work really good for that, as far I know. Adding metatags noindex nofollow on the other side will block adwords robot as well. right? Thank you very much, Serge

    | Kotkov
    0

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