Questions created by Dan-Lawrence
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Structured Data Authorship
Hi I've just successfully set up authorship for a client according to the rich snippet testing tool although bit perplexed since underneath the results theres a section called 'Extracted Structured Data'. The first section is marked hatom feed and under that it says under the field saying 'Author' it says in red: Warning: At least one field must be set for Hcard.Warning: Missing required field "name (fn)".And then under the URL field & the URL it says:Warning: Missing required field "entry-title".Any ideas what this means or even if its important ? I would have thought the tool wouldnt acknowledge authorship as being set up correctly if this was an issue but that does beg the question what is it doing there and what does it mean ?Theres another section after that called rdfa node which seems all fineAlso says page does not contain publisher mark up although i know publisher has been added to the home page, is it best to add publisher to head section in every page (as i have heard some people say) or just the home page ?Many ThanksDan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Domain forwarding
Hi Is it ok or bad practice to domain forward shorter more memorable snappier domains used for promoting a website to a longer domain where the website actually lives, such as: Promoting in social media profiles, emails and offline literature a domain with forwarding set up like: www.brand.com To the main website: www.brandincludingprimaryproductrelatedkeyword.com And if ok (not bad practice), since its the forwarded domains that are being promoted they are hence the links most likely to be shared on social media and other websites so will they be treated like 301's and 'link building' for those will pretty much equate to link building for the main domain (or not) ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Facebook Checkin probs for a local business FB fan page
Hi I have a client who has set up Facebook fan page for their physically located local business and they have 'checkedin' to it but not showing on FB page as having been checked in i.e. '0 were here' when i would have thought it should show at least 1 Does anybody know how best to set up FB fan page for a local business so is checkin'able ? or rather just get the checking in aspect of existing page working properly ? (Have followed FB help guidelines) Cheers Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Will sitemap generated in Yoast for a combined wordpress/magento site map entire site ?
Hi For an ecommerce site thats been developed via a combination of wordpress and magento and has yoast installed, will the sitemap (& other yoast features) map (& apply to) the entire site or just wordpress aspects ? In other words does one need to do anything else to have a full sitemap for a combined magento/wordpress site or will Yoast cover it all ? This link seems to suggest should be fine but seeing if anyone else encountered this and had problems or if straightforward ? http://fishpig.co.uk/wordpress-integration/docs/plugins.html cheers dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
A few misc Webmaster tools questions & Robots.txt etc
Hi I have a few general misc questions re Robots.tx & GWT: 1) In the Robots.txt file what do the below lines block, internal search ? Disallow: /?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Disallow: /*? 2) Also the sites feeds are blocked in robots.txt, why would you want to block a sites feeds ? **3) **What's the best way to deal with the below: - old removed page thats returning a 500 response code ? - a soft 404 for an old removed page that has no current replacement old removed pages returning a 404 The old pages didn't have any authority or inbound links hence is it best/ok to simply create a url removal request in GWT ? Cheers Dan0 -
Duplicate content
Hi Since adding blog to a site semoz is reporting increased duplicate content warning on seomoz crawl error tool such as: /blog/category/easter being a duplicate of blog/2013/03 Does this type of dupe content matter ? If so how do you stop this ? Also pages and pages of dupe content reported from internal/site search results, such as: /catalogsearch/result/index/?q=mens+fashion being a duplicate of /catalogsearch/result/?q=mens+fashion Does this matter need to be fixed or since internal site search not an issue and can just ignore, if it is an issue what do you need do to fix this type of dupe content ? Cheers Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Not provided Data in SEOMoz reports
Hi How do SeoMoz reports deal with 'not provided' data I see my total visits from organic search for a month are same as total of both my branded and non branded keyword traffic combined yet GA is reporting 157 visits from non provided data so is SEOMoz being very clever and finding a way to decipher this not provided data and allocate it accordingly in the reports ? Or if not what ? Many Thanks Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
SeoMoz keyword page grader report card
Hi Ive recently 301 redirected old pages/urls to new pages/urls due to a site redesign. The seomoz kw report card is still reporting the old urls though with a significantly reduced score for most pages (i.e. from A's to now C's, from B to now D's etc). Does this mean mozbot is following the 301's & its actually the new urls being graded as such or is it referring to the old pages ? I will be adding the new urls to report card shortly but just interested in clarifying the above since i would have thought, if it is the old pages, they would not be reporting any score for those, or its scoring the new pages ? Many Thanks Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Guidance for setting up new 301s after having just done so (
Hi I've recently set up a load of 301 redirects for a clients new site design/structure relaunch One of the things we have done is take the kw out of the sub-category landing page url's since they now feature in the top level category page urls and don't want to risk over-optimisation by having kw repeats across the full urls. So the urls have changed and the original pages 301'd to the new current pages. However If rankings start to drop & i decide to change urls again to include kw in final part of url too for the sub category landing pages, whats best way to manage the new redirects ? Do i redirect the current urls (which have only been live for a week and have the original/old urls 301'd to them) to the new url's ? (worried this would create a chain of 301's which ive heard is not ideal) Or just redirect the original urls to the new ones, and can forget about the current pages/url's since only been live for a week ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
