Skip to content

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Moz Q&A is closed.

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.

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!


  • I have a web with 90 vídeos hosted in my Youtube channel and each video have an description in single url, but Youtube videos have no description. If I copy description from my web and paste to Youtube description, this is duplicate content for Google ?

    Content Development | | VisualService
    1

  • Hi everyone This question has been running through my mind since a few days now. Does Google recognise 'and' / '&' as the same? Say for example my website url is: appleandorange.com and my keyword for my company is Apple & Orange. If i Focus on Apple & Orange for on-page SEO will google also recognise apple and orange ? Or will I have to on-page SEO seperately for Apple and orange? So for instance if I keep focusing on Apple & Orange will my website appleandorange.com appear on google? Thanks in advance

    Keyword Research | | u_rauf92
    0

  • Hi All We have over 10000 Products and a while ago we spent some time adding Product Descriptions to the Product Pages, For Example we have Product - Black Snazaroo Face Paint Product Description - Great for Childrens parties, fundraising events, Halloween or other festive faces. An easy makeup to apply and remove. All Snazaroo face paints are Non toxic, Fragrance free and Skin friendly. Snazaroo is suitable for all skin types, however it is always recommended you do a skin patch test on a small area before full application. Unfortuantly our Meta Descriptions really need some work, for example this same page contains the following meta descriptions We realise this could be holding our site back. Is it ok to use the same Product Description inside the Meta Description Tags also, for example can we use the Meta Description for this Page - Thanks

    Content Development | | AMG100
    0

  • Hello Moz community, I'd like to know if you build "pre-sales seo audit" when selling your services to a prospect. I think the main idea of a pre-sales audit is to show your prospect that you understand his industry (trends & competition) understand the opportunities know the roadblocks on his website If so, i'd be interested in discussing the information you put into your pre-sales audit and how you organise it. If you know ressources i should read as regards to mini seo audit / pre-sales seo audit just paste the link 🙂 Thanks for your answers

    Technical SEO | | Sindicic_Alexis
    0

  • We have several brand related domains which are parked and pointing to our main website. Some of these websites are redirecting using a 302 (don't ask, that's a whole other story), but these are being changed. But it shouldn't matter what type of redirect they are no? Since there has never been any traffic and they are not indexed? But it seems that one of them was indexed: exotravel.vn. A search for our brand name or the previous brand name (exotravel and exotissimo) brings up this parked domain first! How can that be? The domain has never been used and has no backlinks. exotravel.vn is redirecting and I submitted a change of address weeks ago to Google, but its still coming up first in all brand name searches for exotissimo or exotravel.

    Technical SEO | | Exotissimo
    0

  • Hi Guys So as I'm just starting out, I have been told and read certain blogs that in the early stages I should submit my site to certain directories, only I would not have any idea which directories I should submit my site to, besides the few that I already know. Any idea how I could find this out? Cheers

    Local Listings | | edward-may
    0

  • I added all keywords in description. Will this affect my website, Google takes this as negative way? I am not adding keywords on my own website, but adding keywords to third party website? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/304555993526970292/

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward
    0

  • Hello. 20 days ago, I changed my domain from uclasificados.net to uclasificados.com doing redirect 301 to all urls, and I started to loose rankings since that moment. I was wondering if changing it back could be the solutions, but some experts recommend me not to do that, because it could be worse. Right now I receave almost 50% of traffic I used to receave before, and I have done a lot of linkbuilding strategies to recover but nothing have worked until now. Even though I notified google of this change and I send again my new sitemap, I don't see that have improve my situation in any aspects, and I still see in webmastertools search stats from my last website (the website who used to be uclasificados.com before the change). What should I do to recover faster?

    Technical SEO | | capmartin85
    0

  • Hey there Mozzers, Another question about a forum issue I encountered. When a forum thread has more than just one page as we all know the best course of action is to use rel="next" rel="prev" or rel="previous" But my forum automatically creates another line in the header called Rel="self" What that does is simple. If i have 3 pages http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1
    http://www.example.com/article?story=abc2
    http://www.example.com/article?story=abc3 **instead of this ** On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1 On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc2 On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc3: it creates this On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1 So as you can see it creates a url by adding the ?page=1 and names it rel=self which actually gives back a duplicate page because now instead of just http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1 I also have the same page at http://www.example.com/article?story=abc1?page=1 Do i even need rel="self"? I thought that rel="next" and rel="prev" was enough? Should I change that?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis
    0

  • These clients are regional news’ websites which have already reached their apex of visits - most of these results were linked to the SEO strategies developed by our team in the past few years. But now, the most common SEO strategies don't show the same effect: a higher number of pageviews. What kind of strategies you suggest to increase this number? Thank you!

