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  • I tried searching for questions regarding dynamic URLs and canonical tags, but I couldn't find anything s hopefully this hasn't been covered. There are a large number of overly dynamic URLs reported in our site crawl (>7,000). I haven't looked at each of these, but most of these either have a canonical meta tag or have are indicated as FOLLOW, NO INDEX pages. Will these be enough to overcome any negative SEO impact that may come from overly dynamic URLs? We are down to almost 0 critical errors and this is now the biggest problem reported by the site crawl after too many on page links.

    Moz Pro | | afmaury
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  • In your Google Places listing on the website link option should this point to a specific location based page for your business? For example my company have several locations in different towns and cities, at present they all point back to the homepage, but should they point back to a specific location based page on the website as I am sure Google looks at the website link for location based text and it its pointing at the homepage which has generic title and h1 tags etc and does not cover location based text then the Google Places listing ranks lower as it displays the meta title in the places result? This is the only thing I can think of because the listings that appears top 2 have no additional info, no photos, no reviews etc while my listing has a description, images, video etc and the centroid location is nearer to the centre of the city than many of the others so I am at a loss again to work out why Google is ranking this so poorly in Local Search?

    Image & Video Optimization | | idv
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  • SeoMoz comes back with duplicate title errors. However these duplicate errors are /feed pages in Wordpress. http://www.guardianpoolfence.com/choose-pool-fence/feed/ http://www.guardianpoolfence.com/how-to-choose-pool-fence/feed/ Why does this happening with only selected pages? I have many more posts but only these two are coming up with duplicate title errors. Also how do I set up meta descriptions for categories and archive pages for example www.guardianpoolfence.com/2011/07 I am not sure how these pages were created and how to give these individual titles. I mean, titles at all... Anyone?

    On-Page Optimization | | Viktoria
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  • "Best Bar In Chicago" - http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=best+bar+in+chicago They have only 5 Google reviews, and their local directory reviews are suspect.  One of them goes to rateclubs.com and it's not even a page for their business, while one of them doesn't have user reviews, it's just an editorial review.  The other one at superpages.com doesn't even link back to their site, it links to their restaurants.com profile.  What is going on here? I've been trying to figure this out for a while as their first place ranking has been solidified for quite some time now.  I can also tell you that a few of the bars listed below them have a MUCH higher profile and are better known.  You can see that just by the reviews.

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum
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  • Ok...so the other day I went from HTML to PHP in every part of my website. I want to know the best option for me for redirecting my pages from HTML to php. I had my site scanned with SEOMoz and I was given many 404 errors which is not at all good. I do not have any pages of my site linking to any of these html pages. All of the site links have been updated. I have checked 3 times. I have never created a robots.txt file so I would love to get a little help with this part. I was thinking it would be best to tell Google not to worry about these pages in the file. I kept the pages up and I plan to remove all code with them so that no content shows up if someone visits but the issue with that is my site is already indexed as HTML. I want to have the HTML pages redirect to the PHP without worrying that my visitors will land on my site via Google onto an HTML page. I hope I am making sense. What is the best advice you can give me. I need all pages to redirect to PHP. I used an htaccess redirect from all HTML to PHP but when I get so many of them added I get an error on my site saying too many redirects. Seriously need help.

    On-Page Optimization | | TrendyHost
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  • I know that's vague, so let me specify.  I recently got a client on the second page for a relatively difficult 2 word keyword.  That is when the location is set to Chicago, Il in Google and private browsing in Chrome (so I'm not logged in).  This is great because Chicago is the more important location (the client is located there and that's what his location is when he searches in Google).  But when he goes home to the suburbs and searches, the ranking completely disappears.  Why would he rank in a much more desired location such as Chicago vs a suburb way out of the city?  Is that something you can control or target in terms of optimization?  It's difficult trying to explain why this is happening to clients.

    Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum
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  • Hello, We're adding a blog to one of our sites. How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines? If it varies from industry to industry, please give a couple of examples. We were going to do 500 words but that seems a bit long. Thanks!

    Content Development | | BobGW
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  • I've used Open Site Explorer here at SEOmoz for the first time and I'm confused by the results. I'm wondering how dated the results are? And, what are they based on? For example, I'm certain my facebook shares and like are higher...same with the twitter links. It seems kind of old?! One of my competitors who gets about 2x more traffic than me DOES have great backlinks. I know that. BUT, it's odd that her facebook and twitter results are what they are compared to mine - they're WAY higher in site explorer  AND her links seem on par with her facebook page whereas mine don't. Whereas mine seem WAy Way lower than what they are in reality. She barely tweets and facebooks any more. Maybe once per month. She started out gangbusters, but doesn't do it much any more. That's kinda why I'm wondering if it's based on older stuff and not updated often? Anyone know?

