No Internal Followed Links on My Site?
-
I just ran the Site Explorer on my site (myeyedr.com) and it reported that there are no internal links on www.myeyedr.com or myeyedr.com. However, there were 20 internal followed links on www.myeyedr.com/index.aspx.
I'm guessing this is hurting my SEO. Any suggestions?
-
Thanks for the detailed response. I really appreciate the feedback.
-
I did see your NoFlash content. I'm not certain that all bots see the NoFlash exactly as you expect. For example, since googlebot does try to crawl flash it may not be seeing your noflash content. RogerBot is almost certainly not a good proxy for Googlebot on your site.
I suggest you log in to Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ (validate your site if you need to)
Under the diagnostics tab, fetch your page as googlebot, then see if your links are being found.
You also do have a canonical problem on your site. http://www.myeyedr.com/index.aspx#/myeyedr-home and http://myeyedr.com/index.aspx#/myeyedr-home (w/ and w/o the www.) are two different pages in google and look like duplicate content. They are both competing with each other for links. I'd suggest you choose one or the other, and create a 301 redirect from the other. At the very least use a rel="canonical" tag on one version. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
You can also specify only one version be indexed in Google Webmaster tools but it's better to solve it on your site, so it's resolved for all search engines.
The index.aspx page you mentioned is redirecting to the myeyedr-home page.
I would still suggest you rethink your flash home page. It simply doesn't have any content on it to signal Google that your are a relevant site to eye exams for example. Outside of your title tag, the keyword "eye exam" doesn't appear anywhere on the site. You have a bunch of keywords in the Meta Keyword field which isn't used by any search engine but does tell your competitors what you are trying to rank for.
Consider a little more content on your home page, with some good semantic markup H1 tags, etc... Alternatively, just don't try to get traffic to your home page, since it isn't designed to rank well. Instead create more keyword specific landing pages, i.e. make https://www.myeyedr.com/request-form.aspx your most compelling page to get clients to book an appointment and then focus your SEO efforts around getting that page to rank well for "Eye Exam".
I know it feels good to build/own a "cool" site, but if I took you into the usability lab and made you watch your prospects try to use your site, you'd likely be very disappointed. Many users will find your unconventional GUI difficult to navigate. To say nothing of users with special accessibility needs, technical issues with Flash, Javascript, etc.. It's particularly ironic for an eye doctors site to be inaccessible to the vision impaired.
At the very least I'd be watching my Google Analytics very carefully. See what percentage of your traffic has flash disabled and/or javascript disabled. Note your conversion rate and bounce rates of those segments vs. your other traffic.
I also happened to notice that your book appointment form is quite extensive. You didn't ask for any forms usability advice but ask yourself if you NEED all that information before the prospect is allowed to walk in your office? Perhaps you'd book more appointemnts with a much simpler form that feels less overwellming. Then you could hand customers an iPad in your waiting room to fill in all that other info.
Good luck!
-
Consider a design that has flash elements and easily spiderable links. Don't leave anything to chance.
-
crvw,
Thanks for the fast response. We actually have an HTML version of the site, which is automatically displayed if Flash is not enabled. This seems to be working quite well, which is why I'm confused. I would expect the spiders to ignore the Flash and pick up the HTML version when it is crawled.
The other interesting thing is that SiteExplorer sees all the links in www.myeyedr.com/index.aspx but not on www.myeyedr.com which is actually displaying index.aspx. Shouldn't the results be the same?
-
Hi Lance,
I took a quick look at myeyedr.com. The whole page is one large flash asset. That's not a great practice from an SEO perspective (or from a Useability and compatibility perspective).
Google and Bing and making some efforts to find links in Flash, so it's possible that the do see your links, but many search engines won't see any links on your page. As you found out, the SiteExplorer bot (RogerBot) Can't see your flash at all.
Don't forget that almost no mobile devices can see your flash site either. Visually impaired users, etc...
