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!

  • meterdei


    With all the stress on inbound marketing and focusing on links for traffic and not just SEO, it would seem to me that going forward the best skilled people for the job of link building are public relations consultants (at least for startups). PR folks have the contacts and training to get publicity on the big authority sites and really drive big traffic as well as strong links. What am I missing? For link building, why should we hire an SEO firm and not a PR firm? Secondly, I've been contacting a few agencies to get some idea of what they charge and most seem to start at about $5k pm whereas we only have a budget of around $1k for link building. Am I wasting my time thinking I may get any benefit at this low of a budget? I'd love to hear from anyone with any experience using PR firms/consultants and if you have any recommendations that would be great also.

    Branding | | meterdei
    1
  • evacuumstoreSEO


    I'm currently creating a 404 error page for my site and I noticed that a similar site uses some sort of code to automatically generate a meta title. Is this useful? For instance type in electrolux.com/john This page does not exist but in the title you'll see John | Electrolux How can i do this on my site?

    Web Design | | evacuumstoreSEO
    0
  • anthematic


    I have a question about the order of parameters in an URL versus duplicate content issues. The URLs would be identical if the parameter order was the same. E.g.
    www.example.com/page.php?color=red&size=large&gender=male versus
    www.example.com/page.php?gender=male&size=large&color=red How smart is Google at consolidating these, and do these consolidated pages incur any penalty (is their combined “weight” equal to their individual selves)? Does Google really see these two pages as DISTINCT, or does it recognize that they are the same because they have the exact same parameters? Is this worth fixing in or does it have a trivial impact? If we have to fix it and can't change our CMS, should we set a preferred, canonical order for these URLs or 301 redirect from one version to the other? Thanks a million!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic
    0
  • AndyMediaLounge


    Hi, We're building 4 e-commerce stores at the moment which are all very similar. They all sell sofas but to different markets. Product content will be different on each site so the content won't be duplicated but the overall theme of the sites will be the same, all on the same server, being launched at the same time. Should I be concerned that Google may not index all of them? Thanks, Andy

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMediaLounge
    0
  • SamCUK


    I'm confused - seo moz crawl shows I have lots of pages with too many links.  150 - 200 or so. I'm not sure how any of my pages can have that many links and they don't appear to to me. Here's an example: http://www.musicliveuk.com/tag/wedding-entertainment They all appear to be 'tag' pages. These pages are blocked by meta robots anyway so is this a problem and how do I fix it? I also am very confused by rel canonical. I have 300 odd pages with this warning. Is this good or bad? Plesae help!

    Link Building | | SamCUK
    0
  • Switch_Digital


    Hi there, I have a number of clients who have their telephone numbers on their sites (understandably of course!) and SEOmoz is classing them as links and therefore a 404 in the crawl software. The protocol is added in the code so if viewing the page on a mobile you can call the client. Should I be doing anything else? Webmaster does not pick these up as 404s so I am wondering if this is an SEOmoz bug or that I should be adding a no-follow? Thanks jT

    On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital
    0
  • NeilPursey


    Hi How do I remove the  "/?__utma=...." at the end of my URLs?We have a site http://www.jetonline.co.za/, if you click on one of the menu navigation links i.e. "fashion". A long "/?__utma=...." url appears. I understand this is for tracking as we have separate domains for each page but is there a way to remove this dynamic url and keep it hidden from users?Thanks in advance

    Reporting & Analytics | | NeilPursey
    0
  • Jacobe


    Hi I'm running into some top level domain conflicts in Google's webmaster tools. I hope you can help me out. Thanks in advance. Website example.com has sub folders for each language. There's no content at the root example.com. The root 301 redirects to English at example.com/en/. In Google Webmaster Tools the root site is added because the web developer can't find a Joomla plugin to put the sitemap and robots file in each sub folder. It's all mixed in the root. So only 1 sitemap and robots exists for all the sub folder languages in the root of the site. As a results Google shows the root site in search results where it should show the appropriate sub folder (in this case Dutch). I see these conflicts occur everywhere. Soon Chinese, Romanian and other languages will be added. I'm afraid this problem will only get worse. What can I do to make sure Google treats every sub folder as a distinctive site and doesn't treat the root as a site?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobe
    0
  • AppleCapitalGroup


    Does Too Many On-Page Links on a Page Really Matters? Especially if they are pointing to internal page?

