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!

  • irvingw


    I added the rel="author" tags to the blog posts last week and updated the authors page with a link to the Google+ account, but I have yet to see the authors photo surface in the Google Results. Example URL: http://spotlight.vitals.com/2011/10/dr-richelle-cooper-testifies-against-dr-conrad-murray-in-trial/ Can anyone identify what else needs to be done?

    Technical SEO | | irvingw
    0
  • SaborStyle


    How do you fix the rel canonical issue on a wordpress site?  Is there a quick fix?   I have a few notices on my site and am a little confused. Thanks, Jared

    Technical SEO | | SaborStyle
    0
  • Melia


    Does anyone have a SEO report for resorts or hotels? Templates would work as well.

    Conversion Rate Optimization | | Melia
    0
  • Apptixweb


    We have a site search that is causing a huge amount of errors as the SEOmoz crawler is showing these as duplicate content. Our first thought was to do a no-follow on the site-search directory, but we realized that the site search is /site-search.aspx and URl strings appear at the end for hundreds of pages. How dow we/how can we no-follow an undetermined amount of URL strings?

    Technical SEO | | Apptixweb
    0
  • seo-wanna-bs


    It seems, some of my pages are being hit by over optimisation penalties. Now to figure out how to tone it down. The website is for downloading widgets. It's got many great ranks. The pages are dynamic and so titles, h1 are done via variables. At present the title + H1 are 100% match for the keyword. In addition breadcrumbs home > widgets > big widgets > big blue widgets. All of which being pretty much 100% match for target keyword. Also, in a gallery, say you're viewing "big blue widgets" there are tabs that link to "small blue widgets" and "medium blue widgets". Again using 100% match anchor text. None of this was done really for SEO. More for usability. But it appears it's recently negatively effecting SEO. After having a couple of pages, that were ranked number 1, now way at the back of the top 1,000, with un-targeted pages ranking in their place, though to a lesser rank. I am going to mix up the tag so that it doesn't match the <title>. I am going to remove the 100% match anchors in the tabs and make them just "small", "medium" and "large". <br /><br />I don't really want to touch the breadcrumbs, because Google uses those in the results and they make perfect logical sense how they're setup. <br /><br />What other changes would you suggest, to help prevent these pages being filtered? <br /><br />Thanks a lot 🙂 </p></title>

    On-Page Optimization | | seo-wanna-bs
    0
  • creativedepartment


    Howdy SEO'ers, I have a quick question for the SEO gurus out there. When constructing "better" search friendly URLs would one of these be better than the other? Example 1: http://Domain.com/Category/Sub-Category/Product-name Example 2: http://Category.Domain.com/Sub-Category/Product-name In this example the category could be phones and the sub-category brands of phones. Is either one of these URLs "better" than the other in terms of ranking? Thanks! I'll hang-up and listen to your answer. 🙂 Jonathan

    On-Page Optimization | | creativedepartment
    0
  • adriandg


    Is this also why people build backlinks to their BBB profiles, Yellowpages Profiles, etc. i.e. why do people build backlinks to other pages that link to them?  Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just build that backlink directly to your target?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg
    0
  • Motivators


    It appears that our keyword rankings update weekly on Thursdays. Is this the same across the board or is there a way to manually run an update?

    Moz Pro | | Motivators
    0
  • adriandg


    What i mean by this is if we were to obtain 10-20 facebook shares for 10 different deep links like these: http://domain.com/deep-page/page-one
    http://domain.com/deep-page/page-two
    http://domain.com/deep-page/page-three
    http://domain.com/deep-page/page-four
    ... Would that help any of these rank better:
    http://domain.com
    http://domain.com/product1
    http://domain.com/product2
    etc... Extrapolating, does the same count for Twitter, Google+, etc?

    Social Media | | adriandg
    0
  • charlesgrimm


    A local seo is exclaiming his fantastic track record for a pool company(amonst others) in our local market. Over 150 keywords on page one of google. I checked out a few things using some moz tools and didn't find anything that would suggest that this has come from white hat strategies, tactics or links etc. Interested in how he is doing this and if it is white hat? Thanks, C

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | charlesgrimm
    0
  • 2comarketing


    Came across an interesting problem. A site has the traditional homepage of site.com and ranks okay. Later I found that another "homepage", site.com/home.html that ranks well for several terms but actually has old branding and semi-up-to-date content. Site.com/home.html has a solid linking profile but not as strong as the current homepage (site.com). The question I have is should I try to salvage the page or 301 redirect to site.com? Thank for the help!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2comarketing
    0
  • deuce1s


    I've recently obtained some great backlinks from popular news sites but OSE hasn't picked up on them yet. Is there a way to "show" OSE what's happened, or do I just have to wait?

