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Hi, thanks for the answers so far...

Although i understand what you are saying - and why google would want to use the "did you mean" feature.

I disagree that, in this case,  its simply google tryin to help searchers - Why? if it was just because our domains are so close - litterally just 1 letter different, then in theory if i did the same search but for the other website - it would say "did you mean: my website"?

http://goo.gl/yphgxE but it doesnt...

This to me, means there is some kind of problem - devaluation of my website - so much so, google thinks if you search my domain name, you have searched it by mistake?

Can anyone shed some more light on this? any advice welcome

Hi all,

I just noticed something quite odd - if i do a search for my domain name (see: http://goo.gl/LBc1lz) google shows my domain as first result, but it also asks "did i mean" and names another website with very similar name.

the other site has far lower PA/DA according to Moz, any ideas why google is doing this? and more inportantly how i could stop it?

please advise

James

Thanks for the response Dirk,

Please understand i am not an "SEO" and do not currently employ an SEO, hence i asked the question - i kind of figured it was shady, but just needed some confirmation from SEO experts such as yourself.

Thanks for confirming.

hi Richard,

thank you for the reponse, what you explained is kind of what happened - initally after the 301 was started site B went up in rankings for a month or two... then it started to drop, the 301 redirect was removed - but site B still dropped and never recovered.

However you mention "i'd also advise you to disassociate the old site completely", do you mind me asking how?

I ask, because there is no redirect in place any more, has not been for a year or so, however if i look in the google webmaster tools "links to my site" of site B - it lists websites that link to site A... So it appears to me there is now some kind of association because of the previous 301 redirect - is it possible to clear this association, or ami stuck with it?

Hi All,

A couple of years ago my site got punished and i kind of figured out it was due to keyword anchor text backlinks.

I recently was considering getting a new SEO company and found one that promotes another company in my industry. However, when i look at the backlinks, of the website they do SEO for, via open site explorer - I noticed nearly all of the backlinks are keywords.

website in question is http://goo.gl/6nRzLi

And if you see the search results here: http://goo.gl/9bXoxY they are ranking on first page with very big brands - and have done for about a year - but nealy all of their backlinks are the keywords in this search...

I understood this is the kind of thing that killed my website 2 years ago - are these backlinks ok? should i still consider this SEO company to work on my site, i 100% do not want my site to be penalised again so any advice appreciated.

thanks

James

Hi All,

Is it OK to 301 redirect site A to site B?

Site A: http://goo.gl/P9Zp2y

Site B: http://goo.gl/ySDCzb

The story - in 2013 site a seemed to be penalised with some kind of anchor text algorithm penalty - SEO couldnt fix, so created site B and turned site A into a holding page with a no follow link to new site.

SEO company worked on disavow file etc, implemented in late 2013

301 redirect site A to B in late 2013 - SEO advised to stop 301 about 8 weeks later... This was my fault i didnt realise the implications of a redirect...

Stopped the redirect, but too late,  as site B dropped in rankings in early 2014 - new disavow files uploaded to both sites, but damage seems done now.

No longer have a SEO company, and i would ideally like to 301 redirect site A to B, as it looks messy having a holding page - but wanted to check if SEO would still strongly advise against that?

please advise

James

Hi all,

I run an ecommerce website, not a great ranked site, however i want to try and improve the product detail pages. To do this, i am first going to focus on 1 page (this one: http://goo.gl/eS62SU)

If i type the product code directly into google.co.uk search i am on the 8th page (see https://www.google.co.uk/#q=hac-hfw2220r-z&start=70) which is a bit poor to say the least.

I see this kind of thing for a lot of my products. Hence, i am going to see if over the next month or two i can get this one page moving up the rankings purely with on page optimisation.

I would like to ask a couple of things:

1. Is there anything that jumps out at you as to why that product detail page could NOT ever rank well, i.e some code / set up of page etc that prevents google ranking it

2. Any advice you could give that might improve that page in rankings for its product code.

FYI - I can not change the dynamic URL, I only have control over such things as product name / summary / features / spec etc

any advice welcome

following on from my question above...

If i have lots of filters to narrow down products - i can dynamically change lots of content on page with each filter, including things like the title tag etc...

