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When you run this page through the rich snippet testing tool, it says the page doesn't contain authorship markup.

Problem is, a look at the code shows rel = author has been properly added, and the author has listed the domain as a site he contributes to. 

Hopefully someone in the forum can tell me what I'missing? Why isn't authorship effective here?

Thanks Alan,

Sure, here is the site map: http://www.nationalbankruptcyforum.com/sitemap_index.xml

As far as noindexing pages is concerned, I always use noindex, follow, but choose to noindex category and author archive pages as I think they can cause duplicate content/ Panda issues.

John

After upgrading design and theme on a relatively high traffic wordpress site, I created an XML site map through Yoast SEO since WP Engine didn't allow the old XML site map plugin I was using.

A site:www.mysite.com search shows Google is indexing about 1,100 pages on my site, yet the XML site map I submitted shows "458 URLs submitted and 467 URLs indexed."

These numbers are about 1/2 of what they should be. My old site map had about 1,100 URLs and 965 or so indexed (used noindex on some low value pages.)

Any ideas as to what may be wrong?

All,

I manage a site that unfortunately crashed due to a server issue in late October for about 3 hours.

Prior to the crash, traffic was the best it had ever been in the 3+ year history of the site. As you might expect, since the crash traffic has gone gradually down and is now about 15% off pre-crash numbers.

I understand that when a site crashes, it disrupts the crawling process and can disrupt traffic (in my case rich snippets were thrown off for days) but would love to hear experiences any of you have had in similar situations.

How much did traffic drop after a crash? When did it recover? Other thoughts?

Thanks,

John

Thanks Miriam, that was my concern as I mentioned above.

Thanks Oleg, my thought was that since domain authority plays a role in local, it could hurt, but I appreciate the feedback.

John

All,

One of my client's sites was hit by Penguin. The business has lost almost all of its organic rankings but is still holding on for a handful of local searches for some of its satellite offices.

We've built a new site and are slowly building domain authority.

My question is this: at what point do I swap out the new site's location URL for the old URL in Google places?

I don't want to risk the existing local placement which is all they have left for the time being.

Thanks,

John

All,

The non www version of a site I own redirects to the www version.

Recently, WMT began showing a big spike in 404 errors (1,000+) on the non www version of the site.

Site traffic is off about 15% since the spike in 404 errors. There was also a brief period about two weeks ago,  where the site went down due to an issue with the code that has now been resolved.

Any ideas how WMT is showing 404 errors on redirected pages?

Thanks,

John

All,

Open site explorer is showing a very spammy link profile for one of my clients, however, when I click through to the actual pages I don't see the links or even the anchor text.

The client has not hired anyone to do clean up on the site and is not yet aware of the links.

Has anyone had similar experiences?

John

All,

Would love to hear from the community on the issue of 2 rich snippets appearing on the same page, will one take precedence in the SERP?

For example, I am working with a client who has authorship markup on his homepage, we are going to add to that schema markup for an introductory video. Will the video snippet or authorship snippet display? Will both display?

All,

What is the best way to deal with a home page that has the /index.html at the end of it? 301 redirect to the .com home page?

Just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

Thanks in advance.

No, I haven't. That was my suspicion as well. It is too strange.

Can a competitor do negative SEO on one page or URL to get it de-indexed?

Hello Everyone,

Under normal circumstances, new posts to my site are indexed almost instantly by Google. I know this because an occasional search with quotation marks surrounding the 1st paragraph of text displays my newly published page. I use this tactic from time to time to ensure contributors aren't syndicating content.

My question is this: I've noticed over the last day or so that my newly published articles are not yet indexed. For example, an article that was published over 24 hours ago does not appear to be indexed yet. Is this cause for concern? Is there an average wait time for indexation? XML issue?

Thanks in advance for the help/insight.

As far as answering the question of length of filing time periods, we absolutely do that. I appreciate the feedback nonetheless.

