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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.

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  • BobAnderson


    I have a site that I know was Domain Authority 35 but now Domain Authority 25 after someone sent a load of spam links to it, how can this be correct and how can I change it? Is it worth doing a disavow and will moz take that into account?

    Link Explorer | | BobAnderson
    0
  • aliki_rigopoulou


    I am asking this as I would like to know if we can include this advice in our Search strategy. For instance, can we say for the keywords that has high business priority, but we are not currently rank above the fold we can boost the traffic and therefore the organic ranking by investing on these keywords on PPC.

    Keyword Research | | aliki_rigopoulou
    0
  • mollykathariner_ms


    I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes. I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com. Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic? Thanks for your input!

    Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms
    0
  • vijay7796


    Hello Expert, I wanted to know, can I use expired domain content on my blog channel. I  have done many searches on google but couldn't find a satisfactory answer. Please help me to find out this.

    Content Development | | vijay7796
    0
  • BWiseContractors


    I have been working on on-page SEO which has involved switching from http to https, and renaming URLs. I am running in to issues with redirect chains. Here is a scenario: Old URL: http://bwisecontractors.ca/products/decks-and-deck-covers/ New URL: https://bwisecontractors.ca/renos-additions/sunrooms-patio-covers/ Since I already created the redirect addressing the redirecting from http to https for the root domain: (http://bwisecontractors.ca to https://bwisecontractors.ca), should the redirect for the above be http://bwisecontractors.ca/products/decks-and-deck-covers/ to https://bwisecontractors.ca/renos-additions/sunrooms-patio-covers/ , or should it be http://bwisecontractors.ca/products/decks-and-deck-covers/ to http://bwisecontractors.ca/renos-additions/sunrooms-patio-covers/ (and the root domain redirect will take care of going from http to https)

    On-Page Optimization | | BWiseContractors
    0
  • AllChargedUp


    In other words, if one of my tracked keywords doesn't currently have a URL associated with it / assigned to it, how do I add a URL to it?

    Getting Started | | AllChargedUp
    0
  • RyanUK


    I was a big fan of Wordpress. I used it for 10 years. However, because I run a very small business, the constant upkeep needed on WP in the end started to frustrate me in the end, so I moved to SquareSpace. However, I am beginning to question my decision, as one of my sites is struggling really badly, and I mean badly. The other sites are okay. So I started asking around, and most people are saying there shouldn't be a difference. A few people have said their Wordpress sites always outranks their SquareSpace sites. Then I read what Rand Fishkin said in the below Twitter thread, now I am even more confused. I am very reluctant to move to Wordpress, its just so much hassle. But at the same time, if a site doesn't get much traffic then it's useless. https://twitter.com/drew_pickard/status/991659074134556673 https://twitter.com/randfish/status/991974456477278209 Please let me know your thoughts and experience.

    Web Design | | RyanUK
    0
  • TTR1


    My Google Analytics always shows visitors on my site that do not show up with a location.  They are always shown as being referred from "ads.google.com".  Our service is exclusively domestic in the U.S., yet my user location map will show 1 domestic visitor, but 19 total visitors.  PLease see attached linked image.   Is there some sort of malware that is being exploited on my pages somewhere that these people are accessing?  Is there some way of blocking them from my site?  Should I?  Aren't they skewing my Google Analytics results?  Are they potentially dangerous?  Thanks in advance for all replies. mKEjs2H.jpg

    Search Behavior | | TTR1
    0
  • dklarse


    My dev was looking into Expires Headers to increase speed, but she don't know the ramifications behind them for SEO. What I found online is really old: https://moz.com/blog/expires-headers-for-seo-why-you-should-think-twice-before-using-them What do SEOs think? Thanks in advance! ~Dana

