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Category: On-Page Optimization

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


  • My site bluecotton.com sells custom printed t-shirts.  Our DA is 46.  Our homepage is PA 55.  The design studio is where users create their designs.  Over the years the design studio has received a lot of fan fair including links from gizmodo and adobe.  When I rank against our biggest competitors customink, ooshirts, uberprints.com I find that our domain as a whole doesn't look all that great.  However, when I look at the history of our subdomain I see that we are more trusted and credible than all of our competitors.  We have 10k links pointing to the design studio.  Here is my question.  What if I did 301 redirect of bluecotton.com/studio.html to bluecotton.com?  Then I created a new url for the DS.  This would not cause users any problems.  In fact for many they would get more context around what we are trying to do and what we offer.  Is this crazy?  I never find results in google for the design studio.  It always shows our home.  That is pretty much what happens to all of our competitors on the higher traffic terms that are driving real sales. So why do i ask?  If my subdomain is more valuable becuase of the design studio links then I wonder if I redirected it to the homepage if it would supercharge my homepage and propel is forward in the serps. Thoughts?

    | bradwayland
    0

  • www.example.com/blog is the full list of blog posts by various writers. The list contains the title of each article and the first paragraph from the article. In addition to /blog being indexed, each author's contribution list is being indexed separately. It's not a profile, really, just a list of articles in the same title & paragraph format of the /blog page. So if /blog a list of 10 articles written by two writers, I have three pages: /blog/author1 is a list of 4 articles /blog/author2 is a list of 6 different articles /blog is a list of 10 articles (the 4+6 from the two writers) Is this going to be considered duplicate content?

    | Brocberry
    0

  • Hello, I am new to this. The crawl of y website reveals that "Too Many On-Page Links" were found on many pages of the website. However, when I check those pages, not more than 5 links are found- I have not included links outside of the post (sidebar/comments/related posts - are these counted in the crawl report ?). I do use SEO SmartLinks Plugin where in some keywords point to Wordpress Categories but am not sure whether that could be the problem at all. Can someone guide what the issue could be and how to debug ?

    | sradhey
    0

  • The majority of the back links I have been  creating link directly to our home page and to the store page. Is this the best approach or should I be trying to spread the links throughout our site to include product  categories and subcategories etc?

    | Hardley
    0

  • Hi there, I'm down to just 6 duplicate page warnings but I'm not sure how to deal with this one: Information Page Not Found! http://www.vintageheirloom.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=6 My Ecommerce shopping site products are unique, 1 of a kind. So once one product has sold and been delivered we take the product off our website, hence the Information Page Not Found! As I understand when search engines re-index these warnings will drop off but new sold products would replace them. So redirecting seems like hard work and never ending. Is it ok to ignore these warnings? Thanks Mozzers..

    | well-its-1-louder
    0

  • My company often puts out short news bulletins to announce short news updates.  We have to write about these topics for our customers and to remain as an industry leader.  However, there is not much real and interesting content to write about these topics. What is the minimum length you think these articles should consist of so that Google won't see them as weak/useless pages and possibly give us a Panda penalty for them?

    | theLotter
    0

  • I have started keeping detailed records of all my blog postings. Is it ok to link to my own url? I make sure to link to another blog posting in each post, and link to sources as well. Thanks in advance for the advice!

    | rivercityransom
    0

  • My Crawl Diagnostic report is showing too many on-page links (~120-141). Is this a count of distinct links (i.e. example.com and example.com/?q count as 2)?

    | SpartzAlison
    0

  • I am preparing recommendations for my client's Webmaster from the On-page Report Card. I am integrating them into a larger Excel spreadsheet with other recommended changes. So many SEO Moz reports can be exported to Excel. Is this an exception, or am I missing something? It would really save me a lot of time and effort.

