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
-
Question About creating seperate websites or using a subdomain or just subfolders...Thanks!
I am working with a company who has created a reservation software...We have been advertising this software aggressively and have been doing well with companies coming on board...Let's call the company ABC and the url was ABC.com...Now they are launching a customer facing side of things that will have all the clients listed for consumers to book at their location...So an online marketplace...Like VRBO or AirBnB...They are taking the name of the software company and making it the url for the marketplace site...So now the marketplace is ABC.com and we need to figure out if we go with a new site for the software side or if we use subdomains or a subfolder.... Do we go with ABCSoftware.com - New root domain ABC.software.com - Subdomain ABC.com/software - Subfolder There are a few other intricacies with this...Not all the companies that use the software will be on the marketplace side...And people who book through the company but using the software have a url embedded on their site that books there directly...This booking costs the company less than a booking that comes through the marketplace so this needs to be kept separate... Thanks for the help everyone!
Moz Pro | | TheMarketingInitiative1 -
Stupid question: why SEOMOz has become MOZ?
According to their On-Page Report Card the URL should include the main keyword i.e. SEO in their case, so why do they get an F grade If I check their main page www.moz.com for the keyword SEO? Thanks for your comments!
Moz Pro | | mcany0 -
On-Page Report Card Questions
First post here, a couple questions as I work through some of the SEOMOZ tool reporting, specifically the On-page Report Card. I've just received the report results yesterday, so working through the data now. There are two issues categorized as critical by the tool: (1) The grader is stating I don't have any instances of the target keyword in my page title, yet it's there. (The page title is too long, but I'm in the process of hacking the blog software to fix this, it's auto-generated by the CMS.) (2) It's also saying under "Broad Keyword Usage in Document" that I have zero instances of the keyword in the body text, and while I certainly don't have enough, there is at least one instance at the bottom of the blog post. All the text is contained with tags. (3) Related to #2, what's the difference between "Appropriate Keyword Usage in Document" under "High Importance Factors" and "Broad Keyword Usage in Document" under "Critical Factors"
Moz Pro | | webranger0 -
I can't submit a private question
I'm trying to submit a private question but I get an error saying: We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly. Cornel
Moz Pro | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
Is ther any wordpress pluggin to ad a foro question like this blog or like yahoo answers to my site
Is ther any wordpress pluggin to ad a foro question like this blog or like yahoo answers to my site
Moz Pro | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Conical tag question
I have now 124 notices showing rel = conical as follow , can you please advise are they ok , they might be due to new wordpress plugin URL: http://www.domain.com Tag value http://www.domain.com are they ok ? Although they look same but then why are they there , how can i remove them in word press and is there any reason for them to be left or removed . My site always uses www, if you put non www address it resolves automatically to www. My ranking have suddenly dropped as well . can it reason . I am aware of new update .
Moz Pro | | HateDoingSEO0 -
301 redirect question from a newb
So, I've been blogging for almost 3 years now. I've always used wordpress, but recently changed from a ProPhoto theme to a Woo Theme (Editorial...don't know if that matters). I've signed up for the SEOmoz website and HOLY CROW I have problems with my website out the wazoo. I am tackling issues one at a time and one of my issues seems to be 301 redirects. If you'd like to see a screen shot of the crawl diagnostics, check it out the attachment. If you'd like screen shots of anything else, just let me know. I'm not sure I'm reading the chart right, but it seems to say that all of my redirecting problems are because my links are redirecting from an http://www..... to a http://http://www... I've been in my wordpress blog post back end and can't seem to figure out how they A. Got like this. and B how to fix it. If I'm reading the chart wrong...definitely let me know. Thank you guys so much in advance! Screen%20Shot%202012-01-01%20at%202.28.19%20PM.png
Moz Pro | | TerraDawn0 -
How do I delete a question?
Having problems with this question, old edits get saved as copies of the question, even this one had to be edited twice, originally an old version of an edited question. How do I DELETE a question I authored (like this one) I see no button for it.
Moz Pro | | AspenFasteners0