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Yes, they will most often combine now.  If you click the main link, it will still go to your website, with a link to the google+ page underneath.  If you have a second page that ranks for the same keyword, it will show up as a normal listing.

I have a potential client that is looking to change their domain for branding reasons, but does not want to lose their solid SERP position.  I'm not concerned about links continuing to pass juice as he was (though I am concerned about the link profile).

What I am concerned about is domain age (moving from a 4 year old domain to one that has just been parked for 4 years but not used, or one that is currently just a redirect to his site), and the fact that his current URL is an EMD.  He is using his state (only really does work there), plus two solid keywords in the domain, and wants to switch to brand name with one of the two solid keywords he was using.

My initial thought is "if it's not broke, don't fix it."   How worried should I be about rankings if we change this domain.

Thanks for the help, and fire back any questions.  Sorry I'm a little vague.

I just did a search, and you came up #1 for "Crystal Lake CPA Firm."  It was merged with your Google+ page.  I'm not sure what you're seeing.  Did you look at the local listings too?

Thank you so much, I really appreciate your help!

I am currently working on a site in Joomla (2.5) and continue to run across issues with titles.  Currently, the site is set to display the page title just over the content.  Turning this off really is not an option, as it is necessary to keep these titles as part of the content.  Right now, my page titles are not well optimized.

What I would like to have is a separate meta title used for SEO purposes, similar to what a plugin like Yoast would do in WordPress - where there is a name for a page (often used in content as well), but a meta title that is used by Google.

Hope that makes sense.  If anyone knows of a plugin that may be helpful, that would be great.  Thanks!

Okay, so my caution was well-founded.  Thanks for helping me feel sane.

I really appreciate your input on this one guys.  Thank you!

I was talking to someone about automatic directory submissions with someone lately, and would love the thoughts of the community here.

Basically, the thought was that automatic directory submissions wouldn't get flagged by Google, because they're directories, not necessarily spam links. Is this still true in a post-penguin world?  He hasn't seen any negative effects from it yet, but I'm still cautious.

My thoughts would be not to depend on the automatic submissions, but to use them as a supplement.  If a handful (maybe 50/mo) of directory links could be submitted automatically, that could free up more time for content development and promotion, which is where I believe the real value lies.  It would also help skeptical clients feel better about having a certain number of links.

So, what have you seen so far?  Is this dangerous, safe, or fairly pointless?

That was terribly unclear, I apologized.

We linked to a new blog post from our Facebook page.  Posted through Hootsuite, but that's never been an issue before.

Because it's a fan page, there are no followers, and the same number of "likes."

Thanks for the help.

We put a blog post up on our Facebook page earlier today.  Within an hour, there were 560 likes and over 4,000 comments.  While that sounds great, that is nowhere in the universe of normal.  Almost all of that was spam (there were no services that we engaged in to bring likes/comments).

So, has anyone else here been hit by rapid-fire Facebook spam?  Any thoughts on what to do - leave it alone, delete the post, filters, etc.?

Would love the advice of the Moz community.  Thanks guys!

If you're using Yoast, it will set up rel=canonical automatically.  That's not a bad thing, it's just letting you know just to give you a heads up.  Don't worry about that.

I think it's fine to promote.  One thing I would do, just to make sure your 404 errors are taken care of, it install webmaster tools (if you haven't already) and make sure no other 404 errors come up.

Looks good though!

Not sure exactly what you mean.  Are you asking if the blog looks good enough to start promoting, or specific advice for where to go from here?

Let us know.  We're happy to help!

And, if I understand right, yes you want keywords in your title tag.  That's one of the most significant on-page factors you can utilize.

How useful are you finding blog commenting to be regarding link building?  I was having a discussion with someone about this today, and I thought some input from the Moz community may be helpful.

How helpful do you find blog commenting to be in link building?

Do you have any evidence of effectiveness/ineffectiveness?

Is it something you still currently do (for link building)?

Any input is appreciated.  Thanks guys!

Thanks for the responses guys.

I know that you won't get the full link juice, but it looked like some weren't even getting seen.  That does explain a lower authority though.

The transfer was done about 2 months ago.  I thought after the first month, things would be basically ironed out, but I'll just give it more time and build other links in the meantime.

Thanks for your help!

Recently, we created a new website for a client, and put it on a new domain.  We put a 301 redirect site-wide on the old site.  The 301 is working correctly, and any visit to the old site is now going to the new one.  So, from a functionality standpoint, we're looking good.

