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Category: Intermediate & Advanced SEO

Looking to level up your SEO techniques? Chat through more advanced approaches.


  • We have three Directory Listing pages that are being indexed by Google: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/ http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/html/ http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/pdf/ How and why is Googlebot crawling and indexing these pages? Nothing else links to them (although the /jsp.html/ and /jsp/pdf/ both link back to /jsp/). They aren't disallowed in our robots.txt file and I understand that this could be why. If we add them to our robots.txt file and disallow, will this prevent Googlebot from crawling and indexing those Directory Listing pages without prohibiting them from crawling and indexing the content that resides there which is used to populate pages on our site? Having these pages indexed in Google is causing a myriad of issues, not the least of which is duplicate content. For example, this file <tt>CCI-SALES-STAFF.HTML</tt> (which appears on this Directory Listing referenced above - http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/html/) clicks through to this Web page: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/jsp/html/CCI-SALES-STAFF.HTML This page is indexed in Google and we don't want it to be. But so is the actual page where we intended the content contained in that file to display: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/meet-our-sales-staff As you can see, this results in duplicate content problems. Is there a way to disallow Googlebot from crawling that Directory Listing page, and, provided that we have this URL in our sitemap: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/meet-our-sales-staff, solve the duplicate content issue as a result? For example: Disallow: /StoreFront/jsp/ Disallow: /StoreFront/jsp/html/ Disallow: /StoreFront/jsp/pdf/ Can we do this without risking blocking Googlebot from content we do want crawled and indexed? Many thanks in advance for any and all help on this one!

    | danatanseo
    0

  • Hi Mozzers My client has their main site with www as the preferred version and utilises 301s for the non www version which is good. For their integrated WP blog, they prefer the non www version, again utilising 301s. So we have no duplicates, but is this different use of sub domains going to hurt SEO with regards to the links pointing in? ie do the links pointing into the blog benefit the main site or are we missing a trick and should change the blog to www? Many thanks Wendy

    | Chammy
    0

  • One of customers provides IT Support for a municipality. The municipality's website (1000+ pages) has a footer link with the anchor text "IT Support" linking to our customer's site. The link is there for employees to get help. In mid summer, our customer's rankings tanked for "IT Support". It looks like a hit by Penguin. The question is, could removing the links bring the rankings back? Does Google's penguin algorithm penalize you for the footer links, or are they simply de-valued? Should we pull them down or no-follow them? If they aren't truly hurting their rankings, we would just leave them

    | CsmBill
    1

  • Hi, got different opinion on this so i wanted to double check with your comment is. We've got /404.html page and I was wondering if you would add this page to robot text so it wouldn't be indexed or would you just add no index tag? What would be the best approach? Thanks!

    | Rubix
    0

  • Good day All, We have a eComm site with over 100K pages and migrating to a new site design, new CMS and with a new URL structure for top level URLs only. Product URLs not changing (thank goodness!). We have outlined our strategy for redirects, indexation, 404s, etc. The missing piece of the puzzle is that we're only allowing 10% visitors to see new site at launch and increase visibility over two week; therefore, my question is do we not allow indexing of new site until 100% visibility to all users? How do we manage the redirects for limited visibility? My gut says don't bother for such a short period of time and block new site from SEs until 100% visibility. Since the site would be blocked how are redirects managed? Should we be using a 302 initially then switch to 301 or use a 503 code to indicate "hey, maintenance happening - come back later" with a time frame? Hope that's clear and any tips greatly appreciated. Cheers, WMCA

    | WMCA
    0

  • Hi, We have a reciprocal link exchange relationship with just 1 website, which is in the same industry as us. They do not have a reciprocal link exchange relationship with any site other than us. Bunches (3-5) of do-follow links to our website  appear on approx 2k pages of theirs. We provide several hundred links back to them (1 per page). The links result in some decent traffic exchanged, but nothing significant or getting Pandalized over. Both our sites are in the 60+ domain authority range according to open site explorer. Both of our sites clearly got hit hard by Panda. From a purely SEO perspective, are these reciprocal links hurting us? I have read that Panda has nothing to do with links but I wanted to know if there is a possibly that this may be hurting us. At the time, many years ago, the link exchange seemed to help us rank better. Thanks.

