Latest Questions

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  Blocking Dynamic URLs with Robots.txt
  

  Background: My e-commerce site uses a lot of layered navigation and sorting links.  While this is great for users, it ends up in a lot of URL variations of the same page being crawled by Google.  For example, a standard category page: www.mysite.com/widgets.html ...which uses a "Price" layered navigation sidebar to filter products based on price also produces the following URLs which link to the same page: http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=1%2C250 http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=2%2C250 http://www.mysite.com/widgets.html?price=3%2C250 As there are literally thousands of these URL variations being indexed, so I'd like to use Robots.txt to disallow these variations. Question: Is this a wise thing to do?  Or does Google take into account layered navigation links by default, and I don't need to worry. To implement, I was going to do the following in Robots.txt: User-agent: * Disallow: /*? Disallow: /*= ....which would prevent any dynamic URL with a '?" or '=' from being indexed.  Is there a better way to do this, or is this a good solution? Thank you!

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewY

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  Dofollow Blog Comments
  

  I wanna buy dofollow comments, can be there any negative effects? I understand that is a kind of a black hat seo, but i saw many sites who used this type of service and get boosted in the search engine ranking.

  Link Building | | Alexsmenaru

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  SEO Triage - What matters most?
  

  If you only had 8 hours to work on an SEO project... How would you spend your time to get the fastest results? On-page optimization, or link-building? Context: On-Page Optimization: "A" grade (SEOMOZ On-Page Report Card) Keywords: "moderately competitive" (SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty Tool) Domain Authority: 33 (SEOMOZ Competitive Link Analysis)

  Link Building | | JessicaCox

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  How can I check a website to see if it is "nofollow"?
  

  I'm a little new to SEO, so maybe this is obvious to some . . . I'm attempting to build backlinks by submitting articles, posting on forums etc.  I just wrote my forst article for ezine and submitted it. I was feeling pretty good about myself until I mentioned it to someone trying to sell me their SEO services and he said that ezine articles are considered "nofollow" on all their links. Well, that was pretty frustrating to hear!  It got me wondering, how many of these other sites have all their posts and blogs listed as "nofollow"?  Is there a way for me to figure it out ahead of time?  Obviously, there are only so many hours in the day and I would rather focus on posting on sites that will actually help me build backlinks! Thanks for your help in advance!

  Link Building | | damon1212

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  What does the "base href" meta tag do? For SEO and webdesign?
  

  I have encounter the "base href" on one of my sites.  The tag is on every page and always points to the home URL.

  On-Page Optimization | | jmansd

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  First click on SEO redirecting to a competitor site?
  

  I just experienced something VERY odd and wondered if any of you had an idea of what it might be. When I did a search on Google and clicked the top SEO listing I was taken to a competitor of the number 1 listed site i.e. NOT the site I clicked on. When I clicked the back button and clicked it again, I was taken to the correct site. This happened with two different searches and I was taken to two different sites. Could this be a clever/sinister cookie implemented by the competitor; a site I frequent regularly? Could this be malware implemented by an affiliate? Could this be a Google glitch?

  Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie

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  Category Pages with Sub-Categories
  

  The image will explain it all...  Each category page starts on the subject of the first sub-category page.  This happens twice (well actually 3 times since this section of the site is called showroom and it starts on the tab mowers). Is this a terrible approach?  If so, how could a site like this be better navigation-ally organized. cat-subcat.png

  On-Page Optimization | | drewschmaltz

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  Unusual Words - How to Check what Google Recognises
  

  I want to check which words Google is aware of, I remember Danny Dover talking about "SeoMoz.org" and theorising that Google couldn't understand that SEO was in the URL because it didn't understand that "Moz" was a word and therefore couldn't seperate the 2 words "SEO and "Moz" out. Any ideas, I thought about using Google Instant but as it comes up with "seomoz" when i type in "seom" so am assuming that this detail is taken from a diffrent source. Justin

  Keyword Research | | GrouchyKids

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  I think Panda was a conspiracy.
  

