Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Keri,

Just wanted to check on this and make sure you got everything worked out.

Thanks!

Anthony

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

SEOmoz updates it's Linkscape index approximately every thirty days. The last update was finalized on May 31, so if you made changes since then, you won't see that data in any SEOmoz tools/reports that pull from the the index.

You're in luck though, the next index update is scheduled for Wednesday (June 27), so you should have a clearer picture of your site's inbound links then.

FYI:

The SEOmoz API / Linkscape Schedule

Google can take quite a while to update it's index, and sometimes four months or more to reassess penalties for violation of their policies (spam / paid links). You might consider filling out this form, which could possibly give you a "fresh start" by devaluing the numerous inbound links w/ identical anchor text. I haven't had any experience with the results, but I've read it can expedite a return to Pre-Penguin organic rankings and traffic. It's just an option, I'm not suggesting that you submit the feedback form without further research.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Anthony

Hi Nick,

I agree with you, deleting the pages and starting fresh is probably the best bet. Once they've been deleted and return a 404 code, I'd go ahead and have Google remove them from the index via the GWT URL removal tool.

I'd say the risk of having those in-bound links sticking around outweighs the reward that 301s might yield.

Good luck.

-Anthony

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

I've been developing in Magento for several years, and I can tell you without a doubt that it's better to keep the H1 tag wrapped around the actual product name on your product pages. This should be default on all pages except the home page, where the H1 is wrapped around the IMG ALT for the logo in the header. I prefer to move the H1 on the main page so that it wraps actual relevant text, but it requires a little bit of editing of the Magento core, and like everyone has said, heading hierarchy doesn't count for much in Google's algorithm these days.

The best way to add specific keywords for product-level pages in Magento is via the Short Description, General Description, and the Product Tags. Tags are likely the most effective solution, as this functionality was designed for customers to make notes about products, so "White Business Shirt" would look natural there and make perfect sense.

You might also try very minimal internal linking from your homepage if you have a specific product you're attempting to boost your SERP ranking for. Something like "Our best selling <  a h r e f = product url  >business shirt<  /  a >."

To be honest, there's so many factors involved in correctly optimizing a Magento-based site, I'd recommend not wasting your time with H tags at all, especially masking and duplicating them.

You'll be much better off if you concentrate on optimizing your category hierarchy, writing unique product descriptions, dealing with duplicate content, configuring robot instructions, decreasing load times, etc...

Plenty to do... no need to mess w/ the H1 tag.

Hope this helps & good luck!

-Anthony

Me three...

Thinking out loud: Should he 301 a few of the existing pages with higher authority to the consolidated site, or do you guys think that would send an unnatural signal?

Totally forgot about the index updates! (Gotta learn to finish reading posts.)

Edit "argentdata.com/css/main.css" (changes in italics):

Line 107

#header #site-name a, #header #site-name a:link, #header #site-name a:visited,

#header #site-name a:hover, #header #site-name a:active {

text-decoration: none;

color: #CCC;

position: relative;

_ left: 100px; _}

Line 111

#nav {

font: bold 96% arial;

height: 2.09em;

margin: 0 105px 0 40px;

position: relative;

_left: 100px; _}

Line 151

#wrap {

min-width: 770px;

max-width:none !important;

margin: 0 auto;

position: relative; }

Line 152

#content-wrap {

position: relative;

max-width: 1200px;

_left: 100px; _}

This should match the root pages to the osCommerce pages.

-Anthony

Hi Keri,

This isn't a perfect fix but it should do the trick.

On line 377 of "argentdata.com/catalog/stylesheet.css" change

max-width: 1200px   to   max-width: none !important

#wrap {

min-width: 770px;

_max-width: none !important; _

margin: 0 auto;

position: relative;

}

You could also just delete the max-width value altogether, but just in case there's another width value somewhere else... might as well change it.

On line 348 add

position: relative; left: 100px;

#header #site-name a, #header #site-name a:link, #header #site-name a:visited,

#header #site-name a:hover, #header #site-name a:active {

text-decoration: none;

color: #CCC;

_position: relative; _

left: 100px;

}

Same thing on line 352... add** position: relative;left: 100px;**

#nav {

font: bold 96% arial;

height: 2.09em;

font: bold 96% arial;

margin: 0 105px 0 40px;

position: relative;

_ left: 100px;_

}

/* Hope this helps!