    Moz Pro | | annasus
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  • In "links to your site" how does Google Webmasters determine the order of the URLs? By influence? Quality?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
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  • What happens if you go back and change old 301 re-directs? So instead of it re-directing  from A to B then C, we write a new redirect for A to C. What does Google see this as next time it crawls the site?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anchorwave
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  • Hi my site www.in2town.co.uk which is a lifestyle magazine has gone under a major refit. I am still working on it but it should be ready by the end of this week or sooner but one problem i have is, google is not visiting the site. I took a huge gamble to redo the site, even though before the refit i was getting a few thousand visitors a day, i wanted to make the site better as i was getting google webmaster errors. But now it seems google is not visiting the site. for example i am using sh404sef and i have put friendly url in the site and on the home page it has its name and meta tag but when you look at google it is not giving the site a name. Also it has not visited the site since october 13th Can anyone advise how to encourage google to visit the site please.

    Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
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  • So I have read on here that page URL Hiearchy is important. My question is from a search engine standpoint which of the following methods would be the best to use (or another if not listed) COMPACT and naturally hierarchical MountainBiking.com MountainBiking.com/adventures ( a list of the pages below ) MountainBiking.com/adventures/in whistler (for each page) MountainBiking.com/adventures/in utah OR VERBOSE but reptetive MountainBiking.com MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking adventures ( intro + a list of the pages below ) MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mounting Biking adventures in whistler MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mountain Biking Adventures in Utah It seemed like the blog I read suggested the compact form, but it seems to me that the verbose (though admittedly a bit clunky) seems better so far as exact keyword match etc. Experience and or advice on this?

    On-Page Optimization | | bThere
    0

  • I am creating a new site and am looking for some advice on how to structure the site Using Google's keyword search tool it seems like I have a dilemma in that about 50% of the keyword pairs are contained in 10 keyword pairs that are similar The first two pairs have about 49% of the traffic and only differ between plural / singular, not quite sure how to handle that, or if google has a method to make these more or less synonomous The last 8 pairs are roughly similar in distribtuion As an example (not my case, just for visualization) Mountain Bike Classes Mountain Bike Instruction Mountain Bike Workshops Mountain Bike Training Etc ... which all more or less give the same results (yes some difference but they all deal with learning how to ride a mountain bike, again this is not my exact case, don't care a whit about mountain bikes 😉 I don't see giving each of those kinds of pairs their own page since the content would be pretty much the exact same, making it substantially different would also be problematic (if I am thinking about this correctly) I have a clean slate to work with from a site perspective so I am wondering how people here would, or better yet have handled similar situations

    On-Page Optimization | | bThere
    0

  • I’m starting to notice some interesting behavior in Google rankings. It seems like most days, rankings move around but movements are relatively small. Then, maybe once or twice a month, there are days (like today) where everything seems to shift around in more dramatic fashion. I don’t know if it’s algorithm updates, or maybe they do light crawls every day and heavy crawls a few times a month..?? anybody have any idea what is behind these big waves of ranking changes?

    Algorithm Updates | | znotes
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  • Someone recently told me that using branded keywords extensively in your copy and titles may be unnecessary so long as you have a substantial catalog of back links containing keyword rich anchor text. Can I take this to mean I can privilege non-branded terms over branded in my onsite SEO efforts?

    On-Page Optimization | | bbelgard
    0

  • We are planning to place an advertisement in a magazine that is published as both print and online.  The online version uses bluetoad.com flash.  Ranked issues have a PA 44 / DA 55.  Why is the PA so high for a flash publication with no apparent content?  Do publishers provide walkable content for bots?  Most important, what does this mean for advertisers regarding link juice? Best,
    Christopher

    Link Building | | ChristopherGlaeser
    0

  • I have a client who has done a lot of link building, and just migrated his site from an old platform to a more seo friendly one, but now he is moving pages on the new site. Old Site --> (301 re-direct) --> New Site --> (301 re-direct) --> Changed Page -->(301 re-direct) Changed page again, etc All his changes are making a lot of etra work for me every month and I feel he is wasting a lot of link juice, How Would you explain to the client why they shouldn't be using several re-directs? What can I do to make sure that they keep as much link juice as possible?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anchorwave
    0

  • Anyone know of any software for this... I need a simple way to create SEO friendly Image Swap Functionality on multiple product pages of a static site. The idea is that customers can see different images within the product screen by clicking on thumbnails.  For SEO purposes it is essential that: The rollover does not create a new URL when the product images are cycled The image needs to have an alt attribute (a different attribute set by the client for each product) As per: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tips-and-musthaves-for-your-ecommerce-platform Thanks in advance. Justin

    Web Design | | GrouchyKids
    0

  • I have the following question. Is it OK to set a desination url to text that did not have it previously? Can it cause SEO (SERP) issues? For example, I have this sentence: The tool you're using is great, but this template will help you. Say, the "this template" text has been just plain text for like a year. And now I want to add a certain destination url to the "this template" phrase. So, can it cause some SEO issues to me or not?

