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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.

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  • carlystemmer


    Hi, We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them? Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well? Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out: http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlystemmer
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  • ClayPotCreative


    Hi everyone. Thanks in advance for the assistance. We are reformatting the URL structure of our very content rich website (thousands of pages) into a cleaner stovepipe model. So our pages will have a URL structure something like http://oursite.com/topic-name/category-name/subcategory-name/title.html etc. My question is… is there any additional benefit to having the path /topic-name/category-name/subcategory-name/title.html literally exist on our server as a real directory? Our plan was to just use HTACCESS to point that URL to a single script that parses the URL structure and makes the page appropriately. Do search engine spiders know the difference between these two models and prefer one over the other? From our standpoint, managing a single HTACCESS file and a handful of page building scripts would be infinitely easier than a huge, complicated directory structure of real files. And while this makes sense to us, the HTACCESS model wouldn't be considered some kind of black hat scheme, would it? Thank you again for the help and looking forward to your thoughts!

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ClayPotCreative
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  • Joanne_Pendon


    Hi all, I have a very curious predicament and I'd be grateful if someone could shed some light on the situation. As mentioned in the title, organic traffic to our website has remained unchanged, but organic impressions have taken a 98% drop in the last week. This happened suddenly over one day; on October 22, impressions were 700, on October 23, they were 500, and on October 24 they drastically dropped to 50. The next two days they were at 22 and then up to 35. Organic traffic, however, showed the normal "weekend drop" as of October 24, and is still showing normal level (even increased a bit) continuing into this week. These are organic impressions according to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. We did perform a complete site redesign a month ago. Could this be an effect from the redesign? We also noticed drop in Domain Authority, but our competitors suffered a similar (if not greater) drop as well, so we wondered if it could be due in part to the algorithm update. If anyone could shed some light on the situation I would be so appreciative! Thanks!

    Web Design | | Joanne_Pendon
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  • PeteC12


    Hi All, I have a Rental site and I am bit confused with how best do my H Tags on my homepage I know the H1 is the most important, Then H2 Tags and so on.. and that these tags should really be titles for content. However, I have a few categories (links) on my homepage so I am wondering if I could put these as H2 Tags given that it is relevant to the page . H3 Tags will my News and Guides etc , H4 Tags will the whats on the footer. I am attached a made up screenshot of what I propose for my homepage  if someone could please  give it a quick look ,  it would be very much appreciated. I have looked at what some competitors do a lot of them don't seem to have h2's etc but I know it's an important factor for rankings etc. Many thanks Pete dJSFQwI

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC12
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  • renukishor


    I want to that my backlinks are instant indexed, so is any social bokkmarking sites availble when backlinks can instant indexed then please answer me.

    Link Building | | renukishor
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  • PeteC12


    Hello All, I am currently doing my H1 ,H2, H3 Tags on my redesigned website We have the ability to have links to relevant DIY Guides on the bottom of our webpage and these are currently displayed under a heading "DIY Useful Guides" above my on page content which is at the bottom of the page. My H2 Tag will obviously be the title that sits above my On Page Content at the bottom of the Webpage and I was going to do the H3 Tag for my DIY Guides Is it a problem if the H3 tag sits above the H2 Tag on the Page or not ?  Or have i got this wrong and I need to move the DIY Guides (links) to below the on page content so the H3 tag sits below the H2 tag? thanks Pete OTmPbbR

    Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
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  • DJDavid


    I used the crawl tool and it return a 404 error for several pages that I no longer have published in Wordpress. They must still be on the server somewhere? Do you know how to remove them? I think they are not a file on the server like an html file since Wordpress uses databases? I figure that getting rid of the 404 errors will improve SEO is this correct? Thanks, David

    Moz Pro | | DJDavid
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  • businessowner


    Hi all, I just submit my url and linked pages along with xml map to index. How long does it take google to index my new pages?

    Algorithm Updates | | businessowner
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  • billyguyette


    About 3 months I started a website (www.guyetteroofing.com) for my roofing business in Montgomery, Alabama. The site is still a work in progress, however, because the competition doesn't really market via internet it was fairly easy to rank on Google Maps. Within 1 month the business was letter "A" in Google Maps. About 3 three weeks ago my ranking was dropped considerably, not showing up at all in letters A through G. The business is still indexed in Google Maps, but only represented by a small red dot. My website is still ranking pretty high for "roofers in Montgomery", but my position on Google Maps has all but disappeared. I have no idea what I've done to be rank so low on Google Maps but still have a solid position on regular Google Search. I've checked my citations and my NAPs, there are a few inconsistencies but nothing major.  How can I rank so far below my competition if I have twice as many citations, an actual website, and a Google Plus page?

    Local Listings | | billyguyette
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  • imaginex


    Hello, I have a website that was started in 1999. On the website I have map pages for each of the offices listed on my site, for which there are about 120. Each of the 120 maps is in a whole separate html page. There is no content in the page other than the map. I know all of the offices love having the map pages so I don't want to remove the pages. So, my question is would these pages with no real content be hurting the rankings of the other pages on our site? Therefore, should I block the pages with my robots.txt? Would I also have to remove these pages (in webmaster tools?) from Google for blocking by robots.txt to really work? I appreciate your feedback, thanks!

