Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I work on a site that has almost 20,000 urls in its site map. Google WMT claims 28,000 indexed and a search on Google shows 33,000. I'd like to find what the difference is.

Is there a way to get an excel sheet with every url Google has indexed for a site?

Thanks... Mike

Hi Gianluca,

All good info - thanks!

One followup question; What is the point of the rel="publisher" link? If a site is linked to it's Google+ page, aren't all pages in effect rel publisher? Also, does it do anything rich-snippets-wise?

Thanks.. Darcy

Hi,

I've been looking at how various sites handle rel author tags linking to Google+ accounts to get rich snippets results. I've found more than a few that have the same code on every page, even though those actual pages clearly have different authors and some may not even mention the rel author's name.

A site I'm working on has different authors for different pages. Although the convenience of putting the same rel author on every page seems dreamy, it also seems like a disaster waiting to happen, since it would appear to be trickery about who the author is and possibly one Google update away from disaster.

Can you call a site owner or employee an author on pages that to the reader appear to be written by others?

Am I being too cautious or what?

Thanks!

Cheers... Darcy

Hi Philip,

Thanks for the words and illustration. As much sense as that makes, can you cite a source for the info on no more than one rel=author on one page?

Assuming you're right, which you probably are, what can be done for a Q&A forum? Just pick one, even though they might have written a fraction of the page's content?

Understood that Google can do whatever it wants - nothing could be truer about all aspects of Google's SERPs.

Cheers... Darcy

Hi,

I work on a site that has a robust q&a forum. Members post questions and other members answer the questions. The answers can be lengthy, often by experts with Google+ pages and almost always by multiple member/commenters answering a particular question. Much like Moz's forum here.

In order to get rich snippets results in search for a single Q&A page, what would happen if each of, for instance, 10 commenters on a page, were tagged as author?  After all, the q/a forum pages have many authors, each as author of their own comments.

Or, should I pick one comment out of many and call that member/commenter the author or something else?

If it matters, the person asking the question in the forum is almost always not the expert providing a ton of detailed content. Also, a question might be 8 words. One answer might be 25 to 500 or more and their might be 5 to 10 different answers.

Thanks! Cheers... Darcy

Hi Jane,

I really appreciate your taking the time to go over all this with me. Thanks, again!

Cheers... Darcy

Hi Jane,

Thanks for asking for a clarification.

To me it seems like search has progressed from being more of a word game, how high one can rank on pretty much the one term, to a meaning game. In the meaning game, one might be going for "zesty pizza sauce." but in the end the page will hopefully produce for dozens or hundreds of related terms. If one is using adwords and finds hundreds of related terms, how best to broaden the pages appeal to that large number of other terms? I've already given up on having easily available/accurate insight into estimating what a url might do in total, short of the in-depth (and excellent) process you explained.

As an aside, I wonder how the keyword difficulty tool could be made more useful for all those related terms.

Thanks! Cheers,

Darcy

Hi Jane,

Wow, lots of great ideas in there.

Wow also, that sounds like a lot of work for my situation, as I'm dealing with a very large number of pages and possible terms for a community site that is about a lot of things and has a lot content.

If there aren't enough hours in the day to do that kind of analysis on the amount of stuff I have to deal with, what about the second part of my question... any tips on broadening the ranking possibilities for the related terms on that one url?

Thanks... Darcy

Hi Jane,

Thanks for the message. I look at it like the page has to attempt some particular term that is probably part of some galaxy of meaning, but then what that url produces is the measure... not what that particular keyword phrase produces as that is impossible to say and no doubt includes a variety of related search terms.

So, if one uses Moz's keyword tool and it shows Bing/exact/local volume is 32 visits for "zesty pizza sauce," which I then target and get to #3 (made up example), maybe I get 10 visits, maybe I get 100 visits, maybe I get 1000 visits per month on that url.

How can I get a better insight into this on the front side before investing the time/effort?

Thanks... Darcy

I use Moz's handy Keyword Difficulty Tool to get a relative feel for difficulty and traffic and specif competition.

At the same time, my experience is that a term may show a local (U.S.) search volume of, for instance, 30 visits and in the end produce hundreds of visits for position #3. This is of course accomplished through the miracle of all the other searches the page may be judged by Google to be relevant for. Hundreds at times and some times few if any.

Here is my two part question:

• What tools or steps do you use to get a better handle on this on the front side of going for a term?

• What tools or steps do you use to broaden the meaning to related terms/searches over time?

