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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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  • Gabriele_Layoutweb


    If I block a URL via the robots.txt - how long will it take for Google to stop indexing that URL?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gabriele_Layoutweb
    0
  • GeezerG


    We are looking for the very best way of handling potentially thousands (50k+) of 301 redirects following
    a major site replacement and I mean total replacement. Things you should know
    Existing domain has 17 years history with Google but rankings have suffered over the past year and yes we know why. (and the bitch is we paid a good sized SEO company for that ineffective and destructive work)
    The URL structure of the new site is completely different and SEO friendly URL's rule. This means that there will be many thousands of historical URL's (mainly dynamic ones) that will attract 404 errors as they will not exist anymore. Most are product profile pages and the God Google has indexed them all. There are also many links to them out there.
    The new site is fully SEO optimised and is passing all tests so far - however there is a way to go yet. So here are my thoughts on the possible ways of meeting our need,
    1: Create 301 redirects for each an every page in the .htaccess file that would be one huge .htaccess file 50,000 lines plus - I am worried about effect on site speed.
    2: Create 301 redirects for each and every unused folder, and wildcard the file names, this would be a single redirect for each file in each folder to a single redirect page
    so the 404 issue is overcome but the user doesn't open the precise page they are after.
    3: Write some code to create a hard copy 301 index.php file for each and every folder that is to be replaced.
    4: Write code to create a hard copy 301 .php file for each and every page that is to be replaced.
    5: We could just let the pages all die and list them with Google to advise of their death.
    6: We could have the redirect managed by a database rather than .htaccess or single redirect files. Probably the most challenging thing will be to load the data in the first place, but I assume this could be done programatically - especially if the new URL can be inferred from the old. Many be I am missing another, simpler approach - please discuss

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeezerG
    0
  • gozmoz


    I found page duplicate content when using Moz crawl tool, see below. http://www.example.com
    Page Authority 40
    Linking Root Domains 31
    External Link Count 138
    Internal Link Count 18
    Status Code 200
    1 duplicate http://www.example.com/index.htm
    Page Authority 19
    Linking Root Domains 1
    External Link Count 0
    Internal Link Count 15
    Status Code 200
    1 duplicate I have recently transfered my old html site to wordpress.
    To keep the urls the same I am using a plugin which appends .htm at the end of each page. My old site home page was index.htm. I have created index.htm in wordpress as well but now there is a conflict of duplicate content. I am using latest post as my home page which is index.php Question 1.
    Should I also use redirect 301 im htaccess file to transfer index.htm page authority (19) to www.example.com If yes, do I use
    Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com/index.php
    or
    Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com Question 2
    Should I change my "Home" menu link to http://www.example.com instead of http://www.example.com/index.htm that would fix the duplicate content, as indx.htm does not exist anymore. Is there a better option? Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gozmoz
    0
  • Netleaf.ca


    Hi Moz ! We're having quite a discussion here and I'd like to have some inputs. Let me explain the situation and what we plan to do so far. One of our client has two separate markets : World and Europe. Both pages versions will be mostly the same, except for the fact that they will have their own products. So basically, we'd want to show only the European EN version to Europe and the standard EN version to the rest of the world, same goes for FR and ES. As far as IT, DE, CS and SK, they will only be present within the european version. Since we cannot target all Europe with a single hreflang tag, we might have to do it for every single european countries. Regarding this subject, SMX Munich recently had quite an interesting session about this topic with a confirmation coming from John Mueller saying that we can target a single URL more than once with different hreflang tags. You can read more here : http://www.rebelytics.com/multiple-hreflang-tags-one-url/ So having all this in mind, here's the implementation we plan to do : www.example.com/en/ Self canonical www.example.com/fr/ - hreflang = fr www.example.com/es/ - hreflang = es www.example.eu/it/ - hreflang = it www.example.eu/de/ - hreflang = de www.example.eu/cs/ - hreflang = cs www.example.eu/sk/ - hreflang = sk www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = be-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = ch-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = cz-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = de-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = es-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = fr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = uk-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = gr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = hr-fr etc… . This will be done for all european countries (FR, EN and ES). www.example.com/en/ - x-default Let me know what you guys think. Thanks!

