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Category: Technical SEO

Discuss site health, structure, and other technical SEO strategies.

  • Entrusteddev


    Hi Mozzers, Here is a dilemma I thought I'd put forward and see how you guys would handle the situations. I'm working on a comparison website on which many of of the product names are very similar. There are circa 2000 products, of which many have similar names. Here are a few of the product names for example; Airsprung Enigma 5ft Mattress Airsprung Double Echo 6ft Mattress Silentnight Double Nova 6ft Mattress The Product name has been used in the page title of the product pages as show below; Compare Prices on the Airsprung Double Echo 6ft Mattress SEOmoz is highlighting these pages as having Duplicate Page Titles (and meta descriptions as a similar approach has been used). How would you handle this situation? Cheers Aran

    | Entrusteddev
    0
  • gmk1567


    Number of indexed pages jumped from 39000 to 52000 and traffic increased around 50% in my site.Note: used "site" command to check the indexed pages. I understand this is approximate.In addition, number of crawled pages/day also increased dramatically.No change in the robots.txt, sitemap, crawl errors and duplicate issues. But server migrated to different IT infrastructure. Before any celebration, want to identify the helper. Thanks.

    | gmk1567
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  • esarge


    The SEOMoz On-Page report for my site brings up one warning (among others) that I find interesting: Minimal Subfolders in the URL My site deals with trails and courses for both races and general running. The structure for a trail is, for example: /trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2 The structure for courses is: /course/28 In both cases, the id at the end is used for a database lookup. I'm considering an URL structure that would be: /trail/Baden-Powell-Trail/ca-bc-vancouver This would use the country code (CA) and sub-country code (BC) along with the short name for the region. This could be good because: it puts the main keyword first the URL is much shorter there are only 3 levels in the URL structure However, there is evidence, from Google's Matt Cutts, that the keyword order and URL structure don't matter in that way: See this post: http://www.seomoz.org/q/all-page-files-in-root-or-to-use-directories If Matt Cutts says they aren't so important then why are they listed in the SEOMoz On-Page Report? I'd prefer to use /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail. I'll probably do a similar thing for courses. Is this a good idea? Thoughts? Many thanks, in advance, for your help. Cheers, Edward watch?v=l_A1iRY6XTM watch?v=gRzMhlFZz9I

    | esarge
    0
  • sesertin


    Hello I am new to wordpress I just have started using it. Can anyone suggest me some useful tools / plugins / setting for SEO? I am further intrested in sepeeding up Wp. Any good advive on wp an seo would be appriciated.

    | sesertin
    0
  • shebinhassan


    Hi, IWe have this mobile page that keeps on appearing in the google search. I even try to put it in the robots.txt to disallow the crawler but still it keeps on popping on the search results. How can I prevent it from displaying?

    | shebinhassan
    0
  • matt-14567


    I work at a design firm, and we just redesigned a website for a client. When it came time for the coding, we initially built a development site to work out all the kinks before going live. Then we relaunched the actual site about a week ago. Here's the problem: Somehow, the developer who coded the site for us (a freelancer) allowed the development site to be indexed by Google. Now, when you enter the client's name into Google, the development site appears higher in the results pages than the real site! In fact, the real site isn't even in the top 50 search results. The client is understandably angry about this for multiple reasons. We quickly added a robots.txt file to the development site and a 301 redirect to the real site. However, that did seemed to have no effect on the problem. Any ideas on how to fix this mess? Thank you in advance!

    | matt-14567
    0
  • sesertin


    We are rebuilding a website and try to get rid of errors. The content remains exactly the same but we correct the code and make it load faster. The site has quite many backlinks and I can't decide whether to remove .html endings from the urls and 301 redirect to the new ones or leave them with the older ending. If I remove the endings how much of the link juice will be passed? Anyone any idea?

    | sesertin
    0
  • shebinhassan


    In our campaign, I see this notices Tag value
    florahospitality.com/ar/careers.aspx Description
    Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical. What does it mean? Because If I try to view the source code of our site, it clearly gives me the canonical url.