Thanks... Darcy

You're on the right track with your traffic assumption. If you can, I would suggest validating your traffic assumption with a little adwords effort. Yes, if you want to compete in more cities, you will have to come up with unique content geared to those individual cities. Of course, for this organic effort (as with any), you should also take a long look at what your competition is for those searches and make a smart judgement about your site's/page's ability to compete. Finally, I am often surprised by how much more can be gotten out of a page vs what a kw analysis tool will tell you. Often, but not always, it's a lot more because of all the related terms and your efforts around that. I hope that helps. Best...Darcy

Other than be odd for the user, it wouldn't do anything positive for search.

Given the time it takes to get somewhere search-wise, I know for me personally I either need to be paid for the time or be so in love with the idea that work doesn't feel like work. If it falls in neither of those two categories, then for myself, I would just let them sit. Best... Darcy

So, this would be taking a domain with a domain authority of 50 (200 root domains, 3500 total links) and, for fictitious example, going from a subject matter like "Online Deals" to "The History Of Dentistry"... just totally unrelated new subject for the old/re-purposed domain.  The old content goes away entirely.

The domain name itself is a super vague .com name and has no exact match to anything either way. I'm wondering, if the DNS changed to different servers, it went from 1000 pages to a blog, ownership/contacts stayed the same, the missing pages were 301'd to the homepage, how would that fare in Google for the new homepage  focus and over what time frame? Assume the new terms are a reasonable match to the old domain authority and compete U.S.-wide... not local or international.

Bonus points for answers from folks who have actually done this.

Thanks... Darcy

Taking Andriy's point a little further, it also depends on the site being linked to. Since the sitewide incoming links are but one element, a good site with an otherwise great link profile could hold up pretty well against the burden of incoming sitewide links.

It would also depend on the area/terms of competition. In a highly competitive space, the burden of those links could harm a razor thin advantage just enough to make a difference. Of course, with all of that I'm talking about the algorithm and not a manual penalty problem, which is a totally different animal.

Best of luck!

Quality content properly promoted is the ultimate link building strategy.

Consider how many artificial link building strategies from the past have eventually caused site owners problems.

I'd post to your site first and when I was sure it was indexed, re-purpose it for social media.

Best of luck!

Honestly, I wouldn't really worry about it. H1s are not the important signal they were years ago. I'd write whatever you think supports visitor engagement.

I suggest, on all of those issues, doing some A/B testing, like with visual website optimizer or similar.

Also, you may want to look at your in-page analytics in G/A to learn more about what folks are engaging with and then experiment from there.

Since there are infinite variations, getting some data through testing would be the way to go.

I think Andy is on the right track, with the caveat that Google needs a little help in the general meaning department. So, one easy way to do that is use Moz's on-page grader for whatever term you've selected... that best describes the page and is hopefully not too difficult and has a little traffic.Just to make sure Google has enough clues as to what this page is about.

Over time, you will find that the page hopefully gives you traffic for all kinds of related terms... not just the one you graded against.  Like everyone else, I have pages with top terms that supposedly are good for no estimated traffic, yet dozens of terms contribute hundreds or thousands of visits because they're all in the same general neighborhood.

Plurals and what not don't change the general meaning which you have helped Google fully perceive without getting spammy.

Hi,

I'm looking for how I can use a star rating for a q&a discussion or article/blog post to achieve a rich snippets search result.

I'm thinking about a user rating for "Was this helpful?" 1 to 5 stars.

As I look at schema.org and do and other reading on it, it looks like it's possible to rate only a set group of content types, blogs and discussions not included.

However, I've seen rich snippets ratings in SERPs for blog posts, like this example

https://www.google.com/search?q=erp+implementation+challenges&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=panorama+consulting+blog&client=firefox-a&hs=gId&hl=en&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&ei=QmCBUYLLCOfwiwKHhIAQ&start=20&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.45921128,d.cGE&fp=eb2f15e2a98a4631&biw=2144&bih=995

On page, it looks like they used some simple span tags.

So, my question is, which content type category does that fit into for rating  and is that strategy safe enough going forward? Also, are there more steps to making this work?

It it is okay to have users rate the helpfulness of a discussion or article and get rich snippets, I'd kinda like to do it.

Best... Darcy

I have a client who has a site in Drupal and, for reasons too complicated to go iinto, wants to host part of the site in Wordpress from a different server.

So it would be like oldsiteexample.com being in Drupal and the new oldsiteexample.com/marketing and everything below /marketing being in wordpress on a different server, obviously with a different IP address.

