Hi Cyrus, just saw this!

I was actually referring to homepages (should have clarified that), and I'm seeing it a lot lately.

This pages share two common factors, they usually have spammy looking link profiles, and they don't rank well for their main keywords.

I've been also seeing this on expired domains that have a huge amount of backlinks, one of my guesses is that they are being left to expire because of a penalization.

For the information I could find (not much really), it seems SEOmoz metrics are cumulative in nature, so you could have high metrics with tons of lousy links, right?

If that's the case, it's a great way to find out if a domain has been penalized or somehow demoted by Google, just by comparing the metrics, what do you reckon?

What else could be causing this kind of incoherence?

Thanks!

You should use nofollow only for linking sites you don't trust or endorse, sponsored links, etc. but not for internal linking, the PageRank sculpting days of this method are long gone, and you'll just burn your link juice and impair it's flow throughout your site.

If you need to exclude some pages of your site from being indexed just use the noindex meta tag.

Check the following resources:

Should internal links use rel="nofollow"?

Link Consolidation: The New PageRank Sculpting

Internal Links - Best Practices

We were just talking about that the other day, check the following thread:

http://www.seomoz.org/q/site-url-called-out-but-not-clickable

Now, if you manage to turn some of those mentions to live links, that could be great too!

Cheers!

Excellent, it does make a lot of sense!

That's weird, try the following:

-Click over the URL and see if it allows you to change it.

-Try to edit the slug with the "Quick edit" button at the 'page list' page, before entering the editor.

-Check your screen options (opciones de pantalla) in the upper right section of the page to see if you have all editing options enabled.

If that fails (maybe one of the many installed plugins is creating a conflict), you can always create a new page with the URL you want, copy the content from your old page and set it as your new landing page (don't forget to redirect the previous page to the new one).

Yes, it is important and appropriate both for optimization and usability.
You can edit the URL by opening the post or page you are using as homepage in the editor and clicking the "EDIT" button next to the URL (slug), check the attached image.

optimize-permalinks-slugs.gif

Using ccTLDs is the heaviest factor you could use to geotarget your websites and
in that case you shouldn't need to use local IP addresses for geotargeting, although if you have the budget, it could give you an extra boost along helping you with other factors such as latency.

You won't be able to use Google's webmaster tools geographic target since this feature is only for gTLDs, ccTLDs are targeted to it's country by default.

Some resources that could prove useful:

Working with multi-regional websites

International SEO: Where to Host and How to Target - Whiteboard Friday

Check this Whiteboard Friday:
How Unique Does Content Need to Be to Perform Well in Search Engines?

I'm sure it will clear some doubts!

Xenu's Link Sleuth is a great tool for that (and other things), although some people complain is not  as ready-out-of-the-box as they would wish, it has a fair enough learning curve.

Here's a blog post @SEOmoz about it (with some instructions): Xenu's Link Sleuth - More Than Just A Broken Links Finder

But you can give a try to this Broken Link Checker Tool first, maybe it'll save you some time if it can find it.

Good luck!

If it's a quality site, relevant to your niche and the links are useful for both sites users, everything should be fine, and both sites could benefit from the exchange.

If in doubt, you can always ask for an editorial link instead of site-wide links.

Check out this video for more info: Whiteboard Friday - Sitewide, Reciprocal, and Directory Links

You could try this one: Google XML Sitemap for Videos

It seems that it only includes posts that contain (or link to) videos in a file called  sitemap-video.xml, so you'll probably need your regular sitemap plugin too to generate a full sitemap.xml file.

Here's Cutt's answer to that: Matt Cutts on Shared Hosting

It seems like a blog engine, maybe an aggregator? I don't know, but I wouldn't authorize it. Keep in mind that if a site that's displaying your ads incurs in a violation of Google's TOS your AdSense account could be banned.

Search engines will recognize the keywords in both cases, also both are relevant and will serve you as a natural anchor, but for structural sake, better user experience and even SERP CTR, you should be better off including them in the folder structure. That way you'll be able to keep your URLs as short and descriptive as possible without sacrificing keywords in them.

Here's Matt Cutts answer on the subject:

Is it better to have keywords in the URL path or filename?

Maybe on extreme cases where you have little content and a very high code to content ratio and 100% duplicated code (not PHP but actual 'source code') from another site it might be taken into account?
I don't know, but then I guess the design would be the least of the problems!

If it helps, I can tell you from personal experience that I've used site structures that I've refined over time in different sites and I've seen very good results until now.

You could try targeting the same keyword in both pages, but best practice would be to have original, relevant and useful content for each term on each of the pages, even if they share a common keyword. I think you would be better off optimizing each page for the keyword set you're referring to, otherwise you'd risk diluting your ranking capabilities by falling into keyword cannibalization.

If you want to go further, you may have the perfect setting to build an authoritative page on "motivation", by providing useful content on different keyword variations, all referencing a central page dedicated exclusively to your main keyword on it's own.

