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!

  • mollykathariner_ms


    I see that Ryan Boots answered a similar question for Mark Skidmore (http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-using-parentheses-affect-the-crawlers), but I'd like to dig a little deeper. If I use a key term with a parenthetical phrase in the body copy with either or tags, will it still hold the same weight as it would if I used the same key term without parentheses? Further, would the same answer apply to key terms in the meta description? Thank you. Joe Donohue

    On-Page Optimization | | mollykathariner_ms
    0
  • gooddy


    Hi Folks, How to compete against the big SEO-powered pages like Yellowpages in the SERPs? I mean, they have thousands of Rd -> Rd Links as well as super Page and Domain Authority. How has a let's say Dentist or Electrician a decent chance to compete against those? Does Google give credit to them because of the Content they have on their page? These yellowpages totally take the fun out of it for my clients. Answeres would really much appreciated. Thank you. For me it feels like Don Quijote.

    Image & Video Optimization | | gooddy
    1
  • sellonline123


    Dear Sirs, I am developing a  site www.mysite.com , this site has content in spanish  www.mysite.com/es and in english  www.mysite.com/en I would like to know if for SEO purposes if it  would be good to have an enter page (landing page) at the root of the domain www.mysite.com  where the users can choose the language, so I can get backlinks from both languages  to the home page in this case the enter page. The thing is for spanish I dont see many  seo resources so this way I can get links for the homepage www.mysite.com from english and spanish resources. and then focus in each folder language to get links for each one, english link sfor /en and Spanish Links  for /es Thanks in advance, David

    Link Building | | sellonline123
    0
  • Melia


    I am trying redirect my old site to my new site, both on the same domain. For one reason or another, I am having a hard time redirecting the some of the old urls to the new site. Please let me know how I can fix this issue. Below are the following old urls that are not allowing me to redirect: <colgroup><col width="636"></colgroup>
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/accommodations/ |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/dining/ |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/events/ |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/flintstones/ |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/ |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/dining.html |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/pools.html |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/ |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html |
    | http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html |

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia
    0
  • minutiae


    I think my homepage and basic product listing page may be competing.. We have a very old domain with lots of links w/ generic anchor text ( click here, etc. ) That page is http://mybrand.com which Google ranks for our "widgets" search term. We have a page http://ourbrand.com/widgets that lists the 5 or 6 basic widgets we sell. This page is indexed also, but doesn't have nearly as many links since it is new compared to the age of the domain. After reading this.. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization I I'm not really sure I can remove all "widgets" links from our homepage, since that's a core part of our site's menu / hierarchy. So maybe my best effort would be to reorganize the page so that the homepage focuses on Our Brand Name Widgets .. and let the product page focus on the widgets keyword. Is having those two pages serve to represent those two separate but similar keywords feasible? Thoughts?

    On-Page Optimization | | minutiae
    0
  • Brother22


    I have been noticing a pattern with my highest ROI keywords. The company I work for sells a ton of different brands. Over the last month one by one my ranks are droping down by about three to the parent companys brand stack. Now I know that Google favors brands but it seems in the last month they have become much more aggressive with brand stacking. Has anyone else noticed this problem or has there been some action on the part of Google to make this happen?

    Branding | | Brother22
    0
  • DTOSI


    SEO Moz has reported 7 of my keywords declined dramatically overnight. One word even went down 18 positions in Google. I have a few ideas on why, but none of them really make sence. 1.) The night before the decline I deleted around 6 "test pages" from our website. None of them could be reached through our website but they could be found by typing in the url. Most of these pages only said things like "test", but one of them was a draft of a keyword rich page within my website that only included some of the keywords that went down in ranking. Could the fact that I deleted this page be the cause of the ranking decline? 2.) About two weeks ago I purchased a url volusion-store-design.com which is one of my keywords and forward the address to an internal page within my website http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design. Could have this hurt my rankings, like Google is considering it duplicate content or something? If anyone has some ideas please help. Here are the keywords that I lost ranking for: volusion developers ---- down 18 volusion features ----- down 5 volusion store design ----- down 2 volusion templates ------ down 11 volusion designers ------ down 4 free volusion templates ------ down 4 ecommerce volusion features ------ down 3 Here are the pages these keyword were pointing to: http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Features http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Templates

