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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Why My Domain Authority Dropped
Hello sir i noticed that my DA is Dropped From 27 to 26 Of this website https://www.mytechtalk.org/. What is the reason I don't i try a lot to find a solution but not get . But I notice that in google webmaster tool the domain linking increased every time but on the Moz.com, not domain added even my DA Dropped. Even When i checked my site on https://ahrefs.com/ he shows approx 350 domain with high da and pa. help me i am getting frustrated. Is that Moz is crawling All domain Fairly or not ??
Link Building | | rishu57818 -
Duplicate content in sidebar
Hi guys. So I have a few sentences (about 50 words) of duplicate content across all pages of my website (this is a repeatable text in sidebar). Each page of my website contains about 1300 words (unique content) in total, and 50 words of duplicate content in sidebar. Does having a duplicate content of this length in sidebar affect the rankings of my website in any way? Thank you so much for your replies.
On-Page Optimization | | AslanBarselinov1 -
301 Redirect in breadcrumb. How bad is it?
Hi all, How bad is it to have a link in the breadcrumb that 301 redirects? We had to create some hidden category pages in our ecommerce platform bigcommerce to create a display on our category pages in a certain format. Though whilst the category page was set to not visable in bigcommerce admin the URL still showed in the live site bread crumb. SO, we set a 301 redirect on it so it didnt produce a 404. However we have lost a lot of SEO ground the past few months. could this be why? is it bad to have a 301 redirect in the breadrcrumb.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
Ecommerce store on subdomain - danger of keyword cannibalization?
Hi all, Scenario: Ecommerce website selling a food product has their store on a subdomain (store.website.com). A GOOD chunk of the URLs - primarily parameters - are blocked in Robots.txt. When I search for the products, the main domain ranks almost exclusively, while the store only ranks on deeper SERPs (several pages deep). In the end, only one variation of the product is listed on the main domain (ex: Original Flavor 1oz 24 count), while the store itself obviously has all of them (most of which are blocked by Robots.txt). Can anyone shed a little bit of insight into best practices here? The platform for the store is Shopify if that helps. My suggestion at this point is to recommend they all crawling in the subdomain Robots.txt and canonicalize the parameter pages. As for keywords, my main concern is cannibalization, or rather forcing visitors to take extra steps to get to the store on the subdomain because hardly any of the subdomain pages rank. In a perfect world, they'd have everything on their main domain and no silly subdomain. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces0 -
Looking for a Tool to Find Referring Pages of Specific URLs
Hello Everyone, We are Looking for a Tool to Find Referring Pages of Specific URLs. Please let me know if you know of a Moz tool or another tool for this need. Thanks.
Moz Bar | | Pushm5 -
Is It Beneficial to 'Like' My Clients Google Reviews?
I have a client who is insisting that all of us in the office 'like' his positive reviews on Google. My boss & I are fine with doing this, but due to the industry the client works in, my staff is questioning doing this or not because they do not want to be associated with his company outside of work. Is there any SEO benefit to us liking his reviews or is this more for him to feel better that people are reading them? Does my staff have anything to worry about if they do 'like' his reviews?
Reviews and Ratings | | Justine.Hedge3 -
Sudden drop in traffic in April and stagnant since then
Hi, I am the editor at a travel website based in Singapore (www.tripzilla.com). In mid April, we suffered a drop out of the blue and in total, it was a 20% drop overall. We post about 2-3 new articles a day, and we do research our keywords. I have also been updating our older ranking articles but seems like it's not really working. In May, we only received a .50% growth 😞 I have to bring it back to speed, and I really dont understand the decline, since the "formula" of our postings has been the same since I joined the company a year ago. Please help thank you! onjn7UV
Content Development | | mousepad881 -
I bought a 5 year old domain and has a spam score of 23%.....