• Anthony */

I'd recommend using a Javascript Lightbox extension to display the certificate in JPG format. That will keep your users on the same page and allow them to zoom and pan over the COA without opening a new window. Free Lightbox extensions are available for most eCommerce platforms, and aren't too hard to implement.

Once the user purchases a product, I'd send the certificate to the buyer in PDF format so it can be easily printed, which I'm sure most customers would appreciate.

Hope this helps.

Thanks!

Anthony

Hi again,

It's really hard to say what happened without any extra info, but it could just be one of those random occurrences w/ Google's API. If the hosting has been suspended or the domain registration has been renewed recently, that's a possibility. Perhaps another user on the account did something they shouldn't have... Good new is that everything should be fine once you re-verify, but as to the cause of the 'bug' it's hard to pinpoint without some investigation.

Thanks again,

Anthony

Hi,

That's very strange indeed. Are you sure there were absolutely no changes made? If not, I'd try to verify it using a different method, and then switch back to the Meta Tag method to see if that fixes it.

From Google:

1. On the Webmaster Tools home page, click the site you want.
2. On the Dashboard, click Configuration, and then click Users.
3. Click Manage site owners, and then click Verify using a different method.
4. Verify your site again using the new method.

Personally, I always verify Webmaster Tools by linking it to the Google Analytics account associated with the site. This keeps the code a little cleaner in your page's section, and allows easier sharing of data with other users and applications.

Hope this helps!

Hello again,

I don't have much insight on this one, but I can share a personal experience that I think is relevant. I launched an Atlanta, GA based printing website about three months ago, and due to some pre-launch SEO efforts, ranked fairly well after the initial index.

Approximately six weeks later, after a "live beta test," my team decided to upgrade the CMS (Magento), and redesign the site to add some functionalities that were missing or buggy. The site was "Under Construction" for about three days, and our rankings increased slightly after the new site was indexed, despite it having less content (products) than the previous version of the site.

Recently (about three weeks ago), we added several more products, and our rankings increased dramatically (Google - 52 improved, 0 declined in SEOMoz rank tracking, 4x increase in queries, 2.5x increase in traffic).

These updates did however coincide with other SEO efforts, so it's hard to nail down what cause the improved metrics.

But... I definitely think that the addition of new content helped. In my market (Atlanta Printing) many of my competitor's websites have been updated very little over the last several months or even years, so it doesn't require much to win that battle. In other markets, this will of course be a different story. I do think freshness of content will impact any search result, like you said, and it absolutely can't hurt to have the "freshest" site in any given market. Again, depending on the search term, fresh content could mean three days old, or it could mean 3 months old, but I advise my clients to publish new or updated content at least every 30 days.

I think it all boils down to the competitiveness of the query and the rate at which other pages competing for that query are publishing fresh content.

Thanks!

Anthony

Hi William,

This could be due to several factors, but it's likely just how the two applications display information.

In Analytics, your total number of exits should be  equal to the total number of visits, so I'm sure what you're looking for is "% Exits" for a particular page, which will allow you to identify what page/content is causing visitors to leave the site.

From Google:

**Exits - **This metric identifies the number of exits from your site, and, as with entrances, it will always be equal to the number of visits when applied over your entire website. Use this metric in combination with particular content pages in order to determine the number of times that particular page was the last one viewed by visitors.

**% Exits - **The percentage of site exits that occurred from a page or set of pages.

It could be that WebTrends is showing you the total number of site exits, while GA is displaying the number of exits for your homepage only.

Hope this helps!

Anthony

Exceptional answer from Ryan, as always. Just wanted to add that freshness of content is an important factor that now has an increased effect on how your site ranks in Google. This could partially explain why your site maintained it's position for several weeks after you made the updates you mentioned, and then recently dropped.

Hope this helps.

