Skip to content

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Latest Questions

Have an SEO question? Search our Q&A forum for an answer; if not found, use your Moz Pro subscription to ask our incredible community of SEOs for help!


  • 1 e-commerce site has bad seo

    I’ve been working on educating myself about SEO all day, again. All-Star Telescope up in Canada. We have a competitor that consistently ranks #1 and I don't get it. Their site is full of duplicate content (straight copy and paste from the manufacturer site). They don't have any meaningful blog or video content to add relevance or value to their site. We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the the competitors page. Our site is slow, but theirs is slower. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page (a popular telescope). Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE: https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069?_pos=1&_sid=f0aa91cc2&_ss=r Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope?_pos=1&_sid=56abdabd4&_ss=r#description Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page. Here is our page: https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). The text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here, something that isn't being captured by the tools that I have. Is it simple the fact that they get more traffic? Is that why some people go and buy traffic? Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product: Celestron NexStar 8SE
    NexStar 8SE
    Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
    NexStar 8SE Canada We've worked with two highly ranked SEO's to try and figure this out, one in Canada, and one in the USA. I haven't seen a confidence inspiring answer from either of them. Posting on a forum is a bit of an act of desperation, I'll continue to work the problem, but it's discouraging to see the leader in my industry look like he's just phoning it in with his website.

    Technical SEO | | nkennett
    1

  • navigation site crawl page rank local seo

    I have a client that is a national brand with 400+ local brick and mortar businesses. Like any site, you navigate to “find a location” and then click on the business location closest to you. I’m going to call these local businesses “subsites”. When you’re on the subsite, the global navigation goes away, and the new subsite navigation replaces it. The subsite navigation does not link back up to the main global navigation (except for the homepage when you click on logo).
    I’ll try to give you a simple visual: Structure of global navigation:
    -Domain.com/service1 (high volume KW)
    -Domain.com/service2(high volume KW)
    -Domain.com/service3(high volume KW)
    Once you go to the subsite of Dallas, TX, the navigation changes to:
    -domain.com/location/tx/dallas/service1 (same service as above but localized)
    -domain.com/location/tx/dallas/service2 (same service as above but localized)
    -domain.com/location/tx/dallas/service3 (same service as above but localized) I told my client that because the subsite does not link back up to the national pages of the site, the page rank does not get to recirculate through the website. Once the page rank is passed down to the subsites, it just recirculates within the subsite like it is its own little website on a website.
    I believe this is causing a lot of problems with the ranking of the national pages because there are 400+ subsites (with 15 service pages = ~6,000 pages) that don’t let the pagerank flow back up to the main global navigation, recirculating the PR throughout the website.
    It is a big ask for the client to change their website navigation without proof that this is happening. So that is what I’m looking for. Has anyone had this problem before or can point me to something to show to my client that we need to keep that global navigation on the subsites?

    Technical SEO | | RiseSEO
    0

  • international seo

    I have got an interesting situation where I have a client who wants to merge two ccTLD's into one. They currently have .fi and .com and they want to merge both sites to .com .fi is for finland and .com for USA. They want to merge the sites and the original plan was to use subfolders for each country and pair with hreflang. However the team now wants to merge both sites with NO subfolders differentiating between finland or the US. My understanding of International SEO that this is the most opposite from best practices, but is there any specific reasons why they wouldn't want to do this? I'm struggling to find any specific reasons that I can cite to the client that would argue why we should at least do a subfolder or some sort of international seo strategy.

    International SEO | | JKhoo
    1

  • blog post outreach blog post backlinks guest blog posting in context link building content marketing

    Hi all, My understanding of obtaining backlinks by way of blogpost outreach is that it's best to include several outbound links to related high domain websites within blog post copy (as well as a link to the website you're marketing, obviously) such as this post https://www.scoopearth.com/why-should-you-use-royalty-free-music-for-youtube-videos/ or this one https://small-bizsense.com/how-to-create-quality-content-for-your-business/. However, I've recently read a few articles that suggest that from a human perspective only having one clear link in the copy, such as this post https://www.clichemag.com/entertainment/movies/the-benefits-of-royalty-free-cinematic-music-for-your-videos/, increases the chance of the reader visiting the site in question. I guess the thinking is that if there's only one link to be clicked on it increases the chances of click-thru, as opposed to the reader possibly clicking on another external link that's only there because of current SEO advice. So is it best to follow SEO guidelines and include several outbound links within guest blog posts, or is it better to only have the one link to your client's site (to focus the readers attention on it)?

