Two Questions
-
1) The PA in the SEOmoz toolbar for ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk/ is completely different to http://www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk. I think in link building I've occasionally left the / off and vice versa. Is google seeing these as two different sites and how can I combine the two so the PA is no longer different? I initially tried a 301 redirect from the less PA to the higher one but it didn't work. Suggestions please.
- I'm trying to rank for the term Scentsy UK. Was told on here that it was unnecessary to get a .co.uk and that if I just link build for my scentsy-uk site which I have been doing. Woke up this morning and my page ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk was no where to be seen on Google. I can still do site: and Link: for my main .com and I'm still ranking first page for other things so don't think I've been penalised at all. However when I try the site: and link: on the .com/scentsy-uk its no where to be found. There was no messages in Google webmaster tools either.
Is this an algorithm thing or have I been penalised?
Also....its now pulling up <cite>www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/blog/tag/scentsy-uk</cite> for the higher ranking results. Have I confused google with having this blog tag as well? Any suggestions to help would be appreciated. Losing a lot of sleep on this website at the moment. x
-
I've asked squarespace for help and they basically said they wont alter any of the httaccess file for me, asked around in the squarespace community and they started saying that this was SEOmoz's crawlers which are completely different to Google and as long as two url's weren't showing up in Google (which they aren't...just two different PA's on the SEOmoz toolbar)...then to not worry about it. They said that Google is smart enough to decide between the two and that from now on I should just focus on one URL for link building.
Feeling a bit deflated....maybe I shouldn't worry about it though. Wish squarespace wasn't so limiting on controls TBH.
Christine
-
Hi Christine,
It could be an issue with the toolbar that's causing the PA of 1 to show up for the first (UK) url you mentioned, but the other two are likely correct.
At the moment you have two distinct pages:
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk
and
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk/
that have the exact same (duplicate) content, and both of which likely have links pointing to them. The same goes for every page on your site, so you're definitely losing some ranking power.
All of your pages should either end with a slash or not end with a slash... it doesn't really matter which one you choose, it just needs to be constant throughout the site. I checked your HTML and there are no Canonical tags, so I'd recommend asking SquareSpace to go ahead and add the first Rewrite I posted earlier to your .htaccess file. I'm sure they've had many similar requests, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. Once that's finished you should be good to go!
Let me know if you have any other questions.
-Anthony
-
The site is through squarespace so I've contacted support to ask whether any of this is possible. I don't believe we are given access to our .htaccess files but have asked to double check.
The only reason why I noticed the different PA's is I happened to type in the different versions of the address in my own location/address bar on the top of Firefox. I did a quick look on Google and only one seems to be getting indexed which funny enough seems to be slightly different as well.
So to clarify:
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-UK/
Showing up on google, clicked on it and the PA in the toolbar in my browser was showing as 1
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk/
shows up as a PA of 17
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk
shows up as a PA of 20
Could it just be a problem with the toolbar? I guess I'm just worried that all these sites are showing as different PA when what I want is just one PA throughout any of the variations people may come across.
-
If you're site is still serving both the URL with a trailing slash and a duplicate URL without it, that is definitely something that should be remedied as soon as possible, as your authority from external links is likely being split between the two URLS.
There's two ways to do this... 301 redirection and rel canonical tags. In my opinion a site-wide 301 redirect rule is absolutely the best solution to this problem. The code below will uses Apache's Rewrite Engine to redirect traffic and "linkjuice" to the URL with a trailing slash, which is what I would suggest.
Just add this to the .htaccess file located in the root directory of your domain.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
_It's possible that the first two lines are already present, in which case you should paste lines 3 - 5 as they are above. _*****Replace 'yourdomain.com' with your domain.
You can be sure that the rule is working correctly by going to 'yourdomain.com/page' and confirming that you're redirected to 'yourdomain.com/page/'.
I also noticed in your question that you used both 'WWW.yourdomain.com' and 'yourdomain.com' when describing your issue. If you're seeing both WWW and non-WWW versions of your pages in search results, it's possible that you have another duplicate content issue, potentially allowing Google to index 4 duplicate versions of the same page... looks like you're good to go though ... I just checked and all non-WWW URLs are redirecting to the WWW versions, so just make sure you add the WWW to the last line of code above (**www.**yourdomain.com).
For other potential readers:
Site-wide non-WWW to WWW 301 redirects can be implemented by adding:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
The opposite (WWW to non-WWW) can be implemented by adding:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
*****Replace **'yourdomain.com' **with your domain and omit Line 1 if it is already present.
It'll take a little time for Google to account for the changes, but if you're redirected when you do the test I mentioned, you can sit back and relax.
Hope this helps and good luck!
- Anthony
-
The seomoz PA only gets updated every no and them it seems.
If the only difference is a / I don't think it would make any difference, as long as both get to the same page.
Site: and link: isn;t indicitive of google penalties. There are many different penalties that can be dished out and you will almost always be left in the dark about them.
If you have been link building, check that. Google is huge on unnatural linking now.