    International SEO | | Netleaf.ca
    0
  • I.AM.Strategist


    How is the best way to handle all the different variations of a website in terms of www | non www | http | https? In Google Search Console, I have all 4 versions and I have selected a preference. In Open Site Explorer I can see that the www and non www versions are treated differently with one group of links pointing to each version of the same page. This gives a different PA score. eg. http://mydomain.com DA 25 PA 35 http://www.mydomain.com DA 19 PA 21 Each version of the home page having it's only set of links and scores. Should I try and "consolidate" all the scores into one page? Should I set up redirects to my preferred version of the website? Thanks in advance

    Technical SEO | | I.AM.Strategist
    0
  • lcourse


    I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword. 
    Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms. 
    However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
    0
  • Ruchy


    Hi there again, I found a major cloaking hack in our client's website that is really well camouflaged and all the seo tools that I tried to help me check for cloaking couldn't find it. I know that screaming frog is a great tool and I want to use it to help me, however, I can't seem to get my way around their system that I downloaded. Can you help me with the screaming frog program? Do you know where I can make a full site check for cloaking, maybe there are more links that I wasn't notified about? I would really appreciate if you could help me with that. Thanks so much, Ruchy

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ruchy
    2
  • riyaaaz


    eCommerce site rendering their services globally but primary market is India. Below approximate traffic coming for countries India - 50% USA & Canda -20% Europe -20% Rest of the world - 10% We are not in a position to go for country specific TLD. What would be the appropriate option to be selected in Google Webmaster tools from the following? Enable Geo-targetting and select "India" Enable Geo targeting and select "Unlisted" Disable Geo targeting (uncheck checkbox) Please note that the site runs on Shopify hence server located in Canada and there are no plans to shift the server or platform.

    Local Listings | | riyaaaz
    0
  • mattdinbrooklyn


    Wanted to ask everyone a questions: So our company is going to be doing a website that is going to be full of videos. The url path will be country.domain.com/language/slug/content-id. We redirect the user when they go to the different country. So if you're in spain on a train to france your URL will change from es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id. Each country can listen to each video in all languages. My question is with hreflang tags and canonicals. Aside from targeting users in a certain country via Google Search Console, how do I eliminate duplication and tell Google which I'd like to show up via which country. In spain I would like es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to show in Google and would have hreflang tags on each of the es.domain pages but what about fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id since it would show the same content? I can't canonical to one of them since I need them to show in their respective country. How do I show the difference in language and country without showing duplication?

    International SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn
    0
  • VoodooCreativeLtd


    Hi there, I am currently reading and learning about backlinks and I find myself stumped as to where I can submit my website to. I understand the logic's and methods for backlinks but just don't know how to find good quality websites to submit my website to. I appreciate any help in advance. Jay

    Link Building | | VoodooCreativeLtd
    0
  • RoxBrock


    We are considering changing the phone number to our website to one of those 1-800-eat-cows. How will changing a phone number we've had 10 years affect our SEO. Do we need to change all citations, Google maps, etc etc? What if we don't? Thanks!

    Local Listings | | RoxBrock
    0
  • gray_jedi


    I'm a bit confused about what Schema markup should be applied to such regular, informative web pages.
    We have a few pages describing our technology and solutions. These pages are not products or news articles. And they are not something that should be reviewed/rated. What Schema markup should be used for a standard run-of-the mill web page?
    Is there a good reference / tutorial for optimizing the schema markup of an informational website? Any advice is much appreciated, thank you!

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gray_jedi
    0
  • mattdinbrooklyn


    Wanted to ask everyone a questions: So our company is going to be doing a website that is going to be full of videos. The url path will be country.domain.com/language/slug/content-id. We redirect the user when they go to the different country. So if you're in spain on a train to france your URL will change from es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id. Each country can listen to each video in all languages. My question is with hreflang tags and canonicals. Aside from targeting users in a certain country via Google Search Console, how do I eliminate duplication and tell Google which I'd like to show up via which country. In spain I would like es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to show in Google and would have hreflang tags on each of the es.domain pages but what about fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id since it would show the same content? I can't canonical to one of them since I need them to show in their respective country. How do I show the difference in language and country without showing duplication?

    International SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn
    0
  • JCCMoz


    If you have the following keywords in an Ad Group advertising for a product, let's for example call it "target" product [target product] "target product" +target +product I've found that the exact match keyword has the highest conversion rate in almost all circumstances.  So it would make sense to have a higher max bid on the exact match then phrase or broad batch.  Even with lots of negative search terms to maximize conversion on the broader matches, if the bid is the same as exact match, the cost per conversion will be much higher (too high.) However in chatting with an Adwords Support Rep (on a different matter) they stated after looking through my account at the end of the chat: " duplicate keywords will impact on quality score. your all keywords will compete with each other" However many of the ad groups in question these duplicate keywords have quality score of 9 and 10.  So obviously if there is an effect it seems it may be minimal. I thought it was pretty common for people to bid higher on more exact match and lower on more broad match.  What's the real story here?  Was this support rep not seeing the big picture?

