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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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  • RosemaryB


    Currently we are providing local SEO recommendations for a well known pharmacy chain.  Like most major brands they enjoy multiple organic (not just 3 pack results) listings when people search for local phrases such as "Dallas pharmacy clinics'". The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page.  We are seeing multiple listings both branded and non-branded search queries. Our concern is that Google will someday decide to choose one listing as the most authoritative and nix the rest of the local listings which will reduce their first page search engine saturation.  To maintain first page saturation we are considering recommending to the client that they move some of their location listings
    to a subdomain (different IP address) to avoid a Google "clean up".  Please note that our client is certainly not using any "doorway" pages but some of these are very scarce on content.  They do not have an issue with duplicate content either. By using subdomains could we help maintain our client's first page saturation?  Any links to articles would be much appreciated.

    Local Listings | | RosemaryB
    0
  • mattdinbrooklyn


    Quick question, which is the best method that people have for automating sitemaps. We publish around 200 times a day and I would like to make sure as soon as we publish it gets updated in the site map. What is the best method of updating a sitemap so it gets updated immediately after it is published.

    Technical SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn
    0
  • Dino64


    Setting aside my personal issue with Google's favoritism for Responsive websites, which I believe doesn't always provide the best user experience, I have a question regarding duplicate content... I created a section of a Wordpress web page (using Visual Composer) that shows differently on mobile than it does on desktop view. This section has the same content for both views, but is formatted differently to give a better user experience on mobile devices. I did this by creating two different text elements, formatted differently, but containing the same content. The problem is that both sections appear in the source code of the page. According to Google, does that mean I have duplicate content on this page?

    Web Design | | Dino64
    0
  • QRN


    Dear all, I am auditing a site in Google Seach Console (GSC, formerly Google Webmaster Tools) and find the Position data in the new Search Analytics report very, very improbable. I suspect that even if you filter by "SearchType = web", the Position data does count the ranking of images in the Image search widget as a search position. Has anybody observed this as well? Here is the case: the site targets a quite broad search query in the bath room domain. I have made a number of searches with private browser sessions, different browsers, alternative IP address via a VPN, etc, and the look of the search result in the relevant geographical market is consistently the following. Three Adwords ads #1 organic result Images universal results widget #2-10 organic results The site’s first page ranks consistently around #15 of the organic results, hence on the second SERP. But it also consistently has an image in the Images universal results widget (usually #2 or #3). This is consistent with the data I have in Moz Analytics. Yet, the GSC Search Analytics report shows 2.2 as average position with the default SearchType=Web setting. I have done the search over and over, and never has a PAGE of the site ranked that high. Is there any public information how exactly the position is calculated? I mean, something more precise than the very general information on https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6155685?hl=en Is there any way to get the correct position/ranking? Thanks for sharing your experience!

    Reporting & Analytics | | QRN
    0
  • henya


    Hi A client with a local business has a 1800 number on their google plus page and most citations. How important is it to use the local number and not a 1800 one for google local? Should we change the phone number to the local number and update all listings? Or should we just continue with the 1800 number and stay consistent? I have added the local number as a second number on the google plus page.

    Local Listings | | henya
    1
  • tbreak.ae


    The traffic on my site (http://www.tbreak.com) has been stagnant over the last few months. We're a news posting site and posting a good 4-8 posts per day and using Yoast plugin to make sure they are optimized, but traffic has not grown at all. What could be the reason for that?

    On-Page Optimization | | tbreak.ae
    0
  • AubbiefromAubenRealty


    Can having multiple H1 tags on a webpage be detrimental to its rankings?

    Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty
    0
  • mediaxplain.nl


    Hello there, I'm using Moz for a while and I'm very pleased with the tool and community. But for the first time I encountered a problem. We are trying to run a crawler for a client's website but only one page (only the homepage) was crawled. We tried to do a test on a more detailed level (maybe there is something wrong with the homepage). My campaign test's crawl came back for the Producten folder (level deeper than homepage), and it was also only a 1 page crawl with a 200 status. I did look at the robots.txt file now, and it is very restrictive, but there is nothing that I can clearly see that would explain why the crawl isn't working. Hopefully someone can point us at the right direction. Thanks in advance, Jeremy

    Moz Bar | | mediaxplain.nl
    0
  • codyfrew


    Our company website has needed a complete overhaul for some time now and the new one is almost ready to go live.  We also have a separate "news" site that is houses around 800 blog posts and news items.  (That news site will be thrown away because it's on a completely different domain and causes confusion.) So we have a main site with about 100 decent blog posts and a separate news site with 800 poor posts. I plan on bringing all the main site blog posts over to the new site (both WordPress), but my question is whether or not to bring over the news site posts?  All, handful, none? Another issue is the news site doesn't have Google Analytics, so I'm not sure if any posts actually generate traffic, but I can from the main site we do get some referrals from it. As far as quality of content goes, it's poor.  Not sure who wrote it all, but it's mainly text press releases that aren't very interesting. Is it worth bringing over for SEO purposes or simply delete the site and create a mass redirect so all of those pages will direct to the new website's blog page? Any help is greatly appreciated.