A few months ago i bought a 5 year old domain and when i went to check in Moz pro the spam score, it shows its at 23%. DA is 1 everything else is 0. The spam score shows 23% but there are no links at all for this website (see image) https://imgur.com/a/3lHjLEh I don't understand, there are no links at all going to this website. I checked google search console, analytics and tried looking for any links linking to this domain and there is none. Even Moz isn't showing any links in the picture i provided above. Is this a glitch? Can i reset my spam score on this domain? Does that mean i wasted my money on this domain and now i can't rank with it? Is there something im missing here. I also checked is there are any warnings or manual actions and it clearly says "No issues detected". A few months earlier i bought a brand new domain very close to the 5 year old domain (new domain has a z instead of an s) and the spam score on that is 0 and DA is 1. Given that the 5 year old domain has a 23% spam score, does that mean i should use the other new domain instead and redirect the 5 year old domain to the new website?
Moz Pro | | Nor1230 -
Google Site search operator showing different results than Search Console
Hey everybody, I am seeing some confusing results. I am seeing that in the back of our Search Console we are showing around 4,500 sites indexed. If I use the "site" operator in google, only 2820 show up... any thoughts as to why that happens?
Moz Pro | | HashtagHustler1 -
Traffic inconsistency
Hello I verified my website on Google Search Console and submitted sitemap a long time ago. I have been getting data for impressions, but no clicks. However, Cpanel shows that people have been visiting my website, but Google Search Console does not. The data do not match up. Would you be able to explain why and what can I do about this? Also, Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest does not identify keywords on my website. Kind regards,
Algorithm Updates | | zi9gy
Igor kRdsaku MFFNnlZ1 -
Multiple Locations Same City
I have a local seo campaign im trying to reconfigure. Lets say i am a dwi lawyer and i have multiple locations. These are merely examples for cities and keywords. Home page is Criminal defense lawyer - this is the term we should be targeting. Maybe i can target the state name, but i am losing so much SEO weight by not leveraging this home page as the main page for this term. Then we have a location page in south Boston that is "S Boston DWI lawyer" as the title tag. Then we have another location page north Boston that is "N Boston DWI Lawyer" as the title tag. I can leave the city name off the home page title tag, but then what do i do with these pages that are pretty much competing with one another? I know the home page will not rank since none of the locations point to it, and only to a location page. I was thinking about creating one page with both locations and having both G map listings go directly there, but that doesn't make sense because other locations do not have the same setup. Or choosing the most central location and pointing that to the home page and let the rest have a locations page. Finally the home page will not rank well for any major terms. The location page does rank for the fictional south Boston DWI lawyer, but the other listing does not show up. The home page does not show up in the first ten pages either. One other aspect is that the home page ranks for terms that I am not even targeting. These pages are all targeted on specific keywords so that they do not overlap or compete, but some pages are the services main outline, but the location pages have their own version. I have removed all mentions of the same keyword from the home page. I made a few wchanges about 2 weeks ago and already noticed movement in rankings days later.
Local Website Optimization | | waqid0 -
Have Your Thoughts Changed Regarding Canonical Tag Best Practice for Pagination? - Google Ignoring rel= Next/Prev Tagging
Hi there, We have a good-sized eCommerce client that is gearing up for a relaunch. At this point, the staging site follows the previous best practice for pagination (self-referencing canonical tags on each page; rel=next & prev tags referencing the last and next page within the category). Knowing that Google does not support rel=next/prev tags, does that change your thoughts for how to set up canonical tags within a paginated product category? We have some categories that have 500-600 products so creating and canonicalizing to a 'view all' page is not ideal for us. That leaves us with the following options (feel it is worth noting that we are leaving rel=next / prev tags in place): Leave canonical tags as-is, page 2 of the product category will have a canonical tag referencing ?page=2 URL Reference Page 1 of product category on all pages within the category series, page 2 of product category would have canonical tag referencing page 1 (/category/) - this is admittedly what I am leaning toward. Any and all thoughts are appreciated! If this were in relation to an existing website that is not experiencing indexing issues, I wouldn't worry about these. Given we are launching a new site, now is the time to make such a change. Thank you! Joe
Web Design | | Joe_Stoffel1 -
Redirect Chain
I moved my site to https a few months back using cloudflare and all went well site is now running on https fine I have recently also signed up to MozPro and it says I have a redirect chain on http://rogerlapin.co.uk I am not sure where to start looking to fix this? Site is running on Wordpress Also not sure how big of an issue it is as site is working ok? Bit confused as i used this http://www.redirect-checker.org/index.php and it reports no issues?