    | calalouf
    0

  • I'm considering purchasing a domain that has sat idle for several months.  It was a company's domain that they have owned since the mid1990's but they went out of business.  Previously, it had a PR 5 but has since lost it's PR as it has sat 'inactive' with a 'server not found' warning for the past several months. That being said, is there any point in buying the domain (for SEO purposes)?  Is there any recourse with Google to try and re-establish the site's credibility or would I be starting over from scratch?

    | martybuch23
    0

  • If a page has more than 100 links, rather than splitting up the page into multiple pages, is it ok to use name="robots" content="noindex, follow" />? The page in question lists links to articles so the page itself isn't that important to appear in serps, but the articles are the helpful content pages: www.ides.com/articles/processing/injection-molding/

    | Prospector-Plastics
    0

  • Hi, I want to add a explainer video on my header. This video introduce our online store, products and services. Should it be host on YouTube or on my online store server. I use BigCommerce shopping cart and I don't have to pay for bandwitch. In a SEO point of view, what is the best option? Thank you, BigBlaze

    | BigBlaze205
    0

  • I have a product that is available for Canadians only but not for Americans. I was just wondering how I can allow Google to find the Canadian page but not the American Page.  I want to optimize this product to show in Google CAN results but not in the results for USA. Is this even possible?

    | odegi
    0

  • I have been experimenting with a number of plugins to speed up the loading of my wordpress site and find that website speed testing tools are all over the map when it comes to results. Even the same tool can produce vastly different results. Does anyone have experience with one that is both dependable and consistent?

    | casper434
    0

  • Hi, I want to ask do you thing that it is good and necessary to have a subdomain with a keyword in it when the domain doesn't include it? f.e. you have a website named domain.com but there is no keyword in it. And if you add subdomain keyword.domain.com will this bring any benefit?

    | vladokan
    0

  • Hi guys, My client has a site built with Cold Fusion (web pages end in .cfm) and we're moving them over to Wordpress (for many reasons), keeping the same menu structure and navigation. Their previous SEO company was pretty awful, however, they did manage to establish some decent authority/backlinks for the website and its 20 or so pages. My questions: I assume I'll want to do 301 redirects for each page, possibly by editing the .htaccess file?  Any advice on this? Anything else I need to consider in this move? Thanks!

    | alpen
    0

  • I have set up on page reports for keywords against specific pages... but I have a whole other bunch of reports which are automatically run by the system (many of them not really relevant at the moment in time) so, I'm wondering if there's a way to filter out just my own reports? This way I can focus on improving my target pages, rather than having to find them in amongst all the sys gen reports. Apologies if this is a rather obtuse questions.... newbie user. Thanks in advance. Khaled

    | khaled-hussaindupre
    0

  • As everybody know Facebook Likes has impact on serch results. But how can Google knows a page like or share count? Is it using an API or something?

    | mtb888
    0

  • My website home page ranks well for a keyword lets call it 'Keyword1'. I'd like to create a new category specific to 'Keyword1' and name it 'Keyword1' so the relevant content and products can sit in there. How can I ensure that my rankings of my current home page are passed on to this new category page? Many thanks,

    | alexhowe
    0

  • One of my site is ranking for all the main keywords except one. This keyword is just a variant of those keywords which are all ranking in top 10 (page 1) in Google. Why is it happening? Does Google punishes site for one keyword. I know competition of keyword matters but other keywords with similar competition are ranking. And even the site is very well optimized for this keyword (titles and site copy without any stuffing) Any Solutions ?

    | Personnel_Concept
    0

  • Hi, Is it a "no go" to put text before H1 on a site? We got some courses where the user puts in the name of the course in a H1 Then we make a H2 with the name of the course and keywords (6 weeks course in XXX) So on the page it appears H1 "XXX Course" H2 "6 weeks course in XXX" **Description of the course ** Would it be logical to remove the H1 from the top and put it where the H2 currently is, leaving the top text with no heading?

