Latest Questions

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  Block in robots.txt instead of using canonical?
  

  When I use a canonical tag for pages that are variations of the same page, it basically means that I don't want Google to index this page. But at the same time, spiders will go ahead and crawl the page. Isn't this a waste of my crawl budget? Wouldn't it be better to just disallow the page in robots.txt and let Google focus on crawling the pages that I do want indexed? In other words, why should I ever use rel=canonical as opposed to simply disallowing in robots.txt?

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter

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  Does the Location of my Server effect my SEO?
  

  Does the geographic Location of my Server effect my SEO? HELP US! We are arguing for 3 weeks already. My partner has mentioned multiple times in the past that  "since 2013 google does not require your server to be in the country you are targeting for seo"
  And that actually all they care about is if its a good and fast server - not where its physically located in the world. I am a strong believer that the geographic location of your server directly effects your SEO ranking... lets say if you want to target www.google.ru for your seo, best you have a server located in Russia for hosting your website.. WHO IS RIGHT? Choose the winner and base the facts.
  If anybody has the correct answer and information to base it on it will help us alot - and maybe even spare some unnecessary violent between us two! we found some articles across the web, sadly they are all dated back to 2012.... Thanks in Advance for all the help guys!

  Local Website Optimization | | DanielBernhardt

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  Demographic Data For Keywords
  

  Hey i was wondering if anyone is aware of any tools at identifying demographic data for keyword terms. Like age, gender, etc? Cheers, AZ

  Search Behavior | | MBASydney

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  How can I see what Google sees when it crawls my page?
  

  In other words, how can see the text and what not it sees from start to finish on each page. I know there was a site, but I can't remember it.

  Reporting & Analytics | | tiffany1103

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  How to change the woocommerce product page permalink
  

  Sorry Posting it again. How I can change the product URL structure. Please let me know how to fix woocommerce permalink in wordpress. My current URL is http://www.ayurjeewan.com/product/divya-ashmarihar-kwath and I want to like (only post name) http://www.ayurjeewan.com/divya-ashmarihar-kwath Attached is the screenshot of option available. qa2hZMP.jpg

  Technical SEO | | JordanBrown

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  Majestic SEO Versus MOZ for Link Tracking
  

  I have subscribed to Majestic SEO for three years and am considering cancelling it as it cost $600/year. Is this a false economy? Will I be losing essential data? Also, MOZ seems really deficient in the link tracking department. Its data seems plain wrong, showing far fewer domains pointing at my site than either Google Webmaster Tools or Majestic SEO. If I get rid of Majestic SEO are there any free/low cost tools that could take it's place? Thanks, Alan

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1

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  Is there a maximum sitemap size?
  

  Hi all, Over the last month we've included all images, videos, etc. into our sitemap and now its loading time is rather high. (http://www.troteclaser.com/sitemap.xml) Is there any maximum sitemap size that is recommended from Google?

  Technical SEO | | Troteclaser

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  Bzzagent good or bad?
  

  I am thinking about offering my products on Bzzagent. This is a social media system where I would send out free products and coupons to a large number of people who would in turn review my products on the Internet.  This sounds like it might violate the "pay for reviews" rules. Looking for opinions.

  Reviews and Ratings | | SmoothSkin

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  Javascript to fetch page title for every webpage, is it good?
  

  We have a zend framework that is complex to program if you ask me, and since we have 20k+ pages that we need to get proper titles to and meta descriptions, i need to ask if we use Javascript to handle page titles (basically the previously programming team had NOT set page titles at all) and i need to get proper page titles from a h1 tag within the page. current course of action which we can easily implement is fetch page title from that h1 tag being used throughout all pages with the help of javascript, But this does makes it difficult for engines to actually read what's the page title? since its being fetched with javascript code that we have put in, though i had doubts, is anyone one of you have simiilar situation before? if yes i need some help! Update: I tried the JavaScript way and here is what it looks like http://islamicencyclopedia.org/public/index/hadith/id/1/book_id/106  i know the fact that google won't read JavaScript like the way we have done with the website, But i need help on "How we can work around this issue"  Knowing we don't have other options.

