Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. Latest Questions

Moz Q&A is closed.

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.

Log in to post

Latest Questions

Have an SEO question? Search our Q&A forum for an answer; if not found, use your Moz Pro subscription to ask our incredible community of SEOs for help!

  • atomiconline


    I am in process of pruning my sites for low quality/thin content. The issue is that I have multiple sites with 40k + pages and need a more efficient way of finding the low quality content than looking at each page individually. Is there an ideal way to find the pages that are worth no indexing that will speed up the process but not potentially harm any valuable pages? Current plan of action is to pull data from analytics and if the url hasn't brought any traffic in the last 12 months then it is safe to assume it is a page that is not beneficial to the site. My concern is that some of these pages might have links pointing to them and I want to make sure we don't lose that link juice. But, assuming we just no index the pages we should still have the authority pass along...and in theory, the pages that haven't brought any traffic to the site in a year probably don't have much authority to begin with. Recommendations on best way to prune content on sites with hundreds of thousands of pages efficiently?  Also, is there a benefit to no indexing the pages vs deleting them? What is the preferred method, and why?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atomiconline
    0
  • AL123al


    Hello, I've been looking online for some help with this. An estate agent has a page of properties for sale. Is it possible to mark these individual properties up and if so would they appear as rich snippets in the SERPS - never seen anything like this for properties for sale so just wondered,

    Technical SEO | | AL123al
    1
  • fablau


    Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
    3
  • unirmk


    Hi Mozzers, I was musing about rel=canonical this morning and it occurred to me that I didnt have a good answer to the following question: How does applying a rel=canonical on page A referencing page B as the canonical version affect the treatment of the links on page A? I am thinking of whether those links would get counted twice, or in the case of ver-near-duplicates which may have an extra sentence which includes an extra link, whther that extra link would count towards the internal link graph or not. I suspect that google would basically ignore all the content on page A and only look to page B taking into account only page Bs  links. Any thoughts? Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unirmk
    0
  • Gavo


    We have a mortgage broker client, ABC, who shares an address with another business, XYZ who is a loans company. A previous SEO agency created GMBs for these 2 businesses using the same physical address and recently, we had to resolve this issue of duplicate address with Google. ABC was happy for us to fix the issue up by putting a unit no. "A" thus making their address "#7A Smith Street" and business XYZ now has #7B on their GMB. Our question is will this affect consistency if we were to build citations without "#7A Smith Street" but just using "7 Smith Street" which is their REAL physical address? Business XYZ has also just contracted us for SEO which means we will end up building citations for 2 businesses with the same business address (but different phone numbers). Should we actually continue using "#7A" and "#7B" for citation building even though that's not what their address is? Thank you in advance for your response!

    Local Listings | | Gavo
    1
  • carlsutherland


    Hi, We are in the process of considering our domain url options for a new site. The plan is to migrate other site (bringing their link juice) to an main brand level domain. At the moment our desired .com url is unattainable however from a band perspective another extension e.g (.group) would probably be a better brand fit - however I wanted to know what the implications might be from an SEO perspective. At the moment some of our sub domains are ranking extremely well for desired keywords. Assuming we implement the correct redirect rules to maintain these rankings, would there be any other implication for our rankings (particularly in the UK and US) for not using a .com domain and using an alternatve TLD extension. Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlsutherland
    0
  • rec123


    Hi Moz Community, I've been reviewing Search Console and have been noticing that there has been a consistent drop in brand clicks. The overall number of keywords (especially for the top 2 pages) have been increasing, according to SEMRUSH, however, traffic and sales are still in decline. There are no algorithmic and manual penalties, in addition, paid search activity has been increasing in the leadup to Christmas. Has anyone experienced this and potentially advise how to diagnose and resolve this issue?

    Branding | | rec123
    0
  • Alexanders


    Hi there, we've noticed a sudden drop in both trust and citation flow scores for many of our clients' websites. We haven't done any black hat activities nor done anything differently the last few months that we can think have contributed to this. We have however noticed a backlink from a website: http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/archives.html that has appeared across all the websites which have dropped in rankings. Could this link be the contributing factor & would that mean someone has linked it to our clients' websites?

    Link Building | | Alexanders
    0
  • JohnWeb12


    I have a client whose name in not currently showing up on Google maps. Their business location only shows once their name or related keywords are searched, but their business name does not show when you only look for it on the map regardless of how far zoomed in you are to the actual location.  I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or knows of a way to fix this. I have already contacted Google multiple times, and they told me that “business’ names are just randomly pulled”. The client is an HVAC store front business with good rankings and a fully optimized Google profile, so these reasons did not answer the issue. Client’s GMB profile: https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=rothheating oak creeek&oq=rothheating oak creeek&rlz=1C1JPGB_enUS685US685&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.5919j0j4 DBZfF

