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  • RobMay


    Hey Everyone! Perhaps someone can help me. I came across this command in the robots.txt file of our Canadian corporate domain. I looked around online but can't seem to find a definitive answer (slightly relevant). the command line is as follows: Disallow: /*?* I'm guessing this might have something to do with blocking php string searches on the site?. It might also have something to do with blocking sub-domains, but the "?" mark puzzles me 😞 Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Rob

    Technical SEO | | RobMay
    0
  • TrevorJones


    Hi I am looking for an FAQ system that is seo friendly, naturally 😉 , so wondered what other people use or would recommend for a website that's isn't using a cms like wordpress etc. Basically looking to add the question as the title and the answer as the page content to get the pages indexed. Thanks in advance. Trevor

    On-Page Optimization | | TrevorJones
    0
  • MyNet


    I am looking for a lot of free "do follow" technology directories to submit to.  Does anyone know of a good directory or a list of some sort of technology directories or something similar?  Actually, I guess any directory that has a technology category would be helpful.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet
    0
  • findachristianjob


    I have a number of SEO focused articles that I would like to post to our site to help with content and rankings.  I am wondering the advantages of posting the content as a page versus a post within Wordpress.  Or even vice versa. 
    Any thoughts on whether I should do as a page or post? Thanks.

    On-Page Optimization | | findachristianjob
    0
  • JaredDetroit


    My site currently ranks #1 or #2 for 2 separate pages on web design & SEO for my geographic location. The URLs are currently mysite.com/services/web-design/ and mysite.com/services/seo/ I'm redesigning my site and I'm taking out the "Services" page as I'm focusing on web design and SEO and lumping everything else into my "Internet Marketing" page. Because my pages for web design and SEO rank so well, should I keep the URL structure even though I don't have a "Services" page or should I just remove services and 301 redirect so I have mysite.com/web-design/ and mysite.com/seo/. I know doing a 301 redirect could hurt me in the short term but I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet now and change it in favor of a better URL structure. What do you think?

    Technical SEO | | JaredDetroit
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    Which is better seomoz's keyword difficulty tool or wordtracker's KEI index? Or, do you have another metric you utilize when evaluating a large list of keywords?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
    0
  • marcusuk-304105


    Hi, A few weeks ago my homepage - http://www.linearsky.com dropped out of the rankings completely for a keyword I was promoting  (web design staffordshire). I was thinking that one of the reasons could be a sudden link spike. The reason being is that I have been doing some development work (for a client) on one of my sub-domains. Now this is a Magento site with thousands of products, with my keyword rich link in the footer. From looking at the Google webmaster tools, it seams that alot of these pages got indexed accidently. Could this sudden link spike be enough to be penalised by Google? Apart from that the only borderline black hat stuff I have been doing is some reciprocal link swapping with a few websites in my niche - http://www.linearsky.com/misc/links.html I also bought a paid link on http://www.iwebtool.com/browser_details, (that I have now asked to be withdrawn) to see what kind of boost it would give me. I know this is unethical, but a number of page one competitors were also using this said link. Also it was only indexed for a few weeks. Could Google really pick this up so quickly? Any ideas of how to resolve this? Many Thanks Marcus

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | marcusuk-304105
    0
  • kynop


    i want to have a funktion which shortens text in categorie view in my shop. apple is doing this in their product configurator see the "learn more" button at the right side: http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC915LL/A apple is doing this by adding dynamic content but i want it more seo type by leaving the content indexable by google. i know from a search that this was used in the past years by black had seos to cover keywordstuffing. i also read an article at google. i beleive that this is years ago and keywordstuffing is completly no option anymore. so i beleive that google just would recognise it like the way its meant to be. but if i would not be sure i would not ask here 🙂 what do you think?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kynop
    0
  • eTundra


    A competitor is consistently beating my website on non-competitive, long tail keywords.  His DA is 32 compared to my 46.  His average PA is 23 to my 28.  His average On Page Optimization Grade is a C compared to my A.  His page speed score using YSlow is a 71 compared to my 78. The only thing I can think of at this point is that he has a better URL structure.  We both have the keyword in the URL, but his structure goes like this (keyword: apw wyott parts): www.competitor.com/apw-wyott/parts While mine goes like this (I had nothing to do with this site's architecture; this is what I'm stuck with for the time being): http://www.etundra.com/APW_Wyott_Parts-C347.html It should be noted that the last word in these keywords is always the same - "parts."  These keywords are for parts by different manufacturers so they follow a consistent pattern: [manufacturer-name] followed by "parts." Also, the "C347" on the end of my URL is the category number given to this particular category of products in our database. Are his URLs beating me or should I continue to look for other factors?  If so, what other factors should I consider?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eTundra
    0
  • Hershel.Miller


