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Hi There

I'm honestly not sure about specific concerns with those platforms. But I can give a few general tips;

• In addition to redirects, be sure to maintain titles and descriptions (unless you're updating those too). Going from one platform to the next can change these all around due to default templates etc so you may want to just be sure they stay consistent.
• I'd  crawl the site with Screaming Frog a bunch of times right as it goes live to catch anything unforeseen: 404's etc.
• Monitor Webmaster Tools closely as well for errors and messages.

I'll see if another associate has some Magento specific experience they can offer tips on.

-Dan

Hi Craig

I honestly don't know much about the Magento piece, but I am pretty confident the path doesn't matter much at all, just the file name of the image.

-Dan

Hi Chris

As I said in the other comment (and I'm just seeing your comment here) - this is crazy! Use a different host that "likes" whatever plugin you want and allows you full access to everything.

-Dan

Hey Chris

Personally, I would use a different host that allows you to edit .htaccess! And I would 301 redirect to the new urls.

Go with long term. Even if you lose .1% of link value the non-html will provide a much better UX in my opinion, and you'll have a standard setup.

-Dan

Hey PortlandGuy

First off, yes, I would put the blog in /blog if it's within a bigger website. But... what that said, I don't think these two buckets (blog VS site + blog) really have any distinction on the rankings. What works for some niches won't work for other, so adding 12 posts a month might be great for certain industries, but others maybe not. Some industries, putting out 2 or 3 really in depth and solid pieces of content (like white papers, ebook, video etc etc) could go a lot longer then a bunch of blog posts.  

-Dan

Hey, I saw that one.

Thanks Anthony. Very helpful.

• First thing. I don't actually see "add to compare" as an actual function anywhere such as http://www.deskcentre.co.uk/shop/next-day/next-day-office-desks.html - but it's in the HTML source code as well as Google's text only cache. Is this function something you want to exist? Because I don't see it anywhere
• Second - I am only seeing this as an issue for "compare" not "add to basket". The add to basket links are behind JavaScript and are not getting picked up on my crawl with Screaming Frog.

Two options then;

• If you in factDO want the "add to compare" function, you can block http://www.deskcentre.co.uk/shop/catalog/product_compare/add/product/ in robots.txt - allow that function for the user but not let Google crawl it.
• However, I am kind of thinking you DON'T want the function available because it's not visible and is does 302 redirect. If this is the case, see if you can disable it entirely and then it won't show up in your source code. If you can't disable it, you can still block it with robots.txt and Google won't crawl them.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

Hi There

I'll just go through some of the biggest things I see in a few areas of the site;

Off Site / Backlinks

• anchor text - you've got too much commercial anchor and not enough branded or non-commercial. see the open site explorer report here. Any anchors that you have control over I would change them to your brand name or domain name. I'm referring to the anchors that say "oakland boudoir photography" etc
• disavowing - as others have recommended, if you do have old back links that are of low quality, it won't hurt to disavow them. what you really should do though is use webmaster tools list of back links. I find the Open Site Explorer backlinks to be great for a lot of things, but when it comes to finding and disavowing all of your damaging old links, you really have to go with Google's list. There's going to be a lot more in there.

Local SEO

• check ExpressUpdateUSA - ExpressUpdateUSA is a data provider to dozens of listing services. If your info is not correct with them, that's why you may wrong addresses pop back up again. Make sure all your info is correct with them.
• use GetListed.org and Whitespark Local Citation Finder or Citation Builder. These services are going to help you find, claim and optimize more local listings than you could ever dream of. Is this the highest quality thing to be doing? Not always, especially as you get past the big ones (Google+, Yelp etc) but can't hurt.
• claim GPS listings. add your business to Nokia Maps , NAVTEQ, tele atlas
• I agree, reviews are huge. This search has a bunch of great articles for ideas in how to get them.

On Site SEO

• link to your homepage with your brand name as anchor text. right now, your name is the anchor text for all links back to homepage. put the homepage link on your brand name and possibly logo for good UX
• if you're especially trying to rank for local queries, you need your city in the title tag(s). Don't stuff all kinds of cities in there. Just put "Oakland, CA". Unfortunately since you're not located in SF, it's not going to help much to put SF in the title tag to rank for SF
• If you want to rank for SF, I would suggest having a specific page with content about San Francisco. Testimonials of clients there, case studies of work there etc etc. I would also suggest getting people from San Fran to write reviews for you on Yelp, Google etc etc
• your site loads at non-www (bayareaboudoir.com) - this should redirect to www version.
• not a huge issue, but /index.html should redirect to the main homepage.
• In general, meta descriptions could be a little longer (not over 156). Make them like natural sentences, rather than lists of keywords.

