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!
-
How to stop Search Bot from crawling through a submit button
On our website http://www.thefutureminders.com/, we have three form fields that have three pull downs for Month, Day, and year. This is creating duplicate pages while indexing. How do we tell the search Bot to index the page but not crawl through the submit button? Thanks Naren
Technical SEO | | NarenBansal0 -
Do Banner Ads Help In Link Building?
We have been contacting some webmasters for building links, but a lot of them will only do banner ads on there site. Is having a keyword rich alt tag on the banner ad and a do follow link to our site just as good? Would like to hear your thoughts and l experiences in trying to leverage these banner ads to help in seo ranking. Thank you in advance for your input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anchorwave0 -
Subdomain v. subdirectory v. other domain for blogs
I have a good amount of content on our main domain ( http://m00.biz/w4Ljfr ) let's say for discussion it's doctors.com and as you can see, much of it is in subdirectories. Traditionally this was the approach. Now I have some other content on subdomains but it's primarily directories and databases. Now I see that Google is giving subdomains their own SER as if they are a separate site and competitors are locking in the top few results merely by having their content on subdomains. Now I have an opportunity of doing two things: 1. Current content: moving all the content of the past few years on their own subdomain (forum, blog), and I'll be moving forum software anyways. Not sure about our own guide, which has been up there for a while. 2. New content: putting up some new blogs/magazines such as "Doctor's Handbook." Let's say that is a common phrase. I can choose between the following: (a) www.doctors.com/handbook/ (b) handbook.doctors.com/ (c) www.doctorshandbook.com I've got a bit of a quandary here, not sure of the best course of action and am curious to hear from many of you who have handled situations like this before.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | attorney0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hello. My Seomoz report this week tells me that I have about 500 pages with Too Many On-Page Links One of the examples is this one: https://www.theprinterdepo.com/hp-9000mfp-refurbished-printer (104 links) If you check, all our products have a RELATED products section and in some of them the related products can be UP to 40 Products. I wonder how can I solve this. I thought that putting nofollow on the links of the related products might fix all of these warnings? Putting NOFOLLOW does not affect SEO?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Constantly randomly rejected Facebook ads, how to solve this?
Im pulling my hairs out literally, Facebook has been constantly rejecting my ads, throwing away All the work it took the campaigns to set them up. This is getting frustrating since I allways get the same "image" reason. What bothers me is the themes are similar to previously approved ads and I for one cannot find a reason on their lists for the rejection. So I was thinking of just resending the same ads with a higher bid, to test if they approved them or not, but don't know how this will work. Is there a way to contact them to actually tell you what they think was wrong? Is there a chance to file a complaint for the rejection of the same ad with different targeting just on different dates? Im really really stressed out since ive lost 10hours of work dealing with this constant rejection nonsense.
Social Media | | makote0 -
Redirection help to retrieve broken links
Hi, my hosting company after they updated my joomla website lost thousands of pages of content, i am now searching for all broken links and re doing the content to get my links back, but i am having a problem understanding how to redirect these links. For example, i have now managed to retrieve this page http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/have-your-say/liberal-dem-leader-says-he-will-be-the-next-prime-minister-what-do-you-think but the old url for this page was http://www.in2town.co.uk/Have-Your-Say/Liberal-Dem-Leader-says-He-Will-be-The-Next-Prime-Minister-What-Do-You-Think/menu-id-4953 i do not have the unfriendly url for this page, so what i am trying to find out is, how to tell google that the above page is now http://www.in2town.co.uk/news/have-your-say/liberal-dem-leader-says-he-will-be-the-next-prime-minister-what-do-you-think in my joomla site. if anyone could please explain how to do this with joomla 1.5 then you will make me very happy as then i will be able to retrieve some of my lost links
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Too many links in my blog post created by comments. Should I worry?
Every year, we do a popular "Favourite pictures of the year" contest where people vote on the best picture (i.e: their mate's) in order to win something. But I just found that I'm going way over the "Too many links" limit and I think it's because of all the comments. 1. Is it a problem 2. Is there a way to de-activate the links? Thank you! 🙂 Ioan
Link Building | | IoanSaid0 -
Young site trying hard, but banging head against the wall -- Site Review
Hi All New to PRO but we're seriously committed to getting this working. And firstly thank you to anyone who offers any useful thoughts and insights. We've launched a new site, unfortunately late to the market for the season and are really struggling to get search engine recognition. Site: http://www.ignitehats.co.uk/ We're continuously adding new content, slowly gathering more links and working hard to promote socially. But even on our clearest search terms like "Ignite hats" we're down on page 4. Both GWT and the Seomoz tools highlight no big problems (a few titles that are too long) but otherwise nothing. Maybe wrongly we requested that the Google spam team review our site incase it was being penalised, but got a template response saying the site was not in their spam system (phew, there wasn't a reason it should be we believe). We're wondering if this is just that our site is just too young? It's been live for 6 weeks. But worry maybe this is not the case. We've had success with another site we run much sooner than this. Any help or pointers would be really appreciated. Similar stories and what others have done, at least to give us some confidence to carry on would be great. Thanks for reading.
