Latest Questions

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  The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
  

  Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan

  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham81

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  Phone number for SEO
  

  We have had an interesting question from a client. They have asked if removing their phone number from their website would have an affect on their rankings. Our immediate answer was 'No' but it may affect the Brand, Usability and Customer experience by restricting the methods of contact. This then made us think that perhaps then it could have an effect in the long term. This situation is also complicated by the fact that they do not have a Google Local Plus account for operational, sensitivity reasons (they don't want to openly publicise their address) We believe that there shouldn't be any negative affect but thought we would open a discussion. Thanks in advance for any comments/ideas.

  On-Page Optimization | | vital_hike

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  Product meta tags are not updating in my Magneto website!
  

  I need some help! For some reason, each time I update the product meta tags in my Magento website, it doesn't change on the current website? Could someone help me understand why that is?

  Technical SEO | | One2OneDigital

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  No-indexed pages are still showing up as landing pages in Google Analytics
  

  Hello, My website is a local job board. I de-indexed all of the job listing pages on my site (anything that starts with http://www.localwisejobs.com/job/). When I search site:localwisejobs.com/job/, nothing shows up. So I think that means the pages are not being indexed. When I look in Google Analytics at Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages, none of the job listing pages show up. But when I look at Acquisition > Channels > Organic and then click Landing Page as the primary dimension, the /job pages show up in there. Why am I seeing this discrepency in Organic Landing pages? And why would the /job pages be showing up as landing pages even though they aren't indexed?

  Reporting & Analytics | | mztobias

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  Images on sub domain fed from CDN
  

  I have a client that uses a CDN to fill images, from a sub domain ( images.domain.com). We've made sure that the sub domain itself is not blocked. We've added a robots.txt file, we're creating an image sitemap file & we've verified ownership of the domain within GWT. Yet, any crawler that I use only see's the first page of the sub domain (which is .html) but none of the subsequent URL's which are all .jpeg. Is there something simple I'm missing here?

  Technical SEO | | TammyWood

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  Tools to test meta descriptions?
  

  Hey does anyone know of any tools which can test your meta descriptions against competitors meta descriptions for specific keyword terms. I know one tool called SERP Turkey which uses mechanical turk, i was wondering if there is any others on the market? Even a tool which can automatically score your meta description against others on the SERP results page. E..g optimised, keyword, call to action, etc. Cheers, Chris

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright

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  Redirect from a previous url
  

  Hi - newbie question I have a customer who's had previous versions of his website. Previously it was known as "princess-interiors.co.uk" (been around for a few years) and is now "princess-design.co.uk" (been around also for a few years). New site is WordPress - what would be the best way to redirect (I have access to the previous version of the site which is still hosted). I expect it's to use 301, but how would I do that (step by step), and does www. versus non-www need addressing (and how). Really concerned, as this site has gone to zero organic visits!! Hoping somebody can help. Thanks

  Link Building | | Gokart

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  Pagination loading with using AJAX. Should I change this?
  

  Hello, while I was checking this site; http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html I found that the pagination is working this way http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-2
  http://www.disfracessimon.com/disfraces-adultos-16.html#/page-3 and content is being loaded using AJAX. So, google is not getting the paginated results. Is this a big issue or there is no problem?
  Should I create a link for See All Products or there is not a big issue? Thank you!

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite

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  Click to view phone number
  

  Well hello there! We run a local directory site for a specific vertical and use several thousand call tracking numbers (one per listing) to track calls to the local business and report on those metrics (number of calls, appointment set, etc). We are familiar with dynamic phone number insertion to be able to track phone calls back to the type of traffic or campaign sending it.  If we wanted to implement this, it would require an exorbitant amount of call tracking numbers as we already start out with several thousand numbers to begin with. We are toying with the idea to hide the phone number in the directory listing and require the user to click to show the full phone number. We know this is an additional action required by the user, but we assume that this would then help us see the folks who are more serious about calling the number of the local business. We could then use that click metric to then tie out all the goals within GA to look at how effective a given medium is and even look at what content is sending traffic that clicks on the phone number. Two areas for comments: Any input on others who use this metric?  Any input on if anyone thinks this is a good/bad metric?  Anyone have a better idea/technique? Do you think that the search engines would see this technique as a negative? If so, why or why not? Thanks!

  Local SEO | | HeaHea

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  Should a sub domain be a separate property in the Search Console?
  

  We're launching a blog on a sub-domain of a corp site (blog.corpsite.com). We already have corpsite.com set up in the Search Console. Should I set up a separate property for this sub-domain in the Search Console (WMT) in order to manage it? Is it necessary? Thanks, JM

  Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio

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  I have a GoDaddy website and have multiple homepages
  

  I have GoDaddy website builder and a new website http://ecuadorvisapros.com and I notices through your crawl test that there are 3 home pages http://ecuadorvisapros with a 302 temporary redirect, http://www.ecuadorvisapros.com/ with no redirect and http://www.ecuadorvisapros/home.html.  GoDaddy says there is only one home page.  Is this going to kill my chances of having a successful website and can this be fixed?  Or can it.  I actually went with the SEO version thinking it would be better, but it wants to auto change my settings that I worked so hard at with your sites help. Please keep it simple, I am a novice although I have had websites in the past I know more about the what's than the how's of websites. Thanks,

  Technical SEO | | ScottR.

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  What punctuation can you use in meta tags? Are there any Google does not like?
  

  So I know you can use dashes and | in meta tags, but can anyone tell me what other punctuation you can use? Also, it'd be great to know what punctuation you can't use. Thanks!