-Dan

Hi Stephane

I also do not see duplicate pages indexed in Google. Not this page: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html or any others searching the few pages of results on a site: search.

Perhaps it was a temporary thing were some got indexed. I've seen that happen on occasion, and then they get removed.

If you're still seeing otherwise definitely feel free to chime back in, and provide screenshots or an example query.

Thanks!

-Dan

I also like "openings" in the URL, because as a user, if I were to land on that page or see that URL in the wild, I'd have a better idea of what the page is about.

-Dan

William

I wouldn't do that - make sure to just noindex tags, and also noindex subpages of archives. Categories can stay indexed, it's usually the subpages that cause issues (ie: /page/2/ etc).

-Dan

Hey There

I wrote a post which walks through how to decide what to do with tags. Essentially, here's what I would do;

(This assumes you have Yoast SEO for your SEO plugin).

• Noindex tags by default.
• Except set only the ones receiving traffic to index (this is the part you need Yoast for).
• Do not overlap your categories and tags (keep them different).
• Minimize tag usage in general - put a few on each post, but not too many more.
• You can use for navigation (like a tag cloud) if you think your readers will find them useful.
• Do not include them in your XML sitemap.

Hope that helps!

I also did this post on setting up WordPress for the Moz blog which you may find helpful.

-Dan

Hi There

You might want to give Screaming Frog a shot for creating XML sitemaps. Here's a post which talks about how. Basically, since you can customize the crawl, this will allow you to exclude the parameters etc. I'd give that a shot.

-Dan

Hi Chris

I generally agree with "xvp's" answer. Google for the most part can pick up the distinction between the state and abbreviation. What you can do is check search volume (if there is any) for each - optimize for the one most searched for in key places like the title tag, but just make sure to include variations within the content if possible. Like include the abbreviation in the meta description if you've written it out in the title tag. But you definitely don't need to create separate pieces of content or anything just to target one or the other.

-Dan

Hey There

OK, this should be pretty straightforward then;

1. Create a new section for the new blog where the old content will go (basically a page that's a blog "homepage").

2. Export all the old content from the old blog using WordPress' export function.

3. Have your redirects ready to go - some people like using just the .htaccess file, some prefer the redirection plugin. Either way, you'll want to maintain ownership of course of the old domain name. Individually redirect every piece of content to it's new home.

4. Import the posts to the new blog.

5. Put the redirects in place. Obviously check everything really well.

I wouldn't use the move domain tool in WMT since you're not doing a direct 1:1 move.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

This really depends on the specifics of what you need to do. In other words;

• are you moving just blog posts, or are you moving pages too?
• when you say "combine" do you mean put the old blog posts into the new blog section on the new site?
• you're going to maintain the same theme as is currently on SEO Martin?
• how do you want this transition to appear publicly? Just that one day, all of a sudden both sites will be combined? Or are you going to do it in stages?
• what are you going to do with the old domain? redirect the old URLs to the corresponding new content?

Whatever the case, you'll probably need some arrangement of these;

• exporting posts
• importing posts
• merge/combine multiple blogs
• moving wordpress

If you want to leave some more specifics, myself or someone else could chime in with more info.

I also wouldn't rule out developing the whole thing on a dev server first.

-Dan

That's exactly right!

Hi Phil

I don't know that I've seen this exact issue before, but I've seen similar situations recently as well. I almost wonder if this could have to do with what data center you happen to be hitting, or if perhaps just in their database for some reason they push back to a prior index. Or you could be seeing part of test in one of those instances.

You could try asking others to check the cache from different places geographically. Have you also tried different browsers? I know some of that could be a stretch, but testing all variables can't hurt.

End of the day, I don't think this is a huge issue if Googlebot crawls the site at a healthy rate. So I'd run through webmaster tools etc and make sure crawl depth is where it should be.

