Either should be fine from an SEO perspective. I'd decide based on what would make most sense to users - probably the second.
Best posts made by AdamThompson
-
RE: Keywords in URL:
-
RE: Do CTR manipulation services actually work to improve rankings?
I generally agree with you that Google is getting better at detecting tricks, but Google is far from perfect and there are a lot of tricks that still work. I'm looking for specific results/data specifically on the CTR manipulation services...
Have you done any tests with CTR manipulation services work?
This is not a tactic white hat SEOs would use, but it's still good for us to know whether it works, so we can respond correctly if our competitors use it, to figure out white hat ways to combat it, to answer client questions, to have a better understanding of Google's algorithms, etc.
-
RE: Huge drop for main branded keyword
Good point. All those sub-pages (listing pages) have content that is duplicated across multiple other sites, too.
-
RE: 'Too many on-page links': doesn't add up...
Hi Felix,
Having more than 100 links on a page is usually not a problem, as long as you're not doing anything shady (it doesn't sound like you are). See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6g5hoBYlf0
Keep in mind that PageRank flows by being divided among each link on the page - so having more links means less PageRank flows to each one.
If you can provide one of the URLs, I can provide more detailed input.
~Adam
-
RE: How to optimize a wordpress blog
Eric,
If you are optimizing category pages, I recommend modifying your theme to display your category description as visible text on the page. This will allow you to have some optimized text on each category page. I believe there is a title tags plugin that will allow you to change the title tags of your category pages individually, also.
-
RE: Do CTR manipulation services actually work to improve rankings?
Yeh, I think this is a good topic to be aware of, even if we wouldn't use it. That way we can respond correctly if our competitors use it, figure out white-hat ways to combat it, have a better understanding of Google's algorithms, etc. All else failing, it wouldn't be expensive to test them out.
-
RE: Multiple domains on the same hosting
Oh, so each of the 80 sites includes a link to a different relevant, quality site? That should be fine!
-
How can we efficiently use Fresh Web Explorer and Just Discovered Links?
Love the fresh data sources SEOmoz is building for us. However, I'm frustrated by the lack of scale the tools offer.
Let's say I have 30 competitors I want to watch (which is pretty conservative - if we're targeting 100 keywords on a site, we could easily have 100's of top 20 ranked competitors). If I have to run individual reports for each using OSE and Fresh Web Explorer, that would be hours of work every day/week.
Ideally, I'd like to see a campaign feature where you could add 2-200 competitors to view in one report. You could view recent links (from FWE and JDL) for all competitors on one handy report, and sort by various metrics. So for example, if you wanted to view the top 10 links your competitors have gotten in the past week, you could see that in 30 seconds of work, vs many hours of work.
Any others who think this would be useful?
Any ideas for how we can use the data in such a way without this feature?
-
RE: How to optimize a wordpress blog
When adding or editing categories in WordPress, there is a field called "description" (not meta description) with the label "The description is not prominent by default; however, some themes may show it." Your developer can modify your theme so the description text is displayed on the category page.
-
RE: Title Tag, URL Structure & H1 for Localization
Google is getting much better at recognizing location, but I would still work to include it on the page in a few places. That's what I've seen the best results doing. My recommendation:
- Include the location in the title tag.
- Include the location in the H1 or at the top of the page - this is for the user as much as for search engines, to reaffirm to the user that they are on the website of a local company.
- You don't have to use the exact keyword + location phrase - mix it up and be natural. For example, "We're a roofing company serving Portland and the surrounding area of Maine."
- Include the location (eg city name) and state at least 2x on the page.
- Use schema.org markup on your physical address in the footer, sidebar, or elsewhere on the page.
- Don't include the location in anchor texts in your navigation - that looks rather spammy.
-
RE: Multiple domains on the same hosting
Google has almost certainly figured out that you own all the sites, and may have discounted the interlinking accordingly.
-
RE: Site redirect
Dennis,
I think Google will be able to follow the multiple 301 redirects OK, but am unsure if that will cause you to lose more link juice. I would seriously consider reducing it to a single redirect (or none).
-
RE: REAL demand for a keyword?
The most accurate numbers you'll get from Google Adwords are using the Keyword Tool set to exact match keywords.
-
RE: Can search engines find the text in a drop down menu? Is it better to have more links or a drop down menu?