    On-Page Optimization | | AppleCapitalGroup
    1
  • Lantec


    Hello, I have a catalogue website and I am implementing the rel="next" and rel="prev" to the website. My question is that we do have a view all page also, which apparently Google likes over a 'page1'.. Should I add the canonical to this page? I already have it set to WEBSITEURL/sonos (which is going well) I don’t want to have to change this to [URL]sonos/view-all (which is my view all link) as the first page is getting ranked well I am then telling Google no, the view all page is the parent. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks Rick

    Search Behavior | | Lantec
    0
  • AJLComputers


    Hi everyone. I have added a couple of keywords to one of my campaigns and everytime I try to check the rankings I get the message below... Whoa! We're dusting off the cobwebs from your keyword history. Don't worry, your data is fine. Check back soon to see your updates. Any idea what's going on here or how long it'll take to get this info? Thanks.

    Keyword Research | | AJLComputers
    0
  • staingurus


    I run a forum that currently has 351 links on its home page (and p.1, 2 etc.) due to all the tags that appear under feed items. Is it a viable solution to get this number down to simply  nofollow all of these tag links? How else can I get this number of links down recorded by Google down, or is it not something I should be especially worried about?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | staingurus
    0
  • wcrfintl


    Please check out this doc - https://docs.google.com/document/d/19VS4SnVvq6VJHQAIrB3CX7iL1ivZU4DH6fyfrHLsNFk/edit Any insights will be highly appreciated! Oleksiy

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wcrfintl
    0
  • ConversionChamp


    Assuming you need to build a private link network from scratch, how would you go about doing it? I am not looking for some shady tactic, but rather something that would be white hat, yet will help in our SEO efforts. Thanks in advance.

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConversionChamp
    0
  • sssrpm


    Hi guys, In SEOMoz Search Ranking Factors, one of the the top ranking factors is number of unique root domains linking to the page: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-5 My question is: do these unique root domains need to be unique root domains liking to my domain also? E.g. www.mydomain.com/landingpage1/ already got a link from www.externaldomain.com If www.externaldomain.com has another link pointing to www.mydomain.com/landingpage2/ will this link be counted? If yes will the value be diluted as www.externaldomain.com has already linked to www.mydomain.com/ Many thanks. David

    Reporting & Analytics | | sssrpm
    0
  • 9xbmarketing


    Just wondering if anyone had any advice on working with a client's PR agency to maximise your efforts for them online? A lot of their work will transfer really well online, however, I'm worried if we barge in their they may see us as stepping on their toes and feel a bit threatened... Has anyone had any experience combining efforts with a PR agency in the past and how have you achieved success? I think it will be key to get them on board so we're both pulling in the same direction, it's just finding the right way of going about this without alienating them...

    Branding | | 9xbmarketing
    0
  • seanuk


    I'm surprised there is no simple overview of all the features anywhere, or a guide on how to use the tools? There's a nice intro video, and a good beginners guide, then BAM! - straight into the Pro Tools (it's a bit daunting for someone learning!) Or at least that I can find... and help or pointers would be great 🙂

    Moz Pro | | seanuk
    0
  • seanuk


    I'm new to SEOMoz and wondering if some nice person can put this into plain English for me? 🙂 On the Competitive Domain Analysis report there are green follow / no-follow links and blue followed / non-followed linking root domains? what is the context of the green & blue circles? is there a better or worse visual representation that I should aim for - more dark green, more light green or about half & half. thanks in advance

    Moz Pro | | seanuk
    0
  • onlinefun


    Good tool guys. Basically, when I used to work at a software development company, we used to have a huge hosted app that had to import/export 10's of 1,000's of records, and at batch of 10,000  could be done in a few seconds. When exporting from OSE, it can take several minutes. Thanks and keep up the good work. Look forward to when your database can catch up to Yahoo's old SiteExplorer (yes, I know they were a full on search engine 🙂 but your one of the only decent alternatives, so guessing you're getting quite popular now 🙂

    Moz Pro | | onlinefun
    0
  • tylrr123


    I am glad to join seomoz,I am from China,the seomoz is a famous seo service provider company,some reason is one seoer guru named zac introduce seomoz to Chinese seor. So I think if seomoz provider seo tools or service to chinese seoer is a good idea.The market is very big.But chinese biggest SE is www.baidu.com,not google.There is something diffrent from baidu and google. My site is www.cn-sen.com, It's good performance at google with the keyword "除湿机",but it's have some trouble at baidu.I think the content of website is the main reason.and internal link is not good. Could someone give me some advise of seo to make my site better performance? thanks very much.

