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Category: Search Behavior

Learn more about search behavior and search trends.

  • lunavista-comm


    We represent a franchise, and the parent site does well for head terms, but we want to add a feature with the nearest location to a consumer based on geo-detection. We don't want to hurt the rankings for broad head terms. Could we use an iFrame to present the closest shop without affecting the general SEO we have done?

    | lunavista-comm
    0
  • NoahsDad


    I'm using Yoast's wordpress seo plug in and a few months ago I enabled the feature that redirects all images to the parent post. This month I noticed a huge drop in my organic search results for images. I just did a crawl of my site and it looks like every image does indeed have a 301 redirect on it. I'm curious what the though is on this. Should I unselect that option? I was under the impression it wouldn't make a difference with traffic and actually thought it would help since it brought people to the post instead of just the image page for that picture. Thoughts?

    | NoahsDad
    0
  • karlseidel


    We have a number of blogs that we categorize based on our vertical markets. In all cases the reader gets to the info through some type of search based on their needs/interests. I can't help thinking that being specific, in other words sticking to the particular vertical market: nuts or coffee or breakfast cereal is better than lumping them all together into 1 blog. On the other hand, if 1 blog is to be used, once a search was completed that search would drive that reader to that 1 blog that contained all the long-tail keywords anyway...so maybe that's an argument for 1 blog only. What do you think? Thanks in advance for your input.

    | karlseidel
    0
  • ben1000


    I had until a few months ago included the original post date of a new blog post on the site. I then removed it and none of my results in Google now include the blog post date, although for some (for articles written about events) Google includes the date of the event where you would usually see the post date. Since I did this, it seems like new blog posts are taking longer to rank on Google, some results are ranking well, and others declined relative to what I would have previously expected. What's the best thing to be doing? To include a date (considering a lot of my content is not time-relevant) or to keep it as it is now? The second thing, is I often go through and update my articles with new information and re-post it in my rss feed etc - ie the date becomes new again. How does Google treat this? Any ideas or comments would be great! Thanks

    | ben1000
    1
  • BeTheBoss


    It can be a scary thing to change your homepage title tag to get the best results in the SERP while also maintaining your rankings. You obviously want to be irresistible and clickworthy… so how much time do you give before changing it up to test again?

    | BeTheBoss
    0
  • clotairedamy


    I started to optimize my personal Blog and portfolio website and all of my on page reports for the keywords "photography" and "Colorado Springs" were A's. What are the benefits and how much is taken in consideration by Google's algorithm? Website http://clotairedamy.com

    | clotairedamy
    0
  • JohnW-UK


    I find myself in a situation where I am having to defend why purely relying on just Google Analytics for site data i.e. exit pages, keywords, bounce rate etc... is not good practise. So I thought/wondered if other people have come up against this. What are the Pro and Cons for ONLY using Google Analytics for your site data....

    | JohnW-UK
    0
  • Stefan-Thorpe


    My question is twofold; firstly is there a recommended company that I could use to get feedback on my site usability. Ideally I would like this company to arrange a focus group of a couple hundred people that fit into the right demographic and organise a report on the opinions of the group and the issues faced. Secondly an in-house understanding of usability Now I would like to think that when I review a site for usability I am not biased in any way. But I believe that if I look at the page that I have created or even collaborated on that I will always miss usability issues as I frankly think my/our creation is amazing. I'm interested to know how people rank and check their site usability and what factors rank highest in their assessments i.e. the tools you use and how you use them.

    | Stefan-Thorpe
    0
  • bpitools


    Hi, Last Wednesday is saw a sudden increase in webstraffic from google searches, bouncerate went down, New Visits up, traffic doubled... Lasted for about 24 hrs. Traffic mostly from USA. However, user behavior was like a bot. Blazing through pages, at an average of 100 pages per user..... When everything was back to normal, I thought, well. ok, no matter. Actually blamed SEOMOZ Roger bot for it.... Because it were all keywords I had added recently, but Roger doesn't make ajax calls or trigger ga.js But today, its happening again. Traffic increase, users blazing through pages upto 500 pages/user..... Now also coming from Europe. I disabled Google analytics for a while to see if "they" use the code elsewhere, but no. "They" actually are on the site itself. It also shows in webmaster tools, and wmt doesn't need javascript. "They" actually use Google, and now also Yahoo to get to the site, and start blazing through the site. Its robot like behavior, but the browsers seem to have normal user agents, have javascript (and cookies, I think) enabled and come from a very wide range of ip addresses... Is this some sort of (black hat) attack or something? To get me kicked from Google and Yahoo? I must be "someone" who wants to do harm, and gave some bot network a list of keywords? There is a misspelled keyword that is repeated over and over again. Searches in French (and other languages) are performed in India, USA and repeated from various locations.... Now some of "them" with 500 pages per visit... I have no defense. User Agents seem normal, ip's are widespread over the world... referers are Google and Yahoo. What can I do? ???

