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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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Latest Questions

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  • KempRugeLawGroup


    I was looking at the title tags/keywords of the top ranking sites for my most important keyword phrase, and I noticed all the pages that were beating us were homepages. Our homepage is not optimized at all. It's very generic, because 1, my boss wanted it that way, (but she's not married to it) and 2, I built out landing pages for all our keywords. For the really, really competitive keywords, I can't get my landing pages high enough. My homepage however, according to OSE, is on par with the other sites, especially the page. I included the screenshots of it, just in case, my analysis was way off. But, those are the top 4 sites and I'm on page 3. Here's my questions: Should I optimize my homepage for the keyword phrase, if it's our most important one? If I do that, what should I do with the landing pages? Lastly, if you look at the screenshots, is my analysis correct that we aren't woefully behind all four of these people (we're kempruge.com)? I know I'm asking on a lot on this one, but it's a pretty big decision for us. I could really use the help making sure it's the right one. Your time is much appreciated, Ruben voVxURN fwoVUBE aKWJQ4E

    Branding | | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • Seeders


    Hello, A new client of mine has an .com and an .co.uk domain. Both the same content (and they don't have the capacity to make specific content on both domains). I am thinking building al domain authority to 1 domain. In this case the .com domain. 
    And forward the .co.uk to this .com domain.
    In this way, the .com will rank in both UK as in other English speaking countries, right? Or not?
    Or should I use the  rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag? I am not sure. But I do know big brands rank high in the Netherlands with .com domains (for example booking.com). Looking forward on feedback on best practices here... Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
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  • Dan-Lawrence


    Hi I have a client project who's developers platform is populating the category part of the breadcrumbs with the header tag.  Since these include the pages primary target keywords/phrase they are being repeated in the breadcrumbs increasing the keyword/phrase count on the page as well as repeating/duplicating the sentence. Can this cause problems ? or not because Google knows its not part of the page content/body copy (because its a breadcrumb) ? Cheers Dan

    On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence
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  • cschwartzel


    I have a local client who is adamant about not publishing their address anywhere online. They are a local (regional) company, and work out of their home. I advised that PO boxes do not fill within "accurate guidelines" for Google Places (and moving forward any citation building is going to be tough). Any way to get around this besides buying a generic mailbox that isn't a PO Box? They feel putting their home address anywhere leaves them vulnerable to people showing up at their home, and considering the industry they are in, it is possible this could lead to negative confrontations and I understand their concern. Any ideas for me?

    Local Listings | | cschwartzel
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  • KempRugeLawGroup


    Hi everyone, I'm looking for some feedback on Yoast Local SEO, and if you think it'd work for our site. www.kempruge.com. Our site is a wordpress site, and there's nothing about it, off the top of my head, that makes me think it wouldn't work, but I've been wrong before. We do use All-In-One SEO, not the Yoast plugin, so I'm not sure if that's compatible.or would cause a problem? (The reason we use All-In-One and not Yoast is because that's what we had when I got here, and I'm worried what would happen if we switched). Also, we have three offices, and I need to be able to do local seo for all three. I know Yoast says it supports multiple offices, but I'd feel more comfortable if someone on here let me know from his/her experience that it did. Anything else you want to add about Yoast Local, I'm all ears! Thanks, Ruben

    Local Website Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup
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  • Dan-Lawrence


    Hi Ive instructed clients to password protect dev areas so dont get crawled and indexed but how do we set up Moz crawl software so we can crawl theses sites for final check of any issues before going live ? Is there an option i havnt seen to add logins/passwords for crawl software to access ? cheers dan

    Moz Bar | | Dan-Lawrence
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  • DougRoberts