If it is coded correctly then search engines can and will read the links in the dropdown menu.
-
RE: Multiple domains on the same hosting
Oh, OK. Well, there is some risk there. As William mentioned, you could possibly be penalized for what probably looks like manipulative linking to Google.
Do these links use keywords or your brand name as anchor text? If the former, the risk is even higher.
If the sites are unrelated (topic-wise) to your site, that also increases the risk.
-
RE: Optimizing two site pages for the same keyword phrase
Yes and Yes! You can certainly get two pages ranked for the same keyword.
Check out these resources:
http://andybeard.eu/1376/google-double-indented-listing.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/draft-whiteboard-friday-getting-indented-listings
-
RE: Two points of view on optimizing our search pages. What should we go with?
Here are my thoughts:
- I would not use http://www.redfin.com/cities/1/seattle?src=homepage as a template for a good page to emulate - it's just a page with a bunch of links. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future Google decides that page is not providing value to the user.
- You probably want to optimize a single page for "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces"
- You should probably send users who search for "Meeting Rooms Seattle" and "Seattle Meeting Spaces" to the same page, too. I see no reason to have them see two different pages for those queries.
- Be wary of creating separate pages for SEO purposes. If you have an existing page for Seattle that most users see, there is no reason to create a second page for SEO. In fact, it could hurt you - having two pages for the same basic purpose (for users to see seattle meeting rooms) will divide your social likes/shares and organic backlinks among two pages. (On the flip side, you could work on getting both pages ranked, but I don't think that is what you were asking about...)
- If you don't want your text content pushing the listings down the page, put your textual content on the right side of the page or even at the bottom, like Zappos does.
Hope these are helpful.
-
RE: Keyword Variations?
Google seems to indicate that Pilotenausbildung is the correct version and the others are misspellings. I would optimize for Pilotenausbildung, but also make sure you sprinkle the other two versions in a few times onto your page.
-
RE: Two points of view on optimizing our search pages. What should we go with?
If users have to click from the landing page to the search results page to see the listings, that's an extra click = fewer people seeing the search results.
You could have two very similar pages - one with the extra text and images, and one without. Add a canonical tag to the one without so all the link juice goes to the one with the extra text and images.
-
RE: Sudden drop in rankings
Hi Kat,
You may have been hit in the Penguin update on Oct 5th.
-
Your site is definitely way "over-optimized" or keyword stuffed. The keyword "Modelling" appears 77 times on your homepage, plus 4 times in the page title. Your internal links structure is also keyword stuffed.
-
Having the page content under the huge big call to action and form on top of the site is not good for users or search engine rankings.
-
A quick check of your backlinks shows they are mostly keyword anchor text links from directories and other lower quality sources.
To be honest, it looks to me like you're headed in the wrong direction SEO-wise and have likely been hit by one or more algorithmic penalties.
Sorry to be so negative.
Hope this helps!
~Adam
-
-
RE: Why are my keywords not being crawled
Jack, Google ignores the keyword meta tag completely, and doesn't pay much attention to the meta description tag for ranking or relevancy purposes.
This blog has a lot of good info on how to optimize a page for your keywords: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization
-
RE: What URL Should I use in Google Place Page?
In most cases, I would tend to put the URL for each location - much more useful for the user.
-
RE: Sudden MozRank drop?
It could just be due to fluctuations in the size of the SEOmoz index and which of your links they indexed this month.
-
Bulk keyword competition tool?
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool is great, but the 5 keyword limit is too small. I need a tool that will allow checking the organic competition level of 100's of keywords (to help in selecting blog topics). Anyone know of such a tool?
-
RE: Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document
45 usages of the keyword on the page is way high, unless the page is very long. Perhaps we could provide more help if we could see the URL - can you share it?
-
RE: Google couldn't access your site because of a DNS error
3 weeks of downtime or DNS issues is an incredibly long time and is absolutely unacceptable for any webhost. I would say definitely move hosts. No matter what it takes, make it happen.
I would expect there will be little or no long term effect on the site's rankings, but I'm not 100% sure (I've never worked with a site that had severe uptime issues for more than a couple days).
-
RE: Google keyword tool no data for a KW- what to assume in this case?
I would say it is likely that there isn't much local search volume, but there are other options. It's difficult to say with 100% certainty. You could run a quick Adwords campaign to see how many impressions you get, which can be a very good way to measure search volume (just make sure your QS and bid are high enough that your ads shows all the time).