It wouldn't be too difficult to recreate your page with HTML/CSS and it would be a lot more SEO friendly.
Sorry to be the barer of bad news.
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
-
When I click an outgoing link from Analytics - why are they all broken?
On one of my websites, if I visit the Behavior > Site Content section of Anayltics any link I try to open is broken. Google Analytics is appending the domain before every URL causing it to open in a popup but as a broken link. Example: Trying to click a link to a page on the website at this URL: http://www.thisisanexample.com/test.html But in the Analytics popup browser this is what it tries to load: www.thisisanexample.comhttp://www.thisisanexample.com/test.html So I can't preview any of the content within Google Analytics. I feel like this is a settings issue somewhere... Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | ShawnW0 -
Webmaster Tools Suddenly Asking For Verification of Site Registered for 5 Years
Google Webmaster Tools has been successfully installed on my website, (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) for more than five years. Suddenly, today I have received a request to Verify this Site". This makes no sense. The only possibility I can think of is that this is somehow tied to the following events in the last month: 1. Launch of new version of website on June 4th
Reporting & Analytics | | Kingalan1
2. Installation of Google of Tag Manager
3. Sudden Increase in number of pages indexed by Google. Unexplained indexing of an additional 175 pages. About 625 pages should be indexed, while 800 are now indexed. In the last month ranking and traffic have fallen sharply. Could it be tat these issues are all linked? But the strangest issue is the request to verify the site. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks,
Alan0 -
Links From Public Info
Hi guys, I'm conducting a link analysis for one of my websites and I have found a few potentially damaging links. However, there are some people who I have contacted about removing links who have said that they will not remove my link because they are using data that is publicly available. Is there anything I can do to get those links removed rather than diavow? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
My GA code is on my site but Google Analytics isn't being pulled into SEOMoz...why?
The CEO wants me to present an SEO plan next week for three of our sites; however, I got this message when I went to campaign overview tab: "It appears there's a problem with our connection to your Google Analytics account. Please go to your Settings page to update your connection." I double-checked the GA code and it's the same on both our site and in SEOMoz...what gives? I clicked on Choose Your GA Profile->Set GA Account and Profile then got this warning: "Are you sure you want to change your Google Analytics connection? Changing your connection will reset our cache of your historical GA traffic data." I need this data pronto so I can set strategy for three sites; any help would be greatly appreciated! Darrell
Reporting & Analytics | | AdviceElle0 -
Can you link several sites together in Google Webmaster Tools?
I have a client saying that there is a way to link 3 separate websites (A website for each department of a company) in Google Webmaster tools to tell Google it's basically one site but really its 3. Or to tell Google it's the same company and all the sites are one. I have never heard of this & I don't see the point in making 3 separate small sites & "linking" them as one in Webmaster tools. Is there in fact a way? Am I out to lunch on what they might be referring to? I am recommending they create one larger authority site with a page on each department & earn links for each department page & provide informative unique content for each page. Thoughts? Thanks for the help!
Reporting & Analytics | | DCochrane0 -
Rel=nofollow link to a NoFollow, NoIndex Page?
I have a multitude of "schedule a demo" pages/forms on my site that are all identical, so I have on all of them. My question is, should I also place on the link to the "schedule a demo" pages? I know the generic rule is to never nofollow any internal links (per Matt Cutts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOOB_Q0MZY), but should that still apply if the link directs to a page that is noindex, nofollow? Thanks for your input in advance; don't want to run into, as Matt Cutts puts it, "a mini kerfuffle!"
Reporting & Analytics | | BethA0 -
Free Online XMl Site Map Creators up sites over 1000 pages
Does anybody know of a XML site map creator that is free for websites over 1000 pages?
Reporting & Analytics | | AppleCapitalGroup0 -
Tracking Effects of Internal Linking
Can anyone suggest the best way to track the effectiveness of internal linking on a website? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RishadShaikh590