I am curious, if i had dynamic title tags depending on what filter was chose - how would that effect the page from an SEO point of view.

Also, would google etc learn the different content for different filters? by that i mean it is a cctv system page, one of the filters would be for "IP CCTV systems", i could change the content for that filter so the title said "IP CCTV Systems..."

if i searched IP CCTV Systems in google  - would they show the "IP CCTV Systems" title with URL showing filter selection - or would they show the generic title with no filters selected?

Hi Monica,

I have a very high bounce rate - which would be great if changing the nav would improve this...

I dont have any A/B testing tools / experience, anything you would suggest?

regards

James

Hi all,

I run the site: http://goo.gl/YATL2i

I have had this category set up like this for a while now - but wonder if its confusing to google, and potentially my users...

let me start by saying my products are available in 3 formats (soon to be 4), so for example i have 3 pages for cctv systems:

Analogue / SD cctv systems: http://goo.gl/SPkdYW

hd sdi systems: http://goo.gl/uksRAD

ip systems: http://goo.gl/UMHBd0

each of the above sub categories then have a further sub category of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 16 camera kit page...

I am trying to figure out if it would be better to just have one "cctv systems" page, and use filters in the left menu so users can filter by format, number of cameras etc etc... but these filters would not navigate to other pages but simply limit the view on the one "cctv systems" page.

If you think 1 page with filters is best - can you then advise what should i do with all the sub category pages i no longer need? 301 rediret to the main cctv systems page?

Basically i currently have my site set up so cctv products are categorised by the format i,e SD, HD-SDI or IP... Which i thought was very important the user doesnt mix formats as it can not work - but am thinking maybe i should catorgorize by type i.e CCTV Camera, CCTV Recorders or CCTV Systems, and then use filters to drill further down in the categories.

Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

thanks

for example - if i want to know who has ranked for the term "seo company" on google for the last 12 months (or there abouts), can it be done?

James

ok, i have a website (website A) which has been running since 2008, done very nicely in search results, until january of this year... it dropped siginificantly, losing about two thirds of visitors etc... then in may basically lost the rest...

i was pulling my hair out for months trying to figure out why, i "think" it was something to do with links and anchor text, i got rid of old SEO company, got a new SEO company, they have done link analysis, trying to remove lots of links, have dissavowed about 500 domains... put in a reconsideration request... got a reply saying there is no manual penalty...

so new seo company says all they can do is carry on removing links, and wait for penguin to update and hopefully that will fix it... this will take as along as it takes penguin to update again...

obviously i can not wait indefinetely, so they have advised i start a new website (website B)... which is a complete duplicate of website A.

Now as we do not know whats wrong with website A - (we think its links - and will get them removed) my seo company said we cant do a 301 redirect, as we will just cause what ever is wrong to pass over to website B... so we need to create a blank page for every single page at website A, saying we have moved and put a NO FOLLOW link to the new page on website B....

Personally i think the above will look terrible, and not be a very user friendly experience - but my seo company says it is the only way to do it... before i do it, i just wanted to check with some experts here, if this is right?

please advise if 301 redirects are NOT correct way to do this.

thanks
James

Hi Thomas,

But that is just it... none of the pages in that photo have the words "- CCTV Cameras" in the title tag... Google has put that word into the title only on the search results page...

They are NOT in the html...

OK, i have recently noticed google is adding a keyword to my titles... I have attached an image which shows the results from a google site:mywebsite search...

8 out of the 10 results on the screen shot clearly have the keyword ( - CCTV Cameras) added to the end of the title.

Now a lot of those pages are support pages i.e "Help & Support", "returns" etc etc.. nothing really to do with cctv cameras.

The only thing i can think of, is the most common anchor text used on backlinks to my website (according to siteexplorer) is the keyword cctv cameras... (i am currently working on removing a load of the backlinks to my site due to what i think is some kind of google penalty as the anchor text is all keywords etc...)

But it seems strange if google has started to discount these backlinks, that it then uses that keyword to add to my titles - unless of course, google thinks that it is my brand name...

Any body have any thoughts on this?

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I'm no expert, so you can take this with a pinch of salt...

But, to my knowledge google gives a lot of weight to domains such as .ac.uk, as these are some kind of educational website and not available to just anyone etc... not saying it is right that they rank above you, just saying that might be the reason google puts them above you.