-Anthony

I agree with iPositions on this one, I don't think you'll be penalized for keyword stuffing in this case. A page about branding will obviously contain the word "branding" more than three times, and it's not a long-tail keyword. If you were to repeat something like "Branding Agency in Salt Lake City Utah" three times, you may have something to be concerned about.

Remember you're writing for your audience, and the repetitive use of "branding" in this case is a creative mechanism to portray a sense of importance, like the often used "Location. Location. Location." Keep writing for human readers and not Google's Robots and I think you'll be fine.

Hope this helps!

Anthony Holcombe
NorthSEO

If I understand your question correctly, you're asking if you should use a subdomain or a path for a particular set of pages or subsite, like a blog. I would recommend using a path (yourdomain.com/blog) over a subdomain (blog.yourdomain.com) because Google treats subdomains almost like entirely different domains, and the subdomain will only benefit slightly from the root domain's authority. Pages that are inside a path however will benefit more greatly from the root domain's inbound links and authority.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony Holcombe

Hi again Egol,

The site that the links are pointing to is actually my own site and the linking domain is my friend / business associate's. I do know about Penguin and Panda, and my link profile is pretty clean. I haven't employed any black-hat methods. When I launched the site, about six weeks ago, I needed to compete quickly, and having the only external site-wide link on a high trust domain seemed like it would help. That was pre-Penguin though, and I can see how it would look unnatural. My traffic has gone up since the 24th, so I don't think I was penalized, though some of my competitors were.

That's what's confusing me a little bit about Penguin Advertising is natural in business, and companies that are affiliated often "refer" potential clients to the each other. That's basically what I did. I help him with SEO and marketing, and he didn't mind that I added a link to my new site in the footer to help me out. There's nothing unnatural or dishonest about it, but it does make me nervous. It's not like a blogroll or link bank though, there are no other outbound links on the site, and we're both Atlanta based businesses, so there's some contextual similarity, and it doesn't look spammy.

Still, I think I'll play it safe and just add two or three links w/ a little graphic on the home page of the linking site. Do you agree that's a better/safer idea?

I agree, Google is being even more vague than usual on this one. Funny that you mention the Journeyman link... I posted this question right before reading yours. I'll think you'll get a kick out of it. Same basic premise... WTF do we now? The answer is always the same though, in a couple of months we'll have enough research and analysis to have a good understanding of the update, at which point Google will change it again. Gotta love gettin paid to play a game

I've been reading about and helping a lot of people who were hit by the Penguin update over the last couple of days, and the update seems to be accomplishing what Google intended it to accomplish... it's scaring people straight.

I've picked up two new clients this week who now only want to practice "Good SEO" and "Do it the right way." This is a good thing for me and for the quality of the net, don't get me wrong. It does make me a little nervous though that the SEO industry is going to be tarnished a bit. Google is making a pretty clear statement with Penguin, which I think boils down to "Don't do anything other than create good content, provide accurate descriptions, and establish good connections to SEO your site... or beware ." (other than technical stuff - 301/ canonical / crawler management / etc).

So riddle me this Batman...

As a proud Journeyman, how is the followed backlink on my SEOMoz profile page going to appear to Google? This is an SEO site with SEO content and SEO tools and SEO in the URL. The site listed below the first followed URL on my profile is an SEO site that's in development. So there's a link to my site and every bit of context around it screams SEO.

But... it is a very nice link indeed, I really do like it, and this is a white-hat kind of place. Do you think Google will start penalizing sites with inbound links from pages that are related to SEO, even if the page promotes respectable tactics?

If so, I'll be having nightmares about a very round Danny DeVito with a pointy nose and creepy hands chasing me through the sewers for weeks to come...

Hi Guys,

I've got a friend / client / business associate who's website I helped develop. It's a three letter dot-com, so good trust, and an eCommerce site, so lot's of pages.

When I launched my new site about 6 weeks ago I put "Official IT Partner of MySite.com" in the footer. No keywords in the anchor text, just the domain URL...

There are no other external links like that on the site whatsoever, and I haven't been hit by Penguin. I'm ranking well for local targeted keywords a few weeks after launch, and traffic continues to increase...

