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Category: Intermediate & Advanced SEO

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


  • I have a page indexed > (http://mysite.com/mypost) and also http://mysite.com/tag/mypost The same post shows up twice, one with /tag/ one without when I search site:http://mysite.com
    Is this a duplicate content?? Can I get penalized for this? In the All in one plugin should I check Use noindex for Tag Archives to avoid this or doesn't matter.
    Thanks

    | vinner-280241
    0

  • I've read that these 2 tags both carry equal weight for seo purposes but in my opinion it looks a little spammy when you see keywords in bold type face scattered over your site. So will they still carry the same weight for seo if I applied a class to them that turned them back to normal?

    | JasonHegarty
    0

  • Hi Everyone, I was wondering if someone might critique my site and let me know what you think.  I've done pretty much everything I know to do proper seo for my site.  I'd love to hear some critiques about what I am doing wrong.  I'm not sure if my titles are okay, being that they are similar amongst pages. The other thing is that for all the javascript buttons on the top I have no followed them since they don't have any anchor text.  The way google will crawl my page is through the links in the footer.  I was thinking of moving them throughout the body of the page since I hear google isn't giving as much weight to footer links. I also wanted to hear what you think about putting a blog on my site and updating with fresh content as opposed to creating a separate blog and then linking back to my website with anchor text.  Thanks for all the help.  And glad to be a member Bill

    | wsh15
    0

  • When running a classified site, what is best practice for what to do with expired ads?  Should they stay on the site with a sold stamp perhaps? Or should they be moved to an archive subdomain, with the original URL 301 redirecting to the new archive ad? I'm kinda thinking the second option but I suppose the only issue with this is you would have to have a consistent flow of new ads on the site to prevent categories from getting too thin. Thoughts on this and any other/better solutions would be much appreciated. Thanks.

    | Sayers
    0

  • We're building a new website platform and are using Ajax as the method for allowing users to select from filters. We want to dynamically insert elements into the URL as the filters are selected so that search engines will index multiple combinations of filters. We're struggling to see how this is possible using symfony framework. We've used www.gizmodo.com as an example of how to achieve SEO and user-friendly URLs but this is only an example of achieving this for static content. We would prefer to go down a route that didn't involve hashbangs if possible. Does anyone have any experience using hashbangs and how it affected their site? Any advice on the above would be gratefully received.

    | Sayers
    1

  • Hi, I completed the optimization of my website, and while my rankings have improved, i seem to have consistently better resultats with absolute search terms: ex: i'm better ranked on "word1 word2" than just word1 word2 without the guillemets. Do you have any idea why? As most people perform search without guillemets, i would like to improve my rankings with these searches too. thanks, cedric

    | smartgrains
    0

  • If i have a keyword rich domain name, but i redirect it to a brand domain name, will doing seo for the keyword rich domain name be effective in showing up on google under that domain, for the keyword i do SEO for? or does this cause a conflict for spiders/robots as soon as they realize the page they want to check out is getting redirected to another domain name?

    | lafurniturestore
    2

  • I am from India.I find that when i search here on google.com or google.co.in some of the blogs operated by Indians are listed as United states next to search results.How is it possible and how can i do it for my blog? Help

    | ivmagnuvi
    0

  • Does anyone have any good advice on how to promote a contest?  Has anyone hosted a contest and had a lot of good luck that could offer some pointers on how to get the word out? The contest consists of people uploading a 60 second or less WildBlue commercial video that they have created.  The video with the most votes will win the competition, and we are giving the winner a $50 cash prize.  So far I have been Tweeting about it, and I have sent out a press release.  Any other advice will be appreciated.  The link to the contest page is http://www.mybluedish.com/lp/contest/ if you want to take a look at it.  Thank you in advance.