After implementing the content efficiency tool contained in this great bog post: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/actionable-web-analytics-custom-reports-advanced-segments/

I was able to see that the average time on the page is almost 3 minutes. Further, I now see why my old getclicky stats (29%) bounce were so low. See this post:

http://getclicky.com/blog/214/why-clickys-new-bounce-rate-is-the-best-in-the-biz

Clicky calculates a bounce as someone who leaves immediately, if a user stays longer than 30 seconds, its not a bounce in clicky. I still plan to implement some of these suggestions (and appreciate the ass kicking), but ironically, the very first comment by designer boutique menswear was spot on. Users read the entire page, it answers their questions and they leave.

Phil, thanks for the feedback and taking the time, no offense taken at all. I am definitely going to incorporate some of these suggestions.

Thanks. Traffic is national, and mostly search driven. We get about 25,000 monthly unique visitors to the site.

Thanks for the candid feedback. Good suggestions.

This page on my site has a high bounce rate (around 90%)  despite being right on point for the search queries that lead visitors to it (i.e. keyword data shows visitors are searching for this information exactly). Also, Google keeps giving the page good placement and it receives a good bit of traffic.

Anyone have thoughts as to why the bounce rate is so high? Feel free to offer candid criticism.

Delton, thanks for the answer. I'm using a few browser testing tools to look into the IE issues. What IE issues have you run into?

Thanks Nicola. Clicky has a "spy" feature where you can watch the visitors who come to your site in real time. I didn't do it obsessively, but i did utilize spy frequently. What I saw was solid engagement, either a second/third pageview or a good bit of time on the site.

Looking back over a 9 month period tracking analytics with getclicky my site showed a 29% bounce rate, with only about 1/4 of visitors spending 1 minute or less on my site.

I've recently implemented GA (removed old clicky code) and although traffic is strong, my site now shows a bounce rate of about 82%. Engagement stats also show that 82% of visitors spend between 0-10 seconds on my site.

My site is built on Wordpress and the GA tracking code wasn't placed directly in the footer, my developer built a field in the admin area to insert the UA number which automatically adds the code to all pages. I've checked the code and the tracking seems to appear on all pages.

I took a look at AW Stats. It corroborates GA and says that 80% of visitors are spending 0-30 seconds on the site.

Potential issues/clues:

browser tests show small loading problems in Internet Explorer 7,8,9 (the phone number at the top of the header loads on the wrong side of the page) and major issues in Internet Explorer 6 (site doesn't load at all in IE 6). The thing is no one who uses IE 6 is coming to the site.

Second, the site gets a grade of C in YSlow, it's not lightning fast at the moment. GA is showing average page load of 2.4 seconds, but don't think either of these issues should cause an 82% 0-10 seconds engagement number.

My site is content rich/focused with very minimal advertising. Content is accessible well above the fold.

My question:

Does the fact that AW Stats and GA agree mean that those numbers are accurate, or is there a bug I should be looking for? How to explain the clicky numbers?

Thanks James. So, if it were you, you would not simply let the pages be crawled without utilizing one of the tactics mentioned above?

All,

I have a  site built on WordPress with directory software (edirectory) on the backend that houses a directory of members. The Wordpress portion of the site is full of content and drives traffic through to the directory. Like most directories, the results pages are thin on content and mainly contain links to member profiles.

Is it best to simply no index the search results for the directory portion of the site?

Thanks for the great answer Miriam!

All,

I'm working on a duplicate Google places listing issue. One of the listings is accurate, verified and has been reviewed by quite a few customers. However, we have a problem with an old address that still shows up in Google maps and seems to be the cause of poor performance for the accurate listing.  The old address listing was deleted but may not have been removed using best practices based on what I've been able to read here at SEO Moz.

The old address listing has been flagged by Google with a notation: “this place is permanently closed.” My question is what happens next? Do listings that have been flagged as permanently closed eventually drop out of the search results Or do I need to take additional action?

It appears that once a listing has been flagged as permanently close you can no longer report a problem so that route seems to be unavailable.