(I presume best not since GWT sitemaps area says most new urls indexed now so I presume sees those as the original pages replacement now) Or should they all be 301'd (original urls and current urls to the new) ? Or best to just run with current set up and avoid making too many changes again, and setting up even more 301's after having just done so ? Many Thanks 🙂 Dan0 -
Robots.txt anomaly
Hi, I'm monitoring a site thats had a new design relaunch and new robots.txt added. Over the period of a week (since launch) webmaster tools has shown a steadily increasing number of blocked urls (now at 14). In the robots.txt file though theres only 12 lines with the disallow command, could this be occurring because a line in the command could refer to more than one page/url ? They all look like single urls for example: Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes etc, etc And is it normal for webmaster tools reporting of robots.txt blocked urls to steadily increase in number over time, as opposed to being identified straight away ? Thanks in advance for any help/advice/clarity why this may be happening ? Cheers Dan0 -
Creating a CSV file for uploading 301 redirect URL map
Hi if i'm bulk uploading 301 redirects whats needed to create a csv file? is it just a case of creating an excel spreadsheet & have the old urls in column A and new urls in column B and then just convert to csv and upload ? or do i need to put in other details or paremeters etc etc ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
301 redirect new site design
Hi I'm just setting up some 301 redirects for a new site design about to go live. The old site structure had some 'overview' pages in the urls (without any content) that just 302'd to a sub page. Do i need 301 redirect these overview page urls or since they had no content theres no need and I probably shouldn't or should i ? Also for pages that have no direct equivalent replacement is it still best to 301 to nearest relevant page or just leave it. For example a thank you page that currently shows after user submits email form wont be on new site (since message shows on form page after submission rather than new page). Should i 301 to form page or just leave it ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Keyword repeats/presence in url's & over-optimisation
Hi I'm about to launch a redesigned site and worried about overdoing kw presence on-page, primarily using in url's since will already be using kw in titles as well as page content. What's current thinking re over optimisation: If kw is in titles and page content is it best not to repeat again in url structure i.e. less is more, even though this will cause things like SeoMoz on-page grade score to fall, or better to keep them/add them ? Personally i think it makes sense to include kw in url again since helps make the page relevant, and so long as matches the content should help as opposed to hinder rankings for the pages target keyword. However when i look into this some say don't do this since is over-optimisation The sites generally ranking quite well for its target kw which i obviously don't want to lose after re-launch & hopefully improve further, in the case of this example they are 'Sports Centre Services' & 'Sports Centre Equipment Rental'). The sites current url structure is similar to this below example: frankssportscentres.com/services/sports-centre-equipment-rental Would it be better to keep following existing/above format or to go with either of the below options i.e. more kw rich urls or less: frankssportscentres.com/sports-centre-services/sports-centre-equipment-rental Or frankssportscentres.com/sports-centre-services/equipment-rental Or even less frankssportscentres.com/services/equipment-rental Many Thanks in advance for any helpful comments Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
URL redirecting domains
Hi Is there anything wrong/dangerous forwarding a clutch of domains to a sub page (landing page) on a different domain ? Say Brand X buys Brand Z and wants to close down Brand Z site but have Brand Z domain fwd to a landing page (explaining the company acquisition) on Brand X site. In addition Brand Z had a few related but unused domains forwarding to Brand Z doman & now also wants those fwd'd to the new landing page on brand X Since the reasons for doing this forwarding are legitimate company reasons relating to an acquisition i would have thought it should be ok but can anyone think of a reason why could be bad since i remember in the old days peeps used to redirect domains for seo reasons so worried fwd'ing a load of domains could cause some sort of negative flag with big G ? Also do domain redirects transfer the authority/juice from the old site/domain to the new destination page (new landing page on brand x site) similar to how a 301 redirect works ? Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Organic search visits in SEOMoz reporting
hi Are the organic search visit figures in SEOMoz traffic reporting unique or total visits ? cheers dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Changing Facebook Username
HI Does anyone know of any negative consequences of changing Facebook username ? For example i take it all your fans are transferred/you dont lose them 🙂 ? Its just a url change (so links on website etc need to be updated) but thats the only thing that changes ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Webmaster tools crawl stats
Hi I have a clients site that was having aprox 30 - 50 pages crawled regularly since site launch up until end of Jan. On the 21st Jan the crawled pages dropped significantly from this average to about 11 - 20 pages per day. This also coincided with a massive rankings drop on the 22nd which i thought was something to do with panda although it later turned out the hosts had changed the DNS and exactly a week after fixing it the rankings returned so i think that was the cause not panda. However i note that the crawl rate still hasn't returned to what it was/previous average and is still following the new average of 10-20 pages per day rather than the 30-50 pages per day. Does anyone have any ideas why this is ? I have since added a site map but hasnt increased crawl rate since A bit of further info if it helps in any way is that In the indexed status section says 48 pages ever crawled with 37 pages indexed. There are 48 pages on the site. The site map section says 37 submitted with 35 indexed. I would have thought that since dynamic site map would submit all urls Any clarity re the above much appreciated ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Non WWW. versus WWW. versions, current best practice ?
