Latest Questions
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Decrement in Domain Authority
Hi, We are a bit confused. Recently we saw a drop in Domain Authority Our organic search is increased but DA decreased By 1 what cause in decrements of DA?
On-Page Optimization | | torbett
We made all the changes suggested by MOZ for improving Domain Authority. We are confused because our organic search is increased but Domain Authority Goes Down. What should we do to improve domain authority?0 -
Not existing domains linking to my website (spam)
Hello, When i run my platform www.taobao.nl through https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ i see a lot of nasty adult domains that link to my platform. These give a very negative (spam)score to my platform. I already disavowed quite a few via Webmastertools, but they keep coming. When i check the names in the Whois, they don't even seem to exist! (anymore) What could cause this and how can i end it?? Thanks for your help! Sander
Link Explorer | | benhond1 -
Schema question
Hi all, We have two Trustpilot schemas (Local Business) on our web pages ( One on desktop / one on mobile) but we are finding that it is not updating the number of reviews in the search results. When using the tool : https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/ , the test results are coming back ok. I have two ideas as to why it may not be working; 1) The duplication of the schema code is causing issues 2) We had to change the html code for all of our 50+ backend pages using a search&replace WordPress plugin to save a vast amount of time. Maybe this is plugin related? The fact that the google testing tool gives back positive results adds to the confusion. I test both of the theorised issues to see if it provides a fixes. Can anyone shed some further light on this issue? Is there something obvious I am missing? All responses are greatly appreciated! Thanks, Tom p.s. Example Page: https://www.allcleartravel.co.uk/asthma-travel-insurance/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AllClearMarketing0 -
Impressions - AdWords vs Analytics
Given AdWords is a paid service, you'd hope the figures are accurate. For an example (exact match) keyword last month, AdWords says there were 14,253 impressions on Google search (i.e. not search partners or display network). However, going over to Analytics, for the same month it suggests 4,500 impressions for the same keyword. Google AdWords says the following about impressions: "An impression is counted each time your ad is served on Google's ad networks, such as on Google.com or other publisher websites and apps." "...How often your ad is shown. An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network." Google Analytics explains impressions as: "The number of times any URL from your site appeared in search results viewed by a user, not including paid AdWords search impressions." Can anyone help clarify what is an accurate way of attaining monthly search figures, i.e. what is my overall potential Google customer base? I've also tried the Keyword Planner - which averages monthly searches - and it gives me 18,100 impressions for the same keyword (almost the two above figures added). Thanks! Rob
Paid Search Marketing | | englebert0 -
Ranking drop
Hello there, Based on Moz's rank tracker our keywords ranking have been dropping in ranking. Does anyone know what might be the cause? We have been building quality "white hat" links which are very relevant to our niche Thanks, Robert
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
SSL redirect issue
Hi guys, I have a site that has some internal pages with SSL. Recently i noticed that if i put https://mydomain.com, this URL is accessible but all the design is messed up. My site is on wordpress and i use "redirection" plugin for all the 301 redirect. So i decided to add a new 301 redirect from https://mydomain.com to my actual URL version of home page http://mydomain.com. After doing that, my home page doesn't load at all. Does anybody know what happens? Thank you for advice!
Technical SEO | | odmsoft0 -
Subdomain question
Hi guys, I have a subdomain on my site that i want to completely remove from the index. I tried already everything to remove it but it is special situation so the only choice i have left is to remove it from Search Console in "Remove URLs" feature. So my question is: if i remove my root subdomain (example: http://subdomain.mydomain.com/) via "Remove URLs" feature in Webmaster Console, will it remove all the URLs coming from that particular domain as well? I also want to make sure that my root domain will stay untouched and be functioning normally. Thank you for advice!
Technical SEO | | odmsoft0 -
Google Tag Manager Tracking
We have Google Tag Manager set up to track our website https://kontenta.co.uk/ Although we have a blog - https://kontenta.co.uk/designroom/ I'm just wondering if it's better to track the sites separately? If so, how do I add the blog to tag manager? Does it need setting up as a filter to match the regular expression https://kontenta.co.uk/designroom/* We just need to figure out the best way to measure both the website and blog traffic and if users are coming from the blog to the site, and what interactions they are making. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Jseddon920 -
Google Images and slideshow copyright
Hello, I made a slideshow and referenced Google Images without searching with advanced copyright settings. Can I just put a copyright disclaimer in my video, or do I need to reshoot it? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Referral exclusion not working correctly?
