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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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  • rachelmeyer


    Hey everyone, My team and I have been digging into this problem and can't find an answer - and it turns out this has been an issue for over year. I'll try to explain the best I can, but let me know if you have any questions. My predecessor noticed a non-existent page URL getting traffic in GA. He had the web dev team create a page so he could see where the traffic is coming from. The page has every directive under the sun on it; noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir, noimageindex, notranslate All of the traffic is (direct) / (none). It gets about 300 visits per day. Avg. time on page is 15:40, bounce rate is 99.6% and it doesn't show up in the funnel. Previous page path is 92% entrance; 8% homepage. Geo is 92% US; then diversified across countries. Browser is predominately Chrome. OS is only Windows, and device is only desktop. I've run this page through a backlink checker, and we get nothing. I've run it through Screaming Frog and it has no internal links pointing to it. I've tried putting quotes around the URL and googling it and we get a few websites, but they're very low authority and it isn't likely that they're sending 300+ visits per day. Also, since all of the traffic is direct, I don't think it's coming from a backlink anyway. This has become a personal quest for several of us, as we really want to figure out where that traffic is coming from. Any thoughts? What am I missing? It's kind of driving me crazy because I can't figure out what I've missed, so if anyone figures this out and is coming to Pubcon in November, I'll buy you a beer!! 🙂

    Reporting & Analytics | | rachelmeyer
    0
  • marchexmarketingmcc


    Hi guys -- Still waiting on Moz to index a page of mine. We launched a new site over two months ago. In the meantime, I really just need a list of internal links to a specific page because I want to change its URL. Does anybody know how to find that list (of internal links to 1 of my pages) without the Moz index? I appreciate the help!

    Technical SEO | | marchexmarketingmcc
    1
  • MrSem


    Is the effect of NAP inconsistency on search rankings basically a myth to justify business citation management services? I've been doing SEO for over 10 years but only recently started doing local businesses. I have yet to find any sort of published study that clearly shows a significant ranking effect by correcting an inconsistent NAP on any business directory site other than Google and Bing Business Listings. In fact, the publishers of any such articles claiming NAP inconsistency has a significant negative SEO effect are almost always businesses or people that are charging for such services. Gee, could they be a little biased? Obviously if you have an incorrect address that is far from the actual address, correcting it will help your ranking (think 3-pack) in the area close to your business but that's not really the type of ranking effect I'm talking about here.  I'm talking about a missing suite #, or an old address that is 1/2 block away from the new address but still the same phone number, or identical address but different phone (a toll free versus a local number). That kind of stuff. Of course you don't want to have an incorrect address or non-working phone number on places like Superpages, Yelp, Yellowpages, etc, but does anyone know of any place I can find good factual proof that having inconsistent NAPs on these sites has any significant effect on rankings? I'm sure some of the big SEO companies have the data to determine the effect. Or is this more of a "tin foil hat" / herd / OCD mentality on this subject that no one can prove (or disprove?)

    Local Listings | | MrSem
    0
  • LawMarketingYLF


    Recently there's been a move made in my company to only allow backlinks from websites on different c-block IP addresses. The most links we have from one c-block is 15. There is a wide variety of other IP addresses linking to our site as well. My question is - do we need to be so restrictive with using websites from the same c-block as long as the neighbourhood is good and we're not linking sites with full identical IPs (matching d-block as well)?

    Link Building | | LawMarketingYLF
    0
  • lohardiu9


    Hey guys, Is it possible in anyway to nofollow links via search console (not disavow) but just nofollow external links pointing to your site? Cheers.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lohardiu9
    0
  • aua


    Hi, Is there any negative SEO consequences from having too many pages private or not published. Can it like slow the site down or does it not matter? Someone in my dept. has so many pages started/not complete and besides being messy, I wonder if it has any negative impact on the site. Thanks

    Technical SEO | | aua
    1
  • HTXSEO


    We think we get link equity from some large travel domains to white label versions of our main website. These pages are noindex because they're the same URLs and content as our main B2C website and have canonicals to the pages we want indexed. Question is, is there REALLY link equity to pages on our domain which have "noindex,nofollow" on them? Secondly we're looking to put all these white label pages on a separate structure, to better protect our main indexed pages from duplicate content risks. The best bet would be to put them on a sub folder rather than a subdomain, yes? That way, even though the pages are still noindex, we'd get link equity from these big domains to www.ourdomain.com/subfolder where we wouldn't to subdomain.ourdomain.com? Thank you!

    Reporting & Analytics | | HTXSEO
    0
  • dsbud


    I know that descriptive image file names are important for SEO. But how important is it to include .png, .jpg, .gif (or whatever file extension) in the url path? i.e. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever vs. https://example.com/images/golden-retriever.jpg Furthermore, since you can set the filename in the Content-Disposition response header, is there any need to include the descriptive filename in the URL path? Since I'm pulling most of our images from a database, it'd be much simpler to not care about simulating a filename, and just reference an image id in my templates. Example: 1. Browser requests GET /images/123456
    2. Server responds with image setting both Content-Disposition, and Link (canonical) headers Content-Disposition: inline; filename="golden-retriever"
    Link: <https: 123456="" example.com="" images="">; rel="canonical"</https:>

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dsbud
    1
  • SoulSurfer8


    We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created. We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale. The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.

    Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer8
    0
  • Adab1


    A kitchen remodelling firm in Australia has noticed a big increase in spammy backlinks to their website since April this year. Majestic shows that referring domains and backlinks during that period have gone up from 400 domains (10,000 links) to 1,070 domains (47,000+ links). About 100 are sitewide links. The vast majority are "follow" links directed at image files on the site - ending in .jpg. Ahrefs now shows the number one anchor text (23%) is a period (full stop) "." Most of the links come from .us domains, eg: cowboysr.us
    blackphoto.us
    alldpic.com Google Search Console isn't showing any of these links, there's no penalty on the site and there's been no noticeable change in rankings (if anything organic clicks went up over May, June, July) ...  so we're wondering what action - if any - should be taken. Are these links likely to have a negative impact on the site and homepage? Should we disavow these links? Appreciate any advice. Thanks.

    Link Building | | Adab1
    0
  • Chris8198


    Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris8198
    0
  • SeoSheikh


    Hi, I have a MOZ PRO account which is brilliant for me. I am about to move my site from HTTP to HTTPS and was looking for a smooth way to list every page and its details so I can make sure I do the correct redirects etc.. before the switch to SSL. Do I need to get Screaming Frog, or can the tools with MOZ Pro ease my path just as well? Thanks

    Link Explorer | | SeoSheikh
    0
  • Wagster


    When people type in a certain keywords in my industry space (animated video), they usually have one of two intents: some want to see videos (for inspiration or entertainment or whatever) and some want to hire a company. We have pages that meet each intent. Some "Best of..." blog posts for the crowd that want to see videos (that might be top-of-the-funnel prospects, potentially) and a landing page for the buying-intent people. I'm seeing each ranking page as essentially two, kept in proper balance to meet search intent by click-throughs. So I'm betting that my landing page won't cannibalize the "best of..." page. Is that the right way to see it, or not?

    Link Building | | Wagster
    0
  • PangeaLangs


    Hello, We have quite a few articles "out there" that give us backlinks. We were thinking of also translating the content and submitting it to local content websites, so it can provide us with more backlinks. The main questions here, will this content be recognized as the same content as the English version? Also, being in another language, some of the anchor text might not hit the English keyword. Not sure how Google sees it. Any advise on the matter? thx!!

    Link Building | | PangeaLangs
    0
  • danatanseo


    Hi all, We have an opening for a Senior SEO Associate. Would love to hire someone in the Moz Community. Here are the details: Sr SEO Associate https://g.co/kgs/Ucwzp7 Cheers, Dana

    Jobs and Opportunities | | danatanseo
    0
  • navdm


    A client implemented hreflang tags in the site header. MOZ says you aren't supposed to do an hreflang Sitemap as well. My question is how should I do a Sitemap now (or should I do one at all)?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navdm
    0
  • dhisman


    Hello All, In google analytic I can see traffic from android browser & android webview so android webview is also a browser? Thanks!

    Reporting & Analytics | | dhisman
    0
  • Harini.M


    Hello All, I'm facing an issue with the MOZ Crawler. Every time it crawls my website , there will be an error message saying " **Moz was unable to crawl your site on Sep 13, 2017. **Our crawler was not able to access the robots.txt file on your site. This often occurs because of a server error from the robots.txt. Although this may have been caused by a temporary outage, we recommend making sure your robots.txt file is accessible and that your network and server are working correctly. Typically errors like this should be investigated and fixed by the site webmaster. " We changed the robots.txt file and checked it . but still the issue is not resolved. URL : https://www.khadination.shop/robots.txt Do let me know what went wrong and wjhat needs to be done. Any suggestion is appreciated. Thank you.

    Feature Requests | | Harini.M
    0
  • Kiakh1987


    Hello, My SEO audit on my site shows we have 858 external links with missing anchor, report shows Target URL and Source URL. How I can fix external links with missing anchor? None of them looks like spam, my target URL is all from our Social Media. Twitter, Google Plus, Linkedin, Pinterest, Facebook ... Here is the link to the the excel spread shit report and you can see it yourself. https://na53.salesforce.com/sfc/p/60000000IcOQ/a/f2000000UVi7/hBZ6Z1tGEFcJOTvVtfjYtYhi_HTw8fRqe9SMjuWcdOA We use ''Hootsuite'' to  shrink the URL and post in to our social media, is that maybe we having this problem now? Thank you,

    Social Media | | Kiakh1987
    0
  • rwat


    E.g. www.website.com/page/#keyword-anchor-text Where the part after the # is a section of the page you can jump to, and the title of that section is a secondary keyword you want the page to rank for?

    Algorithm Updates | | rwat
    0
  • Gavo


    Does anyone know if there is a really easy way to track a button in Google Analytics yourself? It seems that most button click goal setups involve some use of tricky code and I'm wondering if there is a much easier way to do this that will allow us to simply setup and track certain button clicks as goal conversions in Analytics. Your help here is much appreciated!

    Reporting & Analytics | | Gavo
    0

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