Technical SEO | | JHill0 -
Blog links - follow or nofollow?
I need my memory refreshed here! Say, I've got a blog and some of the posts have links to recommended external sites and content. Should these be nofollowed? They're not paid links or anything like that, simply things relevant to the post.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeterAlexLeigh0 -
Understanding the actions needed from a Crawl Report
I've just joined SEOMOZ last week and have not even received my first full-crawl yet, but as you know, I do get the re-crawl report. It shows I have 50 301's and 20 rel canonical's. I'm still very confused as to what I'm supposed to fix...And, all the rel canonical's are my sites main pages, so hence I am still equally confused as to what the canonical is doing and how do I properly setup my site. I'm a technical person and can grasp most things fairly quickly, but on this the light bulb is taking a little while longer to fire-up 🙂 If my question wasn't total jibberish and you can help shed some light, I would be forever grateful. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | apmgsmith0 -
Run of Site Links
I recently got a link from a relevant site but it ended up being a run of site link. The site has over 3,000 pages that now link to my site. Will my site get penalized for this?
Link Building | | mj7750 -
Competitive Domain Analysis Observation
Hi Folks I have been doing some analysis via SEOMOZ tools of www.anglianhome.co.uk which shows that in their linking root domains they have links from apple.com wordpress.com bravenet.com Are these genuine links or have Anglian managed to spam/black hat the process some how because I cant find any reference to their home improvement firm website on any of these major global websites? But it is obviously working because for searches here in the UK it appears prominently on many competitive search phrases.
Link Building | | idv1 -
Search volume on google.no vs google.com for keyword
Anyone know if there is a way to find out search volume for a keyword on google.com vd for instance in our case google.no ? The reason i am asking is that i am ranking 17 on google.com vs 1 on google.no . how do i go about to increase .com ranking ?
Link Building | | danlae0 -
How to find article sites that will be very picky
I'd like to write good, unique content, and one of the places i was looking at was article repositories. I do understand that most of them have been spammed to death, but I was wondering how I would go about finding ones that would accept my article. I do realize that niche news/forum/informational sites are probably my best bet. Beyond that, would would be a step down or a 'general' article directory where I could get something approved and post content that is high quality. I'm not sure I have time to go around to every niche site and make the handshakes necessary at this time.
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Reciprocal linking with same niche in another country
I was wondering if it was still a viable strategy to pull up 'your keyword' on google.uk or google.au, and email all the top ranking sites or call them and personally ask them to reciprocally link to you. Do these links still hold any value in google's eyes? Or is this a well known strategy that no longer holds any weight and is a waste of time?
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Ranked on Page 1, now between page 40-50... Please help!
My site, http://goo.gl/h0igI was ranking on page one for many of our biggest keywords. All of a sudden, we completely fell off. I believe I'm down somewhere between page 40-50. I have no warning or error messages in webmaster tools. Can anyone please help me identify what the problem is? This is completely unexpected and I don't know how to fix it... Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Anchor text on outbound links on a blog, relevancy detrimental or positive?
We have a blog related to computer support, and we have been using guest posts and promotion of those posts to boost freshness and rankings of the blog. We have been restricting outbound links to prevent words such as 'computer repair, 'computer support' etc, because we were under the impression that if we want to rank for those words, we should only allow INCOMING links with that anchor text, and that outbound links from the page, would rob the other parts of the site of the link juice this page provides. My question is, is this wrong? Should I freely allow outbound links on my blog page that contain anchor text that I my self am trying to rank for? Or was I correct initially? Current the anchor text is in 'related' industries, such as mobile apps, technology news, etc...things that google might think are 'related', but not exactly what the site is about.
On-Page Optimization | | ilyaelbert0 -
How much of a hit to changing urls?
Hi, We have a few pages that from an SEO perspective have poor URLs. We are planning on changing them (and 301 redirecting) the old page to the new page. I heard in the past, this can temporarily negatively impact your SERP rank etc. Since the old URLs are bad, even if there is a temporary negative hit, changing them in the long run it is better, but curious if anyone has any experience on what to expect.
