Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Edreamis,

What you see in your SEOmoz campaign regarding canonical "errors" are basically notices from their crawler. Non of the online crawlers can tell you if there is a canonical issue, they can just warn you to check it, which is sometimes really helpful.

I believe all your pages have their canonical set to the same URL (I have checked aprox. 10 and this was the conclusion) so basically this is what SEOmoz is also trying to tell you with their canonical notices.

I wouldn't worry about it.

Gr.,

Istvan

Hi Christian,

Every single tool has it's own index and indexing procedure. Some have a better link discovery than others. This specifically doesn't mean that a tool in general is better than the other one.

Before paying for any tool, I believe you should make a research for what are you going to use that specific tool.

It might be, that ahrefs, majestic have better link discovery, but Moz is better on the on-site issue discovery... and it helps you resolve that issue quite fast.

If you would like to know more about how OSE link discovery works, you can read more about it in Moz's help hub: http://moz.com/help/guides/research-tools/open-site-explorer (check the FAQ also).

I hope this clears up some questions you had.

Gr., Keszi

Hey,

Focus on quality vs. quantity. Your competitor might be collecting links from every scratch website, but if you focus on quality, with time you will beat him.

Gr.,

Istvan

P.S. If you are going to pay for poor quality links... Why would your website rank better?

Hi Jose,

The canonical "Warning" is a notification. Tools cannot tell which is the original page, but can alert you that you have a canonical link on the specific URL.

With this report and a little Excel work you can double-check your canonical implementation.

Greetings, Keszi

Hi,

I'd completely deny access for robots to the subdomain. For this I would create a robots.txt for the subdomain (place it in the folder of the subdomain) which would state the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

This way your content from the subdomain won't be crawled by search engines -> no content duplication issue for search engines.

Gr., Keszi

Hi JJ,

The usage of canonical tag on the document could help you out.

For ex. in the file: 24%22-Sting.html you can insert the canonical tag

You should insert the canonical tag before the .

This way you will exclude the following pages to be indexed:

| www.joannalark.com/store/products/24"-Sting.html?setCurrencyId=1 |
| www.joannalark.com/store/products/24"-Sting.html?setCurrencyId=6 |
| www.joannalark.com/store/products/24"-Sting.html?setCurrencyId=7 |

Also you will transfer the "link juice" from these pages and focus only on one page: 24%22-Sting.html

I hope it helped,

Istvan

Hi,

I'd go for redirect all the pages. Even if doesn't have 1 link (external), but until it is not an orphan page, it still got some value from internal linking.

That is my personal opinion.

Gr., Keszi

Atul,

in long term you can find duplicate content if you don't prevent it. (just because there might be some path problem).

For ex.

you have product A that can be reached through Cat. A or Cat. B, so you will have two paths:

example.com/catA/prodA

example.com/catB/prodA

Which will be the same product reached from two pages -> two different URls with same content -> duplicate content

Regarding Frames:

Currently you have 1 URL because of the frames.

If you would go for 1 page for each product, then you could optimize better the content for the specific keywords.

Istvan

Hi Ravi,

I personally use Screaming Frog to create the sitemaps. I create an advanced exclude/include list for the crawler, then run a crawl on my website and export the sitemap.

After the sitemap is created I double check it in an editor like notepad++

I hope this will work out for you too.

Keszi

Hi Dave,

I can't give you a top 10 list, since there are a lot of factors that are very important.

But you can check for a very good list here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

I hope that will help,

Istvan

In any case, I would recommend an onsite audit. You can do it yourself, or ask an outsider in order to get a fresh perspective of your website.

Let me know, if you need help.

Greetings, Keszi

Hi Shaz,

When you are loading http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref=12345, you are basically loading http://www.mysite.com/products.php.

In order to resolve the duplicate content issue for each product page you could insert a canonical pointing to itself OR you could eliminate the duplicates by adding the affiliate parameters into Google Webmaster Tools -> Site Configuration -> URL parameters. This way you will tell Google what that specific parameter is.

Or you could use both (if it is a large website, it is advised to do so).

I hope that helped,

Istvan

Hey,

there are so many things that could influence your rankings that is hard to tell if it is only from the links, or there are other factors also.

If you see a traffic drop from a specific date, then you could check for the Panguin tool from Barracuda: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

And if the traffic drop is on a specific update date, then you could investigate that specific update, and start from there.

Let me know, if you have further questions.