-Dan

Hi Anthony

This doesn't sounds like anything super harmful but I'm not too familiar with the inner working of Magento - is there a screenshot you could provide that might help?

Thanks!

-Dan

Hey

It's tough to say, I'm not sure which report you're looking at exactly (the keyword report?) - "not set" means is was a different medium of traffic - either direct or referral, so there is no keyword.

There is no way to fix "not provided" - Google has been blocking the keyword for logged in users since October of 2011. Not provided means Google will not provide the keyword because of this.

I highly doubt something it wrong though. You're looking at the /en/ page - is that a new page for English users? Maybe it's a new URL and thus only sees traffic recently.

You can use this awesome method to test Google Analytics with Screaming Frog to make sure it's installed on every page on your website.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

"Palabra clave" --> "key word" - that's great - I play salsa music, and "clave" the central rhythm was always described as the "key" to the music. It's true!

URLs will always be important in lots of ways;

• They are seen by users in many cases (as links, in social media and even the SERPs) and can help improve CTR.
• They are extremely important to the overall site architecture - and especially for information architecture.
• They can often become the anchor text in links.
• They help a user when browsing the site, as if they represent the structure or "level" depth (almost like breadcrumbs) is can make the navigating experience easier.

I don't think URLs are something Google looks at in a simplistic way like "oh you're URL says X keyword, we're gonna weigh that keyword more" - I think all of these factors feed into the importance of URLs and I don't see that value diminishing anytime soon.

-Dan

I agree with Rui. If the 301's are in place, this should not be hurting the rankings anymore. WordPress can be a little slower, but you can use something like WP Super Cache to really speed it up.

I think the issue with the site now are things like the design, content, the on-site optimization, and also back links as Rui pointed out. I would refocus back onto making the site as best you can, and definitely don't shy away from using WordPress.

-Dan

Hey There

First thing you might want to do is supplement weekly Moz rankings by using Webmaster Tools position data (under search queries) and you can filter by keyword - and you'll get you're average daily position straight from Google's data. You can also supplement Moz rankings data with something like AuthorityLabs. There's a list of rank checkers I put together here.

This is because it can be tricky to see what's going on with weekly data.

If/when you have that - it sounds like this is the "Google Dance" (when rankings jump all around). This can be common for new sites, especially as Google is just figuring it out etc.

Has traffic changed much?

I honestly would focus mostly on continuing to create the best site possible. Make sure each page is only targeting one main keyword.

-Dan

Hi There

Without seeing your website it's hard to tell for sure. But a 403 error usually has to do with permissions (who/what your server will allow to access the content).

Have you recently put anything behind a password?

If you have Screaming Frog SEO Spider you can try setting it to Googlebot as the user agent and try crawling your site.

You can also use a header checker like URI Valet to see what server response is returned. It sounds like Googlebot is getting one response while normal browsers are seeing it fine (200 codes).

If you are absolutely not sure, and can not share your site name, I would contact your webhost to look into any issues with the server.

-Dan

I would second FDFPres' suggestions. The site needs to have content accessible to the public which Google can also crawl and index. I would choose content types that best fit your target keywords, audience and brand!

-Dan

As far as I thought, the important thing is that your feed shows up in feed readers. Can you subscribe to and view your RSS feed in a variety of different feed readers?

Yes, so long as the ? is utilized only in ways in which would result in duplicate content, or content that would not be desirable to crawl, it will have that effect.

-Dan

Hi Dan

I see no reason to disallow the feed like that by default, unless there is some reason I don't know about. But it won't harm anything either.

The second part blocks any URL which begins with a ? (question mark). This would block anything that has a parameter in the URL - most commonly a search word, pagination, filtering settings etc.

As far as I'm aware this is not going to be damaging to the site, but it's not the default setting. Did someone set it up that way for you?

My robots.txt shows the default WordPress settings: http://www.evolvingseo.com/robots.txt

Hi There

This is really hard to answer. Let's assume nothing else changed (which is of course, completely impossible) but for the sake of the question. All of the wrong pages that were not indexed prior would need to be de-indexed in Google - I would check to see if they are still indexed, because it can take some time for them to be de-indexed. If/when that happens, in our hypothetical vacuum like situation, the rankings would return when those pages are completely de-indexed.

