To many on page links with ABC search
-
My client site http://www.tshirtsubway.com has a ABC quick find selector on the homepage of the site and throughout the site and as a result is is showing an error of to many links on the SEO moz error crawls reports.
I wanted some advice on improving this and perhaps looking for an alternative also looking at the current setup and asking is this wrong.
-
Hi Garry,
I did not perform a full site analysis. You inquired about the rankings for the keyword "T shirts" so I only compared the pages which ranked for that term.
-
"Since you mentioned the content specifically, neither site is great, but the streetshirts site is significantly better then the tshirtsubway site."
How on earth have you come to this conclusion the streetshirts site has no content on shop pages ?
-
I can't speak for EGOL. Perhaps you can ask him directly. The challenge I find is a large percentage of people keep everything confidential.
Most of my work in the past has been either for other SEO companies or for private companies involved with a penalty or other specific work where I am immediately presented with a NDA. Unfortunately those circumstances prevent me from sharing my work. I have the impression EGOL is in a similar circumstance in that he isn't freely able to share.
What I can suggest regarding content is after it is created, every article should ideally be reviewed by 4 people:
-
An English teacher (or whichever language is appropriate) to check for grammatical and spelling errors along with overall presentation and reading level.
-
A marketing professional to ensure the message is clear and will connect with users
-
An expert from the field which the article covers. A doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. Check for accuracy, qualified quotes, etc.
-
A SEO to check for all other relevant factors such as URL, header tags, title, linking, etc.
Usually there are not 4 separate people involved to perform those functions in which case I recommend at least two people: the SEO and an expert. The SEO can use tools for English checking, and then can focus the other factors.
You can also ask others to review the final article. When I refer to "others" I mean people who would otherwise read the article. It is helpful to have a small group of people (bloggers, etc) who read advanced copies. They can offer valuable feedback and also help promote the article. At worst, grab anyone you can...a receptionist, a student, etc....to review the article and share honest feedback.
Some of the SEOmoz articles from Dr. Pete, Cyrus, Rand and others are good examples.
-
-
had a lot of problems in this project with a guy that runs the site who thinks he knows SEO. As a result its all over the place with ridiculous titles .
Thanks for all that its what I already know but nice to hear it echoed by another seo.
One question I had to EGOL is he always mentions good content being king and so on...
Does he have any examples of his own work. (dont just point out wikipedia :-))
-
Hi Garry,
I mentioned personalization because I was unsure if the ranking information was generated by you or from the client. I didn't mean to offend you.
It is still ranking well for music T shirts in the top 5 if its that bad then why ?
Using AdWords keyword data for the UK:
T Shirts 16,600,000 global monthly searches
Music T Shirts 201,000 global monthly searches
Music T Shirts UK 1,300 global monthly searches
"T shirts" has 80x more traffic then "Music T Shirts" and clearly is a much more competitive term. For "T shirts" you are competing against Wikipedia and many major retailers which simply do not compete at all for "Music T Shirts". Additionally, the site's "Music T Shirt" page is better optimized. Google helped out by changing the page title to "Music T Shirt" which is a perfect match.
The site has numerous issues and the page titles and H1 tags I would suggest are in serious need of attention. They not only target multiple terms, but they cannibalize the same terms.The page which ranks for "Music T Shirts" has a title of "Music T-shirt, T-shirts and Tee Shirts at T Shirt Subway" while the home page has a title of "T Shirts | Music T Shirts | Buy Online at T Shirt Subway".
-
It certainly wasn't due to personalization sorry mate but been in the business 10 plus years .
I hear what your saying but investment from the client etc have to be considered
It is still ranking well for music T shirts in the top 5 if its that bad then why ?
-
When I compare the two sites, they are really night and day from a SEO perspective. The streetshirts.co.uk site does have opportunities for improvement, but it is a completely different class as a site then your client's website. A few examples:
-
The streetshirts site has a Verisign EV SSL certificate. It's basically the best SSL certificate from the world's most recognized provider. The tshirtsubway.com site not only lacks a SSL certificate, it seems to fraudulently claim to have a Versign certificate. I was not able to find any evidence of the site having the Verisign SSL certificate it claims to possess.
-
The streetshirts site accepts Paypal and GoogleCheckout. The tshirtssubway.com advertises acceptance of those payment options, but either the store is not properly configured or these claims are fraudulent.
-
The streetshirts site has active social engagement. There are over 100k facebook likes and about 1k Google +1s on the home page. The tshirtsubway.com site does not use any social engagement at all, except a single Google+ widget on the home page in a sidebar below the fold where it is unlikely to be seen and has 0 clicks.