    | Locutus
    1

  • Hi, I was looking at Gemvara.com which is supposed to be a really great e-commerce site (including SEO wise) and I noticed it changes url as you customize the ring (see product page example). Do they really change the URL? (I don't see page refresh) Is it recommended to do so? (for e-commerce sites whenever you change shirt color, customize a computer etc.) Thanks

    | BeytzNet
    0

  • Hi, We have a site which is somewhat like e-bay, they have several categories and advertisements posted by customers/ client. These advertisements disappear over time and turn into 404 pages. We have the option to redirect the user to the corresponding category page, but we're afraid of any negative impact of this change. Are there any downsides, and is this really the best option we have? Thanks in advance!

    | vhendriks
    0

  • A friend of mine  has published a new site called www.localsguidesa.com. It is an informational/review site about a resort town. Most of my experience has been dealing with single html pages. In the  case of this site, the main "money keyword" pages are mainly an introduction of text followed by a list and snipped of blog posts such as this page http://localsguidesa.com/what-to-see-do/attractions which would target St Augustine Attractions. Would she be better off making the main pages with more content and less blog posts? How would ranking be affected with all the preview blog posts on the page? The strategy is for the blog posts to rank on the longer tail keywords...such as "Top 10 Attractions in St Augustine ", but what suggestions would you have for a main  navigation page such as http://localsguidesa.com/what-to-see-do/attractions

    | Pinlaser
    1

  • Hello that such I make the following query imagine we have three domains on the same thematic or category primary domain: domain-antiguo1.com (3 years) (200 Backlink), domain-antiguo2.net (10 years) (1000 Backlinks) and domain-antiguo3.com (6 years) (500 Backlinks) and decide to redirect all these domains favorite one: domain-principal.com The three domains registered refeccionar this google webmaster, has its respective income sitemap and google webmaster area change of address to the main domain the three domains are my property It would have a penalty for doing this practice?

    | globotec
    0

  • Hi all, We changed the payment part of our site to https from http a while ago. However once on the https pages, all the footer and header links are relative URLs, so once users have reached the payment pages and then re-navigate back to other pages in our website they stay on https. The build up of this happening has led to Google indexing all our pages in https (something we did not want to happen), and now we are in the situation where our homepage listing on Google is https rather than http. We would prefer  the organic listings to be http (rather than https) and having read lots on this (included the great posts on the moz (still feels odd not refering to it as seomoz!) blog around this subject), possible solutions include redirects or a canoncial tags. My additional questions around these options are: 1. We already have 2 redirects on some pages (long story), will another one negatively impact our rankings? 2. Is a  canonical a strong enough hint to Google to stop Google indexing the https versions of these page to the extent that out http pages will appear in natural listings again? If anyone has any other suggestions or other ideas of how to address this issue, that would be great! Thanks 🙂 Diana

    | Diana.varbanescu
    0

  • Does Google interpret Affiliate links as paid links? If so, can Affiliate links harm your rank if they are not properly tagged with a no-follow? Thanks.

    | AWCthreads
    0

  • However this does not seem to be in isolation. All of my competitors websites have taken a similar 1 or 2 points hit. I am thinking that as an industry we may have been affected by a mutual linking site being taken down, redesigned or just loosing its own domain authority. We do rank well for our keywords and we have been on a continual rise since I took over in January, we do a little bit of a guest blogging and I am trying to build links to the site but I am doing it slowly. Would anyone else have an idea on what has happened that would cause 4 sites in the same industry to take a 1 or 2 point hit? Thanks, Emmet

    | CertificationEU
    1

  • Hi guys, Here is the URL: http://www.consumerbase.com/mailing-lists/dog-stores-mailing-list.html The target keywords are "Dog stores mailing list" and "Dog stores mailing lists" Does having "mailing-list" and "mailing-lists" in my URL hurt me?