Moz Pro | | Rogerperk0 -
Best way to link to multiple location pages
I am a Magician and have multiple location pages for each county I cover. I currently have them linked off the menu under locations/ <county>and also in the footer</county> However I have heard that a link from the page is much stronger, so I am experimenting with removing the Menu & Footer link and just linking to these pages from within the content. It's not really a navigation item and most people come in through search to the right page. Am I diluting the link by having it in the Menu/Page and Footer? I read a long time ago that Google only considers the first link to a page and ignores the rest - is that the case? Thanks Roger https://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | Rogerperk0 -
Best to Include Phone Number as CTA Button in Mobile Version of B+B Web Site?
We are attempting to keep the number of CTAs (Calls to Action) on our commercial real estate website to a minimum. Our adjusted design (see attached) has 2 CTAs. One is "Contact Agent" the other is "Schedule a Tour". We are focusing on the listing page, which is the primary product page and critical in terms of CTA. Our mobile version does not show a phone number while the desktop version (also attached) displays a phone number. Should the mobile version also display a button a phone number? Some members of our target audiences, business owners and executives who are often in their 40s and 50s may prefer to call us up rather than communicate by written message. Any suggestions for elegantly displaying the phone number without causing confusion? I have read that the number of CTAs should be limited so I am on the fence as to whether or not to include a phone number Thanks,
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Kingalan1
Alan 6yR88Vt WwYpt810 -
Google Pagination Changes
What with Google recently coming out and saying they're basically ignoring paginated pages, I'm considering the link structure of our new, sooner to launch ecommerce site (moving from an old site to a new one with identical URL structure less a few 404s). Currently our new site shows 20 products per page but with this change by Google it means that any products on pages 2, 3 and so on will suffer because google treats it like an entirely separate page as opposed to an extension of the first. The way I see it I have one option: Show every product in each category on page 1. I have Lazy Load installed on our new website so it will only load the screen a user can see and as they scroll down it loads more products, but how will google interpret this? Will Google simply see all 50-300 products per category and give the site a bad page load score because it doesn't know the Lazy Load is in place? Or will it know and account for it? Is there anything I'm missing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Does an EAT score on my YMYL site impact my rankings?
I've read some conflicting information on YMYL and EAT. If the Google Quality Raters are out there reviewing YMYL pages and scoring them on EAT, does that site's score have an impact on that page's/site's ranking?