-
The streetshirts site PA/DA is 65/58 vs the tshirtsubway 53/43. While both sites appear to have some manipulative links, the tshirtsubway site appears significantly worse. The majority of the anchor text is either "t shirts" or "music t shirts".
-
The streetshirts site uses mostly valid html code (2 errors). The tshirtsubway.com home page has 68 errors.
-
Since you mentioned the content specifically, neither site is great, but the streetshirts site is significantly better then the tshirtsubway site.
-
The streetshirts site manages it's PR flow much better with a total of 51 links on the home page whereas the tshirtsubway site has about triple that amount.
If I were to use an analogy, I would say it's like comparing a McDonald's hamburger (tshirtsubway) to a Whopper w/Cheese. The Whopper isn't a fantastic burger, but next to a regular McDonald's hamburger it's clearly the better choice. They are simply not in the same class.
The last point is you mentioned the traffic drop. There are simply far too many issues with the site to discuss the ranking drop. The home page should never have appeared in the top 20 results in my opinion so it's hard for me to discuss the "drop" from that perspective. My first guess would be the site never really appeared that high but was shown there due to personalization.
Good luck.
-
-
Yeah Ryan Google.co.uk thats right.
-
Garry, can I ask you to share which search engine you are using? I used Google.com for my research because it was a .com site and nothing was otherwise stated. The result you are sharing is from the UK so I am now guessing you are using google.co.uk.
-
Sorry Ryan but I disagree with your reply. The site is ranking highly for Music T Shirts and was 2nd page for T Shirts for months.
something has happened recently but I hear what your saying regarding the site being stuffed with links.
I am worried the site might have been penalized in some way.
For T shirts this site is no 1 - http://www.streetshirts.co.uk/
your telling me it has lots of great content ??
-
Do you have any ideas on the problem with the site ranking for 1 word.
While T Shirts is clearly a focus for the site, it is also an ultra competitive keyword. While the site has a respectable PA of 53 for the home page, there is only one result in the top 20 sites with a PA that low and it belongs to Zappos (PA 47) but that site has a much higher DA (93 vs 43).
The overall quality of the home page is not great. There are no trust symbols and the page seems to be written for search engines more then for people. The page seems stuffed with keywords and links.
The title is focusing multiple keywords which is also a concern.
In my opinion the site's home page should not appear on the 2nd page of SERPs so I can't speak as to why it may have appeared there in the past. There could have been changes made to the site, the page or it's links. I think the site can do well in SERPs but it definitely requires SEO attention.
-
Thanks Ryan I will pass all these suggestions on. Do you have any ideas on the problem with the site ranking for 1 word.
It was 2nd page for the keyword "T shirts" but it has now totally disappeared. Its really strange ?
Asking the client if they have been adjusting pages but never had this happen before.
-
Hi Garry,
An A-Z link panel is fine if it is well presented and used by visitors. I suggest examining your Google Analytics to see if the panel is really used.
I would recommend combining some letters. The letter "T" offers 6 shirts, but U only has 1, V only has 1, and W, X, Y & Z have zero. It is wasteful to flow PR to pages that have no content. Perhaps you can present one button for U-Z.
Also, the bottom part of the page which offers text has many duplicate links. Once again, I recommend reviewing analytics data first, but if users are not clicking those links I would remove all the duplicates.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Preserving link equity from old pages
Hi Moz Community, We have a lot of old pages built with Dreamweaver a long time ago (2003-2010) which sit outside our current content management system. As you'd expect they are causing a lot of trouble with SEO (Non-responsive, duplicate titles and various other issues). However, some of these older pages have very good backlinks. We were wondering what is the best way to get rid of the old pages without losing link equity? In an ideal world we would want to bring over all these old pages to our CMS, but this isn't possible due to the amount of pages (~20,000 pages) and cost involved. One option is obviously to bulk 301 redirect all these old pages to our homepage, but from what we understand that may not lead to the link equity being passed down optimally by Google (or none being passed at all). Another option we can think of would be to bring over the old articles with the highest value links onto the current CMS and 301 redirect the rest to the homepage. Any advice/thoughts will be greatly appreciated. Thumbs up! Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3gcouk0 -
Bad Domain Links - Penguin? - Moz vs. Search Console Stats?
