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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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  • formandfunctionagency


    I manage a site for a medical practice that has two locations. We already have a location page for each office location and we have the NAP for both locations in the footer of every page. I'm considering making a change to the structure of the site to help it rank better for individual services at each of the two locations, which I think will help pages rank in their specific locales by having the city name in the URL. However, I'm concerned about diluting the domain authority that gets passed to the pages by moving them deeper in the site's structure. For instance, the services URLs are currently structured like this: www.domain.com/services/teeth-whitening (where the service is offered in each of the two locations) Would it make sense to move to a structure more like www.domain.com/city1name/teeth-whitening www.domain.com/city2name/teeth-whitening Does anyone have insight from dealing with multi-location brands on the best way to go about this?

    Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency
    1
  • Jason-Reid


    Hi all, I have a question regarding changing the size of my sitemaps. Currently I generate sitemaps in batches of 50k. A situation has come up where I need to change that size to 15k in order to be crawled by one of our licensed services. I haven't been able to find any documentation on whether or not changing the size of my sitemaps(but not the pages included in them) will affect my rankings negatively or my SEO efforts in general. If anyone has any insights or has experienced this with their site please let me know!

    Technical SEO | | Jason-Reid
    0
  • slgray


    Hello, I'm new to SEO but feel I have a decent grasp on it. However, I had a question pertaining to key words and using my city name in it. For instance, if I am using the key word "herniated disc treatment" do I need to put in my city name behind it or does google recognize that I am already in my city area because of my geo tagging and having it listed on the footer of my site? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! -Scott

    On-Page Optimization | | slgray
    0
  • AdsposureDev


    Watchguard and Websense/Forecepoint are flagging my financial services site gambling...how can I prevent that from happening.  https://fwag.com/

    Web Design | | AdsposureDev
    0
  • kvillalobos


    Is it true that cornerstone content should have at least 3,500 words? I've done some research and found that the recommended amount is between 2K-10k. Also, the content that we create/publish has a lot of references/citations at the end of each article. Does Google discern words from the main text and from the references? Meaning should I count references as part of the word count? Thanks for the help!

    Content Development | | kvillalobos
    0
  • d.bird


    A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results. Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/ Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page. I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed. Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?

    Technical SEO | | d.bird
    0
  • CJ777


    Hello, Thank you to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts on this. I will preface this by saying that I am very new to the community and have lots to learn, so please forgive any obvious errors on my part. That having been said am very happy to receive positive criticism and feedback 🙂 Quick Background: We are a high end mobile wellness business based in Toronto Canada offering in home/office servicing including: yoga, pilates, nutrition, meditation, chiropractors, etc... As we are expanding  we are transitioning form new leads coming from business partners and word of mouth to driving new business online As such we have an new Squarespace site (which is the first site I ever built, so any feedback is welcome) and are venturing into social media, SEO, local citations etc... for the first time We have a significant content catalogue originally  for client and instructor education that we are now repurposing for this new digital adventure but have not yet deployed While currently focused in Torotno, we have plans to expand to several other countries in the next two years. As the site is quite new and we have little content or incoming links I was thinking now is the time to switch to .com from .ca before we roll out Website: www.anahana.ca Risk Reward? & Other Issues? Both domains are currently verified with Squarespace, and it seems easy enough to switch. What could blow up by making this switch which I might not be aware of? Our emails and business card use the .ca, but I don't think this would matter too much 6-12 months out... is there something else I might be missing on this? .com and using subfolders or subdomains as opposed to country specific TLDs ? This is something I am still working on understanding, but from what I have learned thus far, if we are going to progressively roll out a large content library, is it not better from an SEO standpoint to have this all in one domain? Local SEO and legal considerations for TLDs when operating local Service Area Businesses. I am sure there are many other angles here that I am missing and am not really looking for any hard answer on much of this, but any general advice, suggested resources, and experienced insights would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much, cj

    Local SEO | | CJ777
    0
  • bgvsiteadmin


    Hi Everyone, We just did a site migration ( URL structure change, site redesign, CMS change). During migration, dev team messed up badly on a few things including SEO. The old site had pages canonicalized and self canonicalized <> New site doesn't have anything (CMS dev error) so we are working retroactively to add canonicalization mechanism The legacy site had URL’s ending with a trailing slash “/” <> new site got redirected to Set of url’s without “/” New site action : All robots are allowed: A new sitemap is submitted to google search console So here is my problem (it been a long 24hr night for me  🙂 ) 1. Now when I look at GSC homepage URL it says that old page is self canonicalized and currently in index (old page with a trailing slash at the end of URL). 2. When I try to perform a live URL test, I get the message "No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag" , so indexation cant be done. I have no idea where noindex is coming from. 3. Robots.txt in search console still showing old file ( no noindex there ) I tried to submit new file but old one still coming up. When I click on "See live robots.txt" I get current robots. 4. I see that old page is still canonicalized and attempting to index redirected old page might be confusing google Hope someone can help to get the new page indexed! I really need it 🙂  Please ping me if you need more clarification. Thank you ! Thank you

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin
    1
  • SathishFirecompass


    I want to understand what is PageAuthority and Domain Authority and how we scale for SEO? Suggestions highly appreciated

    Getting Started | | SathishFirecompass
    0
  • jbcorcoran


    I am trying to figure out how much traffic goes to a particular page on a website. How would I go about finding this?

