Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. Latest Questions
Log in to post

Latest Questions

Have an SEO question? Search our Q&A forum for an answer; if not found, use your Moz Pro subscription to ask our incredible community of SEOs for help!

  • UnderRugSwept


    I know this isn't a developer forum but I figure someone will know the answer to this. My site is http://www.stadriemblems.com and I have a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file to redirect all non-www to www and it works great. But SEOmoz seems to think this doesn't apply to my blog, which is located at http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog It doesn't seem to make sense that I'd need to place code in every .htaccess file of every sub-folder. If I do, what code can I use? The weirdest part about this is that the redirecting works just fine; it's just SEOmoz's crawler that doesn't seem to be with the program here. Does this happen to you?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UnderRugSwept
    0
  • iAnalyst.com


    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2401732,00.asp According to this, Google is bringing the hammer down soon on another 10-20% of the search results.  While we don't advocate keyword stuffing, exchanging links, or anything too risky I am still concerned. Do we know if the example "perfectly optimized page"; http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization  is now going to be penalty bait? Is this over stuffing? Also, how might this effect ecommerce sites in particular?

    Algorithm Updates | | iAnalyst.com
    2
  • -Al-


    We host a few Japanese sites and Japanese fonts tend to look a bit scruffy the larger they are. I was wondering if image replacement for H1 is risky or not? eg in short... spiders see: Some header text optimized for seo then in the css h1 {
    text-indent: -9999px;
    } h1.header_1{ background:url(/images/bg_h1.jpg) no-repeat 0 0; } We are considering this technique, I thought I should get some advise before potentially jeopardising anything, especially as we are dealing with one of the most important on page elements. In my opinion any attempt to hide text could be seen as keyword stuffing, is it a case that in moderation it is acceptable? Cheers

    Technical SEO | | -Al-
    0
  • CrazySEO


    Hi everyone, I wanted to ask you abour your opinon on mobile SEO. Do we already have two different Indices, one for mobile, one for desktop? Except a few mobile listings I don't see a difference yet. If yes, do I need to do special mobile SEO for my site or is it enough to have e.g. a responsive webdesign which detects the device and shows a different page? Are there any other extra Mobile SEO measures that should be considered? I know of the Mobile Sitemap and directories but is there anything else? Best regards

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrazySEO
    0
  • oneresult


    A site we are working on currently gives no indication of the subfolders in the URL. Eg. the site uses: www.examplesite.com/brand-name Rather than: www.examplesite.com/popular-products/brand-name There are breadcrumbs on site to show the user what part of the site they are in and how they navigated there. We are building a new site and have to decide what route to take: Since the site is already performing relatively well in the SERPs and the URLs are nice and short this way, is it a good idea to keep them like this or is it better for usability to include the subfolders? This post suggests that we would be best off to keep the URLs as they are - particularly since less would be changed http://www.seomoz.org/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo Thanks in advance for your opinions! Liz @lizstraws

    Technical SEO | | oneresult
    0
  • Horizon


    Hi Mozzers, I have a very popular property database on a subfolder of my main website. It accounts for about 2 thirds of my overall traffic. I'm moving the database to a new server, so my choices are now a sub domain or completely new domain. If I move my database to a new domain, will my main site lose SEO because of how popular the database is? Cheers Matt

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon
    0
  • Wardy


    Is there any SEO benefits from registering a previously expired domain name that is still linked to form an authorative source and 301 redirecting it to another site on a similar subject? Obviously first benefit is giving users who are clicking on the link to be sent to a site on a similar subject that just to a dead link.

    Link Building | | Wardy
    0
  • Confetti_Wedding


    Hi chaps, Quick question for you. I'm drilling down in GA to one of our eCommerce pages which has a pretty high bounce rate. I'm looking at referring keywords and they don't seem to make much sense. The page I'm looking at is a pretty deep page but the top referring keywords are all branded terms. The page isn't included in our site links. To explain a little further, this is the scenario I think is happening: User searches using "Brand term". They then click through to our homepage and eventually land on the deep shopping page (on a different subdomain) In GA Content > Site Content > Pages > Primary dimension set to keyword - "Brand term" shows as the referring keyword. Does this sound right? We have a custom GA script set up to track multiple subdomains.

    Reporting & Analytics | | Confetti_Wedding
    0
  • menachemp


    Why does buying links still work?  I don't mean approaching an individual webmaster and cutting a deal, that seems to be nearly impossible to detect.  But the huge link brokers, like Text Link Ads, Build my Rank or Linkvine, Google has to be aware of them, right?  Can't they just create accounts to see the whole network, and ban the sites?  Why wouldn't they just do that?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | menachemp
    0
  • deciph22


    If you do a search for my own company name or products we sell the inner pages rank higher than the homepage and if you do a search for exact content from my home page my home page doesn't show in the results. My homepage shows when you do a site: search so not sure what is causing this.