    | Mickelp
    0

  • We have lost considerable rank for some of our top search terms (department names) and the rank loss correlates to a change we made on our homepage.  That change was to remove a secondary navigation to the major departments in the content of our homepage.  Now all we have is the global header navigation on the homepage (and all other pages on the site).  I have read that in-page links pass more value than sitewide header links and I'm wondering if this is really true.  These were text links (not linked images) and our header also contains text links (and some javascript).  We did not make any other changes on our site at this time and this was not around the time of any major algorithm updates.  The site is www.ebags.com.

    | SharieBags
    1

  • For duplicate page content, how different should pages be? For example, I have seven locations and on each location page, we offer a discount. The discounts are the same currently and open into a pop-up window. So it looks something like this: mysite.com/locationA/dicount mysite.com/locationB/discount mysite.com/locationX/discount The pages are identical. Should I change the verbiage on each page or let it be? I noticed that our organic search rankings have dropped since our site upgrade and this is one item that SEOMOZ has noted. Thanks! DHO

    | DougHoltOnline
    0

  • Why does my website have a lower DmT score than DmR  in subdomain and root domain categories? www.adagiowaterfeatures.com

    | AdagioWaterFeatures
    0

  • I am planning to launch an ecommerce website soon. There is no way to start with the original content for such a small startup like me. It's pretty expensive to get original content for 1000 (around) products. You know, there are a lot of other costs such as, software licences, modules, developer, designer fees, wholesale purchases, monthly subscription for services etc... This is what i am planning to do: Start with duplicate manufacturers' or amazon's product description, meta tags etc. Then gradually turn them into an original one. I assume, google will give me a low score due to duplicate content but, if i start with duplicate content first, and then change with the original ones over the time, will this change my score?

    | Emphi
    0

  • I was told by an SEO company that I need to put our name and location in every page title, however, an seomoz.org campaign gave me warnings for having a page title that is too long.  Which is better, have our location in the title or have a title that is 66 characters? We have both a physical and online store, so it would still be nice to direct foot traffic to our physical store.

    | HockSports
    0

  • I have 15k pages and 1.5K have duplicate title and content errors. the reason is I have a ring parent page with child pages for each of the size variations. On a scale of 1-10 how big an issue is this and does it need fixing?

    | Tippman
    0

  • We have a site that has had its content copied verbatim to numerous other sites and articles. We were advised to change our content but the content is originally ours. Does google take that into account before they apply duplicate penalties? And shouldn't copyscape be able to show this information in their reports? It just doesnt seem right that the originating author would have to change content because everyone else is stealing it. Any clarification on this?

    | anthonytjm
    0

  • Quick question - will Gg deem it duplicate content if I use the description tag text anywhere else in the on-page copy? Thanks, David

    | newstd100
    0

  • Dear Seomoz Community I am running a multi language joomla website (www.siam2nite.com) with 2 active languages. The first and primary language is english. the second language is thai. Most of the content (articles, event descriptions ...)  is in english only. What we did is a thai translation for the navigation bars, headers, titles etc (translation of all joomla language files) those texts are static and only help the user navigate / understand our site in their thai language. Now I facing a problem with duplicated content. Lets take our Q&A component as example. the url structure looks like this: english - www.siam2nite.com/en/questions/ thai - www.siam2nite.com/th/questions/ Every question asked will create two URL, one for each language. The content itself (user questions & answers) is identical on both URL's. Only the GUI language is different. If you take a look at this question you will understand what i mean: ENGLISH VERSION: http://www.siam2nite.com/en/questions/where-to-celebrate-halloween-in-bangkok THAI VERSION: http://www.siam2nite.com/th/questions/where-to-celebrate-halloween-in-bangkok As you can see each page has a unique title (H1) and introduction text in the correct language (same for menu, buttons, etc.) but the questions and answers are only available in one language. Now my question 😉 I guess Google will see this pages as duplicated content. How should I proceed with this problem: put all thai links  /th/questions/ in the robots.txt and block them or make a canonical tag for the english versions? Not sure if I set a canonical tag google will still index the thai title and introduction texts (they have important thai keywords in them) Would really appreciate your help on this 😉 Regards, Menelik

