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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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  • cinzia09


    Hi,I have some questions related to duplicate content on e-commerce websites. 1)If a single product goes to multiple categories (eg. A black elegant dress could be listed in two categories like "black dresses" and "elegant dresses") is it considered duplicate content even if the product url is unique? e.g www.website.com/black-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/elegant-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/black-elegant-dress unique url > this is the way my products urls look like Does google perceive this as duplicated content? The path to the content is only one, so it shouldn't be seen as duplicated content, though the product is repeated in different categories.This is the most important concern I actually have. It is a small thing but if I set this wrong all website would be affected and thus penalised, so I need to know how I can handle it. 2- I am using wordpress + woocommerce. The website is built with categories and subcategories. When I create a product in the product page backend is it advisable to select  just the lowest subcategory or is it better to select both main category and subcategory in which the product belongs? I usually select the subcategory alone.  Looking forward to your reply and suggestions. thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cinzia09
    1
  • moon-boots


    I have a lot of backlinks ending with .xyz, around 20%, and they look very suspicious. Should I disavow these? Here are a few: yourrelicsbargains.xyz fantasticsiteinfo.xyz yourvintagelifestyle.xyz usefuldiscount4u.xyz bestdealsaction.xyz bestmemorabilialifestyle.xyz 59177.net lovecollectorsbargains.xyz

    Link Building | | moon-boots
    0
  • BlueCorona


    If someone leaves a review of your business on your Google My Business listing, and you respond to that review, will they receive an email notification of your response to their review? We are working with a client who has unanswered reviews from several years ago, and though it's best practice to respond to all reviews, we didn't want to respond to reviews from 2013 if the person (who has likely forgot about their experience with the business in question) is going to get an email notifying them of our late response to their review. Thank you!

    Reviews and Ratings | | BlueCorona
    1
  • LoganRay


    I'm sure most of you have heard about this startup, RankScience, that has big ambitions to disrupt the SEO industry with their automated (I know I know...the word 'automated' and 'SEO' in the same sentence!!!) optimization software. Their claim is that by running thousands of congruent A/B tests on your site, they can maximize rankings and organic traffic. Initially my thoughts were "oh crap, there goes my (and a lot of other people's) career". But then I started thinking about it a bit more and realized a couple things. First, software can't replace a face-to-face client meeting. Being in an agency world as most of us are, client interactions are vital to a sustained partnership. Second, someone is going to have to understand what this software does, configure it, and monitor it, and I'm ok with that being part of my job if that's how the industry shifts. Third, and most importantly, in theory this software has the capability to reverse engineer search algorithms. If they had the data of 10,000 websites using their platform and are collecting data on what works and what doesn't, it's only a matter of time before they can pick apart the algorithm piece by piece to figure out exactly how it works. Google is obviously not going to like that very much and will almost certainly right the ship. That's my 2 cents, looking forward to what your thoughts are on RankScience and the future of our industry.

    Algorithm Updates | | LoganRay
    2
  • vtmoz


    Hi Moz communtity, Let's say a website has multiple sub-domains with hundreds and thousands of pages. Generally we will be mentioning "primary keyword & "brand name" on every page of website. Can we do same on all pages of sub-domains to increase the authority of website for this primary keyword in Google? Or it gonna end up as negative impact if Google consider as duplicate content being mentioned same keyword and brand name on every page even on website and all pages of sub domains? Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
    0
  • ahmetkul


    Hi guys, I am new to SEO and I have a question for you guys. We created a sitemap for our website. I was thinking of creating a sitemap link on our homepage. Do you think it's a good idea? Would this help us in terms of ranking improvements? Or would help with anything at all? Thanks

