We have this across about 30,000 products (yea, that many). I can't stress enough how much of a duplicate page/title content mess it can become. If your system allows for canonical and pagination it's totally worth the effort.
Posts made by josh-riley
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RE: What to do with eCommerce site with color variations of the same product?
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RE: Public Relations and SEO in 2012
My two cents? I spent 12yrs in the PR field (and transitioned into SEO/social media) and I'd be very careful to ask the right questions to determine what PR agency to work with. I know - and worked with - few who knew how to properly optimize a release. And, while they did have media contacts, PR Newswire did a lot of the leg work. Pitching a story to a reporter or blogger was really the value the PR person brought to the table. And, link building was never something that was regularly brought up. In the past two months, the majority of the PR pros I network with like to tell me "SEO is dead" which tells me everything I need to know about their understanding of SEO.
Again, I am sure there are plenty of seasoned PR people who have an understanding - there's also lots of agencies who like to sell their services even if they don't have the depth of knowledge. Like any business endeavor, it's just a matter of due diligence to find the right fit.
Freelancers have way better prices because they don't have the same overhead costs as agencies, so that could be a more affordable route.
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RE: Why do most Local Directories turn around and lie and try to steal your clients?
Shrug - if someone falls for bad advice, they fall for it. Call it a scam or a bad business decision but the outcome can be similar. You don't have to know everything about everything but if you don't know enough then you risk the outcome.
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RE: Source for how many searches are done on Google per day?
Google will never show its cards And I've never gotten really accurate data from ComScore, etc. so there's only so much you can uncover, eh?
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RE: Does the home page must get the biggest amount of internal links?
I, too, work with a site that has many (thousands) of product pages and dozens of categories. Over time, the homepage did get the most links and it ranks for the brand - which is fine. What's better for the user is that the category or product pages rank for specific keywords. I mean, for the best user experience, I don't want someone to have to go to the homepage and navigate down a few layers to get to what they want. Links to those deeper pages have helped make them more visible. The more pages that rank for the right keywords = more online real estate and more ways for the audience to find you.
So, it depends on your strategy and preference - and - is it better for the user to go to the homepage or to the product page? And, what's the reason those two would compete against each other for keywords (if that's the case).
All the links into the site will eventually help the domain authority.
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RE: Why do most Local Directories turn around and lie and try to steal your clients?
We "put up with it" because it's part of every facet of any business. There's always trolls. I mean, at this point if anyone believes that a Nigerian prince is going to send them millions as a thank you for fronting him money via a wire transfer, serves you right for getting hosted. That email scam has been around for years and people still fall for it since a sucker is born every minute
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RE: Source for how many searches are done on Google per day?
I just went to a luncheon 2 weeks ago that Catherine Roe (Head of Consumer Packaged Goods for Google) spoke at and she said that Google has 1 billion searches a day. This was based on internal data her team gave her (I don't know how recent, but I'd venture to guess she knows the right people to ask).
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RE: Confused why wesbite is number 1 in Google
A few things could be at play: they have their on page content optimized properly (keywords are in the page title and used OK in the proper technical sections on the page). The domain is older than the other sites ranking after it (2007 vs 2009, etc.). And, the keywords aren't highly competitive.
All this means is that you just have to do a bit more than them to possibly surpass. Ex: they only have 2 links - get 10+ for you. Add solid content, update it often enough, etc. and you should be able to surpass. Again, it's not that their site is great - there's just a few things in their favor for right now.
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RE: How can i see the pages that cause duplicate content?
The only other thing I can think of is there's duplicate page content and duplicate title content. If it says true in either of those columns then there's no URLs in the columns to the right of it (headed duplicate_page_content or duplicate_title) then I'd contact Moz and work with them. Mine populate fine.
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RE: How can i see the pages that cause duplicate content?
OK, within that Excel file, there's a column header with "duplicate page content" - so, the URL in question will be in the far left (URL) then there's a column that says "duplicate page" (with true/false as the options) and if it's true, then there's another column with "duplicate page content" as a header and URLs in it. Those should be the ones that Moz caught duplicating the URL in the "URL" column - if that makes any sense at all!
