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Hey Moz Fam!

I have a question regarding adding excerpts from guest posts/expert columns to your website. The reason this came up to begin with is we want to find a way to track ALL our social media posts engagement. When we share guest posts links, we obviously cannot track when someone clicks it since its not going to our own website. The idea was if we create an individual page with an excerpt from the guest post, then add a "read full post" button that links back to it, we could then instead share that excerpt post from our website to social media so we can track it. Then the user could go to view the full post on the actual guest article from there if they wish. We wanted to create a page titled "Media" and have all those posts categorized to fall on that page. Then canonicalize all of the individual posts to the top level media page.

My question is... we've spent a lot of time and money on creating pages with unique quality content and updating any thin content to make it not thin. These new excerpt pages will be thin content, is that going to negatively impact our SEO? We're not trying to rank these excerpt pages or anything. I just want to make sure that adding these excerpt posts with only 100-200 words each is not going to hurt our overall SEO strategy.

I've added our phone number and email address in the header settings in Divi. For whatever reason, when I'm editing the header elements I can see it, but when I view the website it's not showing... I cannot figure out what the issue is. I've never run into it before. Also, the menu looks different, it does not match what it shows in the header elements edit area vs live site.

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Thank you very much! I'll apply the canonical tag to the PPC pages and leave them to stay indexed. They do rank organically for a few keywords and gets leads, so I don't want to lose that. Is the Canonical URL just the "SEO" state page URL that I'm optimizing and want it to point too?

Okay, will the noindex impact our PPC ads? I'm guessing not...

What if I only applied the rel=canonical tags to the SEO state pages and left the PPC pages alone? I saw that you can apply a rel=canonical tag in SEO Yoast, but I don't know how to structure it.

Hi Moz Fam!

Question... we have two pages for each state. Both pages are used in our PPC campaigns. One of the two state pages is fully optimized for organic search. The page that's optimized for organic has 1,500-2,000 words, the other one has thin content. All the content is unique, nothing duplicate. We call one set of state pages that I optimized my SEO state pages, then the other ones are our PPC state pages.

Should I be setting a canonical tag to one of these pages to let Google know which one is the "master" page? (My SEO state page is the master) I've never used them, so I'm not sure what the right answer is for this.

Thanks!

Hi Kevin! What a great tool, thank you! I've bookmarked the transparency report website and will read the guide on the disavow tool. I appreciate it!

We keep getting links from the domain lyricswithoutmelody.org. Currently we have the most referring backlinks of all from them. I'm not sure what to do with it... is it hurting us? I know I can disavow them, but I'm afraid it will hurt since we have 472 total backlinks from the domain. Their trust flow is 9 and citation flow is 11.

Another option I was thinking is to block the domains IP from seeing our website, would that work? Just trying to figure out the best coarse of action... or if no action at all is best.

I've attached a screenshot of my top referring domains. The ones outlined in red I don't know who they are and if it's helping or hurting.

Moz Fam HELP!

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I can completely see where your coming from and agree! Thank you!

We have updated and added completely new content to our state pages. Our old state content is sitting in a our Google drive. Can I make these public to get them indexed and provide a link back to our state pages? In theory it sounds like a great link building strategy...

TIA!

I would be looking at more then just the spam score to determine if the directory link is worth it or not.

• Domain Authority
• Page Authority
• Spam Score
• Trust Flow
• Citation Flow
• Do/No Follow
• How may outbound links
• How relevant is the directory to your niche
• What are the directories back links?
• etc

Many more specs to consider than just the spam score. You may notice a slight decline in ranks after the jump, but that does not necessarily mean anything is wrong. Google is just settling your ranks after new backlinks. I would wait a few more weeks or so before adding any more to see what links stick and look further into their metrics to make sure there quality backlinks.

Spam score of 28 is extremely high, however I only show a 1 for your domain...

https://screencast.com/t/w1lKfTYa

Yext is great for local directories if you can afford it. Another alternative is Bright Local.

The old content is completely going to be rewritten, we're doubling the word count. The current verbiage will be reworded and updated, but won't be the same. We're being cautious regarding knowing what state specific keywords were ranking for currently so we know what keywords need to stay. We also have all the competitors pages that are ranking pulled to compare too as well.

So... no, we won't have any need for the content on our own website anymore.

We've only done one state page so far, we have the remaining scheduled out over the next few months. I would say we have about 4-6 pages per month being revamped.

I can use the one we just completed as an example to show you.

• Are new updated New York content
• Where I published the old content (published today, the author bio links back to our own New York page)

Hello Moz Fam!

I work in the insurance industry and we serve all 50 states. We have a state page for each state where the content is thin(ish). We're slowly revamping each page and hitting every talking point for that specific state. I've used multiple tools to come up with a content template and link building template for each page as well.

I spent 5 months last year proof reading all these pages. So the content is good, just not SEO good. I didn't have the team or resources to really optimize them all yet, now I do. My question is...  what should I do with the old content? I was thinking of publishing it to other platforms that we have a contributor account on and linking back to each state page with it. Of course, I would wait a few days for the search engines to index the new content so it wouldn't be duplicated on these platforms.

Good or bad idea?

Hello! I was wondering how other SEOs handles their annual content. We do well with ranking for our industry keywords with the year in the content. We have annual changes to publish and talk about each year. What do you do with the previous years content? Leave it, 301 redirect it or just revamp the same content so it updates to the current year?