    Good day, We are in the process of starting a website redesign/development. We will likely be employing a tabbing structure on our home page and would like to be able to capitalize on the keyword content found across the various tabs. The tab structure will be similar to how this site achieves tabs: http://ugmo.com/ I've uploaded a screen grab of this page as the Googlebot user agent. The text "Soil Intelligence for professional Turf Managers" clicks through to this page: http://ugmo.com/?quicktabs_1=1#quicktabs-1 So I'm thinking there could be some keyword dilution there. That said Google is very much aware of the text on the quicktabs-1 page being related to the home page content: http://www.google.com/search?q=Up+your+game+with+precise+soil+moisture%2C+salinity+and+temperature+measurements.+And+in+the+process%2C+save+water%2C+resources%2C+money.+inurl%3Augmo.com&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe= Is this the best search optimal way to add keyword density on a home page with a tab structure? Or is there a better means of achieving this? {61bfcca1-5f32-435e-a311-7ef4f9b592dd}_tabs_as_Googlebot.png

    Technical SEO | | Hershel.Miller
    0
  • hfranz


    I need to know thoughts on the best ecommerce solution for our company. We currently have one website with our products, that people call and they purchase over the phone. In the future we are considering adding a different product line, to which we want to be a fully functional online ecommerce site. We eventually are considering having only a portion of our products on our current site to have the ability to purchase online. The reasoning is because we sell very high quality products that range from $1000 - $200,000. We would like to have a consumer section and an industrial sectioin. The consumer section would consist of products from $1000 - $10,000 or so. Then the industrial products you would need to call to purchase. So would it make sense to have a main website that is our corporate site with links to different websites? Or to keep this all in one website and have different directories like so: corporatecompany.com - links to product-line.com corporatecompany.com - links to product-line-two.com or corporatecompany.com/consumer-grade/ corporatecompany.com/industrial-grade/ corporatecompany.com/the-ecommerce-only-section/ Can a shopping cart be used to turn on half of the products for purchasing online, and the other half to be call in only ? What is the best e-commerce solution that is SEO friendly and also can just play a role of a regular website?

    Web Design | | hfranz
    0
  • 21stSEO


    Hi I am not sure if this is the proper place to post this. I was wondering if there are any plans to add automated emails to SEOMOZ Pro. Each week I find myself logging into SEOMOZ Pro to pull csv files across several profiles (I use PRO Elite), does SEOMOZ have any plans to add this functionality sometime in the future? All I need is an email to be sent to a specific email address after the ranking report has been updated. SEOMOZ staff - Great job on the tool, definitely the best ranking tool I have ever used. Thanks, Chris Phillips

    Moz Pro | | 21stSEO
    0
  • azguy


    Has anyone used the new wordtracker link building tool? linkbuilder.wordtracker.com If so, please give your opinions.

    Link Building | | azguy
    0
  • Benj25


    I have no real opinion on them to be honest, I don't really have any experience with them personally: eg: http://www.fastdirectorysubmitter.com/downloads.html http://www.thelinksubmitter.com/ http://www.dumpblaster.com/ I presume they will be negative or a waste of time?

    Link Building | | Benj25
    0
  • White.net


    If a large site has multiple regions (Australia, USA, UK, France), how will IP filtering to a particular area affect SEO. e.g: Ilive in the UK an if I visit the said website I would automatically be redirected to the UK subfolder of the site whereas somebody searching in Australia would be redirected to the AUS folder. Will there be any detrimental affect on SEO and will the search engines still be able to crawl the entire site no matter which data centre is being used?

    International SEO | | White.net
    0
  • ceesie


    In Open Site Explorer´s tab Full list of Metrics  I get for the Page Specific Metrics only 2 Internal Followd Links for one of my websites domain URL. I have checked this metric for other websites and I get some surprising results. Most of the websites get an amount which seems logical take the size of the site into account. But there are a couple of sites more for which I get very low results like only 1 or 2 Internal Followed Links! This is strange because the sites do have at least more than a 100 internal pages which are all linking back to the domain and are indexed in Google. I have checked if there is something strange with the robots.txt or htaccess but I havent found anything. So I wonder if this a failure in Open Site Explorer or can there be any other explanation? Anybody with similar experience? aNp83

    Moz Pro | | ceesie
    0
  • macmallseo


    Hi everyone. Hope someone can help me hook up with a video content provider. Need one to produce optimized video content and market it, too. Did a Google search and found some. But I trust a crowd-sourced answer so I try here at SEOMoz. Anybody?

