Latest Questions
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Farm update
Has anyone noticed any changes since the Farm Update from Google allegedly affected 11.8% of all US queries? Seems like we got some extra long tail traffic from the US - but its too early to tell if that is a coincidence or a more permanent change. I guess its one of those days where its good not to be a content farm 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | ThomasHgenhaven0 -
Using Wordpress as CMS for large Websites
Is Wordpress good enough to be used as a full fledge CMS for a large website. In particular, I'm talking about a news website. We have been online since 2002 but pretty soon we will have digitized our print newspaper archives of about 60 years. So, my question is, is it OK to use Wordpress for the entire website and if so what are some of the important things that need to be kept in mind. Cheers!
Web Design | | RishadShaikh590 -
Google Reconsideration
Our site fell from grace last July and landed on page five of the Google search results for our primary keyword. For 6 months I tried a number of strategies with no results, including reconfiguring our site based on the SOEmoz on-page grading tool. More recently, after receiving your advice in a Q&A, I took down all of my paid links and submitted a reconsideration request to Google. Interestingly, 3 days later we popped up 20 spots. This left us on the top of page three. Better than page 5, but still not prime time! A few days ago (two weeks after our reconsideration request was submitted) I got a message back in my Webmaster Tools, that they had completed a review of our site - but oddly enough they provided no info on the outcome, positive or negative. And there has been no additional movement in the rankings since I received the message. Was the original 20 point jump the result of the reconsideration request, or just a coincidence? Or, is it possible that they did a review and the results will only occur later during some organic re-indexing process? What do you think?
On-Page Optimization | | JimSkychief0 -
Article Links
I write and publish artcles. Typically I publish them on a few top article sites like EZineArticles. The articles then get picked up by other sites, often numbering in the hundreds. All of the articles are published with a link back to our website using a keyword. Are there any SEO risks in this type of link proliferation?
Link Building | | JimSkychief0 -
Internal Linking for Newspaper Websites
Now, there are a number of do's and dont's when it comes to internal linking, but do those rules apply to news websites that have to interlink relevant news stories, primarily based on their relevancy to the user and the value that they have to provide rather than keeping the idea of page rank sculpting in mind? What's your take on this?
Link Building | | RishadShaikh590 -
Internal Links - more the merrier?
I have just recently spoken to an SEO consultant who is pushing the opinion that more internal links would be better for me. They are particularly focused oin aligning a large number of content articles that I have developed over the years, and getting more keyword focus, and more links (inpage within site) onto these pages. I have to agree on a certain level that maybe this large base of unique content is unedr utilised. What is the general opinon, more internal links are better?
On-Page Optimization | | Jurnii0 -
Not counting seomoz or Distilled, what are your top3 SEO blogs you wouldchoose to read if you had a hard limit of 3 total?
Recently on Q&A, Petra weighed in with a link tool site that had completely missed my radar. My problem is lack of time. I don't have enough of it to readthe2 dozen+ SEO blogscurrently in my RSS feed I would like to tobe able to read to stay current. So I end up only reading at the moz. I'm hoping the collective wisdom of the SEOmoz crowd will shine forthand set me on the road of pursuit of new knowledge with the best of the best blogs
SEO Learn Center | | goodnewscowboy0 -
Broad match Vs Exact match
This may sound a little basic, but i'm going to ask anyway. On Googles keyword tool Ive always used broad match, knowing that they are never 100% accurate, and obviously inflated by other SEO's searching for their keywords, but used it all the same to get an idea of global monthly searches and potential targeted traffic. I have seen recently, on SEOmoz, and a post fromJill Whalen not long back, that unless you change the match to "Exact" your data is useless? Could somebody explain why this is the case? My initial thoughts were, a search for SEO on broad shows 6,120,000 per month Yet a search for the same keyword in exact match shows 673,000 per month. I had presumed that the broad match would include "learn SEO" "What is SEO" etc etc, where as 673,000 just search exactly for SEO. Is this correct? 3 points go to Richard Q&A answering animal dude Getz if he gets this first! Thanks in advance
Keyword Research | | Yozzer2 -
Duplicate content
This is just a quickie: On one of my campaigns in SEOmoz I have 151 duplicate page content issues! Ouch! On analysis the site in question has duplicated every URL with "en" e.g http://www.domainname.com/en/Fashion/Mulberry/SpringSummer-2010/ http://www.domainname.com/Fashion/Mulberry/SpringSummer-2010/ Personally my thoughts are that are rel = canonical will sort this issue, but before I ask our dev team to add this, and get various excuses why they can't I wanted to double check i am correct in my thinking? Thanks in advance for your time
Technical SEO | | Yozzer0 -
GA custom reports involving pages and goals - what are the metrics saying?