  Technical SEO | | Trevorneo

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  Duplicate Schema within webpage
  

  I'm implementing schema across a few Wordpress sites. Most (probably all) WP sites use widgets for their footer, which offer their own editable HTML. Is it damaging (or helpful) to implement the exact same markup in the footer and a specific page, like for instance,  a locations page that has the address and contact info (which are also in the footer)?

  Local Website Optimization | | ReunionMarketing

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  How to check if an individual page is indexed by Google?
  

  So my understanding is that you can use site: [page url without http] to check if a page is indexed by Google, is this 100% reliable though? Just recently Ive worked on a few pages that have not shown up when Ive checked them using site: but they do show up when using info: and also show their cached versions, also the rest of the site and pages above it (the url I was checking was quite deep) are indexed just fine. What does this mean? thank you p.s I do not have WMT or GA access for these sites

  Technical SEO | | linklander

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  Dealing with links to your domain that the previous owner set up
  

  Hey everyone, I rebranded my company at the end of last year from a name that was fairly unique but sounded like I cleaned headstones instead of building websites. I opted for a name that I liked, it reflected my heritage - however it also seems to be quite common. Anyway, I registered the domain name as it was available as the previous owner's company had been wound up. It's only been in the last week or two where I've managed to have a website on that domain and I've been tracking it's progress through Moz, Google & Bing Webmaster tools. Both the webmaster tools are reporting back that my site triggers 404 errors for some specific links. However, I don't have or have never used those links before. I think the previous owner might have created the links before he went bust. My question is in two parts. The first part is how do I find out what websites are linking to me with these broken URL's, and the second is will these 404'ing links affect my SEO? Thanks!

  White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mickburkesnr

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  Prismic.io CMS and SEO?
  

  Looking for community feedback: Some of our In house developers want to use Prismic.io over Wordpress for it's alleged ease of organizing and "deploying" content. It's essentially a repository for content from which you make API calls to. It's a rather new platform. There a few posts in Quora around SEO but looking to see if anyone has had experience with platform. My concern is around  page load times, excessive server requests, and content viewed as code. Any thoughts/ experiences would be much appreciated!

  Web Design | | ArcherMalmo

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  Drip Feeding Free Top 10 Blog Sites for Link Building?
  

  Is it a good move to pick 10 free blogging sites to build links. Like drip feeding them. Let's say 10 blogging sites irrespective of its a sub-domain as we get in wordpress or a sub-folder blog as we get in livejournal. Now adding articles related to my money website on those blogs newly created & building links from them. Then drip feeding them by putting 1 article a month at regular intervals with anchor as links in each of them. Do you think its a good move?

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure

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  In the U.S., how can I stop the European version of my site from outranking the U.S. version?
  

  I've got a site with two versions – a U.S. version and a European version. Users are directed to the appropriate version through a landing page that asks where they're located; both sites are on the same domain, except one is .com/us and the other is .com/eu. My issue is that for some keywords, the European version is outranking the U.S. version in Google's U.S. SERPs. Not only that, but when Google displays sitelinks in the U.S. SERPs, it's a combination of pages on the European site and the U.S. site. Does anyone know how I can stop the European site from outranking the U.S. site in the U.S.? Or how I can get Google to only display sitelinks for pages on the U.S. site in the U.S. SERPs? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this topic!

  International SEO | | matt-14567

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  What is Considered Duplicate Content by Crawlers?
  

  I am asking this because I have a couple of site audit tools that I use to crawl a site I work on every week and they are showing duplicate content issues (which I know there is a lot on this site) but some of what is flagged as duplicate content makes no sense. For example, the following URL's were grouped together as duplicate content: | https://www.firefold.com/contact-us | https://www.firefold.com/gabe | https://www.firefold.com/sale | | | How are these pages duplicate content? I am confused on what site audit tools are considering duplicate content. Just FYI, this is data from Moz crawl diagnostics but SEMrush site auditor is giving me the same type of data. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Ryan

  Moz Bar | | RyanRhodes

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  Spammy no follow backlinks - what should I do?
  

  There is a individual/company that is creating lots of spam sites in my niche. It doesn't seem that they are trying to rank for any keywords, so I'm a little confused as to their purpose, but here's what they're doing. They scrape the top 10 Google results for each keyword and create a page - so if the niche is "widgets", they scrape the top 10 ranked sites for 'widgets', 'blue widgets', 'red widgets', and so on. A 'results' page is created for each keyword, which is linked from a home page. The results page always contains 10 websites - text is the site metadescription or similar. Each website gets a nofollow link back with the page title used as the anchor text. The host sites all have the keyword in the domain name - e.g www.widgetsxyz.com. The sites are thrown together but interestingly have a very crappy but individual logo (like 90's clipart). The host sites all have high DA/PA due to some very extensive link spam pointing to the sites, with very targeted keywords. There is seemingly no purpose to these sites that I can see - no other 'followed' links on the page or site. Whoever is doing this is churning out tens, if not hundreds of these sites. Any ideas what might be going on here, and whether I should be disavowing these sites (even though no follow). The fear is that they could switch the links to do follow, and get all the major players penalised in one fell swoop. ???

  Link Building | | johnohara

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  How do you go about updating / correcting bad business listings when you cannot contact the website directly?
  

  There is a business listing I wish to correct / update on 411dir.biz There is no way to contact the website online, and in cases like this, I try to do a whois lookup, and reach out via the email / phone number there. This site seems impossible to connect with, has anybody else come up against situations like this in the past, if so what do you tell your client / what other approaches do people have? Thanks!

  Local Listings | | ParadigmPCB

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  Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
  

  I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?

  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blankslatedumbo

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