    Moz Pro | | deuce1s
    0
  • prima-253509


    Hey All, trying to figure out how concerned I should be about this. So here is the scoop, would appreciate your thoughts. We have several eCommerce websites that have been affected by Panda, do to  content from manufacturers and lack of original content. We have been working hard to write our own descriptions and are seeing an increase in traffic again. We have also been writing blogs since February and are getting a lot of visits to them. Here is the problem, our blog pages are now outranking our homepage when you type in site:domain-name Is this a problem? our home page does not show up until you are 3 pages in. However when you type in just our domain name in google as a search it does show up in position one with sitelinks under it. This is happening across both of our sites. Is this a cause for concern or just natural due to our blogs being more popular than our homepage. Thanks! Josh

    Technical SEO | | prima-253509
    0
  • LeeMiller


    Sorry, perhaps a noob question. In relation to site explorer, have also searched and unable to find any information, wondered if anyone could advise as to what "Linking C Blocks" are? Found under the "Compare Link Metrics" tab. Thanks in advance. Lee

    Moz Pro | | LeeMiller
    0
  • Found


    Hey I have recently come across an issue with several of a sites urls being seen as a 404 by bots such as Xenu, SEOMoz, Google Web Tools etc. The funny thing is, the pages exist and display fine. This happens on many of the pages which use the Modx CMS, but the index is fine. The wordpress blog in /blog/ all works fine. The only thing I can think of is that I have a conflict in the htaccess, but troubleshooting this is difficult, any tool I have found online seem useless. Have tried to rollback to previous versions but still does not work. Anyone had any experience of similar issues? Many thanks K.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Found
    0
  • StefanJDorresteijn


    Hey guys, I have a site where we post quite a lot of info from other sites. We don't want google to de-index our pages because parts of it are quotes from other sites. What would you use to make it so Google sees it's a quote from another site? Or to just make Google not index the quote? Thanks!

    On-Page Optimization | | StefanJDorresteijn
    0
  • notnem


    Hi, I'm looking to register some country specific domains, and I'm looking for either a host that offers international hosting options in these countries, or recommendations for companies I should be looking at. The countries in question are: Germany France Spain Italy Portugal Thanks in advance for any help.

    Technical SEO | | notnem
    0
  • pauledwards


    Hi there, say i have two websites with identicle content. website a had content on before website b - so will be seen as the original source? If the content was intended for website b, would taking it off a then make the orinal source to google then go to website b? I want website b to get the value of the content but it was put on website a first - would taking it off website a then give website b the full power of the content? Any help of advice much  appreciated. Kind Regards,

    Technical SEO | | pauledwards
    0
  • markc-197183


    Hello, A collegue has asked if we can buy multiple domain names which contain keywords and point them at our website. Is this good practise or will it be seen as spam? Will these domains actually get ranked? I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise this but can't seem to find any questions and answers about this. Thanks Mark

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markc-197183
    0
  • oeroek


    I have a website with sauna reviews. These are mostly pages that exist for years and regularly change because comments/reviews are added by visitors and/or because I change information on the page. When searching in Google for competitive keywords I noticed that the snippet of my direct competitor included a date stamp in the format (9 hous ago). How can I include a time stamp in the snippet, and more important how can I make sure that the timestamp is very recent. Is it sufficient to add a date on the page every time the page is updated or is ther emore to it?

    On-Page Optimization | | oeroek
    0
  • vishalkhialani


    Hi, I am planning a few posts on my personal blog and wanted to know if I can take screen shots of the web app here for my analysis. Cheers, Vishal

    SEO Learn Center | | vishalkhialani
    0
  • polyniki


    Hi there, probably this is so self explaining that I didn't find it described in the tutorial about learning to use PRO or here in Q&Α. But remember, there is no dumb question 🙂 What are the followed vs no followed links? I understand followed links as backlinks to my site, but what is a no followed link? Thank you in advance!