    Link Building | | JCN-SBWD
    0
  • Unsolved

    crawl error crawl in progress crawl stalled

    The latest crawl on my site was the 4th Jan with a current crawl 'in progress'. How do i cancel this crawl and start a new one? I've been getting keyword ranking etc but no new issues are coming through. Screenshot 2022-05-31 083642.jpg

    Moz Tools | | ClaireU
    0

  • duplicate content

    Hello, I had an issue with some pages being listed as duplicate content in my weekly Moz report. I've since discussed it with my web dev team and we decided to stop the pages from being crawled. The web dev team added this coding to the pages <meta name='robots' content='max-image-preview:large, noindex dofollow' />, but the Moz report is still reporting the pages as duplicate content. Note from the developer "So as far as I can see we've added robots to prevent the issue but maybe there is some subtle change that's needed here. You could check in Google Search Console to see how its seeing this content or you could ask Moz why they are still reporting this and see if we've missed something?" Any help much appreciated!

    Technical SEO | | rj_dale
    0

  • local listings

    Hello, we have a google my business account. On bingplaces.com it is saying they would like access to our google account. Is that normal for bing to share access with the google my business account? Thanks.

    Local Listings | | MeritInsuranceGroup
    0

  • rankings seo rankings seo on page optimization on-page

    Hello all. I have been working three months in my current job in the hotel industry. I have been publishing a lot of content to our website (mainly articles), which in general have been ranking well and really boosted our website traffic. The problem that I am facing, though, is the fact that our static pages' rankings are basically constantly dropping. Especially one of our main pages, which is this hotel page. I haven't been doing any real changes to the content, but the ranking (with keywords "hotelli helsinki" [Hotel in Helsinki in Finnish]) has plummeted from 13th position all the way down to 19th... What has been happening during these last three months is that we did change to a new domain and we have done all the redirections and also informed Google about this change through search console. I have also done some minor changes to the on-page content, such as changing the meta titles and descriptions as well as the page title and some of the text content to more natural ones instead of clumsy SEO texts and optimizing the images. This hasn't helped at all though and the rankings seem to steadily drop all the time. What would YOU do with this page? Maybe add more text content to the page to be more informative? All tips would be highly appreciated.

    On-Page Optimization | | haapalatuomas
    0

  • seo local seo dynamic content

    Doing work for a telecom provider who operates in over 25 states. They are not trying to drive traffic to their brick-and-mortar stores. They want their marketing website to show products/services/pricing dynamically when a user enters their zip code. Previously, we could not show this until the shopper was already in the purchase flow that began with their serviceable address. They want to move these location-based details more forward in the shopping experience. They would likely have a "default" zip and set of services/pricing displaying until a user changes their location. My question is how does Google treat local SEO on a site where all location-targeted content is dynamic? Will the website suffer in localized search, when a shopper, say, in Colorado, wants to search for Internet providers? Is it better to have distinct landing pages for each territory with services/pricing?

    Local SEO | | sprydigital
    0
  • Unsolved

    refund

    After the free trial period, payment was made automatically. I thought I had canceled my subscription, but it did not apply.

    Support | | rudgns3331
    0

  • local seo reviews google my business

    Hi Mozers, I have a cosmetic dentist client, in Belgium, who had 95 reviews. And in 2 days, he lost 20 good reviews (10 reviews per day), from real customers. The problem is that his rating went down drastically because they were only 5 star reviews. Yesterday he got a 5 star review from a real customer and this morning he disappeared. Have you ever experienced such a scenario? What could be the cause? Thank you in advance for your help. Kind regards,
    Jonathan

    Reviews and Ratings | | JonathanLeplang
    0
  • Unsolved

    accountdeleted support moz pro

    I've just got our account live again after the old payment card had expired. Now I'm back in the account I don't see my old set up and all the site / keywords I've previously had set up. Can you help?

    Moz Pro | | Paul_Coupe
    0
  • Unsolved

    refund amount

    I did not know that automatic payments were being made after using the trial version. I just saw money was flowing through my credit card and I urgently canceled my subscription. Request a refund for the amount. As i am learning will use after some time.
    Kindly refund my amount.