    | bpitools
    0
  • ClaytonKendall


    So this is more of an ecommerce question than an SEO question, but I thought I would ask on here in case someone knew. We are concerned with the different rules and regulations concerning signing Canadians up for mailing lists. We know they must explicitly agree to be signed up for an email list, but is there a law regarding creating an account for them? For example, we currently offer an express checkout option where after they place their order, it emails them a username and password that they can use for future orders. We don't use this for any reason besides giving them the option to have information saved for future orders. They are not asking us to create an account for them, but we just feel as though it can potentially save them time down the road? Is this legally allowed, and if so would you recommend it? Thanks, Matt

    | ClaytonKendall
    0
  • nwright


    Is there any evidence that SEs give a greater weighting to keyword phrases in the page title if there are less characters? For example: 1. "Buy Silver Bullion" 2. "Buy Silver Bullion Coins Bars Rounds Easily Privately Securely" The key phrase I am trying to optimize for is "Buy Silver Bullion." To my knowledge, current practices would say the 2nd phrase is better optimized since it contains more keywords and it has a few USPs. But is there any evidence that the 1st example would be higher ranked in google for the phrase "Buy Silver Bullion" because it is more focused than the 2nd?

    | nwright
    0
  • Buildings


    I'm a bit confused today at Google's SERPs for a number of queries I've done. The first one that sparked my interest is when I searched for 'pinterest' (no quotes) and pinterest.com was NOT on the first page. In fact, the first pinterest.com result was on page 3 and was the page for somebody named Bil Chamberlain, who himself must be more related to the search term pinterest than pinterest.com itself. I've done this for a variety of search terms, signed out of google, signed in, and some companies' home page, or website in general comes up, and some do not. search for facebook, facebook.com is #1 search for united airlines, united.com's "Club and Lounges" page is on SERP 5. Am I missing something in google's search result methodology? I'd love to be directed to some article or discussion related to this because the last time I checked, most brand name or company name queries turned out company or brand home pages as reesult #1. I very well may just be behind the times. CCpjw

    | Buildings
    0
  • Geminineil


    We had one of the pre-penguin "unnatural links " messages in WMT - then Penguin hit April 24th/25th.. wee then set to work on Link profile... since 19th May we have had numerous search phrases come 'back' into rank pre-penguin for a day ie.. #5 - #10 and then drop the next.. ie 300+ this has been happening across a wide range of key phrases.... in fact it may well be that the key phrases are added to the serps 'briefly' or for a set amount of time... but our ranking checker checks daily so while it appears to be every other day in and out there may be another pattern... but the question is What is Google doing here and Why? any suggestions?

    | Geminineil
    1
  • HughesDigital


    I have a website that was built for the primary purpose of showing HTML 5 capabilities.  With this, we have to create forced page views within analytics in order to receive any data about consumer behavior on the site. Are search engines viewing these forced page views as actual webpages?  Does it even effect SEO efforts?

    | HughesDigital
    0
  • secretstache


    I've done a bit of research, but I have yet to come across a list of highly respected marketers who focus on Real Estate...are there any must know sites or individuals who write on the topic regularly?  Based on the Comp analysis we've done for a local boutique real estate firm, most of the competing link profiles are dirty...and we were hoping to get a more holisitic look at what works for the long term.  Any push in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

    | secretstache
    1
  • StreetwiseReports


    How do you know if you have been penalized by search engines? I logged into my Google and Bing webmaster accounts and all looks ok, but in the last 30 days, my organic traffic has decreased 33%. My traffic usually steadily increases and if there is ever a decrease, it's usually very small.

