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Category: On-Page Optimization

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

  • dan.backowski


    I'm curious if the alt tags on the images on my website are treated just like text. Thoughts?

    | dan.backowski
    1
  • lauragee


    I'm having canonical URL problems. I keep trying to set everything to www.mydomain.com, but I'm using wordpress and my site keeps either disappearing completely or giving me an infinite loop error. I've tried changing my main wordpress setting, whether I have canonical URLs turned on, my .htaccess file... Could this be an issue with either my host or my domain registrar? Any ideas how I can fix it?

    | lauragee
    0
  • UnderMe


    Hi, I have just checked my google webmaster tools account and viewed the index status of my website and it produced the attached graph, which show quite a big spike in indexing during July and August 2012. Does this look normal or does it reveal anything peculiar? We did have a new website launched in June 2012 and I re-submitted the sites URL's to google as part of the re-launch and so I am unsure if this may account for the spike. Any advice appreciated. Thanks indexing.png

    | UnderMe
    0
  • KenjiCrosland


    Hi All, One of my clients wants to rebrand http://indiaretailnews.com/ so that it's clear that the site is under the operational umbrella of http://tradebriefs.com/. indiaretailnews.com has a lower domain authority of 20, but because of the domain name it ranks number #2 for the keyword "retail news" for Google India. The client's question: Can we change the site names to TradeBriefsRetail.com  orTradeBriefsIndiaRetail.com without affecting the SEO on each site? How do we do this – redirect from TradeBriefsIndiaRetail.com to IndiaRetailNews.com and so on or simply put all the content on the new sites and get rid of the old domains or some other way? Do long domain names cause a problem? Another option is TradeBriefsRetail.in, etc with the domain extension showing the country that the content is for.. In a year or two, we will be expanding to markets outside India. My opinion: Keep the old domains and redirect to something like http://tradebriefs.com/india-retail-news Or perhaps a subdomain: http://indiaretailnews.tradebriefs.com In the short term, I'd imagine rankings will drop, but if we wanted to consolidate domain authority, I was thinking that http://tradebriefs.com/india-retail-news would be the best bet. Thoughts? Kenji

    | KenjiCrosland
    0
  • Jon-C


    Hi, Just cleaning up some 404 errors in my site in GWT and noticed a couple of external links pointing at me that are wrong. Basically they are from a couple of DIY forum sites (I've not put these links in place myself they are 100% natural) and it appears that the owners of the forums amend the links (inserting characters into link) so they are not quite right. How would I go about redirecting the following - www.example.co.uk/blueberry_pie.htm Whatever I try doesn't work and I always end up with a 404! Cheers
    J

    | Jon-C
    0
  • DanFromUK


    Bing Webmaster Tools showed me that sometimes it displays https://www.domain.com in its results and sometimes http://www.domain.com. That got me thinking. Does Bing consider https to be a seperate duplicate copy of the http version? IE does my site get knocked down for duplicate content because of this? In Google webmaster tools, I can tell it whether I want https or http. But I dont know how to tell Bing. Any pointers will be appreciated. Thanks Dan

    | DanFromUK
    0
  • VillasDiani


    Can somebody help me to explain why when I click on an image in a post it goes to its own page?? And why if I click on other image it does not go anywhere?? this is one of the posts: http://villasdiani.com/beach-wedding-at-a-luxury-boutique-hotel/ what is good or bad?? On most of the images SEOmoz is reporting that I am missing meta description!

    | VillasDiani
    0
  • FDAitsupport


    It looks like my weekly crawl has finished, but my Grade Reports still reflect last week. Is there a way to manually update them, or do I just have to wait it out?