Hi,

Just bumping this, as i'm still looking for any advice?

Thanks for the info Sorina, i agree with you that Google decided the page is also relevant for the keyword cctv cameras...

But i disagree with google.. lol.. i mean, we have a cameras page, the recorder page has nothing to do with cameras, there are no cameras on that page, it is recorders...

Just seems a little odd to me... I will try lengthening the title as it is a little short (only 36 characters)... perhaps if its a bit longer they wont bother adding to it...

Thanks again

sorry

I just realised in image 2 i used the words "scrolling down" suggesting the search result in question is on page one... my mistake - it is not, the search result in question is on the second page of results...

The images were just to show people the same website page with different tittle tag in google search results...

just logged out and tested, i still get the same...

i should point out with image 2 - there is another of our pages that ranks on page 1 for the keyword in that image... but if you go to page two, it shows the page reffered to in image 1 - and you can see the different title...

hi all,

i recently noticed google changing the title tag of one of my pages in search results for certain keywords...

I've done a bit of a search and see its not uncommon, however from what i can tell they usually change the title if it is too long, or they seem to change the branding location etc...

In my case they are litterally adding key words to it...

Example -

See Image 1 - This is my main keyword - the title displays correctly

See Image 2 - Another keyword - see how google has added "irrelevant" keywords to the title

Any ideas why this happens?

fr0PIK7.jpg sv6zWOu.jpg

ok, i am not keen on this approach, the developers have offered an alternative... but again, i'm not sure about it, they have said they can use ajax to force their search results / navigation over my current navigation / products on my category / product pages...

this gets rid of having to use javascript to send to different url... but up above Alan mentions cloaking, which to my understanding is basically serving anything different for a search engine / person... and thats what this will do... it serves up a different navigation to people... and the products could be listed in a different order etc... search engines do not see the ajax...

Is this any better? or just as negative?

even thou the content is identical?

It is only the way that content can then be navigated that is different...

Hi Alan,

i think i may have explained incorrectly - my search page does have the meta tag noindex,follow - it also has a canonical link back to the main search page (i.e search.html) so i do not think any of the search results will be indexed. So my concern is not duplicate content, this should not happen...

My concern is the fact i am using javascript to litterally divert customers from one page to another... its almost like the static pages are there only for the benefit of google... and thats concerning me...

Hi all,

I am currently working on a new search facility for me ecommerce site... it has very quickly dawned on me that this new facility is far better than my standard product pages - from a user point of view - i.e lots of product attributes for customers to find what they need faster, ability to compare products etc... All in all just better. BUT NO SEO VALUE!!!

i want to use this search facility instead of my category/product pages... however as they are search pages i have "robots noindex them" and dont think its wise to change that...

I have spoken to the developers of this software and they suggested i could use some javascript in the navigation to change the onlclick function to take the user to the search equivelant of the page...

They said this way my normal pages are the ones that are still indexed by google etc, but the user has the benefit of using the improved search pages...

This sounds perfect, however it also sounds a little deceptive... and i know google has loads of rules about these kinds of things, the last thing i want is to get any kind of penalty or any negative reaction from an SEO point of view... I am only considering this as it will improve the user experience on my website...

Can  any one advise if this is OK, or a "no no"...

P.s for those wondering i use an "off the shelf" cart system and it would cost me an arm and a leg to have these features built into my actual category  / product pages.

Thanks for all the replies, seems Andy is on the right track... so i had a look around at some scripts that might perform what i need... i came across this: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex17/ajaxpaginate/index.htm

I could remove the paginations, and change the direct links to images, so in my limited understanding that would leave very little content for google to crawl, and there fore get rid of any duplicate content issues... does this seem correct?

please advise

Hi all,

I have an ecommerce website with approx 400 products, these are quite technical products and i use to have helpful information about the products on the product pages...

My SEO company told me to remove all this, as i had lots of duplicate content issues...

I have since had content writers re-write all product descriptions (about 250 words per product)... and now i am trying to figure out a way of getting the "helpful" information back on but in some kind of dynamic way...