However, in reality, this is not how it works of course - so by all means, fix the technical issues, as they are important of course - but don't forget to keep a wide view of the situation and realize that other factors may be affecting the rankings now as well - and to not hyper-focus/obsess too much about this one thing.

-Dan

Edward

The Moz software is correct (per my comment below). Your current tag is the facebook open graph description. Use the Yoast SEO plugin to add meta descriptions to your pages.

-Dan

Hi Edward

The tag you're seeing is the facebook open graph description. This is only for facebook and not the same as a regular meta description for search engines.

I would suggest installing the Yoast SEO for WordPress plugin, which will add meta descriptions to your site for you.

Some WordPress SEO basics here in my article.

-Dan

Hi Dan

Can you share the exact line disallowing RSS?

Thanks!

-Dan

Hey There!

Just making sure you're all set with this? Some additional resources that might help (courtesy of Rand);

• Perfecting On Page Optimization - please keep in mind this resource is getting quite old. But it shows the classic SEO process of targeting a keyword. If the keyword you are trying to out beat your competitor with is at all competitive you'll really want a dedicated page for it. That post will show the traditional method for targeting a page.
• This flow chart (from this post) - shows a method for deciding if you need a separate page to target a keyword.

I use those are good starting point guides when in your situation.

-Dan

Thanks Mike! I was afraid so.

What do you do when you have a few profiles under one property in analytics (for subdomains etc) but you want to link each one of them to webmaster tools? Far as I know, you can only link them at the property level.

Thanks!

-Dan

If you're going to target a specific keyword, here's what I'd recommend (and I'll answer you specific questions at the end, but Dana's already done a good job with that).

1. Ask why. Why do you want to rank for that keyword? Are you sure it's going to do for you what you want it to - which I assume is bring sales? Is your page set up to convert and create sales from visits for this keyword?

2. Study the current search results for that keyword. What is Google returning for results right now? Looks like it's most shopping pages. They've obviously determined this is a transactional or "action search" - someone wants to do something (buy Indian bridal sarees).

3. Have _one _targeted page that's optimized for that keyword: Indian bridal sarees - you need a page with all the on-page elements that make it clearly "about" that topic. Although a little outdatted, check out Rand's "Perfecting On Page Optimization" - DON'T obsess over this. It's a traditional starting point. Use Moz's <a>on-page analysis tool</a> to see if you're page is targeting the keyword. Again, don't obsess, but if you score an F, you may want to improve things.

Getting to your exact questions;

I read many places about never use the same keywords/anchor text this will consider as spam by google

You are most likely referring to the Penguin algorithm. Nowadays you should aim to have about 75% of your back link anchors to be branded and only 25% keywords.

The stuff you have read is not talking about the percentage of keywords on the page, or even the percentage on internal keyword anchors.

I think in general you are just mixing up back links and just general keywords on the website.

if i have 10 articles so in 7 articles i have to give primary keyword and the rest of the 3 will be generic.

Dana's right with this, I wouldn't pay attention to that at all. Just write your articles how you want to. Target keywords if you can, but don't obsess.

I would honestly focus more on - what's everything you can do to get traffic to those articles without Google? That's a whole other topic, but I think that mindset would be valuable when thinking of how to go about writing, and getting traffic to, your article content.

-Dan

Thanks Richard! Glad it'e been helpful. I think I'll be doing a WP Mozinar beginning of June too as we've found the community just has tons of WP questions.

Yup! A page is a much better way to target a keyword than a category archive. That better fots the concept of a landing page.

Hope the video is helpful too

Hi There

First off, I rarely delete pages. Better and easier to noindex. That way you get them out of the SERPs and reduce the poor user metrics, but people can still find the pages otherwise and you don't have to 301 redirect them etc. You can delete if you feel they are just a bad user experience over all of course - but I noindex as a starting point.

Anyhow, regardless, here's how I access it - first I use a custom report with the following metrics (you can play around with them);

• pageviews
• entrances
• new visits
• avg time on page
• exits
• exit rate
• "page" for the dimension

Thresholds - starting point (I use filters)

• pageviews - I start with over 50
• avg time on page - less than 30 seconds
• exit rate - great than 80%

I like to end up with a list of maybe 50-100 pages that fall within the thresholds. Every site is different. But I try to isolate 50-100 of the worst pages (we're assuming maybe a 2,500+ page site).