    International SEO | | tylrr123
    0
  • Juratovic


    Hello Everyone, I have been analyzing various link building strategies recently. One tactic that always seems to come up is to give stuff away. I wanted to get everyones thoughts on creating Wordpress and Joomla Themes, then giving them away as a link building strategy? The goal would be to create some stellar themes, then place our website link in the footer with some text that would read "Wordpress Theme by Pete Juratovic" and Pete Juratovic would point to my website. Is this a good tactic, or would this look like spam? If spam, why? Why would this tactic be any different then creating a great infographic as a link building stratedgy? Pete

    Whiteboard Friday | | Juratovic
    0
  • Trendymobiles


    Hi i am new to blogging and new to SEOMOZ so any one can help me how to increase my backlink count

    Link Building | | Trendymobiles
    0
  • Francisco_Meza


    I have a prospect in the credit repair industry. Does anybody know of some software where the clients can log into their own accounts to see the progress? The feature I am looking for is like a Real Estate website where the brokers can create their own accounts and upload their own properties.

    Web Design | | Francisco_Meza
    0
  • AdoptionHelp


    I'm about to launch a redesign of my company's main website, and we've updated most of the URLs to be more user friendly and SEO optimized. I've just finished editing my spreadsheet, and see that I'll need to implement 244 redirects. My question is: Are there performance issues with loading your .htaccess file up with almost 250 301 redirect commands? I've heard a bloated htaccess file can really slow down apache, should I be approaching this a different way, maybe with php?

    Technical SEO | | AdoptionHelp
    0
  • rdreich49


    We host our blog on WordPress as part of our site.  The blog "address" is www.website.com/blog/post.  If I were to take the same content that's on this blog and post it on a Blogger account we have, would Google consider that duplicate content?  If not, would there be any benefit to doing this?

    Link Building | | rdreich49
    0
  • tpt.com


    Our client ecommerce site load from 3 different servers using load balancing. abc.com : IP: 222.222.222 Abc.com: IP: 111.111.111 For testing purpose 111.111.111 also point to beta.abc.com Now google crawling site beta.abc.com If we block beta.abc.com using robots.txt it will block google bot also , since beta.abc.com is really abc.com I know its confusing but I been trying to figure out. Ofcourse I can ask my dev to remove beta.abc.com make a seperate code and block it using .htaccess

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tpt.com
    0
  • znotes


    A few weeks back, I went to a Distilled meetup here in NYC.  SEER Interactive's Mark Lavoritano did some cool slides on the seasonality of keywords. Basically, his presentation made the point that you should not only think about which keywords you want to rank for but also WHEN they are most valuable. This made me think...we have a lot of moving parts to our marketing efforts. Emails with interchangeable modules, a homepage with interchangeable links, and other dynamic elements for which we have to decide what themes we want to market for the week. Babies or bikes? Kitchen Gadgets or Wine Glasses? Google Insights for Search  is a great tool which allows you to look at keyword traffic year over year. However, for many of the keywords (like the ones mentioned above), on a multi-year timeframe, it can be tough to sift out the specific weeks in which traffic repeatedly peaks year after year. What I really wanted to see was the last 5 years laid on top of each other to find the common peaks. Even better, if I could map 5 years of keyword data to a single row in a spreadsheet and then use conditional formatting to create a colorscale, I could create a sweet forecasting calendar with several keywords and use this to choose the best timing for various marketing campaigns. Here's a link to a screenshot of the calendar I created: forecasting calendar I could have done this in excel, but I've been wanting to try out Python for a while now and decided this was a great time to do it. After some reasearch, I figured out how to import a csv into python and the rest was done with for loops and lists, which is fairly basic python. I've pasted my code below. In a nutshell, the program runs through all 5 years of traffic data and increments a count in a list whenever it sees a peak (according to a threshold called "peakInterestValue" that you set in the code). The output is a list of 52 numbers [0-5] (representing 52 weeks over 5 years). If the value is a 5, it means that all 5 years showed a peak in traffic at that week. If it's a 4, then 4 (out of 5) years showed a peak that week, etc...you can then copy/paste this to a row in an excel sheet with all your keywords, apply a color scale w/ conditional formatting, and  boom! you've got a forecasting calendar. This code works on the exact file that Google insights exports so you don't need to format it at all. It's ready to rock. If you want to see the code formatted and cleaned up, check it out here. If you want to see a hot mess, I've also pasted the code below. You can drop it right into a .py file and run it off a cmd prompt but you'll need to install python first: http://www.python.org has installation info and great tutorials as well. Enjoy! import csv """reads a file from google insights""" """Open the last 5 years of data from Google Insights""" anniversarygiftFile2007 = csv.reader(open("anniversarygift2007.csv","r"))anniversarygiftFile2008 = csv.reader(open("anniversarygift2008.csv","r"))anniversarygiftFile2009 = csv.reader(open("anniversarygift2009.csv","r"))anniversarygiftFile2010 = csv.reader(open("anniversarygift2010.csv","r"))anniversarygiftFile2011 = csv.reader(open("anniversarygift2011.csv","r")) """Combines the data into a list""" anniversarygiftFile = [anniversarygiftFile2007,anniversarygiftFile2008,anniversarygiftFile2009, anniversarygiftFile2010,anniversarygiftFile2011] """counters"""i=0j=0 """flags used to initialize lists""" definedFlag=0 definedFlag2=0 for i in range(0,5): j=0 for row in anniversarygiftFile[i]:         if j<=4: """skips the first 5 rows""" elif j==5: """initialized the list on the first week of data""" anniversarygift=[row[1]] definedFlag = 1 if(i==4): peakInterestWeeks=[0] else: """appends the list with each row""" anniversarygift.append(row[1]) if(i==4): peakInterestWeeks.append(0) if len(anniversarygift)>=52: print("i = ",i) if (i==0): if(definedFlag==1): anniversarygiftArray = [anniversarygift] definedFlag2 = 1 elif (definedFlag == 1): if(definedFlag2 == 1): anniversarygiftArray.append(anniversarygift) break j=j+1       i=i+1 """ Now all of the data is in python lists""" i=0 j=0 """ Lower peakInterestValue to lower the traffic threshold and discover more peaks """ peakInterestValue=90 """ This is a variable to help you tweak peakInterestValue""" peakInterestCnt = 0 for i in range(0,5): print("i =",i) for j in range (0,51): if int(anniversarygiftArray[i][j])>peakInterestValue: """If keyword interest peaks, peakInterestWeeks[] is incremented""" peakInterestWeeks[j]=+=1 peakInterestCnt +=1 print("Peak interest",peakInterestWeeks)print("Peak Interest Count =",peakInterestCnt) """peakInterestWeeks[] is printed out to a row in an excel file""" c = csv.writer(open("anniversarygift.csv", "w")) c.writerow(peakInterestWeeks)