    Moz Pro | | polyniki
    0
  • James77


    If I have a bunch of non important pages on my website which are of little use in the SE's index - IE contact us pages, pages which are near duplicate and conflict with KW's targetting other pages etc, what is the best way of retaining the link juice that would normally be passed to these pages? Most recent discussion I have read has said that with nofollow you effectively just loose link juice, as opposed to conserving it, so that doesn't seem a great option. If I do "noindex" on these pages, would that conserve the link juice in the site, or again would it be just lost? It seems quite a tricky situation as many pages are legitimate for customer usability, but are not worth having in the SE's index and you better off consolidating link juice - so it seems you are getting penilised for making something "for users". Thanks

    Web Design | | James77
    0
  • LeeAnn30


    Hello SEOmoz, This question has been hounding me for a long time and I've never seen a single reliable information from the web that answers it. Anyway here's my question; Supposing that there are three Google places for three different websites having the same categories and almost same keywords and same district/city/IP how does Google rank one high from the other? Or simply put if you own one of those websites and you would want to rank higher over your competitors in Google places Search results how does one do it? A number of theories were brought up by some of my colleagues: 1. The age of the listing 2. The number of links pointing to the listing (supposing that one can build links to ones listing) 3. The name/url of the listing, tags, description, etc. 4. The address of the listing. 5. Authority of the domain (linked website) You see some listings have either no description, and only one category and yet they rank number one for a specific term/keyword whereas others have complete categories, descriptions etc. If you could please give me a definite answer I will surely appreciate it. Thank you very much and more power!

    Algorithm Updates | | LeeAnn30
    0
  • vishalkhialani


    Hi, So after reading a few posts here I  have realised it a big deal to crawl the web and index all the links. For that I appreciate seomoz.org's efforts . I was wondering what kind of infrastructure they might need to get this done ? cheers, Vishal

    Reporting & Analytics | | vishalkhialani
    0
  • AdeLewis


    Hi, One of my clients has a CMS website offering Health and Safety training. When the courses have been run they automatically drop off of the system which is great for the front-end of the site but this leaves pile 404 errors for the URLs. I am trying to put a .htaccess redirect in place that will redirect back to the main category for that course i/e : http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA/27-nrswa-operative-sept-11.html will redirect to http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA I have spent a looooong time hitting google for a solution but can't seem to come up with anything. If at all possible I would also like to be able to post a php variable via the redirect url so that I can display a message on the category page saying that the course is no longer available be please select a different course. i/e: http://www.domain.co.uk/courses/highways/6-NRSWA?course=not-available Any help on this would be most gratefully received.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
    0
  • Eladla


    Hi, I am new-ish to SEO, and something just dawned on me today. I have read in many places that .org domains rank higher (even if slightly) than .coms. Then why doesn't everyone just purchase .org TLDs? For example, in my industry, most good .com domain names are taken, but .orgs are almost all free. Why not purchase a .org and capitalize on exact match search results? seomoz is .org and it's far from being a non-profit 🙂

    Algorithm Updates | | Eladla
    0
  • vishalkhialani


    Hi, I am new here and I have noticed that open site explorer reports about half of the links on  my page. I am really interested in knowing your perspective on this. cheers, Vishal

    Technical SEO | | vishalkhialani
    0
  • WebBizIdeas


    Hi, I am interested to hear what others recommend for the amount of local references & citations to obtain a month.  For example, have you found it is better to get listed in SEOMoz's top 50 Local Business Citation Directories over a 30 day period, or is it the same if you registered on all of them in 1-2 days. What about larger numbers, registering on 100 national local citation websites, 50 industry related websites, and 15 city related sites.  Have you found any large negative ranking effects on registering on all of them for your clients in say a 10-20 period rather than stretching out the registration process over say 3 months.. Jeff

    Image & Video Optimization | | WebBizIdeas
    0
  • mamacassi


    I have a client that has two domians registered - one uses www.keywordaustralia.com the other uses www.keywordaelaide.com He had already bought and used the first domain when he came to me I suggested the second as being worth buying as going for a more local keyword would be more appropriate. Now I have suggested to him that a blog would be a worthy use of the second domain and a way to build links to his site - however I am reading that as all links will be from the same site it wont be worth much in the long run and an internal blog is better as it means updated content on his site. should i use the second domain for blog, or just 301 the second domain to his first domain. Or is it viable to use the second domain as the blog and just set up an rss feed on his page ? Is there a way to have the second domain somehow 'linked' to his first domain with the blog so that google sees them as connected ? NOOBIE o_0