    I've been asked to look at a site that has lost 70/80% if their search traffic. This happened suddenly around the 17th April. Traffic dropped off over a couple of days and then flat-lined over the next couple of weeks. The screenshot attached, shows the impressions/clicks reported in GWT. When I investigated I found: There had been no changes/updates to the site in question There were no messages in GWT indicating a manual penalty The number of pages indexed shows no significant change There are no particular trends in keywords/queries affected (they all were.) I did discover that ahrefs.com showed that a large number of links were reported lost on the 17th April. (17k links from 1 domain). These links reappeared around the 26th/27th April. But traffic shows no sign of any recovery. The links in question were from a single development server (that shouldn't have been indexed in the first place, but that's another matter.) Is it possible that these links were, maybe artificially, boosting the authority of the affected site? Has the sudden fluctuation in such a large number of links caused the site to trip an algorithmic penalty (penguin?) Without going into too much detail as I'm bound by client confidentiality - The affected site is really a large database and the links pointing to it are generated by a half dozen or so article based sister sites based on how the articles are tagged. The links point to dynamically generated content based on the url. The site does provide a useful/valuable service/purpose - it's not trying to "game the system" in order to rank. That doesn't mean to say that it hasn't been performing better in search than it should have been. This means that the affected site has ~900,000 links pointing to is that are the names of different "entities". Any thoughts/insights would be appreciated. I've expresses a pessimistic outlook to the client, but as you can imaging they are confused and concerned. LVSceCN.png

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougRoberts
    0
  • linklater


    We serve up different desktop/mobile optimized html on the same URL, based on a visitor’s device type. While Google continue to recommend the HTTP Vary: User-Agent header for mobile specific versions of the page (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va6qtaiZRHg), we’re also aware of issues raised around CDN caching; http://searchengineland.com/mobile-site-configuration-the-varies-header-for-enterprise-seo-163004  / http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2249533/How-Googles-Mobile-Best-Practices-Can-Slow-Your-Site-Down  /  http://orcaman.blogspot.com/2013/08/cdn-caching-problems-vary-user-agent.html As this is primarily for Google's benefit, it's been proposed that we only returning the Vary: User-Agent header when a Google user agent is detected (Googlebot/MobileBot/AdBot). So here's the thing: as the server header response is not “content” per se I think this could be an okay solution, though wanted to throw it out there to the esteemed Moz community and get some additional feedback. You guys see any issues/problems with implementing this solution? Cheers! linklater

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | linklater
    0
  • 1akal


    I would like to have clear answer in numbers i.e. 1, 2, 3, or 4 etc. of how many Anchor text i can make on One page.????

    On-Page Optimization | | 1akal
    0
  • evan89


    Hey Mozzers, I have a question regarding the Open Site Explorer Recently Discovered Links. I know that I have receive follow link from a few sites that have more DA than my site. I am wondering why it is taking so long for OSE to discover these links? I double checked the sites to make sure that they don't have NOFOLLOW (sorry for the double negative), and the sites have linked to my site for over a month now. Any ideas? I'm not concerned about it because Search Engines have discovered those links. I am just curious why this is, or if it is normal. Cheers!

    Link Explorer | | evan89
    0
  • Colbys


    Hello, We are working on a complete site redesign.  One of the mock-ups that are being reviewed is of a page that encompasses and entire category of products, but the only way the user can see the products is to fill out several drop down menus, and then a subset of products that match that criteria will appear. Once that list appears, the user will then be able to click on each of the products and will then be taken to the product page. I'm concerned that this layout will pose a crawlability issue since click activity and drop down menus have always been a problem for bots in the past, has anything changed?  Will the bot be able to follow the links to these product pages if it can't see them since it can't fill out the form? Also, depending on the functionality of this 'form', I'm assuming the product listing will be populated dynamically and pulled from another source, which means that the product links will not live in the html of the page, and hence cannot be crawled.  Does anyone know how this is normally handled?  Do the actual results usually live elsewhere or does it live in the html of that page? Any thoughts or clarity around this would be appreciated.

    Web Design | | Colbys
    0
  • Ericc22


    Is the only way to get them through the AdWords API? If so, how do I do that?

