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These two URLs are being flagged as 98% similar in the code. We're a large ecommerce site, and while it would be ideal to have unique product descriptions on each page we currently don't have the bandwith. Thoughts on what else might be triggering this duplicate content?

https://www.etundra.com/restaurant-parts/cooking-equipment-parts/fryers/scoops-skimmers/fmp-175-1081-fryer-crumb-scoop/

https://www.etundra.com/restaurant-equipment/concession-equipment/condiment-pumps/tablecraft-664-wide-mouth-condiment-pump/

Thanks,

Natalie

1. No changes yet; however, it's getting worse on our end, particularly from Yahoo, so we're about to update it to add a line for crawl-delay.
2. No known changes have been made with any of these.
3. No changes have been made to any of our canonical or noindex tags.
4. No, everything is the same.
5. The only one that we have consistently crawl the site is Moz.  I'm familiar with the other tools, but I haven't used them lately to crawl the site.

Nothing unusual in any of those areas.  GA is normal too.  The hits/bots did come all at the same time, but since it started, it's been consistent.

We have seen consistent network traffic over the past month, then starting yesterday, huge spikes in hits (hits as in crawls to pages causing an increase in megabytes downloaded) started coming in from Rogerbot, Google, Bing, and Yahoo. A specific example from Rogerbot is as follows:

• rogerbot/1.1+(http://moz.com/help/guides/search-overview/crawl-diagnostics#more-help,+rogerbot-crawler+pr2-crawler-104@moz.com)

• Useragent from the bot

• IP address: 54.226.73.52

• Domain / hostname: ec2-54-226-73-52.compute-1.amazonaws.com

• Physical location: United States flag United States, VA, Ashburn

We've have thought about doing a crawl-delay to prevent these bots from hitting us so hard, but that still doesn't help us answer why this even started in the first place.

Any clue on what may be going on here?

We have more than 80k products, each of them with data-vocabulary.org markup on them, but only 17k are being reported as having the markup in Google Webmaster (GW).  If I run a page that GW isn't showing as having the structure data in the structured data testing tool (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets), it passes.  Any thoughts on why this would be happening?  Is it because we should switch from data-vocabulary.org to schema.org?

• Example of page that GW is reporting that has structured data: https://www.etundra.com/restaurant-equipment/refrigeration/display-cases/coutnertop/vollrath-40862-36-inch-cubed-glass-refrigerated-display-cabinet/
• Example of page that isn't showing in GW as having structured data: https://www.etundra.com/kitchen-supplies/cutlery/sandwich-spreaders/mundial-w5688-4-and-half-4-and-half-sandwich-spreader/

I agree with what Miriam stated, but to play Devil's advocate, it would be interesting to do a study to see if things changed up (unique descriptions for each) would improve local rankings.  I get that it could be on the IYP/directory to make the changes to better their site, but wouldn't it be on the business owner to have unique content there to ensure their listing ranks higher than others that are using duplicate descriptions?

For example, I work with an eCommerce company that sells over 50,000 products, most of which are on other affiliate marketing channels.  Currently, our team members that run those channels pull the generic content that we're given from the manufacturer.  As we're going through updating our content to be unique for our individual product pages, I've asked them NOT to pull that content through the feed (our developers have helped them manage this part).  One of our team members, who's interested in SEO, asked me what would be the best way to help improve his listings on Amazon.  In my opinion, he could keep the generic content that hundreds of other competitors are using (they also pulled it from the manufacturer) or he could write unique content for Amazon and maybe, just maybe, have a better chance of those pages ranking higher than competitors because it is unique content, i.e. it's the business taking the initiative here.

To take this back to local SEO, that unique description for top players in the IYP/directoy realm could potentially bring in better results.  Again, this is only theoretical, I don't have solid proof around this, hence the reason for a study, but the person/company that does the study needs to think objectively here.

Great question by the way, I was wondering what others thought about this too, which is how I stumbled upon it.

To be honest, it sounds bogus.  I've never heard of it, and just from a user standpoint, I'd imagine that would be annoying.  Let's try that sentence again with what was suggested...