    | Travis-W
    0

  • From what I have read i should optimise each page for a keyword/phrase, however, I read recently that google may also look at the context of the site to see if there are other similar words. For example i have different pages optimised for Funeral Planning, funeral plans, funeral plan costs, compare funeral plans, why buy a funeral plan, paying for a funeral, prepaid funeral plans. Is this the best strategy when the words/phrases are so close or should i go for longer pages with the variations on one page or at least less pages? Thanks Ash

    | AshShep1
    0

  • Hello, I took a look through past questions but can't seem to find a definitive answer on setting up Google + Authorship credit (for multiple authors) using a Wordpress blog. Has anyone had experience setting this up? Or could you recommend solid reading/research? I took a look at a couple of Wordpress plug in's but just found them very confusing (so did our IT contact who will ultimately be setting up code for this.) Any direction or advice is appreciated.

    | SEOSponge
    0

  • Hi Guys,
    We are looking to issue a press release on PRWEB.com , But after Google's announcements : Links in press releases should use nofollow ...we became a bit unsure....Would anyone be able to tell us how to do press release on PRWEB.com - CORRECTLY... thanks a lot
    Dmitriy

    | Webdeal
    0

  • My URL is: www.westlakedermatology.com Hello Mozers, I'm looking for some help or guidance as to why my site fell off the "rankings cliff" on 9/5. In the forums I hear a lot of others with a similar issue, and some speculation it is due to a Panda refresh. However, looking at our site we have unique content with each page having over 300-400 words (so it's not light or duplicate content). We get a lot of leads that verbally tell us our content helped answer some of their questions so I'm pretty confident its good for users. Can anyone see an issue with the content on our site? In terms of Penguin, I think our backlink profile is clean, our physicians do take part in providing content to various high quality and relevant websites/blogs. But we do not buy links or do anything in violation of Google's guidelines. In terms of brand, we are the biggest dermatology and plastic surgery group in the Austin area. So any brand implications to search should be on our side. Just looking for some sort of guidance or help, any suggestions would be great! Thanks,
    Adam Paddock

    | iderma
    0

  • I have a website that is built on OS Commerce and I am planning to transition to Magento. I was told that the transition to Magento would change my url structure. How do I preserve my current url structure while migrating to the Magento platform so that I do not lose my backlink profile.

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0

  • I have two questions relating to Reviews. 1. Reviews still add value to Google places ranking. 2. I have a page and two clients posted reviews for me.They all get removed after 3,4 days.What is wrong with Google?Did they consider them fake?

    | csfarnsworth
    0

  • A site I manage is mostly images on our main landing pages and very little text based content. And many of the images are used across multiple landing pages which we're trying to optimize for different keywords. My problem is trying to use best practices for images and yet at the same time rank well for different keywords. How can I optimize for certain keywords, when the majority of "content" is likely coming from image file name and alt tags which have the EXACT SAME images across multiple landing pages. Hope that makes sense? I do have SOME text on the landing pages. Here's an example of one of the landing pages... remove the XXX in the url (I don't want this page to get indexed some how): XXXkidecals.com/product-category/school-labels/XXX There's probably 90 words describing the content of the category page. And there's about 50 images. If you think the ratio of content landing words to images is fine. What do you suggest in terms of Alt Tags -- do I use any keywords?

    | Santaur
    0

  • Can someone explain sitemaps, and if you need html and/or xml? I have a site with a few html sitemaps, one for products, one for categories. I have another site with just one xml sitemap for my entire site (which has massive pages, 600k+). Should I be dividing the site with massive pages into html sitemaps like my other site?

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0

  • Do you need to optimize a 410 page like you do for 404 pages? What does a visitor see when a page is 410 compared to a 404?