    | shebinhassan
    0
  • ClaireH-184886


    Hi i am working on a new blog and would like to know if there are any sites where i can publish part of the new blog to gain traffic to my main blog. What i am looking at is, to publish part of a news story and then have people come to my main site after reading some of the new story. I have come across accidentally a couple over a year ago but cannot locate them now. I want people to be able to come to my site and read the whole story and then hopefully tell their friends. Also can anyone recommend decent social bookmarking sites that have a do follow on them to promote my blog please.

    | ClaireH-184886
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  • DallasBonsai


    I have a wordpress site. When SeoMoz runs the crawl, my report shows 0 errors, but a lot of warnings in two areas: Missing Meta Description and Title Element Too Short. The only thing is, the URL's it shows under both of these categories look like this: http://www.millerhypnosisatlanta.com/author/Michael/page/4/ http://www.millerhypnosisatlanta.com/category/anxiety-panic/ http://www.millerhypnosisatlanta.com/tag/goals/ These are tags, categories, and author pages. How do I hide these from being seen by SeoMoz and Google? I mean I should do that right? Because there is no way I can add a description to these pages, or extend the title - right? Thanks in advance for your help!

    | DallasBonsai
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  • andywozhere


    I like the look of Disqus for handling comments but I'm not sure if it is really SEO friendly. Any other more SEO friendly alternatives out there (other than blogging software)?

    | andywozhere
    0
  • smstv


    Hello; I have installed the WP Yoast Widget in my Blog, and 2 weeks, after my issues went away, they came back X's 300! lol So I uninstalled it, and my issues obviously got worse, and then I re-activated, and reset everything, and still got the 300+ issues. Is there a secondary plug in you would suggest, to run at the same time as Yoats, or theat will fix all issues? Ever think of making an SEOmoz Widget for WP since it is gaining so much popularity?? Thank you Great work by the way! Loved the Webinar today!

    | smstv
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  • ClaireH-184886


    Hi i would like to know about my site which is www.in2town.co.uk which i am currently revamping and i am now in the process of buying a .com name and would like to know the best way to uise it. What i mean is, i have a lot of links going to the www.in2town.co.uk and would like to know should i do a permantent redirect to the .co.uk with the .com or is it possible to have the co.uk replaced with the .com i am trying to work out the best way to do this at the moment as i have never done this before. now after buying the .com for my domain name i would like to know should i use it as a redirect to my main site, or should i develop a sister site and use it. any advice would be great.

    | ClaireH-184886
    0
  • ClaireH-184886


    Hi i am working on my site at the moment www.in2town.co.uk and i am adding new sections and was thinking about buying domain names that best describe that section and which people would remember. so for example i am looking at adding a tenerife magazine to my site and would like to know if it would be wise to buy a domain name for example tenerife magazine and then have it directed to the section of my site. would this benefit my site in any way and would google allow this. instead of having in2town.co.uk and then tenerife  magazine after it, sorry cannot find the slash as i am on a spanish keyborad at the moment, i would like to have something like tenerifemagazine.co..uk etc If anyone can give me advice on this then that would be great. also can anyone let me know if this is a wise idea or not, to have sub domain names on my main site. i would like to know if i had tenerifemagazine under the in2town domain name would it slow the site down or should i consider building a brand new site just for that and then making people aware that it comes under the in2town umbrella many thanks

    | ClaireH-184886
    1
  • Hakkasan


    I came across this article about telling google not to crawl a portion of a webpage, but I never hear anyone in the SEO community talk about them. http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/08/23/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/ Does anyone use these and find them to be effective? If not, how do you suggest noindexing/canonicalizing a portion of a page to avoid duplicate content that shows up on multiple pages?

    | Hakkasan
    1
  • martyc


    Exact match domains are great for ranking but what about domains which contain just half of the full phrase being targeted? eg. If you owned the domain rentals.co.uk but wanted to target the search term "car rentals" Regarding backlinks, would it be best to link back to your rentals.co.uk homepage (using anchor text "car rentals") or to one of the following: a) www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals b) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk c) car.rentals.co.uk AND 301 redirect to www.rentals.co.uk/car-rentals

    | martyc
    1
  • leitpix


    Hey folks! I was wondering what you would do. I do have a Website. The website is provided in 8 other languages. Right now every language has it's own Domain name. The domain name is always the country in the language. I'm thinking about combine everything to one domain and hope to get some great linkjuice from the other 7 domains. So it would be www.example.com/en/ www.example.com/fr/ and so on. How do you handle that. Would this have a big positive impact on that one domain I'm forwarding to?
    I really think so!