    Industry Events | | Kenaum
    1

  • A client (we designed their website) recently employed an SEO who required FTP access or access to the CMS. We told the client they would need to take full responsibility for any updates the SEO carried out, otherwise, the SEO could send over the changes and we would put them in at no extra cost to the client. The client didn't want to take responsibility and denied the SEO access to the CMS, and told the SEO to send over the completed work for us to put into the site. The SEO was not happy with this arrangement, and didn't seem to understand that we needed to trust him before access was would be given at a future date. Other SEO's have never had a problem with this arrangement, but this SEO claimed what they do is secret and for no one else to see. SEO want's to proceed, client doesn't want to proceed, we are happy to update the website with the client's approval.  This particular client has a reputation for backing out of things.  Also from the initial client, SEO contact the SEO was ready to update the website within 24 hours. Are we being unreasonable?

    Industry News | | ChristinaRadisic
    1

  • Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior.  My website is www.hindimeaning.com  which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar

    Link Building | | chaudhary0489
    0

  • The wordpress blog causes problems with page titles. If you go to the second page of blog posts it there's a different URL but with the same page title. for example: page 1: site/blog page 2: site/blog/page/2 Each page gets flagged for duplicate page titles. Thanks in advance for your thoughts,

    On-Page Optimization | | heymarshall
    1

  • Hi I know this isn't technically an SEO question, but wanted people's advice. As I am flying half way round the world I am actually arriving on the Friday and have Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday to go and explore Seattle. I plan on going to watch a baseball game and visit the home of Starbucks (and I hate coffee, but thought might as well visit), but what else would people recommend doing / seeing in Seattle. Thanks in Advance Andy

    Industry Events | | Andy-Halliday
    2

  • I think the title sums up the question, but does a new subdomain get any ranking benefits from being on a pre-existing high authority domain. Or does the new subdomain have to fend for itself in the SERPs?

    Technical SEO | | RG_SEO
    0

  • Hi Moz community, I've got a question about all old backlinks pointing to the http version of my site: Firstly, how it impacts my site's backlinks for SEO and secondly, why does Moz and if you know why Majestic have different metric report values for the different URLs. The Back Story Two months ago I bought an SSL for my personal domain and changed my URL from http to the https version. I 301'd it and can verify that on Majestic SEO using the old http URL. I did this sitewide for an eCommerce site that I'm working and did see a lift in traffic; that was the main reason based on Google talking about sites moving to the SSL Web. I'm No Stranger to 301s Of course all the URLs on my site have been 301'd. I used a HTTPS Redirect plugin for my WordPress site and there's been no issue. I also installed a 404 Checker plugin to log broken external links to my site where I can create a redirect right away in case the HTTPS plugin missed something along the way. I'm comfortable knowing that doing when you change the domain name for a site or just a page going from one URL to another will transfer all the link equity over time. What's Causing the Confusion What's a little confusing is that when I use tools like OSE or Majestic's Explorer, the data doesn't match. For instance in OSE, the https version of my domain has a DA of 1 and PA of 1. But, the http version of my site has a DA of 25 and PA of 36. With Majestic (BTW, please feel free to stop me from asking questions about another tool on Moz, but since we're all part of the same SEO community, I thought I'd ask it here anyway) the Trust and Citation flow values are definitely closely matched but still different values nonetheless. My Question Will I ever see the DA and PA the same for the https & http versions in the future? Does OSE catch the fact that there is a 301 redirect to the https version or does it only recognize that it redirects from http://kingrosales.com to http://www.kingrosales.com when in fact it redirects to https://www.kingrosales.com? My second question is, what about the backlinks? Is it because they are different URLs that OSE doesn't have a way to recognize this and display links from the old http version to the new https version? How will I know the true PA and DA of the https version of my site even with a perfectly executed 301 redirect? lol Let me know if you need more clarification. Thanks

    Link Explorer | | KingRosales
    3

  • I have a page that's ranking pretty well, and driving sales.  That page is starting to get 10+ comments per day and is starting to get quite long.  I was wondering if there is a point where I should disable the comments?  My gut tells me that people interacting with the page, and Google seeing responses with the users SHOULD be a good thing not bad.  But, then I think that a majority of the content of the page is no longer the article, but the comments. All the comments are good, non spammy and directly related to the topic.  People just asking questions, etc.  Good engagement, I should be happy right?

    Content Development | | DemiGR
    0

  • I work for a pretty large company with an established web domain with thousands of pages. We are working on a new website and they talked about moving the site onto a new server. What is the impact ranking wise of going to a new server? Does Google care so long as it's the same domain, or is there some equity lost? Thanks in advance!

    Web Design | | ScottOlson
    0

  • Hello, First post here. I am a IT infrastructure engineer that does application and deployment work mostly,  but new to SEO. That being said, I am a firm believer in demming wheel and defined process/flow charts. I have a website up, built as best practice, its a Magento CE open source Ecommerce store.  After some initial research,  it seems I really need to define my keywords before I start branding my landing pages and such. So i am going to have to go back and implement the keywords and evaluate. But as I am reading it seems most SEO people try their keywords in google ad words first? Then implement? I am hoping to find some flow or process sheets on how successful Keyword research is done via step by step process and evaluation. And explanations of each. How many keywords to start with per landing page, how many to try and get in the H1 headers, paragraphs, URL. How long to leave keywords in to test? Also, I am a start up company that is competing with the big boys in my market space. I know I cant compete for the big keywords in my market? What is my best strategy for getting any kind of ranking as a small business in a global market? SEO is a mysterious, intriguing thing to me! Very much reminding me of one of my favorite whimsical quotes I will leave you will now, and thanks for reading. -Alex "Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple." - Willy Wonka

    Moz Pro | | iamgreenminded
    0

  • I'm working on a project where a site has gone through a rebrand and is therefore also moving to a new domain name. Some pages have been merged on the new site so it's not a lift and shift job and so I'm writing up a redirect plan. Their IT dept have asked if we want redirects done by DNS redirect or IIS redirect. Which one will allow us to have redirects on a page level and not a domain level? I think IIS may be the right route but would love your thoughts on this please.