    Technical SEO | | deciph22
    0
  • deciph22


    I'm doing well on yahoo and bing and the only reason I can think of for why I'm not showing on Google is because I changed the url structure a couple of months ago. I have solid on and off page done for this site.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deciph22
    0
  • Earthsaver


    There is a very strong authority and ranking website that has links on it to some of our competitors websites and other companies. I used opensiteexplorer to check if these links were showing up as backlinks on competitors site but I was unable to find them. This 'powerful' page of links has been around for quite a while so I don't think time has anything to do with it. SEOmoz toolbar itself gives the particular page good rank, trust, and authority. Using this website (not sure it has any use) http://rapid.searchmetrics.com/en/  it finds the outbound links and domains. I was unable to find any nofollow or noindex things anywhere on the site.. Just looking at the site and it's links I would think it an ideal backlink target for my company. However using opensiteexplorer I am lead to believe this backlink is never being found? Any thoughts? Cheers

    Link Building | | Earthsaver
    0
  • YGF


    I'm finding this site great for getting at the information that I need but I am having trouble understanding what I see as conflicting Competitive Domain Analysis and keyword research results for companies in my sector. My company is new to the sector we are in and I am tracking two really well established leaders (Moma and Poppa bear) and one company that is new to the sector (baby Bear) too. When looking at the competitive domain analysis the Momma and Poppa Bear wipe the floor with baby bear (and of course me!) on every single criteria; but when I see who is actually ranking best for the most competitive keywords for our sector who wins...baby bear; I just dont understand it. What is the reason for the disparity between the domain analysis and actual performance? Many thanks, Sinead

    Competitive Research | | YGF
    0
  • MiracleCreative


    I have been reading and trying to learn more about how google takes social media into account when ranking sites, but I cant seam to find a definitive answer to this, does it make a big difference or does it not really matter?

    Algorithm Updates | | MiracleCreative
    0
  • GerryWeitz


    I have been slowly working to remove near duplicate content from my own website for different locals. Google seems to be doing noting to combat the duplicate content of one of my competitors showing up all over southern California. For Example: Your Local #1 Rancho Bernardo Pest Control Experts | 858-352 ... <cite>www.pestcontrolranchobernardo.com/</cite>CachedYou +1'd this publicly. UndoPest Control Rancho Bernardo Pros specializes in the eradication of all household pests including ants, roaches, etc. Call Today @ 858-352-7728. Your Local #1 Oceanside Pest Control Experts | 760-486-2807 ... <cite>www.pestcontrol-oceanside.info/</cite>CachedYou +1'd this publicly. UndoPest Control Oceanside Pros specializes in the eradication of all household pests including ants, roaches, etc. Call Today @ 760-486-2807. The competitor is getting high page 1 listing for massively duplicated content across web domains. Will Google find this black hat workmanship?  Meanwhile, he's sucking up my business. Do the results of the competitor's success also speak to the possibility that Google does in fact rank based on the name of the url - something that gets debated all the time? Thanks for your insights. Gerry

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GerryWeitz
    0
  • adamgthorndike


    Hi, I love the functionality of SEOmoz, although I wondered if I am able to download the social results in another form other than an excel spreadsheet? Thanks, Adam

    Moz Pro | | adamgthorndike
    0
  • hostsurfuk


    Hello SEOMoz! We recently signed up for a free trial and on the pro dashboard it states the following. "To get you started quickly Roger is crawling up to 250 pages on your site. You should see these results within two hours. The full crawl will complete within 7 days." It's been nearly 24 hours and we see no results under Crawl Diagnostics however we do under rankings. Is this normal? Thanks

    Moz Pro | | hostsurfuk
    0
  • steermoz7


    Our client has two almost identical sites targeting: Australia (www.mysite.com.au) Rest of World (www.mysite.com) Currently they have  splash page on www.mysite.com asking users to select: Australia Rest of World (redirects to: www.mysite.com/home) I'm thinking they should get rid of slash page and simply auto detect if user on www.mysite.com is based in Australia and serve a message "Do you want to visit our .com.au site. It's not helped by the fact the .com site appears to get served ahead of .com.au iin australia as both sites are hosted in US.  Looking to change this! Thanks in advance for your help!