    Technical SEO | | dklarse
    0
  • jgoehring-troy


    Hi everyone, Our company sells products in various divisions. While we've been selling Product A and Product B under our original brand, we've recently created a new division with a new domain to focus on a Product B. The new domain has virtually no domain authority (3) while the original domain has some (37). We want customers to arrive on the new domain when they search for key search terms related to Product B instead of the pages that previously existed on our main website. If we create 301 redirects for the pages and content on the main site and add noindex, nofollow tags, will we lose the domain authority that we have from our original domain because the pages now have the noindex, nofollow tags? I read a few blog posts from Moz that said there isn't any domain authority lost with 301 redirects but I'm not sure if that is true if the pages are noindex, nonofollow.   Do you follow?  🙂 Apologies for the lengthy post. Love this community and the great Moz team. Thanks, Joe

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jgoehring-troy
    0
  • AL123al


    I wonder if someone can help me understand clearly page rank flow. If we have a website with a Home page, Services, About and Contact as a very basic website and the page rank will flow to each of those pages from the Home page (i'm not including internal linking between pages or anchor text from the home page content - this is a question purely about home page flow via the main navigation). If the Services page had 3 drop down pages. Would the home page rank also flow to each of these or is it going to the Services page which then distributes it to the three drop down. So instead of Home page rank flowing to 3 pages 33% each - it is flowing to 6 pages 16.6% each. Or is it flowing to 3 pages - 33.3% then the Services pages get a third of 33.3% ->10.1% I know this is simplifying it all a great deal- but it is the basic concept I am trying to grasp on this simple example. Thanks

    Technical SEO | | AL123al
    0
  • rburnett


    I am tasked with optimizing an existing sites SEO. I have added meta's to all the menu pages, however they have blog section with over 700 posts. How important are meta descriptions when it comes to a websites blog? Do I need to take the time to go through 700+ blog posts and create unique meta descriptions for each one?

    Algorithm Updates | | rburnett
    0
  • formandfunctionagency


    I have a client who runs a dental office on the outskirts of Racine, WI. His address specifically shows up as being in Racine, however, his GMB profile has always showed with the category of "Dentist in Mount Pleasant, WI" displaying below the photos. (Mount Pleasant is the next town over and his office straddles the line between the two towns in Google's overlay map of the town.) Obviously this is frustrating and I'm concerned that his location is hurting his ability to rank in the larger, more populous town of Racine. Have any other SEOs ever encountered this? And if so, how have you approached the issue? Location pages? Mentions of the location more often on the pages? tsLvH2B

    Local Listings | | formandfunctionagency
    1
  • SallieJ


    Hello, my understanding was that Google reads hyphens in keywords as spaces, but if that's accurate how come keywords with hyphens that I research with Keyword Explorer — for instance, hospital-acquired infections — rank lower when I include the hyphen? If the hyphen hurts SEO, do I have to remove them all from the blog or page in question? Removing hyphens means a blog or page will have punctuation errors, which is irritating to an editor, but I don't want to sacrifice the effectiveness of keywords, either. Thanks, in advance, for your response!

    Keyword Research | | SallieJ
    0
  • NaomiAdivare


    Hi! I noticed the Moz DA en the Ahrefs DA are very different. Where https://www.123opzeggen.nl/ has a DA of 10 at MOZ, the DA at Ahrefs is 26. Where does this big difference come from? Do you measure in different ways? I hope you can answer this question for me. Thank you in advance!

    Moz Pro | | NaomiAdivare
    2
  • NikCall


    I am working through thousands of organic keywords and would like to create a list of core keywords.  I want the list to be small enough that we can really go after these keywords and track progress.  I work for a B2B software company.  I am thinking between 20-30 but I would love to hear any tips, opinions and recommendations! Thank you!

    Keyword Research | | NikCall
    0
  • yousafsaeed1990sf


    I want to know why my site's DA got changed suddenly? Whereas the DA of other sites of my competitors remained the same. It happened just a few days ago and i noticed it today!