To be "honest" (it sounds bogus);  I've never "heard" of it (and just from a user standpoint); I'd imagine that would be "annoying".

Not saying those are the keywords, but how annoying is that sentence to read?  From a grammar standpoint, it's giving me chills.  Anything in quotes is hinting at something other than what it is... what are we talking "about?"  I hate reading through paragraphs where people use  quotes out of context.  Here's a great example of what I'm talking about: what does this sign mean to you, http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2012/2/10/1328896276621/cheese-burgers-sign-on-sm-007.jpg?  Is it cheese or not?  Not sure, but I don't want that burger!

That is correct!

Sent the example over to you, but for anyone else that may stumble upon this thread, I'd like to give the answer without giving the specific answer that I sent over to Yosepgr.

If you want to see if the bots can see your content or not, do one of the following:

1. Right click on the mouse when on the page, and click on view source.  In the window that pops up click ctrl + F and do a search for the content that you're wondering is hidden.  If you can find it in the html of the page, odds are that the search engines can see it too.  I say odds are, because if the page has a NOINDEX on the page, well you're telling the search engines to ignore the page anyways, soooo yeah, they'll ignore it.
2. Use www.seo-browser.com (enter URL then click on simple) to see how the search engine bots see your page.  This is a super simple way to see what's going on, and best for those of you that don't know much about code and html.

If the questions can still be seen in the html of the page, you'll be fine.  It's like when people have fat navigation that is hidden until it's scrolled over.  That content is still there (look at the view source), but it is hidden in a way that only pops up when scrolled over or clicked on.

Going through an entire site update and switching all of your URLs is always tough, but to launch with mixed case hits you in the stomach, doesn't it!  Instead of going through yet another site update, I'd start with medicating the new site and getting it back in working condition.  There are 2 things you can do with your mixed case URLs at this point:

1. 301 redirect the upper case to the lower case and add rel=canonical's to all of your pages for the URL you prefer.
2. If it's easier to stick on the rel=canonical now, as you work through the 301s, then do that first.  The rel=canonical will help protect you against multiple mixed case issues that you may of not found quite yet.  It also helps protect your content.

I'd be wary of doing an all new site re-haul again, because you may be down for longer that you want to be.

Other things to do:

• Monitor Google Webmaster like your life depends on it - your sites life definitely needs it right now!
• Look for other opportunities where there are quick fixes in helping to improve the site - look at the site errors in Moz and in Google Webmaster.  If you're seeing dupe issues (beyond what you already know about) or missing meta, fix those.
• Instead of focusing on PR, I'd look at your domain authority, homepage authority, MozRank, and MozTrust.  You need to establish a base so that you can monitor the trend line - while you're at it, go ahead and keep record of your competitors too.
• Look at your top links in OSE and make sure that any that are pointing at older URLs are pointing at the new URLs - it's better that your top links go to the right place, rather than being 301'd.

Alright, this is where we are with this.  What Takeshi recommended is a work around.  Yes, it works, but it takes more man hours to constantly upload the info.  If someone wanted to do this more seamlessly, how could we do that?  I don't have an answer quite yet (but wanted to post our follow-up in case someone else stumbles upon this Q&A), but we're going to the company with these questions:

• We need someone on the phone that understands SEO and the BV installation on our site being SEO friendly; i.e. not a developer that knows about implementing BV, but an SEO person that understands the difference between cloaking and duplicate content with product pages.
• We want to know how we can get our product reviews on our product pages that can be seen in the html of the page; i.e. I can view source and see the review content there.  This is inline with Takeshi's work around, but is there an easier way to do this where it's automatic?
• Having the reviews sent over via javascript when the bot requests the info seems to be inline with cloaking behavior that is considered bad with the search engines.
• We don’t want to add a ~1.5 second delay to getting the info pulled over for the bots to see it, as this will increase our PageSpeed.  However, this seems to be the next best solution for getting up-to-date reviews in the code of the product page.

