Latest Questions

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  ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO
  

  I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?

  On-Page Optimization | | AndieF

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  What are "stop" words in Title Tags?
  

  My client is following his GoDaddy SEO Checklist, and it is reporting 5 errors in Title Tags, saying the Titles contain "stop" words. I can't figure out what these are. Any ideas?

  On-Page Optimization | | cschwartzel

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  How to rewrite/redirect a folder name with .htaccess
  

  I have a folder in my site that I want to rename. I don’t want to just rewrite the URL and keep my old folder name, I want to change the folder name and then do whatever is necessary with .hataccess to not lose search engine rankings. The folder name I want to change has a space in it and also is misspelled (whoops x2) Example. Mysite.com/old foldr/page.html Mysite.com/newfolder/page.html How would I go about doing this with .htaccess?  Do I just switch the folder name on my server and then set up a redirect, or do I do a rewrite?  Sorry now familiar with the terms or .htacces. Thanks all

  Web Design | | SheffieldMarketing

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  Robots.txt: how to exclude sub-directories correctly?
  

  Hello here, I am trying to figure out the correct way to tell SEs to crawls this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/ But not this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory/ or this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/sub-directory/... But with the fact I have thousands of sub-directories with almost infinite combinations, I can't put the following definitions in a manageable way: disallow: /directory/sub-directory/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory/sub-directory/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/subdirectory/ etc... I would end up having thousands of definitions to disallow all the possible sub-directory combinations. So, is the following way a correct, better and shorter way to define what I want above: allow: /directory/$ disallow: /directory/* Would the above work? Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance. Best, Fab.

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau

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  Best server-side sitemap generators
  

  I've been looking into sitemap generators recently and have got a good knowledge of what creating a sitemap for a small website of below 500 URLs involves. I have successfully generated a sitemap for a very small site, but I’m trying to work out the best way of crawling a large site with millions of URLs. I’ve decided that the best way to crawl such a large number of URLs is to use a server side sitemap, but this is an area that doesn’t seem to be covered in detail on SEO blogs / forums. Could anyone recommend a good server side sitemap generator? What do you think of the automated offerings from Google and Bing? I’ve found a list of server side sitemap generators from Google, but I can’t see any way to choose between them. I realise that a lot will depend on the type of technologies we use server side, but I'm afraid that I don't know them at this time.

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO

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  Is there benefit to having longer article headlines?
  

  I am seeing a trend in digital publishing on sites like HuffPo and others where they are increasing the length of article headlines to 3-4 rows of large type, often containing multiple sentences. Other publishers like CNN.com still have shorter headlines and character counts. Perhaps this is just a design aesthetic, but I am curious if there is any SEO value to having longer headlines assuming you are able to fit your targeted keywords/terms and message in something shorter?

  On-Page Optimization | | barberm

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  Replacing Slider Image WordPress
  

  Hi Everyone, I decided to delete my slider from my homepage and replace it with a static image. However, after I deleted the slider, I'm left with a dark square where the slider used to be. I want to put my new static image in that same spot, but have no idea how. Does anyone know where or what code I should add to do that? The page is www.kempruge.com The WP Forums never seem to be too helpful for me, but Moz always is! Thanks in advance, Ruben

  Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup

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  In counting words for a "long article," do comments count in the word count?
  

  As Moz and others have proven, long articles help ranking, linking and sharing.  My question is, do the comments at the end of an article count in the word count as Google counts it.

  On-Page Optimization | | bizzer

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  When creating parent and child pages should key words be repeated in url and page title?
  

  We are in the direct mail advertising business:  PrintLabelAndMail.com Example: Parent:
  Postcard Direct Mail Children:
  Postcard Mailings
  Postcard Design
  Postcard Samples
  Postcard Pricing
  Postcard Advantages should "postcard" be repeated in the URL and Page Title? and in this example should each of the 5 children link back directly to the parent or would it be better to "daisy chain" them using each as parent for the next?

