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After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

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  • RASEO


    Hello, I have a question about my company's new website. I've worked in SEO and studied Google Analytics results for a few years now but have never really come across something like this. I started in this position in January of this year and when I started breaking down the traffic sources in Google Analytics, I noticed most of the traffic was coming from Google.com as a referral source. I had never seen Google.com as a referral source before so I looked into options for what it could be. It was not a paid ad and our organic traffic was coming through in Analytics, Before I could get any further, our new website was launched (we switched CRM's to WordPress) and the referral traffic from google went from 2,966 in January of 2015 to 22 in February 2015. for more comparison, in February of 2014, the referral traffic from Google was 2,496. I expected a drop when we switched CRM's but we correctly re-directed all pages and created a new sitemap and our organic traffic is up since the switch (not enough to cover drop in referral). I thought at first this had to do with our Google sellers account being de-activated when we made the switch, but I quickly fixed this over a month ago and no change. I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen Google.com come through as a referral source in Google Analytics and if they we're able to figure out what it actually was. This would be a great help! Thank you, Alex

    Reporting & Analytics | | RASEO
    1
  • Fuel


    We have 2 keywords that are synonyms we really need to rank for as they are pretty much interchangeable terms. We will refer to the terms as Synonym A and Synonym B. Our site ranks very well for Synonym A but not for Synonym B. Both of these terms carry the same meaning, but the search results are very different. We actively optimize for Synonym A because it has the higher search volume of the 2 terms. We had hoped that Synonym B would get similar rankings due to the fact that the terms are so similar, but that did not pan out for us. We have lots of content that uses Synonym A predominantly and some that uses Synonym B. We know that good content around Synonym B would help, but we fear that it may be seen as duplicate if we create a piece that’s “Top 10 Synonym B” because we already have that piece for Synonym A. We also don’t want to make too many changes to our existing content in fear we may lose our great ranking for Synonym A. Has anyone run into this issue before, or does anyone have any ideas of things we can do to increase our position for Synonym B?

    Algorithm Updates | | Fuel
    0
  • MiriamEllis


    Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!

    Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis
    9
  • seoprojecter


    I am using Opensite explorer on my site which uses Sucuri and it shows 0 for everything. Does Sucuri stop MOZ from reading the link? I also suspect that using Sucuri has made my SEO suffer because the first page is always saying "redirecting" . Anyone with experience to this? Thanks

    Link Explorer | | seoprojecter
    0
  • 2Spurs


    Hey Moz'ers - I just added a new site to my Moz Pro account and when I got the crawl report back there was a ton of 404 errors (see attached). I realize the best way to fix these is to manually go through every single error and see what the issue is... I just don't have time right now, and I don't have a team member that can jump on this either, but realize this will be a huge boost to this client if/when I get these resolved... So my question is: Is there a quicker way to get these resolved? Is there an outsourcing company that can fix my clients errors correctly? Thanks for the help in advance:) wBhzEeV

    Moz Pro | | 2Spurs
    0
  • nm1977


    How exact should my meta titles and H1 one be compare to the keyword you wish to rank on. Eksample. When I do a research with google AdWords the keyword tool shows me: 260 monthly searches for house for rent Hua Hin 140 monthly searches for Hua Hin house for rent 70 monthly searches for House for rent in Hua Hin The first two includes the exact same 5 words while the last one includes the stopword "in". That google have different search volumens for these very smilair search queries tells me that small differences matters. So how does that effect the way i shoulf write my: a)meta titles b)H1 I feel I get better sentences often by reordering the keywords etc. “Top tips on how to rent house in Hua Hin” Instead of “Top tips if you want a house for rent in Hua Hin” Do you use stop words like “in” hua hin. (only used in 25% of the searches queries)? Also would it matter if i write a plural form of a keyword instead of a singular etc propeties and sted of property? My goal is to write easy to read and unique content but i feel i can make exact matches if required with out compromising to much.

    On-Page Optimization | | nm1977
    0
  • yoursearchteam


    We have a client whose website was hacked, and some troll created thousands of viagra pages, which were all indexed by Google.  See the screenshot for an example.  The site has been cleaned up completely, but I wanted to know if anyone can weigh in on how we can cleanup the Google index.  Are there extra steps we should take?  So far we have gone into webmaster tools and submitted a new site map. ^802D799E5372F02797BE19290D8987F3E248DCA6656F8D9BF6^pimgpsh_fullsize_distr.png

    Technical SEO | | yoursearchteam
    0
  • MrGlobalization


    Hey there guys, have heard some recent information from some experts that utilizing commas in headings, meta titles or descriptions is not good for ranking. Can you guys please shed some light on this? Thank you!

