Skip to content

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

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

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!


  • So my organization currently has both a main site and on a separate domain and separate host a wordpress blog.  (our own domain not a wordpress.com) the content posted on this blog is local, community driven, and related to our business but it is not used in anyway as a "sales" tool.  It's more for interaction purposes with members and employees. This blog has a lot of content and is updated with new posts very often. (generate traffic from a pretty wide variety of searches some related some not)  My plan has been to 301 the old domain and move the wordpress blog over to our root domain in a subdirectory such as oursite.com/blog. Does anyone have tips for moving a blog over like this?  I'm concerned about any link juice it has dropping off and since it does provide some links to our root site currently (since it's basically a separate site).  Basically i'm wondering if it'll be worth the effort or if i should just keep it separate and focus on other content gen strategies.

    Technical SEO | | SCFederal
    0

  • Our site contains a library of thousands of images which we are thinking of watermarking.  Does anyone know if Google penalise sites for this or is it best practice in order to protect revenues? As watermarking these images makes them less shareable (but protects revenues) i was thinking Google might then penalise us - which might affect traffic Any ideas?

    Technical SEO | | KevinDunne
    0

  • For over the past month my site has received sitelinks from Google and they have been really helping out. All of a sudden this morning they are gone. We 301'ed and redirected (WBT) another one of our other sites to this one on monday. Could it be Google is just trying to figure out what we are doing? Has anyone else seen sitelinks come and go on their site without any other redirects? I am assuming it is because of my sites combining but wanted to hear if anyone else saw sitelinks come and go on their own. Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeorgeLaRochelle
    0

  • Hi, I have editors / copyreader that write twitter headlines & meta descriptions in excel cells. Do you know a way for google docs & excel how to highlight the text of a cell in red if there are more than 140 chars ( or number to define) in the cell so the editor can see if the tweet / description is too long?

    Technical SEO | | Autoschieber
    0

  • Hi, I've a number of wordpress posts that were written by different authors, and I want to merge them into a single author. If Google sees that originally the post was rel authored to person A and later we change the author reference to person B, will Google see this as suspicious in any way? Or does it not matter, as long as it's only attributed to a single author at any one time? Thanks, Leigh

    Content Development | | Leighm
    0

  • Off topic question. Who's going to Mozcon next month and whats on the agenda for the Tuesday evening before the event starts? Anyone interested in having a meet and greet and talking shop over drinks or dinner the Tuesday before (July 24th)?

    Industry Events | | anthonytjm
    0

  • As the title says, how can I compete with competitors that have a domain authority of 60-80? (Only around 2-3 major competitors) However I would like to compete with them. Is anyone else in this situation? What did you do? I've read a lot about building backlinks etc etc but surely theres more to it. I've got to rank 1500+ subcategories for my niche and it's nearly impossible to do so. Thanks to all who reply!

    Branding | | Superinks
    0

  • I am currently working on improving site authority for a client site. The main site has significant authority, but I have learned that the company owns several other resource-focused microsites which are stagnant, but which have accrued significant page authority of their own (thought still less than the main site). Realizing the fault in housing good content on a microsite rather than the main site, my thought is that I can redirect the content of the microsites to internal pages on the main site as a "Resources" section. I am wondering a: if this is a good idea and b: the best way to transfer site authority from these microsites. I am also wondering how to organize the content and if, for example, an entire microsite domain (e.g. microsite.com) should in fact be redirected to internal resource pages (e.g. mainsite.com/resources). Any input would be greatly appreciated!

    Technical SEO | | RightlookCreative
    1

  • The index page and the targeted landing page for that keyword. They have different content, title, meta but I am competing with myself for the main keyword in the industry. What is the best way to fix this? 301 the keyword page to the index page?

    On-Page Optimization | | Aftermath_SEO
    0

  • Hello Today i notice that our site did not auto changed from without www to with, when i checked the .htaccess file i notice # in-front of each line and i know we did not insert it in there, after i removed it it worked fine. The only changes that we did recently was to a mobile version to the site but the call to autodirect is in a JS and not in the .htaccess, could it be the server..? is there any way that anything else might cause this...? The site is HTML and WP could it be because of that...? Thank's Simo

    Technical SEO | | Yonnir
    0

  • Wordpress 3.4, Yoast, Multisite The URL is supposed to be "www.myexample.com/great-site" but I just found that it's "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" It is a relatively new site but we already pointed several internal links to "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" What's the best practice to correct this? Which option is more desirable? 1.Creating a new page I found that Yoast has "301 redirect" option in the Advanced tap Can I just create a new page(exact same page) and put noindex, nofollow and redirect it to http://www.myexample.com/great-site OR 2. htacess redirect rule simply change the URL to http://www.myexample.com/great-site and update it, and add Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://www.myexample.com/gre-atsite$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myexample.com/great-site$1 [R=301,L]

    Technical SEO | | joony2008
    0

  • our online shop targets clients in the US and worldwide (same URL - no subdirectories - currency changes based on IP). when searching in google.ie or google.no for our site google displays in the SERPS "US" or "United States" after the URL for our site, but for most other US competitors it does not show the country in the SERPS. I deleted our google places listing 2 weeks ago, since I suspected it may be related, but no change so far. In google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor. Unfortunately we can not undo this setting since without it our google US ranking for the most relevant competitive keyword drops from position 8 to position 100+. Server location is in Germany which despite lots of US links and US contact info and USD currency appparently makes google think that the site is not targeting the US. Does anybody know what triggers the country name in the SERPS (google places or webmaster tools or other) and  can give advice if there is any way to get rid of it.