However, looking at the domain authority of the sites, it doesn't seem that the old links are passing value to the new site.  The old site had 43 linking root domains, and a domain authority of 30, compared to the new site with 16 linking root domains and an authority of 22.  If I understand correctly, the links should be viewed as pointing to the new site and passing link juice to the new one, correct?  Is there a reason why this may be happening that I should be looking into?  Any thoughts or advice on this one would be appreciated.  Thanks guys!

Yeah, that's what I figured.  I figured I'd throw it out there just in case though

thank you.

So, I know that you can't simply transfer a coupon credit in Google AdWords to another account.  My question, if anyone knows, is there a way to do this using My Client Center?

We manage multiple accounts, and have another coming on board that has a pre-existing coupon credit.  We were going to set up a new account (which we would handle billing for and just invoice) for the client.  But, that would leave them unable to use a coupon code.  If it's managed under MCC, is there a way to work around this?

I'm just trying to understand and clarify a little bit (we do a lot with manufacturers, especially packaging).

What kinds of stuff are you worried about posting?  We do a lot regarding just sharing information - advantages of this metal over that metal during certain manufacturing processes; how one machine can greatly impact manufacturing; etc.  Can you do something like that to create content?

Well, there's not quite enough detail in what you said for me to get a totally clear picture, but let me through some stuff out there and you can follow up to make sure you get a good answer.

It sounds like you have 20 links that are exact match.  How big is your overall link profile.  If you only have about 40 links, yeah, that's a problem.  If you have thousands of links, it won't matter too much.  It sounds like you don't have a big link profile.  I'd spend most of my time right now not worrying too much about the bad links (though if you can write to webmaster of the site they are on and get them removed, it may not be a bad idea.  We've worked with people doing that before).  I'd spend most of my time building quality links.  Make sure you have the standard directory type stuff, blog links, etc.   That will help build up your profile and make sure the exact match aren't too high of a %.  Then try to build some high quality links with generic (i.e. - natural) anchor text.

That's where I would start.

So let me clarify then, if they have (on same domain) multiple pages with near duplicate content, mostly changing names of cities, but use rel:canonical, they will still have the SEO benefit of ranking for different towns, but it won't be seen as duplicate content?

And then the multiple domain situation...that's just a wait and see.

That one probably isn't the issue (unless google specifically identified it as such).

Take a look at your backlink profile.  Sort them by anchor text.  Are there any blocks of links that have the same anchor text, likely keyword saturated?  Take a look at the pages that they are coming from.  It's likely that this is where your bad links are coming from.  It's what we've seen most often.  That's where I would start.

I'm curious to get people's opinion on this.

One of our clients (Company A) has a competitor that's using duplicate sites to rank.  They're using "www.companyA.com" and "www.CompanyAIndustryTown.com" (actually, several of the variations).  It's basically duplicate content, with maybe a town name inserted or changed somewhere on the page.  I was always told that this is not a wise idea.  They started doing this in the past month or so when they had a site redesign.  So far, it's working pretty well for them.  So, here's my questions:

-Would you address this directly (report to Google, etc.)?

-Would you ignore this?

-Do you think it's going to backfire soon?

There's another company (Company B) that's using another practice- using separate pages on their domain to address different towns, and using those as landing pages.  Similar, in that a lot of the content is the same, just some town names and minor details changed.  All on the same domain though.  Would the same apply to that?

Thanks for your insight!

Yeah, that's a good idea, helps a lot.  Thanks for your help!

I'm having some issues setting up a Google CPP extension, and am looking for help.

I just set up a new ad group with a call extension.  The bid for CPP is high enough to cover the adword bid plus $1 for the call.  However, it is saying that the ad is ineligible.

Research is leading me to believe that you need to have 25-40 clicks on an ad in a month in order to qualify.  This will be difficult provided the budget and style of the ad.

I also have another ad group under the same campaign.  That has 79 clicks in the last month.  Google is marking this ad as ineligible as well.

What do I need to do to make the ad eligible?  Anyone have some advice or something that I've missed?  The ad extension itself and phone number have been approved.

Thanks again for your help!

Just wanted to follow up - how's your stuff looking?

yes.  if you go to "see all keyword rankings" in your campaign, you will get a list of your keywords and how they are ranking.  clicking on the individual keyword will show you how it's doing in search results, with all pages ranking highlighted.

this will work after they email you indicating your report is ready.  right now, you're just getting a "starter crawl."  no rush, you'll be fine...

It depends on the size of the site.  Give it a couple of days.  They'll send you an email when they're finished.  After that, you'll get a weekly report, and they'll email you when it comes in.