I am worried that Google will see this is unnatural, but I've received no warning or experienced any decline in rankings. There's about 2800 pages linking from the site to my site, all in the footer of course.

Would it be better to remove the link from the footer and add it just to the home page and a couple of other high authority pages, or should I leave it be. It's not "unnatural", I am affiliated with the site and work in partnership with the site, but it does fit that profile.

I'm thinking about removing the footer link and adding a small graphic on the home page of the linking site which links to my root domain, with a couple of broad keyword anchored links in a description underneath that also link to relevant pages on my site...

What do you think?

2800 links w/ my URL as anchor text  from high Domain Authority / Low Page Authority pages (the homepage and a few other pages have decent authority) to my root domain

OR

Three different links from one High DA/ High PA homepage (one image alt, two anchored w/ broad keywords) to three different pages on my site.

Again, there are no other site-wide external links on the domain, and I'm pretty sure I escaped the Penguin.

Looking forward to hearing the different points of view.

Thanks,

Anthony

Hey,

I agree that the best option, as Francisco mentioned is to <nofollow>the outbound links in order to retain the pages authority and not send any fishy signals to Google. </nofollow>

As far as the content issue goes, it could use a little bit better "text to code" ratio, but content doesn't always mean text. I'm also in branding and graphic design and found the post to be relevant and exactly as you described it..

80 Creative Logos for your Inspiration

There's 80 logos, and they inspired quite a few ideas as I scrolled down the page. So congratulations on pleasing your target demographic, which is exactly what you should be concentrating on.

A couple of extra paragraphs below the images wouldn't hurt, and definitely nofollow the outbound links, but the first eight words of the post say it all...

They say a picture speaks a thousand words...

A little bit different version of the saying I'm familiar with but the post's content isn't an issue, just get the technical stuff right and you've got a winner. Now if you'll please excuse me while I check out a few more of those logos...

Thanks,

Anthony

No problem at all. Glad I could help. I think you've got it under control. I tend to over-think things a little bit after a long night, haha.

Last two cents...

There's a Magento extension I use on one of my stores that's very similar to what you're thinking of.

On the checkout page, the very first form requires the user to enter the billing info (just name, email, address, etc... not payment info), as well as password, and has a checkbox that asks the user if they would like to "Register for Future Convenience."

Above this first form there's a simple a link at the top that says "Already Registered? Login here." which replaces the billing info form with a login form if clicked.

I think something like that would work perfectly for your situation, you'd just need the addition of a password field to the billing info section, and a link that replaces the billing section with a login form when clicked. Depending on which method/form is displayed your button text would either be "Login and Continue" or "Register and Continue."

For new users who need to register, the only additional step as opposed to a "Guest Checkout" would be filling out a password field.

Good luck man.

-Anthony

Hey Sebastian,

I took a look at your site and I see what you're saying about guest checkout. Very nice by the way. I'm definitely going to keep your contact info handy so I'll have it the next time I need a custom modules built.

I do think adding the login form to the basket.html page would be the best way to go in this case. The only problem with that is if the user clicks on the Checkout button and bypasses the View Basket page...

Again, my php skills are horrible but I guess the general idea for the rule would be something like this:

For basket.html - if userisnotloggedin then echo HTML for the login form above the current basket.html content.

For checkout.html - if userisnotloggedin then echo HTML for login form above the current checkout.html content.

The problem with this scenario is that if the user isn't registered, you'd aslo need to dynamically display the HTML from register.html on the basket or checkout page when a user clicks "Register Now", instead of redirecting to a new page.

Could get a little complicated but it should eliminate the 302 warning.

Also, when I created an account I noticed I had to confirm it, so unless you've had problems with fake accounts, I'd  remove that step from the conversion process.

Personally, I use the robots.txt file to disallow robot access to all of my cart, checkout, and account pages (login, register, or after login). The only drawback is you don't have the "Register" page indexed, but I don't think it's very likely that a user would land on a Registration page from a search engine result and proceed to register for a site without viewing any other content first.

