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Thanks

Thanks, I realise the usage should be a correct relative URL or a correctly formed absolute URL. In Moz's case, they used a correctly formed absolute URL.

My question is more around...why not use "/"?

Cyto

I noticed Moz using the following for its homepage

Is this best practice though?  The reason I ask is that, I use  and I've been reading this page by Google

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html

5 common mistakes with rel=canonical

Mistake 2: Absolute URLs mistakenly written as relative URLs

The tag, like many HTML tags, accepts both relative and absolute URLs. Relative URLs include a path “relative” to the current page. For example, “images/cupcake.png” means “from the current directory go to the “images” subdirectory, then to cupcake.png.” Absolute URLs specify the full path—including the scheme like http://.

Specifying (a relative URL since there’s no “http://”) implies that the desired canonical URL is http://example.com/example.com/cupcake.html even though that is almost certainly not what was intended. In these cases, our algorithms may ignore the specified rel=canonical. Ultimately this means that whatever you had hoped to accomplish with this rel=canonical will not come to fruition.

Matt has summed it up, but my question is..why don't you get a wildcard certificate?

It will make it much easier and if you ever move your website to a CDN network, an HTTPS website with a wildcard certificate makes the process smooth!

Should I address this issue now or is it too late to matter?

• Never too late

How would i do it, a link audit through a freelancer?

• Depends on your budget and time.  Rebecca's suggestion is good to use a tool like Link Detox and contact every webmaster. If you got the time to do it yourself, go for it..otherwise if you got the budget, hire a freelancer but check everything.

What do you SEO mozters recommend?

• Rebecca's post summed it up

• Webmaster tools.  Google, Bing (Yahoo) have them. Get your sitemap loaded and site set up in their webmaster tools!
• High authority backlinks. How about a wikipedia page? Or start creating some rich content that users will find useful and share? Even social media metrics come into ranking.
• Make your site run HTTPS and use a CDN
• Images and video. Don't forget users also land on your site from images and videos tabs+

What do you mean by "along with 25 other elements of the keyword.."

So your product title is automatically inserted as the alt tag of an image, so what are the other 25 elements? If it is just the title, sure I can understand and it should be fine - as long as the image is about the title.

Now if the image alt tag is stuffing other elements of a product as the img alt tag (such as other fields) then I would advice altering that automatic code.

Do it.

All 3

• canonical-url-tag,
• changing page Meta;
• and Body text.

In addition to the body text, bring in city specific and state specific content for that category. Images, text and even cross selling to make the page unique.

From my experience, change always happens..

• People might request a change in URL structure (then it will lead to 301 redirects and setting them up)
• It's better to let Google crawl a rich page than a weak page. When it comes to ecommerce sites, you don't want "page not found" as the product hasn't been published but its category page is done. If the sitemap leads to broken pages - well, customers won't like it, so don't expect bots to do either.
• I would work on your ecommerce site, get it done in preview and all ready to go. You can also setup things like Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Webmaster tools, ensure your sitemap is ready, url structure is fine and get it ready.

So my advice is to set it up and then launch. You don't want to end up "fixing" your website post launch.  Here's another way to look at it.. your credit score - it's easier to work on building a good credit score, than having to fix a bad one. SEO is the same.

Hmm, so what it comes down to is that, you can index search pages but provided they have a purpose or add value to the end user.

For instance, A user would search by category whereas an individual product search result isn't necessary when a product page exists.

Thanks Dirk for the links, helps a lot

Cyto

Maybe it has all to do with the site itself and the "human" approach Google is taking.

• The site is a non-profit organisation supporting the New York technology community. Domain is .org
• Let's review the page, in all reality such a page is useful -  it is showing internet companies made in NYC from a non-profit organisation. What other format would you take? Sure it only has links and looks spammy but it isn't a spam page. It has a purpose and exists in a format that is acceptable by its users - plus, it isn't asking for money. If you were to look at this from a human eye, you would go "this isn't spam"
• Taking the human approach again, if my friend was looking for a collection of internet companies in NYC and he had a  research pile with 10 documents and one of them was a handwritten version of this page, shouldn't it be there? Or should it be filed under his research pile of 500 documents? Maybe, we need to see Google differently, it's more complex than a "if statement".
• Maybe reciprocal links to non-profit organisations are viewed differently. A good Samaritan would go "yes" and maybe Google is taking a human approach and going "let me help you as you are a good non-profit organisation"
• Now the nofollow aspect, this is a technical element and I agree, shouldn't it exist? But again, maybe just maybe Google is seeing the site and going "I support such organisations" and the support this can give to other sites isn't so bad.
• Let's take Wikipedia. Would Google punish wikipedia if they didn't have a nofollow? Was the introduction of nofollow done due to Google or a decision Wikipedia made? Maybe it was Wikipedia who noticed users abuse their site and thus introduced the nofollow.

