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  • "... an image link with no alt tag is useless to search engines..." according to a Nov 2007 seomoz blog post. Is this still the case in 2011? I ask because I'm about to obtain a banner link on a high-traffic site (chiefly for the clickthrough value) but I notice the site uses neither "title" nor "alt" tags.

    Link Building | | Jeepster
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  • Currently I use All-In-One SEO and I quite like how simple it is to setup and it's stable. Is that still one of the best ones? What are you using these days? Is it worth stripping out the superfluous meta tags that Wordpress now puts in? Is there any value to adding meta descriptions to all my Tag pages and if so, is there a good plugin that will auto magically create unique descriptions for these pages? Same goes for my paginated archives. Thanks!

    Content Development | | flowsimple
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  • Hi! I am not very familiar with the canonical tag. The thing is that we are getting traffic and links from affiliates. The affiliates links add something like this to the code of our URL: www.mydomain.com/category/product-page?afl=XXXXXX At this moment we have almost 2,000 pages indexed with that code at the end of the URL. So they are all duplicated. My other concern is that I don't know if those affilate links are giving us some link juice or not. I mean, if an original product page has 30 links and the affiliates copies have 15 more... are all those links being counted together by Google? Or are we losing all the juice from the affiliates? Can I fix all this with the canonical tag? Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jorgediaz
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  • Is it bad to use registered trademark symbols in page titles? Does this somehow hurt in search rankings?

    Algorithm Updates | | mlentner
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  • As most people know it's usual that the main menu is after the top right small links in html. My questions are: What is more important for google or how does google tell which link is more important than the other to pass juice on? If the top right links are in front of the main menu in html would they get more link juice than the main menu? Should i focus in working on better html structure but still keeping the same look ( reverse the html code but keep the same look through css)? Any suggestions?

    Technical SEO | | mosaicpro
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  • Hello, I am looking into Meta keywords in the attempt to understand their importance. I have been reading about this in several blogs and get the feeling that the general view is that they are no longer very valuable. Some say it is because Google and Bing no longer use them, that in terms of SEO they carry little importance and that they are a great indicator to your competitors about which keywords you believe are important... My question is this: Without Meta keywords, how do you deal with misspelt search keywords on your website? For example, if you were looking for a product called 'El Mundo en Espa_ñ_ol' but spelt it using the normal 'n' instead of the Spanish 'ñ', and the keyword 'Espanol' was not included in the Meta keywords, would you still find the product? English speaking people commonly search without the ñ because this is more convenient to them. So how can I make sure that the page is optimised for these type of common misspellings? Thanks!!!

    Keyword Research | | languedoc
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  • Quick question: I want some pages that will have canonical tags, to show up in internal results for a Google site search that's built into the site. I'm not finished with the site, but is it correct to assume that pages with canonical will NOT show up in internal site search results, when powered by Google?

    Technical SEO | | EricPacifico
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  • I'm one of the guys out there that is super focused on user behavior right now. I think with the implementation of different things such as the block feature and +1, it points to the fact that Google is putting a lot more power in the users. How influential do you think factors such as bounce rate, CTR, time on site, and other user behavior metrics are in the algo?

    Algorithm Updates | | TommySwanson52
    0

  • I just finished a 2 week test using Twitter.  The person running the test was tweeting for 1 hour every day, but the tweets were broken up into several different times throughout the day.  She engaged in conversations, retweeted, posted interested and catchy topics and linked to our blog.  By the end of the test, we only saw a 7% increase in traffic to the blog.  There was no noticeable increase in sales. According to an article I read by Business Insider, Applied Predictive Technologies ran a test to help companies like Starbucks measure the impact of social media.  They concluded that social media accounted for a 2% increase in sales.  That's not much for the time and money that goes into it. What's your experience with social media? When I first posted this, I neglected to say this Twitter account is one we have been activly using for about 2 years, and we have posted to it at least once or twice every day for the last couple of years.  And, we are a well established company for the past 8 years, and we regularily submit press releases and have written 2 articles per day on our blog for several years.