Hi Im increasingly seeing sites not using the www., but understand from various sources including seomoz that best practice is to be on the www. with the non www version 301'd to the www version. Since alot of sites are clearly doing this the other way round now is that better practice or the former still best ? I appreciate that non www version gives you 3 more characters for url's but apart from that is there any benefit over the www. version ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
G+ and Authorship & Publisher
Hi Ive got one client for whom i have connected their G+ personal page to their site via the email process of setting up authorship. I also set up their company page on G+ and want to link it to the site too but its saying site is already verified/linked. I know i havn't added any rel=pub code to the site so dont know how this can be unless of course its using the already established author details (since admin for the co page) to make the company page connection. Is it the case that you now don't need to add the rel=pub code to establish publisher/verify link with your website ? Similarly to no longer needing to add rel=auth to site to establish authorship (since that can now be established via email) ? Any clarity here appreciated ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Moving site between hosts over short time scale
Hi Does anyone know if moving your website between hosts & server location 3 times in a relatively short time frame (say 2 months) can have a negative impact from an seo perspective ? Cheers
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Dan0 -
Twitter Username Change / Character length
Hi Re: Changing Twitter Usernames/Character Length Issues: To improve the branding of a clients Twitter username I'm about to change clients 11 character Twitter username which currently is half brand name plus a number i.e. @halfbrand99 to a full brand name plus regional suffix i.e. @fullbrandnameuk (since brand name alone not available) totalling 16 characters. I know Twitter usernames should be as short as possible but think more important to maintain consistent brand identity across all social platforms. I have already changed the page profile name to brand name, included brand name in bio and linked to site in bio but not sure whether to change the username or not too ? Whats your opinion ? It doesnt matter, leave as is since shorter better re: character limits and rest of profile well branded OR Better to change to longer branded username for consistent brand identity ? Note: I will be setting up new profile for old username to catch and divert any peeps using old username etc Cheers Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Rebranding / Redirecting
Hi I have a client who wants to re-brand their shopify clothing store under new domain name. Whilst still a clothing store its going to have different department structure and product pages and will hence be a different store/site. Is there anyway to pass any of the history/authority of existing site to the new one such as 301 redirecting the top level pages of existing site to nearest equivalent pages of new site etc or best to just redirect the old site domain to the new ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Domain Name Acquisition
Hi Anyone know how to get contact details for a domain owner beyond those provided by the likes of whois, archive etc etc ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Twitter lists - Transferring from 1 account to another
Hi Does anybody know how to transfer Twitter lists from 1 account to another ? Twitter says this isnt possible but is anyone aware of any software that can do this (or technique) ? Both accounts have the same owner Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Authorship integration
Hi Do you need or is it preferred to have an author page on your website to best integrate and take advantage of authorship integration ? I'm looking at Google+ instructions for setting up and doesn't mention it - saying all you need to do is as they instruct However even if they dont require it to integrate is it still better to have one for better author signals ? Also if you dont have a blog on your site (say you have a news page instead) can you still have an author page or does author page have to be the following format blog/author/name ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Colons and commas in title tags instead of hyphens and pipes ?