    | FDAitsupport
    0
  • RScime25


    A few months ago, in hopes of a) helping new customers navigate the sometimes-arcane language used in the precious metals industry and b) earning some props from Google for making the site more user friendly, I talked the Powers-That-Be into allowing me to create a glossary with links from some unfamiliar terms in each product description and added appropriate <title>tages for each term.</p> <p>My question is: <strong>In the opinion of SEOMoz was this endeavor a brilliant, transformative SEO brainstorm—or just a waste of my time?</strong></p> <p>We haven't been running analytics, so we are flying blind.</p> <p>Here's the 411:<br /> <br />Website: www.goldmart.com<br />Glossary: www.goldmart.com/glossary</p> <p>A sample description: http://www.goldmart.com/1-oz-pamp-suisse-lunar-snake-gold-bar-9999-fine-in-assay.html</p></title>

    | RScime25
    0
  • mihaiaperghis


    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?

    | mihaiaperghis
    0
  • h1seo


    I want to republish the post from  another website with their permission and want to abide by Google guidelines. Google guidelines is clear when you are using the same content at different parts of the same site however not when using it on another site in a legitimate way.  Is there some way to use  rel="canonical"  refer to another website page of you are reproducing the content from same page?

    | h1seo
    0
  • iivgi


    Hi, I want to start adding it to my website I wanted to know: if it's ok to create a Google+ profile  for the company and this profile will be managed buy one or more persons? Or must it be a profile of a person? Is Google+ is the only way to do it? Thank you

    | iivgi
    0
  • nagar


    I've installed the Yoast SEO Plugin for wordpress and I've setup the sitemaps using it. I saw the tool has generated the Sitemap index file http://www.phraseexpander.com/sitemap_index.xml with different indexes for posts and pages I've submitted that to google and it's indexed. When I use Seoquake to check my website, I see that it says that the sitemap is missing (in fact http://www.phraseexpander.com/sitemap.xml) is returning 404. Shall I fix that? Shall I do a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file to http://www.phraseexpander.com/sitemap_index.xml Thanks.

    | nagar
    0
  • podweb


    I have one page targeted to a specific keyword that seems to have dropped into oblivion but rest of website seems Ok and as usual. website is www.pod-exhibition-systems.co.uk search term is "banner stands" Grade is A in SEO moz tools and 3 other SEO programs. looking for an avenue to try as has been 2 weeks so far. regards Joe

    | podweb
    0
  • mr_w


    I've been trying to rank for the key word "kayak fishing" for my site www.yakangler.com.  Last year when I started working on the SEO for my site I was on page 30 for Google search results so like the 300th result. After tweaking things on my site I managed to get to the second page but have since fallen all the way back to page 25-26 in the search results. I'm wondering if I'm penalized for this key word. I can't figure out why my site is ranking soooo badly for "kayak fishing" Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

    | mr_w
    0
  • lauratagdigital


    UPDATE to original question: Ok can I also add, as a solution, could I use %%title%% | A Commercial Property Website that deals exclusively with Industrial Property, Land and Investments For Sale or Let across Scotland. In Yoast as a meta description - so the descriptions will have individual titles but the rest the same? Or will I be penalised? This is for the 1000 or so listings, but I'll write completely unique descriptions for the pages? We have taken on the marketing and SEO of a site that we didn't build. After the first crawl report there were 103 errors, 760 warnings and 990 notices. Including a lot of 301s - which I'm confused as is a brand new site. http://www.shedfinders.com/ I've made some changes in the editor to ensure unique page titles so errors should come down. However i wanted to ask advice how best to optimise a site like this ... people come on they list an industrial property and then those in the market to let or sell can browse and then get more details on industrial property they like the look of. So there are lots of listings going on that aren't correctly optimised ... should these manually all have meta descriptions and rewrite headers etc? Ideally the listings would rank themselves in Google - but I'm going to no index some of the other less relevant pages. Keen to hear your feedback. Thanks, Laura

    | lauratagdigital
    0
  • CsmBill


    This is a fairly common question, but I am going to ask it again. I want to get ranked for many keywords: "hr outsourcing sheboygan", "HR outsourcing duluth", etc., all in my small state. Doing some random research, there are few if any pages with exact match phrases in the URL, Title, Etc. = No competition) Moreover, Google is not popping google places ads for these terms. My plan is to create fairly unique pages on my site optimized for each town.  Right now, the pages are at 65% duplicate. I would assume that all of my pages will have some degree of duplication - there are similar elements on every page. If I run the content through a duplicate content tester, is there a % of unique content that would be fairly safe to avoid the duplicate content slap? Yes, I know it's more complicated than that semantic, heuristic, etc. - just looking for some general guidelines.