There is basically about 5 or 6 blocks of information, that can be added to each product page, these overlap hundreds of products.

i was thinking of perhaps creating a separate static page for each block of useful information, and putting links on the product pages to this...

however, ideally i would prefer to not keep sending customers to other pages... so wanted to see if others had come across similar issues themselves and how they went about having this "content" available to the user but in such a way it was not duplicate content...

Please note using images would not be any good here, as the content varies in size but most of it is text based...

regards

James

Hi Colin,

I think the organisation needs to remain in this way, i could be wrong of course, but its like this because of compatibility issues, there are two other "formats" of cameras, recorders and kits that we sell... but none are compatible with each other... so if we made the main category "cameras"... then people might start buying different formats of cameras thinking they will work together...

Thanks for the breadcrumbs tip, didnt even think about it... have just added breadcrumbs to all categories...cheers

Hi all,

This is from an on-site point of view for an ecommerce site - Just looking for a bit of advice about how i can create different pages for similar keywords, by this i mean lets say i have 4 categories:

Main Category = High Definition

Sub Cat 1 = High Definition Camera

Sub Cat 2 = High Definition Recorder

Sub Cat 3 = High Definition Kits

First lets focus on the Main Category:

Would you not want to mention Camera / recorder / kits in any of the main category title / meta tags / h tags etc?

From a navigation point of view its impossible not to have those words mentioned there, and from a product point of view obviously the "cameras" are going to be on the main category page also...

Obviously we can create some written content also, which i presume again would be best not to mention cameras / recorders / kits? OR would it be wise to mention them, but link to those pages?

NOW if we look at a Sub Category - Say 1 (Camera)

Now obviously everywhere we type in "high definition camera" we are typeing in the keyword for the main category, so is there anyway to limit the effect of this, so that a sub category wouldnt rank above a main category for its keyword... for example if we were to make sure any time the word "high definition" is mentioned in title / meta / h tags, or any specific written content that the word "camera" is directly after it...

Also, perhaps in the content of all three sub categories make sure 1 (or would you advise more) link to the main category using keyword "high definition"?

Any advice on the above would be greatly appreciated... Also bare in mind i am talking about on site only, i'm just thinking from a creating the page point of view, i know we can try and force the issue afterwards with a few backlinks etc..

On a different note, a simple question... When you do a site:mysite.com search in google... is the list google then presents you in order of how "important" googls see's the pages on that site? Or is it just hompage then random?

thanks

James

Hi all,

For a bit of back ground see this question i posted recently: http://www.seomoz.org/q/lost-over-65-of-organic-visits-since-sept-please-help

From the responses there and looking into  my backlinks and my competitors i can see an issue with the anchor text on my inbound links... nearly all keywords and very very few brand names etc...

From what i can gather (using open site explorer) the page in question has:

1. 1100 inbound links from 900 domains
2. These use 90 different anchor texts
3. 106 of these links use my brand / website name in the anchor text
4. These 106 links are spread over 18 domains (73 from 1 directory)
5. About 5-10% of the links are from directories, the rest are from what i would describe as "proper websites"

From my very limited knowledge of this, the issue is my brand / website should have a far higher ratio of links using it as the anchor text then any keyword... which as you can see from the above is not the case... If it wasnt for that 1 directory there would only be 33 links with my brand from over 1000...

I need to start fixing this, but was wondering how to start... Below are a list of options i could try, i have no idea if these would help or hinder, any advice you could give on the potential affects of below options would be very helpful:

Options (the below are hypothetical, i have no idea if i will be able to get it done - Just thinking out loud here):

Get as many as possible of the "directory" links removed

Remove keywords from 50-60% of links and replace with branding

Or

Try to add branding to 50-60% of the anchor texts something like [Brand] + [keyword]

Forget about whats been done previously / changing it will not help in anyway / and focus on branding in anchor text for any future link building?

Thanks

James

Hi EGOL,

Thanks for the link, i went through the quiz, and a couple of things jump out at me...

First it talks about "thin content" being lots of images then a little writing, or just a few paragraphs of text and lots of images on a page...

The majority of my pages are like this, we're an ecommerce website, so all product categories have many images and little bits of text etc...