    SEO Learn Center | | znotes
    0
  • InetAll


    We are setting up landing pages on our site that will cater to specific cities, in an effort to be more relevant to the users in those cities and also capture more localized traffic. These regional pages will each have a unique paragraph at the top, but below that is a sentence or two about each product line that would be difficult to rewrite with quality more than 10 - 15 times. Would the paragraph at the top of the page be enough unique content (about 4-5 sentences)? Obviously the duplicate content wouldn't be to my advantage, but is it really necessary to rewrite the other sentences about the product lines? What's the most efficient method to complete this project in a whitehat fashion?

    Image & Video Optimization | | InetAll
    0
  • CliffAuerswald


    Hey there - I've been reading about rich snippets and was thinking of hiring a programmer to implement this. In my industry I would be the only one thus far on front page with a highly competitive keywords and would be displaying 5 stars based on our testimonials etc, would that be acceptable? These testimonials are not on my homepage so if I implemented would it be a misuse of these tags? My site is mortgage / financial company and I don’t see much in available tags yet except for “location” and “reviews” I could implement. I'm just trying to figure this out and I greatly appreciate any feedback! 😄

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CliffAuerswald
    0
  • MaxOtto


    Does anyone know of a good SEO Site planning tool? I see that SEOBOOK has something that looked interesting but they want $300/mo! Thanks in advance! Andy

    On-Page Optimization | | MaxOtto
    0
  • yacpro13


    Hi guys, we've successfully optimized our home page such that it receives a Grade A for 3 completely different, high traffic keywords. Looking forward to seeing the results! The keywords in question were identified by using the monthly searches reported from the Google Keyword Tool. For one of the keywords, the Google Keyword Tool differentiates between what I thought would be seen as being the same. For example, let's say Google reports these three keywords as high traffic keywords: tea cup
    tea cups
    the tea cup Using the On-Page Report Card, we get a Grade A for 'tea cup', but we get an F for the other 2 terms! I thought Google searches didn't really care about the plural form or adding the word 'the' in front. How should we interpret the result from the On-Page Report Card for the plural form of the keyword and with the word 'the' added in front? Would you track all 3 instances of the keyword independtly in your campaign, or would you just track 'tea cup'? Thanks!

    Moz Pro | | yacpro13
    0
  • Linesides


    What sort of value does an RSS feed provide for a website? If you use an RSS feed on your website, what do you use to keep it updated? Can you recycle mention of content / pages in the feed over time? Any good links on this subject?