    | CsmBill
    0
  • ingageseo


    eg Home page is landing and and has 5 Keywords,  should this be 1 campaign, and then 2nd landing page with 2 keywords is another campiagn. In my current campaign I have lots of "F's" for On site optimisation for keywords that dont have relevance to the landing page. Sorry about the newbie question.

    | ingageseo
    0
  • WithGodInc


    My website Simple Living With God is simplelivingwithgod.com. The plan is to title everything this way because I want to rank high for "Simple Living" "Appropriate Page or Post Title - Simple Living With God" Is that reasonable? A further question - for pages that have Simple Living in the title would it be considered over stuffing to have the brand afterwards also? For example on a page where I want the keyword phrase to be "simple living quotes" which is the best approach for title / url? Title a)  "Simple Living Quotes - Simple Living with God" b)  "Quotes - Simple Living with God" c)  "Simple Living Quotes" Url a)  http://simplelivingwithgod.com/simple-living-quotes b)  http://simplelivingwithgod.com/quotes

    | WithGodInc
    0
  • AxialDev


    Howdy SEOmoz fans! Is it considered a good / bad / neutral practice to include H tags in the footer, as a mean to group a few links? Take http://www.seomoz.org/ for instance: - Voted Best SEO Tool 2010! = H2
    - Looking for SEO consulting? = H3
    - Product and Tools = H3 Company = H3 etc. I often see the same principle applied to sidebars. I feel like because they don't contribute to the actual content structure and because they are repeated from page to page, we should avoid them, but I have nothing to back my intuition. [+] Perhaps they are helpful for usability (screen readers) and thin added value (i.e. category names that carry more weight than if they weren't headers). What do you think? Thanks for your time.

    | AxialDev
    1
  • Ankkesh


    Hi I'm working on an eCommerce site and don't have direct access to the CMS. I had requested developers to provide me a facilty to 301 via htaccess however this is working slight differently. I need guidance from experts whether it's okay or not: Old Page: example.com/old Target New Page: example.com/new After Implementing the redirect, It redirects to an intermediate page or in other words, The same target URL with a question mark added: example.com/new? (notice the question mark in the new URL) This intermediate page has a canonical tag for the exact target URL. So, if I 301 redirect example.com/old to example.com/new? (Intermediate page) and If the intermediate page example.com/new? has a canonical tag for the exact target URL (example.com/new), Will I be able to pass the link juice and authority of old page to the new page?

    | Ankkesh
    0
  • lauratagdigital


    We had to do a rush job for a client and get a website up very quickly. We had to just replace the existing files on the server, but URL stayed the same. Now "teeth whitening glasgow" which they were number #1 for isn't coming up.  Know there is still some on page work to be done - but the link profile should still remain the same? Just looking for some advice to get back to where they were - should we do a website change of address or just verify the site in Webmaster and get all the on page done? Thanks, Laura

    | lauratagdigital
    0
  • BlakeArbogast


    Our site is showing it has a ton of crawl errors in the back end, mostly concerning duplicate content within our blog. The content is unique however. We know this for certain because it's done in house or put together by some of the freelance writers we work with. The site is for an RV dealership and we're using a template-based system from a well known company. Any ideas on what may be causing this?