I dont think there is too much i can do about that one, as i'm not about to try to pioneer a new way of designing ecommerce stores! lol

However, another issue it pointed out is links from "blogs / directories" etc that have keywords in the anchor text... Well i have loads of these, i know my SEO company does link building for me, not too sure how much of it involves directories, but i'll have to speak to them and perhaps get them to stop (remove if possible) them...

To be honest this has opened up a hole new can of worms for me lol, what a mine field SEO is ahh... Just looking at anchor text causing websites to drop in rankings makes me wonder, what about the links that are not on directories / blogs etc... do you get punished if they also use key words in anchor text? I mean, i appreciate google saying it doesnt look natural, but who owns / updates websites that hasnt heard of SEO and would not use a keyword as anchor text if linking to someone? I know if i link to a website, the anchor text isnt just the brand name.

Also, what about if your brand name is a keyword, i heard before google was giving less weight to companies who use a keyword in their URL... but wouldn't this mean they have no choice but to give a little extra weight to companies with the keyword in their domain.... as now the anchor text can be their brand name... and a keyword...

OK i'm straying... getting back on track... if the issue is being cause by this anchor text / keyword ratio... how can one go about fixing this?

ok i just googled it, and i think your talking about google "places", this has no effect on what i am talking about, i only registered for google places about two weeks ago, so i have never been on the local listings...

Correct me if i have misunderstood please

Hi Marie,

Can i ask what you mean by "local listings"? Sorry, just no idea what you are reffering to, and if there is a chance it can be part of the cause, i really need to learn

thanks

Most are not massive drops, from say 1st or 2nd to position 8 / 9 (note i'm talking about on Page 1 position)...

Some are all over the place as i mentioned in this thread : http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-me-or-google

Kind of shocking how many less visitors you get moving 6-7 positions down the first page ahh...

I've been going through WMT fixing what i can, nothing jumped out at me as a big issue, a few crawl errors etc (when this first came to my attention) i did notice my sitemap was very old... i.e i hadnt updated it in almost a year, obviously thats upto date now.

Hi Bond,

of the top 25 keywords...

1 down by 62% (not provided key word)

2 of them down by approx 35%

1 down by 133%

1 down by 150%

19 of them down by 200% or higher

1 of them up by 40% - This is my brand name

Hi Chris,

Drop in traffic is happening for all keywords... but mainly only to do with the home page...

by that i mean nearly all our traffic comes through the home page, apart from one or two other pages... the key words for the other pages have not lost any ranking... only any search where our home page use to do well, is now suffering...

No changes were made to the site during Nov / Dec or Jan... so i dont think it was an on site issue... apart from the duplicate content issue (which was that lots of websites had copied our homepage "introduction to" messgae... so we have since had that re-written...

Just PM'd the URL to you... Didnt want to post it here

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to SEOmoz, i am here because i dont seem to be getting any actuall help from my SEO company, so am trying to figure this out myself.

I have done a quick analysis using google analytics and have gone from 13441 google organic visitors in Sept to 4527 google organic visitors in March.

(see attached image GA Sept - March)

Visitor numbers seems be to fairly stable in sept, oct, nov, and perhaps a slight decline in Dec, but then on Jan17th seems a big drop, and i have never recovered...

(See images GA - Oct, GA - Nov, GA - Dec and GA - Jan )

I am at a bit of a loss, i have heard about google penalties, but there are no warnings in my webmaster tools about this, the only warning i ever got was a message on Dec 24th which read :

http://XXX.co.uk/: Big traffic change for top URL

Search results clicks for (my site) have decreased significantly.

The number of clicks that your site receives from Google can change from day to day for a variety of factors, including automatic algorithm updates. However, if you have recently made significant changes to the content or configuration of your site, this change may be an indication that there are problems.

This is not a penalty notice is it? its simply google telling me i have lost a lot of traffic?

Strange thing is December's traffic was pretty much fine, so do not understand why i got this message, when the drop in traffic happened a month later.

I've been racking my brain for months trying to fix every little possible issue i can find with my site (its not nice, when you do not actually know what google has decided it doesn't like about your site!) but nothing seems to be helping, i've been hiring content writter's as i found loads of websites have copied a lot of content, i also decided maybe the product descriptions are being classed as duplicate so again have got in content writter's to re-write hundreds of product descriptions (all this is costing me an arm and a leg)... Nada!