    Moz Bar | | jbcorcoran
    6
  • nezona


    Hi Guys, Got a site I am working with on the Wix platform. However site audit tools such as Screaming Frog, Ryte and even Moz's onpage crawler show the pages having no content, despite them having 200 words+. Fetching the site as Google clearly shows the rendered page with content, however when I look at the Google cached pages, they also show just blank pages. I have had issues with nofollow, noindex on here, but it shows the meta tags correct, just 0 content. What would you look to diagnose? I am guessing some rogue JS but why wasn't this picked up on the "fetch as Google".

    Technical SEO | | nezona
    0
  • MJTrevens


    We currently only have one option for implementing our Schema. It is populated in the JSON which is rendered by JavaScript on the CLIENT side. I've heard tons of mixed reviews about if this will work or not. So, does anyone know for sure if this will or will not work. Also, how can I build a test to see if it does or does not work?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens
    0
  • AndrisZigurs


    I am in SEO for years but never met this problem. I have client who's web page was hacked and there was posted many, hundreds of links, These links has been indexed by google. Actually these links are not in comments but normal external urls's. See picture. What is the best way to remove them? use google disavow tool or just redirect them to some page? The web page is new, but ranks good on google and has domain authority 24. I think that these spam url's improved rankings too 🙂 What would be the best strategy to solve this. Thanks. k9Bviox

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrisZigurs
    0
  • lcourse


    Any ideas how to increase the Yandex Site Quality Index via onpage changes?

    International SEO | | lcourse
    1
  • neil_stickergizmo


    Hi, We have a current category set up that is starting to rank OK but we are going through a site re-build and this category URL will now better describe a new category of products. My dilemma is if I 301 redirect the current url to my new category I won't be able to use the URL for the new one. But if I don't redirect it will the pages that have already been ranked under this url then confuse customers and search engines. For example - Products and sub-categories under the URL /personalised-toys will now become /personalised-toys-for-boys but I want to use the /personalised-toys URL for a different set of sub categories and products. Any assistance or ideas or just definitely don't do it in a particular way would be greatly appreciated

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neil_stickergizmo
    0
  • iamSILeadership


    Today I have subscribed for 30 days free trial and some amount has been deducted from my credit card. Please tell me why it has been deducted?

    Product Support | | iamSILeadership
    1
  • g3mmab


    I use Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram to post images that are already featured on my website. I have been following a routine of uploading the images to these social media platforms only after I can see Google has indexed the image from my original site. My website is ecommerce and the product images drive sales more than any other factor. The thinking behind my method was that when these images are posted on Pinterest, Twitter and the various Instagram crawler sites (I realise Instagram images aren’t indexed directly), Google would recognise that the image was already attributed to my website. The ‘duplicate’ image would not therefore be indexed and the originally uploaded website image would remain in ‘Google Images’. After completing various searches and reviewing other Q&A’s on Moz, it seems as though this is in no way guaranteed and images reposted on social media platforms may still replace the already indexed image from the website. I am assuming this is because Google views these platforms as more authoritative than mine. I usually change the image by adding logos, text, backgrounds, borders etc before posting on Pinterest and this seems to have worked most of the time (both the original and ‘amended for Pinterest’ versions are often indexed) but images posted on other platforms are usually identical. Does it make sense to continue with my method or am I shooting myself in the foot by reposting these images on social media at all? I obviously want customers searching for products, who then click on an image, to be directed to my site rather than one of my social media pages or worse, an image reposting site. Additionally, If I post images on social media before they are uploaded to my website (for example to tease a product launch), would Google likely class these images as the ‘original’ and therefore be less likely to index the website version of the image once it is uploaded? Any thoughts are appreciated.