    | MyNet
    0

  • Hi All, I've managed to secure a couple of exact match domains that are closely related to my main site but I'm a bit unsure of how to make best use of them. My plan is to generate revenue by ranking high for the exact match terms, moving the visitor onto the main site to take their details and payment. Naturally I want this satelite site to be very similar so that I can keep the brand continuety going and maintain a smooth transition to the main site. My main concerns however are: Will I get punished for using the same Navigation menu, logo and code as my main site? The navigation menu will link to pages on the main site, and this satelite site will most likely only consist of an index page and about 5 - 10 individual content pages. 2)I want the branding on this satelite site to be the same as my main site. Will I be punished for the difference in branding vs domain name? I know the SE's are unlikely to pick it up because the logo is an image but is there a risk of human editing? I want to link from the main site to the satelite site to give it a bit of a boost and to get through a possible sandbox. If the satelite has numerous links to the main site and the main site is linking to the satelite site will there be any benefit? Never tried to create a site like this so a bit nervous about impacting the main site. Thank in advance.

    | Mulith
    0

  • I have a real estate site that contains a large amount of duplicate content. The site contains listings that appear both on my clients website and on my competitors websites(who have better domain authority). It is critical that the content is there because buyers need to be able to find these listings to make enquiries. The result is that I have a large number pages that contain duplicate content in some way, shape or form. My search results pages are really the most important ones because these are the ones targeting my keywords. I can differentiate these to some degree but the actual listings themselves are duplicate. What strategies exist to ensure that I'm not suffereing as a result of this content? Should I : Make the duplicate content noindex. Yes my results pages will have some degree of duplicate content but each result only displays a 200 character summary of the advert text so not sure if that counts. Would reducing the amount of visible duplicate content improve my rankings as a whole? Link back to the clients site to indicate that they are the original source Any suggestions?

    | Mulith
    0

  • I'm facinated by SEO but the truth is, I don't have the time to do it.  I trust the moz community more than some of those other SEO forums out there so I'm asking you all, where can I go to find a good SEO firm who's affordable enough for a small startup? The next part of the question is, what should I expect to pay for services that will really make a difference? Please don't spam this thread....I seriously just want an honest opinion as to where I can find some credible help.

    | Chaz88
    0

  • As a SEO I understand that link anchor text for the focus keyword on the page linked to is very important, but I have a question which I can not find the answer to in any books or blogs, namely: does inbound anchor text 'carry over' to other pages in your site, like linkjuice? For instance, if I have a homepage focusing on keyword X and a subpage (with internal links to it) focusing on keyword Y. Does is then help to link to the homepage with keyword Y anchor texts? Will this keyword thematically 'flow through' the internal link structure and help the subpage's ranking? In a broader sense: will a diverse link anchor text profile to your homepage help all other pages in your domain rank thematically? Or is link anchor text just useful for the direct page that is linked to? All views and experiences are welcome! Kind regards, Joost van Vught

    | JoostvanVught
    0

  • How do you get an icon which links to a google profile to display in google search results? Link this.... https://skitch.com/edwardrobertshaw/f12f8/central.ly-google-search

    | ed123456
    0

  • Community, We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority. What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now? Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move. Thoughts? /TomyPro

    | tomypro
    0

  • Hi there. I'm hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of this great community. I've just become involved in a business that spans two countries Australia and New Zealand. Currently we have one site in Australia "AAAA.com.au" and a similar site in New Zealand which is a joint venture with another company so for some reason they chose to merge the names to get "BBAAAA.co.nz". The Australian site is hosted in Australia and ranks #1 for targeted keywords in a competitive industry. The New Zealand site is hosted in NZ and has been live for nearly 2 years but ranks very poorly with targeted keywords i.e. not in the top 50! The content on sites is similar but not the same and phone numbers and location details are different etc. The NZ site has not been link building which is likely the main issue. What I want to do is now change the BBAAAA.co.nz site to AAAA.co.nz (the other company has agreed the name change is warranted) and service New Zealand from Australia using our well performing site. Any thoughts on the best way to achieve this to maximise the good ranking of the Australian site? The Australian site has a lot of back links from a range of sites. I've taken into account the following info at Google but I'm still stuck for the best answer given our tricky situation. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=182192#2 Would love to hear your thoughts on how to approach this one. Cheers in advance.

