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Regaining Twitter
Our Twitter account had been hijacked by an ex-employee who refused to give it back. However we filed for copyright infringement and got access of our Twitter account back. The sad part is that Twitter could not leep our followers intact and we lost our fan base of over 30k followers. Now that we have control of the account, how should we go about regaining our followers? Just to give the community a better idea i'd like to point out that we are a leading news organization (dawn.com) of Pakistan. (Yes, we have internet and no we don't ride on camels!). We posted a message on our FB account that has an even greater following but didn't get a good response as most followers on FB are local whereas 70% of our readership comes from the US alone! So how would you suggest regaining followers and also, is it better to operate an RSS feed or manually select the links to share on Twitter. Thanks!
Social Media | | RishadShaikh590 -
Duplicate titles OK if page don't need to rank well?
I know It is not a good idea to have duplicate titles across a website on pages as Google does not like this. Is it ok to have duplicate titles on pages that aren't being optimised with SERP's in mind? or could this have a negative effect on the pages that are being optimised?
Technical SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Is it possible to get good SEO results with small brochure websites?
Say I have a 5 page website with 300 words and 4 images on each page. No or little dynamic content. No blog. Is it still possible to get good SEO results in a site like this? what would be the best strategy? what challenges would I need to over come? or is it just too much of an up hill battle?
On-Page Optimization | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Do you spend much time on the phone when link building?
When it comes to link building for a client how important is it to get on the phone when chasing links from other sites? Would you say this done all the time, half the time, not at all? Is this the SEO experts responsibility or the clients? Update: Really hoping to get an idea of how important this is to acheive good SEO results. Any chance the SEOMoz employees have any answers here?
Link Building | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Google Places verification
What advice do you have for achieving verification for Google Places for a client? I have a client at the moment and I tried getting the call sent through and I'm not sure what happened but a couple of tries at this did not work. I've tried the post card way and I'm still waiting. Do I need to be more patient in Australia for this verification post card? Is there a way I can verify the info myself? note: I have set up a seperate email that there business email to handle a lot of the link building but this is different to there business email which Google uses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Australia specific SEO tips?
For those who are conducting SEO here in Australia: A lot of the info I read, and there is a lot, is generally from the States or UK it seems. Are there any things in particular I should look out for when doing SEO in Australia? Are there any SEO tips that are particular to Australia only? What directories are a must in Australia?
International SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
What percentage of my links should be directory links
I feel a lot of my link building might be a bit heavy on the directory links side. Should I limit the percentage amount of links as a part of my overall link profile? If yes what percentage of links is ok to be directory links?
Link Building | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
What is the best method for segmenting HTML sitemaps?
Sitemaps create a Table of Contents for web crawlers and users alike. Understanding how PageRank is passed, HTML sitemaps play a critical role in how Googlebot and other crawlers spider and catalog content. I get asked this question a lot and, in most cases, it's easy to categorize sitemaps and create 2-3 category-based maps that can be linked to from the global footer. However, what do you do when a client has 40 categories with 200+ pages of content under each category? How do you segment your HTML sitemap in a case like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman0 -
Aside from creative link bait, what's a solid link building strategy involve?
All things considered, directories, blogs, articles, press releases, forums, social profiles, student discount pages, etc, what do you consider to be a strong, phased, link building strategy? I'm talking beyond natural/organic link bait, since many larger accounts will not allow you to add content to their website or take 6 months to approve a content strategy. I've got my own list, but would love to hear what the community considers to be a strong, structured, timeline-based strategy for link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman1 -
Video SERP question
Hello MOZ Helpers.. Sometimes video results pop up in Uiversal search..for example for "recycle paint" my video for recycle paint residing on my website shows up on a Universal SERP SEE IMAGE 1..This happens even when I use an ip mask or change local..the confusing part is why my personal version trumps my youtube version SEE IMAGE 2. What metric(s) is Google using to rank videos, and what kind of benefit does this provide if the video points to your site vs. a video service like youtube or 5min? I have attached 2 images with IMGUR but search "recycle paint" to recreate [" target="_blank">>](<img src= "Hosted by imgur.com") [" target="_blank">>](img src= "Hosted by imgur.com") [http://imgur.com/tdCVM.jpg](a href= "Hosted by imgur.com")" target="_blank">a> [http://imgur.com/tdCVM.jpg](a href= "Hosted by imgur.com")" target="_blank">a> [" target="_blank">>](<img src= "Hosted by imgur.com") [" target="_blank">>](<img src= "Hosted by imgur.com") [" target="_blank">>](<img src= "Hosted by imgur.com")
Image & Video Optimization | | johnshearer0 -
Question about web site structure
Is there an SEO advantage for individual pages to be in sub folders vs not being in a folder? Of course site managemnt is easier with folders if you have 100;s of pages...clearly a shorter URL is easier for humans to naviagte. store.com/gadgets store.com/lasers vs. store.com/gadgets/lasers
Web Design | | johnshearer0 -
Multiple domains, which does Google like better?