Then today, when doing this google analysis (see image GA Sept - March) i noticed two sites, i have renamed them on the image to:

XXX-1.co.uk & XXX-2.ecomm-search.com

XXX-1.co.uk was a test server where i could play around with code on  my website before i actually implement changes, usually i delete all the files after i use it... but it looks like i forgot to do that.... the site is a complete copy of my website (but obviously a version where you can not actually process an order) but all the pages still have canonical links back to the proper website... Just in case this was causing issues, i have 301 redirected the site back to my main site... Is this wise? or should i just delete the site?

XXX-2.ecomm-search.com is a search company i was trialing as i wanted to improve the search functionality on my own site, however the search features are hosted on their site... I was told it has no bearing on SEO as its not indexed... however if google is seeing refferalls coming from that site, which is basically a duplicate of my search pages but with better functionality, could they be considering this a duplicate content issue?

If anybody can give me any advice at all about above questions, or in general about what happened on Jan 17th (as i see from web search's many people were affected but i can not seem to find people who actually know what google did) i would be very grateful.

Thanks

James

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Hi all,

I decided yesterday to make a load of changes to my website, and today i woke thinking, should i have done that! So below is an example of what i have done (i will try to explain clearly anyway), can you let me know if you think what i have done would harm or help my website in search results etc...

ok, so lets take just one category - Cameras

And it has the sub categories -

1. box
2. dome
3. bullet

it also has other sub categories (which are actually features, but the only way i can show them on my site is by having them as a sub-category with its own static page, and adding the products to these as secondary categories)

• vandal proof
• high resolution
• night vision

previously i  have it set up so that every single category / sub category / feature had its own static page, with a canonical tag to itself (i.e cameras.html canonical was to cameras.html, vandalproof.html canonical was to vandalproof.html). Any of the categories / sub cats / features that had more than one page were simply not in search results due to the canonical pointing to "Page 1"...

What i have now done:

Last night i decided to change all this, now for all categories / sub cats / features i have add rel=prev / next where applicable, and removed the canonical from second / third / fourth pages etc, but left the canonical on "page 1".

I also removed any keywords from page 2,3,4 etc and changed descriptions to just page "X" + category name.

So for example, page one looks like:

and page two looks like:

I also went a little further (maybe too far) and decided that the features pages would canonicalize back to cameras so for those i now have:

Page 1:

Page 2:

Any advice is welcome on the above, in regards to which way may be better and why, and obviously if anything jumps out as a mistake...

Please advise

James

hi all, sorry been away for a few days... no work was done to the site around that period...

hi james,

only warning i ever got was on 24th Dec 2012:

"Search results clicks for http://www. mysite .co.uk/ have decreased significantly.

The number of clicks that your site receives from Google can change from day to day for a variety of factors, including automatic algorithm updates. However, if you have recently made significant changes to the content or configuration of your site, this change may be an indication that there are problems."

there were two odd things about this, i didnt start losing visitors until Jan 17th... so it seems google told me what was going to happen in future...

Secondly in my webmaster tools there is two accounts, www version, and non www version.... this warning was in the non www version, even thou i have told google via settings i prefer the www version.

i've never had google say any duplicate issues etc... however when i joined SEOmoz PRO yesterday, that picked up the non www as duplicate content... so just to be sure i have asked my host to redirect from non www to www version.

The above warning is not a penalty is it?

Hi All,

I'm new here so take it easy on me..

OK, basically i have had a SEO company for about 3 years, they did a wonderful job, for the last 12 months or so i have been in top 1-3 positions for pretty much every keyword i wanted...

On Jan 17th, that all changed, suddenly google doesnt like something about my site... for the sake of this questions lets focus purely on the keyword "CCTV", i use to be 1st or 2nd, it varied...

Since Jan 17th i am all over the place, today alone, i was 9th this morning, then 13th, then 22nd...

I am working on a lot of things my SEO company told me to do, with regards my site, obviously this is going to take time...

but my big concern is that google doesnt seem to know where to rank me lol, i mean, at least if they settled on a place i.e 22nd, then i have a stable base to work from...

Has anyone seen this kind of thing before, and can i expect at somepoint google decides to simply remove me?

Any advice welcome.

regards

James