Check out these articles, even if they're old I'm sure you'll find a lot of relevant and useful information:

Targeting Multiple Keywords vs. Singular Keyword Focus

How to Employ Multiple Keywords for SEO & Conversions

Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization

That shouldn't cause any problems whatsoever. It wouldn't make sense to penalize a site for having the same structure or design as another. Just think of how many millions are using the same CMS and/or the same template/theme!

Treat it as any other website!

WordPress creates internal redirects sometimes (if your server configuration allows it), for example if you change your permalink structure or a post URL (slug), the old address will redirect to the new one. Maybe that is what you are seeing?

You can check all your internal WP rewrite rules with this tool: http://www.askapache.com/wordpress/rewriterule-viewer-plugin.html

I guess it would depend on the competitiveness of that query, and how relevant your page is for it. It is possible to appear in the SERPs for.an alternate, broader or complementary query, but again, you could be very deep on those SERPs or not at all depending on the competition.

You could always have two pages on your site optimized for the two different set of keywords.

All other factors being equal, and unless you are in Boston, the page optimized for "english courses" should have preference for the the query "english courses".

Those are probably impressions from framed, cached and/or translated content, you should be safe authorizing them since they are Google sites, nevertheless I couldn't find any official info about it and personally I don't allow any sites besides my own to show my AdSense ID, as I'd like my account to be in the extra-safe side (some would say I'm paranoid), at least among the things that I can control.

Anyway, you should be able to see approximately how much revenue you are "losing" by checking your account reports and the amount of impressions originating on those domains filtering by "sites" (check "Web caches and others"), probably peanuts, so IMO it's not worth it.

Basically, yes.

I'm not sure if you can use 301 redirects (best method) in Blogspot, if not you could set the new domain's URLs as canonical.

You could also use the "change of address" feature in Google's Webmaster Tools. although. again. I'm not sure if you can use it with Blogspot (not a big fan of the service as you can see

When you finish, check, re check, and keep an eye for those 404s!

When a domain goes into pending delete status it's DNS have been usually deactivated for a while, generally since the domain entered it's redemption grace period (depending on the domain extension and the registrar).

It usually takes some time for a 301 to 'settle', so I would renew the old domain and keep it redirected for a while, here you'll find a compendium of data on the subject.

The thing is, if the domain has gone into pending delete status, the domain will be deleted soon (5 day period) and you won't be able to renew it. You could use a back order service to try and snatch it, or you could try to do it by hand if the domain is not valuable.

1- When the domain expires (probably sooner), you will loose access to the domain hence the address change will stop working, you'll see that in Webmaster Tools.

2- The pages will cease to exist and so will the redirections, the advise is to keep control of the old domain for at least 180 days.

3- It depends on several factors, like the amount of indexed pages, the amount of links pointing to them, crawling rate, etc. but for an average site it usually takes a couple of months for it to completely disappear from the index (can be a lot faster though).

Yes, there is a way to keep them out of the SERPs and restrict them from getting link juice: using noindex + nofollow, but bare in mind you'll be loosing that link juice and impairing it's flow throughout your site, besides indicating Google that you don't "trust" those pages.

A workaround would be consolidating those links.

Using robots.txt won't ensure that your pages are kept out of the SERPs, since any external link to those pages could get them indexed. If you need to make sure, the best way should be the noindex meta tag.

Now, in order not to loose your linkjuice, you should make sure to use "noindex, follow" in your meta, that way you're still preventing the pages from being indexed but you are allowing the juice flow through them.

If you want to pass the less possible juice to those pages, you should try to link them as little as possible or consolidate those links in fewer pages throughout your site.

Here's some useful information on the subject:

Google Says: Yes, You Can Still Sculpt PageRank. No You Can't Do It With Nofollow

Link Consolidation: The New PageRank Sculpting

If you want to avoid it you could do that but It'd really depend on each case since the use you're giving the tags and their usefulness for your users (even in the SERPs) it's what should give you the right answer.

Some resources that could help you make an informed decision:

WordPress SEO

Tag Optimization for WordPress

The Right Way to Use Categories and Tags in WordPress to Boost SEO

Also, a search within the Q&A should provide useful information.

Check out Google's Global Market Finder, it could give out a few useful clues.

Yes, among other elements, the location of your IP does impact the SERPs if you're using a gTLD (.com, .net, .org, etc.) for your website, but you can also set your domain geolocation using Google's Webmaster Tools.

Read on:

What impact does server location have on rankings?

Working with multi-regional websites (Point #3 - Geotargeting factors)

GWT Geotargeting

Hi Keri,

Could you clarify what we are discussing with tfbpa about the user privileges required to connect a Google Analytics account to a SEOmoz campaign?

Thanks!

If it's an extreme case, and they are adamant about giving you their Goggle account details, there may be a workaround: you can give them your SEOmoz credentials and a link pointing to the "Connect to my GA account" page, that way they could accept it and after that you could change your SEOmoz password again.