    Image & Video Optimization | | macmallseo
    0
  • danlae


    Hi My website is fairly new and i wasnt aware of the difference btw 'website.com' and 'www.website.com' when i started up. It doesnt matter which one i use as long as i am consistent right ? Most of my ingoing links are to mainpage on 'website.com'. I have som ingoing links to 'www.website.com' but also some to 'www.website.com/brandname'. is it enough to 301-redir 'www.website.com' to 'website.com' or does it need to be done on several levels ? I need to have someone do the redirect for me - how can i check its working when its done ? Dan Lærum

    Technical SEO | | danlae
    0
  • Anest


    On certain sections e.g. Top Level Brand Pages i would like to include history, images of products in use, videos, and possibly even a timeline of the manufacturers history. Being that its a store this would push the products quite a bit lower on the page. Can i still have a great positive effect if its below the product listings?

    On-Page Optimization | | Anest
    0
  • john4math


    A little background: The site I'm working on, www.ixl.com, is a math practice site for pre-K through 8th grade.  Our content consists of math skills where we randomly generate math problems, grouped by grades and topics.  We have around 300 skills per grade. The question: We don't currently have a twitter feed, Facebook page, or a blog.  I'm working on setting these up, or at least a twitter feed and the Facebook page first.  I'm wondering, what kinds of things will we tweet about once I get a twitter feed set up?  What kinds of things should we be tweeting about?  Things like online education articles?  And articles about teaching math?  Do you guys think that would be compelling enough to get followers and make this productive for us? Another question, how important do you think a blog is, compared to a twitter feed and Facebook page?  I was thinking it would be fun to set up a blog, and post math questions from the site 2x or 3x a week, as well as other content that could overlap with the twitter feed.

    Social Media | | john4math
    0
  • Rickshaw


    I'm fairly new to SEO and I'm wondering the best way to utilize SEOmoz's multiple campaigns feature. I've set up a "general" campaign with our top key words and competitors to analyze against our domain and I wondered which verticals would make the best second and third SEOmoz campaign.

    Image & Video Optimization | | Rickshaw
    0
  • MarketingResults


    Hi, I was wondering whether it's still important for SEO to host a website in the same country as you're targetting. We host a fair few Australian sites and we're looking for a new webhost at the moment. Should we only consider hosting on Australian servers or is it worth looking at servers elsewhere? One of the main reasons we're thinking about US hosting is that we can get a machine that is 3x more powerful than we can get in Australia for the price. This performance increase should go some way to minimizing the effect of the latency increase. Thanks, Nick

    Technical SEO | | MarketingResults
    0
  • anthony-305442


    So if FailBlog makes about 2 grand a day in YouTube revenue for posting other people's videos, then why can't someone just make their own FailBlog? In other words, someone could simply download all of FailBlog's videos, and remove their logo, and publish the videos on youtube as their own. Afterall, FailBlog doesn't own the videos anyway. Neither YouTube nor FailBlog seems keen on vetting videos - to see the rightful owner. Yet they are happy to both profit from videos of ambiguous ownership. Or, even, unambigous ownership. e.g. its obvious failblog doesnt own this media http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNQLmHKlmiE

    Social Media | | anthony-305442
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, What is the point of getting a large amount of backlinks to internal pages of an ecommerce site? Although it would be great to make your articles (for example) strong, isn't it more important to build up the strength of the home page. All of My SEO has had a long term goal of strengthening the home page, with just enough backlinks to internal pages to have balance, which is happening naturally. The home page of our main site is what comes up on tons of our keyword searches since it is so strong. Please let me know why so much effort is put into getting backlinks to internal pages. Thank you,

    Technical SEO | | BobGW
    0
  • jclubb


    In building my strategy I want to check how well my competitors rank in country specific searches, for example in Canada or the UK vs. the US. Can someone help me by pointing me in the right direction? Thanks

    On-Page Optimization | | jclubb
    0
  • rball1


    Let's say I sell widgets: plastic widgets, paper widgets, brass widgets and steel widgets. These are in order by how popular they are but none is so popular to really stand on it's own. When writing general content about widgets, lets say for the main Widgets page, would you write: 1. "We sell plastic, paper, brass and steel widgets." -or- 2. "We sell plastic widgets, paper widgets, brass widgets and steel widgets." I understand I can have specific pages for Plastic Widgets, Paper Widgets, etc., but like I said this would be for a main category page, maybe even for a quick "this is what we do" opening paragraph on the homepage. Is it better to be concise like in example 1? Or to individually call out each type like in example 2? I'm looking for SEO insight and the customer experience viewpoint as well.