    Search Behavior | | DTOSI
    0
  • Pherogab


    Hi, One of my clients has a big duplicate content issue on his site. He has two domain, on for each language (FR and EN) but each domain propose the two languages! Meaning you can reach every page with two URL. Example: http://www.brand-realestate.com/en/luxury/index.html (home page of the default site in english)
    http://www.immobilier-brand.com/en/luxury/index.html (home page of the default site in french after clicking on the english link) Each of the two site has a default language and a link to the other one. When you click the link the page you are on just refresh and the URL stay the same with an added language parameter (ie:http://www.immobilier-brand.com/luxe/index.html?lang=english), then all the link in the navigation switch to the other language. So my question is, is it better to: Keep the two domain and instead of having the two languages on each send the traffic to the domain which has the targeted language by default (on the right page of course) Have both language on one domain and redirect all the pages from the other domain to this one (each page to the corresponding one) Just add a canonical URL on each alternative version of each domain Let me know if I'm clear. Thanks for the help. GaB

    On-Page Optimization | | Pherogab
    0
  • dools


    In my keywords should they include the city name or not? Example.....  plastic surgery     or    plastic surgery Orlando I know the search engine knows what city i am in, if i search for plastic surgery and i live in Orlando, does it pull up world wide plastic surgery links first or local plastic surgery clinics? Thanks in advance. Daniel

    Keyword Research | | dools
    0
  • meteorr


    We have a news portal
    We have our https://plus.google.com/ our company profile /
    Articles written our journalists It is possible, that they referred to our https://plus.google.com/our company profile / (so as not to each author to your account.) ? example: This article was written on the page: URL ....
    The author  Natasha Penrova The author [Andrey Dembitskiy on the page with the author: http://site.com/profile/natasha/](http://site.com/profile/Dembitskiy/) <a rel="me" <="" span="">href="https://plus.google.kom / our company profile /">+Natasha Penrova on the page with the author: http://site.com/profile/Dembitskiy/</a> <a rel="me" <="" span=""> href="https://plus.google.kom / our company profile /">+Andrey Dembitskiy So will it work?</a>

    Social Media | | meteorr
    0
  • sophia123


    With Facebook likes it comes up on Facebook, telling you who pressed the 'like' button. You also get the number of people that like it. Is there something like this for the +1 button? I can work it out through webmaster tools, but this is delayed data, unlike the Facebook 'likes' which is instant. Is there a way of knowing who pressed your +1 button straight away, like on Facebook?

    Social Media | | sophia123
    0
  • SteveOllington


    Title says it all really... if a site has a normal H1 and a bunch of: class="h1">...... tags as well, does this count as more than one H1 tag even though it's not really an H1 tag??

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington
    0
  • NeilTompkins


    Looking at integrating our GA account with the seomoz Organic Traffic Data feature.  Can anyone let me know feedback regards this ?

    Moz Pro | | NeilTompkins
    0
  • JetBookMike


    I'm getting a little fed up and exasperated - if I'm honest! Our seoMoz rankings are yo-yoing on a weekly basis - extremely. One week we're in the top 3, the next week, we're not in the top 50. The week after that, we're back in the top 3. Then we're outside the top 50 again. I understand rankings go up and down sometimes - but this is every week, without fail. Not only that, but I also check my rankings with cuteRank and Firefox's Rank Checker and while those rankings are consistent with each other - seoMoz's rankings are always different and the only ones that Yoyo. Further, it's not just our rankings that Yoyo - it's those of our competitors too. They follow the same pattern except that when we go up, they go down, and vice versa, I'm just a little lost and unsure what to do, and I can't believe really that this is a true reflection of what is happening to us on Google every week. I know rankings change but surely Google aren't throwing us around like this? It is making doing any SEO on the site impossible because I never know where I stand. Any ideas or help would be wonderful. Thanks.