Hi!I've added our gateway payment system to the Referral Exclusion List a few months ago. Nevertheless, it continues to appear as a referral, and obviously taking almost all of the revenue. Does it work for you? Do you know why could it be not working for my website?Thanks for your response!
Reporting & Analytics | | arielbortz0 -
Duplicate Title Tag
We are getting a Duplicate Title Tag error on our pages but we have different titles and the differences are being seen by Google. We are using the code <%@ Page Title="School Lunch Software Pricing || EZ School Apps"%> Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | EZParentCenter0 -
Z-indexed content
I have some content on a page that I am not using any type of css hiding techniques, but I am using an image with a higher z-index in order to prevent the text from being seen until a user clicks a link to have the content scroll down. Are there any negative repercussions for doing this in regards to SEO?
Technical SEO | | cokergroup0 -
302 Status Code for .com but 200 Status Code for .com/
I ran a moz crawl report for one of my sites. For mywebsite.com I'm getting a 302 HTTP Status Code but for mywebsite.com/ I'm getting a 200 HTTP Status Code. mywebsite.com -Title tag "blank" - Meta Description "blank" - HTTP Status Code "302" - Referrer "blank" - Content Type Header "blank" - 301/302 target "/" - Rel-Canonical Target "blank" mywebsite.com/ - Title tag "correct tag" - Meta Description "correct tag" - HTTP Status Code "200" - Referrer "mysite.com" - Content Type Header "text/html" - 301/302 target "blank" - Rel-Canonical Target "mysite.com/" Will this cause any issues with the search engines? Is there a way to fix this? I'm on wordpress and use Yoast SEO premium plugin. I have sites ranking in many different niches and have done similar white hat SEO for all of my others. They are ranking in competitive niches but for some reason this site is in the 200-300s for basically all keywords in not a very competitive niche. It has excellent content, links and no penalties. I'm trying to find anything that could be the cause of this. Thanks! <colgroup><col width="64"></colgroup>
Moz Pro | | cccreationsinc
| Rel-Canonical Target |0 -
Client would like to 301 redirect the homepage to a category page
Hello MOZ Community!!! I would like your expert opinions on a scenario, please! My client is an ecommerce company, and currently has one of its category pages outranking its homepage for a few key phrases. The homepage, however, has a better conversion rate. So, the client is asking that we make the homepage the category URL, so http://www.theirsite.com/blue-clothes. The existing homepage URL - http://www.theirsite.com - would 301 REDIRECT to the category page - which would render the current version of the homepage. Therefore, there would be nothing, ZERO content, on the MAIN URL: http://www.theirsite.com Has anyone ever done this before? What are the pros and the cons of this practice? Here is my same client, for reference: https://moz.com/community/q/issue-with-category-ranking-on-page-1-vs-homepage-ranking-on-page-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Is there an automated way to test what HREFLANG is ranking for in google and yandex?
Hi everyone, We implemented HREFLANG code for our international sites. We are wondering is there an automated way to test is HREFLANG is working vs. manually browsing in each international search engine? Also, we implemented this a few days ago, and google webmaster tools stlil hasn't picked up that we have it implemented. I've heard it taking anywhere from 2-8 days. At what point would we see results. our site is http://www.datacard.com Is there an order that the site listings have to follow, for example should x-default be the last item listed? Thanks, Laura
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson320 -
Number of indexed pages dropped. No manual action though?
I have a client who had their WordPress site hacked. At that point there was no message from Google in webmaster tools and the search results for their pages still looked normal. They paid sitelock to fix the site. This was all about a month ago. Logging into Webmaster Tools now there are still no messages from Google nor anything on the manual actions page. Their organic traffic is essentially gone. Looking at the submitted sitemap only 3 of their 121 submitted pages are indexed. Before this all of them where in the index. Looking at the index status report I can see that the number of indexed pages dropped completely off the map. We are sure that the site is free of malware. This client has done no fishy SEO practices. What can be done?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | connectiveWeb0 -
Help... To Optimize Category Page or Not?
