Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Yes, can I mark a whole block of ads as "advertisement" or does each individual ad need to be marked?

As Google seems to have new interest in Rel Author for articles, is there anything comparable for q&a comments, where you have many commenters?

IMHO, Google is trying to get at the quality of the authors advice via authority of some kind, especially for YMYL content.

Best... Mike

In marking paid ads as "advertisement" for the sake of Google organic, if you have a block of small ads, do you have to mark each and every one as an advertisement?

For instance, let's say you have a block of small ads in the right column... mark each one or just at the top or what?

Thanks!

Hi Erica,

Yeah, I get that about Google and links. just trying to come up with some reason why anyone would go to the trouble to submit a video review.

Moz is kind of tough comparison, since it's an industry leader with many reasons one might post.

Thanks... Mike

Hi Justin,

By "embeddable" I was just thinking of some kind of social friendly gizmo/result that lures people in to find out what movie their life is like or what movie character or actor they are like or some kind of pop media crap like that for grabbing eyeballs out of social.

Until comments can deepen page text, you might want to "noindex, follow" and remove those thin pages out of the sitemap and index, just so Google doesn't find too many thin pages to whack you over the head with.

Best.... Mike

Do you think folks would do a video review if they could get a link to some local business... part of the mention in their review? If so, how would I publicize that without getting slammed by the G?

Hi Erica,

Thanks for the post. I've seeded it with reviews. The main trouble is getting folks there to even come in contact with the idea of posting a video. Good points about interface and gamifying. The site doesn't sell anything, so can't give a discount.

If anyone has any more ideas, please post. Thanks!

One area that we've had a lot of success with is user generated content. I see it's possible for folks to comment on the site. How much does your use of email drive those comments?  Maybe controversial opinions promoted by email to your list would gain deeper UGC. Better yet if you could segment media fans by personas. Creating thinner pages, say about a trailer review and then not having comments to deepen it makes for a lot of thin/highly templated pages.

You could also work a bit more on internal in-context linking to elevate the importance of various search pages.

I think in the incredibly competitive space of movie reviews, the site will have to focus smartly on nichier/longer tail searches.

Do you leverage youtube? What about some kind of embeddable result creating tool for self-obsessed tv/film fans to link to?

Just some thoughts. Curious to hear what you think. Good luck! Best... Mike

Hi,

I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content.

My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at.

Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi Egol,

Thanks for the message. For this particular site, I'm looking at a very noticeable dip in position tracking that is then partially obscured by the following week's Thanksgiving holiday. This week, the week after the holiday week, is down about 15% traffic wise compared to 2 weeks prior. As a point of reference, last year this site was flat for the same period. So, don't really think it's just seasonality.

I might think it was just this site, but it just happened to coincide with that increase in mozcast temps and other stories of flux.

Has anybody benefited or suffered with the same kind of timing?

Did anyone see any big changes around Nov 19th & 20th? Mozcast had some high temps around there.

If you saw any big changes in organic search, any ideas WTH that was all about?

Any guesses?

One site I work with took about a 15% hit and has since sort of skidded sideways.

Hi Oleg & Chris,

Thanks for the answers. This is exactly what I've been thinking, but wanted to sanity check it... just to make sure I wasn't just having an initial negative reaction to someone else's idea.

Best... Mike

I work with a site that gets lots of members and conversions from its specialty interest community forum out of organic search. The site has been around for a number of years and still has many forum pages that do well in search that are 5+ years old. Some of these discussions may have dozens of comments and a few have thousand words.

The option has been floated to end accepting new comments on specific discussions at some point. I can see the negatives, such as folks coming out of search and wanting to register to comment, but not be able to... if we closed the discussion to new comments.

I've always assumed that new comments may freshen up a page a little organic search-wise, but honestly don't know how much that matters.

Are  there any good reasons to close a discussion to new comments? Related question, what do you think is the optimum qty of unique text before paginating?

Thanks!

Hi,

I'm working on a site that has video reviews of various places. It's general information/experience that most people possess and production-wise they are selfies. These videos are then transcribed and, voila... searchable content.

My problem is this... how do I get large numbers of people to go to the trouble to make a 2 minute selfie? I thought about HARO, since one could work in a plug for something, but they have a site traffic threshold that this new site isn't at.

Any and all ideas on how to efficiently generate this content for a new site with very little traffic would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Good answers all. Thanks! Can you guys come to this meeting with me?

He thinks if you buy a domain with some links pointing to it already, that solves problem one of a site passing some authority. Problem two, pulling it off, he thinks would be relatively easy. Gah!

