Moz Q&A is closed.
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.
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!
-
Where are redirect.viglink's coming from??
I am getting redirect . vigilink links my blog clicks and I don't use the Viglink affiliate program. I have no idea where these links are coming from or how to get rid of them? I was told my another company that I have affiliate links with that they are overriding their affiliate links.
Affiliate Marketing | | TheFearlessForeigner0 -
Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
Hi all, A number of our pages have dropped out of search rankings. It seems they are being marked as "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical" However, the page Google is choosing as the canonical is totally different - different headings, titles, metadata, content on the page. We are completely mystified as to why this is happening. If anyone can shed any light, it would be hugely appreciated! Example URL is this one:
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/london Which Google seems to think is a duplicate of this: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/solicitor/london0 -
Two websites, one company, one physical address - how to make the best of it in terms of local visibility?
Hello! I have one company which will be operating in two markets, printing and website design / development. I’m planning on building two websites, each for every market. But I’m a bit confused about how to optimize these websites locally. My thought is to use my physical address for one website (build citations, get listed in directories, etc. ) and PO Box for another. Do you think there is a better idea?
Technical SEO | | VELV1 -
Should I move my blog from subdomain to subdirectory?
Hi there, We have a pretty strong organic presence on our consumer facing blog. Around 5.7 million organic clicks Year to Date. It's currently housed in Wordpress on a subdomain. Our team is considering migrating our blog from Wordpress to Sitecore, where our parent organization resides. With that consideration, we're trying to determine if we should preserve the subdomain or move to a subdirectory of the parent brand. Moving to the parent brand would also result in a loss of our custom global nav - we would inherit the global nav of the parent website. We're not concerned about traffic loss risk - we know that we'll lose some but we think the move to subdirectory might be more beneficial in the long run from an SEO perspective. We're mostly concerned about the users getting lost without the global nav specific to the blog. Thoughts/concerns? Thank you!
Web Design | | Jessdyl0 -
Important news on Fresh Web Explorer
Hello Moz family, After much deliberation, Moz has arrived at the difficult decision to shift away from brand & keyword mentions monitoring as a standalone tool in Fresh Web Explorer. Though we believe in the value of this service for our users, we’ll no longer be supporting it in order to provide more innovative features that better suit the modern needs of SEOs. We will, however, continue to support existing features within the Pro platform that accomplish similar tasks, like link building, content planning, and mentions monitoring. We understand you might have a few questions and have compiled a list of common FAQs below. Within the answers, you will find a number of other resources to help you out. When is Moz sunsetting Fresh Web Explorer?
Moz Bar | | jacob.butler
Moz will be sunsetting Fresh Web Explorer on November 10, 2020. At that time, you will no longer be able to access this feature within Moz Pro. This means that there will no longer be the ability in your settings to opt into email alerts from Fresh Web Explorer as the email alerts will discontinue after this date as well. I used Fresh Web Explorer for brand and keyword monitoring across the web. How can I do that now? Though it’s not a direct replacement, setting Brand Rules within a Campaign allow a user to monitor specific keywords in the Link Opportunities section, much like Fresh Web Explorer. By monitoring the links that mention your tracked keywords, but do not link to them, you can easily reach out for link opportunities. It can also help you plan content strategies by understanding what is being discussed within the content of those pages. You can read more about Opportunities within Links here. I used Fresh Web Explorer for link building opportunities. How can I do that now? With Moz’s vast link index you can uncover valuable link prospects, create a solid strategy, and track your progress. Within Link Opportunities in a Campaign, you can understand the domains mentioning your tracked keywords (set within your Brand Rules), but not linking back to you. Link Intersect provides an analysis on who's linking to competitors, but not you, and can help users plan strategic link outreach. You can also use Link Tracking Lists to help track progress for link opportunities you’ve identified through unlinked mentions of your brand or your competitors. Our Keyword Explorer tool also includes a Mentions module. Mentions show you pages that contain the searched keyword and gives you a snapshot of the Page Title and URL. Within Mentions, understand a link’s Mention Authority score, which predicts the