    Moz Pro | | NatwarG
    0
  • Unsolved

    refund

    I did not know that automatic payments were being made after using the trial version. I just saw money was flowing through my credit card and I urgently canceled my subscription. Request a refund for the amount automatically paid for a fee. The reason is that I didn't use it.

    Moz Pro | | infinitejoo
    0
  • Unsolved

    ga4

    With the new GA4 coming out in 2023, can our Moz accounts connect to the new GA4 property?

    Product Support | | ArttiaCreative
    0

  • writers content medical

    I have a substantial writing project. One long piece (giveaway PDF), 20 or so follow-up pieces. About a specific medical condition. Where do I find a writer to work with?

    Content Development | | Byron_W
    0

  • redirect chain https

    I've got a redirect chain happening
    http > https> https.www. I can't find how to fix this one. My site is on siteground which forces the https at server level and then onto cloudflare. Anyone have any ideas?

    On-Page Optimization | | Libra_Photographic
    0
  • Unsolved

    robots roger-bot

    Anyone got any ideas how to get a server/hosting provider who is preventing rogerbot from crawling and me not been able to set up a campaign to duplicate the error on there end? The server/hosting provider is crazydomains dot com My clients robots.txt User-agent: *
    Disallow: /wp-admin/
    Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
    User-agent: rogerbot Disallow: Sitemap: https://www. something

    Moz Tools | | Moving-Web-SEO-Auckland
    0
  • Unsolved

    schema.org markup schema schema markup

    I have added schema.org markup to many pages on my site (e.g https://discoverquotes.com/wisdom/) - since it is a quote site I marked up all the quotations - it validates with schema.org - but when I use MozBar and look at Page Analysis-->Markup the moz bar says I have no schema.org markup. Is this something Moz only updates periodically? If so, anyone know how often they update? or any ideas why moz bar is reporting a false negative?

    Moz Bar | | daviddq
    0

  • 301 redirect page rank

    I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new. In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL. What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side? Thanks

    Technical SEO | | CitimarineMoz
    0
  • Unsolved

    structured data breadcrumblist breadcrumbs

    Hello, I would like to update the google search rich results for our website using breadcrumblist structured data. I followed google guidelines on how to get this done and even tested it using the Rich Results test but non of the changes I made show up in google search.
    Is anyone able to provide assistance with this process?

    Technical SEO | | GlobalDentalShop
    0

  • authority redirect 302

    Hi, I have the opportunity to acquire a domain of a company that is closing in a similar industry who currently have a decent Authority - 51DA, 5,752 Linking Domains. I cannot do anything with the new business yet but if I acquire the domain the existing website will turn off. If I crawl the existing site and 302 redirect all pages to a holding page on said domain, will that preserve authority while I start the new business and build the new website and like-for-like pages?

    Technical SEO | | Ant-Scarborough
    0
  • Unsolved This question is deleted!

    0
  • Unsolved

    25 404 error crawl error

    Hi Community, has anyone else had a 404 error reported by Moz, where the end of the domain is /%25s? The error comes from my blog home page https://kaydee.net/blog/ But when I look at the source code, I can't see anything that has a space at the end of the URL. I wonder if it is to do with the WordPress search? Thanks in advance for any insight.

    Moz Pro | | kaydeeweb
    0
  • Unsolved

    matrix

    Hello We are going through the exercise of keyword matrix and want to know if we can get someone to listen in for 5-10 min to make sure we are on the right track. Thank you - Brad

    Product Support | | B2daGz
    0
  • Unsolved

    looping error bug

    When I am trying to optimise a page within MOZ this message box appears: dcf38be5-eff4-4317-87ab-ab560e8fea7c-image.png I click 'Track Keyword' and it just loops round with the same message over and over again. I have already added this particular keyword to be tracked but I still get the error message. Can anyone help?