    | menelik
    0

  • I have a website that has been live for about 8yrs. I do not have any significant rankings for my main keywords but am now starting SEO on my site. I am contemplating changing the url to contain the main keyword prefixed by my brand name. Any views on the ranking benefits and or CTR benefits.
    Example:
    Main Volume keyword - 'car leasing'
    current url - www.bobleasing.co.uk (made up name) thinking of changing to - www.bobcarleasing.co.uk (made up name) Any advice would be much appreciated. John

    | Johnnyh
    0

  • At the moment my site is down due to issue at the datat centre so please don't ask for teh url as it will be some time before it is back up and running. On one of my pages I am targeting two related keyword phrases e.g. "How to use Widgets" and "Using Widgets" Each of these phrases appears once each in the Tile tag, H1 tag and meta description and two or three times in the body text.  Which I beileve is current best practice. However the word Widgets appears more 60 times in total could this be hurting the rankings of the other two phrases? Many Thanks

    | spes123
    0

  • I was checking my traffic history with SEM rush & I noticed that I took a big hit in traffic in the Spring of this year. I have lost a lot of traffic but rankings are still the same. Could it be Penguin, what should I do? www.photosbykristopher.com

    | KristopherWho
    0

  • What are your thoughts on pages vs posts? I am setting up a new blog for a client but not sure how to structure the content. I may just do posts or a whole bunch of page listed down the sidebar. It seems like my pages always rank better than my posts. Has anyone else noticed this? Could it be because of the dates tied posts?

    | SixTwoInteractive
    0

  • This seems like it should be an easy question (and probably is), but it has stumped a few of us over the past few days. Here's the scenario: We have a site that we are trying to optimize to rank well for a set of keywords. We have a lot of internal pages that are important to users when they visit the site (case studies, for example), but they aren't the pages that we want people to find when they search for our primary keywords. Our question is, is it valuable to optimize those internal pages for our keywords? In other words, will having a lot of internal pages that mention our keywords affect how well our overall site ranks for those keywords? Or, is it only important to have one "hero" page for our important keywords? Thanks!

    | omg_jlsa
    0

  • I seem to have duplicate issues on my website due to tags and categories having the same title. If I was to delete one of the two, which would be better to delete? Thanks!

    | IoanSaid
    0

  • On my crawl report from SEOmoz, I have a lot of Temporary Redirects listed. The referring site is a product category page, but the URL listed is part of a shopping cart. For example: | http://www.adagiowaterfeatures.com/cart.php?action=add&product_id=496 | Tested true for a temporary redirect referred by this url: | http://www.adagiowaterfeatures.com/categories.php?category=Free-Standing-Water-Features/Harmony-River-Collection | Why does this occur and what can I do about it?

    | AdagioWaterFeatures
    0

  • What is an acceptable density for a keyword? It's wise to push it as close to spam without sacrificing user experience, correct? I read an article on SeoMoz (outdated I think) that mentioned 6%. If it's a keyword phrase, do you have to make sure you don't go over the density level of a particular word in the phrase. If it's a three word phrase, do you have to not use any one word more than X% or just monitor the exact keyword.

    | JML1179
    1

  • Hi Mozzers, I'm wondering if I need to tweak my SEO friendly URL structure slightly. Example: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-celine/celine-bags would this be better for SEO if it was: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-celine/bags Perhaps the repetition of 'celine' is unnecesary, but OpenCart ecommerce CMS requires a plugin / modification to enable multiple use of a single term like e.g. 'bags'. Any benefit for $30? Thanks!

    | well-its-1-louder
    0

  • Looking for some feedback on a good review generator for customer input and hopefully generate some testimonials.  Thanks in advance.

