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Big Name sites are huge and Moz cannot index every page of these sites. Often the link is buried deep in the Big Name Site and therefore will not be detected.
Try to build links with sites that have good authority, but are a bit more niche. Remember that links are not everything. Google is very keen on quality content too.
Hope this helps
Bruce
This is always the challenge for buying multiple domain variations. Matt Cutts mentioned this on one of his webnars.
As long as the 301 redirects are working and also rel canonicals are in place and href lang tags where appropriate then Google will know which site is the primary site and that they are related. But you may in my opinion loose some quality as this will be shared between the different .com sites.
Google would really prefer that you focus your energies on building "One" strong site and develop links to that site. I am not sure why you would want loads of .coms active though. I can understand brand protections, so buy the domain but leave them dormant.
If it were (edit typo) me, I would only 301 local domains to the .com site and not .com to .com. This for me is confusing for the end user. 301 redirect for "www.brandservicename.ca" or www.brandservicename.de" with the right heading href etc. but not www.brand-service-name.com to www.brandservicename.com.
Other Mozers' opinions will be useful too
Bruce
Hi
Many thanks for all the input we have had from the Moz expert team here. We have had some great thoughts and we have finally decided that we need to move our site to an new provider and to go back to one single .com site for all our global traffic, as we cannot get round possible duplicate pages as we cannot use canonical nor alternate links with our current website provider and this has meant a big rethink in the last couple of weeks.
We where running two sites, .com which has been running for 7 years and a .co.uk site which was dormant since 2007 until 2013 and used from last year to serve our local customers.
Domain Authority for .com 19 and 23 for .co.uk
Our new site will serve 3 currencies so we can offer £ $ & € without the need for duplicate pages or local pages.
We plan but are flexible about using a 301 from the .co.uk site to the dot com. and have enough data to ensure we can do all 301 redirects at page level from our current .co.uk site to our new .com site.
Can anyone provide any SEO tips on ensure we grow our rankings when we make the switch in about 3 weeks.
Many thanks
Bruce
Hi Sarah
You will end up with two Google + pages, One Google Business Page and also a Google+ Page.
The Google Business page is very important as this is the one that will be verifyed to your website and old Google Places pages. It is very very confusing. All our posts on Google Plus go to our page and not to our Business and there is no way to join the too
Google have just launched a new update which starts to map locally to Business pages via local search, for example Timberyard London. This then also brings in all your Google+ Business info, maps etc. Join a few of the groups and recommended is "Google+ Resource", you have to request to join and they are really helpful. Create circles and share content from your sites via G+ on your site. Google Plus is very much part of Google search too, so if members of your circles are logged into Google plus too, then when you post, you posts up in any related search results, normally quite high on page 1.
Worth researching and learning more to get the most out of G+, as it looks like it is going to be very important in Googles effort to keep content fresh, new and unique.
Everything points to the first flush of youth. New site, lots of new content and google loves this. Now time as started to balance as your rightly say, to settle the site to where it naturally sits as a new kid on the block, but not that new.
What-ever you do, do not tweak, if Moz page rank scores are good for your keywords etc, as this will end up with you being totally confused about the stats you are starting to see.
Make sure each main page scores well for your keywords and build good content and update regularly to your main category pages. Products pages are static, so use your entry pages to add fresh content. Improve each page where you can.
Penguin is cannot penalise sites without spammy links, so this is not the problem if you don't have any.
Remember Google is about quality end user content, fresh and unique.
Hope this helps on the journey. Look forwar to many more questions in due course I am sure.
Bruce
Hi Johnas
In our view add it to the main site. If you go for a split solution you dilute all the great work done from both sites. Adding a shopping section to the site will add more traffic to the XXX.com site and therefore will also bring in product specific links and recommendations.
There are some very learned colleagues here on Moz, who will be able to offer more thoughts about your thinking.
As always with SEO, distill the essence of your company and present it in a unique way. Unique in respect of making sure all reading material is written with your own words, with a moderate sprinkling of keywords.
Adding your ecommerce to the site enhances and leads the reader from reader to buyer
Hope that this helps
Bruce
No sure why you would not include the street address. If this is because the business does not have an office or place for customers to visit then they should make this clear elsewhere on their site..in the contact us section or about us section, stating that the address is a Depot only and does not have a customer service department at this location and to call xxxxxxxxxx for sales etc, will help solve this.
Search engines like complete data, therefore if the full address is ambiguous, then the business might be perceived as ambiguous.
