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
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Adwords: Brand ads appear bottom of SERPs
Hello, I'm running a sale promotion on a brand only Adwords campaign (I have the only account with trademark authorization) and have noticed that my ads are appearing at the bottom of the first page on Google. This happened last week so I split the campaign into three Adgroups and that fixed the problem but today I'm running brand only and there is no way to separate them. CPC has also increased dramatically. Normally it's less than 10 cents and now it's sitting at between $2-$4. Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas/advice on how to stop this happening? It's playing havoc with my CTR and conversions. Much thanks,
Paid Search Marketing | | Unity
Davinia2 -
Link building too quickly
Hi all, I have recently started trialing to outsource some SEO to a 3rd party, who obviously promissed white hat techniques and manual links etc.. All has gone well for the first month. But on speeking to another expert they point out that the search engines will spot inconcistencies in link building and penalise me. I know there will not be a know ammount but as we stand at the moment, what is the current feeling of too fast. Links built for me in one month were 100 directory submissions 80 bookmarks 16 search engine submissions 15 Article submissions 46 forum links 10 local classified searches Is this too fast? , If to do I stop and create more inconsistency or continue at a similar rate. Of course quality of link will be an issue, but how much. Many thanks from SEO jnr
Link Building | | smartcow0 -
Fewer keywords in title tag?
Hello, I have a title tag that includes three keywords and has a total of 59 characters. The third keyword is not very important. If I eliminated the third keyword, leaving the first two (for a total of 48 characters), would the ranking value of the first two keywords increase? Does including the third keyword dilute the value of the first two? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
High PR Web 2.0 sites
Hello, I was wondering if you could provide some advice on which are the best Top 20 high pr web 2.0 properties for content besides wordpress? Whilst i do intend to use them to further improve my SEO campaign I also intend to use readable content, that is to say, content that i have written and i feel is worthy of being read by interested parties. What are the top 20 to look at that would benefit an SEO campaign if used correctly (without abusing or being spammy). I can see lots of crappy ones out there but they all look spammy to me and im not really liking that.
Link Building | | irdeto0 -
Blog Sub-Domaine on Other Server, Is This Possible???
My eCommerce cart is BigCommerce. It is not possible to use my domain name to add a blog on there server. I would like to create a blog on a sub-domain, something like: http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/ Is it possible to host this sub-domain on another server? Host this sub-domiane to BlueHost for example and keep my domaine to BigCommerce. If YES, I would like to buy a Word Press theme and start a blog on this sub-domain: http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/ Thank you, BIgBlaze
Content Development | | BigBlaze2050 -
Niche Directories
Hello, I like the concept that a directory is good only if you would still want the link if it passed no link juice. DMOZ and Best of the Web fall into that category. And so do some niche directories. How do you determine whether to go with a niche directory or not? Also, what's the ratio of how many niche directory links you'd want compared to other types of links (being very safe) 3:1? 4:1? 5:1? Does it matter what your other links are? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW1 -
Simple 301 redirect a subfolder to another subfolder
Hi, I have a number of sub-folders that I have to move, each of which contains a number of files. subfolder A has files a, b & c subfolder B has files d, e & f
Technical SEO | | aactive
subfolder C has files g, h & i A, B & C folders need to be X, Y & Z Will the following work? RewriteRule ^subfolder-A/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-X/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-B/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-C/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Z/ [R=301,L] will this result in visitors to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-B/f.html being redirected to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/f.html? All on the same domain. in reality we are talking hundreds of sub folders and thousands of files so we don't want to have to reference every file individually in the htaccess. Thanks0 -
Does Sticky Post in WordPress Have Impact on SEO?
Hi, I Have a Blog that I have attached a "sticky" post, obviously the content in the "sticky" post is the content that I want to ensure that everyone sees. I do update, by adding new posts daily or at least everyother day, my question is: Is the "sticky" post hurting, helping, or is it indifferent to SEO? I know the SE enjoy fresh content, and was wondering does that fresh content have to pop-up at the top of the page otr not. Any input would be great. Thanks. Jimmy
Industry News | | jimmy02250 -
Google ranking my site abroad, how to stop?
Hi Mozzers, I have a UK based ecommerce site, that sells only to the UK. Over the last month Google has started ranking my site on foreign flavours of Google, so I keep getting traffic coming to my site from Europe, America and the far east that we could never sell to, and as a result bounce is going up and engagement is going down. They are definitely coming to the site from google searches that relate to my product type, but in regions I do not service. Is there a way to stop google doing this? I have the target set to UK in WMT, but is there anything else I can do? I worried about my UK ranking being damaged by an increasing overall bounce rate. Thanks
Technical SEO | | FDFPres0 -
Is there a way to block competitor ads from showing in YouTube embeds?
I am running a site in WordPress and would like to know if there is a way to block competitor ads from appearing for the videos I embed to my site? (the videos are not owned or controlled by me, just embeds). Thanks..
