Latest Questions
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Why is rel="canonical" pointing at a URL with parameters bad?
Context Our website has a large number of crawl issues stemming from duplicate page content (source: Moz). According to an SEO firm which recently audited our website, some amount of these crawl issues are due to URL parameter usage. They have recommended that we "make sure every page has a Rel Canonical tag that points to the non-parameter version of that URL…parameters should never appear in Canonical tags." Here's an example URL where we have parameters in our canonical tag... http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/ rel="canonical" href="http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/?pageSize=0&pageSizeBottom=0" /> Our website runs on IBM WebSphere v 7. Questions Why it is important that the rel canonical tag points to a non-parameter URL? What is the extent of the negative impact from having rel canonicals pointing to URLs including parameters? Any advice for correcting this? Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solid_Gold1 -
Car Dealership website - Duplicate Page Content Issues
Hi, I am currently working on a large car dealership website. I have just had a Moz crawl through and its flagging a lot of duplicate page content issues, these are mostly for used car pages. How can I get round this as the site stocks many of the same car, model, colour, age, millage etc. Only unique thing about them is the reg plate. How do I get past this duplicate issue if all the info is relatively the same? Anyone experienced this issue when working on a car dealership website? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | karl621 -
Ranking could be better - wondering why
Hi there, I do SEO for the page conny-ehm.de. I improved the subsite http://www.conny-ehm.de/bewerbungsfotos-freiburg.html to receive an A grade by the on-page grader for the words Bewerbungsfotos Freiburg. However when searching for Bewerbungsfotos Freiburg it is not the subsite that shows up but the main page www.conny-ehm.de. This however get an F in the on-page grader. What should I do to improve the ranking? I do not care which one shows up but I think it should be feasible to get under the top 3. a) Should I improve also the main page for the keywords? I think than I am building an internal concurrence to the subsite which is maybe rather bad. b) Should I place a del canonical on the main site referring to the subsite? c) ??? Thanks for your answers Best regards Marc
Local Website Optimization | | RWW0 -
Multiple Location TROUBLE!
Hello Moz World, I have a client that has three brick and mortar locations. After placing all three locations into Google Places, I discovered that 2 of his 3 locations are not brick and mortar stores. They are actually his house, and his Mother's house. He is a plumber, and services most of the state. My question is, as a professional SEO consultant who wants to do the right thing, what should I recommend he do? How long before Google catches him, and what will actually happen? Should I advise him to play the system till he gets caught? And Lastly, does anyone have any recommendations on how to rank a single website for multiple cities within the state? Loaded Questions, Thanks ahead of time for all of the responses! B/R Will H.
Local Listings | | MarketingChimp100 -
SEM Campaign Reset
In 2016 we are doing a massive paid search reset (conversion point: a high involvement purchase), I wanted to get the community's feedback on how long it makes sense to run with our campaigns and make smaller tweaks, versus launching something new? So in other words, if we aren’t seeing the results we want with a campaign, at what point does it make sense to re-evaluate and end the campaign/trying something new instead of optimizing the existing campaign? In analytics, in most cases there didn’t seem to me much of a runout period on the conversion points, as conversions appeared to be happening within days.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Blue_Compass1 -
Regarding rel=canonical on duplicate pages on a shopping site... some direction, please.
Good morning, Moz community: My name is David, and I'm currently doing internet marketing for an online retailer of marine accessories. While many product pages and descriptions are unique, there are some that have the descriptions duplicated across many products. The advice commonly given is to leave one page as is / crawlable (probably best for one that is already ranking/indexed), and use rel=canonical on all duplicates. Any idea for direction on this? Do you think it is necessary? It will be a massive task. (also, one of the products that we rank highest for, we have tons of duplicate descriptions.... so... that is sort of like evidence against the idea?) Thanks!
Web Design | | DavidCiti0 -
How Submit to different Countries
Hey There, One of My client Needs To rank his site in multiple Location , like He is in Australia But wants To Promote his Site in Canada, india, USA,So What are the things i can do For Rank in Others Country. Please any Expert Help. Thanx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nupuriepl0 -
Help! Website has lost all DA since being 301'd
Hi, We have redirected a small WP website to a new site and domain and it has lost all DA and PA. Does anyone know if there's a fix for this? Would reverting back to the old domain help? We redirect www.northcornwallgardens.co.uk to cornishlawns.co.uk Thank you James
Technical SEO | | CamperConnect140 -
Web3.ca moving into U.S Market
I run an agency called Web3 Marketing Inc. in beautiful Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We have been very busy over the past few years, but now, with the lower price of oil, there is less work in our province. We are still busy, but are looking for new opportunities in the U.S. We currently use the domain Web3.ca The domain performs very well in Edmonton and has exceptional reviews (about 22 with a 5 star rating). Unfortunately, I am aware that a .ca will not rank well on Google.com for U.S. viewers. This leaves us with two options: Re-brand Web3.ca completely (eg. brickwebdesign.com) and 301 redirect the .ca to a .com domain. This should give us a head start in the states.. last time I checked, this should redirect 90% of the authority to the new domain. However, theoretically, we would be risking our organic position for "Edmonton web design." We start with a brand new domain. Considering how competitive the market for "web design," is in cities like Portland, San Fransisco and San Diago, this seems like a fairly daunting task. We will likely have to do a LOT of citation development and supplement it with paid advertising for a couple of years. Outside of local address and phone number, do you guys have any comments about my options / strategy?