    Technical SEO | | mamacassi
    0
  • RobertFisher


    Ok, I know it has been asked, answered, and re-asked but I am going to ask for a specific reason. As you know, anyone who is a graphic designer or web developer is also an expert in SEO....Right??? 
    I am dealing with a client who is clinging to a developer but wants us to do the SEO on a myriad of sites. All connect to his main site via links, etc. The main site was just redeveloped by a developer who claims extensive SEO knowledge. The client who referred me to them is getting over twenty times the organic clients they are and is in a JV with the new client. Soooo, I want to show them once and for all they are wrong on the www. versus non-www. When I do a Site:NewClient.com in Google I get a total of 13 www.newclient.com url's and 20 newclient.com url's without the www. Oddly, none are dupes of the other. So, where the www.NewClient/toy-boat/ is there, the other might be non www.  NewClient/toy-boat/sailing-green/ Even the contact page is in the www.NewClient/contact versus the non www of NewClient/Contact-us/ But, both pages seem to resolve to the non www. (A note here is that I originally instructed the designer to do non www to www. because the page authority was on the www.NewClient and he did opposite. With pages that are actually PDF files, if you try to use the www.NewClient/CoolGuy.pdf it comes up 404. When I check our sites, using Site:We-Build-Better.com ours return all www.We-Build-better/ url's. So, any other advice on how to insure these correct or incorrect? Oddly, we have discovered that sometimes in OSE, even with a correct canonical redirect it shows one without authority and the other with....we have contacted support. Come on mozzers, hook a brother up!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertFisher
    0
  • ChristopherGlaeser


    I use DMX Zone sitemap generator in Dreamweaver.  When generating the sitemap, it includes both http://www.domain.com and http://www.domain.com/index.htm.  Should the /index.htm be deleted from the sitemap, or will the 301 redirect take care of that? Best,
    Christopher

    On-Page Optimization | | ChristopherGlaeser
    0
  • gregalam


    I have a few domain names with the keywords I'm trying to target for my website. My website currently has been in operations for a couple years, and while not hugely authoritative, has built some value. Now, are these domain names with keywords any use to me? Is there any point to forward them to my site? Do I try to build up a page (or a few of content) and then have a link to my main site? Any insight would be mucho appreciated! Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gregalam
    0
  • arainey007


    Agency designed website and not sure what platform was used. Are now working minor redesign of site but wants to do so in word press. I don't have any problem with word press but don't want to start over ranking for key phrases. I don't want to change URL from mysite.com for the home page. What is the right way to make sure this is done correctly. I could not find a resource on the site. I don't mind researching this but am not sure what to search for to find info. Thanks

    On-Page Optimization | | arainey007
    0
  • Gioom


    Ok, so I've been trying something new lately: There are tons of datafeeds from webshops available on all the major affiliate networks. We thought it might be a nice idea to implement these datafeeds into your own little 'whitelabel' webshop with the power of Wordpress and a couple of plugins that help automate this process. So what we've did is this: Get a domain that is relative to the shop or products we're promoting. Install Wordpress with a plugin that enables you to import the datafeed for those products from 1 or more webshops on the affiliate networks. Each product gets an unique text by an article spinner of about a thousand words. The text on each product page is about 85% different than the others because of a massive synonym list. But each text makes perfect sense and is perfectly readable by humans. We let the system add about 20-30 pages per day so we're not flooding Google with hundreds or thousands of new pages per day because that would lead to a direct penalty. The sites look good, unique and look not much different than your average comparison site. They also have privacy policy's, contact information, newsletter subscription, sitemap, about us and all that stuff. We have masked the affiliate links because I know a lot of affiliate links might ring the alarm at Google. So overall these sites are pretty solid and look good (enough). But here is the problem: We have tried 5 of those sites so far and every time the same thing happens: the site gets indexed, gets some visitors, then quickly builds to about 20-30 visitors a day in 2-4 weeks and then BAM, it's over. Google drops the bomb on us. The sites do not get banned from the index, but they just drop a couple of hundred positions to where they don't get any traffic at all anymore. Every single time this has happened and only in 1 occasion the site "rose from the death" and came back again, but we do not know for how long this will last. So, do you have any idea what the cause of this might be? There is only one thing left I can think of and that's the age of the domain. They were all newly registered, but still, it's weird that they do work for a while and then get dropped. 2 examples of my sites are: http://www.veromodashoponline.nl and http://www.converseonline.nl (sites are in Dutch). Please help!

    Affiliate Marketing | | Gioom
    0
  • Mills


    Hi gang. I'm a new SEO and I'm currently working on the redesign of a website. I have just discovered a ton of hidden pages that are filled with duplicate content, basically reiterating the main keyword in a variety of different variations. Each page is titled with the variation on the keyword phrase and then has one paragraph of text very similar to the previous page, etc. Here is an example of one of the offensive pages (nice lookin' site, eh?): http://www.vasectomy-reversals.com/vasectomy_reversal_surgery.html The new site will not have any of these pages.  I'm writing the 301 redirects now and want to redirect these offensive pages to the most relevant page on the new site. But, I'm afraid to redirect the offensive pages. Should I leave them alone, or can I have the former developer remove them?  Help. Don't know how to handle these pages and their redirects. Thanks for your help! ~ Mills