I know, not every tool is perfect, but if there is a gap here, I'd imagine that one of largest companies in review management would be able to tackle this - don't you think?

To me, this feels like our content is being hi-jacked.  I have my reviews in iframes (sort of speak) on my product pages, but also at reviews.mysite.com/product-reviews, which is essentially duplicating my product pages... we're competing with ourselves.  Is the best fix to NOINDEX that subdomain and not let the reviews be seen at all, or keep the pages up and just compete with ourselves in the SERPs?  Or is there an easy way to get those reviews (our reviews) seen on our site from users and bots?

Perfect!  Thanks again for the follow-up!

That sounds like the answer Takeshi!  We were worried about manually doing it because the user wouldn't see their reviews instantly, but with how you're doing it, it doesn't matter, and (like you said) it shouldn't muddy the user experience.

Are you referring to the "Remove URLs" tool in Google Webmaster for deindexing?

Great idea for having a link to an html version.  How do you keep those updated?  Is it manual? And do you just block the pages that they create over on the review.mysite.com sub-domain?

That is actually where we started looking at fixing things.  I see that sub-domain they created as basically competing with our product pages.  Why would that ever be the way a business would want to operate their site, it doesn't make sense to do that.  But all I keep hearing is name drops of big brands.  It's frustrating really.

I'm pretty sure that it's structured markup, but I will definitely be double checking before simply guessing on this one!  Thanks Alan.

This one is tough, and I've asked it once here, http://www.quora.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO/Is-having-rich-snippets-placed-below-a-review-that-is-pulled-via-javascript-considered-bad-grey-hat-SEO, but I feel that the response was sided with the company.

As an SEO or digital marketer, it seems that if we are pulling in our reviews via iframe for our users, but serving them through a nonscript tag when the user agent is a search engine, that this could be considered cloaking.

I understand that the "intent" may be to show the same thing to the bots as the user sees, but if you look at the view source, you'll never see the reviews, because it would only be delivered to the search engine bot.

What do you think?

Heather,

We didn't end up going with Catch Marketing; in fact, it was a predecessor of mine that originally posted this and our company did end up going with another company that does something quite similar.  I've always seen this as bad practice - doorway pages.

One of the first things I did when I started here was get those pages taken down - it just seems way to risky for a company like ours (or any for that matter).  We have more than 60k products online, and to do something shady like this is going to end up doing more harm than good.

Anyways, since we took those pages down within the month, I haven't seen any changes really, but I think there are also a lot of other things we need to fix to get things right again - ho-hum.

I know that going through a site redesign it's essential to make sure that 301s are implemented for any changed URLs, but I wasn't sure if this was the same for the images on the page and the parameter URLs that are created by marketing campaigns - do those URLs also need to be 301 redirected?

For example, this URL:

www.mysite.com/32-inch-round-aluminum-table/

Could have a parameter at:

www.mysite.com/32-inch-round-aluminum-table/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Social%3A+My_Site

And an image at:

www.mysite.com/images/32-inch-round-aluminum-table.jpg

Would the first two URLs mentioned need to be redirected to the new URL, and the image redirected to the new image URL?

Thanks for the help.

That's what our next move is.  I'll let you all know what comes of it.  Thanks for the response!

I have error messages in Google Webmaster that state that Googlebot encountered errors while attempting to access the robots.txt.  The last date that this was reported was on December 25, 2012 (Merry Christmas), but the last cache date was November 16, 2012 (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.etundra.com/robots.txt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a).

How could I get this error if the page hasn't been cached since November 16, 2012?

Just to elaborate on the size of the site, we sell about 150,000 products, and many of them can be accessed through multiple categories. Thanks for the responses!

I saw this article, http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/common-ecommerce-technical-seo-problems/, and noticed that Geoff mentioned that product URLs format should be in one of the following ways:

• Product Page: site.com/product-name
• Product Page: site.com/category/sub-category/product-name

However, for SEO, is there a preferred way?

I understand that the top one may be better to prevent duplicate page issues, but I would imagine that the bottom would be better for conversion (maybe the user backtracks to site.com/category/sub-category/ to see other products that he may be interested in).