What I'm trying to say is that, maybe Google is evolving to be more complex/human like. It's doing a moral mind on decisions.

On the flip-side, it's just a software that forgot to notice the site amongst the millions of websites out there and in time, it will capture them.

All 3

• canonical-url-tag,
• changing page Meta;
• and Body text.

In addition to the body text, bring in city specific and state specific content for that category. Images, text and even cross selling to make the page unique.

• Webmaster tools.  Google, Bing (Yahoo) have them. Get your sitemap loaded and site set up in their webmaster tools!
• High authority backlinks. How about a wikipedia page? Or start creating some rich content that users will find useful and share? Even social media metrics come into ranking.
• Make your site run HTTPS and use a CDN
• Images and video. Don't forget users also land on your site from images and videos tabs+

I don't think there ever is an individual who knows the right answers to everything when it comes to SEO. We're all exploring ideas, learning and sharing knowledge of our own findings and research.

Let's step outside the SEO world, throw away our knowledge and look at the website. Would you say, it is a website your client should be on? If your client is indeed an internet company made in NYC, shouldn't they be mentioned in NY Tech Meetup? From this perspective, I would say yes.

My gut feeling is that, Google won't penalise a website who is an internet company made in NYC and listed on a non-profit organization website with a nofollow link. It seems like a natural fit.

Second, I'm looking at opensiteexplorer, the page has a page authority of 78/100 and 174 root domains including some big power houses like the guardian, bloomberg, forbes. (didn't see any nofollow)  I definitely think these are helping.I remember working on a client's webpage once, we optimised the page with rich content, clear call to actions and it was ranking on page 2, got 2 hyperlinks from the BBC and another high authority website and two weeks later, "boom", we were ranking on page 1, position 4.

Now let's explore the "black hat" technique. The core one would be the requesting of reciprocal links with the anchor text "Made in NYC" hyperlinked

You are right, that is "black hat" if I saw someone else do it, but in this scenario, I would go "that's fine". It all depends on the situation.

• A non-profit organisation focused on supporting new york technology community
• The webpage is specific to one and one thing only, listing internet companies made in NYC
• Their selection criteria focuses on active sites with 10k+ visits and ones solely made in NYC

You see, if I were to move this whole concept to a real world scenario, where nytm was a shop and they had a book listing other shops built in NYC, would you penalize them? "you sir, should not list such shops nor should other shops say you have a list of NYC build shops!"

In all honest, I don't see what they are doing as a big no no. I think things should be looked at as a case by case scenario, not to cluster everyone as a single group.

You mentioned why can't you create a .org page similar to this.. I say why not? Note their directory page isn't the core of what they are. This is just a single page of their entire entity and I think that plays a lot in their strength in reaffirming their presence in the web.

I realize you are frustrated, and all of us have our own thoughts. My thinking has always been to compare things to a real life scenario and focus more on creating great content that others will link to, rather than chase it myself. Sure, they might all use nofollow but they clicked through wanting to see my page and I'll let my rich content, site design and clear call to action turn them to a returnee.

Don't fret my friend. In a weird way, this is the perfect board to vent out and hear everyones thoughts and ideas. I hope my thoughts haven't put you off

Matt has summed it up, but my question is..why don't you get a wildcard certificate?

It will make it much easier and if you ever move your website to a CDN network, an HTTPS website with a wildcard certificate makes the process smooth!

Will your old site be replaced with the new website? If so, I would place the message on top, so it appears above the header. This message pushes the site down

The message could have a 'continue' button and once clicked, it will dissapear pushing the site back up. This way, everyone will see it no matter what landing page they arrive.

We do something similar for our cookie message

Absolutely,

I would also suggest being wary of Google's EMD update. If you don't have a domain with quality content, it won't rank you high just because you have the keyword in the URL.

SEOMoz's Opensiteexplorer? You can look at the external link domains, it even breaks it down to show you the page on the external site with a link to you

Thanks Everett,

• Rel="canonical" is in place, so that's covered
• The urls with the parameter are only accessible if you want to directly access a particular size. If you are on the default page and switch sizes from the dropdown, no URL change is presented.
• I have left webmaster to decide what should be crawled or not. The parameter has been mentioned though.

Agree with Chris and Moosa's points. The following worked for me

• Schema
• Create meta descriptions that will encourage click throughs. For a product page, our meta description summed up what the product did  and the ranges we offered. It led to more clicks.