Algorithm Updates | | BFMichael0 -
Disavowing Links
I need some advice... I've noticed our link profile has increased with many comments links --- something I certainly have not pursued manually. I'm new to disavowing links. However, before I go ahead and disavow them, I'd like to ask how harmful these links are and would you recommend this is something I can do myself (relatively novice SEO) or if you'd recommend someone who could do this for a reasonable cost. In one instance, the link from this comment thread is with the anchor text, "porn"... Certainly not something we want to rank for, haha! I look forward to your advice
Link Building | | LukeBTDT0 -
Site Migration - Pagination
Hi, We are migrating our website and an issue we are facing is how to handle paginated content in our categories. Our new website will have the same structure but with different urls. Should we 301 redirect all the paginated content (if crawled by Google) to the url of the main category? To put this into an example: Old urls: www.example.com/technology/tvs (main category of TVs & also page 1) ** www.example.com/technology/tvs?v=0&page=2 ** ( page 2 of TVs) New urls: **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs **(main category of TVs & also page 1) **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs?page=2 **(page 2 of tvs) Should we redirect all of the old TV urls (also the paginated) to www.example.com/soundvision/tvs ? The is no rel next, prev tag in our site and no canonicals. Also there is a view all products page in each category, BUT it doesn't contain all the products(max. is 100 per page - yes the view all page is also paginated). The same view all products page (paginated) will exist in the new website also. I checked google search console, and Google has decided to treat as canonical page the first page www.example.com/technology/tvs . Also, all the organic traffic of our categories goes to these pages (main category page - 1st page). I would appreciate any thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HellasSITES0 -
Google My Business: Company listing is showing in search instead of division address - similar names/same city
Hi! I have a client whose company name is very similar to one if their company divisions. This division has multiple locations but its main location is in the same city as the parent company. The problem is that when you search for the division, the parent company shows up. The parent company has a physical address, but most users searching need to be going to the division address which takes customers. They are having problems with customers coming to the parent company address instead. I have made the Google My Business parent company page to show service areas instead of their business address. Yet, their listing still comes up first when searching for the division location. This is because of part of the parent company name is in the division name. My client wants users to be able to find the division more so than the parent company. Anyone had this issue before? Any tips would be great!
Local Listings | | agrier0 -
Which keyword to use (plural / singular)
Hi guys. So I'm racking my brain with a question whether I should use plural or singular keyword as a focus keyphrase of my page. The page that I'm optimizing is basically a review page of different websites offering proofreading services. Considering the fact that this is a review and I mention a lot of websites on my page, I decided to rank for a plural keyword that ends with "services". However, this keyword is very unpopular (ahrefs doesn't show any volume for it), while singular "service" has about 100 searches per month. As far as I understand, Google sees both keywords as synonyms, because search results for both keywords are almost identical. Should I change my keyphrase to singular "service" (even though the page mentions a lot of services), or stick with "services" instead? Do I have a chance of ranking for "service" if I stick with "services" in this case? Thank you.
Keyword Research | | AslanBarselinov0 -
I have two robots.txt pages for www and non-www version. Will that be a problem?
There are two robots.txt pages. One for www version and another for non-www version though I have moved to the non-www version.
Technical SEO | | ramb0 -
Does Google ignore content styled with 'display:none'?
Do you know if an H1 within a div that has a 'display: none' style applied will still be crawled and evaluated by Google? We have that situation on this page on line 136: view-source:https://www.junk-king.com/services/items-we-take/foreclosure-cleanouts Of course we also have an H1 up at the top of the page and are concerned that the second one will cause interference with our SEO efforts. I've seen conflicting and inconclusive information on line - not sure. Thanks for any help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rastellop0 -
What would be causing our linking domains and inbound links to decline?
I am noticing a decline in the number of our linking domains and inbound links from month to month. It isn't drastic but looking like a trend. Any reason why this would happen? I'm not sure where to start. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | amanda_feagle0 -
How to create a dynamic visual sitemap using Google sheets?
Does anyone have a solution where you can use a listing of page names with tiers in a Google spreadsheet and have it dynamically appear in a visual sitemap architecture format within in a Google document? Thanks in advance Moz community!
Content Development | | peteboyd0 -
UTM tracking on a mapped subdomain, is it OK? (DA bonus question)
Hi, This is a technical question. OK, two technical questions. Please bear with me and I'll do my best to explain... We have a WordPress blog (business account, hosted by WordPress). We use it to blog and send traffic to our separate e-commerce site. We use UTM tracking to see which blog posts perform best. Our e-commerce site has a high domain authority. Our blog, not so much. In an effort to increase the domain authority of the blog we have mapped a subdomain of the e-commerce site to the Wordpress blog (still hosted by WordPress). Q1. Will this actually raise the blog's DA? If the blog does get a DA boost, I guess it'll be because Google now sees it as part of a powerful domain. But if it is technically part of the powerful domain... Q2. Should we remove the UTM parameters from the blog? I've read that you should never use UTM on internal links because it messes with your Google Analytics data. But I'm unsure if links on a mapped subdomain count as 'internal links'. Any help would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks in advance. J
Reporting & Analytics | | JabeKay0 -
Do content copycats (plagiarism) hurt original website rankings?