Are there SEO considerations in this? The existing oldsiteexample.com has a lot of authority/rank/traffic and don't want to inadvertently risk that.

Thanks... Darcy

Hi Mike,

Thanks, I'll check out SEMRush. Let's see what else gets suggested. I've used a lot of different tools that have a traffic estimate component and generally am unimpressed when I compare to reality (even after adding for "Not Provided.")

Here, you have to get the terms/pages and estimate, which is a little more than just a keyword estimate.

Anyone like any other organic competitor analysis tools?

I'll check out SEMRush though. Thanks... Darcy

Hi,

What tool do you recommend (and why) for best assessing your organic search competition's keywords AND that includes some kind of reasonably accurate estimate of what organic search traffic they are getting by specific page or keyword?

Thanks...  Darcy

Hi,

We re-did a section of a site and got rid of hundreds of pages of no longer relevant content. We 301'd the urls to the category homepage. Now, GWT calls these soft 404s.

a) Should we have done something differently instead of 301ing?

b) Are these hundreds of soft 404 errors a big problem or threat to how Google sees us for SEO?

c) Should we correct this in some way?

Thanks... Darcy

I'd reverse engineer a little and see what keyword difficulties you've managed to rank on so far and why. Of course, the numeric score is just a guideline and take it with a grain of salt. Start with with what you've managed to rank on so far and then look for similar or somewhat more difficult terms going forward.

Have you looked at how the pages are externally linked to by other sites? Compare that to who does rank on page one and you might find some opportunities. IMHO, 301ing a url is really throwing in the towel.

Yes, I'd put it on the slow motion housekeeping list. and don't do every single link you can find.

I'd prioritize in-context links from high authority pages way above masses of footer links, which are often not a great user experience anyway.

Over time, look at the link profile/anchor text in open site explorer. If it looks too targeted, it probably is Go for less than 40% targeted anchor text.

Definitely cut your footer link load.

Good luck!

Hi Paul,

My personal opinion is that adding the company name is a redundant (to the url) waste of space. Possible caveat, if the company name is short and does something for CTR.

Generally no though.

Hi Paul,

I'd add detail to a distinct term, as opposed to more stand-alone terms.

Random example:

"Custom Car Parts For GM, Ford, Chrysler & Most Foreign Brands"

Which would be better than 3 terms all meaning "custom car parts" in the title tag.

Consider also that a keyword stuffed title tag is inherently going to have a lower CTR, which will hurt you in the end.

Good luck!

Egol,

The Matt Cutts video seems to say you can't canonicalize between two totally different domains. So, we couldn't use a canonical for that.

So, you're not saying rel canonical to their page?

What if we just no-follow pages on our site that author originally published on their site? Right now we link to it as orginally published on ....

I'm trying to avoid a Panda penalty for non-unique blog posts reposted on our site.

Hi,

Thanks, Egol

So, on a page of ours where someone re-posts their blog post on our site, we'd add a canonical tag on our page to point to their original page? That would be a canonical tag between two different domains. I didn't think that was okay.

And, if we did that, we wouldn't be risking some kind of Panda duplicate content penalty?

Thanks!

A site I work with allows registered user to post blog posts (longer articles).

Often, the blog posts have been published earlier on the writer's own blog. Is posting a link to the original source a sufficient preventative solution to possibly getting dinged for duplicate content?

Thanks!

Okay, here 6 different ways to measure search rank on Google U.S. and I get 6 different answers:

Looking for search term "Lunch Bags" for the site Zappos (just a random example - no connection to me).

SEOMOZ RankTracker - #49

SEOCentro  - #36

http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html

ZendProxy.com -  #21

(an anonymizer proxy)

anonymouse.org - no rank

(another anonymizer)

Mikes Marketing Tools - no rank

http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/

RankingCheck.com  - #38

Can you duplicate a similar variation?

What gives?

Which if any of these would you rely on?

Thanks... Darcy

Hi Robert,

Good point. From a time cost to search benefit point of view, the initial set up is the big cost... getting the template right.

After that, if you're creating 3000 or 30,000 pages is really no extra time... just flowing in the data. So, with that in mind, wouldn't the site be better off search wise-with 10x the pages (30k vs 3k) to monetize the set-up cost over?

Also, having cut the list down already based on non-search criteria, I have no reliable way of knowing which of the 30,000 is better than the next search-wise. They're all kinda medium nichey with low volume and about the same estimated difficulty.  So, no idea which page would do better than the next in search.