My question is about whether to optimize a category page or not, but it’s a rather odd situation. Here’s a bit of background to start. When we relaunched our site, about six months ago, we had primary, secondary, and tertiary categories created. A user could reach all three levels by clicking through the site. Then we decided instead of linking to the tertiary categories, that we’d turn them into filters which can be applied at the secondary level. Thus, there is not actually a direct link to the 3rd level categories on the site. An important side note, I did check and confirm they are still included in the sitemap file. My initial thoughts were to forget any further optimization of those 3rd level categories, but as it turns out we still have rankings for some of them. Now the question… Because some of these pages are ranking and are found in the sitemap, should I include them in my SEO plan to build up and optimize, or because they are no longer linked to directly on the site will they eventually fizzle out (and I shouldn’t do anything further). This is such a unique situation that I am really looking for some insight from the community. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Why only a few pages of my website are being indexed by google
Our website www.navisyachts.com has in its sitemap over 3000 pages of information, and this is all unique content written by our team. Now Google Webmaster central shows only 100 urls indexed from 3500 submitted. Can you help me understand why and how I can fix this issue? The website has 4 years old, is a Joomla 3.3 up to date. It has part of the content in the Joomla core content systems and part in K2. Thank you. Pablo
Reporting & Analytics | | FWC_SEO0 -
Where do I place my blog
Sorry but this has probably been discussed earlier, but things change all the time. Gonna start blogging about my webside.
Content Development | | helgeolaussen
Where should I place my blog to get most SEO benefits for my main page?
mysite.xx/blog
blog.mysite.xx (on a server with diffrent ip)
An external TDL.0 -
Pop up question and link flow?
Does a pop up like the one on this site www stressfreeprint co uk (top left corner about us, who we are) count as an external link or would link juice not flow to it. I like to have a few pages that i don't want to waste link juice on but would still like to have them and hope this is the answer.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
HTTPS to HTTP in India
I had a question with reference to https protocol. We are planning to shift from HTTPs to HTTP version of the website will it provide any significant advantage in ranking better in Google. This question is specific to Google India and that too in a competitive landscape such as Finance
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | glitterbug0 -
Where to place your important links to gain maximum SEO benefits . Left or Right?
People spent **more than twice as much time looking at the left side **of the page and that is the reason it's good practice to place your important links in left side.
Technical SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Is there a way to make Google realize/detect scraper content?
Good morning,Theory states that duplicated content reduces certain keywords’ position in Google. It also says that a web who copy content will be penalized. Furthermore, we have spam report tools and the scraper report to inform against these bad practices.In my case: the website, both, sells content to other sites and write and prepare its own content which is not in sale. However, other sites copy these last ones, publish them and Google do not penalize their position in results (not in organic results neither in Google news), even though they are reported using Google tools for that purpose.Could someone explain this to me? Is there a way to make Google realize/detect these bad practices?Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoseoseos0 -
How does duplicate content work when creating location specific pages?
In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?
Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr0 -
Mobile Meta Descriptions
Hi we have a e-commerce site on Magento. A lot of the current current meta descriptions are over 120 characters, which is approximately what Google cuts off for mobile search. We want to create mobile meta descriptions but where would we add them to the CMS and how do we tell Google to use the mobile meta description when the site is responsive. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Thanks, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
I have a site that is showing Internal 0 Equity-Passing Links, 0 Internal links, and every page bar the homepage has a PageAuthority of 0\. Any suggestions on why this could be?
The website has been around for several years, although did undergo a significant redesign at the end of last year. I greatly appreciate any help.