    Technical SEO | | imaginex
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  • CKerr


    Hello Moz people, Is it better for SEO to have a URL path like this: flowersite.com/anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses OR flowersite.com/dozen_roses Is it better to have the full trail of pages in the URL?

    On-Page Optimization | | CKerr
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  • IceIcebaby


    Hi, I'm not too sure what to do about this or what to think of it. This magically appeared in my companies robots.txt file (literally magically appeared/text is below) User-agent: Baiduspider
    User-agent: Baiduspider-video
    User-agent: Baiduspider-image
    Disallow: / I know that Baidu is the Google of China, but I'm not sure why this would appear in our robots.txt all of a sudden. Should I be worried about a hack? Also, would I want to disallow Baidu from crawling my companies website? Thanks for your help,
    -Reed

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
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  • ColeLusby


    Hey Moz Community, I have a friend I'm asking for who has an agency and will be taking over SEO from another agency. One thing that worries me is that the agency has confirmed dozens of locations in Google Places (about 60-100) for this business. How would you transfer Google Places ownership (assuming they cooperate)? Could the previous agency delete these listings? If so, how would that affect Local SEO? For example, the location and phone number is already on the website. Isn't that good enough for all of these locations (about 100)? I hope this is clear; please let me know if not. I would be interested in hearing any other feedback about moving agencies. Thanks, Cole

    Local Listings | | ColeLusby
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  • iam-sold


    The site that I am optimising has a problem with duplicate pages being indexed as a result of the load balancer (which is required and set up by the hosting company). The load balancer passes the site through to 2 different URLs: www.domain.com www2.domain.com Some how, Google have indexed 2 of the same URLs (which I was obviously hoping they wouldn't) - the first on www and the second on www2. The hosting is a mirror image of each other (www and www2), meaning I can't upload a robots.txt to the root of www2.domain.com disallowing all. Also, I can't add a canonical script into the website header of www2.domain.com pointing the individual URLs through to www.domain.com etc. Any suggestions as to how I can resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold
    0
  • Firestarter-SEO


    Let's say my website can be accessed in only 3 states Colorado, Arizona and Ohio. I want to display different information to each visitor based on where they are located. For this I would also like the title to change based on their location. Not quite sure how Google we treat the title and rank the site.... Any resources you can provide would be helpful. Thanks

    On-Page Optimization | | Firestarter-SEO
    0
  • Wagada


    Can anyone offer any advice on how Google might get the url which it displays in search results wrong? It currently appears for all pages as: <cite>www.domainname.com › Register › Login</cite> When the real url is nothing like this. It should be: www.domainname.com/product-type/product-name. This could obviously affect clickthroughs. Google has indexed around 3,000 urls on the site and they are all like this. There are links at the top of the page on the website itself which look like this: Register » Login » which presumably could be affecting it? Thanks in advance for any advice or help!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wagada
    0
  • Dan-Lawrence


    Hi I just want to confirm how potentially damaging using java script to hide lots of on page body copy with a 'read more' button is ? As per other moz Q&A threads i was told that best not to use Javascript to do this & instead "if you accomplish this with CSS and collapsible/expandable <DIV> tags it's totally fine" so thats what i advised my clients dev. However i recently noticed a big drop in rankings aprox 1 weeks after dev changing the body copy format (hiding alot of it behind a 'read more' button) so i asked them to confirm how they did implement it and they said: "done in javascript but on page load the text is defaulting to show" (which is contrary to my instructions) So how likely is it that this is causing problems ? since coincides with ranking drop OR if text is defaulting to show it should be ok/not cause probs ? And should i request that they redo as originally instructed (css & collapsible divs) asap ? All Best Dan

    On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence
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  • ey_sja


    Example URL:  http://www.sja.ca/English/Community-Services/Pages/Therapy Dog Services/default.aspx The above page is generated dynamically depending on what province the visitor visits from.  For example, a visitor from BC would see something quite different than a visitor from Nova Scotia; the intent is that the information shown should be relevant to the user of that province. How does this effect SEO?  How (or from what location) does Googlebot decide to crawl the page? I have considered a subdirectory for each province, though that comes with its challenges as well.  One such challenge is duplicate content when different provinces may have the same information for some pages.  Any suggestions for this?

    Technical SEO | | ey_sja
    0
  • Dan-Lawrence


    Hi I've tried adding new mentions for a couple of different campaigns recently, once today and once yesterday. I'm entering the query name and search query but the 'preview this query' button stays 'dull' and cant cant be clicked so i cant preview the query to then add the query/mention. Is there a bug with this feature at the moment ? anyone else having probs or adding mentions ok ? if someone from moz could confirm asap much appreciated ? All Best Dan

    Product Support | | Dan-Lawrence
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  • PeteC12


    I have a website with individual Location Landing Pages for each of my Depots.  I also have individual Google Local Business Listings for each of my depots. Should I have a link from my Website Location Landing Pages to the associated Google local Business listings or not ?... Given that I already have a link on my Google Business listing to the relevant Location Page on my website. I wasn't sure whether linking both ways would be more beneficial thus enforcing things better or whether it's not needed to link both ways . thanks Pete

    Local Listings | | PeteC12
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