Removing those pages from the index, combined with adding a no-follow tag to the View Basket and Checkout buttons links should get rid of the 302 error and any duplicate content issues without having to change your conversion flow, which seems to be very straightforward and user-friendly as it is.

It seems like you've got the skills to make it happen either way though, and keeping a user on the checkout page instead of redirecting them somewhere else never hurts.

I don't think the 302 warning will be affect your rankings much as it is, but to wrap it up... I'd either add the necessary Login and Registration forms to both the basket and checkout pages (only if the user isn't logged in) or disallow indexing of those pages and no-follow any links pointing to them, so the 302 isn't an issue.

-Anthony

Hi Sebastian,

What eCommerce platform are you using?

To be honest, I think the best solution would be to allow users to checkout without being logged in. Most eCommerce stores allow Guest Checkout because a lot of customers don't want to be forced to create a permanent account in order to make a purchase. I'm pretty positive you'd see an increase in Conversion Rate if you enable users to make purchases as guests.

If that's not an option for some reason, you might try letting the user create the account during the checkout process rather than redirecting them to the normal account creation page.

I'm pretty sure there's a way to redirect users to a page without using a 302 via php, but I'm far from being an expert in that language. On my eCommerce site if a customer clicks a link like "Order Tracking" or "Order History" without being logged in they're first taken to the login page, and then after logging in they're redirected to the original page that was requested. I'm not showing any 302 warnings from these links though. I'm using Magento, and while I'm very well versed in that CMS, I've got very little experience with other eCommerce platforms and can't really help you out with anything technical.

Again, I definitely think the best course of action would be to allow non-registered users to make purchases, which would eliminate the problem entirely and increase conversions.

Hope this helps and good luck!

-Anthony

Very strange indeed...

I'd submit a ticket to SEOMoz tech support or shoot a quick email to help@seomoz.org. They usually get back to you and resolve issues very quickly. I haven't personally experienced this, so I've got nothing.

Blessing in disguise though...

I did notice you haven't set up your Facebook page username yet, and you've got waaay more than the 25 fans you need to set one up.

Just click Edit Page under the Manage menu at the top right of your FB page, and then click Basic Information in the left menu. You should see Username near the top. I'm sure you can take it from there.

You'll be able to link to facebook.com/MariahCarlePhotography rather than www.facebook.com/pages/Mariah-Carle-Photography/162925300446877

... so at least the garbled up URLs will be shorter

-Anthony

I've just built an eCommerce site as well, and it can definitely be tricky to keep the information fresh, especially if you're in a market that's not constantly releasing the newer, faster, better versions of the products you're selling, or if you have a small niche-focused inventory.

Like Alan said, updating a section of the homepage with snippets from a separate blog or industry news is a wonderful way to keep fresh content on your homepage, and it also lets potential customers know that you actively maintain your site and are knowledgeable about the products you sell.

Another thing you might consider is dedicating a section of your homepage to a featured product or special that changes once a month or so. If you do go this route, don't just put a picture of the product under a heading that says "Featured Product" with a link to the product page. A small variation in content like that won't do much good. Dedicate a little more time and space to the section and provide product descriptions, reviews, etc on the homepage itself.

-Anthony

Hi Sajad,

Very good questions, and very relevant given recent industry updates. I thing Google is starting to get it right, and your decision to come over to the light side is a good signal of that. Bring your friends!

In my opinion, the key to implementing good SEO practices is to think like your target demographic... consumers and internet users that aren't involved in the digital marketing space, and simply want to find helpful, entertaining, relevant content as quickly and easily as possible.

I don't think any of the methods you listed would be considered black-hat, as long as you're doing them in moderation, on relevant sites, and not just for the sake of the linkjuice you're hoping to gain.

If you post something you think is genuinely helpful and original on a high authority blog, there's nothing wrong with linking back to your site and using a social bookmarking service to help users (and Google) find the content faster. No need for a hundred bookmarks though.