Here's how I feel about this:

https://youtu.be/AwY4pzb0Pjs

My client wants to build a second site to provide targeted links for SEO to his main site. He's interested in buying a TLD with some near topic authority/links and then build the second site's authority up from there.

He is clear that this could get him in trouble for a link scheme, but thinks it can all be hidden from Google. Off the top of my head I was able to recall a few of the pain-in-the-neck things you'd have to do to not get caught, but he seemed unconvinced. I recall you'd have to have:

• Different registrar

• Different contact/WhoIs

• Different site host

• Different G/A, GWT

• Logging into second's site's G/A, GWT with different IP address not used for main domain

With the exception of the last one, he didn't seem to think it would be too hard. Aren't there more difficult maneuvers required for hiding this from Google? I want to be able to point out to him how ridiculous this low integrity effort will be, without losing the client.

Thanks! Best... Darcy

Hi Dmitrii,

Always fun to watch Matt's Greatest Hits, in this example the value of making things better.

I guess the make better or delete seems super black and white to me.

Economically, who is able to make thousands of pages dramatically better with compelling original content? So, instead, the only other option is apparently radical elective surgery and massive amputation? I guess I'd choose the chemo first and don't really see what the downside is for noindex/follow and exclude from the sitemap.

Anyway, thanks again! Best... Darcy

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the message.

To answer your question, part of the reason is link juice via a noindex/follow and then there are some pages that serve a very very narrow content purpose, but have absolutely no life in search.

All things being equal, do you think a smaller, more focused, sitemap is generally an advantage? In the extreme and on other sites I've seen sitemaps with noindexed pages on them.

Thanks... Darcy

Thanks for the suggestion, Andrew.

With setting priority or not in a sitemap, do you think a smaller, more focused, sitemap is generally an advantage?

Thanks... Darcy

Thomas & Dmitrii,

Thanks for the message. With all do respect, I really read the above linked post differently than Google saying "just delete it."

Also, I don't see how deleting it preserves whatever link juice those pages had, as opposed to a "noindex, follow" and taking them out of the sitemap.

Finally, I don't necessarily equate all of Google's suggestions as synonymous with a "for best effect in search." I assume their suggestions mean, "it's best for Google if you..."

Thanks, again!

Best... Darcy

Dmitrii & Thomas,

Thanks for your thoughts.

Removal would be one way to go. I note with some interest this post:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-block-thin-content-use-noindex-over-404s-21011.html

According to that, removal would be the third thing after making it better and noindexing.

With thousands of pages, making it better is not really an option.

Best... Darcy

Would there be any positive effect from editing a site map down to a more curated list of pages that perform, or that we hope they begin to perform, in organic search?

A site I work with has a sitemap with about 20,000 pages that is automatically created out of a Drupal plugin.

Of those pages, only about 10% really produce out of search. There are old sections of the site that are thin, obsolete, discontinued and/or noindexed that are still on the sitemap.

For instance, would it focus Google's crawl budget more efficiently or have some other effect?

Your thoughts? Thanks! Best... Darcy

Thanks, Dirk!

Hi Dirk,

One last clarification...

If Google ignores the canonical and chooses to take the url with parameters seriously, do you think this is causing a duplicate content issue or at least loss of link juice problem?

For instance, the navigation has parameters. If Google chooses to see a page with parameters as index-worthy instead of the canonical, is it then two duplicates splitting the link juice flowing to what we hoped was the one true url for the page? That would be no bueno.

Thanks! Best... Darcy

HI Dirk,

Super helpful insight... thanks!

On the people still visiting the page, if they are landing there out of search, why is Google showing them the url with parameters as opposed to just the representative url? That's the part that has me concerned... landing out of search on a page with parameters.

Best... Darcy

A site I'm working on has canonical tags which I find to be accurate, regardless of tracking parameters or anything else added to the url. The tag looks like:

And we have alot of parameters in Google Search Console that look like

Parameter                                Crawl

page                                         Let Googlebot Decide

destination                                Let Googlebot Decide

filters                                        Let Googlebot Decide

Since all of our parameters follow a question mark, like

http://www.examplesite.com/questions/avocados?source=ad12345

and all of our pages have canonical tags showing the representative url without the additional parameters, why wouldn't we just have the one parameter in GWT as

Parameter                                Crawl

?                                               Representative URL

I ask because I find that Google analytics shows pages with parameters as landing pages in search, which has me concerned about Google seeing it as duplicate content.