    Algorithm Updates | | ahmetkul
    0
  • KathleenDC


    Currently, the way our site is set up, our clients generally visit our homepage and then login through a separate page that is a subdomain, or they can read our blog/support articles that are also on separate subdomains. From my understanding, this can be counted as a bounce, and I know this sorta of site structure isn't ideal, but with our current dev resources and dependencies, fixing this isn't going to happen overnight. Regardless, what would be the easiest way to implement this fix witihn the Google Analytics code? EX: If someone visits our site at X.com, and then wants to login at portal.X.com, I don't want to count that as a bounce. Any insight is appreciated! Thanks

    Reporting & Analytics | | KathleenDC
    0
  • AspenFasteners


    (Note, the site links are from a sandbox site and has very low DA or PA) If you look at this page, you will see at the bottom a lengthy article detailing all of the properties of the product categories in the links above. http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-s/432.htm My question is, is there more SEO value in having the one long article in the general product category page, or in breaking up the content and moving the sub-topics as content to the more specific sub-category pages? e.g. http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-Button-Head-Socket-s/1579.htm
    http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-Cap-Screws-s/331.htm
    http://www.aspensecurityfasteners.com/Screws-Captive-Panel-Scre-s/1559.htm

    Moz Pro | | AspenFasteners
    0
  • Zoope


    Hi Mozzers, I'm seeing more and more companies improving their quality score by including information about their competitors on their website, when driving traffic from competitor brand terms. For example, for 'Yahoo Mail' related terms, Zoho drive traffic via an ad to this page: https://www.zoho.com/mail/yahoo-mail-alternative.html I'm planning a new campaign targeting competitor keywords and wondered what people think about this approach, and the legalities around talking about and comparing yourself to competitors on your own website?

    Paid Search Marketing | | Zoope
    0
  • FPK


    A few months ago my client's website was hacked which created over 20,000+ spammy links on the site. I dealt with removing the malware and got google to remove the malware warning shortly within a week of the hacking. Then started the long process to do 301 redirects and disavowing links under Webmaster tools over these few months. The hacking only caused a slight drop in rankings at the time. Now just as of last week the site had a dramatic drop in rankings. When doing a keyword search I noticed the homepage doesn't even get listed on Google Maps and for Google Search instead the inner pages like the Contact Us page show up instead of the homepage. Does anyone have any insight to the sudden drop happening now and why the inner pages are ranking higher than the homepage now?

    Algorithm Updates | | FPK
    0
  • SwanseaMedicine


    As the question suggests...

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SwanseaMedicine
    0
  • snorkel


    Hi Moz Community, I have a 301 redirect question... I just acquired an old domain: Totally in my niche Domain is 14 years old Website exists of 1000 pages Great amount of backlinks Website is offline since about 2 weeks Will place a new website online asap with new url structure For the 50 best scoring pages I wrote a new, but fully comparable/related article. I will put a 301 redirect from those old to the new pages. My question: What to do with the 950 other url's? Should I put a 301 redirect to the homepage? Should I forward those pages to the 404 page? Should I divide the 950 url's with a 301 redirect to the 50 new ones? Another solution maybe? Any idea what would be the best solution so we can save as much Google juice as possible? Thanks in advance!

    Technical SEO | | snorkel
    0
  • Ria_


    I've recently been shown some SERP results where Google is appending a different website's brand name to the end of the SERP title. It's actually rewriting the brand's name to that of the other website. (This is obviously not ideal.) Why would this be? The other website doesn't even stock the same product, so there shouldn't be any confusion there. But even if it did, many websites stock the same products. Just confusing...

    Branding | | Ria_
    1
  • muzzmoz


    has anyone discovered this bot in their robots.txt file? User-agent: MJ12bot
    Crawl-Delay: 10 Good or bad?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | muzzmoz
    0
  • Ohmichael


    A physical therapy company has 8 locations in one city and 4 locations in another with plans to expand. I've seen two methods to approach this. The first I feel is sloppy and that is the individual url for each location that points to from the location pages on the main domain. The second is to use the silo technique incorporated with metro scale addition.  You have the main domain with the number of silos (individual stores) and each silo has its own content (what they do at each store is pretty much the same). My question is should the focus of each silo, besides making sure there is no duplicate copy, to increase their own hyperlocal outreach?  Focus on social, reviews, content curated for the specific location. How would you attack this problem?