    | BlakeArbogast
    0
  • iivgi


    Hi, I did a SEOmoz campaign and got results today, One of the results is Too "Many On-Page Links" when i am drilling down, i see that that's include inside links. for example, i sale food, i have my main department window - inside i have 30 products - each product is linked to a detailed page about the product. so automatically i have 30 links - not including all the others in this page, and i easily get over 100 and even sometimes 200 is this a big issue? does it damages my SEO? If yes, is there a way to write the HTML in a way that internal links like that wont be counted? Thank you SEOWiseUs

    | iivgi
    0
  • ilovebodykits


    Hi I am trying to redirect all the non www urls to WWW. After I redirected them, most of my category page PR are dropped to 0.  Can someone please tell me if this is the normal after effect after the redirect? Example url:  this is PR2 before the redirect http://www.ilovebodykits.com/category/95/Body_Kits_Front_Bumpers.html

    | ilovebodykits
    0
  • Pepperjet


    I'm Anuj, a regular user of SEOMOZ. I need some SEO guidance from SEO experts. I'm trying to optimize a webstore for few keywords. I am facing some issues on SEO I was using https all over the webstore and was advised by the community members to not have https through out the site (Due to various reasons). The internal links were not showing up in opensiteexplorer & Google Webmaster Tools too when the site was with https (They were just showing 1 or 2). After changing the pages from https to http, I'm now able to see all the internal links of my website on GWT. Unfortunately, the internal link count on opensiteexplorer shows a very small fraction when compared to the # of internal links shown on GWT. The link update from Opensiteexplorer was on 27th FEB 2013. I had done the https to http (for all pages) somewhere between 17-24th of JANUARY 2013. I wanted to know if I have missed something as I am unable to see those numbers on Opensiteexplorer or will it take time for opensiteexplorer to show the internal link numbers ?

    | Pepperjet
    0
  • Superflys


    This isnt exactly on SEO topic but is there any online tools that will scan a site for malware and identify exactly what files are infected. I have a site that was hacked and I've remove most of the malware but there is still some there that I can't find. thanks in advance.

    | Superflys
    0
  • Superflys


    Good, bad, or doesn't affect local SEO? Same question for youtube videos. love this place - thanks in advance

    | Superflys
    0
  • lbohen


    We have a duplicate content challenge that likely has contributed to us loosing SERPs especially for generic keywords such as "audiobook," "audiobooks," "audio book," and "audio books." Our duplicate content is on two levels. 1. The first level is at our web store, www.audiobooksonline.com. Audiobooks are sometimes published in abridged, unabridged, on compact discs, on MP3 CD by the same publisher. In this case we use the publisher description of the story for each "flavor" = duplicate content. Can we use our sitemap to identify only one "flavor" so that a spider doesn't index the others? 2. The second level is that most online merchants of the same publisher's audio book use the same description of the story = lots of duplicate content on the Web. In that we have 11,000+ audio book titles offered at our Web store, I expect Google sees us as having lots of duplicated (on the Web) content and devalues our site. Some of our competitors who rank very high for our generic keywords use the same publisher's description. Any suggestions on how we could make our individual audio book title pages unique will be greatly appreciated.

    | lbohen
    0
  • Jon-C


    Adding breadcrumbs to create a hierarchy on what is otherwise a flat site. Got the following pages which are, our main pages that rank - Metal gates Metal driveway gates Metal garden gates Metal side access gates The Metal gates pages link off to the other pages mentioned but also contain a lot of other info The driveway gates, garden gates and side access gate page all contain our range of gates, the three pages mentioned then have links off to their individual gates contained within each section Breadcrumb wise, should I aim for Home - Metal gates - Driveway gates - individual driveway gate
    Home - Metal gates - Side access gates- individual side access gate
    Home - Metal gates - Garden gates- individual garden gate Is that the best way to go or if I want the driveway gate page (etc) to continueto rank should I go like this Home - Metal driveway gates Home - Metal side access gates etc

    | Jon-C
    0
  • DustyBraband


    Hi, We currently have a number of 302 redirects set up on our e-commerce store that redirect from no forward slash at the end to a forward slash at the end of the url (see below). example: domain.com/treadmills
    Redirects to
    domain.com/treadmills/ Am I correct in saying that this will not pass link juice and the redirects should be changed to 301's (or just removed?). Or are the two urls treated the same (with or without forward slash)? Thanks in advance! Regards,
    Dusty

    | DustyBraband
    0
  • Zacay


    Hi, This has maybe been asked many times. I wonder for example how our website www.hardtours.se can receive higher ranking for the word "hardstyle". Our competitor has "hardstyle" in the webadress and it feels useless to compete with them since it feels that having the name in the www adress is to hard to compete with. Or am i wrong?

