To many on page links with ABC search
-
My client site http://www.tshirtsubway.com has a ABC quick find selector on the homepage of the site and throughout the site and as a result is is showing an error of to many links on the SEO moz error crawls reports.
I wanted some advice on improving this and perhaps looking for an alternative also looking at the current setup and asking is this wrong.
-
Hi Garry,
I did not perform a full site analysis. You inquired about the rankings for the keyword "T shirts" so I only compared the pages which ranked for that term.
-
"Since you mentioned the content specifically, neither site is great, but the streetshirts site is significantly better then the tshirtsubway site."
How on earth have you come to this conclusion the streetshirts site has no content on shop pages ?
-
I can't speak for EGOL. Perhaps you can ask him directly. The challenge I find is a large percentage of people keep everything confidential.
Most of my work in the past has been either for other SEO companies or for private companies involved with a penalty or other specific work where I am immediately presented with a NDA. Unfortunately those circumstances prevent me from sharing my work. I have the impression EGOL is in a similar circumstance in that he isn't freely able to share.
What I can suggest regarding content is after it is created, every article should ideally be reviewed by 4 people:
-
An English teacher (or whichever language is appropriate) to check for grammatical and spelling errors along with overall presentation and reading level.
-
A marketing professional to ensure the message is clear and will connect with users
-
An expert from the field which the article covers. A doctor, lawyer, accountant, etc. Check for accuracy, qualified quotes, etc.
-
A SEO to check for all other relevant factors such as URL, header tags, title, linking, etc.
Usually there are not 4 separate people involved to perform those functions in which case I recommend at least two people: the SEO and an expert. The SEO can use tools for English checking, and then can focus the other factors.
You can also ask others to review the final article. When I refer to "others" I mean people who would otherwise read the article. It is helpful to have a small group of people (bloggers, etc) who read advanced copies. They can offer valuable feedback and also help promote the article. At worst, grab anyone you can...a receptionist, a student, etc....to review the article and share honest feedback.
Some of the SEOmoz articles from Dr. Pete, Cyrus, Rand and others are good examples.
-
-
had a lot of problems in this project with a guy that runs the site who thinks he knows SEO. As a result its all over the place with ridiculous titles .
Thanks for all that its what I already know but nice to hear it echoed by another seo.
One question I had to EGOL is he always mentions good content being king and so on...
Does he have any examples of his own work. (dont just point out wikipedia :-))
-
Hi Garry,
I mentioned personalization because I was unsure if the ranking information was generated by you or from the client. I didn't mean to offend you.
It is still ranking well for music T shirts in the top 5 if its that bad then why ?
Using AdWords keyword data for the UK:
T Shirts 16,600,000 global monthly searches
Music T Shirts 201,000 global monthly searches
Music T Shirts UK 1,300 global monthly searches
"T shirts" has 80x more traffic then "Music T Shirts" and clearly is a much more competitive term. For "T shirts" you are competing against Wikipedia and many major retailers which simply do not compete at all for "Music T Shirts". Additionally, the site's "Music T Shirt" page is better optimized. Google helped out by changing the page title to "Music T Shirt" which is a perfect match.
The site has numerous issues and the page titles and H1 tags I would suggest are in serious need of attention. They not only target multiple terms, but they cannibalize the same terms.The page which ranks for "Music T Shirts" has a title of "Music T-shirt, T-shirts and Tee Shirts at T Shirt Subway" while the home page has a title of "T Shirts | Music T Shirts | Buy Online at T Shirt Subway".
-
It certainly wasn't due to personalization sorry mate but been in the business 10 plus years .
I hear what your saying but investment from the client etc have to be considered
It is still ranking well for music T shirts in the top 5 if its that bad then why ?
-
When I compare the two sites, they are really night and day from a SEO perspective. The streetshirts.co.uk site does have opportunities for improvement, but it is a completely different class as a site then your client's website. A few examples:
-
The streetshirts site has a Verisign EV SSL certificate. It's basically the best SSL certificate from the world's most recognized provider. The tshirtsubway.com site not only lacks a SSL certificate, it seems to fraudulently claim to have a Versign certificate. I was not able to find any evidence of the site having the Verisign SSL certificate it claims to possess.