Also, I can't look at 30,000 pages or even 3000 of search data to make that cut. Know what I mean? So, the cut, if there were one, would be random.

Thanks... Darcy

Hi Dana & BigFish22,

Both good points... thanks!

Here's a little more detail... the site has been about a certain product area for a long time. I'm adding catalog pages for 30,000 different products.

The pages are geared to searches around the word "buy" plus the product name. The pages are different from each other in that the product name, manufacturer, pictures, picture tagging, title & description tags all use different product names and other information. So, the pages are different from each other, but out of the gate not amazingly different from the basic info available on other sites that sell these products... all manufacturer data flowing into a template.

My plan is to put up the catalog and then over time add reviews and other content to make the pages really different from other site's catalog paes that draw on substantially the same basic information.

What do you think? Thanks! Best... Darcy

I have a site with about 1000 pages. I'm planning to add about 30,000 pages to it. Can increasing the footprint by such an amount all of a sudden have any negative consequences for existing organic or hoped-for benefits from new pages?

Would the site draw any increased scrutiny from Google for doing this?

Any other considerations?

Thanks... Darcy

Here's a question I was asked recently, and I can really see going either way, but want to double check my preference.

The site has been around for years and over that time expanded it's content to a variety of areas that are not really core to it's mission, income or themed content.

These jettisonable other areas have a fair amount of built up authority but don't really contribute anything to the site's bottom line. The site is considering what to do with these off-theme pages and the two options seem to be:

1. Leave them in place, but make them hard to find for users, thus preserving their authority as an inlink to other core pages.

or...

2. Just move on and 301 the pages to whatever is half-way relevant.

The 301 the pages camp seems to believe that making the site's existing/remaining content focused on three or four narrower areas will have benefits for what Google sees the site as being about.

So, instead of being about 12 different things that aren't too related to each other, the site will be about 3 or 4 things that are kinda related to eachother.

Personally, I'm not eager to let go of old pages because they do produce some traffic and have some authority value to help the core pages via in-context and navigation links. On the other hand, maybe focusing more would have benefits search benefits.

What do think?

Best... Darcy

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the speedy reply!

It sort of seems like I had previously pursued one term/one page in order to not compete with myself. That's some extra effort on a larger site.

Now I find that not spending the time to worry about it may be at times rewarded. What now makes one term/one page a best practice. It kind of seems like extra effort to avoid a potential benefit.

Thanks... Jane

With Google's penchant for listing at times many results - one on top of the other - from the same domain, is it now advisable to not worry about having multiple pages in the same site targeting the same or very similar keywords?

Is this (keyword/page internal competition) one less thing that I have to worry about or worry about less or what?

Thanks! Best... Jane

Hi Bob,

That excellent question I'll have to look in to and confirm. More later. Thanks!

Well, Bob, it looks like you're right! I guess it will for sure see all the pages in

Moe.123abc456.edu

as the ones to remove and not

123abc456.edu

Also, how does that robots text not get pushed to production as the developer working on that branch completes his work and pushes it to production.

I must confess, it still feels a little like bomb disposal.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the suggestion/question. I'm thinking about that, but wouldn't putting some robots do not crawl text on pages already indexed be a little like closing the barn door after the horses left? Do you think it would un-index the already crawled sub-domain? Thanks!

Hi,

I'm working with a site that has multiple sub domains of entirely duplicate content. So, the production level site that visitors see is (for made-up illustrative example):

123abc456.edu

Then, there are sub domains which are used by different developers to work on their own changes to the production site, before those changes are pushed to production:

Larry.123abc456.edu

Moe.123abc456.edu

Curly.123abc456.edu

Google ends up indexing these duplicate sub domains, which is of course not good.

If we add a canonical tag to the head section of the production page (and therefor all of the duplicate sub domains) will that cause some kind of problem... having a canonical tag on a page pointing to itself? Is it okay to have a canonical tag on a page pointing to that same page?

To complete the example...

In this example, where our production page is 123abc456.edu, our canonical tag on all pages (this page and therefor the duplicate subdomains) would be:

Is that going to be okay and fix this without causing some new problem of a canonical tag pointing to the page it's on?

Thanks!

Hi Sha & Gianluca,

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I guess my only thing with Wistia is that it looks kind of expensive. If it were cheap, I would for sure go with it.

Gianluca, we've embedded youtube on our site before. Are you saying that if I did what I always did, but submitted a video sitemap to Google showing x video on x page, I'd get the video result benefit in Google's serps? If that's all it takes,  I feel silly for not doing that before!

Best...Michael