Hi all, Found some websites stolen our content and using the same sentences in their website pages. Does this content hurt our website rankings? Their DA is low, still we are worried about the damage about this plagiarism. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Product schema with no offer as owner wants to give price per customer
Hi, Trying to markup products for a site that does not show prices. Is there any way to markup a product price when the business model is: 1. customer calls or contacts shop. 2. shop gives a price quote based on level of detail and finish on the product 3. there is no base or top price. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | plahpoy0 -
301 Redirects - Large .htaccess file question
We are moving about 5000 pages from root into different folders. We need to individually 301 each page because the are sitting at root level now: mysite.com/page.com We want to move them to: mysite.com/folder/page.html etc I dont think redirect match can works because of the different files names and folders they are being moved in to. Will 5000 entries in .htacess slow site loading? Any other suggestions how to handle?
On-Page Optimization | | leadforms0 -
Why some domains and sub-domains have same DA, but some others don't?
Hi I noticed for some blog providers in my country, which provide a sub-domian address for their blogs. the sub-domain authority is exactly as the main domain. Whereas, for some other blog providers every subdomain has its different and lower authority. for example "ffff.blog.ir" and "blog.ir" both have domain authority of 60. It noteworthy to mention that the "ffff.blog.ir" does not even exist! This is while mihanblog.com and hfilm.mihanblog.com has diffrent page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayatarh5451230 -
How can I get "Date First Seen","Date Last Seen" and "Date Lost" from the API?
"Date First Seen","Date Last Seen" and "Date Lost" are columns in the CSV exported from LinkExplorer's Inbound Links page. How do I get that data from the API?
API | | StevePoul1 -
Keyword Planner not showing exact match
hi guys I'm currently trying to optimize a site for 'Recruitment Agency North West' when I enter his term into keyword planner it gives me no results for the exact match, but offers me figures for 'Recruitment Agencies North West' Am I to assume that nobody has ever searched 'Recruitment Agency North West'?!!! and that I should be focusing on 'Recruitment Agencies North West' as my main key phrase? Is there another site other than keyword planner that will give me results for 'Recruitment Agency North West'? cheers M
Keyword Research | | Staunton_Rook0 -
How to Implement JSON-LD
Hi, I was implementing JSON-LD via Google Tag Manager but have since read that it is better to place directly on the web page. My questions are: Where exactly do you add the JSON-LD - I mean physically? This article by Moz says the head or body. Does it matter where in the head? At the end? If you do not have development access- is there an easy way to insert? Can you view the added JSON-LD directly on the web page after you have added it or is it not visible in the source once you have added it this way ? If you cannot see it, how do you view? Or it it just OK to use the Google Structured Testing tool as evidence that it is being seen by Google? Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al1 -
Blocking Standard pages with Robots.txt (t&c's, shipping policy, pricing & privacy policies etc)
Hi I've just had best practice site migration completed for my old e-commerce store into a Shopify environment and I see in GSC that it's reporting my standard pages as blocked by robots.txt, such as these below examples. Surely I don't want these blocked ? is that likely due to my migrators or s defaults setting with Shopify does anyone know? : t&c's shipping policy pricing policy privacy policy etc So in summary: Shall I unblock these? What caused it Shopify default settings or more likely my migration team? All Best Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Canonical: Same content but different countries
I'm building a website that has content made for specific countries. The url format is: MyWebsite.com/<country name="">/</country> Some of the pages for <specific url="">are the same for different countries, the <specific url="">would be the same as well. The only difference would be the <country name="">.</country></specific></specific> How do I deal with canonical issues to avoid Google thinking I'm presenting the same content?
On-Page Optimization | | newbyguy0
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