    | leitpix
    0
  • daracreative


    When creating Google Webmaster Account is it advised to create 2 accounts for the 1 domain. one for non www and one for www?

    | daracreative
    0
  • wojkwasi


    Hi 🙂 I've just discovered that my client, who has a medical practice, has created a series of micro sites about their doctors (around 10 or so). The problem is that they're on a shared host with the same C-class, providing no real link benefit at all. Would it be best to: A) Look for seperate C class hosts for each site & migrate B) Recreate the pages on the main site & 301 all doctor micro sites to new pages C) Leave as is and pursue other link building activites? Has anyone run into a similar issue before? Thanks a bunch! Woj

    | wojkwasi
    0
  • ahming777


    Hi, My developers are currently revamping our site. My developer is putting the data via javascript in the . However, there's something that is bothering me. Does the JS data in the affects SEO? 27102011112735pm.png

    | ahming777
    0
  • sichristie


    Curious on peoples thoughts around this. Since restructuring our site we have seen a massive uplift in pages indexed and organic traffic with our pagination. But we haven't yet included a sitemap.xml. It's an ancient site that never had one. Given that Google seems to be loving us right now, do we even need a sitemap.xml - aside from the analytical benefis in WM Tools? Would you include pagination URL's (don't worry, we have no duplicate content) in the sitemap.xml? Cheers.

    | sichristie
    0
  • EvergladesDirect


    We haven't made any significant changes to our website, however the pages that google has indexed for our critical keywords have changed to pages that have caused our SERP to drop dramatically for those pages. In some cases, the changes make no sense at all.  For example, one of our terms that used to be indexed to our homepage is now indexed to a dead category page that has nothing on it. One of our biggest terms, where we were 9th, changed and is now indexed to our FAQ.  As a result, we now rank 44th. This is having a MAJOR impact on our business so any help on why this sudden change happened and what we can do to combat it is greatly appreciated.

    | EvergladesDirect
    0
  • ufmedia


    So about a month ago, we finally ported our site over to a content management system called Umbraco.  Overall, it's okay, and certainly better than what we had before (i.e. nothing - just static pages).  However, I did discover a problem with the URL management within the system. We had a number of pages that existed as follows: sparkenergy.com/state/name However, they exist now within certain folders, like so: sparkenergy.com/about-us/service-map/name So we had an aliasing system set up whereby you could call the URL basically whatever you want, so that allowed us to retain the old URL structure.  However, we have found that the alias does not override, but just adds another option to finding a page.  Which means the same pages can open under at least two different URLs, such as http://www.sparkenergy.com/state/texas and http://www.sparkenergy.com/about-us/service-map/texas.  I've tried pointing to the aliased URL in other parts of the site with the rel canonical tag, without success.  How much of a problem is this with respect to duplicate content?  Should we bite the bullet, remove the aliased URLs and do 301s to the new folder structure?

    | ufmedia
    0
  • 9Studios


    If we change our site's server location to a new IP, will this affect anything involving SEO?  The site name and links will not be changing.

    | 9Studios
    0
  • bfinternet


    I have a URL that when searched for shows up in the Google index as the first result but does not have any title or description attached to it. When you click on the link it goes to a 404 page. Is it simply that Google is removing it from the index and is in some sort of transitional phase or could there be another reason.

    | bfinternet
    0
  • WebTalent


    We are performing SEO on a large niche Job Board. My question revolves around the thought of no following all the actual job postings from their clients as they only last for 30 to 60 days. Anybody have any idea on the best way to handle this?