Please feel free to contact me if you need any help.

Ahhh, I see.  Two things could be happening.

1. You could have changed the second page since SEO Moz ran the campaign report.  It is run weekly, and therefore may not be current.  You may have changed things, gotten recrawled, and the campaign just hasn't seen it yet.  However, Rank Checker is pulling current data.
2. (more likely) - click on the actual keyword in your report.  Don't download the CSV, just click on the actual keyword.  It will give you the top 50 results for that specific keyword.  The CSV that contains all keywords will just show you the top result.

That work?

Forgot to specify - as long as they are on the same domain.  If you want to track two domains, you can use two campaigns, or just set one up as a competitor

Yes.  I don't have an image uploaded to point to, but you will see every instance that you rank for the keyword.  It will show up as multiple points within the graph, and every page on your site that ranks will be highlighted in green in the listing of search results.

FB, Twitter, LinkedIn

In your campaign ranking report, it will show all rankings in the top 50 for your domain.  So, if you have 2 words ranking for "cigar cutters" both will show up.  You can see this by clicking on the keyword in your report.  The list of keywords with all of the rankings will show you the top position.

If you go to tools, then "rank checker,"  you can do this manually.  Put in the exact URL and search for the keyword that you are targeting.

Does that help?

Google does differentiate between a link that takes  you to another page on the site vs. a link that takes you off site.  However, the affiliate links take you off the site, and therefore classifies as a bounce.

However, if someone goes to the home page, then another page on your site, then an affiliate, it is not a bounce.

I wouldn't worry about the bounce rate at all.  That doesn't seem to be an important metric for what you're looking at.

There is no real evidence that I've seen, at least at this point, that Google considers bounce rate as a ranking factor.  I could be wrong, but I've never seen anything that supported that.  Don't worry about that at all.

Bounce rate, for sure, has nothing to do with SERPs, and is exclusively measured by someone landing on your site and not moving to another internal page.

A bounce is any time someone comes to your site and leaves without hitting a second page on your site.  If they come to you and click an affiliate link, that's a bounce.

So, you really don't count a bounce rate to someone.  You should have some analytics tool for the affiliate which will help you see how much traffic you're giving them.  Bounce rate probably isn't something that you probably need to worry about.

That help?

-Adam

I don't use drupal very often, so I'm looking for some help.  We manage two sites in drupal, and the way they are set up, it creates a new thank you page every time someone fills out a contact form.  The thank you page displays the information that was entered, so I assume it is necessary to create a page to do this (this was set up before I came on board).

What I'm trying to do is track conversions in analytics by thank you page, but because a different node is created for every page, it makes things really difficult.

My guess is that there's some kind of module or shortcut that could make this easier.  Do any of you know of something, or preferably, is there something you're using that you'd endorse?

Thanks for your help.

-Adam

Does that mean that they're likely going to be using the beta version with noindex, nofollow at a later point, or is that just a temporary thing.

We're doing very well in organic listings right now, but we have Thomasnet for a client as well.  Trying to decide whether or not to keep them.  We're also getting over 10 times the traffic from PPC at only twice the cost.  Is there a major benefit from Thomasnet that I should be considering?

Thanks everyone.  I really appreciate all your help!

Right now, we have about 160 or so links on the home page.  It's been recommended that we keep it to under 100, though that's not as big of a deal as it once was.

Is it helpful to make a bunch of those links "nofollow" in order to preserve link juice?  Is it going to make a difference, or be at all helpful?  I assume it won't be harmful, especially as a bunch of them are to the same page but on different sections of the page.

Would live your advice and thoughts!  Thanks!

Thanks everyone.  This has all been very helpful.

I'm looking to find some specialized directories, as I assist with a laboratory robotics group.  These can be paid (actually preferred for now) or free.  I know that seomoz has a helpful list of directories, but I was wondering if anyone else knows of a good place to find specialized directories like this.  Thanks.

I'm having some difficulty with a few of the sites I'm managing right now.  When I run a report here, I'm getting a duplicate content issue with sites that I'm running through WordPress.  Sites running on a different CMS are not getting the issue.  The duplicate content is being listed as from two URL's that are identical.  I checked trailing slash, spelling, capitalization, everything.  It looks like the same site is being marked as two with duplicate content.

Does anyone have any ideas of what could be causing this and/or what I may be able to do to resolve the issue (or if it's really something to worry about or not)?  Thanks.

(and thanks for helping the new guy!)