Hope this is useful
Bruce
Hi Sam
They are updated on the 8th day after the campaigns where created and then on the subsequent 8th day, this allows for a full weeks data to be measured. You should expect to see your update shortly
Moz emails you when all the updates have been run with a summary report once complete.
Bruce
Hi Alan
Sounds like a bit of a headache. First things first...don't assume all drops etc are negative. Often big drops in search via good SEO are a sign that you might be serviing better content and this must be also compared to other metrics like bounce rates etc.
Domain rank drops can also mean that sites which are also high ranking have been removed, because their links where not related to your content and therefore in the longer term, could be damaging. Remember links should be from sites which are somehow related to your site. Google is striving for better service delivery to all searchers and therefore does not want links from a site selling widgets to be linking to sites selling cakes, unless the widget is something to do with cakes.
Press coverage, tends to have no-follow links and therefore check out the value of a link before spending time trying to get the link.
Domain Authority comes from quality linked content and therefore high ranking links in your industry sector should be sought. Links are like roots, tiny capillary fibres that grow to big anchor roots in time.
Improve your content and make it fresh. This will do wonders for natural links and google serving up your site. Track keywords and distil the essence of your site pages to ensure that not one hit is wasted. I could be wrong but Google also monitors BOUNCE RATE.
Hope that helps somewhat
Bruce
Have you got your products loaded onto Google Shopping?
Adwords can eat cash if you get the ads wrong, so I would recommend distiling the keywords to be very specific, set a campaign up and test test test. The Adwords Team are great at helping set up campaigns.
The best thing I can recommend is to really really understand your target customer and research what they search for and use only a handfull of keywords per campaign. Don't be hasty in deleting keywords as customers buy seasonally so what might work for winter will not work for summer, so pause a keyword if it worked well and then turn it back on when the season is right, if that is how your business works
Like everything else in SEO and Sales: - Prior Planning Prevents P* Poor Performance
Feel free to ask more about this...
Bruce
Have you checked that the competition for these keywords? When we are at the top it is harder to stay there as everyone else is working on getting to the top too.
It is also worth checking if you have added fresh content to these pages too, as Google knows how often to crawl, so if you are not adding freshness, it might be that your competition are adding regular content and are being crawled more often and therefore are taking some of your ranking places.
In the past few month Google has also rollout out new algorythms so it might also be worth seeing if these reductions are aligned to any of these. Check the Moz Weather map for specific dates.
Worth checking other competitors pages and also how the whole page is performing with Moz Page Grader.
In our opinion,
Distil all the keywords to a handful, Your budget will be swallowed whole if your not careful, pick the best and just stick to to those. Set your initial budget high for a week and then drop it way down, once you start to see which words work best. Make sure your adverts are linked to the right page and use keyword destination URLs. Check the quality score for the keyword. If it's a low score, revisit. Final thought, don't tweak daily unless you can see a problem that is costing money. Leave the campaign alone for 7 days and then revisit.
Bruce
In essence I would agree with you.
Domain forwarding is a redirect, but it is not going at add value if it is new and also it is not really the right way to use domain forwarding. There are many more experts on this subject than me, but domain forwarding from my understanding is meant to direct a domain name to a hosting service, a regional territorial domain i.e .co.uk to a com or to forward domain variations to a parent site.
These should then be used with href lang and also rel canonical in the page headers where appropraite
I think Google would really prefer that you build good links and unique content around the "keywords social skills" and rich content in your original site, creating a page with the URL including xyz.com/socialskills, rather than Domain Forwarding. New traffic and links built up over time to the main site will be worth the time and effort.
Hope this is useful and I am sure others will qualify some of my points ref Domains if I am slightly off the mark.
Bruce
Cross Selling products, have you thought or tried to add links to similar replacement products from the original product?
This style is now discontinued, here are some alternatives.... If the customer took the trouble to find and click onto your site, try and keep them on it and not to bounce straight back out.
Bruce
Not sure of all the facts so very hard to make a call on what to do.
Initial thoughts:- Why is moving warehouse stopping ordering? If this is because you cannot ship fast enough, extend your lead time to ship to cover these days.
To recreate an old phrase of "Out of stock is out of business" to "Offline is out of business"....if a customer makes the effort to get to the site and then cannot buy, what is stopping this and is the reason really really valid. Can you give a few more details about what why and how come?
Warmest regards
Bruce
Hi Dan
What are you wanting to get out of the advertising?