    | Zacay
    0
  • nyc-seo


    Hello. I have a page on our site that is especially popular and has many inbound links. This page has the same site navigation buttons (at the top) as every other page on the site. Do these site navigation buttons pass along link juice to other pages in the same way that an internal link would elsewhere on the page? Thank you!

    | nyc-seo
    0
  • bloomingB


    I started using SEOMOZ due to a sudden and huge drop in Google for two main keywords (hair bows and baby headbands).  Our site (BloomingBows.com) has held a top three spot for years with these words and then in the last few months has dropped down on the first page and now they are completely off the charts.  Is there any insight as to why?  Also, we have been very active using the data from here in the last week or so to clean up and improve anything listed, but I am still seeing keywords drop into the 40 - 60 position and our traffic is drying up.  Starting to panic and wondering if I am missing something or going about this in the wrong way. ANY insight is appreciated at this point!!  Thank you!!

    | bloomingB
    0
  • nyc-seo


    Hello. I am thinking of changing our home page title tag to include our two most valuable keywords from two of our sub-pages. Would this help the rankings of those two sub-pages? Thank you!

    | nyc-seo
    0
  • nyc-seo


    Hello. I would like to change the url of a page. It currently has very few inbound links. I would set up a 301 redirect to the new url. Is there anything else I should take into account before changing the url? Is there a downside to changing a url? Do inbound links carry the same value when a 301 redirect is involved? Thank you!

    | nyc-seo
    0
  • ClaireH-184886


    Hi, i have asked this question a couple of times without any luck so i am hoping third time lucky. My site www.in2town.co.uk  has dropped in the rankings for two of my important keywords, lifestyle magazine and lifestyle news, so i am just wondering if i have to much content on the page for google to understand what the page is about. i am thinking to just have the links on my page instead of the intro to the articles, for example another online magazine does this, http://www.femalefirst.co.uk/ Can anyone please let me know if i should keep the intro to the articles or if i should go with the links idea like femalefirst does to help google understand that we are a lifestyle magazine any advice would be great

    | ClaireH-184886
    0
  • PhilipGledhill


    I've found several good quality, high ranking pages with excellent content, 500 to 1000 words. These pages are made by people who obviously know what they're doing. These pages only have one headline the h1 at the top of the page. Some of the sites use CSS div boxes and other things to make text look like a heading but do not have h2 or h3 tags or bigger font size. Could it be that a single headline tells Google that this page is about a single topic and that several sub headings muddy the water and so reduce page rank. Do multiple headings or subheadings affect page rank or is it just a personal style choice?

    | PhilipGledhill
    0
  • nyc-seo


    Hello, How much better for rankings is an html text heading (H1 text of a word at the top of a page) than a graphic of the word with an alt tag? Thank you!

    | nyc-seo
    0
  • Superflys


    Hello, I was wondering if internal links should be full urls?  for instance my coder might put "page-title.html" but I was wondering if its better for seo to have it be the full url "http://www.blah-blah.com/page-title.html" thanks in advance..... I love this place!