    Local Listings | | JohnWeb12
    0
  • clarasboutiqueusa


    I'm doing KW research for a new business. My understanding from KW research guides: Use tools to create a list of thousands of keywords Analyze difficulty and search volume Reduce your list and do on page optimization for your select KWs My dilemma with this approach is that it seems "keyword based" rather than "intent" or "category" based. e.g. Let's say I have a grocery store. Ignoring SEO, I know that these are my main categories: Produce Meat Dairy Canned Goods Baked Goods In other words, the above categories are the general "intents" and "categories" that I'd really want to rank for. Keyword tool shows that they have high volume and high difficulty. Let's say that after doing keyword research, I discover "Low Fat Chicken Breasts" and "Turkey Sausage" and "Cheap Meat Wholesale" have decent search volume and low competition. I don't quite understand how I'm supposed to utilize these fringe keywords in my on page SEO plan because it doesn't make sense as a human to categorize my site that way. Not sure if this is clear. Basically I'm trying to figure out if I should really be getting this granular on keywords to help guide my store categories or if I should just be picking broader terms.

    Keyword Research | | clarasboutiqueusa
    0
  • lcourse


    When searching for "Madrid hotels" in google I see that the top organic search results have one row of sitelinks. 
    What can I do that also my site shows sitelinks if I am among the top organic search results?
    Anything onpage that I can do to increase probability that google will show sitelinks? Strangely the text which shows as sitelink for SERPs from booking.com and tripadvisor does actually for most of the sitelinks not appear on the landing page (I also checked the source code).

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
    0
  • Raymondlee


    Hi all, I am a newbie to SEO. Lately, I have been struggling to optimize my title tag. Ones say that we should have long tail words in title tags because long tail words improve click through rate and generate quality leads. On the other hand, ones say that putting other words in the title tag will dilute the main keyword that my page ranks for. Do keywords really dilute each other in the title tags? I am really confused. Let me give this an example: Web Design Services | Company Name Web Design Services with Conversion Focused | Company Name Which one would you prefer and why? Thank you.  😄 Best, Raymond

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee
    0
  • KaranX


    I see some PR (press release) sites where they distribute the same content on many different sites and at end they give the source link is that Good SEO Practice or Bad ? If it is Good Practice then how Google Panda or other algorithms consider it ?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KaranX
    0
  • varun1800


    "Suggest an Edit" feature of Google My Business is allowing the competitors to change your business details, that too without your prior permission! I have put together a piece on the issue we faced and you can review the same here: https://www.kvrwebtech.com/blog/issue-in-suggest-an-edit-in-google-my-business-is-it-a-bug-or-a-major-pitfall/ What are your thoughts on the same and what should be the right solution?

    Local Listings | | varun1800
    1
  • MissThumann


    I just realized this happened 😞 I optimized this page over a week ago. I changed out the old image on the page, along with the Alt Text. Now I see this when I do a search for it. No Beuno. Can some one please tell me how I get rid of the alt text in the result. many many thanks in advance. http://thumannagency.com/business-insurance/contractors-insurance Contractors Liability, Work Comp Insurance in Dallas, Texas ... <cite class="_Rm">thumannagency.com/business-insurance/contractors-insurance</cite>Your page is not mobile-friendly.Dallas, Texas Contractors Insurance. Contractors Insurance Quote. General Contractor working on a roof in Texas. Thumann Agency specializes in providing ...

    Image & Video Optimization | | MissThumann
    0
  • SproutDigital


    Hello awesome MOZ Community! Our development team uses a sub-domain "dev.example.com" for our SEO clients' websites. This allows changes to be made to the dev site (U/X changes, forms testing, etc.) for client approval and testing. An embarrassing discovery was made. Naturally, when you run a "site:example.com" the "dev.example.com" is being indexed. We don't want our clients websites to get penalized or lose killer SERPs because of duplicate content. The solution that is being implemented is to edit the robots.txt file and block the dev site from being indexed by search engines. My questions is, does anyone in the MOZ Community disagree with this solution? Can you recommend another solution? Would you advise against using the sub-domain "dev." for live and ongoing development websites? Thanks!

    Web Design | | SproutDigital
    0
  • Kepass


    Hi Guys, Hope you'll be able to help me with a technical problem I am facing right now. We are a company right ? We own 2 webistes. Let's say one sells car parts, the other one buys second hand car parts to refurbish them and sell them. (It is not our case, just an example very similar to ours). sellparts.com buyparts.com Both are ecommerce websites, with large catalogues (7000 skus). sellparts sells a lot and is a big actor in its market. buyparts.com doesn't work nad has a really low DA. My new SEO external consultant, which I am not too convinced about, is telling me to cross link the sites on product level using cross-linking extensions. He want have them do-follow. That would mean having hundreds or thousands of links with really similar linking patterns. buy [parts] [model ] [make] sell [parts] [model ] [make] That to me seems a bit too much and I am worried it compromises the sellparts site's SEO. So should i no-follow the links ? Or do it differently ?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kepass
    0
  • donnieath


    I am not getting docked for these specific errors, but I am getting docked for 1 page has a WWW resolve issue and 1 wrong URL in the sitemap... (SEM Rush) but when I use moz, it's not showing any issues. So I have these things set up so far: In .htaccess i have a command that removes the www. 301 redirect from www version to the non www (homepage) canonical on index.html pointing to non www version, I also set up a canonical tag for each page on the site search console with non www, www, https www, https non www all set to non www preference. Also, when I fetch the www version in google search console it says it's being 301 redirected to non www version which is basically what I want.Is there anything that i'm missing? These errors on SEM Rush are giving me anxiety lol.