    Moz Pro | | JetBookMike
    0
  • pasape


    Hello friends, I have several problems with my website related with duplicate content. When we changed any family name, for example "biodiversidad" to "cajas nido y biodiversidad", it creates a duplicate content because: mydomain.com/biodiversidad and mydomain.com/cajas-nido-y-biodiversidad have the same content. This happens every tame I change the names of the categories or families. To avoid this, the first thing that comes to my mid is a 301 redirect from the old to the new url, but I wonder if this can be done more automatically otherwise, maybe a script? Any suggestion? Thank you

    Technical SEO | | pasape
    0
  • thirsty3


    I have a cleint with a web site and with 3 freestanding wordpress blogs - should we be housing those blogs on the site? should we combine them (its an insurance compnay with several business units). thanks

    Content Development | | thirsty3
    0
  • seomasterbrasil


    Hello everybody! I want to know if Schema.org has any impact on ranking? Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomasterbrasil
    0
  • cpdigital1


    Over the last 12 months we have been working with affiliates and seen excellent traffic and revenue growth from this channel (golf market).  Over the same period we have seen a massive (60%) drop in organic traffic and 40% drop in organic revenue. Our rankings are comparable to last year.  However we are seeing growth in Googlebase traffic and direct traffic Is it the case that consumers are using comparison sites more that organic search queries.  Is there any evidence to support this view if true?  Having content on affiliate sites, could it be harming us organically (but as I say or rankings are comparable to last year - maybe a little worse since Panda updates). Confused? I am...

    Affiliate Marketing | | cpdigital1
    0
  • pauledwards


    We are getting a duplicate content error, with "online form/" being returned numerous times. Upon inspecting the code, we are calling an input form via jQuery which is initially called by something like this: Opens Form Why would this be causing it the amend the URL and to be crawled?

    Technical SEO | | pauledwards
    0
  • MarkHincks


    I monitor several keywords on several domains and i have found that rank tracker gives me one result yet when searching via Google myself (on different machines) i get a different result. I've tried several devices on different networks so there is no chance that Google is remembering my searches as such and i ensure that i am always signed out of my account. All devices provide the same results yet Rank Tracker provides a completely different result. It's as though Rank Tracker is a day ahead or something. Can anyone shed any light for me please?

    Moz Pro | | MarkHincks
    0
  • Socialdude


    Hi, how accurate is SEOmoz keyword ranking v's Google Webmaster? Some Keywords in SEOmoz say I'm in position 3 in Ireland for some Keywords and in Google Webmaster they are figures like 16. I understand in Google Webmaster that the keyword position is an Average What should I be going by and what is the credibility of both ranking estimators?

    Moz Pro | | Socialdude
    0
  • seoug_2005


    Hello, What are the top 5 sites for video submissions ? Any suggestions about which points should be taken into consideration when submitting videos ? Thanks

    Technical SEO | | seoug_2005
    0
  • jamesjd7


    When you redo your website, I assume that sometimes it might turn out worse.  For example, users might just like your prior design better and thus your prior design might actually have better stats. My blog doesn't receive a lot of hits.  I have about 1500 hits per months.  I don't think that i have enough traffic for A/B testing.  Is there a work around to see if my new blog design does better or worse?

    Web Design | | jamesjd7
    1
  • jamesjd7


    my blog is ocpatentlawyer.com.  The domain name has the OC letters in it.  When los angeles internet users land on my blog, they don't click through to the contact page or pick up the phone to call me. Should i start a new blog with a LA focus then link to this new LA patent blog from my main OC blog?  I'm hoping that the LA internet users who land on my OC blog will click through to the LA blog and feel as if I'm in their neighborhood. Should I leave my domain name the same but change the blog to something neutral such as XYZ patent attorney? The basic thing that I want to do is to convert the LA users from my oc blog.  I'm unsure how to do it.