Also, I'd imagine that the top URL would not be a great way to distribute link juice since everything would be attached to the root, right?

Makes sense.  Thanks again!

Thanks for your reply Takeshi.

Two things I like about this approach over a CSE is that first they are going to rework product names/page titles/URLs to target different from the long tail keywords my products already attract traffic for and second they are going to give me full Analytics access so I can see exactly which keywords are driving traffic/conversions.

I was recently approached by Catch Marketing about a service they provide that uses a product data feed to create hundreds of pages with "unique" (algorithm generated) content on a subdomain of a website targeting long-tail keywords not already driving traffic to the site.

It's an affiliate type setup with a commission-based fee structure.

Admittedly not the most elegant solution to driving long-tail keyword traffic but my company is short on resources and long on revenue goals.

I'm not really interested in hearing about creating awesome unique content written by a human as the better solution here; although I understand and aspire to those ideals the reality is that I have 60,000 products to market and I'm the only one who writes product content - after I tend to my other responsibilities.

Has anyone used or heard of this service?  Your feedback appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback Robert!

So far the people running the affiliate network have been excited because they have beaten the revenue goals they laid out for themselves in the first two months - although we have yet to approach the cost of setting the whole thing up, not to mention the cost of paying one person to manage the whole thing and having it take up about 70% of her time.

I just find it hard to believe some of the revenue numbers I see coming in.  Example: one site has a PA & DA of 1, claims to be an SEO firm based in Arizona, and I can't find where they've ever posted a link to our site, yet they have been credited with $2,800 in sales on our site.

Also, we are not a lead gen site but an ecommerce site - does that change the calculus any in terms of using affiliate aggregators?  Seems to me the Value Per Visitor is much higher for lead gen than it is for ecommerce.

Thanks again for your opinion!

My company decided to start a Link Share affiliate program at the beginning of this year.  I've had serious reservations about the value of the program since the beginning but was overruled.

Here are my concerns:

1. The majority of publishers seem to be coupon scraper sites or borderline link farms

2. I am told the biggest revenue earners in our network are publishing articles about my company with links back to our site but if they are Google Alerts sure isn't finding them and a manual search hasn't turned up anything either.  This makes me think these publishers are using some sort of unsavory way to drive traffic to our site or maybe even cookie traffic that was coming to our site anyway in order to get credit for the sale.

Most of all I'd like to hear from anyone else who has used Link Share in the past.

Secondly I realize there's not a lot of information here but I'm wondering if this passes the smell test for anyone else.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

If you type "hydroponics nutrients" into SEOMoz'a Keyword Difficulty Tool you'll see that this is a pretty competitive keyword.  The only domains to rank in the top 10 results with a DA of less than 40 have an exact or partial match to the keyword in their root domain.

Your DA is 12 which means that you probably should not have been ranking so highly (even on page 2) for such a competitive keyword.  It's possible Google was giving your site a test run higher up in the SERPs because it's a new site and then dropped you back down to where you should have been all along.

You need to continue your link building efforts (with much more focus on premium content and social networking) and wait - probably for a long time - until you build up your link profile and DA.

In the meantime, start going after less competitive long tail keyword terms that still relate to your website and product.  Try researching keywords with 3+ words that get any kind of traffic according to the Exact Match Local column in Google's Keyword Tool.  Write articles and optimize pages on your site targeting these keywords.  If you put enough of them together you'll start driving some significant traffic to your site while you continue to work towards ranking for the big main keywords.

There are far too many factors at play here to really be able to pin any one thing down, but I do have a couple observations for you:

1. I only looked at the two keywords you cited in your screenshots "how to mac" and "imovie" and really, for how competitive these keywords are you had no business ranking for them in the first place with a DA of 13, even with an exact match domain.  Is your site pretty new?  It's possible you were getting a test drive in the SERPs (Dr. Pete talked about this phenomenon here).