Thanks! Best... Darcy

Hi Bryan,

Wouldn't it have to re-crawl the old url to see that if forwards to the new url?

I'm changing the url of some old pages to see if I can't get a little more organic out of them.

After changing the url, and maybe title/desc tags as well, I plan to have Google fetch them.

How does Google know that the old url is 301'd to the new url and the new url is not just a page of duplicate content?

Thanks... Darcy

Yes, the only iframe is the wistia and youtube embedded player.

Yes, it seems funny that this site audit tool calls out an embedded player as a problem. What if it was a Vimeo player... does that make any difference. I think probably not

Thanks!

I'm helping someone with a new site that will have pages for organic search that contain embedded video.

Some will be youtube embeds and some will be wistia embeds. These pages will have several hundred words of transcript text and the embeds (iframes) iframes themselves will be rather small, but expandable and possibly more than one per page.

The transcript text area is more like 80% of the page.

Do you think this is an organic search problem? I use one site audit tool that calls this out as a serious warning.

Currently, the embedded player(s) are a column down the left side, about 1/4th of the width of the page,  and the transcripts are everything else, wrapping around it.  The transcripts are fully readable and not hidden in some kind of expandable accordion or anything. Does layout matter in this issue?

Thanks... Darcy

HI Erica,

It's not on the page too many times, it's just relentlessly exact-matched between h1, url, title tag and img alt, but I guess that's okay.

Thanks

Hi Erica,

Thanks for the message. Whaddya mean... the page grader gives it an "A" for the keyword it hammered?

Thanks...

Hi,

I'm working on a site that was last optimized some years ago. It has a fair number of pages that the url, h1, title tag and image alt exact match. Although this comes back as A+ in Moz's on page grader,  it seems a bit much.

What do you think, is all this too heavy an SEO fingerprint for Google?

This is being considered for fairly templated pages as a means of adding unique text to the page, without giving up a ton of real estate. The text is all visible in view source, but only the first few lines in the scroll box. The box itself is just above the fold.

How, do you think this would affect search? Any other ideas for handling this. I'm limited by what the client will accept.

Thanks... Darcy

Recently SEMRush added a feature to its site audit tool called "SEO Ideas."

In the case of specific the site I'm looking at it with, it's ideas consist mostly of suggesting words to add to the page for the page/my phrase(s) to perform better.

It suggests this even when the term(s) or phrases(s) it's looking at are #1.

Has anybody used this tool for this or something similar and found it to be valuable and if so how valuable?

The reason I ask is that it would be a fair amount of work to go through these pages and find ways to add the select words and phrases and, frankly, it feels kind of 2005 to me.

Your thoughts?

Thanks... Darcy

Richard and John,

Thanks for the suggestions. I took a look at Doc Cop... pretty cool. Thing is, it almost seems impossible to find something that would be both a good TLD and have age, a good link profile, trust.

Alot of them look like license plates or too specific or just impossible to shoe horn into this particular concept.

What about using a domain name that reads okay as a domain name and then 301 the bought domain into it?  Totally crazy, or what?

Thanks... Darcy

Hi,

Old domain name is about books and book buyback. It had about 1000 pages at one time, been around since 2006, and still shows in Open Site Explorer as 86 links from from 46 domains, PA 43 DA 35, spam score of 4. The 4 evidently relates to low number of internal links and no contact info.

The domain name's ownership hasn't changed, but for the last year has either not been up at all or only the homepage in the last couple of months.

Now the idea is to maybe re-purpose it for place rating content... no more book content... totally different subject matter.

Is this an organic search advantage or would it be better to start fresh with a new domain name?

Is Google going to have a harder time seeing it as relevant for a new subject (with good new content) or seeing a new site as important?

Thanks... Darcy

Thanks for the answers Richard, Tobey & Lesley. Good points all.

Another option is to repurpose a domain name/one page site (used to be 1000 pages) that has been up for a long time, gained a bunch of authority/links for a totally unrelated subject, had a tragic developer experience where it's old content and could be used for this project. Currently it's a one page placeholder. That old TLD is equally meaningless to the new subject matter and could be anything.

So, if the choice were new 4 letter meaningless .com TLD or old meaningless 13 letter domain name with links for its old purpose and lots of old pages gone, which would you prefer? Is it hard to get Google to see an old domain name as a new subject... any harder than establishing relevance through content etc for a new domain name?

Thanks... Darcy

Sorry to misunderstand the problem. Do those new urls actually exist on your site or just in search?