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SmartStartMediacom

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  Rebranding/Url Structure Change
  

  Hi Everyone, First off thanks for taking the time to looking at my question. I was wondering about rebranding and URL structure changes. Right now my company is planning on changing their domain and doing a massive change to their site which includes a url structure change. The idea is in September they will be changing the site to be a combination of wordpress and ruby on rails (currently the site is ruby on rails). The homepage and design on the site will be completely different and parts of the site will be in php and other parts will be in ruby. The URL structure will also be changing completely at the same time. Each page will be completely different in structure, including the homepage (currently now it redirects you to a subfolder page that is your local page [i.e. nyc if you are in new york]). Then, the following month, they will be changing their domain name to a different domain. I have asked them to do this in stages. First the domain, second the rebrand, and third the URL restructuring or we could lose SEO traffic but they asked a freelancer his opinion and the freelancer said that you could do the rebrand change with the URL restructure and then domain later and while you're SEO may disappear, it'll definitely return in 3 to 4 months. Could you tell me who is right and what the correct method is to make this change?

  Branding | | MattJD

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  Do H2 tags carry more weight than h4 tags?
  

  Of course H tags are key signals for relevance in search.  Does an h2 tag send a significantly "louder" signal than an h4 tag?

  Technical SEO | | aj613

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  Using multiple domains in one Adwords account
  

  Hi, I am currently setting up an Adwords account and wanted to know if you can run multiple websites through one account. We have 2 domains each promoting a different one of our brands and i was wondering the best way to run the account. Regards Ben

  Paid Search Marketing | | benjmoz

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  Removing index.php
  

  I have question for the community and whether or not this is a good or bad idea. I currently have a Joomla site that displays www.domain.com/index.php in all the URLs with the exception of the home page.  I have read that it's better to not have index.php showing in the URL at all.  Does it really matter if I have index.php in my URL?  I've read that it is a bad practice. I am thinking about installing the sh404SEF component on my site and removing the index.php.  However, I rank pretty high for the keywords I want in Google, Bing and Yahoo.  All of the URLs that show up in the searches have index.php as part of the URL. Has anyone ever used sh404SEF to remove the index.php and how did you overcome not loosing your search engine links?  I don't want an existing search showing www.domain.com/index.php/sales and it not linking to the correct page which would now be www.domain.com/sales.  I guess I could insert the proper redirects in the htaccess file.  But I was hoping to avoid having every page of my site in the htaccess file for redirecting. Any help or advice appreciated.

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MedGroupMedia

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  What is the best way to remove a link that redirects to a spammy site?
  

  I've got a new client and I'm trying to clean up their backlinks. There are several links that all redirect to this spam site http://www.expert-lender.com. All of the websites appear to be real, i.e. http://www.sammorganhomes.com/ but the actual links i.e http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html are in a sub-directory and redirect to the spam site. I don't know if these links were from the previous SEO company or if they paid someone to create these or if these sites have been hacked. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and what should I tell these site owners?

  Link Building | | Total-Design-Shop

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  Site Architecture for Sub-Brands
  

  I am working on launching a few industry specific sub-brands for our marketing agency and am trying to figure out the best way to deliver a tailored user experience using subfolders instead of subdomains, if this is indeed the best option... Since I am trying to provide separate experiences, I looking at housing microsites in sub-folders - say /technology or /medical.  Each with its own navigation, home page, and industry specific content/blog/portfolio.  A couple things I am considering: Will my microsite "home pages" and site pages rank as well in a sub-folder versus if they were actually the primary pages on their own sub-domain? Will separate Wordpress and theme installs and separate primary navigations have any affect on SEO if they are in sub-folders of the same site? Thanks in advance for any input.  I really appreciate it!

  Branding | | Alaniz

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  Bad for SEO to have two very similar websites on the same server?
  

  Is it bad for SEO to have two very similar sites on the same server? What's the best way to set this up?