Hi, All! I would like to create a custom report that will enable me to see which of my pages are contributing to goal completion on my site (so I can then optimize the pages that are contributing the most, with maximal ROI for the optimization investment). If I make the dimension "page/page title" and the metric "goal X completions" - which would make sense - what exactly are the numbers that I am seeing telling me? Is it how many times a person started the goal funnel from that pages (meaning every goal would appear only once and there be no overlap)? That doesn't appear to be the case with the numbers, because the headline in the main "Goals" section tells me I have 30 goal completions for that goal, for example, but the headline in the custom report (which is adding up all the numbers) is, say, 100. Or does it mean the number of times that this page was ever in the navigation path of someone who ended up completing a goal? Then the same goal would be counted multiple times, for each page in the path. Additionally, I see this strange thing on some of my reports where the actual funnel pages appear as contributing towards goals, which I guess makes sense, but again the numbers don't match up. If the goal was to get to page B, and the funnel was A->B, and there were supposedly 30 goal completions, my custom report says that A gave 28 goal completions and B gave 25. Anyone know for sure - or through testing - what the case is with all these things? Any explanations will be much appreciated!
Reporting & Analytics | | debi_zyx0 -
How to move my blog from subdomain to subfolder?
Not an unusual situation, I have a blog on blog.domain.com it has quite a few blog postings. The platform is old and will be scrapped, but the blog content itself is going to be moved to domain.com/blog. The current process is we are manually listing all linked to/content pages and we are going to 301 redirect them to their counterparts on the new blog. This is going to be a tedious process. A) Is there any way to automate the moving of the blog? B) What is the best way to do the massive 301 redirect, php headers, .htaccess? Should we move the individual pages with redirects, or redirect the domain in the .htaccess (this will be very difficult to match all the titles and file structure)?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Copying Content With Permission
Hi, we received an email about a guy who wants to copy and paste our content on his website, he says he will keep all the links we put there and give us full credit for it, so besides keeping all the links on the page, which is the best way for him to give us the credit? a link to the original article? an special meta tag? what? Thank you PS.Our site its much more authorative than his and we get indexed within 10min from the moment we publish a page, so I don't worry about him out raking us with our own content.
Technical SEO | | andresgmontero0 -
Duplicate Content Penalties, International Sites
We're in the process of rolling out a new domestic (US) website design. If we copy the same theme/content to our International subsidiaries, would the duplicate content penalty still apply? All International sites would carry the Country specific domain, .co.uk, .eu, etc. This question is for English only content, I'm assuming translated content would not carry a penalty.
Technical SEO | | endlesspools0 -
Page Title Optimisation
We have a fairly large client for which I look after the analytics, and just recently the SEO also. This celebrity client already recieves near a million visitors per month, 96% of the time for her name. I'm using Googles keyword tool and search trends for insights as to what people are searching for As I get further and further into optimising different pages, I'm running out of ideas for Unique page titles to drive additinal traffic as they have all been covered. {high volume exact searches that is} I'm not sure if I'm over using her name also: for example most of the clients pages start with: "First name last name Keyphrase" should I be using her first name last name on every title? Thanks in advance for what seems like a simple task, however when your up against it for the first time, it's a "Do I Don't I situation!" Kind Regards Sean
Keyword Research | | Yozzer1 -
Pad Submission Software
Has anyone got any knowlege about software that I can use to submit PAD files? Would also love to hear about any techniques, for instance I imagine that the PAD detail should not be changed from one submission to the next, any thoughts? Thanks in advance, Justin
Link Building | | GrouchyKids0 -
How does Google interpret articles or prepositions in languages where it's attached to the (key)word?
Hi, All! This is for any foreign language SEOs where articles or prepostitions such as "the" "to" "in" or anything else are actually part of the word they are modifying and not a separate word, as in English: How does Google understand those words on-page and in anchor text? If you want to optimize for the word "house", and your content/anchor text says "the house" or "in the house" (again, all one word) - what does Google count that as? Does it count toward "house"? Does it count toward "in the house" only? Does it count toward "house" but not as much as if you had just put "house"? I end up sometimes writing slightly grammatically-off content because I want to optimize for the keyphrase - but is that necessary? Obviously different languages might be different, but you can probably project a little from one to the others. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | debi_zyx0 -
How specific does keyword anchor text need to be?