    Paid Search Marketing | | Ericc22
    0
  • zeepartner


    Hi This subdomain has about 4'000 URLs indexed in Google, although it's blocked via robots.txt: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&q=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch&oq=site%3Awww1.swisscom.ch This has been the case for almost a year now, and it does not look like Google tends to respect the blocking in http://www1.swisscom.ch/robots.txt Any clues why this is or what I could do to resolve it? Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | zeepartner
    0
  • kymodo


    Hello Moz! Just got a quick question - we have a clientcalled and for some reason they just aren't showing up in the search results. It's not a new domain and hasn't been penalised (or has reason for penalty). All the content is fresh and has no bad back links to the site. It is a new website and has been indexed by Google but for even for branded search terms, it just doesn't show up anywhere on page 1 (i think page 4). Any help or advise is great appreciated is it's doing my head in. We are using www.google.com.au. Kindest Regards

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kymodo
    0
  • AlexanderWhite


    I have 2 websites with same business name and same business address, and obvious 2 different domain names.  I am providing the same services from 2 websites. Is this is a problem?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite
    0
  • groupemedia


    We have a managed server company http://www.centerserv.com in 3 languages.  The 3 languages are international and not country specific.  Should we open 3 different social media account/page for each languages (facebook, twitter, pinterest, linkedin, google+,tumblr)?

    Social Media | | groupemedia
    0
  • Berner


    Hi I am curious if adding a embedded Google map to a footer helps for Local seo? Thank you

    Local Listings | | Berner
    1
  • LauraHT


    Hi, recently we got some editorial links on some of the articles from a few online journals and I've noticed anchor links all have these similar property within the <a>:</a> Mysite What does the skimlinks-unlinked and data-skimwords-word means? Are these normal organic links and valuable?

    Technical SEO | | LauraHT
    0
  • BrigitteMN


    I have a client whose site did not use the www preference but rather the non www form of the url. We were having trouble seeing some high quality inlinks and I wondered if the redirect to the non www site from the links was making it hard for us to track. After some reading, it seemed we should be using the www version for better SEO anyway so I made a change on Monday but had a major hit to the number of pages being indexed by Thursday. Freaking me out mildly. What are people's thoughts? I think I should roll back the www change asap - or am I jumping the gun?

    Reporting & Analytics | | BrigitteMN
    0
  • 94501


    I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is. Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site? Thanks... Mike

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 94501
    0
  • beehiive


    I have a business with 6 locations (in the same state) but very different cities. We we expanded from one location with the city name in the URL we followed best practices to move to the new domain without the singular city name in the URL. We definitly took a hit on the organic side and I'm trying to figure out best practice for where to add geo info. Currently I have geo info: -In footer
    -Contact Page -On local page It's a WP site and each location has it's own page (ie. locations/geolocation_keyword). I know all other locations will take sometime but my concern is the hit we took on the original location that had geo-target URL. I guess really my question is simply can I include city names in homepage meta title and desc.?
    and is there anything else I can do to bounce back organically on the original city faster?

    On-Page Optimization | | beehiive
    0
  • smulto


    I am trying to triple check this - I have a client who has all of their H1 tags as hidden.  As far as I am concerned, anything hidden is not a good thing for SEO. I am debating with their online store provider that this is not good practice.  Everything I am reading says it is not good practice.  They are saying it is for "My SEO experience would suggest otherwise.  In addition, the H1 adds semantic value for users with disabilities to help give them context with what the content of the page is." Did I miss something? They are a large brand and have not been penalized.  This has been happening for 8 months.