I think top directory submissions are absolutely white-hat. Yahoo and DMoz are still very trusted by Google. These sites are meant to be a place that users can find a business that provides the product or service they're looking for. There's absolutely nothing wrong with submitting your site to directories like these so that customers can easily find you. If Google were to penalize your for this, it would be like penalizing you for listing your business in the Yellow Pages, which nearly every business used to do. Top directories are just the digital versions of the old school phone book we still find on our doorstep once a year, and are viable forms of advertising. What you DEFINITELY want to AVOID are the "Submit your site to 50,000 directories for $5!" services. That's the kind of thing that Google is starting to penalize webmasters for.

Same thing with article directories, don't submit randomly generated keyword-stuffed crap to thousands of directories. If you have quality, original content then submit it to the trusted directories and give it a little time to be organically spread across the web by people who find it useful or entertaining enough to link to it.

As far as creating blogs on WP, Tumbler, etc goes... again just do it in moderation. I'd concentrate on a single blog and provide quality content and useful links to other resources as well as links to your own content. Three hundred blog posts about how your company is the best in the world for this keyword and that keyword looks spammy and totally untrustworthy to both users and Google.

The same principles apply for guest posts on quality blogs... if you've got a useful comment to post, by all means post it. Just don't post fake, disingenuous, spam on every do-follow blog you can find.

I think you'll find creating quality content, making your site attractive and easy to use, and engaging your customers will be a much better use of your time than filling the world's servers with gigabytes and gigabytes of useless information. There's no need to trick Google into increasing your rankings... if you provide content that's worth visiting, the visitors will come.

Hope this helps and good luck. Life just got a lot easier

Thanks,

Anthony

Two directions I'd go:

If you're looking to attract young writers:

Journalism, Freelance Writing, etc

If you're looking to attract readers:

News, Entertainment News, Opinions, Columns, Blog, etc.

You're looking at very broad keywords, and you're right, the individual article pages won't really require much keyword optimization. However for your home page and root domain in general, you should do some research about what phrases readers or freelance writers search for when submitting or reading news, and concentrate on those.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony

I have to agree with Kevin on this one...

Items 2,3,and 4 are days away.

Does it suck that OSE's Linkscape Index hasn't been updated since the end of February? YEP!

Will it be worth the wait next week when it is updated and contains three times the data as the previous crawls? YEP!

I consider SEOMoz a community, and though Linkscape's stagnant data is causing some issues, I realize that once those issues are resolved that I'll be getting more bang for my buck than I did before, and I'm totally willing to struggle for a month in order to have better tools at my disposal for many months to come.

Rand and SEOMoz are drastically improving the volume of data that we will have at our disposal. That takes time and resources. They aren't raising prices or making excuses, they're working out bugs and improving the service. I'll take it.

Anthony

Nope, not as far as I know. Just add the tag in the head of the non-canonical URLs:

This is from Google's Webmaster Tools Support section:

If you want http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html to

be the canonical URL for your listing, you can indicate this to search

engines by adding a  element with the attribute rel="canonical"

_ to the section of the non-canonical pages. To do this, create a_

link as follows:

_```
href="http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html">

_Add this extra information to the  section of non-canonical URLs._

http://example.com/dresses/greendress.html?gclid=ABCDh

_This tells Google that these URLs all refer to the canonical page at **http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html**. _

_**Note**: We recommend __using a link with the attribute `rel="canonical"` to_

_indicate your preferred __URL, but we can't guarantee to follow that preference_

_in all cases._

_[More information about rel="canonical".](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394)_

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony_

Hi Daniel,

As long as there are no conflicts with the two content management systems you're using (the new eCommerce CMS and the current CMS), I think it would be more effective to install the ecommerce cart software in a subfolder of your root domain rather than a completely new domain. Basically the result would be "www.Brand-Name.com/shop/" but would act as a separate website.

Doing it this way would decrease the time and resources needed to build authority to a completely new domain, and would centralize your brand rather than splitting it across two domains. You'd also have some inherit SEO benefits, as the domain authority you've already established would help increase page rankings for the store installed in the "shop" directory. Plus you wouldn't have to worry about clarifying which URL is for what across your social platforms and advertising mediums, and I think it would be an easier transition for both you and your customers in general.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Anthony

Also, if you want to PM me your login details I'll be glad to take a look.