    | WebTalent
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  • ellenru


    Hi, I'm an htaccess newbie, and I have to redirect and split traffic to three new domains from site A. The original home page has most of the inbound links so I've set up a 301 that goes to site B, the new corporate domain. Options +FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Brand websites C and D need 301s for their folders in site A but I have no idea how to write that in relationship to the first redirect, which really is about the home page, contact and only a few other pages. The urls are duplicates except for the new domain names. They're all on Linux..Site A is about 150 pages, should I write it by page, or can I do some kind of catch all (the first 301) plus the two folders? I'd really appreciate any insight you have and especially if you can show me how to write it. Thanks 🙂

    | ellenru
    0
  • TimBarlow


    Hi I've got a client with lots of content that is hidden behind a registration form - if you don't fill it out you can not proceed to the content.  As a result it is not being indexed.  No surprises there. They are only doing this because they feel it is the best way of capturing email addresses, rather than the fact that they need to "protect" the content. Currently users arriving on the site will be redirected to the form if they have not had a "this user is registered" cookie set previously.  If the cookie is set then they aren't redirected and get to see the content. I am considering changing this logic to only redirecting users to the form if they accept cookies but haven't got the "this user is registered cookie".  The idea being that search engines would then not be redirected and would index the full site, not the dead end form. From the clients perspective this would mean only very free non-registered visitors would "avoid" the form, yet search engines are arguably not being treated as a special case. So my question is: would this be considered cloaking/put the site at risk in any way? (They would prefer to not go down the First Click Free route as this will lower their email sign-ups.) Thank you!

    | TimBarlow
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  • TheReachers


    Hi, My first question in SEOMoz :). I have just finished doing citations and optimisations for a local business. I now want to know how often Google Places update their database to look for citations etc to improve rankings? Many Thanks

    | TheReachers
    0
  • anchorwave


    I have a client with a lot of 404 errors from Web Master Tools, and i have to go through and check each of the links because Some redirect to the correct page Some redirect to another url but its a 404 error Some are just 404 errors Does anyone know of a tool where i can dump all of the urls and it will tell me If the url is redirected, and to where if the page is a 404 or other error Any tips or suggestions will be really appreciated! Thanks SEO Moz'rs

    | anchorwave
    0
  • pwpaneuro


    Hello everybody, We bought this domain a few months back and we're trying to figure out how to get rid of indexed pages that (i assume) existed before we bought this domain - the domain was registered in 2001 and had a few owners. I attached 3 files from my webmasters tools, can anyone tell me how to get rid of those "pages" and more important: aren't this kind of "pages" result of some kind of "sabotage"? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this. Thank you, Alex Picture-5.png Picture-6.png Picture-7.png

    | pwpaneuro
    0
  • tadden


    What does it mean when your home page has a penalty? I have a site that has good rankings for many pages, but my home page seems to be penalized by Google. I tried searching for my home page URL in Google, www.xxxxxx.com and my page doesn't show up, but sub pages do show up? What would cause this penalty and how do you correct this issue.

    | tadden
    0
  • Bandicoot


    Does moving a site's files from one server to another, with all URL's remaining the same, affect page rank? I am moving a site from one server to another. Everything will stay exactly the same, including URL's, file structure, etc. Will this affect page rank, domain importance, etc?

    | Bandicoot
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  • yeppon


    From your csv report I have this strange issue. This url: elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ it's a duplicate of this elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/ but the only url that I can see in the website is this one. Why the "-" is transalted some times in "%2D" referrer obviously is elettrodomestici.yeppon.it/climatizzatori/condizionatori-fissi/prodotti/condizionatori-fissi-comfee/solo-disponibili/ I have many duplicate url...Can you help me? Thanks

    | yeppon
    0
  • PeterM22


    Is there a best practice for linking out to affiliates URLs post panda? I know some believe it can be a factor.

    | PeterM22
    0
  • ufmedia


    Our site is secured throughout, so it loads sitewide as https.  It is canonicalized properly - any attempt to load an existing page as http will force to https.  My concern is with backlinks.  We've put a lot of effort into social media, so we're getting some nice blog linkage.  The problem is that the links are generally to http rather than https (understandable, since that's the default for most web users).  The site still loads with no problem, but my concern is that since a redirect doesn't transfer all the link juice across, we're leaking some perfectly good link credit.  From the standpoint of backlinkage, are we harming ourselves by making the whole site secure by default?  The site presently isn't very big, but I'm looking at adding hundreds of new pages to the site, so if we're going to make the change, now is the time to do so.  Let me know what you think!