CPC advertising on Facebook is straightforward enough, so if you can elaborate a bit more, that would be useful
Bruce
HI
Do you have a blog? If so is it on your site sub-domain? Create new blogs regularly and google will pick up the new information and crawl more often. if the blog is linked to your current site that is good enough.
There is not much more you can do with products, but you can certainly make the core pages seasonal, so adding new content for each season which give the site a fresh updated look without trying to re-invent the wheel.
Bruce
What might be interesting to check out is this: Is this now the genuine real traffic that the site generated and therefore is now realistic?
Often when problems are fixed, what you start to see is the real figures behind the site.
Check GWT and also GA to see if the two are matching trends. Often impression are only that, impressions and what matters is the real bottom line. Those who engaged and purchased might be found to be equal to that of before, although you mention that take is down 40%. Although if keywords are still at No1, then somethiing appears to be not quite right in the numbers.
Without knowing the industry, seasonal flutation can be that dramatic, due to rain, snow, sun etc.
Validate the data from all sources and cross match to get more evidence
Just a few thoughts.
Bruce
I would disavow them also. Matt Cutts commented on this a while ago and recommended in essence " any doubt" disavow.
Do this via GWT. (edit Added) Google Webmaster Tools
Bruce
Hi
We have a similar problem, but as a retail store selling Brands. Often Moz shows us keyword stuffing possible problems, but as the brand name is in the product title, it is really hard to drop the level of mentions.
Example: XXX Brand and Keyword. Product XXX Trousers. Image XXXX-150011409900-F.jpg
If we then create lovely natural content using the Keyword a few times, we are up to 20 keywords before we even add the content tree.
A tricky problem for Brand based keywords, but in very niche markets the Brand is critical as part of the end user search.
We are not 100% sure about how to deal with this ourselves, a few experiments have removed key search terms and we have had to put them back in as the impressions in GWT dropped 75% without them.
Any other experiences and possible solutions would be really useful
Bruce
If you can give a bit more info about the site that would help.
Cost Benefit and load time can be subjective depending on the industry and also what load time is for the normal user and how much "Load Time" is the next issue to tackle on your SEO list of things to do. You might get far more gains in authority by focusing on core weaknesses such as content, social, and link building that you will gain from the cost spend on a dedicated server
Hope that that is useful.
Bruce
A Couple of things:
New Google Shopping for Adwords, if you are list products on Google. This has had a dramatic effect versus the old Shopping on Adwords
Also check Google Places, now Business. They had an update in August, so this might be a place to look too
If neither of these are likely, give a bit more info about your site, so it helps with some clues.
Bruce
Its not that complicated, it is really easy...
In Google Webmaster tools go to the Crawl/Fetch as Google. The top level will be displayed at the top of the page. Press the Fetch Button to the right.
Goolge will fetch the page and this will be displayed underneath on the same page. To the right of this line, you will see a button to submit to index. When you press this a pop up box will appear and you can select to either submit just this page or this page and all links from it. Select the all links from it. (you can only do this full crawl/submit option 10 times in a calendar month, to submit just single pages you can do this 500 times a month) and then press Submit.
Google will then submit all the pages to its index.
Hope that helps.
Bruce
Hi Dan
From what we can see so far, taking out the Keywords dropped impressions over the course of a week. We put them back in but reduced the instances as per Moz page checker. We are still over the recommended level of keywords, so we will see what happens over the next period.
Due to various issues that we cannot resolve via normal SEO techniques we are rebuilding our online site, but we are planning to reduce the amount of products on a page and removing Alt image tags where possible. We used the correct Alt image tag as a way to catalogue the images internally but this doubles the Keyword count instantly
What we have found with Brand searches, that customers find us via text searches or via image searches, as they might not know the style code, but know the brand and will click through via the image.
It would be great if we could register the nature of our business with Google in a way which is not so subtle as them having to work out we are retailers and this is a shopping site.
Will keep the post updated with new results as the appear.
Bruce
No expert, but I suspect that Google is on this one already. In Googles world i guess, they want you make your Golden Ticket, not some-one else from the past. Google crawls your site and will decide in the fulness of time how good the site is and will rank accordingly.
My major concern would be building a castle on sand. The sand is the high ranking domain, and unless you can convert this sand to concrete fast, then it will slowly blow away with the wind.
Bruce
No it only transports approx 90-99% of the power. You lose some in the redirect.