    | Superflys
    1
  • AmSupMktg


    Hi, I bought ForSaleInAZ.com for my real estate website. Google Keyword Tool estimate 301k local searches for that term. I would like to capitalize on this by building this site with good content. My question to you, besides the search being the URL, what is the best practice to specifically promote the "For Sale In AZ" phrase? Should it be in the Page Title, Meta Description, Content H1 & H2 tags, Image tag? Or, is it being in the URL good enough...so all I have to do is build good content? I understand not to over do it but I could use your advice. Can you please give me some suggestions/ guidelines to follow specifically to my EMD? SEO Expertise Level: I am comfortable and have the decent understanding but, by no means, an expert! Thanks, Carl

    | AmSupMktg
    0
  • HiddenPeak


    Hi, We are developing a website for a company based in the US, but that also distributes to the UK. After careful thought, we decided to go with adding subdirectories for the UK pages on the site rather than creating content on a new ccTLD (though they own that domain). 1. How much of the Title Tags, H1, content, needs to be different for UK versions of the same page. Is it enough to simply Geo tag the EN subdirectory in Webmaster Tools? Or do the Title tags and content need to be different in order to avoid keyword cannibalization? 2. Would it be better to create a Landing Page using the ccTLD .co.uk version with information that links to the .com/en version? This would allow the users to see the .co.uk version for trust-building purposes. Or, would it just be better to 301 redirect the .co.uk version to the .com/en? Thanks for your help! Erin

    | HiddenPeak
    0
  • HiddenPeak


    Hi, I have 2 301 redirect questions. Question 1: I have am working with a designer on the redesign of a website that currently has over 5,000 indexed pages. The majority of these are dynamic URLs from the Stone Locator database. (see below) http://www.domain.com/storelocator.php?zipcode=91784&page=12 How can I efficiently deal with these pages from an SEO perspective when developing the new site? Is there a way to do a bulk 301 redirect to a store locator page, for instance? Question 2: If a rel=canonical tag has been established on a page (www....), is it necessary to add 301 redirects to all of the other versions on: the home page (domain.com , domain.com/index.html, domain.com/index.html, etc.) all other pages with those same extensions ? Thank you for your help! Erin

    | HiddenPeak
    0
  • JABacchetta


    I recently changed my category base in WordPress and instead of redirecting or deleting the old base, WordPress kept the content up. So I now have duplicate content on two different urls - one on the old category base, one on the new category base. How should I handle this situation? The site is only a couple weeks old, if that makes any difference.

    | JABacchetta
    0
  • csfarnsworth


    Geo Meta Tags Dublin core Microformats What are they and If they are helpful for SEO purposes.How can i set them?My site is in wordpress.

    | csfarnsworth
    0
  • dwaddsy


    I am very new to this website and signed up within the month. I have seen the crawled results of my website www.davidwaddleton.com but I just don't know what to do with the information. For example I get duplicates/errors/suggestions and I look at them but don't know how to fix them. Can you please recommend how I can move forward as a newbie? I feel overwhelmed with the amount of errors and duplicates. There are hundreds!

    | dwaddsy
    0
  • bvalentine


    I'm working on a site for a small guest house (http://www.tommysonthebeach.com).  I have created a Google Place page (Bing and Yahoo Local) as well and I have the address in the footer on every page. I have the location (Indian Rocks Beach) at the beginning of most titles tags because that is how people tend to search, e.g. "Indian Rocks Beach vacation rental." In theory I would think that I don't need location in the title tag because Google knows the location, and I could use the real estate for other keywords suchs as "pet friendly" or "beach hotel," etc. But when I look at the SERPS, those ranking highly all seem to have the location at the beginning of the title tag. Thanks. P.S. The site is currently not showing up in Google local search apparently because Google thinks it's a vacation rental agency, which are not allowed in local search. I'm trying to get that fixed.

    | bvalentine
    0
  • brianw10


    Is it better to use my fdqn of http://1stclassdriving.co.uk/ or ~/ or ../ and then page name address for internal links or not? or does it just not matter for seo rankings?

    | brianw10
    0
  • CabbageTree


    Just wondering what domain is more beneficial for a mobile site and why.

    | CabbageTree
    0
  • nyc-seo


    Hello, I have a title tag that includes three keywords and has a total of 59 characters. The third keyword is not very important. If I eliminated the third keyword, leaving the first two (for a total of 48 characters), would the ranking value of the first two keywords increase? Does including the third keyword dilute the value of the first two? Thank you!

    | nyc-seo
    0

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