authority of the page using a proprietary algorithm, along with a combination of Moz metrics that take both the authority and influence of the page into account. Need help getting started with all of these similar features? Read more here. I used Fresh Web Explorer for content planning. How can I use Moz for that now? There are many ways you can plan your content strategy using Moz. For a high-level understanding of how Moz Pro can help you plan content, take a look at our Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy here. Otherwise, one way you can understand what is being mentioned within your tracked keywords is through Opportunities in Links within a campaign. This feature helps you get a sense for what type of content is published on the web around your tracked keywords, branded or non-branded. You can then plan similar content as what’s being mentioned. For more information on how to set up Brand Rules in a Campaign, click here. I used Fresh Web Explorer for the email alerts to notify other stakeholders on keyword & brand mentions. Can I do that another way within Moz Pro? We recommend using our Custom Reports to email your stakeholders of tracked mentions on the web. You can set Brand Rules within your Campaign settings for branded or non-branded keywords you’d like to monitor. You can read more on how to set up Custom Reports here. The Moz Pro feature alternatives you suggested aren’t really a direct replacement. Why? We recognize that our feature suggestions are not a direct replacement for brand and keyword mentions monitoring. And, we also understand that this functionality is desired by many of our users. We will be exploring opportunities to include some of the Fresh Web Explorer functionality within future versions of Moz Pro. In the meantime, if you're looking for a direct replacement, we suggest checking out BuzzSumo. Their Monitoring feature provides you a one-stop-shop for monitoring your brand, keywords, and trends across the web. Do I need to do anything before the sunset on November 10, 2020? No. Fresh Web Explorer will simply disappear from the Moz Pro interface. No action is needed on your end. Once retired, you will no longer see the page within Moz Pro and you will no longer receive alert emails that were previously set up from the settings tab within an account. Do you have any content you can point me to that outlines the other ways in which I can find my brand’s mentions in Moz Pro? We sure do! Check out this fantastic Help Hub article that outlines all of the ways you might track, monitor, and analyze your brand’s mentions in Moz Pro. The features here include Keyword Explorer’s Mentions, Brand Rules, Link Opportunities in Links within a Campaign, Link Tracking Lists, and Custom Reports. If you have any questions, I'm happy to discuss more in the Q&A thread. Or, feel free to send an email to help@moz.com with any questions. Best,
Jacob Butler4 -
Is 301 redirect the only way when using Vanity URLs?
We have been using vanity urls for some of our pages. Mostly the pages that have a vanity URL have a long URL length. But now the problem is, the vanity URL is getting displayed on the search engine when the particular keyword related to the page is entered. I checked the google search console, the vanity URL is indexed and the original URL remains unindexed. What should I do? Is adding 301 redirect to the vanity URLs are solution? Since some of vanity URLs are not redirecting to the original. Some of the original pages are not getting traffic. Also, can using canonical tag help?
Technical SEO | | tejasbansode0 -
What to do with outdated and irrelevant content on a website?
Hi everyone, On our corporate website we have a blog where we publish articles which are directly related to our company (house heating systems and gas cylinders) and some articles which are completely irrelevant to our core business, but which might be of interest to our potential clients. Recently I've been told that it is not a good idea to include these not directly related posts to our core business, because Google might be somewhat confused at to what our core business is all about. I was advised to research this topic and think of completely removing blog posts that are irrelevant to our core business from our blog. By removing I mean completely removing pages and setting a 410 status to tell Google that it is not a 404 error but that these pages were intentionally removed. I would like to hear some independent advice from Moz community as to what I should do? Thank you very much in advance.
Content Development | | Intergaz0 -
How long does it take Google to remove links after using disavow tool?
Hi guys, So we're currently in the process of removing some of the less useful and more suspect links from our profile, and used the Google disavow tool to do so. We uploaded the .txt file to the search console on 7th July this year, 2 months ago now, and according to our most recent site crawl, the suspect links are still showing up on our link profile. Do we have any idea how long this is roughly supposed to take? The ideas I've found online are conflicting - anything from 3-4 weeks to 6-9 months. Which is it? Is there any way of fast-tracking this process? Thanks!
Link Building | | rawdog0 -
H1 text and Header Image Overlap?