    Paid Search Marketing | | JCCMoz
    1
  • muzzmoz


    Anyone familiar with Shopify will understand the problems of their directory structure. Every time you add a product to a 'collection' it essentially creates a duplicate. For example... https://www.domain.com/products/product-slim-regular-bikini may also appear as: https://www.domain.com/collections/all/products/product-slim-regular-bikini https://www.domain.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/product-slim-regular-bikini https://www.domain.com/collections/bikinis/products/product-slim-regular-bikini etc, etc It's not uncommon to have up to six duplicates of each product. So my question is twofold: Firstly, should I worry about this from an SEO point of view? I understand the desire to minimise potential duplicate content issues and also in focussing the 'juice' on just one page per product. But I also planned on trying to build the authority of the collection pages. If I request Google not to index the product pages which link off the collections, does this not devalue these collections pages? Secondly, I understand the correct way to fix these is using 'rel canonical' tags, but I'm not clear about HOW to actually do this. Shopify support has not been very helpful. They have provided two different instructions, so just added to the confusion (see below). Shopify instruction #1: Add the following to the theme.liquid file... <title><br />{{ page_title }}{% if current_tags %} – tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif %}{% if current_page != 1 %} – Page {{ current_page }}{% endif %}{% unless page_title contains shop.name %} – {{ shop.name }}{% endunless %}<br /></title>
    {% if page_description %} {% endif %} Shopify instruction #2: Add the following to each individual product page... So, can anyone help clarify: The best strategic approach to this inherent SEO issue with Shopify (besides moving to another platform!)? and If 'rel canonical' tags is the way to go, exactly where and how to apply them? Regards, Murray

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz
    1
  • BeckyKey


    HI We've seen a huge drop in impressions for brand terms in Adwords. YOY - 37,140 vs. 792. Our impression share is still high. An agency manage this for us and can't seem to find a reason, but the drop is huge - it seems like it's just people not searching but we haven't seen this in organic and the drop is so huge we wondered what else it could be? Paid is fairly new to me, so just doing some fact finding 🙂

    Paid Search Marketing | | BeckyKey
    0
  • johnnybgunn


    I'm getting a "Your page is not mobile-friendly." notice in the SERPs for all of our PDFs.  I check the pdf on the phone and it appears just fine. rFtLq

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | johnnybgunn
    0
  • smpomoryCRH


    There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH
    0
  • Tz_Seo


    Hello, First of all I know that all the links which come from Pinterest are no follow. However about 4 years ago we made a campaign to pinterest for one of the websites we are managing. Although the thing was going well we had to stop it for various reasons. Right now, 4 years later, this thing has grown big without any move for us! All these years our pins, which were great in many aspects, were continuously reppined. This has lead to the point where the Google Search Console is reporting that about 500.000 links are linking to our website from Pinterest. We know how this has helped us or not concerning the actual refferring traffic from Pinterest but our main question, and this where we want the Moz's community help, is how is this helping from a SEO aspect. Thank you!

    Social Media | | Tz_Seo
    1
  • gatorpool


    Hi Mozers, We recently switched servers and it came to my attention that we have two sitemaps a XML version of the sitemap and a .aspx version of the sitemap. This came to light as the .aspx version of the sitemap is causing the site to come to a screeching halt as it has some complex code and lists over 80,000 products. My question is do we need both versions of the sitemap? My understanding is that the XML version is for Search Engine bots and the .aspx version is for customers. I can't imagine that anyone is using our .aspx version as it is basically a page with 80,000 links and it's buried away on the site, so we were hoping to kill off the .aspx version of the sitemap and keep the .xml version for Search Engine Bots. I wanted to check here first to make sure we did not any negative search engine implications. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks so much! Patrick

    Web Design | | gatorpool
    0
  • WeAreDigital_BE


    Hi Mozzers, I was just looking at the dwell time tip from Mike Arnesen and have some difficulties understanding it. This is the formula: (Words on page)/15*1000 Why is he using 15? Where does the number stand for? What is it that I'm actually calculating now? Thanks!
    Sander

    Reporting & Analytics | | WeAreDigital_BE
    0
  • Parker818


    Hi Moz Peoples! We have a small site with a simple site navigation, with only a few links on the nav bar. We have been doing some work to create a new page, which will eventually replace one of the links on the nav bar. The question we are having is, is it better to rename the existing page and replace its content and then wait for the great indexer to do its thing, or perm delete the page and replace it with the new page and content? Or is this a case where it really makes no difference as long as the redirects are set up correctly?

    On-Page Optimization | | Parker818
    0
  • vgusvg


    I am moving my site from Volusion to Shopify.  The domain remains the same but the URL paths are different.  With respect to my Google Shopping feed, is it best to send old URLs (with 301 redirects) or to send the new URLs?

    Paid Search Marketing | | vgusvg
    0

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