SEO MOZ Crawl Report Help

[bwpatton]

I recently bought a web page from a reputable Real Estate company (Real Estate Web Masters). They are known for their ability to write codes that index IDX feeds from MLS boards but they charge a huge rate compaired to other web devlopers in the Real Estate industry.

After joining the SEO MOZ community and running a few SEO Bot Crawls I was scared when I reviewed the campaigns that I created. The report came back with Duplicate content on my blog and a bunch of on site errors and warnings. Below you will find a few quistions if you could help me with these answers I would appreciate it.

1. I have 28 URL's that show up on the error report that say they have duplicate content. Should I deleate all of these pages or erase all the content and try to make them more custom? I cant tell if this is a URL issue or a content issue. The bot reads the errors and sounds like it is trying to point out that there are more than one or two URL's on my page that point to the same blog post. If that is the problem then it is a programming issue.

2.Duplicate Page title= I have just created this blog so there are only about 30 submissions but almost every blog says it has a duplicate title?

3. Title element to long= how important is this to fix? I think this is also a programming issue becuase these title elements are created to show homes for sale within a certain price range say 200,000 to 300,000. There is a lot of desription within these tites on the homes that show up and there is a lot of homes for sale within that price range. So once again I think this would be a programming issue.

I am trying to keep up with the Real Estate Web Masters on this subject but there SEO rates are $2500 a month and I am a start up company so I really need to learn how to do some of this on my own. Please advise!

Relevant links

My Web page

Real Estate Web Masters

The REW Forum I have asked for help from | I dont know if they will let you view this

but I will update your response within that forum if that is ok with you.

[RyanKent]

From a ranking perspective, it makes no difference whether your site is a .com, .info, etc.

The problem with having a non-.com site is there will definitely be times when users try to access your site by visiting the .com version. If your URL is elitehomes.info sometimes people will visit the elitehomes.com site by mistake. It could cost you a client.

The same idea holds for a hyphenated website. elite-realty.com will lose some visits due to users going to eliterealty.com. Additionally, users are most comfortable clicking through to a .com site, where other domains could experience lower acceptance.

Regarding the error cleanup, if the errors are from your crawl report, then they exist on your site. Check the "referrer" field to find the page which contains the error. If it is a different report, try to locate the source or share some additional information about the tool you are using.

[bwpatton]

The new error report came back much lower then before. I am now around 30 erros and 80 warnings. However, most of those errors are showing from pages that I deleted within my web page. Could this be that these erros are coming in from a diffrent blog that points to my domain?

[bwpatton]

I am going to print off the SEO book right now

[ShaMenz]

Wow! Awesome work from Ryan on this one

Your duplicate content problem is caused by the fact that the blog software generates a duplicate URL for each tag, archive, rss feed etc that is related to an individual post. This is a standard problem with common blogging software such as Wordpress and normally (if you were running a standard Wordpress Blog), the fix would be to install an SEO plugin which allows you to either turn off these things, or add code which will tell the search engine that they relate to the original post.

In this case though, your site is using the blog offered through your IDX/MLS account. In order to address the duplicate issues you will need to contact your IDX/MLS provider and ask them to deal with the problem. We have clients who use the IDX, but we have installed standard wordpress blogs for those as there are no self management options with the blog supplied by that provider.

The following pages are also returning 404 not found errors on your site:

http://www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com/agents/brandon-patton/

http://www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com/buying.php

http://www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com/Homes-for-Sale-in-Richland-Washington.php

http://www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com/Richland-Real-Estate.php

http://www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com/selling.php

http://www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com/thumbs/280x186/www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com%252Fimages%252Ffeatured%252F1298323189.jpg (this is an image URL)

If you have deleted them by accident, then you will need to go back to your last backup and restore them, otherwise you will need to create 301 redirects to send any traffic to relevant pages on the site.

In addition to following Ryan's suggestion of reading the Beginner's Guide to SEO, I would suggest taking some time to read through as many of the posts in the SEOmoz Blog as you can, especially watching the Whiteboard Friday videos. Most of those provide quick, easy to understand explanations of many basic concepts of SEO.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[RyanKent]

There are numerous tools capable of crawling the pages of your site and reporting on your page titles. Since you are a PRO member, I would recommend you await the SEOmoz crawl report.

With respect to your CMS, you have not shared what the name is of the software you are using. Most popular CMS solutions will offer a means by which you can append the site name to your titles. By simply unchecking a box, you can turn the feature off. For this particular question you may want to ask in the forums offered by your developer.

For the site name, as a general rule you want it to be as short and memorable as possible. Ideally it should be easy to spell as well. Some ideas which come to mind (all the .com's are taken for these unfortunately): WashingtonRealty, TriCityRealty, ProgressiveRealty, PattonRealty, etc. I also tried matching the names up with "homes" and "realestate" instead of realty.

It can take weeks or months to come up with a name you like which is also available. The rewards are worth it.