Hi In light of Google changing display of title tag from character limit to pixel limit does it make sense to swap some uses of pipes and hyphens with colons and commas ? For example: Category: Keyword, Keyword, Keyword | Brand Instead of: Category - Keyword - Keyword - Keyword | Brand I seem to remember hearing bad things about colons in title tags but think that was just in regard to when used multiple times. Surely ok to use once if in logical format ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Are plural & singular versions of keywords considered repeats ?
Hi Are plural and singular versions of keywords if used in same page element such as a title tag considered as a keyword repeat ? How naughty are keyword repeats in title tags ? I personally think that so long as the page content justifies their existence in title then should be fine. I ask because i hear talk that one should avoid kw repeats in title tags, but surely in cases like the below example its ok ? If i were to give this page: www.leisurecentres.com/uk-leisure-centre-guide This title tag: UK Leisure Centre Guide | Leisure Centres Surely thats ok ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Geotargeting duplicate content to different regions - href and canonical tag confusion
If you duplicate content onto a sub-folder for say a new US geotargeted site (to target kw spelling differences) and, in addition to GWT geotargeting settings, implement the 'Canonical' and 'Hreflang' tags on these new pages to show G different region and language version (en-us). Then does the original/main site similar pages also need to have canonical and href tags ? The main/original sites page I don't really want to target a specific country (although existing signals (hosting etc) will be UK (primary target of main site) but pages show up in other country searches too (which we want). Im presuming fine to leave the original/main site as it currently is although wording in google blog/webmaster central articles etc are a bit confusing hence why im asking for anyone elses opinion/input on this. Also is there are any benefit (or just best practice) to use 'www.example.com/en-us/...' in the subdirectory URL as opposed to just 'www.example.com/us/' many thanks in advance to any commentators 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
SEOMoz & GWT crawl error conflicting info
Site im working on has zero crawl errors according to SEOMoz (it did previously have lots since ironed out) but now looking at GWebmaster Tools saying 5000 errors. Date of those are not that recent but Webmaster Tools line graph of errors still showing aprox 5000 up to yesterday There is an option to bulk action/tick them all as fixed so thinking/hoping GWT just keeping a historical record that can now be deleted since no longer applicable. However i'm not confident this is the case since still showing on the line graph. Any ideas re this anomalous info (can i delete and forget in GWT) ? Also side question I take it its not possible to link a GA property with a GWT account if created with different logins/accounts ? Many Thanks Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
SEOMoz & Google Webmaster Tools crawl error conflicting info
Site im working on has zero crawl errors according to SEOMoz (it did previously have lots since ironed out) but now looking at GWebmaster Tools saying 5000 errors. Date of those are not that recent but Webmaster Tools line graph of errors still showing aprox 5000 up to yesterday There is an option to bulk action/tick them all as fixed so thinking/hoping GWT just keeping a historical record that can now be deleted since no longer applicable. However i'm not confident this is the case since still showing on the line graph. Any ideas re this anomalous info (can i delete and forget in GWT) ? Also side question I take it its not possible to link a GA property with a GWT account if created with different logins/accounts ? Many Thanks Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Will same language different region (US/UK) geotargeting via subdirectory (& GWT) cause dupe content or other issues ?
If a UK hosted site on a .com, needs to target US now too but for keywords that are spelt differently in US is creating duplicate version of uk hosted .com site and putting it on a subdirectory .com/us/ and geotargeting via webmaster tools (to usa) ok ? I take it in this scenario no dupe content issues (or other issues) so long as is geotargeted via GWT ? Or are there ? Comments from anyone with experience doing similar (same language, different region geo-targeting dupe content with kw spelling being only difference, via a subdirectory or other route) much appreciated ? Many Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Best geotargeting strategy: Subdomains or subfolders or country specific domain
How have the relatively recent changes in how G perceives subdomains changed the best route to onsite geotargeting i.e. not building out new country specific sites on country specific and hosted domains and instead developing sub-domains or sub-folders and geo-targeting those via webmaster tools ? In other words, given the recent change in G perception, are sub-domains now a better option than a sub-folder or is there not much in it ? Also if client has a .co.uk and they want to geo-target say France, is the sub-domain/sub-folder route still an option or is the .co.uk still too UK specific, and these options would only work using a .com ? In other words can sites on country specific domains (.co.uk , .fr, .de etc etc) use sub-folders or domains to geo-target other countries or do they have no option other than to develop new country specific (domains/hosting/language) websites ? Any thoughts regarding current best practice in this regard much appreciated. I have seen last Febs WBF which covers geotargeting in depth but the way google perceives subdomains has changed since then Many Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0