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0

  • We are fighting some duplicate content issues across multiple domains. We have a few magento stores that have different country codes. For example: domain.com and domain.ca, domain.com is the "main" domain. We have set up different rel="alternative codes like: The question is, do we need to add custom rel="canonical" tags to domain.ca that points to domain.com? For example for domain.ca/product.html to point to: Also how far does rel="canonical" follow?  For example if we have:
    domain.ca/sub/product.html canonical to domain.com/sub/product.html
    then,
    domain.com/sub/product.html canonical to domain.com/product.html

    | AlliedComputer
    0

  • Hello everyone, here is another question for you: I have several forum postings on my websites that are pretty old and so they are sort of "dead discussion" threads. Some of those old discussion threads are still getting good views (but not new postings), and so I presume may be valuable for some users. But most of them are just answers to personal questions that I doubt someone else could be interested in. Besides that, many postings are just single, unanswered questions still waiting for an answer, forgotten, they are just sitting there, and will probably stay unanswered for years.... I don't think this may be good for SEO, am I right? How do you suggest to approach this kind of issues on forums or discussions sections on a website? I am eager to know your thoughts on all this. Thank you in advance! All the best, Fab.

    | fablau
    0

  • Hi, As far as SEO goes, are there any direct contradictions to picking up an approximately 1 year old domain, where the only thing that has ever been on is a static "Hello world" page from a wordpress install done when the domain was created? I'm thinking about picking it up again, as if it was a totally fresh domain, add content, and do SEO on it. What are your thoughts friends? Thanks.

    | kaince
    0

  • I have a blog as part of my site http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Community/Ashleys-Blog.aspx and has been live for approx 10 weeks, but i dont think google recognises is yet as a Blog. Is there anything that i can do to speed this up? We have posted about 25 posts. Thanks
    Ash

    | AshShep1
    0

  • Hi there! I am creating a ton of content for specific geographies. Is it possible for these pages to get indexed if I only put them in my sitemap and don't link to them through my actual site (though the pages will be live). Thanks!
    Travis

    | Travis-W
    0

  • I have seeon some trends for sites which do not even use XML sitemp and robots e.g. see this site. How do you see if sitemap is not used. Also for classified websites, should ad pages be included in sitemap because after certain duration those ads will be deleted and google might not be able to crawl. What do you suggest about XML sitemap for classified website.

    | MozAddict
    0

  • Let's say you have a .ng domain but you receive more traffic from USA than from Nigeria. Let's say you want traffic only from Nigeria. How do you correct this?

    | YESdesign
    0

  • Hi, My client recently launched a new site and their index went from about 20K up to about 80K - which is a severe over indexation. I believe this was caused by parameter handling as some category pages now have 700 pages in the results for "site:domain.com/category1" - and apart from the top result, they are all parameters being indexed. My question is how active/aggressive should I be in blocking these parameters in Google Webmaster Tools? Currently, everything is set to 'let googlebot decide'.

    | LukeyJamo
    0

  • If we build some quality inbound links to certain pages, that are a later date 301'd to another domain, does any equity or juice get transferred across? Or is the inbound link's value wasted? Thanks

    | bjs2010
    0

  • Hello here, I am eager to know your thoughts on this. If I search on Google for "fur elise violin sheet music", we are on the second page for our sheet music title of "Fur Elise for violin and piano" (look for "virtualsheetmusic.com"). Ok, that's not very good and I still have an hard time to figure out why there are many crappy and NOT really related websites listed before us, but here is the best (weird) part... .... search now for "fur elise violin and piano sheet music" which should narrow the query further down and so increase the chances for us to get on the first page results... and in fact we are on the first page with that query, but for a different page and a different music for a different instrument! If you scroll the first page of the results, you will find our site at the end of the 1st page for our version of "Fur Elise" for "viola and piano" and not for "violin and piano"... What the heck!??! Why's that??? Doesn't make any sense too me... why if the user search for "fur elise violin and piano" Google shows "Fur Elise for viola and piano"???!! I would really appreciate any thoughts on all this. Thank you in advance!

