It is only really required on the non-canonical urls, but it's often placed on the canonical page also. It doesn't have to be, though.
Best posts made by AdamThompson
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RE: Canonical Tag
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RE: Would you approve this blog comment?
If I am unsure about the site being linked to, I approve the comment and nofollow or remove the link.
Your situation sounds very intriguing. I, like you, would suspect that content had been copied from somewhere. But maybe not, if you can't find it anywhere online. Or maybe they copied it from a print book or ebook or something...
I would probably approve it, then check back in a week and see if you can find duplicate content then.
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RE: What is the best: one big site or several small ones?
No, I would not be trying to get Google to think your sites are unrelated. I would accept that Google will realize my sites are related and may factor that into evaluating any links between them.
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RE: What are the pros and cons of moving one site onto a subdomain of another site?
Aye.
Oh, and hey! I just noticed I know you from NOLA.
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RE: Bounce Rate
There is an easy way to fix this. Create a custom advanced segment to only include visits with pageviews > 1. This will allow you to see avg time on site for all visitors excluding bounces.
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RE: Backlinks Calculation & Ranking Effects
Yes, it usually takes weeks or often months to see SEO results.
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RE: What is the best: one big site or several small ones?
Yes, you want to be careful.
Keep in mind that having your websites on different IPs isn't enough to trick Google. They can also look at domain registrar info, contact info, linking patterns, etc to figure out that the same person owns the sites.
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RE: 302 vs. a href="nofollow"
302 redirects mean the page has temporarily moved. It sounds like the pages are only temporary, so that would be the correct thing to use. You could also use nofollow or canonical tags, too.
A nofollow won't stop the page from getting indexed if it is linked to from elsewhere on the web.
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RE: Pay Per Post?
I would try Elance or Guru to hire a freelance writer.
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RE: Why have I disappeared from 1st page to outside top 100 results?
Sounds like you may have been hit by the EMD update. The update didn't hurt all exact domain sites - only those that Google deemed low quality.
I looked at your backlink profile and found multiple footer links that look like they might be paid links or doorway sites. It's possible that these links played a factor in why your site's ranking was reduced.
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RE: Google Pake Rank of Zero?
The visible PageRank is only updated about 4 times a year. How long have you been building links to your site?
Also, I notice you only have a very few backlinks to your site - you may not have enough to get PR1 yet.
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RE: 2,500 Word blog post? What's your advice?
I think it depends on your site, the content, how intuitive it would be to split the article, etc.
I think SEOmoz had done an analysis awhile back that looked at which blog posts got the most links. Length of article was one of the factors they looked at, I think. Alas, I can't find that article now, though. Anyone else have the URL?
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RE: "gimme links" = easy to fill out profile/personal reputation links that offer a do-follow anchor text flexible link
Between profile links and article marketing, it sounds like you'll be building a pretty low quality link profile - one that could be susceptible to penalty.
If your client has a very limited budget, I'd suggest that they write and provide you quality content that you can use to gain some higher quality backlinks (i.e. guest blogs, etc.).
Perhaps they could also get links from partners, vendors, etc.
I'm not saying you shouldn'tpick up a few links from user profiles on established sites, but I would keep that a small portion of your link building efforts.
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RE: Which version of pages should I build links to?
Eamon,
If you can't get them to change their site to HTML only, I would setup canonical tags to tell Google that the HTML version of each page is the correct version.
~Adam
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RE: My Blog needs more hits
Better Design
I suggest upgrading the design of your blog so it's more custom. A sharp, custom design gives your blog a visual brand and helps you stand out. Also, make it more personal - use author bios, profile pictures, contact info, etc.Better Content
For us little guys, having phenomenal content is of the utmost importance important. Since you don't have a large following, you need to publish content that is completely unique and/or significantly better than any other content available on the topic.Example: I publish an article on 301 redirects. If my article article doesn't present important new information, and it's not better than the articles on 301s already on SEOmoz, SEJ, etc - very few people will bother to read, share, or link to my article. Why should they? There is an equally good or better article on a blog they already know and trust.