From a business perspective It seems a better idea to have one site and multiple domains pointing to that one site. Is there any benefit as far as ranking well in Google to having a site set up on each domain with links to the main site? Does you have any success from a business point of view in using this strategy? P.S. This is my 4th question in Beta testing, just want to make sure I'm not taking advantage of your generosity and if it is fine to keep asking questions here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Is article writing and submission for link building a good idea in all circumstances?
I'm attempting to build links for a seafood market / restaurant and I'm finding my creativity and knowledge of SEO being stretched, which is a good thing of course. Can you help me grow here? I have the client interested in writing articles but he has little time for this. I want to make sure it is worth it. Is article writing and submission worth the time and effort for a business like this? How would I go about link building though articles for a small business like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Is facebook and twitter always a good idea to promote a website and improve Google rankings?
I'm attempting to promote a fresh seafood market / restaurant here on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. I have not found a lot of examples of people using Twitter and Facebook to promote this type of business here. Is it hard to justify the time for return here? One benefit I thought for twitter is we could have tweets displayed on site giving us some dynamic content which would hopefully keep Google spider coming back more regularly is this correct? Is there any link building advantage to using these social media sites?
Social Media | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
Is there any SEO benefit for links shared in Facebook feeds or wall posts?
Is there any SEO benefit for links shared in Facebook feeds or wall posts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NinjaTEL30 -
What's the best SEO practice to get conversion rate up?
If you want to get conversion rate up what is the best method to do so?
Competitive Research | | blackrino0 -
Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?
Hi Everyone, This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites. We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de. On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below: example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users? Google guidelines say that this should be ok. Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community! Thanks, Supriya.
International SEO | | Amjath0 -
What is a good closing ratio? I am at 32%
I have a client I landed about 1 1/2 months ago. The only traffic coming to the site is from Google Adwords. The goal page is the "Get A Quote" page and the closing ratio is 32.4%. So about 1 in 3 visits fill out the quote form. I usually do eCommerce and I am used to seeing 2-3% goal conversions. But 32.4%???? Is that normal for a regular static site (non-ecommerce). It's been like that for a whole week! Should I toot my own horn here?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Francisco_Meza0 -
Sister Sites or Joint Family?
A large News Media Group has a Tv Channel, print newspaper, radio channel (for music primarly) and an online website that includes the newspaper content and other original content in different media. My question is, is it better to have independant websites for these different mediums or have all the content on one big website. Currently the newspaper and blog are online as one whereas the radio channel has its own website and the television has its own. So should we maintain sister sites and cross link to each other or have one big happy family under one house? Best, Rishad.
On-Page Optimization | | RishadShaikh590 -
When URL rewrite can lead to un pretty URLs
Hi Mozzers. I've a client that has done a little bit of mess rewriting the URLs of its site. In fact, also the data base driven URLs are rewritten, but the dev forgot to change the space with "-", so that now the 95% of the URLs are like this one: http://www.portalesardegna.com/search/Appartamenti e Residence/ Obviously not really a pretty URL. I am not so sure if this issue has an SEO consecuences (in fact, the site ranks pretty well also with those kind of url), but I am thinking more on usability issue. Could you suggest me any easy fix to this rewrite problem?
Technical SEO | | gfiorelli12 -
What do you do about links to constantly moving pages?