Also, they could give you access to their Google Analytics account without giving you their password, just adding you as a user in their settings area, under the user manager tab..

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009618?hl=en (bottom of the page)

Hope it helps.

It depends on the use you are going to give to the CMS and what kind of capabilities you are looking for. Here is a link to a resource site were you can compare any CMS side by side and have a glance at it's features and capabilities compared in a friendly manner: http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

And here is a place where you can test them: http://opensourcecms.com/

Good luck with your choice!

You can mark the post as spam and ban the author from posting again in your page and/or report them.

Check here:
https://www.facebook.com/report
http://www.facebook.com/help/263149623790594/

By the way, it's probably not a good idea to spam this forums.

Good luck!

Here are a few things you could do (no particular order):

• Optimize for the keyword + the location you're targeting.
• Set your company location in Google Places, Google+ and other social networks.
• Use rich snippets.
• Use a ccTLD or establish your domain geolocation within Google Webmaster Tools.
• Get some local link juice.
• Get a local IP address.

Good luck!

Is it DA the most significant metric you're looking at? What about other metrics? Maybe this has something to do with your DA dropping a bit: Mozscape API Temporarily Rolled Back to March 19 Index ?

I'm guessing here since I don't have any data about your campaign, but your link building could have affected the SERPs in that way.

Linking your site from global oriented sites or sites scattered on hosts or ccTLDs around the globe,  could have that effect, versus boosting your local rankings if you focus your link building campaign on relevant local sources.

Off course. there may be other factors, but from what you mention it could be the case.
Did you have a noticeable higher percentage of local link partners before starting your campaign?

Does that validate?

I'm no expert, but I think the trailing slash shouldn't be used with meta elements, except maybe if the declared DocType is XML or XHTML? If you do, leave a space just before it, like in your rel canonical line, for compatibility's sake (old stuff but just in case, it won't hurt).

And shouldn't it be a space between the comma and follow in "noindex, follow"?

Yes, that happens sometimes, just make sure the plugin has implemented the tags correctly and that the head of your pages don't contain any other misplaced meta tags or invalid code, since this could cause the issue.

Then give it a try, it usually works, you'll have to wait until the site is re-crawled dough, so give it some time. Then, if it doesn't work, you could take more drastic measures.

Good luck, and follow Alan's advice of using 'no-index, follow' in your tag if you want to make sure of keeping the link flow.

Yes, they could affect your rankings, probably more so if you're getting errors and warnings from them, and even if you don't want to index them, depending on which kind of errors you're getting, it'd be probably a good idea to fix them up, as they will still be part of your site.

Now, if you use robots.txt those pages could get indexed anyway (i.e. someone else links to them), and could also stall ranking factors, read more here.

About the links, you'd probably be better off using 'noindex' instead of 'nofollow', to make sure pages aren't indexed and don't drain your juice, but I guess in this case the best choice would be to use a 'noindex, follow' meta tag within those pages, to make sure they aren't indexed and don't drain your site.

Although, if the content is sensitive (as you say, customer data) it'd be better to password protect it, that way you'd be blocking not only search engine bots but malicious robots, spyware, and uninvited users as well.

You can see metrics about the users who interacted with your content (count, gender, age, location, etc.), but if what you ask is seeing personal information about each specific user, I don't know, I don't think so, I guess Facebook would save that valuable data for themselves.

You could implement Facebook Insights for Domains, then you should be able to see that as well as many other metrics.

I guess tags are there because they fulfill a function, but if they aren't useful for your users it shouldn't be a problem to erase them, as long as you take the necessary measures not to get tons of nasty 404s, although if what worries you is duplicate content, you could just noindex the tag pages, I think most SEO plugins for WP have this option, else it shouldn't be hard to include the noindex tag in tag.php or whatever file generates it's pages, then you wouldn't have to deprive your users of an useful function (if that's the case, off course).

About your question of Google's preference, I'm not aware of it, but couldn't it be because there are many internal pages linking to tag pages and also with the same anchor?

Hey,

There's a great Whiteboard Friday which I think covers those questions and more:

Which Link Metrics Should I Use? Part 1

Which Link Metrics Should I Use? Part 2

Check it out!

I don't know if there's a definitive answer on this, since it's effects wouldn't be easy to measure, but if you think about it, it makes sense that it should be taken into account to some extent, and if not, at least users would be able to learn about your site.

Off course, as regular links do, I guess it would depend on the context, relevance, and reputation of the page where the mention takes place.

Also, from a branding point of view, it would be positive (again, depending on the context), it seems one of the functions of the new SEOmoz Fresh Web Explorer is precisely to find out about mentions.

Check out this post where they carried out an experiment about the subject and also cite Matt Cutt's reponse to the question (although very old): http://dejanseo.com.au/seo-experiment-with-non-link-references/

Yes, you can't actually vote for the product, they just include hReview-aggregate which is intended to show an average of user votes, but since there's no implementation of a voting system it seems they're just filling out the blanks by themselves..very similar to what I saw in this other site I was telling you about.