You can check my tested eLance scores at atlantamedia.elance.com.... just so you know I won't mess anything up

Hi Christine,

This looks like some kind of misconfiguration in Wordpress that's probably being caused by your permalink structure. If you've installed any plugins lately that change your permalinks, try deactivating them and see if the problem remains.

Looks to me like the permalink structure or template is just repeating itself, so instead of going to yoursite.com/page it's going to yoursite.com/page/yoursite.com/page.

Should be an easy fix if you find the offending plugin or setting.

It could also be caused if you have manually linked to certain pages, and then changed your permalink structure, making the links that were correct before the change now point to pages that don't exist.

If you're site is working fine and you can't find the links pointing to the 404 pages, you can use Google Webmaster Tool's URL removal to stop them from being indexed, or add them to your robots.txt file via the Disallow command.

Hope this helps!

Anthony

I agree with both Moosa and Aran. I don't think constantly changing your page titles on a site-wide basis is going to help your rankings. It may actually have the opposite effect, depending on how you interpret Google's mysterious and upcoming "Over-Optimization" penalty.

However if you're page title's need improving and doing so will help you increase impressions, I wouldn't avoid it. I just wouldn't make a habit of tweaking them and changing them too often.

Like Aran said, if you've running a special promotion, have a major announcement, incredible new content, etc... I absolutely think changing the titles on relevant pages to reflect those things is a great idea for increasing CTR and conversions.

Moderation is the key on this I believe.

Hope this helps.

Anthony

Hi David,

Great question. I'm not sure if that's possible or not, I know there are a lot of options via Linkscape's API but you're talking about Crawl Reports and that's a separate issue entirely. I'd suggest asking the SEOMoz Staff about it... I'd love to know my self.

To submit a ticket: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/home

Contact SeoMoz Help: help@seomoz.org

If it's not currently possible you might want to add it to the Request a Feature page.

Thanks,

Anthony

Hi Michael,

I'm not talking about the product pages that make up the site, just the actual cart and checkout pages.

I'm not sure what eCommerce platform you're running, but basically whatever page is displayed when a customer clicks "My Cart" and "Checkout" or whatever it happens to be on your site... the pages that are dynamically generated when user's add products and purchase items. There's no need to have a My Cart or a Checkout page ranking in Google that shows an empty cart or an error when somebody clicks the search result. Same thing for customer account pages like order tracking or order history... anything that's dynamically generated and requires a user to be logged in or have an active session on the site.

I agree with both you guys...

Gone are the days of outbound links hurting your authority. Be useful to users. Users enjoy usefulness. Google gauges your site's usefulness by the behavior of it's visitors...

What's better for your rankings?

A user clicks through to your site, then realizes "This isn't what I'm looking for" and clicks the back button... bouncing to Google in hopes to find the content they're actually seeking OR...

A user clicks through to your site, exclaimes "Hallelujah! I found it!" and clicks from your site to the content... they give it a good look, and the click back to your site, which was so very helpful.

You get the point. Too many hours in front of the screen for me today.

Donnie said it in a sentence...

Hear hear. Thumbs up.

One word... competition.

I act as 'Director of Marketing' (aka SEO/Graphic Designer) at a small tech company that specializes in Cisco networking equipment. I can tell you from experience that small variations in part #s like these can have a huge amount of variation when it comes to the competitiveness of the keyword.

For example,

CISCO1812-SEC-K9 Extremely Competitive

CISCO1812-SEC-K9-P Not Very Competitive at all.

This is an example, and I probably have the part #'s wrong, but basically one is the power adapter, and one is the actual $2500 router. Your competitors are likely concentrating on the products that have the highest profit margins.

Part # searches for hardware have a very good conversion rate, as this is usually what a potential customer will search for after they've decided what piece of equipment they want or need, and are trying to find the best price. So the fact that you're ranking above high authority domains for certain part numbers is awesome, but more demand and higher margins for a specific part will naturally lead to more competition.

Could also be other factors like backlinks and keyword density, just like Donnie mentioned. It's hard to tell without  competitive and search analysis for those keywords.