    Web Design | | jamesjd7
    0
  • DigitalJungle


    Dear All, I am facing stupid duplicate page issue, My whole site is in dynamic script and all the URLs were in dynamic, So i 've asked my programmer make the URLs user friendly using URL Rewrite, but he converted aspx pages to htm. And the whole mess begun. Now we have 3 different URLs for single page. Such as: http://www.site.com/CityTour.aspx?nodeid=4&type=4&id=47&order=0&pagesize=4&pagenum=4&val=Multi-Day+City+Tours http://www.tsite.com/CityTour.aspx?nodeid=4&type=4&id=47&order=0&pagesize=4&pagenum=4&val=multi-day-city-tours http://www.site.com/city-tour/multi-day-city-tours/page4-0.htm I think my programmer messed up the URL Rewrite in ASP.net(Nginx) or even didn't use it. So how do i overcome this problem? Should i add canonical tag in both dynamic URLs with pointing to pag4-0.htm. Will it help? Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle
    0
  • tylerfraser


    [same server; same speed] I don't think so, whatsoever right?

    Technical SEO | | tylerfraser
    0
  • fun52dig


    Why is it that when I run an "On Page Optimization Keyword Report" for my website I get a different score when using http://www.tandmkitchens.com vs http://tandmkitchens.com. My keyword is "Kitchen Remodeling" http://www.tandmkitchens.com scores an A http://tandmkitchens.com scores a B It's the same page yet one url scores higher than the other. Any help! Thanks
    Gary

    Technical SEO | | fun52dig
    0
  • pano


    Hello Forum, We've re-launched our website with a new, SEO-friendly URL structure. We have also set up 301 redirects from our old URLs to the new ones. Now, is there any benefit to asking those external websites that link to us to update their links with our new URLs? What is the SEO best practice? Thanks for your insight.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano
    0
  • ZakGottlieb71


    I'm looking at a lot of competitor's sites, and they only seem to have gone after root domain anchor text in their link-building campaigns. Since I am just launching and am essentially a one-man band (with some hired help), is it worth my while to attempt to optimize individual keywords or pages at this point, or should I just do as they have done, and try to get domain-name links wherever I can? For that matter, should I spend more time going for the low-hanging fruit of followed blog comments, forum posts etc, or emailing influencers to try and get editorial links? Sorry if that last one is a bit broad, and thanks very much in advance for any and all help.

    Link Building | | ZakGottlieb71
    0
  • ChatterBlock


    Say I have a page:  mydomain.com/page But I also have different views: /?sort=alpha /print-version /?session_ID=2892 etc.  All same content, more or less. Should the subsequent pages have ROBOTS meta tag with noindex?  Should I use canonical?  Both? Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | ChatterBlock
    0
  • ChatterBlock


    I'm new to SEOMoz.  Been digesting the crawl data and have a tonne of action items that we'll be executing on fairly soon.  Love it! One thing I noticed is in some of crawl warnings include pages that expressly have the ROBOTS meta tag with the "noindex" value.  Example:  many of my noindex pages don't include meta descriptions.  Therefore, is it safe to ignore warnings of this nature for these pages?

    Technical SEO | | ChatterBlock
    0
  • mj775


    I recently purchased a domain from a someone with a large portfolio and my site's link is still found on thousands of his one page/low quality sites. I find these links on Open Site Explorer but not in WT. Should I ask the portfolio owner to remove the link from his low quality domain advertising sites?