    Technical SEO | | MrGlobalization
    0
  • Sika22


    How could I begin to research this to find out why we have less total links and a lower domain authority. Our DA has gone down two points and our total links dropped by a few thousand.  I'd like to find out why that happened but I'm just not sure where to start.  Thanks!

    Moz Pro | | Sika22
    0
  • nans


    Will images, loaded via css class, get indexed? For example something like : style="background-image: url(https://www.mysite.be/content/dam/homepage-mama.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.2000.9999.jpeg);"

    Image & Video Optimization | | nans
    0
  • BrandExpSteve


    I have ppc landing pages that are similar to my seo page. The pages are shorter with less text with a focus on converting visitors further along in the purchase cycle. My questions are: 1. Is there a benefit for having the orphan ppc pages indexed or should I no index them? 2. If indexing does provide benefits, should I create links from my site to the ppc pages or should I just submit them in a sitemap? 3. If indexed, should I use rel="canonical" and point the ppc versions to the appropriate organic page? Thanks,

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandExpSteve
    0
  • nchachula


    I have an e-commerce website and am trying to create product category pages. I am under the impression that Description is the text that would appear under the title on a google search and I believe the meta description is just what google reads? Is having BOTH important or just description? Is it ok to duplicate the description for the meta description? I know its not good to duplicate descriptions on other products and pages.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchachula
    0
  • GBCweb


    Technical help required - please!
    In our Duplicate Content Pages Report I see a lot of duplicate pages that are created by one URL plus several versions of the same page with the dynamic content, for example,
    http://www.georgebrown.ca/immigranteducation/programs
    http://www.georgebrown.ca/school-program.aspx?id=1909&Sortid=Study
    http://www.georgebrown.ca/school-program.aspx?id=1909&Sortid=Term
    http://www.georgebrown.ca/school-program.aspx?id=1909&Sortid=Certification
    http://www.georgebrown.ca/school-program.aspx?id=1909&Sortid=Title How do we solve it?

    Moz Pro | | GBCweb
    0
  • NAHL-1430


    Hi guys, We've recently noticed a (very) minor competitor competing with us, as well as some of our industry's biggest names, in the Google SERPs - and the reason why has us absolutely stumped. Aside from an awful website from an aesthetic/UX point of view, their on-site content is horribly over-optimised, with keywords on the homepage even STRONG TAGGED for crying out loud! A backlink check using OSE and Ahrefs found 19 linking domains - most of which were just trash - but there were 5 that boasted some decent DA, the highest being 43. The thing is, these 5 sites are all very generic industry-relevant "blogs" that provide exceptionally poor quality content. The thing is, they have some very high quality backlinks (the BBC, the Guardian and CNN to name just three) acquired when the websites were something different entirely. The competitor has basically bought expired domains, turned them into basic websites related to our industry and linked them to their main domain. My question then is: is this competitor benefiting from the very high quality links that are pointing at sites that are then linked to their main domain? I found an article from 2009 that suggested old links stop counting after being purchased by someone else, but we are stumped as to why they could be otherwise. Thanks in advance everyone! John

    Competitive Research | | NAHL-1430
    0
  • emerald


    Hi Mozzers,
    Hoping for your advice on how to handle the SEO effects an image URL change, that changed 3 times, during the course of setting up a CDN over a month period, as follows: (URL 1) - Original image URL before CDN:www.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 2) - First CDN URL (without CNAME alias - using WPEngine & their own CDN):
    username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 3) - Second CDN URL (with CNAME alias - applied 3 weeks later):
    cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg When we changed to URL 2, our image rankings in the Moz Tool Pro Rankings dropped from 80% to 5% (the one with the little photo icons). So my questions for recovery are: Do I need to add a 301 redirect/Canonical tag from the old image URL 1 & 2 to URL 3 or something else? Do I need to change my image sitemap to use cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg instead of www.? Thanks in advance for your advice.

    Local Website Optimization | | emerald
    0
  • seopalermo


    hi,  i'm working on a site  endrena.com  who has more of 466 links, but i don't know what they are, i know only the links from menu and subcategories but they are not 466. the moz onpage grader say me the category receive a A grade and it don't say me any advice like more link but if i use the rankranger onpage it found more of 466 links! Can you help me to find all this links? 166m3gz.png

    Moz Bar | | seopalermo
    0
  • BohmKalish123


    I am considering adding our actual service area to our Google My Business profile, but I don't want this to dilute our local search results.  As it is, we come up in the top 3 or so when searched in our HQ's city and several nearby cities when you search for us in Google Maps (although when I look at the top 10 organic for Google for some reason when you search for these cities + our keywords Google doesn't show any local results). Our actual service area is fairly large, comprising the states of CA & Hawaii & parts of CO, AZ, and UT.  I would be adding the service area by zip code rather than radius, as a radius wouldn't make any sense in this case (particularly considering the distance between HI and CA).  Is it better to keep our relatively high ranking in local results?  Will adding the service area not affect local results negatively? Also, do you know why Google isn't showing me local results when I look for our keywords + our nearby cities?  When I look for these keywords in larger cities like LA or San Diego, Google always shows me local results.

