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Hi

I'm in a similarish situation with a clients site.

Their situation is that the dev site is on a subdomain i.e. staging.domain.com and they want to keep the staging area active for demonstrating future development work, so situation may be slightly different from yours.

They have now blocked via robot.txt but that's like shutting the stable door after the horse has already bolted.

I asked Moz Q&A a few months ago and got the below answer from a few very helpful and wize Mozzers

1. Setup a completely different Webmaster Tools account unrelated to the main site, so that there
   is a new W.T account specific to the staging area sub-domain

2. Add a robots.txt on the staging area sub domain site that disallows all pages and all crawlers
   OR use the no-index meta tag on all pages but Google much prefers Robots.txt usage for this

Note: Its very important when you update the main site it does not include or push out these files and
instructions too (since that would result in main site being de-indexed)

3. Request removal of all pages in GWT. Leave the form field for the page to be removed blank,
   since will remove all subdomain pages

4. After about 1 month OR you see that the pages are all out of the Search Engine listings (SERPS),
   and Google has spidered and seen the robots.txt, then put up a password on the entire staging
   site.

Hope that helps

All Best

Dan

Hi

How long aproximately does G take to pass authority via a 301 from an old page to its new replacement page ?

Does Moz Page Authority reflect this in its score once G has passed it ?

All Best
Dan

Hi Caxton

I had this a few times and asked MOz help and they said:

"that type of message is typically crops up when there is an issue with the level of permissions associated with the GA login info that was used to connect it. So, I would recommend making sure that it is being re-authorized with the most authoritative set of admin credentials for that GA account; ideally, the original creator of the Google Analytics account."

They also said to watch the number of GA accounts/profiles since has a token limit and once exceeded can cause connection issues. So say your accessing a a clients design agencies GA account to import your clients data into Moz, if the agency has lots of clients all with their own GA profiles in their accounts then that can cause you to exceed token limit and break the connections.

However i can always reconnect/reauthorise the connection (although very annoying that i have to every time i view a campaign), wheras sounds like you cant reconnect so prob best to email help@moz if i were you.

Hope this helps a bit !

All Best

Dan

Thanks Robert and for the extra comments too !

I cant remember which Mozzer helped me with the above in the first place who should be credited but ill track down the original thread and add it to this post since also contains further info and discussion

All Best

Dan

i would guess that yes it is because of the Latvian characters, if you send Moz a support request they will be able to confirm this for you

All Best

Dan

Hi Ash

Personally i would wait and see since G has been known to drop rankings for recently 'improved' pages just to stop people being able to correlate changes with ranking improvements.

I would give it a couple of weeks and see where you are then, if no improvement then change one thing at a time to undo possible over-optimisation.

Also keep an eye on a couple of competitors (who have similar domain authority to you) rankings too since if they are volatile over same time period then could just be general volatility

Having said that I have noted some of my clients/projects pages achieving an A grade with previous good rankings have recently dropped quite significantly and hence im testing reducing the numbers of keywords on page and using synonyms and plurals/singulars as well as the broadest of broad match combinations.

All Best

Dan

i agree with Billy

the 2 topic/genres are so closely related i think you will do best by developing out the current site rather than start a new site

Hey Jake

That is correct as i understand it

That broad match in title is: keywords in any word order

and exact match is: keywords in the exact order of the target keyword

Hope that helps ?

All Best

Dan

I think when first launched some were getting away with it and possibly still now, although i wouldn't reccommend trying since is definately misleading and not what authorships about. It doesnt make sense for an author to have a logo since an author is a person and the image should therefore be the persons picture and nothing else

Hi Donna

I had a similar issue couple of months back re a client that had migrated/changed urls and put pretty much the same question out on Moz Q&A

Samuel Scott very kindly offered me some great guidance, heres a link to the Q&A thread:

http://moz.com/community/q/comparing-user-behaviour-in-ga

Hope this helps ! sorry if not same scenario but sounds similarish so should help

All Best

Dan

HI Sameer

I wouldnt worry too much since i think this is much more to do with MOz recent Index update.

If i look at my 'Manage Campaigns' page where i see a list of all my campaigns currently running (10 campaigns), 9 out of the 10 DA has dropped by a similar percentage.