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
-
1500 Domains... Where to begin? & Web Structure Question.
So, as the title says, I am stuck. I recently have been brought on as the SEO guru for a small-mid size company with the task of rebuilding their web presence. Their website is in pretty unfortunate condition. The more research I do, the farther and farther I am going down the rabbit hole of chaos. Essential the previous CEO was doing all SEO work. He purchased 1500 domains, all keyword specific. Installed wordpress on roughly 1,000 and then began pumping out content. Of the 1,000 roughly 300 of them have about 600-2,000 characters worth of content that is absolute fluff. From there the linking began. Now the content is different enough that Google doesn't seem to notice that its the SAME FREEKIN THING on each domain, but I am very concerned. The company has their main multi-page domain which has other links and sources of traffic, but in essence the previous owner created a micro link web. My advice is to cut those links ASAP and remove the previous work. At the same time, I also don't want them to lose rank. So I guess I am asking a whole slew of questions... Am I right in thinking that we have to build a bridge before we burn a bridge? Is it worth fixing up some of those other domains to have original content to try and bolster what we already have? Would it be better to combine everything into one website, or try and have different domains represent different things. For example Envato.com is an umbrella website with 8 separate websites operating under the same roof using different domains.? Where do I begin? I feel like I have started this project numerous times. I know the keywords, I know where the duplicate content is, I know the structure of the main domain, I am getting the structure of the entire link web. Lastly, any thoughts you all have would be greatly appreciated. I realistically have minimal experience in this realm. I am a a major nub. I understand SEO in theory, sorta. So I'm getting there!
Moz Pro | | HashtagHustler0 -
OK Crawl Test Link Question Again!
I've downloaded a crawl test and column G Link Count reads 62 and yep there are a total of 62 links on the page in question. Column AM Internal Links reads 303 and yep there are somewhere in the order of 303 pages pointing at this one. Root Domains is surprisingly low at 6, so maybe there are only 6 domains linking to this page. BUT... External Links read 51. There are not 51 links pointing away from this domain on this page, no way hozay, so can anybody tell me what is meant by 'External Links? A humble thank you in anticipation of an education. Jem
Moz Pro | | JemRobinson0 -
Page authority questions?
I've been analyzing some IT communities ...in order to check how relevant is the page authority vs PageRank. I found one main site which is organized by "communities'..and every community is a sub-domain. The root domain has an authority of 90/100 which it should be great......so the sub-domains "inherit" part of this authority.... Until here everything seems to be perfect. However, I went deeper and I picked one of these communities. Analyzing the "Linking Root Domain" I discovered it only has only 5 root domains pointing to its home page. Those 5 Root Domains have generated more than 134k links. That doesn't seem to be "natural". Checking those 5 Root Domains I discovered that they have been registered by the same Root Domain site. Ex: Main domain: Domain.com Community1.domain.com Community2.domain.com.... Linking Root Domains: DomainXY.com DomainABC.com DomainRST.com DomainFGH.com DomainOPQ.com It seems to me that it is easy to cheat the authority domain score. Just creating others sites developing the same topic and generating back links to your main domain
Moz Pro | | SherWeb0 -
Ask a Question
SEO Moz has found a bunch of duplicate content errors on one of my sites because blog archives has created a new page for each tag. For example: http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/travel http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/travel-photography http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/tours http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/accommodations The above urls are just tags for the same exact page, hence making them all duplicates. Is it normal for each tag to be a separate page? Do the search engines see this as duplicate content? If so, how do I correct this issue if I want to keep the tags? Regards,Dino
Moz Pro | | Dino640 -
Technical Question about tools available in market
Hi, I am looking for a tool most probably web based tool like opensiteexplorer / majestic seo that gives me the list of URL For example, on google we can do site:seomoz.org , and it's saying About 115,000 results. I need to get list of those 115,000 URLS in any file whether it's csv or any other. anybody care to share ?
Moz Pro | | sumairr1230 -
Seomoz research tools question for inbound links
What is the best seomoz tool and or indicator within a tool for checking on a link (directory or article site) to evaluate whether or not you would actaully want a link from them? Any way to see if google penalizes them for there tactics or if that can hurt me by them linking to me or whatever? I am at the beginning of a link building mission, but want to ensure that I do it methodically and correctly as possible based on the combines wisdom of this community. Thanks for your help, Steven
Moz Pro | | sfmatthews0 -
Question about a dramatic decrease in domain authority.
My personal website http://Bsalva.com has started to drop in both page authority and domain authority. This seems to be largely due to open site explorer not picking up all of my inbound links. Right now it says I only have one linking root domain, but I know this to be crap. I have quite a few followed links from well trusted and reputable sites. My page rank typically bounces between a 5 and 6. I should also have hundreds of inbound links. The other sites In my campaign monitor haven't taken such a hit so I'm starting to get a little worried. Does anyone know what might cause incoming links to not me recognized? they were just fine last month, and I can go find them on the web as we speak.
Moz Pro | | Bsalva0 -
Authority On Authority Question
Hi, What does it mean when seomoz shows our domain authority as 43, but our homepage authority as 52 or higher? More recently, the two used to be roughly comparable at around 52. Maybe it doesn't matter, but it did change and it makes me curious. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | 945010