    Social Media | | BradBorst
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  • Hi This again is probably a naive question, but here goes anyway.  I've searched around a lot to find out how to use 'Technorati' with my companies blog posts, i.e.extend their reach.  I have discovered, from lots of querying, that WordPress does an automatic RSS feed which 'Technorati' will automatically pick up on once it has been told of an update to the blog by WPs automated Ping. In a WP forum I found a discussion about the problems of getting your blog into 'Technorati'. http://wordpress.org/support/topic/tags-do-not-update-technorati/page/2?replies=52 In it basically it states that you blog post should be there.  If it isn't it is due to errors in coding on an individualized theme.  I ran a W3C validater suggested, that did pick up 90 errors for my 'home' blog page.  The link even explains in practical terms how to correct the errors. However, the designer is not convinced this is the problem.  As a novice I don’t know if this is the reason for definite.  Does anyone have an opinion on this problem?

    Content Development | | catherine-279388
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  • I never used link exchange yet in our link building practices i want to know is after Google Panda updates etc. is link exchange with good SEOMOz rank good niche sites still effective or not ? If yes what shall be the points which i shall remember while doing the start link exchange.

    Link Building | | anand2010
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  • We are looking at integrating a blog into our website. Unfortunately, our content management system is very clunky and not set up to quickly publish blog style content. I'd like to use Wordpress and set up the blog as a subdomain of my company website. Our URL is www.blockandcompany.com so the blog URL would be www.blog.blockandcompany.com. Is it correct to say that if the blog is set up this way, the search engines will see the regular website and the Wordpress hosted blog as one big site? I want to use the blog to write keyword-rich content, but I don't want to divide my SEO "equity" between two separate sites. Any advice?

    Content Development | | Blockinc
    1

  • Hi All - I am currently attempting to move a blog (companyname.blogspot.com) that has a 2/10 GPR to a custom domain name so that I can get my targeted keywords in the domain name. The new domain will just be www.targetedkeyword.com. There are easy instructions for doing this with the A record and CNAME changes in the Blogger help, but I am worried about losing rank and links if I do this. Can you guys help me understand what the ramifications would be, and how I can accomplish this without losing the 2/10 mojo? Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | Bandicoot
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  • On a blog from an SEO perspective how do you choose keywords to use in the "meta keyword tag" vs. "post tags"? Will it be different based on the search volume/competition of the keywords targeted?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | saravanans
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  • Hi Everyone, I work regularly on this site www.cheapsnapframes.co.uk which is a cubecart based site and upto a few months ago the home page used to rank on poster frames we were on page 1 of google now we are on page 2 but it has dropped the home page and favours a category page. I have been looking at this to try and figure out why and I have today realised I had some external links on the home page pointing to the .com which the site used to run from but has been setup as a 301 redirect so I have changed these to internal links. I have used the on page tool and get an A but its been showing an A for a long time. Is there any other reason why we have lost out on this keyword term? Thank you in advance Tracy

    On-Page Optimization | | dashesndots
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  • Hello, I am trying for the first time to implement a canonical redirect on a page and would really appreciate it if someone could tell me if this was done correctly. I am trying to do a canonical redirect: -from http://www.diamondtours.com/default.aspx -to http://www.diamondtours.com/ As you will see in the source code of the default.aspx page, the line of code written is: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.diamondtours.com" /> Is this correct?  Any guidance is greatly appreciated. Jeffrey Ferraro

    Technical SEO | | JeffFerraro
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  • Hello, We rank fairly high for a lot of terms but Google is not indexing our descriptions properly. An example is with "arnold schwarzenegger net worth". http://www.google.ca/search?q=arnold+schwarzenegger+net+worth&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a When we add content, we throw up a placeholder page first. The content gets added with no body content and the page only contains the net worth amount of the celebrity. We then go back through and re-add the descriptions and profile bio shortly after. Will that affect how the pages are getting indexed and is there a way we can get Google to go back to the page and try to index the description so it doesn't just appear as a straight link? Thanks, Alex

    Technical SEO | | Anti-Alex
    0

  • So, I have a website www.mobikwik.com which provides mobile phone topup in India. I signed up for SEOMOZ Pro membership a little less than a month ago. For all our competitors , which rank above us in google as of today , I checked out two things a) competitive link analysis     and b) on-page optimization. On b) , our home page had the best optimization for targeted keywords and the best score amongst all competitors who ranked above us. On a) , linkscape tools showed our moztrust and mozrank to be the best. Except for 2 competitors, our domain authority was also better than the rest. Inspite of all this, our website is ranked no more than 6 on google for all targeted keywords. We have the best quality links amongst our competitors. I am at a loss to understand this and how to improve our ranking. I have to make a decision whether to renew my SEOMOZ membership in 2 days time. Please help me decide!