    International SEO | | lcourse
    0

  • Hi, I'm running Joomla 1.7 with SEF on and I'm trying to do a htaccess redirect which fails. I have approximately 100 in effect so far and all working fine, but I have one snag. Index.php is not working as I need it to when it's redirected to www.myurl.com/ If I turn on index.php redirect to root using this code #index.php to root
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^myurl.com$ [OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.myurl.com$
    RewriteRule ^index.php$ "http://www.myurl.com/" [R=301,L] And then go to www.myurl.com/test.html I'm redirected to the homepage. I think this is because all pages are index.php in joomla. SEOMOZ and Google both think that index.php and root are duplicate pages. Does anyone have any advice for overcoming this? Thanks, Adam

    Technical SEO | | NaescentAdam
    0

  • Hi, i am in the process of setting up a business directory site that will be used in a number of cities, though i am initially launching with only one city. My question is, what is the best URL structure to use for the site and should i start using this URL structure from day one? At the moment i am using www.mysite.com.au as my primary website where it contains all listings for the the one initial launch city. Though to plan for the future i was considering this URL structure: www.mysite.com.au/cityname so for example, if i launch in the city Sydney initially then all website traffic that goes to www.mysite.com.au would simply be redirected (302 temp redirect?) to www.mysite.com.au/sydney. When i expand to other cities www.mysite.com.au would simply be a "select your city" screen that then redirects to the city of choice (similar to www.groupon.com page). How would doing a 302 redirect from www.mysite.com.au to www.mysite.com.au/city impact on SEO for the initial launch? Or should i just place this on the root domain since no other cities exist at the moment?

    Web Design | | adamkirk
    0

  • My domain name is free with my service with yahoo but it expires every year and gets extended automatically as I continue service, how does this impact my seo efforts? I've heard that the search engines prefer sites to expire in 3 years or more? Is this a fact?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad
    0

  • My questions is what to do with old domains we own from a past business. Is it advantages to direct them to the new domain/company or is that going to cause a problem for the new company. They are not in the same industry.

    Technical SEO | | KeylimeSocial
    0

  • I am starting a link bulding campaign and want to know where to put the reciprocal links on my site. Do i create a new specific Link Page? or do i place them on the pages that i want ranked higher? This is my first question on SEOMoz. Please be kind....:) Thanks

    Link Building | | aidanlawlor
    1

  • I need to be able to explain to a client the difference from an SEO perspective between Blog. vs  /Blog. www.website.com/Blog vs Blog.website.com The client wants to know which one will help there website with SEO. I belive both will but /Blog will more. I'm looking for a tangible answer only centered around this subject. Thanks,

    Link Building | | cfield_splashmedia.com
    0

  • Keyword research can take a lot of time.   Suppose you are not sure of what keywords you want to rank for but just want to see a list of phrases that have 500-5000 searches a day, low cost and low competition because you are looking for phrases that interest you for which it will be easier to rank close to #1 in google.   Besides AdWords Keyword Tool, are there sites that specialize in this?

    Keyword Research | | Darden
    0

  • Example: sitemap.example.com/sitemap.xml for pages on www.example.com.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT
    0

  • My clients wants to use UPPER CASE for all his page titles. Is this okay? Does Google react badly to this?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | petewinter
    0

  • Is there any evidence that SEs give a greater weighting to keyword phrases in the page title if there are less characters? For example: 1. "Buy Silver Bullion" 2. "Buy Silver Bullion Coins Bars Rounds Easily Privately Securely" The key phrase I am trying to optimize for is "Buy Silver Bullion." To my knowledge, current practices would say the 2nd phrase is better optimized since it contains more keywords and it has a few USPs. But is there any evidence that the 1st example would be higher ranked in google for the phrase "Buy Silver Bullion" because it is more focused than the 2nd?

    Search Behavior | | nwright
    0

  • Hello mozCrew Just a quick yay or nay. We have an embeddable code on our site for customers who want to post our link on their website listed here: http://www.accupos.com/etc/embed-code-restaurants.php But in our link, there are actually 2 separate links, one branding link that says the name of our company, AccuPOS, and another link which targets a specific target keyword "Restaurant POS Software". My question is, does Google only give credit for the branding link, since it is listed FIRST? Or will we get double credit? Is this a good or bad practice, and what would you recommend? Thank you! Derek Moore

    Link Building | | DerekM88
    0

  • So I've tried scouring the internet on the proper way to markup youtube videos. I know there's the VideoObject propery but that seems to be more made for the old school embed code that looks like this: <embed width="100%" id="video-player-flash" height="100%" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swfbin/watch_as3-vflpp9opi.swf" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" bgcolor="#000000" flashvars="el=embedded&fexp=904001%2C914057%2C918000%2C910206%2C907217%2C907335%2C921602%2C919306%2C922600%2C919316%2C920704%2C912804%2C913542%2C919324%2C912706&is_html5_mobile_device=false&tabsb=1&hl=en_US&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dial800.com%2Fblog%2Fvideos%2Fdial800-product-overview-video&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fi4.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fgk1aD9UCKYA%2Fhqdefault.jpg&tspto=12000&probably_logged_in=1&tsp_buffer=10&video_id=gk1aD9UCKYA&tsp_dvrloop=50&sendtmp=1&enablejsapi=1&sk=WZy3rFIXzzhTB_BpmE1p1tTsbxMib1vIC&rel=1&playlist_module=http%3A%2F%2Fs.ytimg.com%2Fyt%2Fswfbin%2Fplaylist_module-vfl3lol2H.swf&jsapicallback=ytPlayerOnYouTubePlayerReady&playerapiid=player1&framer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dial800.com%2Fblog%2Fvideos%2Fdial800-product-overview-video"> Do I need to use that code or is it possible to mark it up using just the clean iframe src that youtube provides now?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SirSud
    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.