-
The streetshirts site accepts Paypal and GoogleCheckout. The tshirtssubway.com advertises acceptance of those payment options, but either the store is not properly configured or these claims are fraudulent.
-
The streetshirts site has active social engagement. There are over 100k facebook likes and about 1k Google +1s on the home page. The tshirtsubway.com site does not use any social engagement at all, except a single Google+ widget on the home page in a sidebar below the fold where it is unlikely to be seen and has 0 clicks.
-
The streetshirts site PA/DA is 65/58 vs the tshirtsubway 53/43. While both sites appear to have some manipulative links, the tshirtsubway site appears significantly worse. The majority of the anchor text is either "t shirts" or "music t shirts".
-
The streetshirts site uses mostly valid html code (2 errors). The tshirtsubway.com home page has 68 errors.
-
Since you mentioned the content specifically, neither site is great, but the streetshirts site is significantly better then the tshirtsubway site.
-
The streetshirts site manages it's PR flow much better with a total of 51 links on the home page whereas the tshirtsubway site has about triple that amount.
If I were to use an analogy, I would say it's like comparing a McDonald's hamburger (tshirtsubway) to a Whopper w/Cheese. The Whopper isn't a fantastic burger, but next to a regular McDonald's hamburger it's clearly the better choice. They are simply not in the same class.
The last point is you mentioned the traffic drop. There are simply far too many issues with the site to discuss the ranking drop. The home page should never have appeared in the top 20 results in my opinion so it's hard for me to discuss the "drop" from that perspective. My first guess would be the site never really appeared that high but was shown there due to personalization.
Good luck.
-
-
Yeah Ryan Google.co.uk thats right.
-
Garry, can I ask you to share which search engine you are using? I used Google.com for my research because it was a .com site and nothing was otherwise stated. The result you are sharing is from the UK so I am now guessing you are using google.co.uk.
-
Sorry Ryan but I disagree with your reply. The site is ranking highly for Music T Shirts and was 2nd page for T Shirts for months.
something has happened recently but I hear what your saying regarding the site being stuffed with links.
I am worried the site might have been penalized in some way.
For T shirts this site is no 1 - http://www.streetshirts.co.uk/
your telling me it has lots of great content ??
-
Do you have any ideas on the problem with the site ranking for 1 word.
While T Shirts is clearly a focus for the site, it is also an ultra competitive keyword. While the site has a respectable PA of 53 for the home page, there is only one result in the top 20 sites with a PA that low and it belongs to Zappos (PA 47) but that site has a much higher DA (93 vs 43).
The overall quality of the home page is not great. There are no trust symbols and the page seems to be written for search engines more then for people. The page seems stuffed with keywords and links.
The title is focusing multiple keywords which is also a concern.
In my opinion the site's home page should not appear on the 2nd page of SERPs so I can't speak as to why it may have appeared there in the past. There could have been changes made to the site, the page or it's links. I think the site can do well in SERPs but it definitely requires SEO attention.
-
Thanks Ryan I will pass all these suggestions on. Do you have any ideas on the problem with the site ranking for 1 word.
It was 2nd page for the keyword "T shirts" but it has now totally disappeared. Its really strange ?
Asking the client if they have been adjusting pages but never had this happen before.
-
Hi Garry,
An A-Z link panel is fine if it is well presented and used by visitors. I suggest examining your Google Analytics to see if the panel is really used.
I would recommend combining some letters. The letter "T" offers 6 shirts, but U only has 1, V only has 1, and W, X, Y & Z have zero. It is wasteful to flow PR to pages that have no content. Perhaps you can present one button for U-Z.
Also, the bottom part of the page which offers text has many duplicate links. Once again, I recommend reviewing analytics data first, but if users are not clicking those links I would remove all the duplicates.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Too many SEO changes needed on a page. Create a new page?