    Moz Pro | | mobikwik
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  • When tracking Google Shopping using the URL builder is it possible to pull through the Keyword used or will analytic do this automatically?

    Reporting & Analytics | | TPSUK
    1

  • What is the best practice with having multiple locations in Google Places. Does having multiple Google Places set up for each business have a big effect on local rankings for the individual areas? Should I use the home page for the website listed on each page or is it better to have a specific landing page for each Google Places listing? Any other tips? Thanks, Daniel

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions
    0

  • I added SSL to my wordpress blog because that was the only way to get a dedicated IP address for my site at my host. Now I am noticing Google has started indexing posts both as http and https. Can some one please help how to force google not to index https as I am sure its like having duplicate content. All help is appreciated. So far I have added this to top of htaccess file: RewriteEngine on Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} ^443$ RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt And added robots_ssl.txt with following: User-agent: Googlebot Disallow: /  User-agent: * Disallow: / But https pages are still being indexed. Please help.

    Content Development | | rookie123
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  • One of my clients has a pretty decent website that ranks 1st place for most major keywords in their line of business. EXCEPT one keyword that i've been struggling to get 1st position on Google (currently 2nd). My problem is: let's say "tennis shoes" as a keyword the home page of course has several other shoes listed but I've seen that Google took my home page and made it 2nd position (on 1st page). Where the section domain.com/tennis-shoes  is on 2nd page of Google. My question is should i rel cannonical from the /tennis-shoes section to the home page so it focuses more on the specific keyword that i need to get the home 1st? Or should i leave the home page generic and focus more on /tennis-shoes to get that 1st position? What do you Moz'ers Think?

    Competitive Research | | mosaicpro
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  • Is MozCon filmed? Will it be available after the event? I'm half a world away and unfortunately most likely would not be able to get there this year.

    Industry Events | | MrPaulB
    0

  • Or worded differently: Has anyone heard of "big" SEO companies removing links after termination of service? I have a client who isn't particularly happy with the SEO he's getting from a big Aussie SEO firm, and he wants to terminate, however they've built thousands of links for him and he's a little concerned they might all get pulled. Has anyone heard of this happening, or; Do you think this is a legitimate concern? I think its physically possible to remove backlinks like this because it seems the SEO firm in question is building links by using other client's websites. I also wonder if they might have large content farm style sites where they place links for clients which might be quite easy to take down. Please discuss!

    Industry News | | CheapGames99
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  • Hi, Operating from the Netherlands with customers troughout Europe we have for some countries the same content. In the netherlands and Belgium Dutch is spoken and in Germany and Switserland German is spoken. For these countries the same content is provided. Does Google see this as duplicate content? Could it be possible that a german customer gets the Swiss website as a search result when googling in the German Google? Thank you for your assistance! kind regards, Dennis Overbeek Dennis@acsi.eu

    Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI
    0

  • My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?

    Technical SEO | | ShaMenz
    0

  • I have a client who has a website which is getting fairly descent traffic in the current industry its in. He is launching a new business model, same industry. New domain, new brand etc. Is it better to keep both entities separate and try growing them both? Or would it be more effective in terms of acquiring ranks and traffic to 301 redirect the old established site to the new site? Transferring all the value from the old and instantly boosting the new model. Not sure if this ads anything to the topic, the new domain is also an exact domain keyword match for a highly searched term.

    Branding | | sunbelt
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  • If pages get moved and 301s are in place is it still important to update the anchor text links to the new page url? For example would it be optimal to go through old blog posts and change the urls for the anchor text if the old anchor text url redirects to the new page url.

    Link Building | | jmansd
    0

  • Hello everyone, My name is Davys and I'm what you call a newbie...so the question may sound stupid....But where we go. In this campaign I will be targeting around 130 to 150 keywords to my store. So here is the technical question. What is the right way of indexing 150 keywords? Should I attempt to have all 150 going to www.mysite.com or should I break it down into smaller pages if I can put it that way. Like www.mysite.com/pages/bikiniwax for example.  Even if I break it down, what is the right amount of keywords that I should SEO per page? Or do 150 pages? Please helppppppppppppppppppppp....  🙂 Thanks a lot for your help.