Technical SEO | | NicB10 -
Get Lots of links quickly?
Hey everyone, I have some questions about links. First off, I only do things that are very white hat, so I don't want to do any sort of spammy or paid links. I have been doing SEO for a year and a half and have been researching and following SEOmoz for that amount of time as well. I still am having a hard time getting links. I have a low budget and am not sure what to do. I have two pro webinars in mind as some background for my questions. First of all, the webinar Rand did on link building during the summer was great and really motivated me - http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/future-of-link-building. I realized that there were things we could do to get links, but that they would just take time. Secondly, in Dr.Pete's recent webinar on the future of SEO, (http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/future-proofing-your-seo-2012-edition) he threw out a number like 10 as far as referring to how many links someone could get per day. Maybe I misunderstood but this seems crazy to me. I've tried the tactic of emailing for links, no dice (they were personalized emails and done properly). I am now planning on moving towards producing great content to draw in links, but the kind that would work would take a lot more time and money than what I am allotted. I feel a little overwhelmed and concerned. I would appreciate any insights. Thanks! Holly
Link Building | | hwade0 -
Big difference in rank on google.com and google.no
Hi Our E-com website went from 8th to 1st spot yesterday for our most important keyword (barneklær = childrens clothing) on google.no weirdly enough we arent ranking on first page at all on google.com . I find this very strange especially since the keyword itself is so country specific - mainly because of the norwegian specific letter - æ. The results are not due to personalization i ve check it with the keyword difficulty tool here on seomoz. The sites ranking higher then me on google.com are sites i am ranking higher then on google.no. Anyone got a good explanation ? The changes for my keyword in ranking i saw yesterday was alot more then i am used to see - almost like google made some sort of script change. we went from 8th to 1st. 1st dropped to 4th, 5ht went to 2nd etc - i am not used to seeing this big changes. Anyone got a clue to either of these 2 questions ?
Keyword Research | | danlae0 -
Serps rank different from each login location
I prepared a report yesterday morning and I had a variety of keywords ranking at #5. Today when checked from another location they are all over the place. kitchen mats has been 11-15 for months, and then when checking from a school computer that starts a new session upon each login Yesterday it was #5 as was anti fatigue mats - it has been 27-32. Is google pulling in local hits and shifting the serp rankings? the site is www.wellnessmats.com any there suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I know we have had duplicate content issues, and now reading some of the posts - perhaps "key word cannibalization"? thanks
Keyword Research | | bakergraphix_yahoo.com0 -
New Backlinks by Week?
One of my competitors has recently got a surge of links and I need to work out where they've been focusing their efforts to make sure I don't get left behind. The only method I've really got at the moment is looking at saved reports from OSE and trying to find new links between them. This is obviously time consuming and has some odd results (Old content showing up only on newer reports for example and have to ensure that each weeks report is generated exactly the same). What I really need is a weekly output of where 2 or 3 websites have been gaining links. Can anyone recommend any tools that can help me with this? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Stinkyink0 -
Article Marketing - manual vs automated or both
Hi Mozzers, Are services such as Article Samurai or Content Crooner worth the time/effort/money? On one hand, I cannot see them generating high quality links. But , they may be able to help on the quantity side of the link building equation. Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with automated article submission? Thanks, Peter
Link Building | | hawkvt10 -
Should we block URL param in Webmaster tools after URL migration?
Hi, We have just released a new version of our website that now has a human readable nice URL's. Our old ugly URL's are still accessible and cannot be blocked/redirected. These old URL's use a URL param that has an xpath like expression language to define the location in our catalog. We have about 2 million pages indexed with this old URL param in it while we have approximately 70k nice URL's after the migration. This high number of old URL's is due to facetting that was done using this URL param. I wonder if we should now completely block this URL param from Google Webmaster tools so that these ugly URL's will be removed from the Google index. Or will this harm our position in Google? Thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | eCommerceSEO0 -
Question regarding two versions of a page (redirect)
At one point in my SEO journey I had noticed some duplicate issues going on in Google webmaster tools (I could have been reading it wrong.) It looked like WMT was saying I had 2 versions of some of pages...it looked like pages that ended in a '/' ranking differently than pages that have no slash at the end. So I downloaded the redirect plugin and redirected many non / pages to the page that end with the "/". This was probably a mistake. but I'm trying to clean all of that up. (I'm also noticing that SEOMoz tools tells me my site has many, many redirected url's. I'm not sure why. I was looking at http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/pages?site=noahsdad.com%2F this morning at my top pages and it shows 2 versions (one being redirected) of the page about my son who was born with Down syndrome. (Noahsdad.com/story and Noahsdad.com/story/) I don't know if I've built rankings for those pages separately and it would now hurt me if I did away with the redirect. I'm not sure why I did the redirects (I must have read something online somewhere.) I'm wondering if someone wouldn't mind looking at the report and letting me know what the best way to 'clean' this stuff up...Should I go into the redirect software and delete all of the redirects where the non / page is being redirected to the / page? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | NoahsDad0 -
New bookingsengine url, what would you do?