    Social Media | | g3mmab
    2
  • Praveenshah1


    Hi, If we merge two sites say, one with DA 35 and another 20 what will be resulting DA of the merged site? Secondly, will the result vary based on which Domain is kept and which one is 301ed? ps :- all content is transferred from one to another using 301. Regards,

    Product Support | | Praveenshah1
    0
  • MikeBlue1


    Hi All, I recently did a 301 redirect. Page to Page and the notified google via its console. Its been 6 days since. The home page and one other high traffic page swopped out with the new domain on google search index with 3-4 drops in ranking for each. The rest of the sites pages have been indexed but still reflect the old domain when searched. Recently today my home page dropped even further to the second page of google index for the specific keyword. Can you share similar experiences and how long it took you to recover rank fully? and how long for all pages to swop out on google search's index? Regards Mike

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue1
    0
  • ReunionMarketing


    Hi All, We have a client with a Bing Maps listing with old photos on it that we can't seem to remove. The photos are being populated from other sites like Yelp. The kicker is, we didn't upload the photos to Yelp, a user did. We've messaged the user to please remove the photos and they haven't responded. Now Yelp won't let us contact the user again and we've already flagged the photos on Yelp weeks ago but they haven't been removed. We don't see a spot to flag them on Bing. Do you have any recommendations for how to remove these?

    Local Listings | | ReunionMarketing
    1
  • Kyle_M


    I'm wondering what people recommend for linking from press releases; specifically, what kind of tracking parameters people add to their links, if any. My first thought is to add UTM tracking parameters for Google Analytics, but I have a few concerns: bloggers that copy our link from the release include the tracking parameters in the links from their site, which would only identify the traffic as coming from the release and not the specific sites UTM parameters in the link may make it look less natural to Google Also, I've considered using shortened URL's without parameters in the release that get 301 redirected to the relevant pages, which I thought might have a few benefits: the links look more natural (no tracking parameters) UTM parameters could be added as part of the redirect after the fact if the release attracted links from spammy sources for some reason I could kill the redirect, which I'm hoping would effectively kill the link My company doesn't rely on press releases for link building, which we understand to have been ineffective for a long time, but we do send them out occasionally and want the most effective links for tracking and SEO. I'd love to hear if anyone has thoughts on these assumptions, or if anyone has different linking strategies that they have found strike the right balance of SEO and tracking considerations. Thanks!

    Social Media | | Kyle_M
    2
  • PoppyP


    I have a question about the Spam Score for my website .
    I have run a Spam Score for https://www.poppyporter.co.uk
    It has come back with an 80% score because there are 4 links that are apparently from my poppyporter.com domain each with a 69% spam score.
    This poppyporter.com domain is parked and I have no idea why there are links from it. There are no pages there and there never have been, I've never used the poppyporter.com domain only poppyporter.co.uk.
    I don't understand why there are links there and why they are making my Spam Score so high.
    Will they affect my site's SEO? Do I need to worry about them? If so how do I get rid of them?
    Can you help?
    Thanks very much Poppy

    Moz Bar | | PoppyP
    1
  • Tom3_15


    Hello, I have a broken plugin creating hundreds of WP-Content directory pages being indexed by Google. I can not access the source code of these pages to add a noindex to them. The page URL's all have the plugin name within them.  In order to resolve the issue, I wrote a solution with javascript to dynamically add in a noindex tag to any URL containing the plugin name. Would this noindex be respected by Google and is there a way to immediately check that it is respected? Currently, I can not delete the plugin due to issues with it's php. If you would like to view the code: https://codepen.io/trodrick/pen/Gwwaej?editors=0010 Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | Tom3_15
    0
  • Mat_C


    Hi everyone, I have a question about embedding videos on a website: if you optimize the title and description for the video in Youtube, will these be taken into account for the ranking of the page where the video is embedded? Or will only the Youtube link for the video show in SERP's, instead of the page itself? I've read in a post of Phil Nottingham that it's usually not a good idea to embed a Youtube video on your own site, but use Wistia instead, exactly to avoid cannibalisation of your own rankings. Is this correct? Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
    0
  • Tom3_15


    Hi All, The site I am working on is built on Wordpress. The plugin Revolution Slider was downloaded. While no longer utilized, it still remained on the site for some time. This plugin began creating hundreds of URLs containing nothing but code on the page. I noticed these URLs were being indexed by Google. The URLs follow the structure: www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/revslider/templates/this-part-changes/ I have done the following to prevent these URLs from being created & indexed: 1. Added a directive in my Htaccess to 404 all of these URLs 2. Blocked /wp-content/uploads/revslider/ in my robots.txt 3. Manually de-inedex each URL using the GSC tool 4. Deleted the plugin However, new URLs still appear in Google's index, despite being blocked by robots.txt and resolving to a 404. Can anyone suggest any next steps? I Thanks!

    Technical SEO | | Tom3_15
    0
  • alstam


    Hi, i want to redirect from this old link http://www.g-store.gr/product_info.php?products_id=1735/ to this one https://www.g-store.gr/golf-toualetas.html I have done several attempts but with no result. I anyone can help i will appreciate. My website runs in an Apache server with cpanel. Thank you

    Technical SEO | | alstam
    0
  • Adido-105399


    I have a client who sell retirement homes. Their current schema for each property is LocalBusiness - should this in fact be Product schema?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adido-105399
    0

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