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RE: How can i see the pages that cause duplicate content?
No shame! There's a ton of data here and it can be a bit of a needle in a haystack at first to figure out That's why these forums are so helpful!
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RE: How can i see the pages that cause duplicate content?
Exactly. The download gives much deeper data, however with a few clicks that Netlogiq suggested you can find it w/o downloading.
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RE: How can i see the pages that cause duplicate content?
Now, I'll preface this by saying I don't know what documents you may be looking at vs what I have access to. I see duplicate links from SEOMOz, so you can get to it.
For example, when I log into my SEOMoz campaign information and click on the red errors box, then the duplicate content box, there's a selection of duplicate URLs right below the chart. My current one is indicating it caught 29 duplicate pages of content for my Spanish signs product section, then I can see all the URLs listed out that it sees as duplicates.
Granted, SEOMoz only crawls 10,000URLs at a time, so for a major site like mine that's only part of what we have, but it's an indicator of stuff we need to fix. I download my campaign report into a CSV file and there's columns in that identifying what's duplicate, too.
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RE: Question Concerning Pages With Too Many Links:
I agree; too many links alone can be overcome. (I know, I live it.) If rankings across the board aren't good then there's something else - maybe several things - going on.
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RE: Question Concerning Pages With Too Many Links:
When you hover on the tabs at the top, all those menus that appear count as links. The locations g tab has about 20 alone; all those add up. Since that menu is on every page, that could explain it. How you see things isn't the same as how Google does; we tend to base it on what we see - Google bases it on what they can access (which sometimes you can't directly see, like with the tabs).
My site has the same problem; we resigned ourselves to it because, for us. it's better for the users.
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RE: Does anyone do SEO for a % of sales?
I think there's been some awesome views here and there's so many viable options. If I were the SEO you wanted to hire, here's an issue I'd force: I can't control if you keep your website working properly. I can't control if your back end measurement is accurate. I would insist that if it came to light that you somehow couldn't properly calculate your sales (and my performance was tied to revenue) there'd be some lump sum or something payment to me anyway.
Why? I worked on a site where leads were the most important thing wanted; the coding to track leads got messed up and for four months there was no accurate way to calculate what leads came through SEO vs other channels. Also, there ended up being major instability issues with the site and it kept crashing, creating major technical issues (that flowed into the need for technical SEO support).
Anything can happen with a website. The SEO can only do so much.
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RE: How to best use our blog posts for SEO?
Selfishly, this was a great thread to get involved with. Our domain can't handle a blog so we have to do it similar to how Mike does - and ours hasn't launched yet, so I got some good confirmations to work with so we maximize the opportunity as best possible given our limitations.
So, thanks for asking, Mike. And, thanks for answering, Dr. Pete!
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RE: Troubleshooting Drop in Rank - could it be one of these?:
A lot of SEO can be undone/is reversible; the kicker is it's easier to go down faster than it is to get it back up. Changing things doesn't automatically (even when done correctly) mean you won't see a drop before a pick up. Google claims to be moving away from "exact" matches in keywords and more toward understanding content (example: degrees and certifications often have to do with acquiring knowledge and learning).
My advice? Page title is one of the most important things Google looks at; make your count. If you are trying to do multiple things with it (location/keywords/NLP), then you have to wait out to see if Google figures it out.
I have seen cases where pages can still rank even without an exact title/content match, but since you've noticed a decline, reconsider consistency across your optimization and content. BTW, as a user, NLP doesn't tell me what NLP is - only the acronym is used and that's not necessarily a good thing. (Ex: GHS? Greenfield High School or globally harmonized system.) How does Google know if your content is relevant to a searcher if it's not clear what NLP stands for?
Also, check the technical and make sure there's no weird coding or broken somethings that could also be in the way. Good luck!
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RE: Seomoz suggetions implemented but keyword rankings dropping.
Ranking don't always increase right away (although it's ironic that they seem to drop fast, eh). Google will need to recrawl and reprocess your information. SEO "stuff" doesn't always make sense - and, while I am sure you did everything correctly, there could be something else going on.
As Stephan posed, if you are willing to share your URL, someone may be able to peak and see if they notice something you haven't.