Just like Bede said,

UBL = Inexpensive and quick, but can lead to some issues. It's more about posting your listing in as many places as possible, but not managing the content once it's there. Not bad at all for the money though.

YEXT = More expensive. More control. Better management of content.

If your goal is to simply get your business listed in as many places as possible to increase impressions and awareness, I'd go with UBL.

If you're looking for more of a full fledged reputation management solution that allows for each listing to be easily updated with new specials, content, images, etc, then YEXT is probably the way to go.

If you've got the money - go with both.

Mark - Got ya man. Long day here too. Old No. 7's taking care of me though.

Hi Pete,

Good question.

First thing, don't worry too much about keywords in your meta descriptions. Google will make them bold, which might draw some attention to your listing on the results page, but keywords in meta descriptions don't actually improve rankings.

Instead, use the meta description area to entice the searcher to visit your site. What set's you apart from the competition... do you offer free shipping?... any special promotions? Using the Meta Description as an informative snippet and a call to action is much more effective in increasing CTR (Click Thru Rate) and Conversions than packing them with keywords.

Secondly, some pages (like the Shopping Cart or other customer specific pages), you don't really want showing up in Google, so it's best to instruct Google not to index these pages (either via the robots.txt file or meta-robots tag). If Google doesn't index the page, then there's no need for the Meta Description.

Lastly, I'd recommend investing the time in writing good Meta Descriptions for the pages that you anticipate will be receiving the most impressions and traffic, and use a default description of the site for the pages that will likely rarely appear in results.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Anthony

Hi Streetwise,

I've never actually A/B'd a subscription mechanism like the one you're talking about, but I definitely agree that people are NUMB to the word "Subscribe" and that setting yourself apart a little bit would help.

One of the thing's I really appreciate about SEOMoz is the inventiveness and originality they employ in converting visitors to customers... worked on me

From greeting me with a nice warm "Aloha" to having Roger personally tell me I've reached a 404 pages, it's that kind of personal customer engagement that seems to be leading to more conversions these days.

I'm not sure what your niche is but a few suggestions to replace "Subscribe Now".

Stay Informed.

Keep me Informed.

Update me.

Keep me in the loop.

I think even eliminating "now" could help, and having the button simply say "Subscribe"

Last one...

Hop on the Bus, Gus.

Kidding... but you get the point. Be different.

Take a browse through seomoz.org and you'll see plenty of examples. (Might want to log out first to get the full effect.)

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony

Hi Sofia,

Two things you need to consider when troubleshooting this:

The actual robots.txt file (located in the root directory of your site) and the meta-robots tags in the section of your HTML. When you say you checked the source code and the robots instructions were missing, I think you were talking about the meta-robots tags in the actual HTML of your site.

Webmaster Tools is probably referring to the actual robots.txt file in your domain's root path, which would differ entirely and not be visible by checking the HTML on your site. Like Nakul and Brent said, if you'll let us know your site's URL and paste the content of your robots.txt file here, I'm sure one of us can help you resolve the problem fairly quickly.

Thanks!

Anthony

Great point Tom, and great handle.

While I've gotten a few leads from Facebook and Twitter, the true reason for my investing any time at all in those outlets is that potential customers often check these places to validate the popularity, or even the success of a business. If a fan page on Facebook has 4 likes, or a Twitter account has 17 followers, it's not a good signal to a potential customer, especially one researching web marketing providers.

The fact that Google now incorporates social metrics into their ranking algorithm also had some bearing on the energy and resources I've allocated to increase my company's presence on FB and Twitter.

The problem with Google+...

Nobody looks. Nobody cares. That's my experience.

I've invested a very little bit of time and money to add a few +1s to my website in order to increase the rankings, but that's it. I did see an improvement in rankings, and there wasn't much work involved at all, so I consider it a win.

The problem, in my opinion, is Google's almost Narcissistic approach to Google+. It's a Google product, so it matters. Why? Because Google says so.

I can't remember a platform that has had such little impact in the lives of real world users, yet such an effect on website rankings. Could be a good strategy on the part of Google, could fade away... we'll have to wait and see.

No problem at all. Happened to me more than once. Good luck!