    | fablau
    0

  • I'm looking to add a number of feature rich articles to educate, promote best practice and provide useful all round advice. My reasearch to date on the pros and cons have drawn me to writing articles as a page, as per
    http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/#pagesvsposts My Question, etc.
    I would like to get an outside opinion on the above. Additionally, how can you find out the site structure of a website.
    i.e. what are blog posts or static pages

    | Mark_Ch
    0

  • Dear Moz Community, Some time ago we've change the structure of our website and we've redirected the old URL's to the new ones. About 2,000 posts were redirected at that time. While checking Webmaster Tools a few days ago I've discovered that about 500 duplicate meta-description issues appear in the "HTML Improvements" area. To my surprise, altough the old posts were redirected to the new path, WMT sees the description of the old posts similar with the one of the new post. Moreover, after changing the structure all meta-descriptions were modified and they weren't the same used before the restructure. For example I've redirected /blog/taxi-transfer-from-merton-sw19-to-london-city-airport/ to /destinations/greater-london/merton-sw19/taxi-transfer-to-london-city-airport-from-merton/ Now they are shown as  having duplicate content. I've checked the redirects and they are working. I get the same error from the redirected pages for about 150 titles. Did anyone else get this errors or can you please offer me some suggestions about how I can fix this? Thank you in advance! Tiberiu

    | Tiberiu
    0

  • Hi, I am currently working on my site and have the following duplicate page content issues: My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2631849e33 My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2edd30f8c6 This happens 15 times Any ideas on how to fix this please? Thank you

    | grays0180
    0

  • As anyone know with an ecommerce website, products are constantly being added and removed. Once products are removed, the corresponding product pages are not reachable. Currently, I am redirecting to the Search page, if a product page is reached, whose corresponding product has been deleted. I am not sure if that is the correct, recommended technique from a SEO perspective. Should I try to show related products on the redirected page? Does anyone here know what is the best thing to do with this product page?

    | amitramani
    0

  • I'm working with a client who is "under attack" by one unhappy customer.  That customer created a Facebook page to share her outrage, and her page is outranking my client's (consistently immediately above his FB page).  I've checked all of the obvious things... page name page URL About section, and all business-related data He has MANY more "Likes" than she does, makes posts far more frequently (with much better Engagement), references his company name in almost every Post (as she does), and on and on.  My main question is this...  are there one or two factors that seem to have the most impact on how a given FB page ranks?  Thanks for your help, Moz family!  🙂

    | measurableROI
    0

  • We are developing a plug in the changes the home page relative to a users location or zip code.  We believe this will provide users with a more personalized experience. We are concerned about how this might affect SEO.  We are also wondering if we should partner with one of the SEO ply in developers.  We were thinking about Yoast.  Is there another partner that might be better? I would appreciate any feedback people can give.

    | Ron_McCabe
    0

  • Hello all and thank you in advance for the help. I have a coffee company that sell both retail and wholesale products. These are typically the same product, just at different prices. We are planning on having a pop up for users to help them self identify upon their first visit asking if they are retail or wholesale clients. So if someone clicks retail, the cookie will show them retail pricing throughout the site and vice versa for those that identify themselves as wholesale. I can talk to our programmer to find out how he actually plans on doing this from a technical standpoint if it would be of assistance. My question is, how will a spider crawl this site? I am assuming (probably incorrectly) that whatever the "default" selection is (for example, right now now people see retail pricing and then opt into wholesale) will be the information/pricing that they index. So long story short, how would a spider crawl a page that has two sets of distinct pricing information displayed based on user self identification? Thanks again!

    | ClayPotCreative
    0

  • Hi Mozzers, My client is really pushing for me to get thousands, if not millions of pages indexed through the use of long-tail keywords. I know that I can probably get quite a few of them into Google, but will this dilute the PR on my site? These pages would be worthwhile in that if anyone actually visits them, there is a solid chance they will convert to a lead do to the nature of the long-tail keywords. My suggestion is to run all the keywords for these thousands of pages through adwords to check the number of queries and only create pages for the ones which actually receive searches. What do you guys think? I know that the content needs to have value and can't be scraped/low-quality and pulling these pages out of my butt won't end well, but I need solid evidence to make a case either for or against it to my clients.