    | StreetwiseReports
    0
  • Mcarle


    I have been on a pretty big content upgrade on my websites. More content 5 pages to 14 pages 100 words to 500+ words per page More images More alt tags This has increased my traffic & my click through rates due to a massive increase in impressions. But because the impressions have gone up so much further my CTR had crashed. I have gone from : 500--> 50 to 4500 -->70 In one month. (Taken from Google webmaster tools) Will having a much lower CTR hurt my ranking in the long run? In the end I want more phone calls about my service so far I'm not yet seeing that conversion happening.

    | Mcarle
    0
  • daygoexpress


    I joined as member to this site yesterday and have found a few isuues, long page descriptions X 7 ( all now fixed ) and 3 X duplicate title tags. The title tags duplicated are www.daygo-express.co.uk www.daygo-express.co.uk/ and www.daygo-express.co.uk/sitemap/ how do i fix these issues, i am by no means a webmaster and only use simple 1&1 package as a host. Do i need to insert robots txt?, if so can someone with knowledge writeit for me and post please. Also does the robots txt need to placed in the heder section. many thanks Dee

    | daygoexpress
    0
  • KS__


    My website is www.eyeforweb.com and we are going to launch www.eyeforweb.ca soon. Should we do so on the same server (same IP address) or choose a different one so that Google doesn't notice same IP address for two sites?

    | KS__
    0
  • RochelleRietow


    Hi there! We're looking to hire a talented SEO Specialist for all of our SEO needs and wants - someone with amazing skills who can develop & execute comprehensive SEO strategies across our divers portfolio of businesses - But besides LinkedIN and Indeed, we're stumped on where to look! We just moved our headquarters to the heart of the great city of Detroit and thought there may be some great resources or recommendations! Any suggestions on where we should look to find killer SEO talent!? Thanks for any and all suggestions! Cheers - to your success! Platinum Innovation Group

    | RochelleRietow
    0
  • TargetClick


    I am trying to figure out the number of searchers that use wildcards (*) in their searches.  I cannot find much information about a percentage or even ballpark figure.  If there is not information on that, what is the percentage of users that use the 'advanced search' options?  I am guessing the numbers would be semi-similar. Thanks!

    | TargetClick
    0
  • ivan.precisodisso


    Hello World! May you guys tell me if I can trust in BT Buckets data, and if it's a good solution? We're integrating this solution to our website, but it seems that the API is out-of-date, like it's abandoned by the owner since 2010. Thanks.

    | ivan.precisodisso
    0
  • bendyman


    Hi, first time I've posted a question, New EU Laws governing cookies; will Google Analytics still be usable after May 25th? - apologies in advance if its already been covered, but I couldn't find any answers when I searched - google search showed someone else ask the question already, but no straight answers were given:- From May 25th the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive will come in to force which prohibits the use of cookies without informed, prior consent from web users. I've been trying to research to see whether or not this will affect Google Analytics.The Directive seems to be designed to prevent behavioural tracking, rather than web stats, but after reading the directive (with no law experience) I'm fairly confused by what will be prohibited.  If anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I'd be very grateful! 🙂

    | bendyman
    1
  • ahw


    is there a tool that allows you to follow the actual frequency of search for specific  keyword phrases over time (ie years).? Thanks.

    | ahw
    0
  • winefolly


    I launched at the beginning of the year and get about 7k uniques a month with about 50 or so unique pages. (Just in case sample size is maybe an issue?) Anyhow, here is an example page, it has about 1200 uniques and a bounce rate of 90% http://winefolly.com/update/calories-in-wine/ Any ideas why? A lot of traffic comes from social media right when the post comes out, maybe they are looking and leaving?

    | winefolly
    0
  • elisainteractive


    Hi there! we are all aware about the importance of user behaviour in search results. But I am a bit short of ideas in how a good report/analysis of this specific topic would be. So far, I have managed to do the following: Usability tests and anlysis using tools like crazy egg, in order to check how is the traffic flow and the call to actions to the best products regarding people who come from SEO traffic. GA analysis focused on: bounce rate, page views and traffic flow Is there anything else you would add to these two items to get the most out of this topic? thanks a lot in advance!!