Hence this IMO is a Moz crawl drop in DA rather than real world drop in site authority

Would be good to get a response from a Mozzer too just to confirm ??

All Best

Dan

I presume everyone here has seen the news about UK Moz local now available but just letting you know here just in case not since at least 3 of you have expressed interest on this thread:

https://moz.com/local/overview

All Best

Dan

Hi

Whilst i appreciate its best practice to 301 redirect permanently moved pages, what if the page is say a login page or other page you not really interested in ranking or transferring juice to ? is it still important/best practice to do so simply because the page has permanently moved hence should still be a 301 even though you don't really want it to rank ?

cheers

dan

Hi Darin,

Thanks! Schema all supposed to be correct, which one do you mean specifically - organisation schema?

The weird thing is that it does all display correctly when I click 'View In Search' in my GMB a/c, only not when I check directly on search (weird because 'View In Search' within GMB looks like it links through directly to the same results just with the GMB pack).

Yes other things checked and not incognito & yes competitors all resolving ok

All Best

Dan

Good list id go with most of those but i would certainly add CTR from search, demonstrating improvements after implementing meta descriptions and titles you have spent hours crafting & tuning to perfection.

As compared to clients probably non existent meta descriptions before you got involved where google was just sucking first bit of copy it came across which was probably totally irrelevant and devoid of a CTA, as well as boring default titles i.e. 'Welcome to brand X website' compared to your new version:   'Brand X gonna rock your world'

HI Lawrence

As far as i understand it aprox 90% of the 'juice' will be preserved/passed on to the new URL

If able to change any of the external links to the new one quickly and easily then why not, to get the 100%

Thats my take on it anyway

All Best

Dan

Hi

If you have a client whose business address is not the same as the regions they serve/cover then how do you set this up correctly in G+? So listing (& preferably website too via the G+ places connection & onpage local address schema) do help local search query listings in the target areas ?

Also schema too if possible (i.e. how do you add areas/regions covered if outside of actual business address area) ?

Is the only way round this to set up serviced/virtual office addresses in your target market regions ?

Surely there's a way to have a business listed in areas outside of its actual address.  Its a physical business but is not bricks & mortar beyond the admin office.

All Best

Dan

Many Thanks Mat !

I see your just over the water from me, i'm on the IOW, beautiful day to be by the sea

The indexed pages are linking through to pages with content so not looking like they have been 404'd

Thanks for your comment

Cheers

Dan

Hi Miriam

Yes its SHOP21

Has been showing the results fine since going live end of April, then suddenly disapeared over the last 48 hours

This is the link to the results showing correctly when i  click on 'View in Search' from my GMB dashboard, but can no longer replicate that for a direct branded search for 'shop21'

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&_ga=2.12081972.1837970735.1559125830-980297739.1559125830&q=SHOP21&ludocid=1029865427336891279&lsig=AB86z5WuLWll0fZnP4SOIPNSQbBb

Many Thanks

Dan

Why am i still seeing very recent organic kw traffic being reported in Analytics if G is now fully encrypted ?

Should it not all be 'Not Provided' now ?

When this fully roles out if not already wont it be impossible to distinguish between brand and non brand kw ?

Cheers

Dan

in short - dont focus on the keyword anymore, focus on user/searcher intent so provide high quality content that answers queries relating to the topic in question and include the various synonyms as well as plural and singular versions of the related keywords if can be done in a manner thats makes sense and provides value

Here's a recent article on the subject: http://marketingland.com/googles-horowitz-no-google-plus-is-not-dead-130328

I think the whole 'authorship' and 'publisher' G+ features; linking real entities (people & organisations) to content, as a way of verifying & qualifying the content as being good quality & from a reputable source must be pretty helpful for Google so i would personally be surprised if they did away with those aspects of G+.

I know they have scaled back some aspects of 'authorship' such as removing the authors image in the SERPS but that could just be due to needing to reduce the 'computational budget/bandwidth' they allocate to it.