2. I didn't look at more than two articles, but the ones I did look at seemed a little thin on content.  Great topics, great images, but I'm guessing there were only about 100 - 150 words in them.  I have no idea if that has anything to do with your ranking troubles, but just from a user value standpoint these articles could be a little more meaty.

Good question (and one I was hoping James would ask so I could start working on him to let me blog for them ; )

Just a few ideas off the top of my head:

1. English Premiere League coverage  - EPL games are getting more and more popular in the U.S. - they even show some games on NFL Sunday!
2. Local Colorado coverage - I also live in Colorado and am a referee here and there are many competitive leagues around the Denver area.  Become the gazette for these local teams and earn tons of local links.
3. MLS coverage - the Colorado Rapids won the MLS cup last year and went to the playoffs (despite many injuries) this year - cover the local team for local links and the league in general as there are few MLS sources outside of the league's own news reporting.
4. U.S. National Team coverage - do you have any idea how hard it is to follow the U.S. Men's National Team???  The only place for regular updates is the U.S. Soccer website.

I didn't even get to equipment and product updates, etc... this is just a start - and plenty more where that came from...

I do not think blog networks are necessarily bad but they won't make your blog the most popular on the web either.

Definitely do the subdirectory as you mentioned, and use WordPress.  There are other platforms out there that are just as good but I personally prefer WordPress and you can't go wrong with them.

Continue the engagement with other soccer blogs you mentioned and start asking for guest posts with links back to your blog.

But, above all, write the best content there is to write about soccer!  I just so happen to be a huge soccer fan living in the U.S. and I can tell you that there is definitely a lack of quality content on the web for U.S. soccer fans.

I am assuming that you target the U.S. market, and if so, then you have an awesome opportunity to make your blog the best thing out there for the U.S. fan.

Good content isn't enough to move the SEO needle for your site.  Premium content is a must.  It's a lot of work, but if you do it right then you'll see huge benefits.  Don't think you can just plop a few posts down a week and see a difference.  You need to become the central source for all things concerning soccer, and that will require a concerted effort by an entire team of people.

Oh OK that makes sense - it will be a worthy investment!

As far as copying over content, here are my thoughts:

1. Are these reviews on competitor websites?  If so they would probably take a dim view of you using their reviews.  I would make sure I got permission to republish reviews originally posted somewhere else.
2. It's still technically duplicate content, but it does add value for your customer, and as long as you have a good amount of other copy on the page (original product description, accompanying how-to article or buying guide) then you're probably OK - in my humble opinion at least.

The main issue is getting permission to pull those reviews from somewhere else.  And if the review is the only (or majority) content on these product pages then it's probably not a good idea.

Good question - I have a similar situation on my site and I also get the duplicate page title warning in SEOMoz campaigns.  Up until this point I have not worried too much about the warnings because I do have the canonical tag in place and Google is indexing the correct page and leaving the copies out.

I would like to hear what others have to say about this though.

Why are customers reviewing your products somewhere besides your website in the first place?

I would strongly encourage you to set up a system that allows customers to review your products on your web pages.  That way you don't have to go to all the work of finding and copying reviews out on the web and you get a bunch of unique content for your product pages.

I don't know what your budget is like but my company uses BazaarVoice and we have enjoyed using their platform for customer reviews.  There are several good User Generated Content services out there that you can plug directly into your website.

Good luck in your search.

Just wanted to point out that if someone guarantees you first page results in major search engines just by building links without getting any additional information about your site or your target keywords then a red flag should go up in your head about the validity of their tactics.

You might want to expand and define your criteria a little more - what is the state of on-page optimization? content creation? conversion metrics? user engagement metrics? long tail keyword optimization?

Unfortunately, SEO is rarely as linear as build links = 1st page results, and if someone is willing to hire on for a job with those success metrics then they are revealing just how little they understand about SEO.

And for you - do 1st page results for a set of target keywords automatically meet your business goals?  Is your website set up to convert the traffic those results will bring?  Are you targeting the right keywords? Do you have the content and community built to engage your new visitors and turn them into lifelong customers?

All things to consider before dropping a bunch of money on a link builder with the goal of 1st page results in the SERPs.

