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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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Latest Questions

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  • cinchmedia


    I have a services page with a lot of rich text and a slideshow of images.  Currently, I am using a column of buttons to various services, and am wondering if a sidebar menu would be more effective for Google to crawl and rank?

    Web Design | | cinchmedia
    0
  • bcmull


    We are setting up websites for our dealers. We are considering whether it is better to set them up as independent domains (i.e. www.dealer-state-brand.com) or as subdomains (dealer-state.brand.com) Any thoughts?

    Local Listings | | bcmull
    0
  • J05B


    Hi all, I have been collecting reviews for a little while now. Ofcourse im hoping to cross the 150 reviews border soon 🙂 But i also added the review markup to my website to show up in organic results. This was working fine for a while. I did not added the markup to my homepage. But now for somehow google is not showing this review markup anymore in search results. So i decided to give the company that is hosting the review tool (google partner also) a call. The informed me that they had a lot of calls and e-mails since 2 weeks from their customers. All with the same problem that review markup is not used in search results anymore. Anyone else had this, or know about this issue?

    On-Page Optimization | | J05B
    0
  • vtmoz


    Our website CMS is wordpress. Due to the Genesis Framework; below 4 phrases tuned into h2 tags: Skip links, Header Right, Main navigation and Footer. How to remove these?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
    0
  • SeoSheikh


    Hi folks, I know the majority of you are based in the US, so won't be experiencing the same problem as me. I have set up a Google My Business account for a company here in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The only problem is that I can't verify it using the normal methods like a postcard being sent out as the UAE doesn't have a postal service, so there are no postcodes to target an address. Basically I go through the process of creating a GMB account, setting the address details and map marker, then try to verify the account by postcard (this is the only way). I wait 14+ days but still no postcard arrives for obvious reasons - no postal address! So - my question is, how do we get round this problem? I know it can be done as there are plenty of businesses out there in Dubai that are verified on Google maps and GMB. Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

    Local Listings | | SeoSheikh
    0
  • scienceisrad


    I would love to get you all's take on Gotch SEO.  I am gearing up to link build for a site in the next several months, and have been reading up from sources other than Moz, in preparation.  (Need to re-read Moz's guide, too, but I have already read it last year)  I'm reading Gotch SEO's main link building method articles right now, and am wondering what you all think.  Do you think they have a good approach and are generally reliable? Likewise, has anyone used their service for getting a link?  What was your experience?  Or if you haven't used the service, any quick takes on it?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scienceisrad
    0
  • odihost


    I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost
    0
  • insurifyusa


    Hi there! We are currently evaluating data visualization / charting tools for rich content. Are there any open source solutions that work best in your opinion? Why? Some specific questions: Are static image / svg rendered images better than a javascript dynamic chart (canvas/HTML5)? Which gets indexed better? Is there any proven or perceived benefit to using Google Charts API that gives you an SEO boost? Are there tools for progressively enhancing HTML raw data tables to generate charts? Looking at a couple of solutions: Google Charts API C3.js Chartjs Thanks for your feedback!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | insurifyusa
    0
  • Tylerj


    I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj
    0
  • donsilvernail


    I have a client who is a general practice Lawyer. This particular client refuses to acquire free profiles from legal sites such as AVVO, Super Lawyers, and Justia. I have been working with this client for a year and have had a tough time getting him to rank in an ultra competitive marketplace. The other law clients I handle have all secured these backlinks and traffic is produced, domain and page authority is much higher. My client say that he has heard from other lawyers that sites like AVVO produce bad or little results, so he wants no part of them. I feel these lawyers are giving him bad advice. They are competitors and each of them have their profiles on these sites. I thought I would get some thoughts from the community to maybe help back my thoughts on these particular back links. Thanks