Hi Oscar

Sorry not a direct or full answer but just to let you know i have definately seen a few instances of this too i.e. Google coming up with their own titles and replacing the pages actual title tags.  If they think they can write a better title than whats in the tag they sometimes do

Cheers

Dan

Hi

Just redeveloped my site and went live end of April

Since then whenever i do a branded search  the GMB 'pack' has always shown on the right hand side whenever i do a branded search but it has disapeared as of the last couple of days.

Any ideas why this can happen ? and is it anything to worry about or just a google 'glitch' that should right itself soon?

If not any ideas how to fix ? (accounts and website all properly linked) etc

When i go to GMB dashboard and click 'View on Search' it does show up as it should, but not when i go to do a google search for the brand name !?

All Best

Dan

HI Anna

its most likely reduced because new KW planner is giving Exact match search volumes rather than previous kw tool giving Broad match search volumes

All Best

Dan

Ok great thanks for the update,

As a suggestion it would be good to have that kind of info as a 'newsflash' or mentioned prominently somewhere so we know its happened rather than spending ages analysing backlink profile for drop in other metrics trying to find causes of the overall DA drop.  Apologies if such an area exists and i just havnt seen it yet (such as a service status update area etc)

Specifically though any ideas why a site that has earn't some really high quality/authority links over november/december authority not have increased its DA. Is it that those links are likely not being factored in yet ? (i thought that they would be since so high authority and hence easily identified)

Thanks
Dan

Thanks again really is a big help

Ive read that correct charsets are important, i take it that plugin handles that correctly ?

Do you know if plugin should work fine in WP Multisite environment with network childs domain mapped with their cctlds ?

Re: "using x-default and removing the canonical is nonsense" The dev just meant if going down route of NOT using canonicals AND using x-default in the hreflang then would need to suppress Yoast in those instances.

Re:  "In my example, I used two very similar (if not the same langs), however there are things that change, but those are minimal (take as an example a car "hood", in England a "bonnet"). As those are such minimal changes, I don't think a specific version for GB is needed if you are already serving a US version (that's up to you)."    Would you say the same if phrases containing these regional variations (hood vs bonnet) were on your target kw list ? Since i find that whilst Google is getting better at semantic relationships between words i think that they do need to be specifically targeted/appear in content & meta data in order to rank for them, or at least increase chances of ranking for them.

Also re your final paragraph 'car repair centers' would be a logical target kw for such a page so i would have thought it would be beneficial to create 2 versions of this page, 1 for US targeting US spelling & 1 for UK targeting UK spelling (centers vs centres), rather than 1x English to serve both UK & US audiences

Also I would have thought it would be useless showing a list of US car repair centers to UK visitors ?

Sorry for more questions, think that should be it now & thanks again

All Best

Dan

Hi Dirk

i had heard it was possible to geotarget sub domain and sub folders by setting up new profiles for them, but havnt tried to yet but pretty sure its possible

In this case its trying to attract 2 different regions/areas via one tld: worldwide english with the domain.com, then Turkey via domain.com/tr. Then there is a domain.com/de subfolder with German content but thats domain mapped to domain.de so is essentially a second TLD to target German language and region.

Thanks for sharing that interesting info, i think for the moment at least and as you and others have suggested not to tinker with geotargeting in GWT yet and see how things develop first

All Best

Dan

Hi

possibly because 'content creator' is not a high enough level of authority to connect via the api.  It could be worth asking them to make sure you are added as a page admin with a higher level of permissions

All Best

Dan

Hi

How do you delete a campaign in Moz Analytics ? (i set up 2 campaigns for the same project by accident)

cheers

dan

Thanks Bryan, yes sitemap all submitted and saying indexed ok so rekon just a display issue/bug specifically in 'Index Status'

cheers

dan

Thats great thanks Lynn, i just had a response from Moz too saying they will phase out GB so use UK ideally

Thanks everyone

Thanks Oleg !

Yes 'links to site' is of value to me (although i do have other link tools to see this info i like to see what Google is perceiving). But ideally as much of the rest of GSC data too, such as indexed pages etc etc

There is a profile set up in GSC for all the language versions, its just the Turkish version (the only version in a sub-folder) is not being populated with any data so must be something missing in the set up maybe/not properly completed, such as something required for properly finish the set up/integration of a sub-folders on GSC so that it shows data.

