Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi, Is there a way to add to the OSE a list of disavowed domains? Also, how often is it refreshed?
I know that the GWMT shows us links on sites that are down for months now. Thanks

Hello, As a site owner, I've worked with several SEO firms in the past. Even though a long time has passed, they still appear in the GWMT list of admins (though inactive). I wouldn't like other companies and consultants see that in the future. Is there a way to remove them? Thanks

Hi, When working on unnatural links penalty, is removing and disavowing links shown on the GWMT enough or should the list be broaden to include OSE and Majestic etc.? Thanks

Hi, I am looking for a recommended company which specializes in content creation to fluently create posts for our blog. This content needs to be of the highest quality. Areas of expertise - luxury goods, diamonds, diamond jewelry, fashion Any recommendations?

Hi, For the example I will use a computers e-commerce store... I'm working on creating guides for the store - 
How to choose a laptop
How to choose a desktop I believe that each guide will be great on its own and that it answers a specific question (meaning that someone looking for a laptop will search specifically laptop info and the same goes for desktop). This is why I didn't creating a "How to choose a computer" guide. I also want each guide to have all information and not to start sending the user to secondary pages in order to fill in missing info. However, even though there are several details that are different between the laptops and desktops, like importance of weight, screen size etc., a lot of things the checklist (like deciding on how much memory is needed, graphic card, core etc.) are the same. Please advise on how to pursue it. Should I just write two guides and make sure that the same duplicated content ideas are simply written in a different way?

Hi All, Lately its been discussed a lot about the various penalties and the one that is least clear to me is over optimization. I'm currently dealing with my site's sub-folders naming. My site sells computers yet the domain name has nothing to do with computers. The question is should I put computers in every folder name? Examples: domain.com/surveys/xxx    VS     domain.com/computer-surveys/xxx domain.com/Questions/xxx    VS      domain.com/Computers-Questions/xxx and domain.com/Education/xxx     VS    domain.com/computers-education/xxx Where is the limit?

Hi Last night some of my good links suddenly stopped from being display displayed at the WMT list of links Any thoghts? Thanks

Hello, I do not believe so much in spammy links attacks and I definitely do not believe my site is worth attacking. However, I'm seeing new links pointing to my site that I have no idea where they come from. I just spotted three articles on a poor crappy article site with exact match keywords point to me. The articles are completely unique (copyscaped them) and they were posted according to the site time stamp during Oct and Nov 2012. (And they Appear in the WMT recently discovered links from more or less the same time). What to do (besides for disavowing this domain)? Thanks

Hi, I am disavowing some links. Does anyone know if Google removes them from the WMT?
This is interesting for followup purposes. Thanks

Hi, I have few articles on my site that are quite good both SEO wise (getting organic search traffic) and as a reading material. They get lots of traffic and people are staying and reading them (2-4 minutes on page). The problem with these articles is that people are reading them and then leave. These are landing pages for certain queries so I assume that the readers are getting what they wanted but when they finish they exit. The bounce rate is 70%-85%. Are these type of pages good or bad for my site? Last note, my site is an e-commerce store. I do try to "motivate" more people to navigate to other pages but the majority do and will probably leave (because they were looking for answers and not products). Needless to say that the articles are related to my site's subjects and products.

Hi, In our e-commerce site on category pages we have pagination (i.e toshiba laptops page 1, page 2 etc.). We implement it with rel='next' and 'prev' etc. On the first page of each category we display a header with lots of text information. This header is removed on the following pages using display='none'. I wondered if since it is only a css display game google might still read it and consider duplicated content. Thanks

Hi All, To clarify my question I will give an example. Let's assume that I have a laptop e-commerce site and that one of my main categories is Samsung Laptops. The category page shows lots of laptops and a small section of text. On the other hand, in my article section I have a HUGE article about Samsung Laptops. If we consider the two word phrases each page is targeting then the answer is the same - Samsung Laptops. On the article i point to the category page using anchor such as "buy samsung laptops" or "samsung laptops" and on the category page (my wishful landing page) I point to the article with "learn about samsung laptops" or "samsung laptops pros and cons". Thanks

Hi, While looking to buy a Christmas gift to my wife I was searching for yellow diamonds. Being a bit familiar with SEO I gotta understand how the following page was ranked 4th for "yellow diamonds": http://www.bluenile.com/diamonds/fancy-color-diamonds The phrase yellow diamonds is not mentioned even once! Thanks