    | tvw130
    0

  • What changes have you made to see highest results? such us rank increase etc

    | DiamondJewelryEmpire
    1

  • I had completely forgotten that I have about 20 pages of content on my site that is an exact duplicate of other sites (i.e. obtained from PLR site). I really do not want to delete these pages as they do get a lot of visitors (or did before last algo updates). These visitors are not from organic search but have navigated to the pages from within my site. Question is should I a) add noindex to these pages and then ask google to remove them from index or b) try to rewrite them Many Thanks Simon

    | spes123
    0

  • Hi SEOmoz! I'm a newbie, first post, here goes... Working my way through On-Page Report Cards. Noticed this page http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel/vintage-chanel-bags flagged with 'Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document'. Keyword is 'Vintage Chanel bags' and there is just one instance of it on this particular category page?? Any ideas? Any general pointers for me on www.vintageheirloom.com would also be much appreciated. Thanks SEOmozzers...

    | well-its-1-louder
    0

  • My seomoz report has warned me about 38 occurrences of a keyword on a page, is that always too many? 19 of them are in my reviews tab, "I love KEYWORD", etc. I expect to get more reviews and more keyword mentions. If I had to keep that page to 15 or fewer, I would have no reviews tab.

    | Brocberry
    0

  • Hey everybody, So, our niche doesn't have a million and a half searches per month, which makes a handle full of visitors look mighty enticing to a CMO Our price point is very high too, so to the question, is it worth taking the time to put a whole new content strategy in line for a few new visitors, the answer is yes. Now's the hard part. How on earth do I make 1,000 pages for similar topics? Is making new pages the best way to go about this? (probably so right? It's the only thing that I can see that would certainly increase likelihood of being more relevant, plus if I don't I will be missing out on the benefits of beefing up our site, AND the opportunity to more specifically answer a users query.) With phrases like "keyword" and "aftermarket keyword," the searcher is asking for two totally separate collections of results. I'm always reading about the importance of being there throughout the buyers complete purchasing /research process, which makes me think that considering doing anything other than creating unique pages is simply missing out.. Suggestions? Massive Content Strategy Help? Anybody? Thanks, TA

    | TylerAbernethy
    0

  • Hi, Quick question regarding author pages. I have the blog set as me for my author page. so the url is: mysite.com/blog/author/miles/ Now, seomoz has picked up that my author page is missing meta description. But, this cannot be editied through wordpress as there is no edit option available. I may really be missing something, but where can I alter the author page, I have a feeling it might be fed from G+ but no really sure what part of G+ is used as the description. Thanks Miles

    | easyrider2
    0

  • Can anybody tell us why Google changes your title tag in the SERP? If you check out the below link or type in 'days inn', you will see the 2nd result for www.daysinnrc.co.uk  just says 'Days Inn' but on the actual site the title tag for this page is 'Days Inn UK | Days Inn | Daysinnrc.co.uk' http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=days+inn&oq=days+inn&gs_l=hp.3...4110.4110.4.4297.1.1.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1c.1.kWVC24EnCHE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=7680231318a44bb0&bpcl=35466521&biw=1920&bih=934 This has happened with another site too, does anybody know why? Thanks

    | SEOwins
    0

  • I want to put navigation links in my footer. I watched the (distilled) whiteboard friday video saying it can be a penalty. How are links in the footer different from links in the navigation. Why don't you get "hit" for putting the word "Real Estate Listings" in the navigation menu? It appears on every one of the 30k pages. I don't get why the links in the footer would have a negative effect if the links in the navigation don't. My example is a real estate website. When people are browsing properties (30k), it is convenient that at the end of the page there is a navigation of areas. I could put the navigation on the sidebar but that would be in essence, the same thing. A wordpress site would dynamically include that sidebar on every page.

    | JML1179
    0

  • Does anyone have a baseline on what the average bounce rate should be on a school website?

    | BillyBobGriffin
    0

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