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | smulto
    0
  • Eteach_Marketing


    Hello everyone, I have no idea how to ask this question, so I'm going to give it a shot and hopefully someone can help me!! My company is called Eteach, so when you type in Eteach into Google, we come in the top position (phew!) but there are 6 links that appear underneath it (I've added a picture to show what I mean). How do you change these links?? I don't even know what to call them, so if there is a particular name for these then please let me know! They seem to be an organic rank rather than PPC...but if I'm wrong then do correct me! Thanks! zorIsxH.jpg

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eteach_Marketing
    0
  • WebServiceConsulting.com


    I own a website (domain.com) and used the subdomain "dev.domain.com" while adding a new section to the site (as a development link). I forgot to block the dev.domain.com in my robots file, and google indexed all of the dev pages (around 100 of them). I blocked the site (dev.domain.com) in robots, and then proceeded to just delete the entire subdomain altogether. It's been about a week now and I still see the subdomain pages indexed on Google. How do I get these pages removed from Google? Are they causing duplicate content/title issues, or does Google know that it's a development subdomain and it's just taking time for them to recognize that I deleted it already?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0
  • KarlBantleman


    hi mozzers I have a client that has just released a .com version of their .co.uk website. They have basically re-skinned the .co.uk version with some US amends so all the content and title tags are the same. What you do recommend? Canonical tag to the .co.uk version? rewrite titles?

    Technical SEO | | KarlBantleman
    0
  • CWG7575


    I run a local service based business. About 6 months ago, I updated my homepage title tag to incorporate the phrase "near me" (I performed other optimizations as well). Over the last few months, I've noticed increased traffic, calls and online bookings from different areas around the country. I was perplexed, I thought I may have mis-targeted my ppc campaign. After some digging, I found out that my home page ranks #2 in the organic listings for a couple core service keywords with the "near me" phrase added. Of course, my bounce rate, from these visitors outside of my local area, is pretty high (65%). Also, the majority of these visitors are using mobile devices. I see an opportunity here to possibly provide relevant information to the searchers, based on their geographic area. The problem is that, I can't risk modifying my website for the sake of this "out of area" traffic. If I were to provide a page to a visitor based on their ip, could that be considered a black hat tactic? I don't want to do anything that will compromise my core business. Any advice will be welcomed.

    Local SEO | | CWG7575
    0
  • kinimod


    Hi there, I am new to MOZ Q&A and  first of all I appreciate all the folks here that share their expertise and make everyone understand 'the WWW' a bit better. My question: I have been developing a 'travel guide' site for a city in the U.S. and now its time to choose the right domain name. I put a strong focus on SEO in terms of coding, site performance as well as content and to round things up I'd like to register the _best _domain name in terms of SEO. Let's suppose the city is Atlanta. I have found the following domain names that are available and I was wondering whether you guys could give me some inside on which domain name would perform best. discoveratlanta.org
    atlantaguide.org
    atlanta.travel
    atlantamag.com Looking at the Google Adwords Keyword tool the term that reaches the highest search queries is obviously "Atlanta" itself. Sites that are already ranking high are atlanta.com and atlanta.gov. So basically I am wondering whether I should aim for a new TLD like atlanta.travel or rather go with a .org domain. I had a look around and it seems that .org domains generally work well for city guides (at least a lot of such sites use .org domains). However, I have also seen a major US city that uses .travel and ranks first. On the other hand in New York, nycgo.com ranks well. Is it safe to assume that from the domain names I mentioned it really doesn't matter which one I use since it wouldn't significantly affect my ranking (good or bad)? Or would you still choose one above the other? What do you generally thing about .travel domain names (especially since they are far more expensive then the rest)? I really appreciate your response to my question! Best, 
    kinimod

    Local Website Optimization | | kinimod
    0
  • jessential


    Hi, I am not sure what this error message is: "Error.aspx?aspxerrorpath". It immediately follows pages that are given at 302 status in Moz's crawl report. The same pages have never had this error before: | http://www.homedestination.com/news/2013/Minneapolis-home-price-appreciation.html | | http://www.homedestination.com/mortgage-worksheet.html | | http://www.homedestination.com/foreclosure-eligibility.html | Each page has a 100% score with WC3.  Could you give me more insight as to what Moz may suggest I do to give the page a 200 HTTP status as before? Thanks.

    API | | jessential
    0

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