Any idea as to how i fix or find out how to fix ?

Many Thanks

Dan

ok cool thanks for your comments and feedback.

pls do advise when this feature is launched

many thanks

dan

just looked again and its now saying 15 so seems to have fixed itself, prob just a short term display issue - thanks for commenting

Hi Dirk,

Thanks so much for confirming that !

So is it simply an error that Moz Analytics campaign set up keeps it as an option ?

All Best

Dan

ok thanks Kate

Seems a tad strange though since all known paid channels being reported elsewhere.

It would be good to know if theres a way to find out whats causing it since all paid campaigns, PPC, emails, display, etc etc being reported in other places and traffic from this 'Google Other' source is 4x current organic search traffic

All Best

Dan

The problem with Products is that they are are hard to update the content for since they usually (but not always) have an 'evergreen' description. Hence a great way to keep the content fresh is to enable customer reviews and comments on the product page and then encourage customers (via your 'post sale touch points' such as follow up emails saying thanks for your order, hows the product ?) to leave a review of the product (& incentivise them to do so via loyalty points/future discounts).  This will mean the product page is continually populated with new fresh content that is also user generated demonstrating customer/user engagement hence showing 'signs of life' from real people too.

Hi,

Im creating some listings for a client on a relevant b2b directory (a good quality directory)

I asked if the links are 'followed' or no 'followed' and they said they are 'server side redirects' so no direct links.

Does anyone know how these are likely to be perceived by Google ?

All BEst

Dan

Hi

Wheres the form for filling in/registering your brand with Google for trademark protection in adwords ?

I can only find an infringement/complaint form, which given no one currently infringing i imagine will be pointless filling it in.  I understand its possible to register trademark with Google in the first place

If someone can direct me to the exact page will be much appreciated ?

Many Thanks

Dan

Hey Dr Pete, thanks for commenting

Sorry to be confusing, i appreciate i'm probably being a tad pedantic here but i just would have thought that the subheader for the 'crawl errors' section in the reports summary would, similar to the 'crawl warnings' subheader, also mention 'could be penalised' (due to things like dupe content being potential causes of a penalty) ?

All Best

Dan

In that case i would be looking to closer associate the reviews to the page content.

I would also concentrate on using the blog etc to generate fresh content and deep link (where directly appropriate and helpful for user) from the blog post to the product pages and of course category pages too (re your response and factoring in Chris' good comments too).  Regular fresh unique content (associated/tied to an author & publisher) of a high quality (hence likely to earn social amplification) linked to the relevant categories and product pages (where appropriate & helpful) will do far more toward those pages being perceived well by G than overly concentrating on changing the content in the category & product pages

Hope this helps

ps - I'm going to Worthing for a 40th tomorrow coincidentally (just checked your profile)

Ok great thanks Donna

All Best
Dan

thanks Michael but who do you call ? i have never seen a phone number for Google (UK) ?

Hi

As of today my overview pages are devoid of formatting and just text and basic display, anyone else getting this ?

Cheers

Dan

Hi Roy

It depends how similar the products are, if they are simply variations of the same products then i would just list the 1 product and then give multiple options for the different variations.  For example 1 product page for 'Suede Shoes' with selectable further options/variations of that product i.e. Colours available (blue, red, pink) and size available (8, 9, 10 etc)

Hope that helps

All Best

Dan

Havnt had a detailed look but all looks good from a quickly scanning it, i would suggest adding an 'about' section including mission statement etc and/or a 'contact us' section with physical address for more trust

thanks Tim, have already looked at that though and im here talking about username not page name

many thanks

Hi

Probably because there is not much competition for the keywords they are ranking for

A good seomoz grade report does not determine that you will get a good ranking, just that a page with an A grade is more likely to achieve better rankings than a page with an F grade (since an A grade means page is more relevant for the target keyword than a page with an F grade).  This is also considering all other factors to be equal (which they never are of course).  So for example a page graded F but has lots of high quality links from good quality content pages on high authority websites, may well rank higher than a page on a different site that has an A grade that doesnt have any good quality links, from high quality websites

Hope that helps ?

All Best

Dan