    | elisainteractive
    0
  • greenjoe


    I changed my title tag to encourage a better CTR by looking less keyword stuffed and my rank dropped from #2 to #5.  So what do you think is better a title that business name first unlike everyone else who is just keywords first or a more google friendly title that looks like everyone else?

    | greenjoe
    0
  • StreetwiseReports


    I have a newsletter button on my website that states "subscribe now". I am wondering if there are better words than the word subscribe since people are so numb to that word now. Anyone ever measure or A/B test different words?

    | StreetwiseReports
    0
  • Stefan-Thorpe


    How do I start to target a national audiences? I currently get most of my hits from The US and Australia? But I see no reason why I don't get vies in Canada and The UK.

    | Stefan-Thorpe
    0
  • activitysuper


    Hi, I've been reading lots of great stuff on location optimisation and have picked up some new SEO knowledge on this area. Usually I target UK wide terms but this is a new beast for me. From what I have read if you was going after 'Ironing Services Essex' you would setup google places, include your address across your website and submit to local directories using the same uniformed address. BUT what happens if you live in a town 10 mins outside of Essex, your address doesn't contain Essex or Essex postcode on your website, the Google places pin is outside of the Essex area etc, well hopefully you get the idea. Basically Lets say your company is 10 mins from the area you want to rank for, it's easy for you to get into the location and do business but your address is different to the location you want to target because you live in a village 10 mins outside of the area (city) you want to target.

    | activitysuper
    0
  • KS__


    We developed this website www.stevenprigge.com When you search for STEVEN PRIGGE in google, the first listing you get is for  www.stevenprigge.com, but when you click on it it takes you to some other website. Can somebody tell me why is this happening?

    | KS__
    0
  • mdorvill


    So my website has a paywall that allows users that are IP Authenticated to look at content where unauthorized users don't have access to but this is hurting my SEO (since googlebot doesn't go past the paywall either). Is there any way that I could ask google to go through and crawl the entire site?

    | mdorvill
    0
  • Grumpy_Carl


    Anyone finding Google slow to index new websites at the moment? Made a new site on Thursday and posted a number off high quality, relevant, backlinks to it the same day and now on Monday it is still not indexed. Have see the same with a couple of sub domains I have created off a website with a moz score of 40. Normally can get new sites indexed within hours but this seems super slow.

    | Grumpy_Carl
    0
  • EGOL


    I have been searching on Google.com with FireFox this morning. I searched for a state name....  like "georgia". Then I search for a product... like "guitars". For the Guitars query the first page of the SERPs include some music stores in georgia. So, Google is contaminating your search results with information from your most recent query. Are you seeing this too?   Has Google been doing this for a long time?  Or, I am going crazy?

    | EGOL
    3
  • Dexx22


    Hi, I have a voip service, currently my keywords are ranking good in US. But i would like to rank them for India too. As i am selling India based voip services. I have a single domain .COM and no country specific domain. Here what i am planning to do. I would change the setting in Google webmasters central to change the target country to USA. And then i will do on page seo to match keywords related to India. Is there anyother suggestions? please let me know.

    | Dexx22
    0
  • SEODinosaur


    Hello, I am fairly new to creating case study material, can some of you share some strategies that work for you.

    | SEODinosaur
    0
  • activitysuper


    Hi, I have a keyword which is location specific and without any work doing to it, it ranked page 4 position 7. I did 4 guest posts all in one go and the it moved to page 3 position 5, I then left it for a week (position didn't move) and did another guest post a day after the guest post had been indexed I lost rankings and moved back to page 4, position 4. Has anyone got an idea why this happened? Is it a case its just fluxing and I could see in a few days it come back to page 3 position 2 or do you think I got an initial boost because the guest posts all went up and its just a fluke that it dropped when the 5th one went up? This is a big deal for me because I rely on guest posting a lot, I've even got a copy writer pumping out 500 quids worth of content a month just for guest blogging. I need to understand what is happening, this is one of the most important questions so far on here so I would appreciate some talk on the matter.