    | ICMI
    0

  • Hi, I used this tool to test some domains. The tool can be found at http://www.virante.com/seo-tools/duplicate-content I have no questions about the other checks but with the similarity check. My question is how do i get Google not to omit some entries very similar to the top 1000 pages on my site? Will appreciate your answers, thanks. Suleman

    | esuleman
    0

  • We are in the process of changing our URLs from dynamic to more SEO friendly. The website is ciee.org and I'm specifically talking about ciee.org/study. While we work with the business to get approval for ciee.org/study-abroad, we are going with ciee.org/study/abroad. Can anyone foresee any difficulties or negative implications that could come if we change from study/abroad to study-abroad all within 6 months? Thank you in advance!!

    | CIEEwebTeam
    0

  • We are pitching to a hotel client to build two new websites, a summer website and a winter website, two completely different looking websites. The client wants to automatically switch their domain name to point to one or the other, depending on the time of year. The customer does not want to use a landing page where you would choose which site to visit; they want the domain name to go directly to the relevant website. Our options: Set up two new domain names and optimise each website based on the holiday season and facilities offered at that time of year. Then change the exisiting domain name to point at the website that is in season. Or Use the existing domain name and setup two sub domains, switching the home page as necessary. We have been chewing this one over for a couple of days, the concern that we have with both options is loss of search visibility. The current website performs well in search engines, it has a home page rank of 4 and sub-pages ranking 2 and 3’s, when we point the domain at the summer site (the client only has a winter website at present) then we will lose all of the search engine benefits already gained. The new summer content will be significantly different to the winter content. We then work hard for six months optimising the summer site and switch back to the Winter site, the content will be wrong. Maybe because it's Friday afternoon we cannot see the light for the smoke of the cars leaving the car park for the weekend, or maybe there is no right or wrong approach. Is there another option? Are we not seeing the wood for the trees? Your comments highly welcome. Martin

    | Bill-Duff
    0

  • Hi Guys I just wanted to give you all a heads up on something I adjusted recently that worked really well and wanted to ask for your own experiences on this. 1. We have a blog that adds regular content and within the blog we link from the keyword we are targeting. Standard stuff right ! We were struggling for movement on a keyword so I removed the links from the articles and added a link on the site wide blogroll. The link on the blogroll included the keyword but was a longer descriptive link. Low and behold we got a first page listing when the changed it.The change in ranking was made a few days later. I have always been given the impression that site wide isn't that great ? So explain this one . Of course there are many other factors etc 🙂 What are your experiences and thoughts on what happened here ?

    | onlinemediadirect
    0

  • I recently joined promoz and I've been busy working through the issues raised brought to light during the crawls of our Magento site, www.unitedbmwonline.com. One of many issues were the 10,000+ Duplicate Page Titles which I believe are the result of not using Canonical tags when setting up the store. This is now corrected and hopefully I'll see a significant drop in this value after this next crawl. Am I correct in this assumption? Cheers, Steve

    | SteveMaguire
    0

  • In your experience how long does it normally take for 301-redirected pages to drop out of Google's index?

    | bjalc2011
    0

  • I have a local client in the automotive service sector. Actually,  I deal with several local, service-oriented businesses, so I am hoping to apply the knowledge gained from this question to several cases. And, I am not concerned with Google Places or Adwords in this case - I have those dialed-in just fine - I am referring to a methodology applicable to organic search results. While it has been simple enough to target one or two local geographic regions (e.g. cities/towns) for specific key phrases related to my client's industry by adding geo-modifiers to the mix.  I need to develop and apply a method to target multiple outlying towns (up to 12 within a 30mi radius) near my client's place of business - without generating pages of duplicate content (e.g. automotive service town-1, automotive service town-2, automotive service town-3, etc.) Would someone more experienced in this area be willing to shed some light upon my dilemma? Thanks!