One of the sites I work for is an employment site, they have a job database and the job pages tend to get links. The problem is that every time one of these jobs is filled, the job page goes away. What should I do to keep the value from these links?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
301 redirect
We have just had an outside SEO agency report on our site: One of things brought up were arounf broken links, and how they class them as broken links. Could any body tell me whether this statement holds true please, as I am not aware of this "Our latest intelligence shows that google are downgrading ranking from sites that feature 301 redirects within the internal link structure". Any help would be greatly appreciated Regards
Technical SEO | | Yozzer0 -
Do search enginges prefer pages with mobile websites on the mobile phone?
Let me explain what I want to know: Somebody searches e.g. for a hotel on his mobile phone. Do the search engines rank websites with special mobile pages better than others? I am not considering the local factor here (let's say there are hotels nearby with or without mobile websites). If not, is there a trend for that? Does anyone have some datas / examples / experience about that?
Image & Video Optimization | | petrakraft1 -
How important are breadcrumbs?
Do you see their usage in usability and / or regarding SEO? What about the position? Normally they are embeded in the top area ... what if I have a really long page and I embed them at the bottom of the page. Isn't that positive for the user - he doesn't have to scroll up again. But what about the SEO purpose if they are at the botton in the nirvana? Are breadcrumbs navigational links and have less value because of that?
On-Page Optimization | | petrakraft1 -
How do you visualize website structure
How do you visualize a website structure in terms of (categories of) pages and interlinking. I use such visuals for discussing what you are actually doing now and what can be improved. I have made visuals I few times myself (basically making boxes representing categories of pages and lines representing internal links), but I found that I soon ran into a scheme of huge proportions and needed more paper and more time. Appreciate your thoughts!
Web Design | | NewBuilder2 -
How do you use mozMetrics
How does everyone use the mozMetrics (mozRank, mozTrust, Domain Authority, Page Authority) with their clients? Do they ask you what these metrics mean and if so how do you explain it to them?
Moz Pro | | caseyhen1 -
Wordpress vs. mvc framework
What's the benefits of choosing an mvc framework such as codeigniter or cakephp over wordpress? Wordpress has so many plugins, and a universally known UI for customers, it just saves a ton of time. However, a lot of the 'big guys' like SEOmoz and Distilled(?) use Cakephp and other mvc frameworks so it has me wondering what the benefits are...... anyone?
Web Design | | DonnieCooper2 -
How do you store your passwords?
I have seen many solutions and tried most of them. But when serving multiple companies the amount of passwords one has gets astounding. It is hard to find a way to securely store them, but also have the convienence of looking them up. What solutions do you recommend?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
What's your best hidden SEO secret?
Don't take that question too serious but all answers are welcome 😉 Answer to all:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | petrakraft
"Gentlemen, I see you did you best - at least I hope so! But after all I suppose I am stuck here to go on reading the SEOmoz blog if I can't sqeeze more secrets from you!9 -
Site Relaunch
Hello, I recently launched my new site (Nov. 25, 2011) but still have the old site live because I still need old customer data from the old admin for customer service issues and I cannot delete the old front-end without deleting the old back-end!. I am seeing a lot of referrals coming from the old site IP address with many backlinks to the new site but dont know if this is actually hurting the new site due to duplicate content, ect .. Any input would be greatly aaaaaapreciated 😉 Thanks in advance, Byron-
Technical SEO | | k9byron0 -
Do you validate you websites?
Do you consider the guidelines from http://validator.w3.org/ when setting up a new website? As far as I know they don't influence rankings ... What is your opinion about that topix?
Technical SEO | | petrakraft0 -
Location of the web host provider and SEO
There has been several debates on the topic of the geo location of hosting provider and the impact on SEO and rankings. As a best practice, it is recommended to host in the same country you are targeting but are there any studies available that confirms the web hosting providers location influences rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ninjamarketer1 -
What are SEO factors in re-doing a website?
Most of my work now involves converting older websites to CMS-based sites (in Wordpress) and I'm wondering about best practices here. If I create a "dev" or "sandbox" directory for my development work how do I keep the pages from being indexed while I am working on the new site? Can I "noindex" a directory? What do I do with the old html files when the new site goes live? I'm assuming I will do a 301 redirect from domain.com/index.html to the new domain.com/, and also on all of the inner pages that have equivalent pages in the new site. But there will be a lot of old files left that have no equal in the new site. Do I just delete these, or noindex nofollw them?