    Local Website Optimization | | Ohmichael
    1
  • Carissamay


    I changed the domain of my website from www.vanillacrush.co.uk to www.carissamay.co.uk at the end of December and yet my DA for carissamay is still 1. As advised, I set up a 301 redirect from VC to CM which seems to be working fine. However when I check on redirect detective it tells me I also have a 302 set up. Could this be confusing things? http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk http://www.vanillacrush.co.uk/ http://www.carissamay.co.uk Any help would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carissamay
    0
  • simonatkinsphoto


    I'm using the Yoast plugin with wordpress and have noticed in my HTML I have duplicate meta data. For example my header starts with 
    <title>(title) </title<span><<br /><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span>Then I have the 'This site is optimised by Yoast" tagline followed by the same meta -<br /> <span><meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">name</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:title</span><span>" content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:description</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content=<br /><span> <meta </span><span class="html-attribute-name">property</span><span>="</span><span class="html-attribute-value">og:site_name</span><span>" </span><span class="html-attribute-name">content</span><span>=<br /><br /></span></span></span></span>Is this likely to cause problems with Google and is there a way to stop both wordpress and Yoast adding meta to the header. </p></title>

    Technical SEO | | simonatkinsphoto
    0
  • Taylor17


    Can anybody help me with this error please... Error: A charset attribute on a meta element found after the first 1024 bytes https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fsocialmotors.uk%2F I have no idea how to find or fix this issue, i have spoke to my theme dev and they say it is not a problem with the theme, so i do not know were to turn now. As you will see in the link above there are a couple of errors, i do not know how to fix them either 😞 Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

    On-Page Optimization | | Taylor17
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi, Is there any ratio between dofollow and nofollow back-links of a website? Do a website really need some nofollow back-links? Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi All, I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings? Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
    0
  • AL123al


    Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B  -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website.  I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help

    Technical SEO | | AL123al
    0
  • missionunpossible


    Our company having multiple domain aliases (DIfferent TLD) like example.com, .net, .org, .club, .win to one site (Same Content). We do this because our country ISP is blocking a few of the domain aliases. Question: Does this hurt the SEO rank? What approach is the best for us to gain SEO Rank?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | missionunpossible
    0
  • nickspiteri


    Hi Peeps I'm working a web build project and having some debates going on with our UX and SEO department regards hidden content in click-to-expand tabs.  The UX team is suggesting using these tabs is a legitimate method of making large amounts of copy more easily digestible to readers.  The tabs are for FAQs ( hopefully, you can view the wireframe URL ) and the SEO team are concerned that the content in these tabs contains some core keyword phrases which may not be indexed.  I am the project lead on this and honestly can't claim to be an expert on either discipline so any advice would be very welcome.  Can search engines index content hidden in these tabs? Thank you in advance for any advice shared. Nicky 213985904

    Technical SEO | | nickspiteri
    0
  • donnieath


    Hey guys, I'm doing a review on some schema on some of our sites. Most of them are generic using LocalBusiness. There are a few more specific schemas I could use, but not sure what would be the most relevant. Wondering if any of you have a suggestion or ideas? https://schema.org/Residence https://schema.org/LodgingBusiness https://schema.org/ApartmentComplex or I could just stick with LocalBusiness. I'm leaning towards LodgingBusiness or ApartmentComplex.... but when I think of LodgingBusiness I think of something temporary / vacation type deal like hotels. Apartments... kind of self explanatory, a condominium isn't exactly an apartment but perhaps it is more comparable to an apartment than a hotel, motel or inn. What are you thoughts on this? Also, which "format" is better to use RDFa, microdata, or JSON-LD. Does it matter?

    On-Page Optimization | | donnieath
    0
  • vtmoz


    Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz
    0

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