    | SCW
    0

  • A page of mine  (http://loginhelper.com/networks/facebook-login/) was ranking in the top 10 for keyword (facebook login) and has been for at least 2 months, moving between 5th and 10th. Suddenly in the last 3 days the rank for the keyword dropped from 7th to 46th, yet none of the other keywords have been affected (they target other pages) and their ranks have continued to improve. I am trying to figure out what caused this sudden drop in the ranking of 1 page (the page has quality mainly text based content and isn't in the least bit shallow or spammy) I have been thinking perhaps a crawl or server error may be to cause leaving the page temporarily unavailable or with a big load time... Otherwise what could cause one page to drop so much so quickly whilst other pages improved their rank?

    | Netboost
    0

  • What do you do if you have a client that never implemented a 301 redirect on their domain?  For example here are the OSE stats for the URLs; http://url.com PA: 48 DA: 50 LRD: 65 TL: 1,084 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 http://www.url.com PA: 51 DA: 50 LRD: 165 TL: 2,271 FB: 178 FB: 14 T:5 G+1:3 My first instincts are to redirect the first one to the second one, but is it too late for that?  Will that screw up all of their established stats?  Any input or examples of past experiences with this would be great.

    | MichaelWeisbaum
    0

  • Hello, Some of my hosted clients don't mind if I put a footer link on the bottom of their website.  I would like to put a footer link that looks like Seomoz's - http://imgur.com/GrC8y Basically it would look like so: "Powered by "my company name".  The world's #1 "keyword" provider (LOGO goes here) Here are my questions: 1. Would this hurt or help my rankings? 2. Should the logo be hosted by my clients so that a different ip is hosting my logo (where my image name will get picked up)?  Or is it best to host it myself? 3. If my company name and keyword are getting linked, is that one link too many? 4. Is it a good idea to use a different keyword so that other keywords get picked up by SERPs, or should I set myself up on one keyword ? Thank you so much! Shawn

    | Shawn124
    0

  • Dear SeoMozers, My website www.buy-hosting.net ist around for about 6 months. It performed quiet well the first months and for the main keyword "Buy Hosting" it went continously better, until #7 in SERPS of Google. Then, some days ago, it suddenly disappeared and traffic went down to nearly zero. It is not even in the Top 100 for "buy hosting" anymore. Can anyone please advice me, what could be the reason for that and what I could do about it? I'am desperate, beacuse I worked about 8 months nearly 100% of my time on that project... Thank you and kind regards

    | ie4mac
    0

  • My blog is showing in search results instead of my homepage and this is fine, but less than ideal. Any idea on how I can fix this?

    | ChrisClever
    0

  • We recently moved a community website that we own to our main domain. It now lives on our website as a sub-domain. This new sub-domain has a lot of duplicate page titles. We are going to clean it up but it's huge project. (We had tried to clean it even before migrating the community website) I am wondering if this duplicate content on the new sub-domain could be hurting rankings of our root domain? How does Google treat it? From SEO best practices, I know duplicate content within site is always bad. How severe is it given the fact that it is present on a different sub-domain?

    | Amjath
    0

  • I am seeing some very interesting changes in our non-branded keywords, and am curious to know how keyword significance in Google Webmaster Tools plays into ranking of a site.  Say for example we are a photography website selling photography supplies.  At one point our most significant word was Canon, but now it is photography.  Would that mean that we would start seeing a lot of non-branded keywords generating from Google like "camera strap", "camera lens hood", etc.  This is really good for us, but curious to know if the only reason we are seeing this is the shift in our keyword significance.  Any insight?  Thanks!

    | NaHoku
    0

  • How long after one moves a page and sets up the 301s should the site take to regain its previous rankings? Context:  i've ported a site to a new framework. Along the way, several high ranked pages needed to have new URLs setup, as well as the site moved from www.domain.com to simply domain.com.  About 1 week after the change, the site's traffic went down 70% and has been there for about another 2 weeks. I suppose it could be something about the new framework that is causing problems though according to SEOMoz tools, the new framework is checking out pretty well.  I assume the problem is reconciling all those old www inbound links with the new non-www location.  It is all 301'd however ... so it should be working, but is not. So my questions are: 1. How long should it take Google to reconcile these changes and put us back to original SERP positions 2. is there something inherently problematic with switching from www to non-www?