If you want to see significant success on social media, your content needs to be exceptional. Epic. Head and shoulders above the rest. Groundbreaking.
Marketing
To answer your question more directly, my suggestion for bloggers is to focus on social media and SEO. Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Inbound.org can be great traffic sources for exceptional content. If you want to do paid advertising, Outbrain can provide good traffic at 0.03 per click. Twitter ads can also be effective.I think that the design and content of your blog need to be improved before your marketing efforts will fully pay off, though. It's not that your blog is bad (it's not) but it's not yet exceptionally good.
Hope that helps. (All criticism was offered with the friendliest, most constructive attitude possible!)
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RE: Example of a local "boring-niche" site in a relatively high competition area using strictly white hat tactics
We have some clients that would fit into this category. I can't share the URLs due to non-disclosure setups, but I can share the basic strategy we use.
Basic strategy is to brainstorm interesting topics that are at least tangentially related to the topic at hand.
For "elevator doors in chicago" we could use topics like:
- Top 10 Most Epic Movie Scenes That Take Place In An Elevator
- 10 Smartphone Apps To Make Your Visit To Chicago A Breeze
- 7 Videos Of Elevator Pranks, Bloopers, & Accidents
- http://www.prettycoolthings.com/2008/03/27/the-worlds-coolest-elevator-rides/
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RE: Crazy Pagerank
Majestic shows 220+ linking domains, and Majestic's index is still much smaller than Google.
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RE: Internal Linking Structure - help Req'd
"Could the /redirect cause a problem when crawled by Google"
Possibly. What type of redirect is it? 301, 302 JavaScript, Meta Refresh? -
What's a good way to find recent blog posts about a given topic?
Let's say I want to find blog posts posted in the past week or so about "key west". These posts could be on a personal blog, travel blog, etc.
Google News is mostly news sites (not blogs) and Google blog search doesn't work any more. What other good options are there?
So far Open site Explorer Just Discovered is the best option I've found, but there is a lot of other stuff mixed in with a few blog posts.
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RE: Keyword strong domains`and Good Link Building Techniques
Social bookmarks, directory listings and forum posts from an outsourcer are probably not good links. Good links are links you get editorially - guest blogs, linkbait, content marketing, high quality directories, etc. Good links are a lot harder to get than posting a bookmark or submitting to a directory. Don't get discouraged, though - there are a lot of good resources that can help you.
Here are a few resources that come to mind:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
http://www.blueglass.com/blog/the-content-marketers-guide-to-web-content/
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RE: Noindex, Nofollow to previous domain
I think I understand. Since your site was de-indexed, Google has to start over indexing your site on the new domain. This is what should happen:
Google will follow any external links it finds pointing to your site, will find the 301 redirect, and will follow that to your new site. Google will then crawl your new domain. Google will "forward" most of the link juice from your backlinks to your new domain.
Via your internal link structure, the forwarded PageRank will be spread throughout your site. This will hopefully result in you regaining the rankings you previously had.
I assume you have forwarded each subpage on the old domain to the same page on the new domain?
I would also:
a) if you can, change over at least some of your backlinks to point to your new domain
b) build/attract links to your new domain
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RE: Dramatic Decrease in Google Organic Traffic Indicates a Penalty But None Found
Just because there was no manual action taken doesn't rule out a penalty. It could be an algorithmic penalty.
Have you used the SEOmoz crawler to look for possible technical issues?
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RE: Why do links appear then disappear month to month?
Also, SEOmoz doesn't necessarily crawl the same set of URLs each month. Even if index sizes are the same, some URLs get dropped and some added each month.
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RE: How to promote my guest blog posts?
Here are a few suggestions:
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Be picky and find the higher quality blogs on MBG.
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Get on Google and find the high quality blogs in your niche. Contact them and negotiate getting them to publish your guest posts.