I've been doing some research on a keyword with Page Optimization. I'm finding there's a lot of changes suggested. I'm wondering that because of the amount of changes required is it better to create a new page entirely from scratch that has all the suggestions implemented OR change the current page? Thanks, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris29181 -
A word which has link to some other page, is that word also count as keyword stuffing
Dear All, A word which has link to some other page, is that word is also countable, and it also considered as keyword stuffing. For example, if I am giving link to other page for a keyword "Vastu Specialist", here the word "Vastu" is my main keyword for particular page, if so this word Vastu is considered to be keyword stuffing, This info was not available any where. It may be very useful for all of SEO's. https://www.subhavaastu.com/vastu.html , in this link there is a huge content, in which "Vastu" is appeared to be in some places, when going to backend page Ctrl+U then we may find many "Vastu", but many has link to other page. May I know the exact answer for this question please. Thank you so much for every body who shared their knowledge to the society.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sureshworks0 -
Redirect Search Results to Category Pages
I am planning redirect the search results to it's matching category page to avoid having two indexed pages of essentially the same content. Example http://www.example.com/search/?kw=sunglasses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WizardOfMoz
wil be redirected to
http://www.example.com/category/sunglasses/ Is this a good idea? What are the possible negative effect if I go this route? Thanks.0 -
"No index" page still shows in search results and paginated pages shows page 2 in results
I have "no index, follow" on some pages, which I set 2 weeks ago. Today I see one of these pages showing in Google Search Results. I am using rel=next prev on pages, yet Page 2 of a string of pages showed up in results before Page 1. What could be the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Help! Optimizing dynamic internal search results pages...
Hi guys, Now I have always been against this, and opted to noindex internal search results pages to stop the waste of link juice, dupe content, and crawl loops... however, I'm in a discussion with somebody who feels there may be a solution, and that the pages could actually be optimized to rank (for different keywords to the landing pages of course). Anybody come across such a thing before? My only solution would be still to noindex and then build static pages with the most popular search results in but that won't suffice in this case. Any recommendations would be much appreciated 🙂 Thanks, Steve 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0 -
Natural Link Profile, low and high value links, really?
I cant really get my head around this one. I've read a few times when building links make sure you pick up so low value links as well. So here is an example (and lets say each link takes half hour to get): I got 5 hours of link building and this is what I have managed to get with the time. 1. 10 high value links all with PA/DA 50-60+ 2. 5 high value links with PA/DA 50-60+ AND another 5 low value links with PA/DA 10-. Surely #1 beats #2 hands down?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
If google ignores links from "spammy" link directories ...
Then why does SEO moz have this list: http://www.seomoz.org/dp/seo-directory ?? Included in that list are some pretty spammy looking sites such as: <colgroup><col width="345"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg
| http://www.site-sift.com/ |
| http://www.2yi.net/ |
| http://www.sevenseek.com/ |
| http://greenstalk.com/ |
| http://anthonyparsons.com/ |
| http://www.rakcha.com/ |
| http://www.goguides.org/ |
| http://gosearchbusiness.com/ |
| http://funender.com/free_link_directory/ |
| http://www.joeant.com/ |
| http://www.browse8.com/ |
| http://linkopedia.com/ |
| http://kwika.org/ |
| http://tygo.com/ |
| http://netzoning.com/ |
| http://goongee.com/ |
| http://bigall.com/ |
| http://www.incrawler.com/ |
| http://rubberstamped.org/ |
| http://lookforth.com/ |
| http://worldsiteindex.com/ |
| http://linksgiving.com/ |
| http://azoos.com/ |
| http://www.uncoverthenet.com/ |
| http://ewilla.com/ |0 -
Does Google count links on a page or destination URLs?
Google advises that sites should have no more than around 100 links per page. I realise there is some flexibility around this which is highlighted in this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru One of Google's justifications for this guideline is that a page with several hundred links is likely to be less useful to a user. However, these days web pages are rarely 2 dimensional and usually include CSS drop--down navigation and tabs to different layers so that even though a user may only see 60 or so links, the source code actually contains hundreds of links. I.e., the page is actually very useful to a user. I think there is a concern amongst SEO's that if there are more than 100ish links on a page search engines may not follow links beyond those which may lead to indexing problems. This is a long winded way of getting round to my question which is, if there are 200 links in a page but many of these links point to the same page URL (let's say half the links are simply second ocurrences of other links on the page), will Google count 200 links on the page or 100?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SureFire0