Bruce
Hi Dan
Google Images, we don't use any plugin as this is not needed. Google is excellent at picking up new content and images from our site, hence why we ensured the Alt Tags where used properly, using more narrative in the Alt Description to properly paraphrase the content of the image. The image links are already in the crawl results.Normally images appear on Google Images in about 48 hours after we post themBruce
You can have as many 301s as required, no problem at all. Google will not mind at all.
You will lose some authority of between 1 to 10% via the redirected to...pages, but this is to be expected. DA reflects the site and PA the page, so if you need to change the domain, then you will drop a bit, but will with good SEO bring this back up reasonable quickly.
WMT only specifies which version of the site you prefer, so Google knows that www.example.com and example.com are the same site. if you don't make a specification Google will not make the association and will class both as separate domains.
Bruce
Without know what kind of site you have it is hard to gauge.
Ecommerce Keyword ranking swing wildy as these are often used in conjuction with Adwords and bidding. So whilst you might have a great keyword, if this is a seasonal or on trend product then the competition changes dramatically.
If you have a blog or a company site, not in ecommerce, check what is happening in the industry and see if your keyword has gone on trend. For example: Blue LED. a few days ago this was not the hotest topic around, but since the Noble Prize has just been awarded, this phrase will be more volatile, but will drop back once the excitement drops.
So in essence for the above, if you keyword was rankng well, it might be that you where in a niche area and ranked well even with other SEO issues present. Once competition hots up, others might well outrank you.
If you can give us some more info about your site, that would be a great starting point
Bruce
Hi Pascale
If the content is visible to the "not signed in end user" then it is visible to google. If it is not, it is not visible to Google.
I might have this wrong, but it would appear that you have a pinterest style site and that you want further content only be visible when the user is logged in? This then would be a site settings and not crawl issue. This is a trgger on the website server to require the guest to log in after XYZ. The whole site is opened to crawl but you set these parameters for the guest user in your sites back office
I think it is a case of either or, not both
Bruce
edit typo
It is a really tough one to deal with, although Google does recognise ecommerce data for products and recognises that duplication of product titles and descriptions happen and does not from what I understand have a major issue, although you will be competing with the others for the key word and phrasematches with your own site. (edit expand explaination)
Depending how your own site is structured, product popularity etc will give an indication of how well you will rank for your own site versus the big boys.
My view is that whilst you should use your own site to reflect your brand identity, expand the Brand / Category pages with fresh new text to add authority to your site, and look at all the channels collectively and do not worry if your own site is appears to underperform compared to the rest. This is normal as the volumes of traffic and exposure will drive sales.
Hope that is useful
Bruce
17th October we have seen dramatic increase in Google Crawl activity, not as strong as the last update, about half the pages were crawled this time than that of the last main update.
Bruce
edit typo
Hi Wattlebristol
Really interesting post and one that gets us all frazzled.
Web Design Bristol. Really interesting search phrase. I cannot think when I would have put this phrase into a search engine looking for Website Designers. I note you only have one match for this phrase on you homepage.
Can we recommend that you do some deeper research into what real customers are actually searching for when looking for a company to create our website.
When too close to the coal face, we cannot see the wood for the trees, to mix metaphors.
Who would really in reality would search for this phrase. Step way way back and put yourselves in the shoes of a real business looking to help building a webste...If we where looking for a company to BUILD our website, this is perhaps not the first words to trip of our tongues. A few might be....
Website companies, Website building companies, Ecommerce Websites, we need a new website, companies who build websites etc
I think we also had the same problem a while ago with a really annoying competitor, who outranked us on one keyword, but having had some feedback from their main supplier, we realised that in fact we outperformed them on gross sales.
Not perhaps the ideal answer, but one we think is worth responding with
Bruce
HI Thomas
If the redirects look dodgy get rid of them. Redirects feel spammy unless they are 100% legitimate and can be justified as logical to the end user. We have all got caught in searches in the past where you click a clink and then get a cascade of redirects going on. Google want clear transparency for entry to a site.
Bruce
Thanks for the clarification Mark.
So distilling down the motivation of the client, they ultimately are looking for sales?
If this is the case then everything needs draw the customer to the basic motivations to enquire further. This would suggest a cleint based presentation.
If sales are not the motivation, then the site surely must be a vanity site to show how good they are at what they do. In which case showcasing to the industry their expertise is the important ellement.
I could be wrong, but I think that the client wants a sales introduction site, not a vanity site???
Bruce
(edit typo)
Google Plus arrived after the party started, but is very important to validate customer engagement.