I have images with text at the top of every page on my site. But no H1 or H tags at all. I would like the text on the image to be my H1 text. But I don't want to be repetitive. What should I do?
On-Page Optimization | | Calligraphy0 -
Fighting spam on Google Maps
"Suggest an edit" on Google Maps works occasionally and so does Google's Redressal Form. Sending a DM to @GoogleMyBiz on Twitter does too. But it seems like the vast majority of spammy businesses that I report, go unnoticed by Google. I'd really appreciate hearing from some other SEOs on how they remove crap from the map, with better results. Thanks.
Local Listings | | Jason_Taylor0 -
Whatstuffwherebot user agent messing up Google Analytics
Starting yesterday, Aug 26, 2020, I noticed a new bot crawling our site with user agent whatstuffwherebot. Google Analytics is counting these hits as human traffic, completely throwing off my numbers - yesterday, Analytics reported nearly triple my typical number of visitors. As of now, Search Console only shows data through Aug 25 so I don't know if Search Console is also affected. Is anybody else seeing something similar? Does anybody know what the whatstuffwherebot bot is? I don't get any results when I search on Google or Bing. For what it's worth, the traffic is coming from Columbus, OH, running over Amazon AWS via 278 different IP addresses so far. Also, WordFence (my WordPress security plugin) correctly identifies these hits as bot traffic.
Reporting & Analytics | | ahirai0 -
Solved Refund
Hi I forgot to cancellation my subscription before the trail expired. We are currently at a very nascent stage and do not require the product and can't afford it as well. During such trying times ( COVID, when the business is not doing well at all) we would really appreciate if you can refund the money and help us. Kindly consider. We missed the date by one day. We will be really grateful. Regards, Prachi Joshi
Product Support | | Prachijo6 -
Should we set up redirects for all deleted TAGS?
We recently found our site had 65,000 tags (yes 65K). In an effort to consolidate these we've started deleting them. MOZ is now reporting a heap of 404 errors for tag pages. These tag pages should not have links to them so not sure how come they're being crawled. Any suggestions from experience in this area would be useful.
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
How to handle sorting, filtering, and pagination in ecommerce? Canonical is enough?
Hello, after reading various articles and watching several videos I'm still not sure how to handle faceted navigation (sorting/filtering) and pagination on my ecommerce site. Current indexation status: The number of "real" pages (from my sitemap) - 2.000 pages Google Search Console (Valid) - 8.000 pages Google Search Console (Excluded) - 44.000 pages Additional info: Vast majority of those 50k additional pages (44 + 8 - 2) are pages created by sorting, filtering and pagination. Example of how the URL changes while applying filters/sorting: example.com/category --> example.com/category/1/default/1/pricefrom/100 Every additional page is canonicalized properly, yet as you can see 6k is still indexed. When I enter site:example.com/category in Google it returns at least several results (in most of the cases the main page is on the 1st position). In Google Analytics I can see than ~1.5% of Google traffic comes to the sorted/filtered pages. The number of pages indexed daily (from GSC stats) - 3.000 And so I have a few questions: Is it ok to have those additional pages indexed or will the "real" pages rank higher if those additional would not be indexed? If it's better not to have them indexed should I add "noindex" to sorting/filtering links or add eg. Disallow: /default/ in robots.txt? Or perhaps add "noindex, nofollow" to the links? Google would have then 50k pages less to crawl but perhaps it'd somehow impact my rankings in a negative way? As sorting/filtering is not based on URL parameters I can't add it in GSC. Is there another way of doing that for this filtering/sorting url structure? Thanks in advance, Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thpchlk0 -
Should you 'noindex' Checkout Pages?
Today I was reviewing my Moz analytics and suddenly noticed 1,000 issues with pages without a meta description. I reviewed the list and learned it is 1,000 checkout pages. That's because my website has thousands of agency pages from which you can buy a product, and it reflects that difference on each version of the checkout. So, I was thinking about no-indexing (but continuing to 'follow') these checkout pages, but wondering if it has any knock-on effects I may be unaware of? Any assistance is much appreciated. Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Luke_Proctor0 -
Which are the best off-page SEO techniques for 2020?