    Link Building | | Linesides
    0
  • levalencia1


    Hello. As I am a SEO Beginner I wonder if the elements of the page will make a better or worse ranking. I ask this because my boss asked to change the order of the elements. He wants to put first the section of Supplies and Accesories, and then additional information. http://www.theprinterdepo.com/hp-9500mfp-refurbished-printer Does it affect my seo for worse or for better?

    Technical SEO | | levalencia1
    0
  • clayts


    Are there companies out there that accept payment on the results they get for organic search listings? I have a site that I want to be number 1 for two terms on Google UK and .com and I while I dont think it will take much effort I would like to find a decent SEO company or person that can do this and be paid for the result. What do people think?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | clayts
    0
  • Discountvc


    Hey Mozzers, We have a vacation rental site where every property has its own video of the property. (i.e. YouTube embedded video) So, with more than 1000 homes, how do you make a video xml map? Or, should we have an xml map with 1000 links on it? Can't wait to see your insights!

    Image & Video Optimization | | Discountvc
    0
  • evoNick


    I'd like to add our merchant review count and rating to our site and use the schema.org markup to indicate to the search engines what these are.  The reason I'd like to do this is so that the star rating pulls through to the organic listing. Check out this example from several UK tight sites.  Notice how the organic listings display the star rating... My questions are: Has anyone seen an example of this from Google.com (US site) I heard that you should only add this markup to the homepape - but couldn't find any Google documentation to back this up.  Do you know if this can be applied throughout the site w/o penalty? Thanks everyone!

    Technical SEO | | evoNick
    0
  • Shawn124


    Hello, My website started to offer guest blog posting and was wondering if it is a good idea to have an anchor text link to a not relevant website in the author bio. The content the guest blogger gave me is relevant to my website but in the author bio there are a couple of anchor text links that are linking to a completly different industry. Thanks in advance for your help.

    Link Building | | Shawn124
    1
  • anthematic


    Hi, If you perform a Google search like site:seomoz.org, how are the pages displayed sorted/ranked? Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic
    0
  • agirlandamac


    I'm moving my store to a new site and will have a much friendlier but completely different URL structure. I used Open Site Explorer to find inbound links to 513 pages and have done about half so far. The remaining pages have one link each at a page authority of 27 or less - but there are still 250+ of them. I have to manually view each old page, search for the product on the new site, and enter the redirect as there is no way to translate old URL's to new ones. How important is it for rankings to redirect the remaining 250 or so  pages?

    Moz Pro | | agirlandamac
    0
  • raybiswa


    I want a list of some good dofollow bookmarking sites and directories so that i can put my site there. Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raybiswa
    0
  • PureStorageMarketing


    For about a week, unable to access onsite explorer, anyone else having same issue?

    On-Page Optimization | | PureStorageMarketing
    0
  • raybiswa


    I am interested to do the SEO work for an affiliate site. Is it same as others or something particular has to be done for affiliate sites.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raybiswa
    0
  • Nightwing


    Good evening from I can just about keep my eyes open 7th cup of Coffeee David, Ok I'm adding a mobile sitemap to a mobile site. Whilst I know this is important the client wants one good reason why he should have one integrated into  http://www.innoviafilms.com/m/Home.aspx I'm so knackered I cant articulate one, could some one put me out my misery and give me one good reason I should toil away with mobile xml; sitemap? Resource: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34648 Any insights welcome 🙂

    Technical SEO | | Nightwing
    0
  • sciway


    Hi! We are desperately needing to overhaul our site navigation setup, and we have so many categories that we think our site could really benefit from a drop down navigation similar to what these sites have: http://www.paychex.com/ http://www.bmc.com/ We've held off doing this type of navigation in the past because we were only seeing people use flash to create it and we knew that it wouldn't be good for link juice. But these two sites are using HTML and CSS - which seems like a much better style and good for SEO. Do you agree? We want to make the switch but are worried about losing linking power by nesting our navigation in 's and CSS styling.

    Technical SEO | | sciway
    0
  • inc.com


    Can anyone explain what this backlink does? The original content was syndicated on Yahoo News from Mashable. At first glance it appears to be a straight up follow link from Yahoo to Mashable, but upon closer inspection I saw this in the code. went public just three months ago Here's the article on yahoo news: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-zynga-generates-12-revenue-them-175509319.html I've rarely seen backlinks from yahoo for any content partner let alone follow links. The us.lrd.yahoo.com in the hyperlink makes me highly suspicious.

    Technical SEO | | inc.com
    0
  • ATMOSMarketing56


    I have a list of keywords I'm trying to target and they are essentially different variations of each other: Example: blue yankees baseball hat yankees blue baseball hat yankees baseball hat in blue Should I be targeting all these on the same page, or should I be making a new page for each one? Thanks Mozzers!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing56
    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.