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Get in Google and do searches for things like "guest post [keyword]" to find good sites that accept guest blogs.
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RE: Noindex, Nofollow to previous domain
"maybe I need to upload the website with the old domain again and let google re-index it and only then do the 301, what do you think about that ?"
I'm not 100% certain, but I can't think of any reason you would need to do that.
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RE: I have 15,000 pages. How do I have the Google bot crawl all the pages?
Google will only index your pages if it deems they are "worthy". However, you can certainly give Googlebot some encouragement. A good way to do this is to setup an XML sitemap and submit it via Google Webmaster Tools.
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RE: Learn SEOmoz API (and more)?
You will generally need programming expertise, to write a program to pull and display the data from the API.
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RE: "Noindex" the Landingpage of a Linkbait or not?
OK, so you don't want your linkbait page to displace your sales pages in the rankings.
Personally, I would just try to adjust the optimization of the linkbait page so it ranks for keywords other than my primary money keywords. But I suppose noindex,follow would work as well.
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RE: SEO for New Web Site Launch
Creating an entire marketing and branding strategy is far beyond the scope of a simple Q&A thread. I would suggest hiring an hourly consultant to assist you in creating a strategy.
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RE: Website is extreemly slow
Well, it's probably either the code on your website or the server.
If it's the code, a good programmer can help you find and fix the issue.
If it's the server, your hosting company should fix it...if not, switch hosts.
Without access to your site, I don't have many more suggestions.
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RE: Most of the time getting error.
Can you share the site you are getting that error for?
You might also want to email help@seomoz.org
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RE: Off page SEO
My suggestions:
- 7 social bookmarks. Not a good way to build links.- 30 Website directory submissions. You should only submit to a few high quality relevant directories. - 4 guest blog posts. Good, if on high quality sites. - 3 press releases. Not a good way to build links, should be done to help gain press coverage. - 8 blog posts (on 2 dedicated wordpress blogs). Good, if the content is really high quality and is being shared and linked to. - 4 articles published in high ranking article directories. Not good. - 3 social profile with links/blog comments on .edu/.gov with links/classified ad links. Not good. - 1 slideshare presentation with links. Good, if it's getting shared and linked to.
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RE: Mapping URLS - Zen Cart to Open Cart
I would switch the OpenCart URLs to something more static/search friendly first.
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RE: Javascript --can SE crawl?
Search engines can and sometimes do crawl JavaScript, but you shouldn't count on them to do so.
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RE: Rank tracker based on personalization or not?
A few suggestions:
- Google can show different results based on your location - even for users in different areas of the same country.
- I doubt the SEOmoz rank tracker even calculates where your location is. If anything, results are probably given for wherever SEOmoz's servers are.
- When you do a Google search, you can change your location manually to see results for a different location than where you are.
- Clearing browsing history and restarting their browser may not be enough. They should also be signed out of Google.
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RE: Organic search traffic dropped 40% - what am I missing?
Thanks for the suggestion. So far the only significant difference in optimization I've found has been that they added Schema.org markup.
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RE: How long does it take for Google to index a new site and has anyone experienced serious fluctuations in SERP within 2 weeks after launch?
I disagree with some of your advice. "Submit manually your website to all search engines" is unnecessary. "do social bookmarking" to build a bunch of backlinks could actually hurt your site, as most do-follow social bookmarking sites are low quality spammy sites.
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RE: SEOMOZ Crawling Our Site
If SEOmoz is crawling all those duplicate/unnecessary URLs, the search engines probably are, too.
Best solution: Change the navigation on your site so that each page is linked to using a single URL.
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RE: Backlinks Redirected Temporarily (New to Old)
If possible, I would set up a several page site with good content on the new domain and start building links to it. I think that would look less strange than a 302 redirect.
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RE: Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?