    Product Support | | Zigaflow
    0

  • cannibalization

    Hi Moz Community, Glad to be here with you. I need some help from you guys. I have a new client website: [https://deluxemassage.co.uk/](link url) My client runs this type of business offering professional therapeutic health services. It offers massage services on demand ("mobile", therapists visiting clients at home). The client has his business registered, and the therapists listed on the website are carefully vetted, all having training in different types of massage. The client's problem is that until 2 months ago the site was in position 3-4 in Google (somewhat stable) with the main page for the keyword "mobile massage London". Recently I noticed that another page on the site that lists all therapists - i.e. this page [https://deluxemassage.co.uk/therapists/](link url)- is on the first page of Google for the above keyword, although both the title tag, meta description and the page on the site do not target the above keyword.
    I notice that both pages have serious fluctuations in the SERP for the mentioned keyword, sometimes appearing both in the results.
    The Home page is marked as rel=canonical Of course the position in SERP fluctuates from 8, 11, 12, 7. What should I do to solve this problem? Any thoughts here would be appreciated. Thanks

    Algorithm Updates | | Koyel9754
    0
  • Solved This question is deleted!

    0

  • nap address

    I have an issue with an address. Some sources use a space in it, others do not. For example:
    '123 Blue Berry Road' is recognized by Google, various other sites and Google will correct the search if not using the space. '123 Blueberry Road' is recognized by the USPS. To make things more complicated, the road is split between 3 towns. 1 of which is recognized by Google as the proper usps validated 'Blueberry Road' And as if it couldn't get even more complicated than that, the address is recognized by USPS as a different town than the location is actually in or taxed as. But that's not really the problem, because everyone agrees that the wrong town is how USPS recognizes it and that will be that. It's just the space that is the issue. How much of an affect will this have either way I go with it? Thanks in advance!

    SEO Tactics | | pg181
    0
  • Unsolved

    api keywords

    Hi, my boss is asking if you "have any API for keyword research -- e.g., as soon as a user creates a card title in [our application], we can auto-recommend keywords from Moz within [the application]. I shared a link with him to your Links API page, but he says he doesn't think that API does the above. Can you help? Thank you, Renae

    API | | CarolinaRen
    0

  • seo rankings seo

    I've recently been confused by a marketplace that appears to have significant traction (500K) despite having a very low DR (46). Has anyone experienced something similar and been able to attribute this?

    SEO Tactics | | MarketGrowth
    0

  • international seo seo international google rankings

    Hi there, I have a question regarding international SEO and the APAC region in particular. We currently have a website extension .com and offer our content in English. However, we notice that our website hardly ranks in Google in the APAC region, while one of the main languages in that region is also English. I figure one way would be to set up .com/sg/ (or .com/au/ or .com/nz/), but then the content would still be in English. So wouldn't that be counted as duplicate content? Does anyone have experience in improving website rankings for various English-speaking countries, without creating duplicate content? Thanks in advance for your help!

    International SEO | | Billywig
    0

  • urlredirect optimization content marketing seo tactics content development redirect

    What are best practices for rewriting (and then redirecting) blog URLs? I refresh old blog posts on our blog every month and many of them have URLs that are too long or could be improved. However, many of them also already get decent organic traffic and I don't want to lose traffic due to a URL redirect. Are there any best practices or "rules" I can follow when deciding whether to re-write and redirect blog URLs?
    Thanks!

    Content Development | | Emily.R.Monrovia
    0
  • Unsolved

    performance metrics crawl error

    I am getting an error:
    Crawl Error for mobile & desktop page crawl - The page returned a 4xx; Lighthouse could not analyze this page.
    I have Lighthouse whitelisted, is there any other site I need to whitelist? Anything else I need to do in Cloudflare or Datadome to allow this tool to work?

    Product Support | | bhsiao 0
    1

  • meta data google

    I have seen several posts as to why google may not be using the meta description. The most common reason is that they found other text on the page that is more relevant. While I have seen this to be the case on some, most of the time it is not. Is there any way to alert the google bot that it is taking wrong info that would not be good to the user?

    Technical SEO | | RobDalton
    0
  • Unsolved

    crawl performance

    I'm looking to do a 1-off Performance Metrics analysis across dozens of pages on a single website - a prospective client. I thought it would be part of the On-Demand Crawl.

    Moz Tools | | amandacash85896
    0

  • designoptimizations cta html css

    We are a casino affiliations company, our website has a lot of the same casino offers. So is it beneficial to put the content over the casino offers, then do a CSS flex, reverse wrap, so the HTML has the page content first, but the visual of the page displays the casinos first and the content after? or just the usual i.e image the HTML as content first, and CSS makes offers come first?

    On-Page Optimization | | JoelssonMedia
    0
  • Unsolved

    cancelation

    Hello, I need to cancel my account, how do I do that?

    Product Support | | heelo
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.