Technical SEO | | bvalentine0 -
Page Authority
I have recently optimised a set of images for a client of ours: I'm looking through all the PA of these newly optimised images, and have varying PA {from SEOmoz toolbar} I understand that internal linking will pass link juice, and obviously external links will add to the overall PA. I have several pages with a PA of 36: { Fairly deep pages} Yet they have no external or internal links going to them. My question is "How can a page gain any authority when it has no visible links pointing at it?" Obviously there must be a link pointing at it {internally} as Google wouldn't have crawled the page right? Also lets say all the keywords are of equal competitiveness would the keywords with highest PA rank higher than those on O PA pages. Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Yozzer0 -
Canonicalization
Having been a member of SEOmoz Pro tools for only a couple of months, I'm now at a point where there are certain issues with our recently overhauled site: On my latest "Open Site Explorer Report" I am seeing a number of external links going to the HTTP://Domainname.com and a number pointing at HTTP://wwwDomainname.com. This only appears when I pull the report from the Root Domain. If I pull a report from the Sub-domain all URL's are the same. Does this matter too much? Would best practice be to put a rel=canonical on the Non www ? Thanks for any help in advance Sean
Technical SEO | | Yozzer0 -
Tracking Effects of Internal Linking
Can anyone suggest the best way to track the effectiveness of internal linking on a website? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RishadShaikh590 -
NYT article on JC Penny's black hat campaign
Saw this article on JC Penny receiving a 'manual adjustment' to drop their rankings by 50+ spots: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html Curious what you guys think they did wrong, and whether or not you are aware of their SEO firm SearchDex? I mean, was it a simple case of low-quality spam links or was there more to it? Anyone study them in OpenSiteExplorer?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scanlin0 -
HELP! My client got a DDOS Attack! Need advice
Here the setup: Server is hosted inhouse. It got attacked using a DDOS from 20+ IP addresses spoofing in different counries. Our server overloaded and didn't work anymore. URL is registered at GoDaddy. Signed up at Dreamhost. We pointed DNS to Dreamhost successfully. Attacks kept coming and messed up other sites on the Dreamhost shared server. We didn't know we were being followed at first. We originally thought they were attacking the IP address on our inhouse server. Dreamhost noticed the attack and put us on a seperate IP and disabled our URL until the attacks 'stopped'. MY QUESTION IS: What do I do if they don't stop? Close shop? 99% of the business is internet driven. This has to be the blackest Blackhat SEO ever.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Francisco_Meza0 -
How to find links to 404 pages?
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember. One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Getting the most out of existing PR
I am currently compiling material for a creative session where I will sit down with our client's PR team and look at ways to maximise SEO value while they do their usual PR work. Apart from obvious link inclusion in the written material (resource box / in-text) what are the other tactics that can be used to help SEO? I am not only thinking about content but also distributiuon and technology / platform as well. My (random) thoughts are around: Talking about specific website locations, features, media Generating curiosity Using existing media contacts and chanels as link opportunities Using interesting and user-friendly yet smantically rich content Use of synonims Referring to related terms and concepts Integrating social media Referring to PR material in blog and social media? (maybe bad idea) Note: I've recently been introduced to platforms such as HARO and MyBlogQuest (by Peter Gregory in this related posthttp://www.seomoz.org/q/are-press-release-sites-useful) and wondering if there is anything else out there that's new and exciting?
Content Development | | Dan-Petrovic1 -
Should I include location in title tag to rank higher in local search
I'm working on a site for a small guest house (http://www.tommysonthebeach.com). I have created a Google Place page (Bing and Yahoo Local) as well and I have the address in the footer on every page. I have the location (Indian Rocks Beach) at the beginning of most titles tags because that is how people tend to search, e.g. "Indian Rocks Beach vacation rental." In theory I would think that I don't need location in the title tag because Google knows the location, and I could use the real estate for other keywords suchs as "pet friendly" or "beach hotel," etc. But when I look at the SERPS, those ranking highly all seem to have the location at the beginning of the title tag. Thanks. P.S. The site is currently not showing up in Google local search apparently because Google thinks it's a vacation rental agency, which are not allowed in local search. I'm trying to get that fixed.
On-Page Optimization | | bvalentine0
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