You can throw a segment on there if you want to segment just Google Organic traffic - that could in some cases be more accurate.

Hope that helps! Interested to see what other people do.

-Dan

Hi Andrew

Without knowing the niche it's a little tough to say, but I'll give a general answer.

First off, a category page is typically not also written as an article its self. It is an "archive" which is always to be used to list the posts within that archive. You can set up a custom category page, to display unique content at the top (see how Sugarrae does it: http://www.sugarrae.com/social-media/)

Next, a category page isn't the best type of thing to target your main keyword with. If it's the main keyword for your niche (thus your entire site I presume) the homepage would target that keyword.

Categories should traditionally be used to divide your blog into 5-8 topic "buckets" in which all your posts will fall into 1-2 of them. Users can navigate easily through your different blog posts etc.

If you are not keen to use the homepage to target the main keyword, I would suggest just a static page. Category archives generally do not rank as well as the homepage, pages or posts.

Some WP resources for you;

• my post on WP SEO
• my video on pages vs posts
• a recent WP Mozinar

-Dan

Hi There

I've taken a look around and don't see an obvious reason, but as others have said, I wouldn't be concerned about this unless that page is having trouble ranking for just a keyword search.

For example I search "Cleardata provides bespoke document storage and archive storage services to businesses operating within East England." in quotes and that page returns in the results.A search for the URL returns it #1 as well, so I don't see any issue as far as that page ranking.

-Dan

Craig

D'you have screaming frog? BEST way to make sure you're all set is - run a crawl with Screaming Frog. By default it will acknowledge robots.txt and not crawl anything being blocked. Set the user agent to Googlebot.

If it crawls all the pages you want it to just fine, than you are all set!

-Dan

Hey There

I see this question is a bit old ... are you still have these issues? If so, when you say "going down" do you mean according to the numbers showing in Webmaster Tools?

I do know that quite often there can be a delay in the data in Webmaster Tools (especially the indexation report which you may be referring to).

I don't think there's any harm in updating the dates to reflect the most recent version of the page, so long as they are accurate.

Let me know if that helps or if you're all set.

-Dan

Ha! I'm trying to quit. _Again. _

Hi Juan Miguel

I crawled the site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider - and here's what I found.

• This is a screenshot showing you what links to /contacto/estrella/
• This is a screenshot showing you what links to /equipo/equis

So I would;

• look on those pages highlighted in the screenshots
• look in the HTML source code for the link (you can do a control-f to search text in the HTML source code)

for example I found one of the pages pointing to /equipo/equis - see the screenshot 

Hope that helps!

-Dan

Hey There! Let us know if you are all set. I am not a Thesis expert, so if you still need help I'll bring in another associate to help out.

Thanks!

-Dan

You're welcome Alex! I am having a coffee right now

Thanks so much to Paul and Brett too!

Hi Alex

What both Brett and Paul said is correct. Let me break it down for you a little more.

When Adding Media

• when you add your image - DON'T select "attachment page" - screenshot

Here's what each option does;

• custom URL - you can link the image to anything you want - an external link, another internal post, or to the source of the image itself if you need to attribute credit.
• media file - this is for if you click on the image, it just opens the actual image file. this is totally harmless, and in some cases many people like it, as it allows you to see the image larger. this is the one I usually choose by default.
• attachment page - that's the one giving you problems. it creates a new page for every image. so I never use this choice.
• none - no link as used at all. you can't click on the picture or anything.

Noindex Media

With the Yoast SEO plugin, you can also noindex media pages. See this screenshot for how to do so.

The means, no matter if you still end up with some media/photo pages indexed and missing titles etc, it won't be an issue.

Recap

OK - here's your steps;

1. Moving forward, don't select "attachment page" when uploading media.
2. Use Yoast to noindex media pages.
3. Use Yoast to add a title and description template to media pages, in case they still get indexed.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

SIMPLE: All you need to do is "noindex subpages of archives" using the Yoast SEO Plugin. This keeps the subpages from being indexed, but the first page in each category will get indexed.

Check out further resources;

• My post on WordPress SEO
• A recent Mozinar someone did on WordPress

-Dan

Awesome! Thanks for letting me know it worked and thanks for trying that 'good answer' button a few times

If you ever have any more trouble with anything on Moz - email help@seomoz.org