    | NealCabage
    0

  • Across our site, we have canonical tags in place for URLs that contain duplicate content and for URLs without a trailing slash since we are using URLs WITH a trailing slash for all URLs across our site. We also recently added a no index, follow tag to all non-canonical URLs since we noticed a high number of duplicate content URLs in Google Webmaster Tools. The first part of my question is: How does a canonical work? Does the robot read the canonical and immediately go to the canonical URL or does it continue to read past the canonical tag and get to the no index, follow tag if there is one present? The second part of my question is: Is it necessary to have both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag in place? Or should the canonical tag be sufficient to avoid duplicate content? And lastly, if both a canonical tag and no index, follow tag are in place, should they be in a specific order? Canonical tag first then no index, follow tag second or no index, follow tag first then canonical tag second? I would appreciate any insight you can give. Thank you!

    | kbbseo
    0

  • A subdirectory/folder on our website doesn't seem to rank for any keywords where the same type of pages on the same competition level keywords rank perfectly fine. For awhile the pages weren't getting indexed but were crawled regularly. Can't seem to figure the problem out.

    | bprimeelitellc
    0

  • I have installed Google plus button on my homepage. My GA report is being displayed like this - 7 total events were recorded Total Events              Unique Events 7                                    2 Event action                    Total Events on                                           4 off                                          3 My questions are - 1 ) Is someone clicking on Google plus button considered an Event ? 2 )  What is meant by 2 Unique Events 3 ) Why does GA report shows   on  4 and  off  3

    | seoug_2005
    0

  • Can someone from this wonderful community answer the question. The link is http://www.seomoz.org/q/google-one-button-help-needed-2

    | seoug_2005
    0

  • is it possible to be sandboxed for a google places page? one of our clinics has a places page, and it was doing fine (http://www.google.com/maps/place?cid=5542269234389030356) but now whenever we set our location to trinity,fl and try to search for weight loss, weight loss trinity, etc.. it doesnt come up. it only comes up if we search medi weight loss trinity. also, when we go into our google places dashboard and try to edit the pictures, it doesnt show the same pictures on the actual locations page. for example, in our dashboard we have 5 pictures, but on the actual places page, 3 pictures are showing (none of which are in our dashboard). any ideas?

    | AustinBarton
    0

  • Hello, with a support system similar to this one: https://expresslane.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.do would you suggest that express lane be put in a folder rather than a subdomain? EX: sony.com/expresslane/getproductgroulist.do for authority purposes or is there an advantage to have it on a subdomain?

    | matmox
    0

  • can anyone recommend solid directories (paid) to submit websites to? maybe a directory you've already submitted to and have gotten results. Thanks

    | PaulDylan
    0

  • In 2009 we peaked in organic site traffic. During that time we received traffic for 276,000 different keywords. Since then our organic traffic from Google only has fallen almost 45% and our unique keyword traffic has dropped to 195,000. During that time I thought we were doing everything right: We wrote over 300 articles on our site We got on Facebook and started posting regularly. We got on Twitter and tweeted several times a week both about our niche topic and our store We launched a new product review site and took on bloggers as product reviewers The reviews the bloggers write link to our store, the product and some valuable keywords in every post and there have been a couple of hundred written We've done about 20 Youtube videos And yet, here we are with our organic Google traffic down 45%.Alexa has dropped us 200,000 spots. At this point I feel like the house is burning down around me and really don't know where to turn to get this trend reversed. Any suggestions on a clear path forward?

    | IanTheScot
    0

  • Will I lose or gain seo benefit from using rel=nofollow on my SSL certificate?  every page on the site refers (links) to the cert and the server call to display the cert adds over 500ms to my page load speeds. <updated question="">  Is there a way to display the cert to cut down on load speeds?  Also, would Google discount or penalize the site if the cert were nofollowed?</updated> Thoughts? Thanks in advance!