    Web Design | | codyfrew
    0
  • everestagency


    We just picked up a new client and I've been doing some digging around on their site. They have quite the wide variety of URL's that make for a rather confusing experience. One of the milder examples is their "About" page. Normally I would expect something along the lines of: www.website.com/about I see: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=About I'm typically a graphic designer and know basically nothing about code, but I just assume this has something funky to do with how their website was constructed. I'm assuming this isn't particularly SEO friendly, but it doesn't seem too bad. Until I got to another section of their site. It's a section that logically should look like: www.website.com/training/public-seminars It's: www.website.com/default.asp?Page=MT&Area=Seminars&Sub=MRM Now that's nonsensical to me! Normally if a client has terrible URL's, I'd say let's do some redirects, but I guess I'm a little intimidated by these. Do the URL's have to be structured like this for some reason? Am I missing some important area of coding here? However, the most bizarre example is a link back to their website from yellowpages.com. Where normally I would expect it to lead to their homepage, I get this bizarre-looking thing: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/?utm_source=ReachLocal&utm_medium=PPC&utm_campaign=AssetManagement&reference_id=15&publisher=yellowpages&placement=ypwebsitemip&action_target=listing_website And as you browse through the site, that strange domain stays. For example the About page is now: http://website1-px.rtrk.com/default.asp?Page=About I would try to google this but I have no idea where to even start! What is going on with these links? Will we be able to fix them to something presentable without breaking their website?

    Technical SEO | | everestagency
    0
  • KJ-Rodgers


    We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers
    0
  • MoosaHemani


    I know Google says there is no limit to it but I have seen on many websites that too many 301 redirects can be a problem and might negatively affect your rankings in SERPs. I wanted to know especially from people who worked on large ecommerce site. How do they manage internal redirect from one URL to other and how many according to you are too many. I mean if you get a website that contain 300 plus 301 redirections within the website, how will you deal with that? Please let me know if the question is not clear.

    Technical SEO | | MoosaHemani
    0
  • Rooted


    I am working with a client that  has multiple locations across the nation, and they recently merged all of the location sites into one site. To allow the lead capture forms to pre-populate the locations, they are using the query string  /?location=cityname on every page. EXAMPLE - www.example.com/product www.example.com/product/?location=nashville www.example.com/product/?location=chicago There are thirty locations across the nation, so, every page x 30 is being flagged as duplicate content... at least in the crawl through MOZ. Does using that query string actually cause a duplicate content problem?

    Technical SEO | | Rooted
    1
  • McTaggart


    Many SEOs I know simply upload the new sitemap once the new site is launched - some keep the old site's URLs on the new sitemap (for a while) to facilitate the migration - others upload both the old and the new website together, to support the migration. Which is the best way to proceed? Thanks, Luke

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
    0
  • McTaggart


    Hi everyone - What is the best way to deal with 404s on an old site when you're migrating to a new website? Thanks, Luke

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
    0
  • benhond


    Hello, When i run my platform www.taobao.nl through https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ i see a lot of nasty adult domains that link to my platform. These give a very negative (spam)score to my platform. I already disavowed quite a few via Webmastertools, but they keep coming. When i check the names in the Whois, they don't even seem to exist! (anymore) What could cause this and how can i end it?? Thanks for your help! Sander

    Link Explorer | | benhond
    1
  • cokergroup


    I have some content on a page that I am not using any type of css hiding techniques, but I am using an image with a higher z-index in order to prevent the text from being seen until a user clicks a link to have the content scroll down. Are there any negative repercussions for doing this in regards to SEO?

    Technical SEO | | cokergroup
    0
  • mickburkesnr


    In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?

    Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr
    0
  • vivekrathore


    How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having duplicate content. I mean somewhere google says they will prefer original content & will give preference to them who have original content but this statement contradict when I see Indeed.com as they aggregate content from other sites but still rank higher than original content provider side. How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content

    On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore
    0
  • Gaolga


    Hello, I have a main domain example.com where I have my main content and then I created 3 subdomains one.example.com, two.example.com and three.example.com I think the low ranking of my subdomains is affecting the ranking of my main domain, the one I care the most. So, I decided to get rid of the subdomains. The thing is that only for one.example.com I could transfer the content to my main domain and create 301 redirects. For the other two subdomains I cannot integrate the content in my main domain as it doesn't make sense. Whats the cleanest way to make them dissapear? (just put a redirect to my main domain even if the content is not the same) or just change the robots to "noindex" and put a 404 page in the index of each subdomain. I want to use the way that will harm the least the performance with Google. Regards!

    On-Page Optimization | | Gaolga
    0
  • AL123al


    Hi, A client of mine offers loft conversions and wants to make a go of it. So he has a website dedicated to loft conversions. He is also a joiner/carpenter and has another old website which offers general joinery work and insurance work. Both websites have the same business name and same address and phone number. There is only one Google place page for the loft conversions website. The loft conversions website is not ranking as well as we would like locally. Could it be due to the same NAP? What are the best options? Redirect the old website to the loft conversions one (he might not like that idea) Change the address and phone number on one website?(and all subsequent citations?) Would love some help on this!

    Local SEO | | AL123al
    0

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