-
RE: Cnnonical Issue! Plz Help
I'm not sure I fully understand your query, but there is a specific markup you can use for pagination: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
-
RE: is pointing to the same page that it is already on, is this a problem?
It's OK for a page to specify itself as the canonical URL.
-
RE: Any SEOMoz users try HitTail?
I used it years ago. I think it's effectiveness may depend on the niche you're in. I may try it again for one of my sites.
-
RE: Will Google handle "this not that" pages differently?
"You would have to do it like what you were offering was a hotel. If it's clear that it's not, google will not rank you well for "hotel"."
Sorry to be blunt, but do you have evidence to support this?
-
RE: Canonical in head best practice
You should definitely remove those canonical tags ASAP.
Each page should only have one canonical tag - the correct canonical URL for that page.
Hope that helps!
-
RE: Any SEOMoz users try HitTail?
I decided to sign up for it again. Feel free to message me in a week or two if you want to hear how it's going for me!
-
RE: How does Google view frequent changes to the copy of an ecommerce product page?
In and of itself, I would not expect changes to the copy to materially impact your rankings.
Of course, if you're making changes that changes your on-page optimization and keyword usage, then that could impact your rankings.
-
RE: Subdomain vs Main Domain Penalties
This isn't necessarily surprising. Penalties and negative ranking algorithms can be applied at a page level, a subdomain level, a root domain level, etc.
For example, HubPages used subdomains to help escape from a Panda slap.
Another example: Google placed a manual penalty on a single page of BBC's website.
-
RE: Penalty or Algorithm hit?
Michael, answering your question fully will require analyzing your site, and probably your traffic and GWT data. If you can post your site url, I'll take a brief look at it. If you can put together a traffic data graph showing your drops in traffic and how they coincided with what changes you were making to your site, that would be helpful, too.
-
RE: What's the deal with this local business directory? (http://www.camerchants.com/)
The site doesn't appear to be fully functional, that's for sure. Hard to say - maybe it is an abandoned or unfinished website, or maybe they just have some broken features. It almost looks unfinished to me - like they started building it and didn't finish.
-
How do you check mobile-friendliness when you have a separate mobile site?
One of our clients has a separate mobile site, and we've setup the rel="alternate" on the main site homepage, but https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ still fails the site (it checks the main site, instead of the mobile site) when we put in the main site URL. Is there any way to check that we've got everything setup correctly? (We have a lot of experience with mobile responsive sites, but not so much with separate URLs.)
-
RE: Google Update on the 6th July
Yes, a site I worked with lost all traffic on the 6th. See http://www.seomoz.org/q/website-penalized-3-times-by-google
It sounds like it was a change in the duplicate content algorithms.
-
RE: What's the deal with this local business directory? (http://www.camerchants.com/)
Are you sure this site is the source Google Places is using to add the location? Another possibility is that this site and Google Places are both getting their data from the same source...
-
RE: How do you check mobile-friendliness when you have a separate mobile site?
Got this issue fixed. The issue was that robots.txt was blocking the Javascript file that does the redirect, so Google couldn't see the redirect.
-
RE: Tuesday July 12th = We suddenly lost all our top Google rankings. Traffic cut in half. Ideas?
OK. Well, my suggested strategy would be:
- Go through the list Todd gave to make sure that there is nothing wrong on your site. If not, you can probably assume it was a Google algorithm tweak, so proceed to...
- Work on improving your site, starting with any areas you know of that might be an issue. I would say any content that is not unique would be a good place to start.
-
RE: What are the biggest (most serious) press release portals in the UK/USA?
http://www.prnewswire.com/ is a good portal with a lot of bloggers and journalists that use it.
I think you will find that individual outreach is needed, unless you're already working with a well-known brand.
-
RE: One business location and several local business listings
Well, Google typically shows a mixture of web and Places results for local queries.
To get ranked among the web results for the second city, just adding a page to your website could work. To get ranked among the Google Places listings, you are going to need an office in the second location and create a Google Places listing for it.
-
RE: Tuesday July 12th = We suddenly lost all our top Google rankings. Traffic cut in half. Ideas?
Are your articles unique or are they syndicated?
-
RE: New website & the dreaded drop in rank & queries.
Could you give us your website URL?
When did you see the drop in traffic?