    | Travis-W
    0

  • I've got a site that ranks #1 for it's term. It's Worpress on Thesis 1.85.  The site is not responsive and cannot be because Thesis 1x is not (and Thesis 1x is a dead end). I really would like my site responsive, but I fear changing things might affect my #1 rank. The least impactful change I could do is move to Thesis 2.x, but I have come to really dislike the company and hate to get locked in again.  There are other frameworks I would prefer to move to, but their impact on my pages' source would be much more. So, my question is, is it worth moving to a new theme (keeping the layout looking exactly the same, although the "source" would look different) just to make the site responsive? Is it that important?

    | bizzer
    0

  • Hello Moz Community, I hope someone could help me identify the best action to take on an on-page optimization confusion I am currently having. The website I am currently trying to optimize is http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx. There is an option to view a country specific version of the page, or language version (there are 2 drop down menus on the top, for country or for language). When viewing a country specific version of the page, the URL changes depending on country selected. Some country versions also updates the content to the language of that country, but some remain English. Example, when viewing the France version of the page (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/FR/home.aspx), the content is updated to french version, but when viewing the China version (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/CN/home.aspx), the content is in English. This is because we have not yet translated for all countries (this will eventually be all translated). Now, when viewing by language, the URL does NOT change. Example, in http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx, you can choose French, German, Italian, Polish, etc. The content of the page will change based on language chosen, but the URL (including page titles, meta-descriptions) will not change. My question is, how should I approach this for on-page optimization? Canonical? Hreflang? Any input, feedback, recommendation, suggestion will be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Sharon

    | RiaMT
    0

  • A client of main has a specific domain for their webshop, separately from the brand the domain. The brand domain has much more authority (according to SEOMoz), so the conclusion in an other topic was that it would be better to move the entire webshop to the same domain as the branddomain. Like moving www.webshopdomain.com to www.branddomain.com/webshop Of course all categories and important pages will have a 301 to give through the build up authority. Does anybody have experience with this? I believe in the end this will be much better because all authority will be build up at the same domain.
    But I am afraid of a drop in the beginning. If there will be a sales drop, I really must give my client notice of this... I hope somebody has done this before..

    | Seeders
    0

  • Do I need to disallow the dynamic pages that show when people use our site's search box? Some of these pages are ranking well in SERPs.  Thanks! 🙂

    | esiow2013
    0

  • Everybody at some point will write a feature rich article and publish it on their website.
    What is stopping your competitors from blatantly stealing your article and publishing it on their own website virtually word for word.
    If your competitors website gets indexed by Google before yours than surely Google will see your hard work and cost as duplicate content. Question:
    Should site owners be worried about this type of practice?
    How do we safeguard ourselves from this type of practice? Any other good advice would be appreciated... Thanks Mark

    | Mark_Ch
    1

  • Overly-Dynamic URL Overly-Dynamic URL Although search engines can crawl dynamic URLs, search engine representatives have warned against using over 2 parameters in a given URL. Search engines may also see dynamic versions of the same URL as unique URLs, creating duplicate content.

    | adulter
    0

  • I'm looking to up my currently knowledge of SEO. I've looked at many different software packages, I've seen articles that say old ways are out with nobody really expounding on whats happening now. I'm really over paying people to get mediocre results and I'm not looking for an SEO service as much learning more. Anyone care to help?

    | drsmallbusiness
    0

  • I don't understand. I am continually blogging, optimizing, creating new landing pages, getting awesome inbound links... Traffic has even been up dramatically in the past two months. I checked the DA on Monday and it was 59 and today it is 55. What?? Help! http://www.howlatthemoon.com/

    | howlusa
    1

  • Can you be a victim of your own success? So your write a quality article on your website. You educate your audience and hope quality trusted authority sites will link back to your article. Great, all those plus points adding to your SEO.
    On the down side you get poor quality sites with no real SEO value linking to your article. My Question Is This: What impact will poor quality sites have on your SEO?
    What impact will changing the Anchor Text to something unrelated to the article content have on SEO?
    Are there any other considerations?
    Thanks Mark

    | Mark_Ch
    0

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