    Local SEO | | donsilvernail
    1
  • fenixbazaar


    I have been searching through these forums and haven't come across someone that faces the same issue I am. The folks on the Google forums are certain this is an algorithm issue, but I just can't see the logic in that because this appears to be an issue fairly unique to me. I'll take you through what I've gone through. Sorry for it being long. Website URL: https://fenixbazaar.com 1. In early February, I made the switch to https with some small hiccups. Overall however the move was smooth, had redirects all in place, sitemap, indexing was all fine. 2. One night, my organic traffic dropped by almost 100%. All of my top-ranking articles completely disappeared from rank. Top keyword searches were no longer yielding my best performing articles on the front page of results, nor on the last page of results. My pages were still being indexed, but keyword searches weren't delivering my pages in results. I went from 70-100 active users to 0. 3. The next morning, everything was fine. Traffic back up. Top keywords yielding results for my site on the front page. All was back to normal. Traffic shot up. Only problem was the same issue happened that night, and again for the next three nights. Up and down. 4. I had a developer and SEO guy look into my backend to make sure everything was okay. He said there were some redirection issues but nothing that would cause such a significant drop. No errors in Search Console. No warnings. 5. Eventually, the issue stopped and my traffic improved back to where it was. Then everything went great: the site was accepted into Google News, I installed AMP pages perfectly and my traffic boomed for almost 2 weeks. 6. At this point numerous issues with my host provider, price increases, and incredibly outdated cpanel forced me to change hosts. I did without any issues, although I lost a number of articles albeit low-traffic ones in the move. These now deliver 404s and are no longer indexed in the sitemap. 7. After the move there were a number of AMP errors, which I resolved and now I sit at 0 errors. Perfect...or so it seems. 8. Last week I applied for hsts preload and am awaiting submission. My site was in working order and appeared set to get submitted. I applied after I changed hosts. 9. The past 5 days or so has seen good traffic, fantastic traffic to my AMP pages, great Google News tracking, linking from high-authority sites. Good performance all round. 10. I wake up this morning to find 0 active people on my site. I do a Google search and notice my site isn't even the first result whenever I do an actual search for my name. The site doesn't even rank for its own name! My site is still indexed but search results do not yield results for my actual sites. Check Search Console and realised the sitemap had been "processed" yesterday with most pages indexed, which is weird because it was submitted and processed about a week earlier. I resubmitted the sitemap and it appears to have been processed and approved immediately. No changes to search results. 11. All top-ranking content that previously placed in carousal or "Top Stories" in Google News have gone. Top-ranking keywords no longer bring back results with my site: I went through the top 10 ranking keywords for my site, my pages don't appear anywhere in the results, going as far back as page 20 (last page). The pages are still indexed when I check, but simply don't appear in search results. It's happening all over again! Is this an issue any of you have heard of before? Where a site is still being indexed, but has been completely removed from search results, only to return within a few hours? Up and down? I suspect it may be a technical issue, first with the move to https, and now with changing hosts. The fact the sitemap says processed yesterday, suggests maybe it updated and removed the 404s (there were maybe 10), and now Google is attempting to reindexed? Could this be viable? The reason I am skeptical of it being an algorithm issue is because within a matter of hours my articles are ranking again for certain keywords. And this issue has only happened after a change to the site has been applied. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated 🙂

    Algorithm Updates | | fenixbazaar
    0
  • Barn2Plugins


    Hi, I'm using Keyword Explorer to prioritise keywords. This is really hard as most of my keywords say 'no data' when I import them. How can I get this data please so that the Potential column is more accurate? Thanks

    Link Explorer | | Barn2Plugins
    3
  • vtmoz


    Hi all, We always mention "brand & keyword" in every page title along with topic in the website, like "Topic | vertigo tiles". Let's say there is a sub-directory with hundreds of pages...what will be the best page title practice in mentioning "brand & keyword" across all pages of sub-directory to benefit in-terms if SEO? Can we add "vertigo tiles" to all pages of sub-directory? Or we must not give same phrase? Thanks,

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
    0
  • WebMarkets


    A) what is a realistic timeline to increase a websites domain authority by 20 points? B) what are the most important factors to increase a websites domain authority?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarkets
    0
  • pdrama231


    Hi Mozzers, My first Moz post! Yay! I'm excited to join the squad 🙂 My client is a full service entertainment company serving the Washington DC Metro area (DC, MD & VA) and offers a host of services for those wishing to throw events/parties. Think DJs for weddings, cool photo booths, ballroom lighting etc. I'm wondering what the right URL structure should be. I've noticed that some of our competitors do put DC area keywords in their URLs, but with the moves of SERPs to focus a lot more on quality over keyword density, I'm wondering if we should focus on location based keywords in traditional areas on page (e.g. title tags, headers, metas, content etc) instead of having keywords in the URLs alongside the traditional areas I just mentioned. So, on every product related page should we do something like: example.com/weddings/planners-washington-dc-md-va
    example.com/weddings/djs-washington-dc-md-va
    example.com/weddings/ballroom-lighting-washington-dc-md-va OR example.com/weddings/planners
    example.com/weddings/djs
    example.com/weddings/ballroom-lighting In both cases, we'd put the necessary location based keywords in the proper places on-page. If we follow the location-in-URL tactic, we'd use DC area terms in all subsequent product page URLs as well. Essentially, every page outside of the home page would have a location in it. Thoughts? Thank you!!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pdrama231
    0
  • TaylorRHawkins


    Good afternoon everyone! I wanted to start a discourse on a subject that I think might benefit a few select readers. What would be your best plan-of-action to successfully propose and execute a Local-SEO campaign for a small, local business in a rural town? The type of town that has next to zero local directories, the type of business that has hardly any (if any at all) "fresh mentions" on the internet, etc. I'm interested to see how other SEOs would handle tackling this kind of campaign. Can't wait to hear what people have to say! 
    Thanks! 
    Taylor