A client of mine is introducing a new and improved bookingsengine. They're launching it on a different url than the existing one. The existing one needs to stay online a little bit longer for affiliate purposes. The old engine url has a sitelink in the SERPS and ranks well on a few terms. I'm wondering what you would do in this case? They want the new url to rank as quickly as possible also as sitelink of course. Any help greatly appreciated. I have some thoughts of my own of course... 🙂 But to keep the discussion as wide as possible... I'll wait a bit to add m thoughts.
On-Page Optimization | | YannickVeys0 -
Use of <h2class="hidden">- SEO implications</h2class="hidden">
I'm just looking at a website with <h2class="hidden">Main Navigation and <h2class="hidden">Footer inserted on each page, and am wondering about the SEO implications.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
<a></a><a></a><a></a><a></a></h2class="hidden"></h2class="hidden">0 -
Ignore Urls with pattern.
I have 7000 warnings of urls because of a 302 redirect. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/44060409.png/ I want to get rid of those, is it possible to get rid of the Urls with robots.txt. For example that it does not crawl anything that has /product_compare/ in its url? Thank you
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Overly-Dynamic Urls how to fix in SEOMOZ?
Hello. I have about 300 warnings of overly-dynamic urls. In urls like this: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/clearance?dir=asc&order=price&p=10 As you can see all parameters are needed, and my ecommerce solution generates them automatically. How can I get rid of these warnings? I suppose that by using robots.txt, but I have no idea about it. In my google webmaster tools I have already configured that these parameteres the crawler should not index them. Check the image here: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/64/37092444.png/
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Bookmarklet question
This is with reference to the post http://twkm.ca/seo-bookmarklet/#comment-47 My questions are - 1. Where should i enter the code in IE and in 2. Chrome Thanks
Social Media | | seoug_20050 -
How to Increase PageRank
Hi, My website has 0 page rank. How can I increase this? What are the different factors to increase page rank? My site is HomeEscapade.com Thanks in advance...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trigun0 -
Changing backlinks anchor text
Hi, I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links? Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this? Thanks Duke
Link Building | | clickangel0 -
Should rel canonical tags include the root domain
It does sound like a silly question but bear with me a little... I recently installed on my Joomla website a module that automatically creates rel canonical tags for pages that contain lists that can be sorted by different criteria: (price, alphabetic order, etc...) I know that a proper canonical tag should look like this: However, the module I'm using creates the following structure Will this work? I mean, will it be "understood" by the bots? To see what the module actually does, you can visit the following link http://www.quipeutlefaire.fr/fr/index.php?sort=price&sort_direction=desc&limit=10&limitstart=0&option=com_auctions&category=240 In the source code you will see that the canonical tag is Which is the original "unsorted" page. Thanks in advance for your help
Technical SEO | | QPLF0 -
Www vs "non" www site addresses and SEO
I first apologize for the lame question title - didn't really know how to word it... I'm having a bit of a conundrum and cannot figure out whats going on, but in the mean time I thought I would ask to see if its hurting my ranking. My site at www.ap-mg.com is built on WordPress using the Thesis them by DIY (just a little upfront info). I am very careful to make sure that all my links are in a particular format i.e. http://www.ap-mg.com - on my site, as well as other sites I have my profile on. My site also used to be hosted on the /home directory until about a month ago. My problem is that when I click on the DA MoxBar link while at my sites homepage, it takes me to Open Explorer, but to ap-mg.com and shows no results - I then add the www to the front of the address and vuala - results. But then the second issue I'm having is then it tells me that my site is redirecting the the /home directory, which its not and I'm still trying to figure that one out. So with all the craziness with my site, www, no www, /home....is this killing any chance of real ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | apmgsmith0 -
Strengthening my personal coaching site
Hello, My domain for my personal coaching site is my name bobweikel(dot)com and I think this is weak for all of my keywords, but I'm sticking with it. What's some of the easiest way I could gain strength with national keywords so that people will pursue phone coaching with me, terms like nlp coach wealth and success coach wealth coach personal coach life coach I know that these are varying greatly in competitiveness. Thanks!