    Link Explorer | | yousafsaeed1990sf
    0
  • mirabile


    Hello! We are doing an image optimization audit, and are therefore trying to find a way to get a list of all images on a site.  Screaming Frog seems like a great place to start (as per this helpful article:  https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-perform-an-image-optimization-audit), but unfortunately, it doesn't include images in CSS.  😞 Does the community have any ideas for how we try to otherwise get list of images? Thanks in advance for any tips/advice.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile
    0
  • iQi


    Hi there, You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first. A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com" The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently => 
    Cache-Control => private
    Content-Length => 174
    Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
    Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
    Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
    X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
    X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
    X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
    Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
    Connection => close Does the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago. Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain! Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening. Best,

    Technical SEO | | iQi
    0
  • frankandmaven


    Hey All! I'm wondering if there is any benefit (or if benefit could possibly outweigh the cost) to changing a domain from .com to a new .edu domain. The current .com domain has decent credibility already, and the .edu will have never been used before.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | frankandmaven
    1
  • pinder325


    Hello, We are working on a new site. The idea of the site is to have an ecommerce shop, but the homepage will be a content page, basically a blog page.
    My developer wants to have the blog (home) page on a subdomain, so blog.example.com, because it will be easier to make a nice content page this way, and the the rest of the site will just be on the root domain (example.com). I'm just worried that this will be bad for our SEO efforts. I've always thought it was better to use a sub folder rather than a subdomain. If we get links to the content on the subdomain, will the link juice flow to the shop, on the root domain? What are your thoughts?

    Technical SEO | | pinder325
    0
  • marshdigitalmarketing


    For the longest time, our company policy has always been to put PDFs in a secure folder (hence they are not indexed and do not appear in search results). After evaluating this strategy, there has been clamor in recent months to allow Google to index our whitepapers. My question: Once PDFs start appearing in search results, what is the best way to start tracking clicks due to these "downloads"?

    Reporting & Analytics | | marshdigitalmarketing
    0
  • EdKim


    I am trying to figure out the site structure of a website and the urls of all the pages. Normally this would be easy but a couple of months ago the website went down and I don't think it will ever come back. Any help would be appreciated.

    Competitive Research | | EdKim
    1
  • bellezze


    What's best for SEO: a folder or no folder? For example: https://domain.com/arizona-dentist/somecontent or just https://domain.com/somecontent. The website has 100+ pages with "dentist" within the content of the somecontent pages, as well as specific pages for /arizona-dentist/. Also, the breadcrumb for the somecontent page would appear something like follows: Arizona Dentist > Some Content ... you can find the somecontent page from the Arizona Dentist page. I didn't include folders in the path because I did not want the url to be too long. In terms of where it is showing up on google search results...it is within the top 3-4 on the first page when searching Arizona dentist come content. The website is pretty organized even without subfolders because it was made using Umbraco. I am wondering if using folders will increase the SEO ranking, or if it really doesn't and could hurt it if paths become too long; especially since it's not doing too bad in the search ranking right now. -Thanks in advance for any help.

    Algorithm Updates | | bellezze
    0
  • AdenaSEO


    Hi guys, The tech department implemented rel="prev"  and rel="next" on this website a long time ago.
    We also added a canonical tag to the 'own' page. We're talking about the following situation: https://bit.ly/2H3HpRD However we still see a situation where a lot of paginated pages are visible in the SERP.
    Is this just a case of rel="prev" and "next" being directives to Google?
    And in this specific case, Google deciding to not only show the 1st page in the SERP, but still show most of the paginated pages in the SERP? Please let me know, what you think. Regards,
    Tom

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdenaSEO
    1
  • insidewebanalytics


    I have put bad or spam links in disavow file, but still showing in MOZ backlinks. So, I want to know that Why is MOZ not removing the spam links from their system?

    Moz Bar | | insidewebanalytics
    0
  • AdenaSEO


    Hi, A website is not fully secured with a SSL certificate.
    Approx 97% of the pages on the website are secured. A few pages are unfortunately not secured with a SSL certificate, because otherwise some functions on those pages do not work. It's a website where you can play online games. These games do not work with an SSL connection. Is there anything we have to consider or optimize?
    Because, for example when we click on the secure lock icon in the browser, the following notice.
    Your connection to this site is not fully secured Can this harm the Google ranking? Regards,
    Tom