    Keyword Research | | rball1
    0
  • adriandg


    Recently i noticed one of our competitors is getting a citation out of a directory called Refer Links.  I contacted them to find out their pricing, and to be listed in that directory it is $365/year. I noticed that all the links to the websites are cloaked with php redirects and rel=nofollows' so i doubt it would do much for our page rank, so strictly from a citation standpoint, is this worth it? Here is our competitors listing: http://www.referlinks.com/listing/all-canadian-self-storage-inc--mobile-self-storage.html

    Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
    1
  • cardif


    I have 51 errors on my Crawl Diagnostics tool.46 are 4xx Client Error.Those 4xx errors are links to products (or categories) that we are not selling them any more so there are inactive on the website but Google still have the links. How can I tell Google not to index them?. Can those errors (and warnings) could be harming my rankings (they went down from position 1 to 4 for the most important keywords) thanks,

    Moz Pro | | cardif
    0
  • cardif


    I've been working with a company to get some incoming links since April 2011. We are targeting only 2 keywords. For one keyword I was ranked number 1 until a couple of weeks ago. In fact, most of my rankings went down including those keywords that the company was not working on. They are writing 5 articles per month and posting them to their proprietary network. Could those backlinks could harmed my rankings?

    Link Building | | cardif
    0
  • hornsbylaw


    Hi... We're doing some reciprocal link building and a gentleman has been kind enough to offer me sever additional links for the exchange. All of them (5) are on the same IP address as one of his links to which we have already linked. They are in a related field of endeavor, legal websites. If I make the swap with him, is Google going to disregard, penalize or otherwise marginalize my efforts? Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | hornsbylaw
    0
  • adriandg


    For example, we all know that there is a ranking boost to having a domain name: http://bluewidgets.com when someone searches for "blue widgets". But would the domain name http://widgetsblue.com also get a bonus in the serp for "blue widgets" ?

    Keyword Research | | adriandg
    0
  • kylesuss


    We are located in Denver, Colorado. I want the majority of the site to be focused on Denver keyword terms but I also think we should branch out to other cities around Denver, as well as around the keyword "Colorado." What's an appropriate way to do this? I've seen site that have a page for every city in the area but it looks terrible and doesn't really fit into the site. How do I cross link to these new city pages (I don't want them in the main navigation)?

    Keyword Research | | kylesuss
    0
  • iszalinski


    My site has many backlinks from 208.109.47.246/* and go.diaodou.com/* which have low authority.  The 208.109.47.246 I believe is my godaddy IP and I don't know why I have the diadou links.  Is there anything I can do about these links other than building other more reputable links?  Could switching hosts or going to a dedicated IP solve the 208.109.47.246 issue? Here is a look at the links- http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.mueslifusion.com%252F/a!links Thanks,
    Ian

    Link Building | | iszalinski
    0
  • 4RealLocal


    Can you tell me what questions to ask in order to find a reputable company to do back links? Do you have any companies that you can recommend? What should a service like this cost?

    Link Building | | 4RealLocal
    0
  • outofboundsdigital


    We have an ecommerce client transitioning to a new platform. Due to the nature of the platform, all the pages will have different URLs. There are between 7000-8000 total pages on the website. We wrote 301 redirects for all URLs which are showing inbound links. Unfortunately, automating this process is pretty difficult and hand writing URLs for 8000 links is unfeasible. Is it worth investing the time to 301 redirect all 8000 URLs, or are we safe with only doing those with inbound links? One other option would be to implement a generic redirect for all the rest of the old URLs that sends them to the homepage. Would this be a good compromise?