  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com

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  What's the best way to eliminate "429 : Received HTTP status 429" errors?
  

  My company website is built on WordPress. It receives very few crawl errors, but it do regularly receive a few (typically 1-2 per crawl) "429 : Received HTTP status 429" errors through Moz. Based on my research, my understand is that my server is essentially telling Moz to cool it with the requests. That means it could be doing the same for search engines' bots and even visitors, right? This creates two questions for me, which I would greatly appreciate your help with: Are "429 : Received HTTP status 429" errors harmful for my SEO? I imagine the answer is "yes" because Moz flags them as high priority issues in my crawl report. What can I do to eliminate "429 : Received HTTP status 429" errors? Any insight you can offer is greatly appreciated! Thanks,
  Ryan

  Moz Pro | | ryanjcormier

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  Adding multiple locations business to directories
  

  We have multiple locations business.
  Adding each location business info to directories. There are same services and everything for each location. Should we keep the same description for all listings or different for each location?
  Should we indicate Home Page URL (with 800 number, no address in footer) or location URL?

  Local Listings | | VicMark

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  [UPDATED] Any Q&A Regulars Attending MozCon Next Week?
  

  [Update] Between here and the MozCon Facebook Group we've got a number of folks interested, so we're going to grab a table together for lunch on Tuesday at the conference. I'll try to mark it with something noticeable, or you can tweet me @thompsonpaul and I'll let you know where to find us. Hope to see lots of us there! [/Update] Hey gang - I'm wondering which Q&A regular (or irregular!) contributors are coming to MozCon next week? I know Dana Tan and Marie Haynes are for sure. So who else is coming? If there's a bit of a gang of us, it would be fun to connect up for a lunch table or a drink at some point during the event to meet each other face-to-face. Let me know in the comments, and if there are enough of us, I'll set something up. Paul

  Industry Events | | ThompsonPaul

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  No-index pages with duplicate content?
  

  Hello, I have an e-commerce website selling about 20 000 different products. For the most used of those products, I created unique high quality content. The content has been written by a professional player that describes how and why those are useful which is of huge interest to buyers. It would cost too much to write that high quality content for 20 000 different products, but we still have to sell them. Therefore, our idea was to no-index the products that only have the same copy-paste descriptions all other websites have. Do you think it's better to do that or to just let everything indexed normally since we might get search traffic from those pages? Thanks a lot for your help!

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EndeR-

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  Tags vs. Categories? What should I use?
  

  I'm starting with a blog (self-hosted wordpress) and I'm thinking of the following content structure so that the readers are easily able to locate relevant content: Background: It's a blog which gives people relevant info about government jobs. To start with we will just be publishing information about these jobs but over a period of time also intend to post content that helps readers prepare for these jobs. In other words, right now it's just about detailed job notifications but in the coming months, we shall also post about preparation-related information. Typically, each of the job notifications can be bifurcated like: Jobs basis industry Banking Railways Clinical, etc. Jobs basis company ABC co. DEF co. XYZ co. etc. Jobs basis State / City City 1 City 2, etc. Jobs basis educational qualification Graduation Post-Graduation, etc. Now, I'm seriously confused how should I structure this data from the perspective of Categories & Tags such that it's reader as well as SEO-friendly. Do note that each of the government jobs post ideally falls in a couple of above mentioned categories. Thanks..

  On-Page Optimization | | Shalin.TJ

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  Image naming best practices?
  

  While I have found many good sources of information for naming images for SEO purposes, I'm having trouble finding an up-to-date, exhaustive and authoritative source for image names, alt tags, etc. For instance... Max characters for image name? Max hyphens? How descriptive should you be? "ice-cream-flavors-icon_._jpg" or "ice-cream-flavors.jpg" or simply "ice-cream.jpg" How similar should the image name, alt text and page title be? At what point are you overusing a keyword? Rules to follow? So much more, but you get the idea! Anyone have a good reference or an answer to all things related to images and SEO? Thanks!

  On-Page Optimization | | OSD

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