I think the amount of link juice that will flow from the acquired site will be a function of:

1. How conspicuous your link building becomes

2. Where the sites are hosted

If your acquired site is hosted on the same server as your current site my opinion is that you won't experience much value from the additional links as the search engines can identify ownership information as well as websites that exist for the sole purpose of linking to one another. Consider hosting on different servers, hence different IP addresses, and even this may not stop Google from eventually realizing that you own both sites.

Similarly, 100 new links from your acquired site will raise red flags and won't do much to advance your existing site.

I'd link the two sites strictly where it will benefit your readers (i.e. where a reader of the acquired site will benefit from or be interested in content on your existing site). Bottom line: don't overdo it and link for your readers.

Just my opinion

OK, great idea, but how much must I change in order for Google to see the content as a unique product?

All,

We used to allow users of our legal information site to syndicate content that was published in identical form on their blogs and, in some cases, other sites as well. No surprise that post-Panda, we're not ranking for those syndicated posts, they offer very little value.

We still boast a very nice library of original content that drives traffic, however, I'm concerned that those lingering syndicated posts are bringing down our overall domain authority/credibility. Right now, syndicated posts account for roughly 25%-30% of overall site content.

I'd like your opinions as to whether I should:

1. Delete the syndicated posts and 301 to an original page;

2. Do nothing

3. Do something I've yet to think of

Any insight is welcomed!

John

All,

I operate a Wordpress blog site that focuses on one specific area of the law. Our contributors are attorneys from across the country who write about our niche topic. I've done away with syndicated posts, but we still have numerous articles addressing many of the same issues/topics. In some cases 15 posts might address the same issue. The content isn't duplicate but it is very similar, outlining the same rules of law etc.

I've had an SEO I trust tell me I should 301 some of the similar posts to one authoritative post on the subject. Is this a good idea? Would I be better served implementing canonical tags pointing to the "best of breed" on each subject?

Or would I be better off being grateful that I receive original content on my niche topic and not doing anything?

Would really appreciate some feedback.

John

I run a forum website built on Wordpress. We're about two years old. The theme of the site is a directory of attorneys, with each directory listing having its own blog account on our site. Through this platform, we receive 75-80 blog posts now every month of varying quality from our users.

QUESTION: A good number of the blogs published on our site are also published on the attorney's law firm site as well (they're syndicating on our site). Will this hurt our site in light of Panda? A lot of the syndicated content is very well written and insightful.

By contrast, Will non-syndicated but average to below average posts hurt our site?

The authors almost always link back to their firm site.

Would love some feedback on whether we should be happy about the syndicated content or whether we should potentially ban it?

Sure, it's http://www.nationalbankruptcyforum.com. Thanks for the help.

Removal of an old getclicky code (and installation of new tracking code) from my site after some changes resolved inaccuracies in my page view/bounce rate information.

Prior to adding the correct getclicky code, getclicky was showing 95% plus bounce rate on my site. I knew this was wrong because GA showed around 40%.

Ironically, now that my getclicky account is working (showing a 30% bounce rate), GA bounce rate is steadily climbing.

Is it best to just stick with one analytics account so that the codes don't conflict?

Is it possible to have two accurate analytics accounts at the same time?

All,

My site: http://www.nationalbankruptcyforum.com shows an average time spent downloading a page of 1,489 (in milliseconds)

We've had spikes of well over 3,000 and lows of around 980 (all according to WMT). I understand that this is really slow.

Does anyone have some suggestions as to how I could improve load times? Constructive criticism welcomed and encouraged.

EGOL, Thank you. A site:www.mysite.com search reveals over 1,400 indexed pages.

I've claimed both the preferred and non-preferred domain in WMT and the redirect is working. Non-preferred is redirecting to preferred. The preferred domain was showing over 900 URLs in web index yesterday.

Luckily, traffic isn't being impacted.

All,

Strange occurrence: My WM Tools shows 0 URLs in the web index. It was 930 something yesterday. Any ideas as to why? Any fixes?

I recently changed the preferred domain.

Any help would be appreciated.

When other sites link to your blog pages does it benefit the root domain or just the actual blog page that is linked to?