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Local SEO, identifying citations
Hello, How do I identify free local citations to target for bobweikel(dot)com I want to rank first for several local results such as nlp boise life coach boise personal coach boise and related terms. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
How does TTH have only 220 Domain Backlinks?
Was looking at these guys today http://www.tentonhammer.com/ One of the orginal games websites, an authority in its niche and 7 years old (about as long as that niche has existed) Its all unique, high quality content but it has a only 220 linking domains, including BBC etc It doesnt make any sense to me that this website should have so few linking domains. Anyone have a thought as to whats going on here? S
Competitive Research | | firstconversion0 -
Trying to avoid Keyword Cannibalization
I have a navigation menu at the top of my page with drop down menus that lead to different pages of my web site. Very typical navigation. If I have a page that is optimized for a particular keyword, lets say "Awesome Blue Widgets", do I want to remove that link from the navigation menu on the page awesome-blue-widgets.htm since the link uses the keyword phrase "Awesome Blue Widgets'?
Keyword Research | | TRICORSystems0 -
How can small businesses use Social Media?
This is a question that has been nagging at me for more than a year now. I've played around on Twitter and LinkedIn, and am a frequent user of Facebook. I really struggle to see how a small business can utilize Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Let's get the obvious, "Tell your friends about your business" post out of the way. I have a friend that posts about his business everyday, the same thing, over and over. I have since blocked his feeds because they are annoying. I always pay attention to when someone makes a post about a new business they are starting because I want to watch and see how they use social media to grow, but it never seems to develop into anything more than a simple "I have a new business." I don't want to be the guy at the neighborhood Christmas party that everyone ignores because they think the only thing I will talk about is my business. I've also tried doing the "Build real relationships on Twitter" approach. It seems like everyone I chose to follow and try to become friends with was a bot. They didn't post anything, but "Inspiring Quotes" and "Random Facts". I think my real question is "How do small business use social media, WITHOUT being annoying?"
Social Media | | kadesmith0 -
Rating Snippet on Google SERP
Hi Mozers, I have question today. I see lot of Serps with rating review on the snippet, good i am reading on google about that, and i placed it on my website and i checked it, through google test tool and it works! My question is: Which type of rating system can i use on Google Adwords? Only shoping rating, or can i use the same rating system of my content and not on any product-shop on google? Can you tell me please! Thanks, Meti.
Paid Search Marketing | | leadsprofi0 -
Huge increase in rank ..
Hi Today I went from 8th to 1st place for my main keywork ( barneklær) childrens clothing in norwegian . Ive been trying to link build regularly. Last couple of weeks ive gotten links from a few catalogues and some blogs and I by no means expected a rank increase like this. Ive tried to look them up to understand why this happened - but i cant understand it. Any ideas as to how i can find out. I just dont want to drop 7 spots again without knowing what happened .. Sites URL www.epleskrinet.no if that can help . Thanks Dan Lærum
Link Building | | danlae0 -
Mini site links?
Can anyone point me to information about the "mini" site links on the Google search results or tell me how to get them set up? These aren't the full site links that show 3 by 3 under the first listing but small text links that appear for certain results. (See attached image for reference.) Are these something that can controlled/requested? NAj6E.png
Technical SEO | | DVanSchepen0 -
Best URL for international domain
Hello SEomozers We have a site with this structure: -www.xyz.com US customers, limited content in12 languages, -global.xyz.com for International customers, full content in 12 languages. The global site is the hub for the rest of the world. We are creating a new site from scratch and want to consolidate the two domains in one by using subfolders, such as: www.xyz.com for USA, www.wyz.com/jp for US customers reading in japanese and www.xyz.com/int-jp for customers from Japan (international - will set geo location with webmastertool) What do you think would be the best naming convention for the international?
International SEO | | FXDD
www.xyz.com/int-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu/jp or
www.xyz.com/ ...any other suggestions?0 -
French (Canadian) Directories? Know of any?
There's never any love for Quebec and the horrible french we speak! However, I obviously still need to rank in French SERPs. Anyone know of any good directories or possible backlinks for are Quebec/Montreal/French/Canadian ish? Thanks folks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | deuce1s0 -
Is there a work around for Rel Canonical without header access?
In my work as an SEO writer, I work closely with web designers and usually have behind the scenes access. However, the last three clients who hired me have web designers that are not allowing admin access to anyone else (including the clients) outside of their companies/small business. Is there a work around for the Rel Canonical element that usually is placed in the header? I am using All-In-One-SEO plug-in to address part of this issue. Sage advice or discussion on this is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | TheARKlady0
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.