Local Listings | | Web3Marketing871 -
Rankings drop from the new update
Hello, I've noticed some big ranking downs on important keywords, from the last Google update, and don't really know what seams to be the problem, but have an assumption. In April 2015 we had 3.000.000 pages indexed by Google, and 80% of them had duplicated content for about 90% of it. The site I'm talking about is http://nobelcom.com/. The duplicated content came from variations between calling from and calling to selections, because each of this selection was making a new url (ex. nobelcom.com/caling from/calling to). If "calling from" and calling to were the same country the url was nobelcom.com/calling-from, but after you chosen another calling to, the url become like the one in the example. To solve this I've decided to keep the nobelcom.com/calling-from urls and for different calling to country to display the content trough a javascript, because it was the same, it changed only the country names and the rates. I thought that this change will help us with the duplicate content, and still deliver our client what they are interested in, without affecting the UX, and also reducing the link juice dilution because we had 3.000.000 indexed by Google and most of them with no added value Can this be the reason for the drops? Now we have 590.000 pages indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silviu1 -
Google search analytics position - how is it worked out
In our Google search analytic s graphs total clicks and impressions appear as a sold line on the graph(ie showing a result for each day) Position only shows as an occasional dot or line - not a continuous result for each day) sometimes there are days with no result for position. How do google get these results
Algorithm Updates | | CostumeD0 -
The difference between api value and screen value
When I check the two parameters (PA and DA values) actually, these values often differ from those which I receive from your API. Why does it happen?
API | | orange0021 -
Different Domains on Same IP
Hello I'm just wondering how much of a difference it makes having links to a site from 2 separate domains that are on the same IP, compared to if the domains were on separate IPs? Thank you! Sam
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Use brand name in the graphs instead of 'You' and use consistent colours in reports
Would be great to see the brand name instead of 'You' in the reports, especially in the graphs. Currently, I use Chrome developer tool to edit the source code of the Moz page and change You to the brand name, then take the screenshots. You might be fine for small agencies or personal accounts, but I can't use it it corporate stakeholder reports and presentations, especially when our own brands are compared to each other. Who's You? The campaigns' Links / Competitive metrics graph is using the domain names, but the Search Visibility / Competition graph is using You. It's inconsistent. Also, the Campaign Dashboard search visibility report shows our website with orange, but the Rankings / Search Visibility / Competition graphs shows our brand with green. It's very confusing in reports.
Feature Requests | | Gyorgy.B0 -
Page title contents
In my page title, I have my product name. Is it beneficial to also include another keyword like: Buy wedding dress online Australia: e..g. (page title) amelie wedding dress | buy wedding dress online Australia. Or is it better just using: Amelie wedding dress
On-Page Optimization | | CostumeD0 -
How can I submit Baidu business listings if I live outside of China?
A client of our wants to manage business listings for three locations in China. We wanted to submit to Baidu but from what I've learned this is highly regulated (you live in China, pay a fee and call them to confirm). This is the only article I could find about submitting to Baidu: http://www.nanjingmarketinggroup.com/blog/baidu/how-can-baidu-maps-help-my-business Are there any conduit or 3rd party services available that can handle this? Thanks
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
Is there a way to tell which redirect - from another domain - is driving traffic to your website?
My company acquired another domain/website several year's ago. We want to see - for accounting purposes, how much traffic/revenue that site's REDIRECTS are driving to our website now. Is there any way to pull this information? I thought of comparing when the site was originally redirected to our traffic/revenue changes - but so much has changed from the acquisition that I wouldn't have faith in this value. Thanks for any assistance you can provide.
Technical SEO | | Blenny1 -
To noindex and follow or noindex no follow?
We have to greatly scale back on one of our services and focus on the other more successful ones. I need to figure out what to do with all the pages relating to the service we are cutting back. Just to be clear, we aren't getting rid of the service. So they still want the pages on the website, but it is better for us to have more link juice going to the other service pages, more of our content ratio to be around the more profitable services, etc. So, should I no-index/no-follow all the pages relating to the service we are cutting back on? Or should I no-index/follow all the pages relating the service we are cutting back on? Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is there is any benefit to linking to the Google page from RFQ contact page?