Keszi

Hi David,

There is a really good mozinar about Advanced Wordpress SEO: http://moz.com/webinars/advanced-wordpress-seo

I know it is from 2013, and it might not look fresh, but I remember listening it and getting a lot of good tips on how to handle your wordpress website. (Also tags, archive pages, etc.)

It is less than one hour, and it does worth watching it.

I hope it will help you identify and resolve these issues on your website.

Good luck! Keszi

Hi Simon,

I will quote from: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6066468?hl=en

1. Fetch as Google can’t currently fetch your URL because the server took too long to reply.

OR

2. Fetch as Google cancelled your fetch because too many consecutive requests were made to the server for different URLs.

Note the URL is not unreachable for all of Google-- it is just unreachable for the Fetch as Google simulation tool.

Keszi

Hi Emerald,

I would recommend you two very good White-Board-Fridays by Rand Fiskin:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-link-metrics-should-i-use-part-1-of-2-whiteboard-friday

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-link-metrics-should-i-use-part-2-of-2-whiteboard-friday

In these two Rand talks about a few tricks and tips how to use the link metrics.

I believe if you watched these videos you will gain the answer to your question.

I hope that helped,

Istvan

Hi Darren,

And welcome back to the community!

You can start at the help hub, they have quite some information for you: http://moz.com/help

I am quite sure you will find most of your answers there. And when you do struggle, do not hesitate to ask

Gr., Keszi

Hi Cody,

image alt tags serve as anchor text if you use images as links.

I hope that answered your question.

Gr.,

Istvan

Hi there,

Just check the answer from the following question: https://moz.com/community/q/unable-to-crawl-after-301-permanent-redirect-how-to-fix-this.

Jordan Railsback describes the issue, and how to fix it.

Matt, thanks for the credits!

double thumbs up on your statement regarding link building: "remember that link building is always about quality, not quantity."

Gr.,

Istvan

Hi Rusty,

Usually when I am seeking for the entrance keywords I am checking on Google Analytics. It gives me a better retrospective. But that doesn't mean you cannot do that with seoMoz.

Still on GA sometimes I have found some quite interesting data to work with.

Istvan

Hey Garry,

Firstly I would start contacting these websites and kindly ask for a link removal (make sure to keep the archives of these messages in case of submitting for reconsideration).

Note, that you can handle the links that you have on your site, but you cannot those which are on other websites, owned by other companies.

If they do not respond with on the link removal, you can point out the message archives while resubmitting.

Good luck!

Istvan

Hi there,

I have a question for you:  what content do you have on the products pages?

I am asking this, because I have seen some websites which produced very cool "how to" articles and focused less on the product pages. I would focus more on creating better content on the product pages, then focusing how to draw back the existing rankings.

I hope that will help in some way!

Good luck,

Istvan

Hi Marcel,

Let us not forget that in order to be able to rank with your website, you will have to give the possibilities for Search Engines to make 3 steps: 1. Crawl 2. Index 3. Rank

One of the best solutions that I have seen for your case is what Specialized Bikes uses (www.specialized.com

So As I have seen they have an IP sniffing on the main address only: www.specialized.com which will then redirect you to your location's store (for me it is http://www.specialized.com/ro/en/home/ for a person from the US it should be http://www.specialized.com/us/en/home/ and so on for each country which they have specified).

This is good, because then in Google Webmasters Tools they can create separate profiles for each folder: /ro/ /us/ /fr/ etc.

This means that they can still create a sitemap.xml for each of the "stores" and they can submit the sitemaps from Google Webmaster's Tools and avoid crawling issues. (And if you check via proxy different local Google results, you will see that they still rank quite good).

The problem comes with the same language content on different countries where you could:

1. insert Hreflang
2. get local some nice LOCAL links for both

(at least this is what I would try to do)

Now to respond your question, I quote:

1- which redirect should we use? 301, 302?

A: This wont be a temporary redirect, so be sure to use 301! 302 redirect will retain the "link juice" on the old version. For reference check the following article of Dr. Pete: http://moz.com/learn/seo/http-status-codes

If we choose 301, then which version of the site will get the link juice? (i.e, /ca-en or /us-en?)

A: Depends who do you redirect to.

P.S. As you mentioned you will have duplicate content issue because of us-en and ca-en, which Ideally it shouldn't be a problem:

“Duplicate content and international sites

_Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries.”  _Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192

if we choose 302, then will the link juice remain in the original links? is it healthy to use 302 for long term redirections?