Moz Pro | | embracedarrenhughes0 -
Looking to hire an SEO Specialist: Freelance at 60-80 hours per month ongoing
I'm posting this on behalf of someone I know looking to hire an SEO guru. Sounds like a great opportunity for a freelancer looking for guaranteed monthly work. The details can be found at: [link deleted]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 2wheelpartssupply0 -
Link Spam from Competitor Help
A clients link profile is recently getting lots of spam links related to "abortion pills" and "does my husband cheat" I found a few of the sites that link, and it appears that there is some malicious code on the site injecting links at the top of the site. http://www.med-reporter.at/index.asp?men=Gesundheit&submen=Produkte&artid=1587&kategorie=&blockzl=3 Can anyone look at the link above and tell me what network or software is creating these links?
Technical SEO | | webbroi0 -
Why has my website stopped working?
Signed up to Moz and my site is now down as it's "gathering data". Is this normal?
Getting Started | | BurrowsPT0 -
WEBMASTER console: increase in the number of URLs we were blocked from crawling due to authorization permission errors.
Hi guys,I received this warning in my webmaster console: "Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs we were blocked from crawling due to authorization permission errors." So i went to "Crawl Errors" section and i found such errors under "Access denied" status: ?page_name=Cheap+Viagra+Gold+Online&id=471 ?page_name=Cheapest+Viagra+Us+Licensed+Pharmacies&id=1603 and many happy URLs like these. Does anybody know what this is and where it comes from? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | odmsoft0 -
Flip-Flopping domains - 301 redirect question
We have a client who has had the following domain setup for some time: longdomain.com 301 -> shortdomain.com Now, they would like to go back to the original longdomain.com, and will have the following setup: shortdomain.com 301 -> longdomain.com Obviously, I'm concerned about redirect loops cached in the browser. I plan to have the 301's from longdomain.com changed over to 302's for two weeks ahead of the change, so that hopefully when the change happens, browsers and search engines are more ready to respond. I also plan to establish rel=canonical on the longdomain.com pages after the switch. Is there anything else you'd recommend to help with the changeover? Should we plan for an intermediary period were both domains are serving the content, so that the redirects can be purged, before being re-established the other direction? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bit-Wizards0 -
Index bloating issue
Hello, In the last month, I noticed a huge spike in the number of pages indexed on my site, which I think is impacting my SEO quality score. While I've only have about 90 pages on my site map, the number of pages indexed jumped to 446, with about 536 pages being blocked by robots. At first we thought this might be due to duplicate product pages showing up in different categories on my site, but we added something to our robot.txt file to not index those pages. But the number has not gone down. I've tried to consult with our hosting vendor, but no one seems to be concerned or have any idea why there was such a big jump in the last month. Any insights or pointers would be so greatly appreciated, so that I can fix/improve my SEO as quickly as possible! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Saison0 -
Free Media Site / High Traffic / Low Engagement / Strategies and Questions
Hi, Imagine a site "mediapalooza dot com" where the only thing you do there is view free media. Yet Google Analytics is showing the average view of a media page is about a minute; where the average length of media is 20 - 90 minutes. And imagine that most of this media is "classic" and that it is generally not available elsewhere. Note also that the site ranks terribly in Google, despite having decent Domain Authority (in the high 30's), Page Authority in the mid 40's and a great site and otherwise quite active international user base with page views in the tens of thousands per month. Is it possible that GA is not tracking engagement (time on site) correctly? Even accounting for the imperfect method of GA that measures "next key pressed" as a way to terminate the page as a way to measure time on page, our stats are truly abysmal, in the tenths of a percentage point of time measured when compared with actual time we think the pages are being used. If so, will getting engagement tracking to more accurately measure time on specif pages and site signal Google that this site is actually more important than current ranking indicates? There's lots of discussion about "dwell time" as this relates to ranking, and I'm postulating that if we can show Google that we have extremely good engagement instead of the super low stats that we are reporting now, then we might get a boost in ranking. Am I crazy? Has anyone got any data that proves or disproves this theory? as I write this out, I detect many issues - let's have a discussion on what else might be happening here. We already know that low engagement = low ranking. Will fixing GA to show true engagement have any noticeable impact on ranking? Can't wait to see what the MOZZERS think of this!
Reporting & Analytics | | seo_plus0 -
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having duplicate content. I mean somewhere google says they will prefer original content & will give preference to them who have original content but this statement contradict when I see Indeed.com as they aggregate content from other sites but still rank higher than original content provider side. How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Search Analytics update in Google Webmasters Tools? Where can we find search queries bringing traffic to website?