"use hreflang and that acts like a canonical"
Google and other sources don't indicate that hreflang will pass/consolidate link authority. So I think hreflang and canonical tags are different in that regard. Based on that and what I've seen, I don't see that hreflang tag would negate the disadvantages of a subdomain. If you have evidence it does, though, I am very interested!
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RE: Link building question
Your SEO firm is probably correct, in my opinion. Having an overly high percentage of your anchor texts be keywords is one of the factors that makes your site likely to get penalized by Penguin or other algorithmic penalties. See http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172839/Google-Penguin-Update-Impact-of-Anchor-Text-Diversity-Link-Relevancy
Your SEO firm has most likely determined that your backlink profile uses too many keyword anchor texts, and they are trying to fix the unbalance by building mostly non-keyword anchor texts for awhile. In other words, they are trying to dilute your too-keyword-focused anchor text portfolio. Here are two more articles you may find helpful:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anchor-text-optimization-case-study-whats-natural/43404/ (written by yours truly)
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization
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RE: Panda Update Hurt, but why?
Hi Sam,
What day did your rankings drop (this will help determine which update hit your site)?
Here are some possible issues that could be hurting you with Panda or Penguin:
- You appear to have a link exchange directory for doing link exchanges: http://www.dfwgolfcourseguide.com/links.html Suggest removing the links directory and don't do link exchanges (it's OK to do a few with a couple high quality, relevant sites).
- The course pages don't have much unique content,and the content they do have is also on other sites: http://www.golftexas.com/golf-courses/north-central/burleson/southern-oaks-golf-club.htm Suggest adding unique content to each course page.
- You may be using too many keyword anchor texts. A natural link profile typically has more brand and url anchor texts than keyword. See http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.dfwgolfcourseguide.com and https://www.majesticseo.com/reports/site-explorer/anchor-text?folder=&q=dfwgolfcourseguide.com&oq=dfwgolfcourseguide.com and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/anchor-text-optimization-case-study-whats-natural/43404/ and http://www.searchenginejournal.com/post-penguin-seo-link-building-the-naked-url-truth/46936/
- Your links appear to be mainly from blog comments, directories, and link pages, which tend to be low quality links.
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RE: Geo-targeting / Presenting Unique Content
Just to be sure I understand - the url would be the same, but the content and price point would differ based on the user's IP address? I would not recommend that. For one thing, Google is only going to crawl and index one page at any given url. For another (as you mentioned) geo-targeting is not 100% accurate.
I would recommend two separate pages or sections of your site.
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Do CTR manipulation services actually work to improve rankings?
I've seen a variety of services on the fringe of the SEO world that send a flow of (fake) traffic to your website via Google, to drive up your SERP CTR and site engagement. Seems gray hat, but I'm curious as to whether it actually works.
The latest data I've seen from trustworthy sources (example and example 2) seems mixed on whether CTR has a direct impact on search rankings. Google claims it doesn't. I think it's possible it directly impacts rankings, or its possible Google is using some other metric to reward high engagement pages and CTR correlates with that.
Any insight on whether CTR manipulation services actually work?
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RE: Javascript to manipulate Google's bounce rate and time on site?
Stephen,
Thanks for the explanation - I just had a client ask me about this script. Based on your explanation, this script will change your bounce rate. This is because once the event is triggered, the visit will no longer be considered a bounce, even if the user only visits one page. So it's an artificial/false decrease in bounce rate, not a "fix" as others claim.
I wrote a short blog post on this (and referenced your description)!
~Adam
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RE: Does MozAuthority calculates the MozAuthority of each incoming link?
Moz Authority metrics are based not on the total number of links, but the authority each link passes. A page with links from 5 high authority pages will generally have much higher authority metrics than a page with links from 5 low authority pages.
Will the 3rd case necessarily have a higher MozAuthority than #1 and #2?
Probably, but not necessarily:
- It's possible to get links from low authority pages on high authority domains, which would only pass a small amount of authority.
- A page with a lot of links will pass less authority to each link.
My answer uses some generalizations, here are more details on the specific metrics:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain-authority