I wouldn't advise you to do so. If it is a permanent redirection, let it be a 301.

So before making the huge step, I would advise you to go through some steps:

1. create a full list of incoming links
2. Sort your list of links for relevance, quality and geo-location
3. Make the change in the URL system
4. Start contacting your most important linking partners and kindly ask them to change the old links into the new versions (from example.com to example.com/us/en/ or if it is a French link from Canada then from current version to the example.com/ca/fr/ version and so on)

I know it is really a huge work, but it will grow its fruits.

Good luck!

Istvan

I totally agree with you Matt.

Nowadays even Google's Keyword suggestion tool is crap. Just check on what Rand talked about in a blog entry here on SEOmoz: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/be-careful-using-adwords-for-keyword-research

If it was me, I would go for Matt's solution: allocate time for keywords research, try to figure out how you potential visitor is thinking.

Gr.,

Istvan

Like I have mentioned in my response, that is one case.

But I must agree with Monica, you should place the value to the searchers&User Experience.

Hey OT,

the canonical notice will show up as soon as you have a canonical on the page.

SEO Tools cannot analyze if the canonicals are set up correctly or not, they can just warn you if a canonical is there or not. The example link you provided is ok.

Gr.,

Istvan

Each search engine has it's own search algorithm. In some cases things are similar, but I do not think they can be correlated.

Hi John,

Here is a Q/A that was answered by Ryan Kent.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/correlation-between-google-and-yahoo-indexed-pages

Maybe that helps.

Istvan

Hi Andy,

It is important to know that Moz crawl gives you an error/notification about a specific issue, to highlight that one or more elements could influence your search rankings. All tools can do, is to highlight information for you.

The way they highlight an issue (high importance, low importance, etc.) is based on the big data they are able to analyze, and how they have experienced how these data correlates with the rankings from their data.

On the other hand having your competition having the same issue, might be a signal that it is a point on your website where you could do better than your competition.

This is how I interpret their data.

I hope this was helpful.

Gr., Keszi

Yoast plugin -> Edit files. That easy!

Hi Michele,

First of all, I would try to include it in sitemap. Than I'd do the following:

1. For all the cars that you have sold, I'd try to implement a noindex, follow (and keep the page alive for the following few days, giving time to Google to crawl these URLs again).
2. Every day a sitemap should be generated, then pinged (check Google's "best practices for sitemaps" article: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ro/2014/10/best-practices-for-xml-sitemaps-rssatom.html and the ping protocol: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#submit_ping)

That's my personal approach. But might be that others come up with better ideas.

I hope it helped.

Gr., Keszi

In my belief, working on quality, expecting to have link on sites that are really big fish in the industry, eventually will pay out.

Yes, there are still a high number of websites which rank well with those links, but time will come when they will regret that.

So don't worry about your principles just keep up the good work.

Greetings,

Istvan

Hey!

Actually Rand made a very nice Whiteboard Friday about this topic: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

I personally prefer to use subfolders, had good experience with it.

Gr., Keszi

I believe what you are missing is the pagination markup link rel="prev"/rel="next". This is why all the paginated content is indexed, although you have a canonical link set up.

Gr., Keszi

Hey,

IMO when it comes to redirects/merges on a website, the first thing that you want to ask yourself, whether the content that you are merging is more related to your homepage or inner page?

What I am trying to point out is, if you have two websites: one which was selling independent products/product groups, the other the branded website, I would create a new inner page/select an existing inner page that already would host the new products on the branded website and redirect it towards that page.

If we are talking about two websites that were hosting almost the same products, then I would go for a more detailed redirect, such as independent product pages get redirected to their correct version on the selected domain. If this scenario cannot be applied, only then I would redirect whole domain to the homepage.

Like mentioned above, this is my opinion, but I hope it helps you.

Gr., Keszi

So the question really is, what kind of page template does the homepage use in order to pull in the data. We would need to modify that in order to put in the pagination.

P.S. Sorry for the late reply.

Hi Carlos,

SEO in general isn't a black&white, "I implement and it is working" science. The results will appear with time.

If I had to compare SEO I'd do it like this: It is an ongoing&endless chess game, with unlimited number of players who can move at the same time. And there is Google from the other hand, who can change the rules of the game at any point.

Seeing results in this industry (or as you have mentioned it: SEO time) will be quite different with every project. Because it doesn't only depend on you and/or Google. There are the other websites who are constantly evolving and developing.

I hope you will see your results soon.

