Latest Questions

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  Create a new XML Sitemap for a blog subdomain?
  

  What would be the best way to go about this? A site just put a blog on http://blog.domain.com/ Should there be a separate XML Sitemap for that particular subdomain or should the original XML Sitemap for the main domain be sufficient? Looking forward to your responses. Thanks

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com

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  Local Keyword vs Business Name in URL
  

  I am working with a local business owner who has purchased multiple domains. One includes the geographic area she serves and the type of business she runs. The other includes her business name and the type of business she runs. She is unsure of which domain she would like to use as the main URL for her business website. When choosing a domain for a small, local business, would you consider it advantageous to have the main geographic area that the business serves in the URL rather than the actual name of the business? What would be the best use of domain name which isn't selected from a SEO standpoint?

  Image & Video Optimization | | Neustop

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  Dynamically-generated .PDF files, instead of normal pages, indexed by and ranking in Google
  

  Hi, I come across a tough problem. I am working on an online-store website which contains the functionlaity of viewing products details in .PDF format (by the way, the website is built on Joomla CMS), now when I search my site's name in Google, the SERP simply displays my .PDF files in the first couple positions (shown in normal .PDF files format: [PDF]...)and I cannot find the normal pages there on SERP #1 unless I search the full site domain in Google. I really don't want this! Would you please tell me how to figure the problem out and solve it. I can actually remove the corresponding component (Virtuemart) that are in charge of generating the .PDF files. Now I am trying to redirect all the .PDF pages ranking in Google to a 404 page and remove the functionality, I plan to regenerate a sitemap of my site and submit it to Google, will it be working for me? I really appreciate that if you could help solve this problem. Thanks very much. Sincerely SEOmoz Pro Member

  Technical SEO | | fugu

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  How to use overlays without getting a Google penalty
  

  One of my clients is an email subscriber-led business offering deals that are time sensitive and which expire after a limited, but varied, time period. Each deal is published on its own URL and in order to drive subscriptions to the email, an overlay was implemented that would appear over the individual deal page so that the user was forced to subscribe if they wished to view the details of the deal. Needless to say, this led to the threat of a Google penalty which _appears (fingers crossed) _to have been narrowly avoided as a result of a quick response on our part to remove the offending overlay. What I would like to ask you is whether you have any safe and approved methods for capturing email subscribers without revealing the premium content to users before they subscribe? We are considering the following approaches: First Click Free for Web Search - This is an opt in service by Google which is widely used for this sort of approach and which stipulates that you have to let the user see the first item they click on from the listings, but can put up the subscriber only overlay afterwards. No Index, No follow - if we simply no index, no follow the individual deal pages where the overlay is situated, will this remove the "cloaking offense" and therefore the risk of a penalty? Partial View - If we show one or two paragraphs of text from the deal page with the rest being covered up by the subscribe now lock up, will this still be cloaking? I will write up my first SEOMoz post on this once we have decided on the way forward and monitored the effects, but in the meantime, I welcome any input from you guys.

  Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie

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  Is the all in title technique helpful?
  

  I watched a tutorial on lynda.com about keyword research. And they said to use the All In Tittle trick to see how many pages on google are optimized for that keyword - do you reccommend using that method as well? In google, you type allintitle:"key word phrase" and the results show how many page titles are optimized for that phrase. Should I use this technique as well when choosing keywords?

  Keyword Research | | aircyclemegan

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  How to handle sitemap with pages using query strings?
  

  Hi, I'm working to optimize a site that currently has about 5K pages listed in the sitemap.  There are not in face this many pages.  Part of the problem is that one of the pages is a tool where each sort and filter button produces a query string URL. It seems to me inefficient to have so many items listed that are all really the same page.  Not to mention wanting to avoid any duplicate content or low quality issues. How have you found it best to handle this?  Should I just noindex each of the links?  Canonical links? Should I manually remove the pages from the sitemap?  Should I continue as is? Thanks a ton for any input you have!

  Technical SEO | | 5225Marketing

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  SEO value of "in the news" links on home page?
  

  Notice more sites have an "in the News" section on the home page, or something similar like press releases... Apart from providing users fresh content, is there an SEO value to this?  What is the explanation for this? Have a feeling the answer is obvious but just not too sure Thanks a lot.