    Link Building | | mj775
    0
  • ZakGottlieb71


    I'm building a content site (the model is AdSense revenue) around a certain niche, and I'm currently paying for about 6 articles to be contributed per week. I have the capacity to be paying for a lot more articles, however, so I'm wondering what, if any, factors exist to recommend building the site up slowly as opposed to throwing on e.g. 100 articles over the next week? Those I can think of are: 1. Going slowly leaves room for better keyword optimization etc. 2. Google seems to favor aged domains/content, so 100 good articles now certainly isn't as advantageous as 100 articles 2 years from now. All that being said, I still feel like the benefit in terms of traffic of adding more content now - since I can - might outweigh these considerations. Does anyone have any thoughts?

    Content Development | | ZakGottlieb71
    0
  • mccormackmorrison


    Hello I'd appreciate views of the various metrics I'm struggling with in GA: I've run 2 different reports that provide 2 different outputs. 1. In Standard Reporting you can report in Traffic Sources on Organic Search by Keyword, which returns the number of Visits. 2. In Custom Reporting you can define the Keyword dimension and the Organic Searches metric, which returns the number of Organic Searches. This returns 2 different numbers. For example, over the last month for a given term report 1 returns 77,306 visits whilst report 2 returns 52,589 organic searches. I have found some definitions: "Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site." "Organic Searches: number of organic searches that happened within a session. This metric is search engine agnostic." My understanding of these definitions is that report 2 should return a larger value than report 1 rather than what is happening (i.e. report 1 returns a greater value than report 2). Does anyone have a greater understanding of what these mean and relate to? Does anyone have any views on which metric is more useful? Thanks Neil

    Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison
    0
  • EnigmaSolution


    Good evening, my question might sound stupid but please forgive me, I am still learning SEO. If I build a new site that will replace an existing site. Is there any point to do a 301 redirect for pages that had no inbound link so, no juice to pass? I kind of think that it would be a better practice to 301 redirect each pages to a page that make sense on the new web site  .... but here is why I think that. Why I say that If I am lucky, many of my old web site pages will be indexed, many of them having no inbound links. So once the new web site online, until all my new web sites pages are indexed, I could imagine Google would send  people to the index pages (the old ones that do not exist anymore)... I am right? So in that case, if I do a 301 redirect only for pages that have inbound links, the user would end up on a 404 page. Could you tell me if it make sense  how I think? Thanks a lot !! Nancy P.S. I would not redirect if it make no sense to the user. I fully understand that we must always keep the user experience in mind in any 404 and 301 redirect decisions. But to simplify the question, just suppose it is ok from a user perspective to map every old site pages to a page in new web site.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnigmaSolution
    0
  • EnigmaSolution


    Hello, I have spent a lot of times on the forum trying to make sure how to deal with my client situation. I will tell you my understanding of the strategy to apply and I would appreciate if you could tell me if the strategy will be okay. CONTEXT I am working on a project where our client wants to replace its current web site with a new one. The current web site has at least 100 000 pages. The new web site will replace all the existing pages of the current site. What I have heard for the strategy the client wants to adopt is to 404 each pages and to 301 redirect each page. Every page would be redirect to a page that make sense in the new web site. But after reading other answers and reading the following comment, I am starting to be concerned: '(4) Be careful with a massive number of 301s. I would not 301 100s of pages at once. There's some evidence Google may view this as aggressive PR sculpting and devalue those 301s. In that case, I'd 301 selectively (based on page authority and back-links) and 404 the rest.' I have also read about performance issue ... QUESTION So, if we suppose that we can manage to map each of the old site pages to a page in the new web site,  is a problem to do it? Do you see a performance issue or devaluation potential issue? If  it is a problem, please comment the strategy I might considere to suggest: Identify the pages for which I gain links From that group, identify the pages, that gives me most of my juice 301 redirect them and for the other, create a real great 404 ... Thanks ! Nancy

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnigmaSolution
    0
  • SignifyMarketing


    When reviewing Organic search traffic on my site, there no (not provided) visits.  Not one.  I searched for the term while viewing all keyword visits and still nothing!  I find that hard to believe that is possible with 6,000 monthly visits. Is something wrong? Help?!