  Technical SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach

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  Redirect at Registrar or Server
  

  Hi folks, I have run into a situation were a new client has 3 TLDs (e.g. mycompany.com, mycompany.org and mycompany.biz), all with the same content. They are on a Windows IIS environment, which I am not familiar with. Until now, all of my clients have been Linux/Apache environment, so I always dealt with these issues utilizing htaccess. Currently all resolve to the same IP, but the URL remains the same in the browser address field (e.g. if you type-in mycompany.org - it remains as such). We want the .org and .biz version to 301 Redirect to the .com TLD. I am wondering what the best practice might be in this situation? Could we simply redirect at the registrar level or would implementation at the server level be best? If so, I would really appreciate an example from someone with experience implementing redirects on IIS. Thank you!

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW

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  Redirect root domain to www
  

  I've been having issues with my keyword rankings with MOZ and this is what David at M0Z asked me to do below.   Does anyone have a solution to this?  I'm not 100% sure what to do.  Does it hurt ranking to have a domain at the root or not?  Can I 301 redirect a whole site or do I have to do individual pages. "Your campaign is looking for rankings for the www version of the campaign but the URL resolves as a root domain. This would explain the discrepancy. Since there is no re-direct between the two, you can have brickmarkers.com 301 re-direct to www.site.com  which will prevent you from re-creating your campaign to track the root domain. Once the re-direct is in place it will take a while for Google to show the www version in the results in which your campaign rankings will be accurate." Thanks

  Technical SEO | | SeaDrive

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  Is Using a Question, Answer Format Appropriate for a Blog? Is a 300 Word Micro Blog An SEO Plus?
  

  My PR agency has suggested a question answer format be incorporated in my blog. They suggest a microblog with a single sentence question and an answer of about 300 words. My blog currently has about 35 posts. I would like to ramp up blog entries to about one or two per week of these "mini blog" posts. The format of the new blog begins as a question with the responses being paragraphs that do not use headings. My concerns are as follows: 1. No headings in an answer of 300 words will fail to provide Google with context regarding the content's meaning. Everything I have read about SEO suggests text be broken up in short sections and that it be divided by headings (preferably H2s). I very much like my agency's concept for a question answer format blog. It provides very practical info for visitors. How can I use it in a manner that supports SEO best practices? 2. According to a reputable SEO firm that has been assisting me, Google does not consider a blog post of less than 600 words to be superior quality. They told me that  blog posts of 300 words, from an SEO purpose will not be a great helpful, that the content will not be rich enough to generate incoming links. Is this really the case? What if this abbreviated content is very well written and engaging? If so, is 300 words sufficient? From the visitor's perspective I am not sure they would have the patience to read 600 words when 300 words is more than than enough to answer these basic questions. From a PR perspective I think the shorter content in a question answer format is superior at least for my line of business (commercial real estate brokerage). 3. If 500-600 words is the minimum word count, and headings are necessary, what is the best way to execute a question and answer blog format? The purpose of this blog is to provide very useful info to my visitors while generating incoming links to that will boast my rankings. Thanks in advance for your feedback!!! Alan

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1

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  Google recommended dropdown in search bar
  

  When Google drops down and tries to predict what you're searching for, are the terms in order of popularity from the top down?

  Keyword Research | | SSFCU

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  Special characters in URL
  

  Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark. Thanks!

  Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO

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  Merging two different domains - subdomain or subfolder?
  

  My company has two sites on different domains. We are considering merging the sites into one and keeping only the dominant domain. The dominate site is already a sub-domain of a larger organization so the new sub-domain would be two levels deep.  I realize this is a little abstract so below is an example Dominant company site:       company.root-domain.com Secondary company site:     other-root-domain.com When they merge, everything will be on company.root-domain.com. Should it be other.company.root-domain.com   or company.root-domain.com/other Note: The other site has several hundred pages. Both sites have strong authority and link profiles. I want to maintain as much of the value on the other site as possible with the merge.

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEI

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  Very odd behavior. Google is changing “%20” to “+” in my URLS
  

  I just realized many of the links on my site are BROKEN when entered from a Google SERP. This didn’t used to be this way. I have no idea what’s going but I’m worried. It involves a folder of our site that has a space in it. Google is even displaying the proper “%20” in the SERP but when I click the link it replaces that “%20” with a + which breaks the link!! You can see this in action by typing in “brown jordan sheffield furniture” without quotes into Google. You’ll see our site come up first and displaying this link sheffieldfurniture.com/Other%20Furniture/BrownJordan.html but when you click it the link is broken! This is happening on many of our pages! Anyone know what in the world is going on?

  Industry News | | SheffieldMarketing

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