In other words, how page specific is the value of linking?

Hello Everyone,

Background: I recently decided to change the preferred domain settings in WM Tools from the non www version of my site to the www version. I did this because there is a redirect from the non www to the www and I've built all of my internal links with the www. Everything I read on SEO Moz seemed to indicate that this was a good move.

Traffic has been down/volatile but I think it's attributable mostly to a recent site change/redesign. Having said that the preferred domain change did seem to drop traffic an additional notch. I made the move two weeks ago.

Here is the question: When I google my site, the home page shows up as the site title without the custom title tags I've written. The page that displays in the SERP is still the non www version of the site.

a site:www.mysite.com search shows an internal page first but doesn't return the home page as a result. All other pages pop up indexed with the www version of the page.

a site:mysite.com (notice lack of www) search DOES SHOW my home page and my custom title tags but with a non www version of the page. All other pages pop up indexed with the www version of the page.

Any one have thoughts on this? Is this a classic example of waiting on Google to catch up with the changes to my tiny little site?

SEO Moz Community:

After twice changing directory software, I have a ton of 404 errors in Webmaster Tools (over 3,000). I've decided to do 301 redirects but can't manually enter in each 404 URL.

How can you redirect pages from the same folder on a mass scale?

For example, mysite.com/autos has hundreds of pages associated with it (/autos/ford, toyota etc.) How can you do a 301 that redirects all those pages without manually entering in each URL?

Site is built on Wordpress

Thanks Ryan. So, if most of the links (including all internal links) are built with the www format then it is wise to change preferred domain settings to www and redirect the non www to the www domain?

Am I likely to damage rankings/traffic by doing this? What happens if I just leave it as is?

Guys,

Thanks for the input. I just want to do what is best for traffic and the site. I don't want to do anything that is going to tank my rankings and visitors.

I don't get alot of type in traffic.

www is the main way the links have been built, why not just redirect those to the non www version?

I've seen some good threads developed on this topic in the Q&A archives, but feel this topic deserves a fresh perspective as many of the discussion were almost 4 years old.

My webmaster tools preferred domain setting is currently non www. I didn't set the preferred domain this way, it was like this when I first started using WM tools.

However, I have built the majority of my links with the www, which I've always viewed as part of the web address.

When I put my site into an SEO Moz campaign it recognized the www version as a subdomain which I thought was strange, but now I realize it's due to the www vs. non www preferred domain distinction.

A look at site:mysite.com shows that Google is indexing both the www and non www version of the site. My site appears healthy in terms of traffic, but my sense is that a few technical SEO items are holding me back from a breakthrough.

QUESTION to the SEOmoz community:

What the hell should I do? Change the preferred domain settings? 301 redirect from non www domain to the www domain?

Google suggests this: "Once you've set your preferred domain, you may want to use a 301 redirect to redirect traffic from your non-preferred domain, so that other search engines and visitors know which version you prefer."

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks everyone for the insights and for taking the time to help. I'm using the WP All in one SEO plugin and will continue to leave the tag pages set to noindex.

I have a wordpress blog with settings currently set so that Google does not index tag pages. Is this a best practice that avoids duplicate content or am I hurting the site by taking eligible pages out of the index?

Can someone recommend an excellent SEO who can perform a full site audit of my fairly large Wordpress site? The site receives about 14,000 visits per month but traffic is waining one month after a recent change. Need analysis of some funky stuff in my Webmaster tools and overall site review.

I run a blog/directory site. Recently, I changed directory software and, as a result, Google is showing 404 Not Found crawling errors for about 750 non-existent pages.

I've had some suggest that I should implement a 301 redirect, but can't see the wisdom in this as the pages are obscure, unlikely to appear in search and they've been deleted.

Is the best course to simply manually enter each 404 error page in to the Remove Page option in Webmaster Tools? Will entering deleted pages into the Removal area hurt other healthy pages on my site?

Thanks Alan,

There are over 700 crawling errors, can a 301 re-direct be performed globally or does each 404 error need a 301 implemented one by one?