    | ufmedia
    0
  • BenRWoodard


    I am about migrate a 1500 product ecommerce site from Netsuite to Volusion. The url structure is not going to be the same so I need to know the most effective way of redirecting the old urls to the new site.  Is there an easier method than collecting the most popular pages and creating a 301 xml  page and upload it once the site goes live?

    | BenRWoodard
    0
  • webit40


    In WordPress, with the ALL In ONE SEO pluggingm we've optimze the permalinks to show more keewords in the URL'. What can be the impact?

    | webit40
    0
  • roundbrix


    If I have a website with thousands of products, is it a good idea to create a sitemap for this website for the search engines where you show maybe 250 products on a page so it makes it easy for the search engine to find the part and also puts that part closer to the home page? Seems like google likes pages that are the closest to the home page (less clicks the better)

    | roundbrix
    0
  • webit40


    Since we've put an index.htm file indicating that our webiste is under reconstruction and have removed it few hours after, the instant preview picture still showing the informative message. It has been 40 day since and we've submit our sitemap few times. Is there a way to change it manually?

    | webit40
    0
  • Red_Mud_Rookie


    I just experienced something VERY odd and wondered if any of you had an idea of what it might be. When I did a search on Google and clicked the top SEO listing I was taken to a competitor of the number 1 listed site i.e. NOT the site I clicked on. When I clicked the back button and clicked it again, I was taken to the correct site. This happened with two different searches and I was taken to two different sites. Could this be a clever/sinister cookie implemented by the competitor; a site I frequent regularly? Could this be malware implemented by an affiliate? Could this be a Google glitch?

    | Red_Mud_Rookie
    0
  • C-Style


    I'm building a steady link profile to one of my websites and the new links still haven't shown up in open site explorer even after 2 months. How long does it take OSE to recognize new backlinks?

    | C-Style
    2
  • fun52dig


    Can anyone recommend the best or a better alternative to submitting a clients site to multiple directories than Universal Business Listing?  Is UBL the best or is there something better and/or less expensive out there? https://ubl.org Thanks

    | fun52dig
    0
  • sellmoreonline


    For my site I have keyword relevant category urls and want to have my navigation also match the keyword for the page. By default my web platform places all of my navigation anchor text inside of a see the example below. Does this present any issue? Are there concerns I should be aware of? In the past I've just placed the anchor text not within a span in my navigation. Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Keyword 3

    | sellmoreonline
    0
  • roush


    I've read some vague warnings of potential problems with having a long list of 301 redirects within an htaccess file.  If this is a problem, could you provide any guidance on how much is too much?  And if there is a problem associated with this, what is that problem exactly?

    | roush
    0
  • FirePowered


    www.firehost.com/?ref=pressrelease example - http://cl.ly/2O1d1x2m3b1b3K1K0h2J

    | FirePowered
    0
  • martyc


    Hi, I have seen significant SEO benefits from owning exact match domains and was wondering whether exact match subdomains hold the same (or some) of these benefits? eg. halloweencostumes.co.uk vs. halloween [dot] costumes.co.uk Many thanks.

    | martyc
    0
  • HaymarketMediaGroupLtd


    Hi there, I have noticed several sites now display 4 lines of meta description in Google. Has anyone else seen this? Any help would be appreciated...thoughts? Barry

    | HaymarketMediaGroupLtd
    0
  • mickey11


    my question is like the title reads If I have an rss feed in an xml file and from time to time I update the pubdate and time. Will this have a positive effect on my website in terms of the rss aggregators coming to my site thinking that it was recently updated and creating links to these pages or will they be able to determine that there is nothing new by comparing it to the old page that they may have stored. thus doing nothing or maybe even hurting the website.

    | mickey11
    2
  • Gareth_Cartman


    Hello all, I would appreciate any help in identifying the following bots: Vagabondo/4.0 TwengaBot-2.0 FatBot 2.0 Googlebot/2.1 bingbot/2.0 Baiduspider/2.0 Yahoo! Slurp SeznamBot/3.0 ShopWiki/1.0 MJ12bot/v1.4.0 YandexBot/3.0 Sosospider+ Ezooms/1.0 Gigabot/3.0 Thanks Shehzad

    | Gareth_Cartman
    0

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