    | AnthonyYoung
    0

  • As part of my company's ongoing SEO effort we have been analyzing our link profile. A colleague of mine feels that we should be targeting at least 50% branded anchor text. He claims this is what search engines consider "natural" and we should not go past a threshold of 50% optimized anchor text to make sure we avoid any penalties or decrease in rankings. 50% brand term anchor text seems too high to me. I pointed out that most of our competitors who outrank us have a much greater percentage of optimized links. I've also read other industry experts state that somewhere in the range of 30% branded anchor text would be considered natural. What percent of branded vs. optimized anchor text do you feel looks "natural" and what do you base your opinion on?

    | DeannaTallman
    0

  • Must be SEO "compliant". User friendly Must be customizable Possibly extendible

    | rmteamseo
    0

  • Hi, I don't know much of anything about Google Pruduct Feeds. Here is my starting point on thia: 1. Is this really free? We'd be doing it without Google checkout, just landing on our own pages with our own checkout. 2. Where do you upload the file? 3. What determines if you come up or not as a result? Any strategy or tactics involved? 4. We're the manufacturer of a product and late to the product feed game. The description that Google has used for our products is not ours or great. How do we change that product description that Google has for our products? Thanks!

    | 94501
    0

  • Hello! I'm a professional photographer and have used categories in an old blog to separate my work. (weddings, portraits, etc.) I'm starting an new blog and everything was imported, except categories so as i started rewriting them, I noticed the 'personalised URL. So I was thinking of re-writing my categories based on types of jobs and location. For example: *North Wales -wedding photography -portrait photography -commercial photography *Cheshire -wedding photography -portrait photography -commercial photography and so on... Or do you think it's best to just have shoot style categories? What do you guys think? Thanks!

    | IoanSaid
    0

  • I have checked all of the usual things.  My page has not lost any links or authority.  It is not black listed or any other obvious sign.  What's going on? This has just happened within the past 3 days.

    | Tormz
    0

  • The keyword  "business engagement in outsourcing" shows 0 visits. I have a look at Seomoz post at - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/advanced-google-analytics. According to it, "If someone makes more than one visit to a site within the same "session" and each visit comes from a search but on different keywords, then both keywords will be included in the keywords report - the first with 0 visits and the second with 1 visit" In my  GA report, i could only see 0 visit for the above keyword. Why is 1 visit not being shown ? On reading the blog, http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-analytics-tips-and-tricks-why-do.html#axzz1UPqhMV7o i am more confused, as it says "Google Analytics, assigns the visitors activity to the first keyword " . which is NOT what seomoz suggests

    | seoug_2005
    0

  • How can i reproduce RSS feed from another website to my website ?

    | seoug_2005
    0

  • Through searching, I can find lots of discussion regarding "dash vs underscore", but am having trouble with an even simpler question: Is there any SEO difference between using http://www.broadway.com/shows/milliondollarquartet.php vs. http://www.broadway.com/shows/million-dollar-quartet.php

    | RyanWhitney15
    0

  • Our website has ranked for two variations of a keyword, one singular & the other plural in Google at #1 & #2 (for over a year). Keep in mind both links in serps were pointed to our home page. This year we targeted both variations of the keyword in PPC to a products landing page(still relevant to the keywords) within our website. After about 6 weeks, Google swapped out the long standing ranked home page links (p.a. 55) rank #1,2 with the ppc directed product page links (p.a. 01) and dropped us to #2 & #8 respectively in search results for the singular and plural version of the keyword. Would you consider this swapping of pages temporary, if the volume of traffic slowed on our product page?

    | JingShack
    0

  • I attended the Bruce Clay training at SMX Advanced Seattle, and he mentioned link pruning/sculpting (here's an SEOMoz article about it - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-says-yes-you-can-still-sculpt-pagerank-no-you-cant-do-it-with-nofollow) Now during his presentation he mentioned that if you have one page with multiple links leading to another page, and one of those links is nofollowed, it could cause all links to be nofollowed. Example: Page A has 4 links to Page B: 1:followed, 2:followed, 3:nofollowed, 4:followed The presence of a single nofollow tag would override the 3 followed links and none of them would pass link juice. Has anyone else encountered this problem, and Is there any evidence to support this? I'm thinking this would make a great experiment.

    | brycebertola
    0

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