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RE: Dealing with a category page that is optimised & ranks for same keyword as homepage
Deeper pages that rank help lift the authority of the main URL/domain. (Think like a pyramid; the more "voted" content you have on your site, the better.) Obviously for you, links to your main URL (which can often be the easiest to get) should be manageable for you to achieve. Good luck!
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RE: Dealing with a category page that is optimised & ranks for same keyword as homepage
Google sometimes will do this if it thinks that the deeper page (in this case) is a more relevant to the search query. And, optimizing is merely a way to indicate to Google what you want them to think a page is about; there's no promise that Google will agree.
Even with a small website, something outside of the homepage will rank - Google will crawl the site and offer up additional pages to searchers if they think there's good content there, regardless if you intentionally optimized said page or not. Trying to block out all the other pages isn't necessarily the best strategy. Rather than look at how your other pages work against you, look at how they can work for you. If you didn't put a no index tag on the page and it's already ranking, that's not a solution that works best for after the fact (but something to keep in mind as the site grows).
Sounds like part of the problem is that even with a few pages you cannibalized by trying to only use one keyword/variation. Even if the content isn't 100% the same, Google can interpret it as similar enough. Dr Pete did an excellent blog that may be able to offer some insight. I'll preface that he wrote about duplicate content, however it goes through when to use things like canonicals (not something that fits your case) so it may be helpful to at least read up and confirm what won't fix it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world (he specifically mentions how canonicalizing your site to one URL can do lots of damage).
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RE: How to best use our blog posts for SEO?
I'm working on something similar right now and have a few random thoughts: I'm not a fan of using the same content; aside from duplicate content issues (and nobody wants to deal with those messes), what's the value for end users? Why read the blog if it's going to be on the site? Or, why have a blog if you're going to put the same stuff (even if it's only some of it) on the site? Obvious, but for a successful blog it's critical.
Linking from the blog to the site, etc. makes a lot of sense for SEO/link juice and there's plenty of benefit there.
It's not a one-course-of-action scenerio. I've been building the business case for how we should handle ours since our site technology doesn't allow for hosting a blog. Sometimes it a bit of the lesser of the evils, but ultimately there's still plenty of good to get from it.
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RE: Backlinks vs Incoming links
I'll only chime in on Google: they don't like to show you everything. Across their products, they (at best) give you only a sampling, so even if numbers appear low that's not necessarily an indication it's true. The data I get from Analytics often is not the same as what feeds into Omniture; my takeaway is that these are indicators, not facts, to work with and make intuitive decisions.
Some of the other responders mentioned some other tools/options - variety is always good as, quite frankly - not one tool is perfect. You're on the right track and are doing your due diligence and that's what matters the most.
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RE: Need Help with MAGENTO - URL rewrite
I'm not a Magento expert by any means - I had a similar situation and the first thing my IT asked me was about where the files were stored and how they were layers as that determines how many subfolders down the info is and the path that has to be taken to get the content there. Meaning, I couldn't just rewrite my URLs, we had to look at how our data was stored in folders and where the folders were accessible first.
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RE: Does it make sense to go after broad search with less competition vs. narrow search with very high competition?
I think EGOL makes some great points, especially about content vs product/sales. And, given that I work on an incredibly complex site that often poses many SEO challenges, here's how I happen to look at it:
- Low volume words that are highly competitive you hope would mean a more targeted audience. (So, not throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.) One issue: if it's, let's say 100 searches a month, then the best you can hope for is a percentage of that.
- Fact is, not everyone who may be looking for a "lockout tagout custom procedure" may search for that long tail. They may just search for "LOTO" - so, I have selected to build a keyword/SEO strategy that build long tail into short tail/broad terms.
- Also, what I have noticed is that even with the short tail, our bounce rates haven't taken a hit, perhaps because the meta descriptions give enough info away so people can tell before the click if we may be right for them.
- And, our rankings for a section where we did a much better pyramid build with keywords/content/like subjects has steadily improved in visibility - giving me hope that if you can manage the technical with understanding what Google wants (good, relevant content), it works.
Good luck!
Andrea