    Technical SEO | | steermoz7
    0
  • SamCUK


    My site has some good google SERPS but yahoo and bing don't rank it well at all. I know of course they have different algorithms to google but I would expect there to be some correlation. Why does google appear to consider my site valuable and return it for search queries and yahoo/bing don't?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK
    0
  • opoczno


    Hi, were in the process of creating multiple domains and sites for each country we plan to operate in, should each site site have it's own set of Facebook, twitter you tube accounts etc? I realise this will create more work in administrating each site and corresponding set of social media accounts, but does it have benefits ? As we'll need to do it anyway in different languages, does separating the English languages accounts make any difference carry any benefits? Thanks,

    Social Media | | opoczno
    0
  • blackrino


    My question is: If you have a keyword that is searched more when it's spelled wrong then when it's spelled right - what do you do? Do you do the misspelled word or keep true to the spelling and say oh well to SEO? Also - Along the same lines of that question: What if you have a keyword that has a - in the middle of it. For instance: website and web-site (this isn't the keyword just an example). and drupal website is searched more then drupal web-site but wordpress web-site is searched more then wordpress website. Technically website is the correct spelling and way to write it, but people put web-site (again not the case in reality - just an example).

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino
    0
  • Boodreaux


    Any recommendations for an SEO friendly social sharing button company? Or ones that provide a good service and also actually helps your brand name in SEO? I think it is important for others to be able to share my pages with colleagues and others. Thank you, UtahTiger

    Branding | | Boodreaux
    0
  • Linwright


    We've been slowly working up the rankings for some targeted keywords, and though it's been slow we have recently moved up to pages 1,2 and 3 for some of these kwyrods. Friday I got the rankings report from SEOMOZ and we have completely dropped from all rankings. Everything is gone. We've dropped at many at 40+ positions almost overnight. I haven't gone into deep research as to why this happened yet, and I have not asked the client if he did anything off-site to hinder our rankings, but I know that I have changed nothing in terms of SEO techniques in the past week...and these techniques have been working and moving us up so I'm at a loss as to why all of a sudden we've lost everything. If anyone has dealt with this issue before or can take a look at this site I'd appreciate it: http://www.EraseDisease.com Thanks

    Algorithm Updates | | Linwright
    0
  • david305


    howdy SEO moz people, I had a quick question about internal linking. I am using the WP platform for my website and on one of the widgets I have a category widget that shows all the pages, (on every page). I wanted to know that when if i make a new post or page does it matter if the internal anchor texts are on the content itself or is it suffice to have it on the side bar within the widget? Basically what im asking is does it matter if i have anchor text links on the content itself or is it ok to have it anywhere on the page. and if it does matter to have it on the content, please help out on any suggestions on where to place them. thanks

    On-Page Optimization | | david305
    0
  • SilbertAd


    Hi Everybody, I am trying to understand how does Google works, so I ve been reading and researching a lot. But I am still having a problem that I cannot solve. My website is in several languages, but its main language is Catalan. so if you get into my webite: "www.vallnord.com" the default language will be catalan. but if someone using Google.es in Spanish I would like the spanish version of the web to be the main result not the catalan. unfortunately this does not work like this. For a search query like "Esqui Andorra" the catalan version is on the 1st page and the spanish (www.vallnord.com/es) is on the 4th page. Does anybody know why is this happening or how can I solve it? Regards.

    International SEO | | SilbertAd
    0
  • david305


    howdy people, I had a quick question about keyword stuffing. I am creating a page on my website and on the page i am going to have multiple links, around 15 or so. they all have the word "pickup line" which will be hyperlinked to the respected page. this page is going to serve as a sort of directory to all the various pick up lines, "cheesy", "funny", "dirty" etc. I have written some content on this page as well. I wanted to know that since the keyword "pickup" line will be showing up a lot ( in hyper link form) will this be considered keyword stuffing? for this page

    On-Page Optimization | | david305
    0
  • GulitUpadhyay


    The only browser I am very comfortable working with is chrome. There are plenty of extensions and tools for it but adding them all makes it slow. could use some suggestions from experienced chromers which are most effective extensions for SEOs in Chrome?

    SEO Learn Center | | GulitUpadhyay
    0
  • SirMax


    Are there any SEO benefits drawn from creating backlinks with Google url shortener service(especially for the very deep links) or for the do-follow link juice I have to use a complete address?

    Link Building | | SirMax
    0
  • Mcarle


    I have been slowly building links via personal/professional networking, press from art shows, blogging, and such. I work with several non related domains & local blogs & press outlets, it is pretty easy for me to add a few new pages of content along with text links. Or should I just concentrate on getting links from totally "new" domains that have never linked to me before?