    Reporting & Analytics | | SignifyMarketing
    0
  • Prime85


    Just a quick question from someone that is extremely new to this: If "G" penalizes sites for bad backlinks (low quality, spammy) then why are people not building these types of links towards the competitors that are currently outranking them? Or are they?  and if they are, is it beneficial? (are your competitors dropping in rankings?) Seems like a fair question.... Any insight is appreciated

    Link Building | | Prime85
    0
  • TRICORSystems


    I've had to rename some of the pages on my site and also move them to different locations. I placed a rel="canonical" on the old page pointing to the new one. The reports on my PRO Dashboard are telling me that I have Duplicate Content and Page Title errors. Do the SEOMoz automated reports take the rel="canonical" link into consideration or do I need to remove these pages and do a 301 redirect from the old to the new page?

    Moz Pro | | TRICORSystems
    0
  • gmk1567


    Does Bing accept the pagination hints? Thanks.

    Technical SEO | | gmk1567
    0
  • ClaireH-184886


    Hi i have been reading that if you have links going out of your site then this can damage your site, so i have been trying to find out, how i can do no follow links for some of the affliate sites that i have on my site. I have a couple of adverts on my site and i would like to turn these into no follow links while the rest of my internal links on my page are to stay follow links but in joomla i am not sure how to do this. can anyone please give me some advice

    Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
    0
  • nxmassa


    I've been working as a copywriter for about a year and a half now and I feel like the more advanced SEO topics (rel= tags, .htaccess files, etc) are a bit over my head. Is there a website where I can read up on all of these things? I have a basic understanding of them but I couldn't talk about them for very long, and I want to become more well rounded as a search marketer. Thanks!!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nxmassa
    0
  • CMCD


    What are the concerns I should have in deleting a WordPress Page that is no longer relevant or a duplicate? Note: This would be a page that does not have any inbound links to it.

    Content Development | | CMCD
    0
  • ChatterBlock


    My site features businesses that offers activities for kids.  Each business has its own page on my site.  Business pages contains a listing of different activities that organization is putting on (such as events, summer camps, drop-in activities).  Some businesses only offer seasonal activities (for example, during Christmas break and summer camps).  The rest of the year, the business has no activities -- the page is empty. This is creating 2 problems.  It's poor user experience (which I can fix no problem) but it also is thin content and sometimes treated as duplicate content. What's the best way to deal with pages whose content can be quite extensive at certain points of the year and shallow or empty at other parts?  Should I include a meta ROBOTS tag to not index when there is no content, and change the tag to index when there is content?  Should I just ignore this problem?  Should I remove the page completely and do a redirect? Would love to know people's thoughts.

    Technical SEO | | ChatterBlock
    0
  • N5c


    Is there any way to set up Open Site Explorer to show these things for competitor external backlinks: Google Page Rank of the page the backlink is on Google Page Rank of the domain the backlink is on Whether the backlink is a follow or no follow Is this possible in OSE? If not, are there any other SEOMOZ Tools that will do this? Thanks.

    Moz Pro | | N5c
    0
  • ClaytonKendall


    We were contacted by a company that claims they want to build us a local. sub domain that targets only local traffic and operate on a rev share model. I'm very weary of this and can think of many things wrong with it, but I was asked to look into it. I'm about to give them a call to see what they are all about, but I always get great advice from the moz community so I thought I'd reach out to hear your opinions. Thanks!

    Search Behavior | | ClaytonKendall
    0
  • RezStream8


    What are the Page Authority ranges? 1. Excellent link 2. Moderate 3. Total junk link Of course you look at the anchor text you can use, how many links are on the site, how often it is cached. Thoughts?

    Link Building | | RezStream8
    0
  • AdenBrands


    Am I missing something here or does SEO Moz only support three competitor sites to do comparisons against in each campaign? If not where do I add another website to the list to compare against? Thanks in advance!

    Competitive Research | | AdenBrands
    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.