    Technical SEO | | Mills
    0
  • uniquegifts-277879


    First, thanks to those who have helped me before. Second, according to Google Webmaster there are about 14,765 external links to my site.   According to Open Site Explorer I have 22. So a couple of questions: 1. Why such a discrepancy? 2. Of the 14,765 links shown in Google Webmaster 14,665 are all from one place and all link to my home page.  The site is interiordesignproductfinder.com.  In August of this year I bought a sponsorship there.  There are several of these sponsors so which show up on a rotating basis. Will having 14,765 links all of a sudden showing up be grounds for some type of a Google downgrade? Why are there 14, 765 links instead of just one.  Is a new link created every time our sponsorship rotates to the page? Another thing, in the past couple of months our conversions have dropped significantly.  we average about 180 visits a day with a 50% bounce rate.  Is there anything obvious thatt might have caused this drop? Thanks for any insights. Don www.uniquegiftsanddecor.com

    Conversion Rate Optimization | | uniquegifts-277879
    0
  • mindflash


    Hi, We are creating a new content directory for online courses hosted on our site. Like a typical directory, we have high level categories and then more granular subcategories. A course will typically only be in one high level category and then multiple subcategories. What would be the best URL structure for an individual course? Should we force users to pick one 'master' subcategory that gets included in their URL? Or should we just not include the subcategory at all in the URL? Right now we've been thinking about: OurUrl.com/upper-category/sub-category/course-title or OurUrl.com/upper-category/course-title

    On-Page Optimization | | mindflash
    0
  • SoccerStop


    Hello, We have many pages in our crawler report that are showing duplicate content.  However, the content is not duplicateon the pages.  It is somewhat close, but different.  I am not sure how to fix the problem so it leaves our report. Here is an example.  It is showing these as duplicate content to each other. www.soccerstop.com/c-119-womens.aspx www.soccerstop.com/c-120-youth.aspx www.soccerstop.com/c-124-adult.aspx Any help you could provide would be most appreciated.  I am going through our crawler report and resolving issues, and this seems to be big one for us with lots in the report, but not sure what to do about it. Thanks
    James

    Technical SEO | | SoccerStop
    0
  • 5outhpaw


    Company A is set to acquire Company B. As part of the merger agreement, Company A will be redirecting the linking domains of Company B's website (over 1,000 links) to company A's website. Will Google penalize Company A for redirecting Company B's 1,000 linking domains to Company A's website at one time? If so, would it be better for Company A to redirect Company B's 1,000 linking domains in waves?

    Link Building | | 5outhpaw
    0
  • AlanMosley


    I mentioned my problem a few nights ago, but since then I think I may have found my problem. I have a site that was never really promoted to any great level, but for the main keywords I could find it in serps with out clicking though too many pages. I came up first for the company name in both Bing or Google. Recently I finally decided to promote it and did a bit of a ranking check. First I still come up first for my company name in Bing, but in Google I come up 900+ out of 1000, virtually last. For my main keyword, the title of my site and optimized well for, I come up last, absolutely last. For long tail terms from my home page where I am the only site in the world to have the exact term, I come first in Bing, and absolutely last in Google. I don’t do black hat, but I thought I must be flagged by Google and I asked for reconsideration, they replied that no manual actions had been taken again the site, and referred me to the usual Google guidelines. It was very frustrating, I then had a thought, I had a long forgotten sub domain that had a load of duplicate content, it was a load of Microsoft documentation and other dev stuff from other sources, rss feeds and the like. Nothing sinister, but duplicate all the same. I am now thinking that this maybe my problem. I have 410’ed the whole sub domain as the site has not been maintained for some time anyhow. Does anybody know of simular, sub domain causing loss of ranking for root domain

    Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
    0
  • honestabejosh


    I just discovered that our site is registered with the major search engines without the "www" sub domain.  Both domains resolve directly to our site, which I need to get corrected.  I had planned to have the root (honestabe.com) forwarded to the sub (www.honestabe.com).  However, I then found that the sub-domain is not listed with the search engines. Of course, naturally almost all of our inbound links include www.  Does Google differentiate between links with and without the sub-domain? In other words, if I forward the www address to the root, will I still get the SEO benefit of those inbound links using www? I'm trying to figure out how to approach this.  I'm hoping someone is going to make me feel really stupid for asking this and say it's no big deal.  However, I have a feeling this could be a mess.

    Link Building | | honestabejosh
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    I read this article on SEJ: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/scrapers-and-the-panda-update/34192/ And, I'm a bit confused as to  how a scraper site can be successful post Panda? Didn't panda specifically target sites that have duplicate content & shouldn't scraper sites actually be suffering?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
    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.