    Link Building | | Mcarle
    0
  • Boodreaux


    Question: Will duplicate informational content at the bottom of indexed pages violate the panda update? **Total Page Ratio:  **  1/50 of total pages will have duplicate content at the bottom off the page.  For example...on 20 pages in 50 different instances there would be common information on the bottom of a page. (On a total of 1000 pages).  Basically I just wanted to add informational data to help clients get a broader perspective on making a decision regarding "specific and unique" information that will be at the top of the page. Content ratio per page? : What percentage of duplicate content is allowed per page before you are dinged or penalized. Thank you, Utah Tiger

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux
    0
  • applesofgold


    How hard is it to grab expired domains? I have my eye on a domain that is expiring in 3 days, but I don't think it's quite that simple. Doesn't it go through months of waiting to become available? Is there an easy way to grab domains that are set to expire? Are the services that offer this type of service good? And who do you guys recommend?

    Technical SEO | | applesofgold
    0
  • applesofgold


    I have heard it's best to have 400+ words of content for strong SEO per page. I believe this is true for the most. I have a project in mind, however, that I am considering doing 100-200 words of content per page. This is for a glossary of terms for my industry, where I have a unique page for each term that describes what that term means w/ 1 image and a few links to related products. Is having just 100-200 words going to be enough? Each page will still be unique, original content. Or is it best to really try for longer articles? In other words, is there a general rule for # of words per page for search engines to see the page as valuable and unique and to give it good ranking? Give me a BIG THUMBS UP if you found this question useful. It won't cost you anything! Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | applesofgold
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, I think that us targeting 2 different geographic locations (San Francisco, CA and Salt Lake City, UT) is negatively effecting the rank of some of our main keywords. My evidence for this: Since December our main keyword (NLP) dropped in ranking for nlpca(dot)com from about 19th to about 40th. This is about when we started to really target 2 different locations. Other main keywords dropped a lot as well, like the important term "NLP Training" Also, our name, nlpca(dot)com indicates NLP California (CA stands for California in Google) The other day we bolded a sentence with the words "Salt Lake City, Utah" at the top of our content and in one of Google's Databases (the one I was looking at) we dropped in rankings for "NLP California" where we used to be completely sitelinked (where we took up a lot of space at the top of the search). Also, we shot up to 1st on my datacenter for both "NLP Utah" and "NLP Salt Lake City". At the same time, our rankings for the term "NLP" dropped off the map. It has come back up, but we've also targeted California again. A lot of our anchor text has the word "California" in it. We're thinking about building a separate site for Utah and just linking to it from the California website when we need to. Does it sound to you, in your experience, that targeting both locations in our case is what's causing a decrease in rankings? Thank you!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW
    0
  • MikeGracia


    Our SEO agency is considering hiring a new SEO consultant, specifically for outreach, with a strong focus on (quality) blog outreach. I know how many successful posting I expect to get per month doing the work myself, but I wanted to make sure that I expected realistic amounts from a new (already experienced) staff member (just to be fair to them!), Soooooo... I thought I would throw a question at other folks, and try to come up with a rough average number, to make sure I don't expect too much (or too little) from the new guy! Now, obviously this varies depending on niche etc, but I am just asking for an approx. average, using search queries like:  _"blog posting guidelines" "[niche here]" _ (Plus using feedburner searches, etc... usual blog outreach tactics!) Also bear in mind that the outreacher will be based in the office, and content will be written for them by professional writers. The question is... As an experienced blog outreacher, based on the above info, how many successful posts would you expect to get per month, assuming a 35hr to 40hr work week (Mon-Fri). Cheers guys! I look forward to your opinions... I think it will be interesting to see how much the answers vary! UPDATE: - So far only Casey seems willing to share 🙂 Nobody else willing to chip in?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeGracia
    0
  • dpaq2011


    Hello, I read about a practice (also suggested by EasyWP SEO plugin) whereby I should place on my current page (call it page A) an internal link to another page (call it page B) using as anchor text the keywords I want page A to rank for. I dont really understand this and it is a cause of great confusion in my head... Can someone explain this to me and why this would be good practice? I would have thought that having as anchor text to page B a keyword I want page A to rank well for would steal juice from page A and give it to page B? Or am I missing something else? Thanks !