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdenaSEO
    1
  • Alces


    I'm working on some schema for a client and have a question regarding the use of schema for a high-level category page. This page is merely the main lander for Categories. For example: https://www.examples.com/pages/categories And all it does is list links to the three main categories (Men's, Women's, Kid's) - it's a clothing store. This is the code I have right now. In short, simply using type @Itemlist and an array that uses @ListItem. Structured Data Testing Tool returns no errors with it, but my main question is this: Is this the _correct _way to do a page like this, or are there better options? Thanks.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces
    0
  • virtuance_photography


    Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"

    Local Website Optimization | | virtuance_photography
    1
  • vtmoz


    Hi, We have lost the non-slash to slash URL redirection in our WP site. We are using Yoast SEO. All the settings are normal and we have enabled the related code in .htaccess too. Still we couldn't able to find why we lost. Please help. Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
    0
  • DAMIDEZ


    Goof Day pls Am having S Spam Score Of 33% On my Blog Naijazeal.Com And I Check In my Google webmaster and i analyze all the link i see and i see little with high spam Score But Checking My Spam Score on Moz, It showi Extermal link below but most of the link showing below is not in my Seach console Pls help

    Moz Pro | | DAMIDEZ
    0
  • GrueBleenAgency


    Hi Moz Community We are in a unique position. We just launched a new site for a client. The site was doing fine before but it wasn't very user friendly. We created a site with almost identical architecture and content as the last one, just new design and layout. Within 5 days, the site dropped off of LOCAL search almost completely, it now ranks on the 9th page in Austin Texas. (reliantplumbingdotcom). Every other location (Dallas, LA, Philadelphia, Houston) all show the site on the first page for relevant keywords (Austin Plumbers, Austin Plumber) I have no idea what to think about this and don't know if we're being penalized somehow (checked GSC and no manual penalty) I have never experienced a site being blacklisted locally but well ranked everywhere else. Thoughts?

    Local Listings | | GrueBleenAgency
    1
  • HashtagHustler


    Hey guys, I have a bizarre situation on my hands. I have a URL that is being wonky. The url is redirecting to another url and the 301 redirect is not in my htaccess. There is a 301 redirect in my htaccess but is being overwritten by something else, i.e. whatever is happening in above. So basically URL A should be redirecting to URL B but instead its going to URL C. I know we were not hacked, it's not redirecting to a strange bizarre domain. I have also disabled all of our plugins that redirect (to my knowledge) Any thoughts would be great!

    Technical SEO | | HashtagHustler
    0
  • wonkydogadmin


    Hi, all Wondering if someone could give me a pointer or two, please. I cannot seem to get Google or Bing to crawl my sitemap. If I submit the sitemap in WMT and test it I get a report saying 44,322urls found. However, if I then submit that same sitemap it either says Pending (in old WMT) or Couldn't fetch in the new version. This couldn't fetch is very puzzling as it had no issue fetching the map to test it. My other domains on the same server are fine, the problem is limited to this one site. I have tried several pages on the site using the Fetch as Google tool and they load without issue, however, try as I may, it will not fetch my sitemap. The sitemapindex.xml file won't even submit. I can confirm my sitemaps, although large, work fine, please see the following as an example (minus the spaces, of course, didn't want to submit and make it look like I was just trying to get a link) https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemap.xml https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemapindex.xml I would welcome any feedback anyone could offer on this, please. It's driving me mad trying to work out what is up. Many thanks, Jeff

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wonkydogadmin
    0
  • cPanel-LLC.


    Hi there, We recently changed our domain from .COM to .NET so that all our subdomains from external pages matched. Right now in Google Console we have our new .NET website being tracked, but in GA we are still tracking .COM. It is also causing issues with MOZ crawling our site because of the .COM/.NET discrepancy. My question is what is the best way to change our Google Analytics from .COM to .NET without losing historical data and what considerations do we need to change before implementing this? Our team was concerned that just downloading the old data would be too vast and it we wouldn't be able to continue manipulating it dynamically in GA. Thanks!!

    Reporting & Analytics | | cPanel-LLC.
    0
  • samgold


    For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic. Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes? Thanks Sam

    Technical SEO | | samgold
    0

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