I'm trying to get to the bottom of something. If you are trying to optimise for a phrase e.g. "Keyword 1 Keyword 2" And your anchor text is something like "Keyword 1 keyword 2 Another word" Does this still provide as much weight for "keyword 1 keyword 2" or does the additional word come into play and dilute the effect? If it does come into play does it have much of an effect?
Link Building | | RodneyRiley0 -
Link analysis task
Hi mozzers, I am currently working on a phd, and one of the professors asked me for help. He would like to know how many Danish school websites (n=1500) links to a certain section of a government website (the relevant section has around 1600 pages). The problem is, that the government website is coded very poorly from an seo perspective with lots of strange URL variables, entailing OSE can't give valid data. So, what would be the best way to check how many of the school websites link? Throw all 1500 website through Xenu, or is there a smarter solution? Maybe the link out feature on Bing? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciate. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | ThomasHgenhaven0 -
Using own domain for Google blog
Is it worth the effort using your own domain for a Google blog? After adding my own domain to a blog I see a boost in ranking, maybe the url has more value without the blogspot extension, or that Google might treat the (max.10) pages you produce under your own domain as "independent" thus giving you the chance of building your own domain trust...?
Content Development | | vibelingo0 -
Query String Redirection
In PHP, I'm wanting to store a session variable based upon a link that's clicked. I'm wanting to avoid query strings on pages that have content. My current workaround is to have a link with query strings to a php file that does nothing but snags the variables via $_GET, stores them into $_SESSION, and then redirects. For example, consider this script, that I have set up to force to a mobile version. Accessed via something like a href="forcemobile.php?url=(the current filename)" session_start(); //Location of vertstudios file on your localhost. Include trailing slash $loc = "http://localhost/web/vertstudios/"; //If GET variable not defined, this page is being accessed directly. //In that case, force to 404 page. Same case for if mobile session variable //not defined. if(!(isset($_GET["url"]) && isset($_SESSION["mobile"]))){ header("Location: http://www.vertstudios.com/404.php"); exit(); } //Snag the URL $url = $_GET["url"]; //Set the mobile session to true, and redirect to specified URL $_SESSION["mobile"] = true;header("Location: " . $loc . $url); ?> Will this circumvent the issue caused by using query strings?
Technical SEO | | JoeQuery0 -
How to set up a rel canonical in big commmerce?
I have no clue how to set this up in the Bigcommerce store platform
Technical SEO | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
Backlinks not showing up in the campaign crawl
I have been adding backlinks, about 110 since the last crawl, but only 14 new linking domains showed in my campaign profile. Can someone explain? Is it that the linking domains were not crawled and thus not seen. Is it that the crawl posting is from data that was crawled a long time ago (4-6 weeks ago) and it took a while for it to show up is it that the domains i got links on were, possibly, not so hot and just get filtered out?
Link Building | | Ken_Jansen0 -
Blogging for an ecommerce site
Hi There, Where would you install the blog? mydomain.com/blog/ blog.mydomain.com mydomainblog.com regards
Content Development | | Jvalops0 -
Est ce qu'on peut poser des questions en français ?
(can we ask questions in a language other than English?) Pour le SEO est ce qu'il faut mieux un domain avec les tirets ou sans ? Les américains aurait tendance a faire les domaines sans tirets
International SEO | | NeilInFrance
Par exemple goodseoconsultants.com Et bcp disent qu'utiliser les tirets fait "spammy" ; En France il y a plus tendance à mettre les tirets mais est ce qu'il y a une risque négatif pour le sites qui le font ? Par contre il y a plus de chances que les moteurs et les humaines comprennes les mots avec ; good-seo-consultants.com Qui a raison ? Neil0 -
Links from Google Books
Hi Interested in your views on this and any references to research on the subject Using Google Books recently I have discovered multiple citations of a web site I produced years ago in a whole load of publication. Really quite touching to find these 10 years afterwards I imagine that this must have a positive effect on search engine listings for this site. The site has really good listings still. Has any research or any announcement been made by Google about this. Pushing this a bit further ; An advertising hoarding has a web site address http:// ... would Google StreetView pick this up and could it be used as a signal too ? Neil PS No I don't sell adversing hoardings 😉
Image & Video Optimization | | NeilInFrance0 -
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
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