    Link Building | | dpaq2011
    0
  • ScottBaxterWW


    Hi Guys, I was listening to the over optimization penalty Matt Cutts was talking about at SXSW over at Search Engine Land. http://searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google%E2%80%99s-working-on-an-%E2%80%9Cover-optimization%E2%80%9D-penalty-for-that-115627# Looking at my on-page reports through SEOMOZ I have A report cards for each page, will we be OK or do we need to take a look? Thanks, Scott

    On-Page Optimization | | ScottBaxterWW
    1
  • wianno168


    My SEOmoz report showed many posts with "too many links." I can easily go back into wordpress and delete self serving links. But is there a downside to this if these posts are already ranked well on google search for the desired key words? Or will deleting the excess self serving links improve ranking

    On-Page Optimization | | wianno168
    0
  • WillQ


    Hi all, Got a bit of a weird problem that I can't work out. I've got a page that contains a video. The SERP for one keyword has the video appearing directly in the search listing like a video rich snippet / schema. Do not want. This rich snippet style video result only appears when the page is found for this one keyword, and no other. How do I stop google displaying the page like this? Why is it only displayed like this for one keyword and no others? The video is a YouTube video and is embedded in the page. Nothing fancy is going on with the code. Any ideas? I'm stumped.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WillQ
    0
  • shebinhassan


    Hi, First time that we are using Yandex for our website SEO. Main reason is we have great customers coming from this region. Any tips that you can share on how to rank on this search engine and I was wondering if its possible to automatically use the subsite www.florahospitality.com/ru in yandex and rambler instead of the default www.florahospitality.com?

    SERP Trends | | shebinhassan
    1
  • eugenecomputergeeks


    I manually listed my site in a few hundred free directories, two paid directores (Joe ant $40, and dirmania $12), and 50 directories that require a reciprocal link ( I paid for a cheap service that gets around having to do the reciprocal). I made the big mistake of having the title and the description for these as the same or very close to the same...is this a huge problem?  Should I have my site removed from the free directories or just let it go? I've since stopped focusing on all the directories, and considering saving up to get in Yahoo directory.  Working now on getting legit and relevant links from .edu sites.

    Technical SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks
    0
  • peruviansoul


    Hello everybody, I have the following erros after my first crawl: Duplicate Page Content http://www.peruviansoul.com http://www.peruviansoul.com/ http://www.peruviansoul.com/index.php?id=2 Duplicate Page title http://www.peruviansoul.com http://www.peruviansoul.com/ http://www.peruviansoul.com/index.php?id=2 Do you think I could fix them redirecting to http://www.peruviansoul.com with a couple of 301 in the .htaccess file? Thank you all for you help. Gustavo

    Technical SEO | | peruviansoul
    0
  • SilbertAd


    Hi Everybody, I am having kind of an issue when it comes to the results Google is showing on my site. I have a multilingual site, which is main language is Catalan. But of course if I am looking results in Spanish (google.es) or in English (google.com) I want Google to show the results with the proper URL, title and descriptions. My brand is "Vallnord" so if you type this in Google you will be displayed the result in Catalan (Which is not optimized at all yet) but if you search "vallnord.com/es" only then you will be displayed the result in Spanish What do I have to do in order for Google to read this the way I want? Regards, Guido.

    Technical SEO | | SilbertAd
    0
  • DerekM88


    we went into our google account and saw about 70 bad links that they found on our site. what's the best thing to do, seo-wise: should we go into the pages that have the bad links and delete them from the html code, or re-direct them in our htaccess script?

    On-Page Optimization | | DerekM88
    0
  • Earthsaver


    using open site explorer I see that my pages have a ridiculous amount of inbound links. I assume it is recording the same link from every page of the website through the menu somehow? Like the about us page has 200+ inbound links!!! ahh.. Is there a way to prevent this besides like.. no-following your own menu? Or is that what your supposed to do.. ~~Confused.

    On-Page Optimization | | Earthsaver
    0
  • DWJames


    Here's our sitemap: http://www.driftworks.com/shop/sitemap/dw_sitemap.xml In google webmaster tools, I can see the sitemap report and it says: Items:Web    Submitted:2,798    Indexed:2,910 Items:Images    Submitted:3,178    Indexed:0 Do you have any idea why our images are not being indexed according to webmaster tools? I checked a few of the image URLs and they worked nicely. Thanks in advance, J

    Technical SEO | | DWJames
    0
  • dreadmichael


    I have a fairly large FAQ section and every article has a "print" button. Unfortunately, this is creating a page for every article which is muddying up the index - especially on my own site using Google Custom Search. Can you recommend a way to block this from happening? Example Article: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/idx.php/11/183/Maintenance-of-Mature-Locks-6-months-/article/How-do-I-get-sand-out-of-my-dreads.html Example "Print" page: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/article.php?id=052&action=print

    Technical SEO | | dreadmichael
    0
  • TheGrid


    If my form starts on domain1.com/leadform/html and the confirmation page is on Domain2.com/confirmation.html can I still set up GA goal conversion tracking?

    Conversion Rate Optimization | | TheGrid
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Browse Questions

Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.