    Link Building | | VinceWicks
    0

  • Ran Open site explorer on my site: www.psbsperakers.com It is saying that I only have "1"  Internal followed link could somebody tell me what that means... and maybe take a look at my site and see it this is a quick fix?

    On-Page Optimization | | kevin4803
    0

  • I am new to Drupal and as an organization we are considering using it to author both our corporate site and our blog. In the future we'd like our blog to live at a separate domain and I understand Drupal is capable of publishing across 2 domains. Does anyone know of any SEO implications to this type of infrastructure set up? Are there specific things to be mindful of when setting up the Drupal CMS across 2 domains? thanks for the assistance!

    Technical SEO | | Hershel.Miller
    0

  • Taking some advice/ideas from this seomoz blog post http://www.seomoz.org/blog/99-ways-to-build-links-by-giving-stuff-away-and-improve-your-brand-too-14029 I decided to launch a facebook competition were you like/share the product you want to win. The question is should I be looking for share or likes?  From what I have read Share are more valuable than likes, but Likes would be easier to get I think (ie we could get a lot more of them).  Here is an example of one of our product pages: http://www.lovefurniture.ie/sofas-furniture/corner-sofas-l-shaped-sofas/rihanna-corner-suite-with-sofabed We already have a like, tweet +1 buttons, but not a facebook share, should it be there? Any feedback or advice would be appreciated

    Social Media | | eunaneunan
    0

  • Here's the situation for the website in question: The company produces printed publications which go online as a page turning Flash version, and as a separate HTML version. To complicate matters, some of the articles from the publications get added to a separate news section of the website. We want to promote the news section of the site over the publications section. If we were to forget the Flash version completely, would you: a) add a canonical in the publication version pointing to the version in the news section? b) add a link in the footer of the publication version pointing to the version in the news section? c) both of the above? d) something else? What if we add the Flash version into the mix? As Flash still isn't as crawlable as HTML should we noindex them? Is HTML content duplicated in Flash as big an issue as HTML to HTML duplication?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford
    0

  • Do search engines (specifically Google) crawl the url in the canonical tag as it loads or do they load the whole page before crawling it? Thanks,

    Technical SEO | | ao.com
    0

  • Hi, I want to know how to create a server side 301 redirection on IIS7. I found on google the below details; IIS Redirect In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL". Enter the redirection page Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource" Click on 'Apply' But couldn't find anything like that. Can anyone help me out. thanks & regards

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VipinLouka78
    0

  • Hi, Has anyone got any Tips / Advice on how to build an email subscriber list up? Has anyone had any success in doing this? What's the best way to start it? PPC? Forums? Competition? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

    Conversion Rate Optimization | | activitysuper
    0

  • If your website CMS forces you to redirect from the homepage should it be a 301 or 302 Example includes www.direct.gov.uk which 302's it My view is that it should be a 302 in this instance and almost all others should be a 301 - the reason for this is that you want the www.direct.gov.uk  to be the "primary" and one that is displayed in Google, whereas for anything else you want the URL of the location. Yes I know that ideally you don't have any redirection at all...

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AxonnMedia
    0

  • It's been doing it's thing for over 48 hours now and Ive got less than 350 pages... is this norma? It's NOT the first crawl.

    Moz Pro | | borderbound
    0

  • Hi guys. Just wondered what people's thoughts were on the value of a link from a subdomain vs a .com or .co.uk - I have several clients operating within the UK crafts sector, and there are a huge number of blogspot blogs with decent PR etc. Given that anyone can start one of these for free (and therefore theoretically get themselves hundreds of bogus links), I wonder whether they carry the same value as an independent site. I'll look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts 🙂

    Link Building | | Aceville. 0
    0

  • Hi, A friend has just bought 3 domains and is not planning to build websites with them for around 2 years. He asked me what the best thing to do with these domains was...I have 2 ways of look ing at it: a) Putting a holding page on these and submit to Google Webmaster Tools - this way they are indexed by Google and hold search engine trust when the site finally goes up - HOWEVER, if they are not updated with fresh content would that work against them in 2 years time? b) Simply redirect them to their existing site and don't do anything else. Let me know your thoughts. Adido.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adido-105399
    0

  • Example, Have a site on 173.194.33.51 and site on 173.194.33.52, same server, different IP addresses, same network subnet. Make one link from site residing on 173.194.33.51 to site on 173.194.33.52 Can this hurt? Can it be beneficial if site on 173.194.33.55 has good PR?