[bwpatton]

To check up on the status of those titles that I changed do I have to run another SEO MOZ scan or is there a way to download and app that will show me these titles as a Search Engine will see it?

I made all of those changes but the Real Estate sofware will add to it so I am trying to figure out a way to see what it will look like. I will just start another SEO Moz scan to be safe.

Also, I will try to think of a shorter URL. I have spent a lot of time building up that Triciitesrealeastateagent URL it is all over my community blogs within my industry.However, if you think is will help SEO to get a shorter domain then I better for it because I am interested in long term results.

[RyanKent]

There is a wide variety of criteria to consider when choosing a domain name. The TC509 domain has the advantage of being substantially shorter which is one criteria. Another important factor is whether the domain is memorable. If you have an opportunity to explain the meaning of your TC509 domain name, then there is a decent chance for people to remember it. It otherwise will appear as a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers to the majority of searchers who have not visited your site.

.coms are available for around $10 each so I would never use a domain simply because you owned it. The cost to build a site and provide SEO and advertising for it can quickly exceed $10k. Take your time, find the right domain name, then build upon it. Gather feedback from friends, family and clients.

[bwpatton]

I am working on everything right now. I deleted almost everything and figure I would just start over. I deleted all my blog post and most of my internal pages. I have started with changing the titles so they are shorter but still relevant.

What about the domain:

www.TC509.com

I registered this a while back for print media. It is short and the TC stands for Tri Cities and out area code is 509. Should I set up a 301 re direct of Tri Cities Real Estate Agent to point to this other domain?

[RyanKent]

Just a couple of examples of each issue would have been fine, but this works too

The purpose of a title is to allow searchers to identify the topic of a web page. If you perform a search on Google.com, the title tag is shown as the larger blue underlined text at the top of each result.

Google offers a lot of ranking weight to the title tag. It is commonly believed the title tag has a fixed amount of weight, and it is divided amongst each term in the title. Additionally, more weight is offered to terms at the beginning of the title. For these reasons you should focus your title on the specific keyword or phrase which is the focus on your web page. When you offer a long title tag, you diminish the weight of every word in your title and the words at the end receive very little weight anyway. It's not a good SEO practice.

Another important component of the title tag is Click-Through-Rate. The title is an important decision making tool which searchers use to decide whether or not to click through to your site. An optimal title tag will balance the need to rank well with what text would be most compelling to users. Title tags are cut off around 70 characters. Everything after that point shows as "...". When searching on google.com for "tri cities real estate agent" I noticed your listed in 22nd place. Please examine your title tag and notice it has been cut off.

With the above background understood, the first recommendation I would offer is to change your site title. Presently it shows as "Tri Cities Real Estate Serving Richland,Kennewick and Pasco Washington". Ouch! You simply cannot tack that on to every page of your site. Your site name is http://www.tricitiesrealestateagent.com. That is a long URL (5 terms) so not ideal, but if you wish to use it in the title tags I would suggest adding it to the END of the title tag, not the beginning. Presently you have the Tri Cities title at the beginning so users will often see your generic site title and never even get to see the actual page title.

Using your first long title example:Tri Cities Real Estate Serving Richland,Kennewick and Pasco Washington - Homes for Sale in Tri Cities, $100,000 - $200,000

I would recommend something like: Tri Cities Homes for Sale $100k - $200k

This title has 38 characters and properly positions the more important terms at the beginning of the title. It also has room to add a couple more words if you so desire.

You can add your site title but I really wish you had a shorter site name. It's not only long, but you have competitors with sites similar to yours such as tricitiesrealestate.com. Choosing a domain name is a personal choice. I am a football fan so I checked and seahawksrealestate.com and seahawksrealty.com are both available. These URLs would identify with the Washington area and offer you a branded site with a memorable, shorter domain name. Personally I would get both domains and use the second, shorter domain with the first forwarded to the second.

So back to your title tags. Another issue is many titles seem to duplicate information. Example:Benton City Washington Real Estate - Benton City Real Estate, $200,000 - $300,000

Instead try: Benton City Washington Real Estate $200,000 - $300,000. Perhaps you can drop the "Washington" and replace the extra three 0s with a "k" such as: Benton City Real Estate, $200k - $300k

Your "Real Estate Blog" titled RSS feed should not be indexed.

[RyanKent]

For issue #1 and 2, duplicate URLs and titles, the fix would depend upon the nature of the cause. Can you share an example of a URL and it's duplicate?

For item #3, title too long, you asked if it is important to fix. If you are here on SEOmoz and taking the time to run crawl reports on your site it seems SEO and your ranking and click-through-rate are important to you. In that case, it is important to fix. A properly presented title will directly affect your rankings and CTR.

I am a start up company so I really need to learn how to do some of this on my own. Please advise!

My recommendation is to read the Beginner's Guide to SEO. It is an excellent, easy to read document.

I checked the REW forum but registration is required to view the thread.

In looking at your site, it appears to be a custom CMS. What software is being used?