Keszi

After some research made, I have found the following code, which could be implemented in the theme's functions.php:

function rel_next_prev(){global $paged;if( get_previous_posts_link()){?>
}if( get_next_posts_link()){?>
}}
add_action('wp_head','rel_next_prev');?>

Try it out, and let me know when it is live. We can then check if it works well or not.

Gr. Keszi

Hi Kelly,

There are a few nice articles about this topic. I will point out a few, maybe these checklists will help you determine what could have gone wrong with the redesign:

• http://searchengineland.com/8-necessary-seo-steps-during-a-website-redesign-65470
• http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-website-redesign-checklist/
• http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-13220778-pdf/docs/ebooks/10-step-checklist-website-redesign.pdf
• http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2400414/checklist-launching-a-site-redesign

I hope it helps! Keszi

Ivan, correct that homepage is a "static page", which has a custom template in your theme directory.

That template has a loop which is going to show your latest articles on the homepage. That's part of the file you need to edit.

Gr., Keszi

Shaq, the reason it is not higher is, because it wasn't updated at all since 2013.

Regarding DA, check again the http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority link that I have provided in my previous answer.

Moz clearly states, that you can not directly(or it can be a hard task to) influence this metric (check the SEO best practices part in the bottom of the article).

Quote:
"Unlike other SEO metrics, Domain Authority is difficult to influence directly. It is made up of an aggregate of metrics (MozRank, MozTrust, link profile, and more) that each have an impact on this score. This was done intentionally; this metric is meant to approximate how competitive a given site is in Google.com. Since Google takes a lot of factors into account, a metric that tries to calculate it must incorporate a lot of factors, as well.

The best way to influence this metric is to improve your overall SEO. In particular, you should focus on your link profile—which influences MozRank and MozTrust—by getting more links from other well-linked-to pages."

Hey Melissa,

If you are going to use a subfolder on your company page as: www.company.com/canada/ then you will benefit from some link juice from your company site.

But in long term, I would go for ccTLD. Although you will have to build the "link-reputation" from almost zero, you can better optimize it for the specific country (in our case Canada).

Also it would be better to gain a hosting package that is based in Canada, many small factors, BUT 1+1 makes 2, right?

I hope it helped,

Istvan

SEO tools are like personal assistants:

• you will never find the "best"
• they never do your job (only assist you/speed you up)
• if you have the budget to have more, you get more work prepared by them

That is my shortlist

I personally use Screaming Frog + Moz, + Majestic + Xovi

I hope this helps.

Gr., Keszi

Hi Alexander,

In your webmaster tools you will have to register your sub-folder as well, so you will have the following:

1. Your website

2. Your website/France

3. Your website/Germany

now you can adjust the sub-folder's geo-targeting to the desired country

I hope this helped,

Istvan

Hi Thomas,

I remember that there was a mozinar (https://moz.com/webinars/advanced-wordpress-seo) that helped me a lot answering these kind of questions. I think that would be useful for you too.

Regarding your question: if it is useful for the visitors, but you believe it causes (in any way) duplicate content.... I would set them to noindex, follow.

If you have the time, watch the mozinar, it describes the issue quite in detail.

I hope it will help you.

Keszi

I am with EGOL, unfortunately there are a lot of comment spammers, and what you can do, is just to simple delete all the time the spam comments, or don't allow any comments.

Regarding competing with these guys, I would say, that until you play fair one day it will pay out. Google, Bing and other search engines too are working hard on competing with spam and "delivering best results". Until you, I or anyone else really focuses this, I wouldn't be much worried regarding these low quality companies. There will be always some who think they can earn fast money, without putting anything on the table. But these guys will raise and fall... again-again-and-again, but those who "play fair" will remain up constantly.

These are my thoughts, I know it is kind of idealistic....

Istvan

Hi Alec,

There are various tools that you can use, but when it comes to the real "deal" I usually go for Screaming Frog + Excel. Back, when I had a Moz Pro account, I remember their crawls provided quite a good data to start with.

This is how I usually do it (doesn't mean that there are no good tools for SEO).

The most important IMO is to collect data, as much data as possible. Understand it. Prioritize it. Then take action accordingly. (I think Moz Pro is a perfect tool that can help).

I hope it has helped.

Gr., Keszi

Alan, I agree with you on this one.

But if there is no followed link to the pages then it kind of stops the search engines to reach these pages.

But we'll see as soon as we have any testing done on this issue.