I just got up and see Search Analytic's being updated today totally. Their is no option to see old reports. As Search Analytics only share 999 keywords.
Search Behavior | | csfarnsworth
Whats next now?
How can a webmaster finds all search queries bringing traffic to his website?
Any paid or free tool?
Google Analytic's > Acquisition > Search engine optimization > search queries will this area helps? Whole question revolves around. Any good tool that will help you find all the queries bringing traffic to my website?0 -
Renew Our Yahoo Directory Listing?
Our yearly renewal for the Yahoo Directory is coming up. Has anyone cancelled their renewal, and if so, did you see a drop in SEO? Not sure whether to renew this or not. Thank you for any insight.
Link Building | | christopherinc0 -
DA advise Dutch National Webshop
Hi all! What do you advise us to do to gain DA naturaly for www.eppinga.nl? The new shop is build on www.eppinga.nl while the old shop was http://eppinga.nl the second one has DA of 20 while our new shop is on 13 at the moment. All help is very welcome! Thanx in advance!
Link Building | | Tymen0 -
How to remove subdomains in a clean way?
Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!
On-Page Optimization | | Gaolga0 -
Closing Old Locations with Moz Local
I'm sure the answer is pretty simple, but how are we supposed to report an old location as closed in Moz Local? I'd like to mark an old address as closed in all of the major data providers. Of course, I can claim the new location, but I do I need to claim the old location and then somehow mark it closed? When I do a search with Moz, it gives me five results for a doctor who has a single location now (I'm not posting the actual name because I just don't want this forum to appear for searches for the doctor): <address>Dr. Doctor Name, DMD Verified
Moz Local | | TomBristol
Old Address
Current Phone</address> <address>Doctor Name, DMD Verified
Current Address
Current Phone</address> <address>**Periodontist, Doctor Name, DMD, PC **Verified
Current Address (Alternate City Name)
Current Phone</address> <address>Doctor Name, DMD
Current Address (Alternate City Name)
Current Phone</address> <address>Doctor Name
Old Address
Current Phone</address> Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks! Tom0 -
General drop in rankings
We've made a LOT of improvements to our on page SEO and we've been on the right track, but since about 26/7 our rankings appears to have gone down. Since early 2015 we've reworked a lot of the copy on our site to improve the unique/duplicate ratio, we've redone a lot of urls that didn't make any sense. We've improved image alt-text and file names. We've reduced image size on most of the site and we have disavowed spam links (obvious ones like nike shoes and oakley glasses). We've basically improved on-site SEO as much as we can with headers and whatnot. We've been hacked 4 times since January and we had two partial manual penalties from Google, but they were quickly dealt with and we've switched server to one that is both safer and a lot faster. Most of the hacked content seems to have disappeared from Googles index but not all of it. We have also tried our best to deal with URL parameters and we've made 301's out of hundreds of URLs with duplicate content from old slideshows that basically only had an image. And there's even more things we've done like working a lot more with social media, but despite all that were loosing ranking every week and our SEOlytics SVR is at its lowest since early 2014. And we've never (afaik) bought links or anything like that. Obviously we're doing something wrong but frankly we're running out of ideas. We've lost rankings on individual important phrases but there's site-wide general drop.
On-Page Optimization | | Emil_780 -
Why would one of the big 4 banks in Australia recently start defining meta-keywords?
Hi All, Hope everyone had a nice weekend. I just stumbled upon one of our competitors who for some reason is all of a sudden defining meta keywords for their product pages. I find this extremely strange since its a definite no-no to define these? They are one of the largest (Chase, Barclays equivalent) in Australia with a large digital team. Do they know something we don't? Hope someone can help. Cheers, Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CFCU0 -
Sitemap Priority and Recency
Perhaps more of a discussion here than a definite answer, but we are looking at making periodic changes to the priority and recency of our sitemap pages, but would have to repopulate that information each time our plugin updates for our WordPress site. Is this something that is even worth doing or are these updates not impactful enough to merit adding it to our process? Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReunionMarketing0
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