Because a well written meta description can be much more compelling and generate better click through from the SERPs than a random snippet of copy from the page.

Use everything you already know about writing good calls-to-action and apply them to your meta tags and see if CTR improves.  If it does (and I bet it will) then you'll know exactly why it's worth it to write a good meta description.

Those are some good resources Keith!

Wow, what a fascinating product you work with and a very interesting website.

I took the liberty of checking out your site and found it pretty impressive.  Some effort has already clearly been taken to optimize this site and provide real value to your customer, so kudos to whoever is responsible for that effort.

At a very high level - so take this with a grain of salt because I only spent a few minutes - you have great domain authority and a lot of really strong content, but it appears that you are not ranking for keywords associated with your product that you clearly should be ranking for.

I went to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and typed in "cablevey tubular drag conveyors" (the first keyword in the page title of your home page) and got a long list of great keywords associated with your industry.  I went through a couple of the higher traffic ones in SEOMoz's Keyword Difficulty Tool and there's no reason why you shouldn't be ranking for these keywords based on your Domain Authority alone.  It very well could be that you just haven't optimized the proper page on your site for these keywords yet, and it is possible that a little on-page optimization is all you need to start ranking well because your DA is so strong.

I am willing to go more in-depth if you want - just shoot me a private message and we can exchange contact information.

As far as a referral goes... there are many good SEO companies and individuals in the SEOMoz community who would be able to provide quality help.  My recommendation would be to instantly tune out anyone who says you need link building and content - not that you don't need those things but I don't think they are your priority right now.

when I could get someone internally to do this.

Sounds like you answered your own question, and I agree.  Thank them for their list of companies and hand it over to someone on your team.

From a pure ROI standpoint, all discussion about the value (or lack thereof) of directory links aside: you can get a marketing intern to submit your site to directories for free, or at worst, minimum wage if that's what you really want to do.  I'm sure this company charges much more per hour than that.

From a "smell test" or "gut feeling" standpoint: first this company talks about link exchanges and then submitting to directories.  They are not inspiring much confidence in their grasp of up-to-date, user-focused, let's-add-value-to-this-website-while-we-improve-organic-rankings, are they?

If an SEO strategy doesn't improve the experience your customers get when they surf the web or visit your site then it doesn't pass the smell test.

The most effective way to build quality links is through topical, well-written, captivating content, so unless you are hiring a company that promises to write good content in order to gain links a red flag should always go up when they say "link building" and don't mention content in the same breath.

Unless you have some significant on-page optimization and technical SEO issues you should be looking for a good copywriter rather than an SEO firm.

Like most things in SEO, it depends.  What are your business goals (lead generation, ecommerce, thought leadership, etc.)?  What is the status of your current optimization efforts - i.e. has any on-page optimization, site architecture, link building, content, etc. been done?  If so, how much?  What is your competition doing and how does your site stack up against them?

Different sites have different goals and are at different points in the optimization process.  Prioritizing your SEO efforts is going to depend heavily on where you sit currently and where you want to go.

I would advise a full site audit first to figure out what is working well and what isn't.

Actually, I take that back.  First, define your goals - what do you want to accomplish with your site.  Then do the audit.

Next, discover which keywords are driving traffic to your site and which ones convert the best.  Then start putting together groups of keywords that are variations of your top performers and start looking for new keyword groups to target.

If you're getting a lot of traffic from what seem like good keywords but not converting, then start optimizing your site for conversions.

This is all pretty high level, but if there's one thing I've learned about SEO it's that there are no absolute answers, only problems that need solving, and there are always many ways to skin that cat.

Going through the process of identifying problems and opportunities, developing a strategy to act, and then analyzing success is a constant effort.

Deciding which problem/opportunity to attack first can only be accomplished by having a clear goal in mind.

Well, first, DA is only a small part of SEOMoz campaigns.  Personally I use the competitive analysis to monitor the links my competition are getting, the ranking report to track SERP performance, and the Error report to track and fix on-site issues.  Those are the areas where the monthly fee really pays for itself, in my opinion.