Hi I'm trying to promote an ecommerce site that sells vitamins and health goods. The site owner doesn't want to add texts in the product pages because it is medical material. therefore he Currently has non unique (duplicated) content in each product page' It is the same exact content all others have (taken From the manufacturer)' Any ideas? Thanks

Hi, While searching for co-operations and guest blogging opportunities I found several sites that look legit and that lost all SE traffic (according to various tools such as SEMRush). By legit I mean sites that have PR3 and up. Have many solid looking articles and that the articles are on the site's subject and that the articles do not necessarily point to other sites with exact match anchors. Should I post in these sites or are they probably penalized and therefore being there put me at risk? Thanks

Hi, Looking at Google's WMT "links to your site" it shows few sites that have thousands of links pointing to mine. There are actually only 1-2 links pointing to me from a site that Google shows 2000.
I assume that it is simply because they don't have canonical tags. Should I ask for the 2 links to be removed? Thanks

Hi, When I open an internal page with target=_blank (for example taking people from our store to our blog) it may cause a session timeout on the store page (assuming they stay on the blog and don't come back). Does that cause a bounce? Does that mean that the store's page just became the  "Exit" page? Thanks

Hi All, My question doesn't actually refer to the fluent work of maintaining a page but rather to the basics. In our Facebook page we simply "bought" ads leading to our page and got the followers over time. I don't see an equivalent option in G+. Do I need to use  regular adwords and point people to the G+ page or is there a place I can place ads inside G+? Thanks

Hi Let's assume that our company's name is "Smith Computers" and we specialize in Ultrabooks (for those who don't know - super light and slim computers - a niche within computers for the matter). Under which name would you open the Plus account - Smith Computers Ultrabooks Smith Ultrabooks Smith Ultrabooks Computers The example is not 100% but the question remains - No one knows Smith Computers and even if we turn up in search results for computers, the customers are not looking for our type products.
However, it is our brand name! Ultrabooks - I assume it will help us gain followers faster but will be hard to brand. The followers will be people who like the product and not the company but might be good people to sell to in the future. I'd say that option 3 is half branding and option 4 is 75% branding 🙂
Both will also have good chances to pop up in search results. The company at hand is a family owned business. We do not plan to rule the industry but rather taking it to the next level. We do not count on having thousands of people searching Google for "Smith Computers" like Best Buy etc. Please consider that at the end we want to use it both for promoting our brand (slowly) but also (and maybe mainly) SEO (by getting more people that click +1 onsite). We currently have lots of Facebook followers but naturally they only Like and not +1 Please help...

Hi, As far as I know, in the past Italic was used to emphasize (similar use to Bold). Now I've seen people use Italic for quotations. Is that the correct thing to do for an entire paragraph or is it a problem for Google wise? Thanks

Hi, What I meant is should I use the above mentioned account as rel=author for category pages etc? It seems to me improper to use my account (with my picture) in a category page and to show my face in the SERPS for searches like "Toshiba Laptops". On the other hand, if in the SERPS it will show our Logo it might increase CTR... Any thoughts? Thanks

Hi, I know that once there were discussions about "navigating" all links top wise to the main pages - for example to category pages in e-commerce sites. What is the proper methodology today? One example: Should I link out from a category main page which shows my products (a serious landing page)  to a page that explains about the product? It makes sense but I don't want my about page to become the more important page (even though it does link back to the products category page). Thanks

Hi, As stated in the title, I am wondering if I should NOINDEX NOFOLLOW my shopping cart page - it is actually a buy now page that receives in the URL the Item ID - only one item per purchase. I received duplication errors so now I added canonical and I wonder if I should simply remove it altogether. Thanks

Hi, I'm showing my videos using jquery lightbox etc. This means that I do not have the normal YouTube "embedding" code onpage. Does anyone know if Google will somehow index my videos? Any solutions / ideas? Thanks

Hi, Do you recommend removing Meta Keywords or is there "nothing to lose" with having them? Thanks

Hi, Do you think that texts that are written inside the file's source code get more attention / more credit from Google than texts that are brought from the DB? Thanks