I've been trying to figure out why my site www.stephita.com has lost it's google ranking the past few years. I had originally thought it was due to the Panda updates, but now I'm concerned it might be because of the Penguin update. Hard for me to pinpoint, as I haven't been actively looking at my traffic stats the past years. So here's what I just noticed. On my Google Search Console - Links to your Site, I discovered there are 301 domains, where over 75% seem to be spammy. I didn't actively create those links. I'm using the MOZ - Open site Explorer tool to audit my site, and I noticed there is a smaller set of LINKING DOMAINS, at about 70 right now. Is there a reason, why MOZ wouldn't necessarily find all 300 domains? What's the BEST way to clean this up??? I saw there's a DISAVOW option in the Google Search Console, but it states it's not the best way, as I should be contacting the webmasters of all the domains, which is I assume impossible to get a real person on the other end to REMOVE these link references. HELP! 🙂 What should I do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TysonWong0 -
Linking to own homepage with keywords as link text
I recently discovered, that previous SEO work on a client's website apparently included setting links from subpages to the homepage using keywords as link text that the whole website should rank for. i.e. (fictional example) a subpage about chocolate would link to the homepage via "Visit the best sweet shop in Dallas and get a free sample." I am dubious about the influence this might have - anybody with any tests? I also think that it is quite weird when considering user friendliness - at least I would not expect such a link to take me to the homepage of the very site I was just on, probably browsing in a relevant page. So, what about such links: actually helpful, mostly don't matter or even potentially harmful? Looking forward to your opinions! Nico
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Unpaid Followed Links & Canonical Links from Syndicated Content
I have a user of our syndicated content linking to our detailed source content. The content is being used across a set of related sites and driving good quality traffic. The issue is how they link and what it looks like. We have tens of thousands of new links showing up from more than a dozen domains, hundreds of sub-domains, but all coming from the same IP. The growth rate is exponential. The implementation was supposed to have canonical tags so Google could properly interpret the owner and not have duplicate syndicated content potentially outranking the source. The canonical are links are missing and the links to us are followed. While the links are not paid for, it looks bad to me. I have asked the vendor to no-follow the links and implement the agreed upon canonical tag. We have no warnings from Google, but I want to head that off and do the right thing. Is this the right approach? What would do and what would you you do while waiting on the site owner to make the fixes to reduce the possibility of penguin/google concerns? Blair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlairKuhnen0 -
Best possible linking on site with 100K indexed pages
Hello All, First of all I would like to thank everybody here for sharing such great knowledge with such amazing and heartfelt passion.It really is good to see. Thank you. My story / question: I recently sold a site with more than 100k pages indexed in Google. I was allowed to keep links on the site.These links being actual anchor text links on both the home page as well on the 100k news articles. On top of that, my site syndicates its rss feed (Just links and titles, no content) to this page. However, the new owner made a mess, and now the site could possibly be seen as bad linking to my site. Google tells me within webmasters that this particular site gives me more than 400K backlinks. I have NEVER received one single notice from Google that I have bad links. That first. But, I was worried that this page could have been the reason why MY site tanked as bad as it did. It's the only source linking so massive to me. Just a few days ago, I got in contact with the new site owner. And he has taken my offer to help him 'better' his site. Although getting the site up to date for him is my main purpose, since I am there, I will also put effort in to optimizing the links back to my site. My question: What would be the best to do for my 'most SEO gain' out of this? The site is a news paper type of site, catering for news within the exact niche my site is trying to rank. Difference being, his is a news site, mine is not. It is commercial. Once I fix his site, there will be regular news updates all within the niche we both are in. Regularly as in several times per day. It's news. In the niche. Should I leave my rss feed in the side bars of all the content? Should I leave an achor text link on the sidebar (on all news etc.) If so: there can be just one keyword... 407K pages linking with just 1 kw?? Should I keep it to just one link on the home page? I would love to hear what you guys think. (My domain is from 2001. Like a quality wine. However, still tanked like a submarine.) ALL SEO reports I got here are now Grade A. The site is finally fully optimized. Truly nice to have that confirmation. Now I hope someone will be able to tell me what is best to do, in order to get the most SEO gain out of this for my site. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richardo24hr0 -
Block search engines from URLs created by internal search engine?
Hey guys, I've got a question for you all that I've been pondering for a few days now. I'm currently doing an SEO Technical Audit for a large scale directory. One major issue that they are having is that their internal search system (Directory Search) will create a new URL everytime a search query is entered by the user. This creates huge amounts of duplication on the website. I'm wondering if it would be best to block search engines from crawling these URLs entirely with Robots.txt? What do you guys think? Bearing in mind there are probably thousands of these pages already in the Google index? Thanks Kim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Voonie0 -
Should product searches (on site searches) be noindex?
We have a large new site that is suffering from a sitewide panda like penalty. The site has 200k pages indexed by Google. Lots of category and sub category page content and about 25% of the product pages have unique content hand written (vs the other pages using copied content). So it seems our site is labeled as thin. I'm wondering about using noindex paramaters for the internal site search. We have a canonical tag on search results pointing to domain.com/search/ (client thought that would help) but I'm wondering if we need to just no index all the product search results. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0