And again, if you're beating your competition in rankings, then I would worry less about their DA and more about converting all that extra traffic you get into sales.

Does this site rank higher than you for your targeted keywords?

I checked out www.nahoku.com and if "hawaiian slipper" is one of your keywords (it's in your page title) then there's no reason to worry - you rank #2 and hawaiianjewelryshop.com doesn't even show up in the top ten.

Building higher DA is good, but as long as you are ranking well for the keyword terms you want to target then you're doing well.

Remember that DA is for reference only - it is most useful as a high-level way to quickly gauge (very roughly) where a site stands.

In the end the only thing that matters for your site is whether you are ranking highly for the terms you want to target and converting the traffic you get from those keywords into sales.

Clarification: I'm not the one getting advice here, and I do think good help was offered for free, which should always be appreciated.

I just find anything that starts with sigh a little condescending - maybe it's just me, but I have encountered this condescension elsewhere in this forum from many very smart PRO members and I personally find it irritating.

Anderson probably doesn't even care and I probably shouldn't have said anything... No offense ninja just a pet peeve.

I agree with these recommendations, but your delivery coulda been a little more constructive...

In my opinion - and it is just an opinion - trying to figure out specific reasons for fluctuations in ranking is an exercise in futility.  There are just way too many factors going on - both within your website and outside of it - that Google is using to determine rankings.

Not to say you shouldn't be concerned about the decline in rankings.  Here are two observations for you:

1. These are pretty competitive keyword terms, and the pages you have been using to target these keywords have a PA of 1, indicating to me that you will probably see ranking fluctuations until you get some quality links to these pages.  Compare your PA to the top 5 results, which all have PA in the 30s and 40s or more.

2. How long have you been tracking your rankings using SEOMoz Campaigns? Did you have steady rankings spanning several months and then see a decline or did you start tracking recently?  I ask because (at least in my experience) low PA pages targeted towards more competitive keyword terms tend to move up and down on a lot on the SERP, so if you just started tracking you could have come in on a peak and now be seeing the valley.

First, I should reiterate that I am only hypothesizing about why your DA went down.  There are many, many factors that go into DA - what I talked about above is what I consider to be the most likely explanation without having really looked at your sites.

What I meant by "not as much domain diversity among smaller sites" is that you don't have enough links from unique root domains.  Open Site Explorer shows that you have some 1,400 links from only 6 domains for one site and 1,400 links from 3 domains for the other.

You have a good amount of total links, but in the eyes of Google you have only convinced 9 other sites that your two websites are worthy enough to receive an editorial vote.  Domain diversity is certainly a very important (although still only one of hundreds) ranking factor for Google.

Much, much more importantly - what are the keywords that lead to a purchase on your website?  Which ones get a lot of traffic that you would like to rank better for?  You need to work backwards from the keywords that are driving the best qualified (i.e. most likely to convert) traffic to your site and then build a linking/SEO strategy from there.

Hi Steve,

SEOMoz just updated their PA & DA metrics - you can read more about it here.

The main takeaway is that in this crawl of the web SEOMoz focused more on getting a broader range of domains rather than crawling deeper pages on bigger sites.  If you lost DA then that probably means you had quite a few deep links that did not get crawled and not as much domain diversity among smaller sites.

The main thing to always remember is that DA is for reference only.  It is not meant to be a key performance indicator for your site!  DA will continue to fluctuate up and down as SEOMoz improves their index of the web and continues to tweak the priorities of each crawl.

Yes, DA is highly correlated to higher rankings, but it's still a very high-level view of a site.  If you're trying to get a feel for a random site at a glance, then DA & PA are great.  If you're trying to figure out what your site is doing well and where it needs improvement, then you need to dig much, much deeper.

What keywords are driving traffic to your site?  How well are you converting that traffic?  What closely related keywords to your main ones could you rank better for?  What 3, 4, and 5 word variations of those keywords do you rank for or could you rank for?  These are the questions that are going to lead to positive actions, not 10 point fluctuations in your DA.