    Link Building | | _Z_
    0

  • I have following Facebook fan page and want vistastores username which is my domain name. But, I am not able to get it due to my personal profile. Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vista-Stores/160667877282170 Personal profile: http://www.facebook.com/vistastores I am thinking to delete my Facebook account. [Profile & Fan page] Then, I will re-open my Facebook account and create fan page. So, Can I transfer my username from personal profile to fan page by this method?

    Social Media | | CommercePundit
    0

  • Mine started yesterday afternoon and it's now almost 11pm on Sunday. 30+ hours and still not finished (and no progress indicator). 438 pages quoted as being crawled. That's not normal - right? I have made a bunch of changes based on last weeks crawl so I have been eagerly waiting for this to finish But 30 hours?.... Thanks. Mark

    Moz Pro | | MarkWill
    0

  • I have just changed the domain name on one of my sites, can i change the domain name of the reletive campaigns and keep the data, or do i have to set up a new campaigns?

    Moz Pro | | AlanMosley
    0

  • I have over 400 URLs in a spreadsheet and I would like to get Open Site Explorer data (domain/page authority/trust etc) for each URL. Would I use the Linkscape API to do this quickly (ie not manually entering every single site into OSE)? Or is there something in OSE or a tool I am overlooking? And whatever the best process is, can you give a brief overview? Thanks!! -Dan

    Moz Pro | | evolvingSEO
    0

  • The question is in the title: Should HTML Heading Tags ALWAYS be in Hierarchical Order? For example, using them in order: H1, H2, H3... etc. Or is it OK to have H2 tags before the main H1 tag on a page? - for example sidebar content with H2 headings before the main content H1 tag? Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
    0

  • I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league)  when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks

    Technical SEO | | bThere
    0

  • My company has an ecommerce website that's been online for about 5 years.  The url is www.betterbraces.com.  We're getting ready to launch an australian version of the website and the url will be www.betterbraces.com.au. The australian website will have the same look as the US website and will contain about 200 of the same products that are featured on the US website.  The only major difference between the two websites is the price that is charged for the products.  The australian website will be hosted on the same server as the US website. To ensure Australians don't purchase from the US site we are going to have a geo redirect in place that sends anyone with a AU ip address to the australian website. I am concerned that the australian website is going to have duplicate content issues.  However, I'm not sure if the fact that the domains are so similar coupled with the redirect will help the search engines understand that these sites are related. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to handle this situation to ensure oue rankings in the search engines aren't penalized. Thanks in advance for your help. Alison French

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djo-283669
    0

  • While looking over my competitors inbound link report, they have a reported 5K inbound links. The first 20 listed inbound domains are things like UPS, and other sites that when I look at them, and the source file has no link to their domain at all??? So are they using some kind of Black Hat technique, or is SEOMoz not reporting properly? Help please.

    Moz Pro | | WBConsulting
    0

  • Hello Everyone, For a long time now I've had many of my website pages ranked on first page of results for some popular searches. On friday I noticed the traffic coming from google dropped dramatically and I realized that I was not on first page anymore. My SEO is focused for Google Spain. Here are some examples: http://msn-messenger.hispazone.com/ This page was on position 9 (first page) if we perform the search "Descargar msn" on Google. Now it's on page 3. http://http://adobe-acrobat-reader.hispazone.com/ This was position 5 (first page) for the search "descargar adobe". Now it's also page 3. Any suggestions? Best Regards.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HispaZone
    0

  • Hi. I run a site that's SSL only. (Using a 301 redirect to redirect traffic from http:// to https://). This might be a stupid question but i can't seem to find any conclusive answers to the question by searching. Does this negatively affect the search engine ranking of the site? Regards,
    Eivind

    Technical SEO | | Host1
    1

  • Hi Guys, First off, it's an honour to be a part of this awesome community. I'm using WordPress and getting top 3 rankings for great keywords and I'm very excited, however my page titles are in this format "keyword optimised title here - site name here" eg: "This is my keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is another keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is a longtail keyword - this is the name of my blog" SEOMoz is reporting errors because of duplicate page title tags due to the "this is the name of my blog" being in every page title. Will this hurt my rankings? Thanks in advance and keep up the great work! Cheers, Troy.

    On-Page Optimization | | TroyDean71
    0

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