    Technical SEO | | outofboundsdigital
    0
  • prima-253509


    Looking through Google analytics today and noticed that there is a section under top content that shows  number of Facebook likes & shares,  tweets, diggs, delicious book marks, etc. Anyone else seeing this? [staff note: see answers, this came from a Chrome extension]

    Social Media | | prima-253509
    0
  • Qasim_IMG


    Hi guys, Some of you may have seen a previous question I posted regarding a new client I started working with. Essentially the clients website steadily lost all non domain name keyword rankings over a period of 4-12 weeks, despite content changes and various other improvements. See following:: http://www.seomoz.org/q/shouldn-t-google-always-rank-a-website-for-its-own-unique-exact-10-word-content-such-as-a-whole-sentence After further hair pulling and digging around, I realised that the back link anchor text distribution was unnatural for its homepage/root. From OSE, only about 55/700 of links anchor text contain the clients domain or company name!....8%. The distribution of the non domain keywords isn’t too bad (most repeated keyword has 142 links out of the 700). This is a result of the client submitting to directories over the last 3 years and just throwing in targeted keywords. Is my assumption that it is this penalty/filter correct? If it is I guess the lesson is that domain name anchor texts should make up more of your links? MY QUESTION: What are some of the effective ways I can potentially remove this filter and get the client ranking on its homepage again? Ensure all new links contain the company name?
    Google said there was no manual penalty, so not sure if there’s any point submitting another reconsideration request? Any advice or effective experiences where a fix has worked would be greatly appreciated! Also, if we assume company is "www.Bluewidget.com", what would be the best way to link most naturally: Bluewidget
    Blue widget
    Blue widget .com
    www.bluewidget.com
    http://www.bluewidget.com....etc I'm guessing a mix of the above, but if anyone could suggest a hierarchy that would be great.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qasim_IMG
    0
  • EAOM


    Is a h1 tag wrapped image with a optimized alt tag as effective as text wrapped in a h1 tag?

    On-Page Optimization | | EAOM
    0
  • gomyseo


    I have a client who wants to put a re-direct on his landing pages based on the visitors IP address. The landing page will be a sub domain relevant to the country their IP is located in. I am a little concerned this will effect the SEO. Appreciate any advice. Dylan 🙂

    International SEO | | gomyseo
    0
  • walidalsaqqaf


    There doesn't seem to be clear cut advice / data on whether Facebook Share or Facebook Like is more valuable from an SEO standpoint. So I'm asking you SEOmoz fans have you come across conclusive evidence or have your own sites / testes proven that one is stronger than the other.

    Social Media | | walidalsaqqaf
    0
  • MarieHaynes


    I have a great idea for an infographic.  Does anyone have any resources for tools or tips on creating an infographic? I have some design skills, but I'm not a pro.  I'm not against paying someone to create it...but my budget is small. How do you guys create your infographics?

    Content Development | | MarieHaynes
    2
  • wedmonds


    Hi All, If I had a site about a cartoon character (for example). When I add keywords to the 'keywords' meta tag, would I be best to put specific phrases such as Cartoon Character, Cartoon Character on TV, Cartoon Character on Television or would the following have the same effect: Cartoon Character, Tv, Movie, Television I was wondering if  having the above instance might be less effective as the search engines might read TV, Movie, Television as less relevant to Cartoon Character. Hope that makes sense!  🙂

    Technical SEO | | wedmonds
    0
  • seoug_2005


    I am asking this question after reading similar post. My question is does the first link count rule - Only the first link is counted, if we point to same page with two different anchor texts - applies to anchor text only. Does the PR is passed to the second link ?

    Technical SEO | | seoug_2005
    2
  • Benj25


    Every 2-3 days, presumably each time we are crawled we go from 2nd for a chosen keyword - to 4th for a chosen keyword. Then 2-3 days later - back to 2nd. It's always the same two listings that come above us, and go back underneath - why would this be?

    Technical SEO | | Benj25
    1
  • nicole.healthline


    Do you think that content (that doesn't have a date attached) has a shelf life? Especially content that is effectively timeless such as a quiz? I've noticed in my link building efforts that most links are achieved within the first couple of weeks, and that there seems to be a point of diminishing returns. Why do you think that may be?

    Content Development | | nicole.healthline
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    Several leading experts say that keyword density isn't all that important. What do you think of keyword density? Do you incorporate it into your day to day activities?

    Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline
    0
  • anthony-305442


    Notice on the YouTube sidebar, each video has a thumbnail and a title. But, for the ALT tag, YouTube simply uses the word "thumbnail". In the past, i was using a keyword phrase for my thumbnail ALT tag. I thought I was being clever. But is this superflous? We note that the A tag on the YouTube items, encompasses the SPAN that is the video + title. Does Google associate the text of the title as valid "anchor text" despite the existance of other info in that span --- e.g. like View Count and the User Name of the video creator? Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | anthony-305442
    0

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