  On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja

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  Subdomain gets different IP
  

  How good or bad is it for google (my most important friend on the internet , but i like you too guys) if the subdomain gets a total different IP adress lets say main domian start with 213.xx.xxx and subdomain starts with 83.xx.xxxx Thanx in advance

  Content Development | | turnon

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  Subdomains for niche related keywords
  

  I wanted to know how efficient using a subdomain is, taking in consideration all the updates Google has made lately. I am looking to use a subdomain for a well branded website for a niche specific part of their website. The subdomain will end-up having more than 100 pages. I'd like to see in what cases do you guys recommend using a subdomain? How to get the same benefit out of a subdomain as i am getting from the actual main domain?

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMTM

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  Blog commenting
  

  I have been doing a little bit of testing in regards to blog commenting on high authority blogs that no follow comments. The comments have all been manual and added value to the blog. I have noticed quite a big jump in rankings for some keywords. I was wondering if anyone else has a view on the effectiveness of these links when combined with other link building methods?

  Link Building | | PeterM22

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  Does domain WhoIs Privacy affect SEO efforts?
  

  Hi guys, I got a hopefully quick question.  I am designing a site currently that is made up of many different domain names as part of a network. I've heard that Google will penalize however is linking is passed back and forth between these domains if the registrant information was the same.  I have WhoIS privacy information on all the domains to stop telemarketers and spam as well as (hopefully stop Google from getting suspicious).  I'm not doing anything bad or against Google rules but I can see how they might think that if I have a huge network and links are being passed between these.  It's a friend of mine who owns like 2000 domains and he wants to put legitimate information on each one and rank them higher, it's an interesting concept but I won't go into to much detail. So my question is basically, does having WhoIS privacy on all these domains, will it affect me in anyway in the SEO process? Will google count the links passing back and forth as legitimate? Or might it get suspicious and think I am spam? Are there ways to see what server it's coming from? Should all these sites be on different servers? Any help is much appreciated!

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | itechware

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  How long until you see results?
  

  How long does it typically take for SEO efforts to materialize?  We recently performed a complete website redesign (new site, and am wondering how long we should wait until we analyze the results and possibly change our seo/keyword strategy?

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdeboer

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  Can Changing Meta Descriptions Negatively Impact SERP's?
  

  I have just had a page start ranking well in key SERP's and I would like to change the meta description and add a price as we are extremely competative in that line. Could changing the meta description now a page is ranking negatively impact the SERP placing? Does anyone have any experience with this?

  Conversion Rate Optimization | | robertrRSwalters

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  Which pages to "noindex"
  

  I have read through the many articles regarding the use of Meta Noindex, but what I haven't been able to find is a clear explanation of when, why or what to use this on. I'm thinking that it would be appropriate to use it on: legal pages such as privacy policy and terms of use
  search results page
  blog archive and category pages Thanks for any insight of this.

  Technical SEO | | mmaes

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  Using a third party server to host site elements
  

  Hi guys - I have a client who are recently experiencing a great deal of more traffic to their site. As a result, their web development agency have given them a server upgrade to cope with the new demand. One thing they have also done is put all website scripts, CSS files, images, downloadable content (such as PDFs) - onto a 3rd party server (Amazon S3). Apparently this was done so that my clients server just handles the page requests now - and all other elements are then grabbed from the Amazon s3 server. So basically, this means any HTML content and web pages are still hosted through my clients domain - but all other content is accessible through an Amazon s3 server URL. I'm wondering what SEO implications this will have for my clients domain? While all pages and HTML content is still accessible thorugh their domain name, each page is of course now making many server calls to the Amazon s3 server through external URLs (s3.amazonaws.com). I imagine this will mean any elements sitting on the Amazon S3 server can no longer contribute value to the clients SEO profile - because that actual content is not physically part of their domain anymore. However what I am more concerned about is whether all of these external server calls are going to have a negative effect on the web pages value overall. Should I be advising my client to ensure all site elements are hosted on their own server, and therefore all elements are accessible through their domain? Hope this makes sense (I'm not the best at explaining things!)

  Technical SEO | | zealmedia

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  Does anyone know what the %5C at the end of a URL is?
  

  I've just had a look at the crawl diagnostics and my site comes up with duplicate page content and duplicate titles. I noticed that the url all has %5C at the end which I've never seen before. Does anybody know what that means?

  Moz Pro | | Greg80

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