    Moz Bar | | donnieath
    1
  • RosemaryB


    We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why). Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC? Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
    0
  • Storesco


    Hi, I run shops in several languages out of London. One of our key revenue drivers is google shopping. It is important for me to look the the shopping search results for example in germany. Recently Google changed something so when I want to look at the german shopping results from here, eg. http://www.google.de/shopping it always shows me the english ones with prices in pounds. Is there a trick to still get the foreign results? Thanks in advance Dieter

    Paid Search Marketing | | Storesco
    1
  • TomHW


    I am new to MOZ pro. I have lots of spam backlinks from a company that blackhatted me about 5 years ago. Can MOZ list these for me? I don't know how. Thanks

    Product Support | | TomHW
    0
  • FelixHe


    Since yesterday, I am receiving thousands of visits from India and Ireland. Both of those are not our target audience. When looking at those visitors, they are mostly users on Chrome OS, with Chrome. Google Analytics shows me this traffic as organic traffic with the respective URL as keyword. My first thought was that it might be connected to me having set up an automatic ad campaign on AdWords three days ago, but I am having doubts, since google probably won't be testing all the links manually. My concern now is that our content is being scraped. Also, I am wondering why the traffic is shown as organic search.

    Paid Search Marketing | | FelixHe
    0
  • Raymondlee


    Hi all, In my website, I would like to use CSS to set the anchor text to "website design service"(my company provides web design service) but show the button text as "website", due to some artistic reasons. Therefore, the anchor text for the link is "website design service" but what users see is "websites". Does this sound spammy to Google? Is it a risky move that might hurt my SEO? Looking for some advises here. Thank you very much. Best,

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee
    0
  • ChaseH


    Goal: Increase organic traffic, Increase Inbound Links (earn them), Increase lead conversions If you could hypothetically spend $1000/month for 12 months and start from scratch, today. What would you do and why?

    Link Building | | ChaseH
    1
  • Eric_OWPP


    So on Oct. 21, our direct traffic increased 3x and our organic traffic decreased 3x. And it has been that way ever since. Almost like they flip flopped. Additionally, that was the same day I started retargeting to our site. I have tagged all the links from the ads and they're being counted as google paid clicks in GA. And our accounts are linked. I am just dumbfounded as to how this could happen.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_OWPP
    1
  • Excal


    Interesting situation when I looked at Google Search Console this morning, I found that back-links from directories had dropped off and am wondering if anyone else is seeing this? Specifically, I am in Australia and had links from Yellowpages.com.au and Truelocal.com.au to my primary domain. Interestingly, Yellow Pages had gone a bit crazy recently in that the number of links to my site seemed to balloon exponentially from about 50 when I first listed to 700+ to 1500+ to 1800+ and then the balloon popped. Truelocal in contrast was only ever showing the 1 link. There have not been any changes from my end, and I only ever had one listing in these directories so not sure what generated all these extra links in Yellow Pages. Anyone else in Australia noticed a sudden drop off in Google Backlinks from Directories?  If not it may just be a temporary blip.

    Link Building | | Excal
    0
  • ConclusionDigital


    A couple of months ago there was a result in Google for our branded search term which wasn't the 'official' URL, actually the result shown in the SERP was www.mycompany-ip.nl. We've applied a 301 redirect of this URL to the 'official' URL which is a subdomain: department.mycompany.nl. From Google the redirect is obviously working, but up until now, I don't see Google replacing the incorrect URL by the correct URL. I am wondering what to do to make the result correct. André

    Technical SEO | | ConclusionDigital
    0
  • Raymondlee


    Hello guys, Yesterday, I used SEMrush to search for the keyword "branding agency" to see the SERP. The Liquidagency ranks 5th on the first page. So I went to their homepage but saw no exact keywords "branding agency", even in the page source. Also, I didn't see "branding agency" as a top anchor text in the external links to the page (from the report of SEMrush). I am an SEO newbie, can someone explain this to me, please? Thank you.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Raymondlee
    0
  • alisacromer


    I'm putting the url designfirstkitchenandbath.com and getting the "oops! our crawlers were unable to access the site. Since this site is a potential client, which shows up online, I can't get access to fix the code, plus while I can write a little html I don't feel comfortable working with hard, live code on someonelse's site. Anyone have a simple solution?

    Moz Bar | | alisacromer
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Browse Questions

Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.