I have a Request for Quote contact page is there any benefit to linking from the Google + page? or the other way?
Local Listings | | ScottImageWorks0 -
How does Google select what ends up in the snippet before SERPs?
We rank on page 1 for some keywords. Pulling SEMRush reports, we discovered we were placed #1, and we thought it was out of the norm, then determined it was due to the snippet preview Google created before SERPS. Anyway to know how we can consistently be favored by Google to get the snippet preview? I've read up a structured data markup on schema could help. https://developers.google.com/structured-data/ All input is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ejcruz0 -
Impact of distribution of backlinks across multiple pages
Community, I would be interested to see if anyone has been seeing any experiments, experience documentation, or other data that would give context around the impact of pointing backlinks not just to your money page / home page but distribute it across pages. When doing competitive research I often run into competition which has lower domain strength and page rank but a link profile that is more spread out across their domain; these competitors often outrank my site despite their individual page properties being weaker. Any reference to existing documented experiments, personal experience or guidance is welcome.
Link Building | | italiansoc0 -
60,000 404 errors
Do 404 errors on a large scale really matter? I'm just aware that I now have over 60,000 and was wondering if the community think that I should address them by putting 301 redirects in place. Thanks
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
How to set-up international URL structure for e-com shop?
Hi There We're currently running a successful international online store on a .com domain. We are located in Europe but most of our visitors are coming from the U.S. We display all the prices of our products in USD to all our customers. We are considering to set up multiple stores for different regions, so we can display different currencies per region, shipping methods, banners etc. We were thinking about the following set-up: eu.domainname.com (for EU excl. UK, currency €) uk.domainname.com (for UK, currency GBP) www.domainname.com (For rest of the world, currency $) All shops are in English. Would this be a good set-up? What should we take into account to avoid duplicate content? Kind regards Jerome
Local Listings | | JeromeEcom0 -
What are top 3 directives to prepare for a Google algorithm update?
Company's site fluctuated in keyword rankings last Friday, due to Unnamed algorithm. Our directives are on-page optimization and continual content generation. What are other directives to take?
Algorithm Updates | | ejcruz0 -
Pageless/Single Page Design and Migration Questions
Hello, We are starting a content audit and migration to a new CMS. We would like to take content and present more on a pageless/Single Page type design instead of having visitors drill down so many levels to find the content. What should we be aware of from an SEO perspective. Here is Example of current pages and structure: http://www.saintpetershcs.com/GraduateMedicalEducation/PediatricResidency/
Web Design | | sphcs
Subpages include: Overview, Curriculum, Faculty, Residents, Benefits, How to APply Here is example of what we would like to do:
http://themeforest.net/item/medicalpress-health-and-medical-wordpress-theme/full_screen_preview/7789703 As you scroll information is populated: Duke Medicine also has something similar. https://www.dukemedicine.org/treatments/cancer What are your thoughts?0 -
Wanting to see when a user exists form site and its jopurney while on site please
Hi there, Wondering if you can help please? I am needing to know bounce rates on a landing page and also wanting to know if they landed on that page and went from that page to another and another... how can i look at that on MOZ please? Thanks Cass
Search Behavior | | AITLtd0 -
Tracking Facebook Mobile Visits to Desktop Conversions?
Hi. If I set an ad in Facebook, I can obviously track visits, conversions and so on from that ad and see if they where mobile or desktop. However, how do I, if possible track a mobile visitor who the converts on a desktop? Eg. I go on XXX Facebook Ad on my mobile whilst in work, look around. Like what I see. Then I go home from work, open my laptopn and go on XXX website and send an email enquiry form in. Is this possible to track? Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | YNWA0 -
Would you consider this title to be keyword stuffing or bad?
A competitor uses the following format for all of their meta titles: [Store Name] Voucher Codes, Cashback & Discount Codes | [Website Name] They do vary their titles slightly, depending on which keywords are searched for, for the particular store. What do you think about this title? I'm torn between it looking a little 'stuffy' but them also getting across the point that their page offers all of that.
On-Page Optimization | | vickluque0 -
Pagination & SEO
Hi In one of my other Q&A's someone mentioned I may need to look at pagination. For instance, are these pages counted as 'new' pages in Google's eyes when clicking on pagination? http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/plastic-storage-boxes#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Does anyone have any advice on what I could do? It's not something I have had much experience with. Thank you Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
How does Google measure page position in Webmasters?
Does anyone know exactly how Google measures page position in Webmaster Tools? For example: In Google Webmaster Tools, we had a product which on the 22/12/15 was at position 7, and then dropped to position 112 on the 30/12/15. It then rose back up to position 7 on the 6/01/16 and then down to position 25 on the 16/01/16. What does this mean and why?