Hi, On each product page in my e-commerce site, I have a link to show a certificate of authenticity for the product. (similar to any guide in an e-commerce site). I also have the details as plain text on the page, but this is required. What is the correct way to show it, using PDF or JPG? Thanks

Hi All, As far as I know, Google also gives "importance" ranking to pages based on the number of clicks from the homepage that it takes to reach them. The question I have is How Google treats menu items that are revealed only with hovering / click? Menu Items such as the SEOMoz Blog that can be reached when hovering "Community" here in the top menu. Is it an equivalent to the Q&A Forum? Would it be the same if the menu would have opened with a click instead of hovering? Thanks

Hi, I have an e-commerce website that has an articles section: There is an articles.aspx file that can be reached from the top menu and it holds links to all of the articles as follows: xxx.com/articles/article1.aspx
xxx.com/articles/article2.aspx I want to add several new articles under a new sections, for example a complete set of articles under the title of "buying guide" and the question is what would be the best way? I was thinking of adding a "computers-buying-guides.aspx" accessible from the top menu / footer and from it linking to: xxx.com/computer-buying-ghudes/what-to-check-prior-to-buying-a-laptop.aspx
xxx.com/computer-buying-ghudes/weight-vs-performance.aspx 
etc. Any thoughts / recommendations? Thanks

Hi, I'm using AddThis sharing on my site. The implementation is by embedding a href's all over the site. Do these buttons take my LinkJuice? Thanks

Hi All, We have an e-commerce website and the category pages are built so that there is a product image and below it there is the title. Both the image and the title are in a href (each on its own). I encountered the following unfinished discussion here at MOZ:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-optimize-achor-text-links-on-ecommerce-category-page#post-93758 The discussion states that its improper. The question is - if it is wrong then why? (maybe because Google will give its weight to the image anchor instead of the text anchor since it is higher in the page). The other question is how to resolve the matter?
Should I add nofollow to the image href? Thanks

Hi All, In my e-commerce site in each product page I have the breadcrumbs on top which show the root categories  that lead to this product. However, I saw once that Google even if you use several anchors from page A to page B Google treats only/mainly the first anchor. This means that inserting contextual links on the product text, the product description, that leads to the category page (which is an important landing page) is irrelevant/ambiguous since the link is already in the breadcrumb on top. What do you think? Should I insert contextual links on the item description or is it worthless? Thanks

Hello, I'm considering strategic change in my site's formation.
301 redirecting some of the pages is not a problem but the question remains - what will happen with all of my social signals? These pages have Likes, plus ones, and tweets. Thanks

Hello All, I once read that htm files are considered stronger (SEO wise) than aspx files and I wondered if that is correct. Obviously, I mean the static part of aspx files for example making my about us page in htm and not aspx. Among the advantages of aspx is the usage of a master page (a template) for the design etc. Any thoughts? Thanks

Hi, I have images that match several different keywords and I wondered if I can give them different alts based on the page that they are displayed or will Google be angry with me? Thanks

Hi All, I know that social bookmarks are considered to be a good thing when pointing to a specific page. Is that the same to simple facebook "Likes" and tweets? By Likes I mean on page and not on Facebook fan page. Thanks

Hi All, Up till now I've been registered only to Google WMT. Do you recommend using at the same time Bing's WMT? Thanks

Hi All, I'm maintaining an e-commerce website and I've encountered some related keywords that I know will not convert to sales but are related to the subject and might help becoming an "authority". I'll give an example... If a car dealership wrote an amazing article about cleaning a car.
Obviously it is related but the chances of someone looking to clean his car will go ahead and buy one now are quite low. Also, he will probably bounce out of this page after reading the piece. To conclude, Would such an article do GOOD (helping to become an authority and having more visitors) or BAD (low conversion rate and high bounce rate)? Thanks

Hi All, Lately you see more and more JQuery slides in pages.
These banner slides can obviously contain html texts & links as well as photos. Does Google notice all of the texts in all of the slides of a page or does it notice only the first slide or alternatively somehow splits the weight it gives to the texts among the various slides. Thanks

In the following video with Cutts: http://youtu.be/r1lVPrYoBkA he explains a bit more about 301 redirects but he only talks about cross sites. What about redirecting internally from a non-existing product in a store to a new similar existing product?