I have just published an awesome website or blog, and i really worked hard keeping everything perfect. Do you think it’s enough? Having a perfect blog, website or business is just enough. i need readers for my blog, visitors to my website, and customers for my business. So, what to do?
Local Website Optimization | | boxinghunter0 -
How I can increase DA of my site?
Hi, I have my 4 month old blog, PA of site is 17 but DA is still 5. I don't know how to increase DA of site. Please suggest me how to increase DA of Site https://myeasygrader.com/ . Thanks
Getting Started | | markwillson0 -
How to rank website on google with help of Moz ?
I am new here and my question is how rank a website with moz because my website was not ranking in any keywords so plz guide me
Getting Started | | RoyDigitalWorld0 -
Ranking Keywords are not showing on Moz
i just check my Apk Finds on moz site explorer and check its ranking keywords but it does not show it please help me my site age is 3 months
Link Explorer | | malik12378670 -
Ranking keywords are not showing for my site
Hi, I have started my website 6 months ago and many of my site's keywords are ranking but when I explore my site Get YoWhatsApp in Moz site explorer, it doesn't show ranking keywords there, I'm a little bit confused about this, when my site's keywords will be shown there? Atqd4Bf
Link Explorer | | GetYoWhatsApp0 -
Local Landing Page Optimization and Multiple GMB Listings
Hello, We’re building out a site for our business that has close to 100 office locations in different cities. Many of these are ‘partner brands’ that we have acquired under our brand. Similar to a franchise model. We want to be able to help users find offices near their location. Each office will have it’s own landing page with a physical address and contact information. We know we’ll have to build out unique copy and markup customized to the office/location. We’ve already read through https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages as well. We’re also considering ‘silos’ to build out pages for each location. To preserve authority and avoid cannibalization; our thought was having each location as sub-folders off of our domain (i.e. domain.com/locations/Partner#1/). The other option would be using a sub-domain (i.e. Partner.Domain.com/) which we noticed competitors doing and treating each sub-domain as their own independent site. Is all of the above the correct strategy? Any further suggestions? Should we fill out a separate GMB for each office and should they all use the same brand name? (in other words “BrandA” vs. “BrandA” - Brooklyn Office). In addition to GMB; would each location need local listings created (also all under the same name)? Any help or insight would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R0 -
Can I safely asume that links between subsites on a subdirectories based multisite will be treated as internal links within a single site by Google?
I am building a multisite network based in subdirectories (of the mainsite.com/site1 kind) where the main site is like a company site, and subsites are focused on brands or projects of that company. There will be links back and forth from the main site and the subsites, as if subsites were just categories or pages within the main site (they are hosted in subfolders of the main domain, after all). Now, Google's John Mueller has said: <<as far="" as="" their="" url="" structure="" is concerned,="" subdirectories="" are="" no="" different="" from="" pages="" and="" subpages="" on="" your="" main="" site.="" google="" will="" do="" its="" best="" to="" identify="" where="" sites="" separate="" using="" but="" the="" is="" same="" for="" a="" single="" site,="" you="" should="" assume="" that="" seo="" purposes,="" network="" be="" treated="" one="">></as> This sounds fine to me, except for the part "Google will do its best to identify where sites are separate", because then, if Google establishes that my multisite structure is actually a collection of different sites, links between subsites and mainsite would be considered backlinks between my own sites, which could be therefore considered a link wheel, that is, a kind of linking structure Google doesn't like. How can I make sure that Google understand my multisite as a unique site? P.S. - The reason I chose this multisite structure, instead of hosting brands in categories of the main site, is that if I use the subdirectories based multisite feature I will be able to map a TLD domain to any of my brands (subsites) whenever I'd choose to give that brand a more distinct profile, as if it really was a different website.
Web Design | | PabloCulebras0 -
Fire a tag when element is loaded on page (Google Tag Manager)
I'm using an Element Visibility trigger to track a value that appears on a page. However, I want to track this value even when the user doesn't scroll to the area of the page where the element is (i.e. when the page is loaded, and the value is displayed below the fold, but the user doesn't scroll down there). Is there a way of doing this
Reporting & Analytics | | RWesley0
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.