Reporting & Analytics | | CostumeD0 -
Preferred URL structure for directory pages?
Hi Moz-Mind, We've got a bunch of duplicate content issues in our directory of trucking-related businesses, caused by search terms that can appear in any order, (classic mistake). We're taking advantage of this our work on URLs to try to improve our URL structure, and I'm not sure which way I want to go. These are the options we're considering. What does the Moz-mind think of each of them? example.com/location-name/service-name example.com/service-name/location-name example.com/service-name-near-location-name For the moment location-name would be a city & state abbreviation, like atlanta-ga, (unless it's better to use something else). Since these are search URLs, it's also possible to add a distance restriction, and a keyword, to the search criteria. How do you suggest adding the distance restriction? example.com/service-name/location-name/50-miles example.com/service-name/within-50-miles/location-name example.com/service-name-within-50-miles-of-location-name And the keyword? example.com/service-name/location-name/keyword example.com/service-name/location-name/keyword/{actual-keyword} example.com/service-name-near-location-name/keyword Something else? I was leaning toward example.com/service-name/location-name/within-50-miles, but I thought of the /service-name-near-location-name/ and /service-name/within-50-miles-of/location-name options today and really like how they make sense both to computers and to people, not unlike example.com/GA/atlanta/service-name/50 I'm looking forward to hearing what the community thinks. There must be an established best practice for directories, but if it's kind of ugly I'd like to find an even better way, if possible. Thanks, John
Local Listings | | 4RS_John0 -
Webmaster Tools Pages and Queries
In Google Webmaster Tools, under Search Analytics, what is the difference between positions in queries and positions in pages?
Reporting & Analytics | | CostumeD0 -
Search Keywords, Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions; Keeping Webmaster Tools Current
What are Search Keywords, Meta Keywords and Meta Descriptions? What exactly is the difference between them and which one is more important? In regards to Webmaster Tools, if we delete a page or a product, it still shows up in Search Analytics. How can we update Webmaster Tools so as to keep it current with our website? Lastly, again in regards to Webmaster Tools, in Search Analytics. At the moment we put relevant queries into the Meta Description of low ranking pages, in order to raise the position of the page. Is this the right way to handle queries? Should we be putting the queries into the Meta Description or the Meta Keywords?
Reporting & Analytics | | CostumeD0 -
Sub-domain vs Root domain
I have recently taken over a website (website A) that has a domain authority of 33/100 and is linked to from 39 root domains. I have not yet selected any keywords to target so am currently unsure of ranking positions. However, website A is for a division of a company that has its own separate website (website B) which has a domain authority of 58/100 and over 1000 legitimate linking root domains. I have the option of moving website A to a sub-domain of website B. I also have the option of having website B provide a followed link to website A. So, my question is, for SEO purposes, is my website better off remaining on its own existing domain or is it likely to rank higher as a sub-domain of website B? I am sure there are pros and cons for both options but some opinions would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Badges & SEO
Hello, Moz Community! We're working on creating an affiliate badge for events that make our best-of list and we're wondering: if every event website embedded the badge (could be as many as 70), would having the same image hosting URL for each one raise concerns with Google? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EveryActionHQ0 -
Use hreflang for language and regional URLs
I have implemented hreflang on site, seen here http://www.cobaltrecruitment.com/ but Webmaster Tools is returning loads of errors in the international targeting area..... "'“en-sg"' - unknown language code" and "'“en-ar"' - unknown language code" Can anyone suggest what I need to tell my developers to do? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
How long should I keep the 301 redirect file
We've setup an new site and many pages don't exist anymore (clean up done). But for many of them we have new pages with new url's. We've monitored the 404 and have now many URL's redirected with 301 (apache file). How long should we keep this in place? Checking all links manually to see of new url is in place of the old url (in google) is too much work. tx!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KBC0 -
Extract price from API to a Rich Snippet
Hi all! I'm trying to create a rich snippet that shows the bitcoin's price in the SERP title.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Gaston Riera
I've already seen this in the search result of "bitstamp". I've added a screenshot so as you can see what I'm saying. Also i'd like you to recommend me some rich snippet preview that supports extract data from an API. This is my first Q&A, hope you can understand me 🙂 Bye 60abdb6537.JPG0 -
301 to canonical
I'm doing some work on a website, they have a very popular product search where you enter a specific part code (6 digits) and it takes you to the product. So for example Search: 123456 Page redirected to domain.com/product/123456 With a canonical of domain.com/product/this-is-the-product-title Would it be beneficial to redirect from /product/123456 to /product/this-is-the-product-title Google seems to be indexing both versions. For some of these products a reasonable amount of links are built.
On-Page Optimization | | ThomasHarvey0
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