    Technical SEO | | Marketing_Today
    1

  • Our county's website has a news' blog, and they want to do an article about an award we won. We're definitely going to do it, and we're happy about the link. However, all the other news' articles they have only have a PA of 1. The DA is 82, and the link is completely white hat. It's a govt site in our locale, however, with such a terrible PA, I'm don't think the link is really all that great from an SEO stand point. Am I right or wrong (or is it some dreadful murky grey area like everything else in this industry (which I'm thankful to be a part of 🙂 )? Thanks so much for any insights! Ruben

    Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup
    0

  • I have a situation where a client is working out of their home. I know that Google does not like when you list a business with a home address so we have hidden the address on Google, but are wondering if Google penalizes businesses for hiding it? When listing them to other directories we do our best to find ones that we can hide the first line of the address. But does that matter? Should we just be listing to our normal directories with the address visible? Does a mix of hidden addresses and visible ones hurt your rankings? Thanks in advance for your help!

    Local Listings | | JohnWeb12
    0

  • Hi there, While doing some research on the indexation status of a client I ran into something unexpected. I have my hypothesis on what might be happing, but would like a second opinion on this. The query 'site:example.org inurl:index.php' returns about 18.000 results. However, when I hover my mouse of these results, no index.php shows up in the URL. So, Google seems to think these (then duplicate content) URLs still exist, but a 301 has changed the actual goal URL? A similar things happens for inurl:page. In fact, all the 'index.php' and 'page' parameters were removed over a year back, so there in fact shouldn't be any of those left in the index by now. The dates next to the search results are 2005, 2008, etc. (i.e. far before 2013). These dates accurately reflect the times these forums topic were created. Long story short: are these ~30.000 'phantom URLs' in the index out of total of ~100.000 indexed pages hurting the search rankings in some way? What do you suggest to get them out? Submitting a 100% coverage sitemap (just a few days back) doesn't seem to have any effect on these phantom results (yet).

    Technical SEO | | Theo-NL
    0

  • So there is a website www.domainname.com that is based on wordpress. Basically this site has 8-10 pages  but it is not a blog. And it has a subdomain  mystore.domainname.com which is based on magento. While developing the site the circumstances were such that we had to use a subdomain for ecommerce based on magento. So the wp site is ranking and people are landing on that site. It makes sense when it has a bounce rate of around 72% because people are actually going to the subdomain ( store ) after they land on the wp site. Because they are actually looking to buy. My question is will this bounce rate affect in ranking of the wp site ? Because for now only the wp site is ranking for most of the terms. Should i consider  removing the wp site and have the whole site based on magento ? I appreciate any kind of feedback and suggestion 🙂

    Conversion Rate Optimization | | MindlessWizard
    0

  • So, interestingly enough, the Moz crawler picked up my index.html file (homepage) and reported duplicate content, of course. But, Google hasn't seemed to index the www.domain.com/index.html version of my homepage, just the www.domain.com version. However, it looks like I do have links going specifically to www.domain.com/index.html and I want to make sure those are getting counted towards my overall domain strength. Is it necessary to 301 redirect in the scenario described above?

    Web Design | | Small_Business_SEO
    0

  • Hi friends, We have a client who is in a peculiar predicament... essentially his business and his biggest competitor share the same name. Officially on their business licenses they are differentiated by the year they were each established, but in all their marketing, on their website, and in the community they are both known by the exact same name. When the company name is searched for, the competitor shows up #1 organically with the map pin as well as in the knowledge graph, and our site shows up number 2 without any any map pin or Google+ page site link or anything. We thought we could differentiate ourselves by changing his Google+ page name to his official business name (with the date) and building a bunch of really good citations with that official business name, but we still haven't made a dent for his branded keyword, and our Google+ page site links aren't even showing up. Has anyone run into a situation like this and any suggestions?

    Local Listings | | localtrifecta_im
    0

  • Has anyone seen any evidence of Google penalizing for Medical Marijuana related keywords in states where that is legal? Thanks in advance.

    Algorithm Updates | | eocreative
    0

  • The .com owner of the desired domain refuses to sell the domain (even though it is essentially a parked site and has been for the past 5+ years). Currently, our site resides on .net. I hear that many associate .net domains with dated and too techy. What is better? A .net or a .co?

    Branding | | trl711
    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


Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.