Hi Pete,

It sounds like you've done what you can. I wouldn't submit multiple removals for the same url.

I assume it's out of your site map and you're not still being hacked and have figured out how it happened and taken steps to fix it.

Google will eventually figure it out. I'd try to move on to new stuff.

Best... Mike

Am starting to work with a new site that has a domain name contrived to help it with a certain kind of long tail search.

Just for fictional example sake, let's call it WhatAreTheBestRestaurantsIn.com.  The idea is that people might do searches for "what are the best restaurants in seattle" and over time they would make some organic search progress. Again, fictional top level domain example, but the real thing is just like that and designed to be cities in all states.

Here's the question, if you were targeting searches like the above and had that domain to work with, would you go with...

whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/seattle-washington

whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/washington/seattle

whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/wa/seattle

whatarethebestrestaurantsin.com/what-are-the-best-restaurants-in-seattle-wa

... or what and why?

Separate question (still need the above answered), would you rather go with a super short (4 letter), but meaningless domain name, and stick the longtail part after that?

I doubt I can win the argument the new domain name, so still need the first question answered.

The good news is it's pretty good content.

Thanks... Darcy

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the message. How much of a Summer drop do you see?

Anyone else? Thanks.... Darcy

I have a client who has a b2b site catering to a white collar information market.

Looking back in G/A, it appears that they've never had a good organic search Summer, but have made plenty of YOY gains.This Summer is a little better than past Summers.

Personally, I have read about people who take Summer vacations. Mostly in France. This is a U.S. site and U.S. traffic catering to business executives.

I can see it in the parking lot of the downtown office building I work in... fewer cars after Memorial Day and more cars after Labor Day. How seasonal would you expect that kind of organic search traffic to be, say from April vs July?

Would prefer answers from direct B2B experience, rather than guesses. But, if a guess is all you have, I will gladly accept that!

Thanks... Darcy

Hi Egol,

Thanks for the response. What do you see as the risks, if any, in our more automated approach?

Thanks... Darcy

Hi,

One of the sites I'm working on has a forum with thousands of pages, amongst thousands of other pages. These pages produce lots of organic search traffic... 200,000 per month.

We're using a bit of custom code to link relevant words and phrases from various discussion threads to hopefully related discussion pages. This generates thousands of links and up to 8 in-context links per page. A page could have anywhere from 200 to 3000 words in one to 50+ comments. Generally, a page with 200 words would have fewer of these automatically generated links, just because there are fewer terms naturally on the page.

Is there any possible problem with this, including but not limited to some kind of internal anchor text spam or anything else? We do it to knit together pages for link juice and hopefully user experience... giving them another page to go to. The pages we link to are all our pages that produce or we hope to produce organic search traffic from.

Thanks! ....Darcy

Hi Dirk,

Thanks for the response. Folks out of Google do not see the full page that Google saw. They see a snippet of comments and a pitch to log in or register to see full comments (in a forum). They don't see different content right now... they see less content, but the same as Google saw. Is that clearer?

Thanks... Darcy

The times of looking to rank numero uno for one term are long gone. What sounds like your existing strategy of having good content is the way to go. The risk with an agency that would even focus up on one term and promise number one is that they are going to inadvertently wreck your link profile.

If I were you, I would read the beginner's guide to link building https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building and continue to make good content. Don't allow an agency to manipulate the hell out of your profile for the sake of one term.

How do we safely show logged-in members/Google one type of content on a page and logged out/non-members another kind of content without getting slammed for cloaking?

Right now we do this thing where we show Google everything on the page, but new visitors partial forum comments with the pitch to sign up and see full comments. So far, we have not gotten into trouble for this.

The new idea is to show non-members a lot of marketing messages and one kind of navigation and then once they sign up and are logged in, show different or no marketing messages and a different kind of navigation.

How do we stay out of trouble with this? Where is the cloaking line drawn? It's got me kinda nervous.

Thanks... Darcy

I kind of think of text in expandable tabs like could be useful to someone, but not the majority of people.

Tom is right that it could be a better user experience. But what does it say about the text... not really super important for most people. That's a little like way way down the page.

Have you searched for your text in tabs to see if it's indexed? I did that not long ago and found that mine wasn't and since moving it out of expandable tabs it now is.

It's possible it was not the only thing going on, but it would be interesting to check.

I'd start here: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo and think of it like a fun game that may take moments to learn, but a life time to master.  That guide will lead you to still more handy resources.