Post content on Google + and keep it regular, share content from your site to Google Plus too. Like facebook, it takes time and patience to build the level of likes.
Build your circles too and share content. Be aware of C Blocks in general and also for Google Plus, don't just get your work colleagues to all click google plus, as these start to not count from the same building or location.
Google will rank these posts and share very highly to other Logged in Google users, and they will also carry some rank on generic search too
Just a few thoughts
Bruce
There is another thread currently running here about PPC.
What is interersting is that some Mozzers are reporting sites are getting only 10% organic traffic.
We are all in the same search for the elixir of SEO. We too are baffled by two competitors getting high ranks, but as we mentioned on another post, we also know we sell more than they do for the competing brand.
So it is not always true that those who appear to be winning actually are.
Bruce
h1 tags are useful, but are not needed by Google, as they will crawl the page to see the content. However if you have h2 h3 etc tags, but don't have an h1 then crawls will not read any tag at all, as they must be present, completed and sequential.
Hope that helps
Bruce
Agreed.
Find new unique angles to keep the site content unique and fresh, For most business's seasons, annual or quarterly events either in the business or outside can provide insites and a great reason to add more current content to the existing content already provided.
If you are a bit stuck, let us a bit more about the industry so we can perhaps give a few more angles to help give you some ideas.
Bruce
Good post Patrick
Your right, Google is not here to make us popular, that is our job. Google has to protect its own postion as No1 search engine, by delivering top quality content first time to the user.
I remember a not that many few years ago starting to get really hacked off with generic search queries delivering porn, meds, directories, warez sites and other useless returns, hit a link and have pop ups galore to try and close before the next one popped open. What a vastly different experience Google searches are now, of course with Browsers getting better too. The flip side is that we have to work harder to make our own sites visible to the rank highly.
One other thing we noticed a week ago, was that another competitor who was the bain of our lives, has delisted the brand we were competing with them for. That said, most who where on the scene a few years ago have also disapeared too.
Without doubt, penguin, panda etc will level again the playing field as Google has to remain the browser of choice for Google to remain at the top position.
(Edit forgot Bruce )
Hi
This is a really interesting article by Matt Cutts
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en
I think this will help you to clarify your concerns on syntax etc
Bruce
Hi Demi
Is the blog on a sub-domain of the main site or a separate domain.
If it is on a sub domain, then this counts as fresh content. if it is not you might want to think about moving the Blog to a sub domain.
Can you let us know
Bruce.
Hi Cole
Yes, we use content page specifc URLs for any links we feel appropriate. Directories are not a highly thought of any more as a good SEO practice, as this became repositories for links links etc. This adds no real value to the user of potential user of a directory.
If the directory is something like Yel, we would want only parts of our site to link to their category heading where we are listed under. So we would not want our generic home page linking to a specific heading in Yel, as this is not useful to the end user, who would click the link and then have to start to search for what they really wanted.
Specific links at this level are liked by Google, because the link is 100% relevent to the user
Hope this helps
Bruce
Looks to me that some mighty tinkering has been going on, on a regular basis to get these ups and downs and vast swings.
If you can refer back your change logs to see where what and when has reflected in the traffic flow.
Also look at your Adwords account too. When a key word that drives traffic but no sales is eventually culled this can be the result. Low traffic, but very good quality traffic remains
Please let us know more info,
Bruce
I would doubt that this is a test, but this is driven by other metrics.
Positions rises and fall initially and then settle, so this could be the result of your hard work. If this was me and I was unsure as to why this has happened, I would also stop any further tweaks until I have seen how static these positions become, otherwise you will not be able to see what environmental changes have effected any future change.
Keywords can be very volatile for many reasons, seasonality, competition, trend etc. So it is worth doing more research on what theses results mean and find out as much as you can as what factors have influenced this positive change and be able to explain what has happened.
Positions change like the weather so nothing is permenant in site ranks, so work will still nee dto be done to maintain the positions, but knowing what why and how is key to this future maintenance
Bruce
Are you talking about Brands on other Sites or Brands on the same site?
If you have two site sharing links is not bad as reciprocal links gives great customer experience, but if one is for example plumbing hardware and the other for Knitting Machines, then you should ensure that the pages that link the two sites make sense. So you might share the link on a page called " Our Other Brands" or the like
Just dropping a link on the homepage within the context of that page, unless relevant, is not beneficial to the experience.
Bruce
Can you explain a bit more about what you want to know?
Thanks
Bruce