  It's just a theory, but I think that Panda was not really an algorithm update but rather a conspiracy. Google went out of their way to announce that a new algorithm was being rolled out.  The word on the street was that content farms would be affected.  Low quality sites would be affected.  Scrapers would be affected.  So, everyone with decent sites sat back and said, "Ah...this will be good...my rankings will increase." And then, the word started coming in that some really good sites took a massive hit.  We've got a lot of theories on what could be causing the hit, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious fix. Many of the key factors that have been suggested causes of a site to look bad in Panda's eyes are present on one of my sites, but this site actually increased in rankings after Panda. So, this is my theory:  I think that Google made some random changes that made no sense.  They made changes that would cause some scraper sites to go down but they also knew that many decent sites would decline as well. Why would they do this?  The result is fantastic in Google's eyes.  They have the whole world of web design doing all they can to create the BEST quality site possible.  People are removing duplicate content, reducing ad clutter and generally creating the best site possible.  And this, is the goal of Larry Page and Sergey Brin...to make it so that Google gives the user the BEST possible sites to match their query. I think that a month or so from now there will be a sudden shift in the algo again and many of those decent sites will have their good rankings back again.  The site owners will think it's because they put hard work into creating good quality, so they will be happy.  And Google will be happy because the web is a better place. What do you think?

  Algorithm Updates | | MarieHaynes

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  How to optimize a wordpress blog
  

  I’m helping a client optimize a word press blog, and I’m not that familiar with Wordpress.  The site is www.athleticfoodie.com. At first I was treating it like a normal website, where the categories would be optimized like pages on a website.  However, I now realize that categories don’t have any content on them, so I can’t really optimize anything other than the names. Are the following things the best way to handle on-page optimization for a blog? Optimizing the homepage & domain: Find ways to incorporate the most important keywords into the elements on the main frame of the site: Navigation menu, Widgets, Category names, Alt Images. Optimizing the categories: For the posts within the categories (i.e., photos), work to make sure the category keywords are worked into the post titles (but not too much to seem spammy) Optimizing specific posts. Work keywords into the text and images. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

  On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee34

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  Tool/Method to find users on Twitter from a CSV file
  

  I'm attempting to find users to follow and receive reciprocal follows for a client on twitter. Through the company's newsletter database, I have a CSV file of somewhere in the range of 20,000 email addresses and names. I've been importing them 250 at a time into an empty Gmail account then connecting that with twitter each time to find some of them. However, a lot of the PEOPLE using the email addresses on the mailing list are not on twitter but their COMPANY is. To find the company, I can obviously drop the name@ part of the email and just search by the domain but this becomes tedious real quick since it has to be one by one and cannot be bulk imported/searched. Are there any tools/ideas out there to more easily find twitter users based on a larger set of keywords and/or domain names?

  Social Media | | Motava

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  Parasite Hosting
  

  How can i create a parasite hosting? I that one good http://www.squidoo.com/filme-online-subtitrate

  Link Building | | Alexsmenaru

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  What SEO considerations for multiple languages on a single page?
  

  I am working on a language teaching site for Chinese speakers learning English. I consider myself above average when it comes to basic SEO issues, but all I know here is that Google doesn't like multiple languages on a single page. Without getting into too many details, both Chinese and English text will appear on the same page with links, tags, phonetic spellings, etc. I'm hoping someone here knows the science about using the lang="zh" xml:lang="zh" attributes within text and the effects on ranking for text within the declarations. And it'd be great if there was clarification on the link juice passed using the hreflang attribute for both internal and external links. Also, of course, any info on using both English and Chinese characters in the URL would be most helpful. A heads up on any other language specific SEO issues would also be much appreciated. My goal is to get the most out of both languages per page in terms of ranking.

  Technical SEO | | kwoolf

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  What is the best way to manage backlinks?
  

  What back link management software do you guys use or recommend? Need to manage types of links on each page. Thanks

  Link Building | | joemas99

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  How to track keyword performance over time?
  

  The SEOMoz keyword reports show week-to-week changed in keyword positions, but what report can I run to see trends over time so that I can evaluate the effectiveness of our SEO efforts?