    Local Listings | | BohmKalish123
    0
  • McTaggart


    Hello Mozzers, I was wondering whether there's any best practice guidance out there re: how to deal with membership/subscriber (existing customer) only content on a website, from an SEO perspective - what is best practice? A few SEOs have told me to make some of the content visible to Google, for SEO purposes, yet I'm really not sure whether this is acceptable / manipulative, and I don't want to upset Google (or users for that matter!) Thanks in advance, Luke

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
    0
  • Ecom-Team-Access


    Hi there, Our company publishes press releases on the company blog and have found we were hit by an algorithm update. We have identified the press releases as being the culprit and would like to move all press releases to a company press page on the main site and title it "press room" or "press." We have a lot of media sites that visit our blog to grab the most recent releases, so they are important to the business. My question is, how should we handle the page SEO wise? Should we do a "no index" or a "no follow" on all the links? I'm curious what advice the community has on how to handle a company's press page. Thanks!!

    Branding | | Ecom-Team-Access
    0
  • CFSSEO


    For some reason, we have some URLs on our site with parentheses in them such as somesite.com/used-this(that)What will parenthesis do to the ranking of those pages?

    Reporting & Analytics | | CFSSEO
    0
  • BohmKalish123


    I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page.  What do you think?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish123
    0
  • MOZ.info


    Hey guys, I have been managing a few websites and have input them into Moz for crawl reports, etc. For a while I have noticed that we were getting a gratuitous amount of errors when it came to the number of missing meta tags.  It was numbering in the 200's.  The sites were in place before I got here and a lot of the older posts no one had even attempted to include tags, links of the page or anything. As they are all Wordpress Sites and they all already had the Yoast/Wordpress SEO plug-in installed on them, I decided I would go through each post and media file one at a time and update their meta tags via the plug in.  I personally did this so I know that I added and saved each one, however the Moz crawl reports continue to show that we are missing roughly 200 meta tags.  I've seen a huge drop off in 404 errors and stuff since I went through and double checked everything on the sites, however the meta tag errors persist. Is this the case that Moz is not recognizing the tags when it crawls because I used the Yoast Plugin?  Or would you say that the plugin is the issue and I should find another way to add meta tags to the pages and posts on the site?  My main concern is that if Moz is having issues crawling the sites, is Google also seeing the same thing? The URLS include:
    sundancevacationsblog.com
    sundancevacationsnews.com
    sundancevacationscharities.com Any help would be appreciated!

    Moz Pro | | MOZ.info
    0
  • dwautism


    Hi, I am new to eCommerce. Traditionally I have run a couple of semi-successful websites relying largely on Adsense revenue and affiliate income. So I have a bit of experience with on page and off page SEO. This time around I am creating a membership site and also sell eBooks as bundles that non members can buy. My question is, should I SEO optimize the sales page for my eBook or use another content page that links to the sales page. For example, if I am selling an ebook on Dog Training and targeting the main KW "Dog Training Tips", should my sales page be optimized for "Dog Training Tips"? The reason I ask is because typically Sales pages do not provide a lot of useful information but are more geared around selling the product. The other option would be to create a helpful information page targeted for "Dog Training Tips" and lead users to my sales page through contextual links, banners, popups (I hate popups), etc. This would be the approach for the other LSI keywords anyways. Any thought would be appreciated.

    On-Page Optimization | | dwautism
    0
  • xvpn902


    Hi, I've tried searching in past threads about this, but couldn't find any updated and recent answers. I'm looking for a way to see historic ranking and search data within Moz further than from a single month for organic visits, and further than 3 months for the keyword rankings. Is this possible? Thanks

    Product Support | | xvpn902
    0
  • vivekrathore


    Hi, Will interlinking our internal pages using dynamic parameters(like abc.com/property-in-noida?source=footer) help us in increasing our rankings for linked pages OR we should use static urls for interlinking Regards

    Web Design | | vivekrathore
    0
  • regineraab


    I can't seem to figure out how often our domain authority is updated - it seems random, do you know typically when this happens? Thanks!

    On-Page Optimization | | regineraab
    0

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