    Local Listings | | TaylorRHawkins
    1
  • DPA


    Hello all, The company that develops our website recently contacted and asked me if we could remove a large amount of URL rewrites. I've described a few factors and my main questions below. Some information: One year ago we did a large migration. We went from 27 websites to one main website. We have got about 2000 rewrites in the htaccess file. And the file is 208kb. A lot of links from our old domains still have incoming traffic which are handled by the rewrite rules mentioned above. Questions:
    The company that develops our website said that the htaccess file is too large and is causing or could be causing us website performance issues. They have asked us to remove URL rewrites.
    My question is:
    a) How many rewrites is too much? 
    b) Is the filesize of the htaccess of any importance or is it just the amount of rewrites in the file?
    c) Could we solve any potential server/website performance issues due to a large htaccess file in any other way? Increasing some values like 'post_max_size' or by any other solutions handled serverside? I do not have a lot of knowledge of htaccess rules but I've seen websites that handled over a million of rewrite rules. This is why I'm having doubts on whether removing URL rewrites is the only solution and possibly not the best solution for us. Hopefully you can help me any further and with the best way to proceed without losing traffic or causing 404 pages. Thanks in advance!
    Iordache Voicu

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DPA
    0
  • brettmandoes


    Hello fellow Mozzers, In Google's knowledge panel there is a section at the bottom that says "people also search for" and a list of competitors is displayed. I'm hoping to get some information I can use to get my client listed there on top of the local organic results. The more SERP presence, the better. Attached image should provide clarity to those who are confused. I suspect I know the answer to this question, but since I can't find a source to verify my beliefs, I'm crowdsourcing. Thanks in advance! NhoihY1

    Local Listings | | brettmandoes
    0
  • whiteonlySEO


    Hi, I have quite a few orphan pages on my site and we see that our rankings have fell significantly over the past 6 months. Can this have be negatively affecting our rankings? Thank you.

    On-Page Optimization | | whiteonlySEO
    0
  • Bee159


    Hi all, I'm working on a dentist's website and want some advice on the best way to lay out the navigation. I would like to know which structure will help the site work naturally. I feel the second example would be better as it would focus the 'power' around the type of treatment and get that to rank better. .com/assessment/whitening
    .com/assessment/straightening
    .com/treatment/whitening
    .com/treatment/straightening or .com/whitening/assessment
    .com/straightening/assessment
    .com/whitening/treatment
    .com/straightening/treatment Please advise, thanks.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee159
    0
  • 94501


    Hi, Just started working with a site that has the occasional url with a capital, but then the url in the canonical as lower case. Neither, when entered in a browser, resolves to the other. It's a Shopify site. What do you think I should do?

    Technical SEO | | 94501
    0
  • AndrewMicek


    I have some new pages on my site, and Moz gives them a very low PA ranking. I am wondering if these scores are updated monthly or quarterly? I'm not sure how frequently to check back for updated scoring.

    API | | AndrewMicek
    0
  • MichaelJanik


    My site is about jokes. I wonder what schema markup could I use to be more visible in the search results.

    On-Page Optimization | | MichaelJanik
    0
  • CayenneRed89


    Hi Guys I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating. The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5. What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets. They are all ranking fine.   It is only 1 keyword. The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference? The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories. The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange. What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business  - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword. If anyone has any ideas  or feedback that would be great! Thanks, Duncan

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed89
    0
  • moon-boots


    I know that duplicate H1 and H2 tags are a red flag for Google, but does the same apply for H3, H4 and H5 tags? A lot of my products have the same H5 tags and I'm wondering whether or not that is pulling down my keyword rank.

    On-Page Optimization | | moon-boots
    0
  • NortonSupportSEO


    Can we have organization markup schema for subdomain ? For example if my main domain is xyz.com and subdomain is sub.xyz.com If i plan to have organization markup schema for subdomain how should it look like ? Should the markup schema must have main domain url or sub domain url in markup schema ? Should it be like this ?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NortonSupportSEO
    0
  • cinzia09


    Hi, There is a lot of debate going on on whether to use a single keyword per page or multiple keywords per page. What I know for sure is that it is not advisable to repeat the same exact keyword in different pages. I need to optimize product pages, categories and pages for an online store and still do not know if it is better to: 1-work with one main keyword per page plus latent semantic keywords, 2-to optimize a page for multiple different keywords (2 to 4 keywords) which are strongly related to the main topic or to the product sold in a particular product page 3- use single keyword for each page (and no more than one keyword per page). Some seo gurus argue this is the best way to get higher ranking for that particular page in the serps. My personal opinion would be 1 or 2, but I would like to hear what you suggest and think about it. Any suggestion or opinion is welcome and appreciated. Thanks in advance

    On-Page Optimization | | cinzia09
    0

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