Social Media | | Clicksjim1 -
Moving from a .com to .co.uk
I need to migrate a wordpress site from domainname.com to domainname.co.uk. If I just put a 301 on every page on the .com will that cover it? Would it make sense to go and change all the backlinks/profile links to the new .co.uk site or doesn't it matter if you have a 301 redirect on it? Thanks
Technical SEO | | littlesthobo0 -
A link with "return false"- OSE sees as a No Followed Link
Hello, I couldn't find a clear answer to the impact on SEO for a link written in this way: [" class="expert_info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=) [Does the "return false" act as a "no follow"? I came across this in our link data in Open Site Explorer which lists these links all as "no follows." However, an engineer I spoke to said that it shouldn't impact search engine behavior. Any ideas? Thank you in advance! -Sarah K.](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=)
Link Building | | OneMedical0 -
Changing Facebook Username
HI Does anyone know of any negative consequences of changing Facebook username ? For example i take it all your fans are transferred/you dont lose them 🙂 ? Its just a url change (so links on website etc need to be updated) but thats the only thing that changes ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Registered Trademark in a Meta Title or Content
I know that registered trademarks don't hurt SEO, however if the trademark is used in the middle of a popular search phrase (see below) will it hurt the site's chanced of getting ranked for this term. Example: Funkybrand® Shoes PS I found one brand that used the trademark Acuvue® contact lenses. thanks!
Technical SEO | | yanaiguana1110 -
Can I make 301 redirects on a Windows server (without access to IIS)?
Hey everyone, I've been trying to figure out a way to set up some 301 redirects to handle the broken links left behind after a site restructuring, but I can only ever find information on 2 methods that I can't use (as far as I can tell). The first method is to do some stuff with an htaccess file, but that looks like it only works on Linux-based servers. The method described for Windows servers is generally to install this IIS rewrite/redirect module and run that, but I don't think our web hosting company allows users to log directly into the server, so I wouldn't be able to use the IIS thing. Is there any other way to get a 301 redirect set up? And is this uncommon for a web hosting company to do, or do you all just run your sites on Linux-based servers or your own Windows machines? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrianAlpert780 -
Double Slash // in URL
My client is using double forward slahes in URL like this "//" is this affecting SEO?
Technical SEO | | yanaiguana1110 -
E-commerce site, one product multiple categories best practice
Hi there, We have an e-commerce shopping site with over 8000 products and over 100 categories. Some sub categories belong to multiple categories - for example, A Christmas trees can be under "Gardening > Plants > Trees" and under "Gifts > Holidays > Christmas > Trees" The product itself (example: Scandinavian Xmas Tree) can naturally belong to both these categories as well. Naturally these two (or more) categories have different breadcrumbs, different navigation bars, etc. From an SEO point of view, to avoid duplicate content issues, I see the following options: Use the same URL and change the content of the page (breadcrumbs and menus) based on the referral path. Kind of cloaking. Use the same URL and display only one "main" version of breadcrumbs and menus. Possibly add the other "not main" categories as links to the category / product page. Use a different URL based on where we came from and do nothing (will create essentially the same content on different urls except breadcrumbs and menus - there's a possibiliy to change the category text and page title as well) Use a different URL based on where we came from with different menus and breadcrumbs and use rel=canonical that points to the "main" category / product pages This is a very interesting issue and I would love to hear what you guys think as we are finalizing plans for a new website and would like to get the most out of it. Thank you all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arikbar0 -
Is there a tool that will "grade" content?
Does anybody know of a tool that can "grade" content for Panda compliance. For example, it might look at: • the total number of words on the page • the average number of words in sentences • grammar • spelling • repetitious words and/or phrases • Readability—using algorithms such as: Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease Flesch Kincaid Grade Level Gunning Fog Score Coleman Liau Index Automated Readability Index (ARI) For the last 5 months I've been writing and rewriting literally 100s of catalog descriptions—adhering to the "no duplicate content" and "adding value" rubrics—but in an extremely informal style. I would like to know if I'm at least meeting Google Panda's minimum standards.
On-Page Optimization | | RScime250 -
Question on Breadcrumb and Canonical
Hi SEOmozers, I have another question. =] Thanks in advance. First question: How important is the breadcrumb for SEO? I know that breadcrumb makes better UX because it shows how the visitor landed on this page and the breadcrumb may show up in the search engine. But other than that, how important is it? Second Question: If I have a page that can be found via 2 locations, how should I handle this in regards to breadcrumb? For example, I have page A. You can access page A via Category A and Category B. Therefore, what I did was list Page A under Category A and when someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it will redirect to the page A that was found via Category A. The problem is on page A, the breadcrumb is Home > Category A > Page A. So if someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it redirects and the breadcrumb shows Home > Category A > Page A. What should I do with the breadcrumb for Category B > Page A? Should I create another page A and just use canonical on it? Should I create another page A but do not index it? or leave it as is? 1 Page A, can be access via 2 categories. Please advise. Thank you!
Web Design | | TommyTan0 -
Web Designers and SEOs using backlinks from client sites
What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites. For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website. My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised. That's what I believe! However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly. Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it? Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course). The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this. If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Multiple Authors Google + Authorship
Hello, I took a look through past questions but can't seem to find a definitive answer on setting up Google + Authorship credit (for multiple authors) using a Wordpress blog. Has anyone had experience setting this up? Or could you recommend solid reading/research? I took a look at a couple of Wordpress plug in's but just found them very confusing (so did our IT contact who will ultimately be setting up code for this.) Any direction or advice is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOSponge0
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