    Technical SEO | | Davys
    0

  • I use z-indexing for a floating bar that scrolls vertically along the side of my page.  I'm not hiding anything.  Is this safe or not?

    Technical SEO | | BradBorst
    0

  • Some of my Open Site Explorer Top Pages http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/drho.ro/a!toppages have [No Data].  How do I fix this?  I use WordPress and these are .pdf files I uploaded to my server and 301 redirects I created using the Pretty Link Pro plugin

    Moz Pro | | drhoro
    0

  • We are between UBL and LocalEZE for our preferred local listing submission vendor. DIfferences:
    *UBL does not have a relationship with local data vendors, but submits to axicom and infousa (as examples) which LocalEZE does not.
    *LocalEZE has active feeds set up with many local vendors. What are your preferences? We are leaning twoard LocalEZE, Razorfish (the agency) is among their notable clients. What about submitting to both? I would be fearful that the data will overlap.

    Image & Video Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
    0

  • I have seen several sites that put a div feature at the bottom of a page to hide content.  If you click on the button, it will extend the page down and be loaded with paragraphs of text rich with keywords. Does anyone know is this is viewed as a negative with Google?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netmkting
    0

  • I have a smaller site that has a google penalty, webmaster tools says there might be a doorway page. Im wondering if, once the site is fixed, is it necessary to file a reconsideration request, or, if the site is no longer in violation,  will the site be included eventually by itself, without a reconsideration request?

    Technical SEO | | serpent2011
    0

  • We're in the process of looking to hire link builders & content managers in the Chicago area. While I know it's not a "core function" of SEOmoz, the SEO Industry Jobs section has been very helpful to us. Unfortunately, it's not easily searchable/filterable by geography. I think the Moz resume & job-board could be a lot more helpful with some updates, including filter by geography. Anyone else have any suggestions?

    Moz Pro | | Gyi
    0

  • Please forgive my stupidity if there is something obvious here which I have missed (I keep assuming that must be the case), but any advice on this would be much appreciated. We've just acquired a new client. Despite having a site for plenty of time now they did not previously have analytics with their last company (I know, a crime!). They've been with us for about a month now and we've managed to get them some great rankings already. To be fair, the rankings weren't bad before us either. Anyway. They have multiple position one rankings for well searched terms both locally and nationally. One would assume therefore that a lot of their traffic would come from Google right? Not according to their analytics. In fact, very little of it does... instead, 70% of their average 3,000 visits per month comes from just one referring site. A framed version of their site which is through reachlocal, which itself doesn't rank for any of their terms. I don't get it... The URL of the site is: www.namgrass.co.uk (ignore there being a .com too, that's a portal as they cover other countries). The referring site causing me all this confusion is: http://namgrass.rtrk.co.uk/ (see source code at the bottom for the reachlocal thing). Now I know reach local certainly isn't sending them all that traffic, so why does GA say it is... and what is this reachlocal thing anyway?? I mean, I know what reachlocal is, but what gives here with regards to it? Any ideas, please??

    Reporting & Analytics | | SteveOllington
    0

  • I currently work for a contract manufacturing company so when I think about building links it seems as if it's going to be a daunting task. Mainly because any kind of content that you can come up with is rather dry. When I go about searching for links I usually run into a lot of directories that charge anywhere between $25-$50 for a listing. I've had a hard time convincing marketing that we should start a blog which may be a good way to build some links if we come up with quality posts but those posts may be few and far inbetween. Does anybody have any recommendations for building links for this type of company or subject matter? Also, and I'm sure we have all heard this. When I mentioned the fact that we should be building some quality links to the site marketing first asked why and then commented "Well that shouldn't take you too long". Why is it so difficult to get management to accept the fact that managing a website is an ongoing and constantly changing process that involves research and experimentation?

    Link Building | | TRICORSystems
    0

  • Do "Sponsored Posts"  links get discounted by google? A feture post that is tagged by the site as "featured' or "sponsored" are they discounted as paid links by google?

    Link Building | | DavidKonigsberg
    0

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