Hi All, While trying to grow we used several freelancers and small companies for guest blogging, article submissions etc. We lost about 90% of traffic from our peek at December. We don't know if it is related but we got the following message last week:
"Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to www.domain.com" Is it related (getting this message after two months of losing traffic)? What to do???? (P.S
We fired most of the companies we used months ago since we noticed they used bad methods. We didn't believe it can hurt us - just thought it would be useless...) Please Help...

Hi All, I was wondering when I should write something as a post in my blog and when I should simply add an article in my articles section? What are the advantages of each way? Thanks

Hi, I was wondering what is the best way to run a blog? The options I thought of are: Completely separate domain with many links to my main site. blog.domain.com www.domain.com/blog Thanks

Hi, I was looking at BlueNile (biggest diamonds online dealer in the world) since I was wondering how they dealt with similar products and with sold products. Each diamond that is sold is unique. Once it is sold it is unavailable for sale. Also, all diamonds are VERY similar so they should also find a way to handle duplication in content. Look at the following 2 pages: http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02360835 http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02366155 The pages are practically identical and in the "view source" I noticed that they add a canonical tag to themselves... Any thoughts on that? Thanks

Hi All, What happens with an indexed page that I 301 redirect?
Is it removed from the Google index after a while? Thanks

Hi, I have an e-commerce website that sells unique items (one of a kind). We have hundreds of items and the items are rapidly sold. Up till now I kept the sold items under our "sold items" section but it started to get back at me as we have more "sold" than non sold and we are having duplication problems (the items are quite similar besides to sizes etc.). What should we do? Should we redirect 100 pages each week? Will Google be upset with that? (for driving it crazy) Thanks

Hi, I only now found out that www.domain.com and www.domain.com/ are different. Most of my external links are directed to  www.domain.com/ 
Which I understand is considered the subdomain and not the domain. Should I redirect? (and if so how?)
Should I post new links only to my domain?

Hello, I'm selling unique products - only one of a kind of each product.
This means that whenever a product is sold, it is removed from display. In order  not to upset Google by keep removing indexed pages I created a "sold items" page which links to all of the removed products. The problem is (or maybe it's not a problem) is that I got to the point where I have more "sold items" then existing items (and the list keeps adding up). What should I do with the non-existing items?
Was I correct? ---------------------------------------- ADDED INFO --------- The way the site is built is that I have main category pages and each of them is showing a large amount of products. Most of these products got indexed by Google. Each product has its own unique URL (Products do not return...) Once a product is sold it does not come up in the product categories - I only have a general "sold items" in the footer that shows all of them (with a lot of pagination). Since the products are rapidly changing, i thought it would upset Google to have a hundred 301 redirects in each week or two. Since the products are very similar to one another (only different measurements / colors etc.), I thought of having a link from a sold Item to a similar available item so if Google will direct someone it will probably be to the available product. The problem is that the sold items are now 4 times more than the number of available items... I don't think that a store should display 2008's t-shirts on 2012... Another problem that may rise with so many products is that I'm afraid that the one type of product that is being sold much more often will take charge at the end on the entire site since I will end up with 8,000 sold items of this product, 1000 sold items of other products and 1000 available misc products... this might also start causing duplication problems as the products are quite similar. Should I stop with the "Sold" products and use 301's? Thanks

Hello, I have an eCommerce website with hundreds of similar products. On some occasions, besides for their measurements they are completely identical. The titles are kept different by using the stock reference and the meta descriptions also use their measurements. However, I'm gettingDuplicate Page Content errors by the MOZ crawler. This is more than understandable since the products are very similar -
WHAT SHOULD I DO??? I noticed a similar situation in BlueNile (the diamond ecommerce site) - They have numerous almost identical pages, see example: http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02424873 http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02430168 For some reason, they did on each page a canonical to it's self... I wanted to add... It is impossible to add different descriptive texts due to the amount of products and to the rapidness they are sold (each product is unique - similar to the diamonds in the BlueNile example).

Hi All, I have an e-commerce website with thousands of unique pages. The site is built with quick access through the navigation bar to the main product categories. All of the product pages have navigation trees in them.
What happened is that in one of the main categories I have so many pages (products) that it actually gets more links than the home page - it is getting the links both from the menu (in each page in the site) and from the product pages that belong to that category whereas the homepage gets only the one link from the menu. Is that OK or should I add a level in the navigation tree that points to the homepage? Thanks