  Moz Pro | | mhkatz

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  Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical
  

  For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)

  Technical SEO | | raywatson

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  Nofollow links & content syndication
  

  When syndicating content, I have heard/read that even if the piece you syndicate has a link back to your site (original post), the engines should be able to tell your post is the original because of the link that is pointing back. Is this the case when the links are "nofollow"? I think not, but I just would like to get someone else point of view. I think that if they don't want to follow the links, they should at least add noindex meta robots tags to the post so it doesn't create duplicate content... Any thoughts? Thanks!

  Link Building | | bonnierSEO

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  Why should your title and H1 tag be different?
  

  Is it dangerous to have your H1 tag and your title the exact same thing?  My thought was that it's not be the best use of space, but that it couldn't cause harm. What do you think?

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes

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  Deep Page Link - url no longer exists
  

  I used Open Site Explorer and found a link to our site on http://www.business.com/guides/bedding-supplies-3639/  The link was setup to go to an important, deep page on my website, but the structure of our urls changed and the url no longer exists. The link (anchor text 'National Hospitality Supply') does direct to our homepage, www.nathosp.com. My question is, am I receiving full link juice? Or would I be better served to create a 301 redirect to the revised / new page url? In case it matters, if I had my choice I'd prefer the link to go to the intended deep page. Thanks in advance for your insight. -Josh Fulfer

  Technical SEO | | mhans

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  Should I set up a disallow in the robots.txt for catalog search results?
  

  When the crawl diagnostics came back for my site its showing around 3,000 pages of duplicate content. Almost all of them are of the catalog search results page. I also did a site search on Google and they have most of the results pages in their index too. I think I should just disallow the bots in the /catalogsearch/ sub folder, but I'm not sure if this will have any negative effect?

  Technical SEO | | JordanJudson

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  Scammer or Legit?
  

  Okay so I keep on seeing stuff like this, I know it's been going on for ages but it seems to be increasing in intensity. Anyway, thanks to Facebook knowing I click on their ads to do with SEO it shows me pretty much just those ad types now. I'll get to the point. I saw an ad for the "Search Marketing Business Academy", or "SMBA" so I was curious and clicked. There's a chap who professes 12 years experience in internet marketing and has a bunch of companies and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, he's offering himself up as basically an expert of experts, one that can show other search marketers how to make it. www.searchmarketingbusinessacademy.com/ There's a few things that look fishy though. The testimonials have common names and no business names There's no mention of what these companies he runs are There's no work to see in the form of case studies or a portfolio Under "Meet Lee Gilbert" it states that they've been supporting other SEM companies since 2004, yet a quick Google of the company and the name shows little to support this. Googling the chaps name just gets you his own website www.leegilbert.co.uk which professes more of the same and just a bunch of products Of just a few pieces of advice given for how to rank on Google it includes keyword density The chap seems to still place a lot of importance on Page Rank (As in the old PR that we all know means nothing now, and his blog about this is only a month old) From searching, it doesn't seem that there is any history at all, let alone this history of mass success There doesn't appear to be any social presence for the company or the man, except that ad. It seems just like an average SEO (albeit one that's a bit behind on the times) who knows an average amount, trying to say he can tell other SEO's how to master the arts. He's not even a member on SEOmoz, that's the biggest give away haha. So, could I be wrong? Am I being too harsh?

  Industry News | | SteveOllington

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  One big site or lots of little sites? Which is better for SEO and my business in general?
  

  I realize there are some aspects of what I'm asking that only I can answer. With that said, I'm looking for some discussion about the pros / cons of each, and what are the most important factors that will push me one way or another. Let's say I have a company that has three products. One big brand, three little brands. Each of the little brands is focused on a particular sub-niche, all of which are in the general health & wellness niche. Either, I could create a large site for the big brand, with subsections for each product, and work hard on turning that domain into a goto site, with lots of articles, etc. The domain name for this one would be a made up word so I can fully control the search results. Or, another strategy would be to create smaller, "sniper" sites for each product, maybe even sites for each major search term that is interested in that product. These sites would have fewer articles. Descriptive, exact match domain names. Which is the best strategy? #1, #2, or a mixture of both? #1 seems legitimate, #2 seems a bit spammy. What are the pros and cons to each? Can anyone speak from experience about both these practices?

  Branding | | monetize-266006

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