    | activitysuper
    0
  • Bush_JSM


    Hi Mozzers, I have a client that gets loads of traffic and since the 15th February there has been a decrease in New Visitors and an Increse in Returning. Traffic levels are the same. The returning is up and new are down by a long long shot. Have Google changed the way these visits are calculated? I can't see anything on the blog - anyone experiencing similar issues Bush

    | Bush_JSM
    0
  • ahw


    With improvements in our rankings, we are seeing adverse changes in our measures of engagement. My gut reaction is to believe we are attracting more unqualified traffic, thus higher bounce rates, declines in pages/visit and time on site (approx 15%, 15%, 25%, respectively). While recent improvements in navigation might have contributed  to these engagement declines, do you have any suggestions how best to determine whether these declines are due to nav changes vs. due to copy/content issues?  There's been no change in copy content during this period. Thanks.

    | ahw
    0
  • TheReference


    Hello SEOmoz, First question here on the forum, but a silent follower for years 🙂 I'm looking for a good book - you define what is "good" - about content marketing and or persona creation that you read and proved to be usable in real-life situations I've read "Accelerate" but found it too light-weight. Therefore your recommendations would come very in handy. Looking forward to your replies! Best regards, Nikolaas

    | TheReference
    1
  • preventionaid


    Is there a way to track the history of keyword search over time. I.E. the frequency of the Google search of the phrase 'unpasteurized milk' from 2006-2012 to see trending patterns.

    | preventionaid
    0
  • gerardoH


    Hi, Could you please point me to a reliable resource where I can find information on US desktop browser share? I have already found info for mobile (Comscore) but not for desktop. Thanks in advance for your replies 🙂

    | gerardoH
    0
  • Bristolweb


    Some sites i promote limit their services to 50 miles around their location how best is it to optimise their websites. Currently they don't rank very well for  non localised search terms but they do  very well for term which include their local area.  is this something they should be concerned about? Any tips and advice  on optimising for local search  are greatly appreciated. thanks

    | Bristolweb
    0
  • SirMax


    Our attorney wrote a dozen articles that range from 300 to 700 words on various topics of the certain law area. These articles are all placed on our FAQ page with anchored table of contents. This page does frequently come up on the first page of the google when people search for the questions discussed in these articles. 90% of these visits are not local therefore they are not potential clients. Attorney views it more like a community service then a marketing tool. However, I think there might be a problem. People read though the page and close it because usually they can find what they were looking for right there, however GA counts it as bounce because they did not browse to another page. Would large number of bounces hurt our standing with Google? Would it be better to separate the page into multiple pages for each article to make visitors browse?

    | SirMax
    0
  • ProFishingStore


    We were ranked no8, and in one week we jumped to no2 on Google, but there is no change in nuber of our visitors. What is going on? Is it personalization of SERP? What can we do? Tnx

    | ProFishingStore
    0
  • PeterAlexLeigh


    http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-panda-update-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078 or indeed any other other 40 changes Google have announced? http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html Unfortunately I have in a bad way. Almost exactly a year after it first happened with Panda! I'm Angry!

    | PeterAlexLeigh
    0
  • jliu.blitz


    Services like Compete and Quantcast provide information on competitive sites, but as far as I can tell only at the aggregated domain level.  Is there a similar service (paid or free) that provides this type of data - especially demographics - for a subdirectory? For example, if my competitor has widely different product categories and I suspect that the audience for Product B is very different from his site as a whole (which is mostly focused around his major product, Product A) is there any way to get info on that without actually owning the site and having access to Analytics/Facebook OpenGraph etc.?

    | jliu.blitz
    0
  • PeterAlexLeigh


    I suspect (Although find it hard to beleive!) that a recently aquired link may have affected the rankings of one of my sites for all of it's keywords. Should I get this link removed asap or leave it and see if things recover? To me, it just smacks of un-nautral if the link gets removed straight away.

    | PeterAlexLeigh
    0
  • JHSpecialty


    Title tag best practices according to seomoz is the following keyowrd - keyword | brand.com but I have seen some interesting results from using a comma as to a hyphen to seperate keywords as reccomended and wanted to know which method is more crawler friendly.

    | JHSpecialty
    0
  • CorkyGifford


    Our Wordpress site has had an historical bounce rate of 40% for the last 3 years but last Thursday it dropped to 17%, Friday to 7% and now is running at 2%. The pageviews per visit have also increased from 3 to almost 6. Thanks

    | CorkyGifford
    0

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