I know what information I need to pull... I know I need APIs to do it... I just don't know how to pull it or where. I have tools like Screaming Frog, Scrapebox, SEMRush, Moz, Majestic, etc. I need to find out how to type in a query and pull the top 10 ranking specs like DA, PA, Root Domains, Word Count, Trust Flow, etc.

Here is a screenshot of info I manually pulled...

https://screencast.com/t/H1q5XccR8 (I can't hyperlink it... it's giving me an error)

How do I auto pull this info??

H1q5XccR8

Hey Moz Family!

I'm looking for a screen share platform, like gotomeeting, for our agents. However, we need one that does not require the other party to download anything. I know I came across it once... they sent me a link that prompted for a code and that was it. We work with seniors, half our problem is getting them to the right place on there computer. Having them download something to see their screen will be to hard.

Any recommendations?

Thanks!

Absolutely agree! Thank you!

Yes, that's pretty much what I'm doing. I just wasn't sure the proper way to pitch the news story to the new stations. Do I just say "we just published this press release today and feel it would be valuable to your audience" and send them a link???

Thank you for confirming my strategy is on the right track!

I'm currently setting up projects in Buzz Stream so that I can send out news tips and press releases to local news stations. Has anyone been able to do this successfully without signing up for an expensive press release distribution company like Newswire? If so... I would appreciate it if you could share an email template you use to send out your news tips and press releases to the local news stations.

Thank you!!!

Does Google determine how your permalink shows up in the search results or is that a setting on our end? I noticed most of our competitors have their permalink show up in their snippet results. Ours shows "knowledgebase" instead. I think seeing the keywords in the permalink helps with conversions.

https://screencast.com/t/fyFyNaWayajx

Thank you!!!! I've printed up your responses and applying your suggestions to my 2018 strategy. I've been using similar methods but this really breaks it down and gives me what I need to make an actual organized game plan going forward.

Yes, very nice work Roman, thank you! I really appreciate your research and well thought out response.

Using your example...

I don't have Ahrefs, we use SEMRush. Pretty sure they have the same features overall. I also use Long Tail Pro, MOZ, Majestic, etc.

How did you determine this---> "You'll need backlinks from ~32 websites to rank in top 10 for this keyword"

Also, what tool or strategy did you use to determine link prospects? Where these the backlinks of those ranking for the keyword? We have buzzstream, it's a great tool for link prospecting as well.

Regarding adding lists, info graphics, statistic numbers, etc... that's on my Q1 to do list for sure. We just hired an in house developer/designer who's going to help me with this.

Thank you again!

"Giving attribution links does not change the fact that they are duplicate and  thin content.  Why should Google index them?  They do not provide anything new to the web.  Google will either send these pages to the supplemental index or not index them at all.  If they are indexed they will eventually fall out of the index."

I can see your point on this... and obviously that's the case with mine since only the content that's unique seems to be staying indexed.

"Yes, but if you can get unique and valuable links, you will be better off getting them pointing straight at your main domain."

Yes, I usually only focus on our main domain. Constantly looking for high authority links and guest blog opportunities.

The strategy applied here is from SerpSpace syndication networks. From my experience, this strategy works well. It's not considered duplicate or thin content because you're giving an attribution link back to the original content. The blogspot pages that have indexed have shown to positively increase the page SERPs it's linking too within a day of indexing.

"And, the blogspot site will not pass any linkvalue to medicarefaq.com unless it has unique links into it from websites that are outside of your own network and not duplicates of websites that already link to medicarefaq.com."

Do you mean to get link value I need to have more authority backlinks to my blogspot or external links to other authority sites?

We have a few authority blogs that I manage to help increase our brand awareness and build power to our website. We have Blogspot, Wordpress, Tumblr & Typepad. Our content get's a summary syndicated to our authority blogs with an attribution link back to the original post. I also manually check them one a month to make sure it looks good and the content syndicated correctly. I even add unique content to these blogs once in awhile. I recently realized that the majority of the pages are not indexing. I added the blogs to our GSC & Bing webmasters and submitted the sitemaps. This was done on December 11th, as of now some pages indexed in Google and Bing says the sitemaps are still pending...

• Blogspot - 32/100 pages indexed
• Wordpress - 34/81 pages indexed
• Tumblr - 4/223 pages indexed
• Typepad - 3/63 pages indexed

Can anyone help me figure out why I can't get Google to index more pages or Bing to process the sitemaps timely?

I've spent the entire morning researching and editing our Schema code on an FAQ page. Does this look right regarding the breadcrumb Schema? There's two... the first one our developer put in the functions.php file so it goes across all our FAQ pages and the second one I added manually so that it breaks down each question & answer.

https://www.medicarefaq.com/faqs/when-can-i-buy-a-medicare-supplement-plan/

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.medicarefaq.com%2Ffaqs%2Fwhen-can-i-buy-a-medicare-supplement-plan%2F

So if an article is answering more than 1 query... or question... would we add more than 1 question schema to that page? Like if the article answered three different questions... would you add the question schema three times so that it sees each header as an answer to a question?

Yes, I have access to our Wordpress backend. I went through the plugin list and don't see which one, if any, is implementing our Schema markup. When I look at a specific pages text editor I don't see the script in there.

Thank you so much for all those resources! I've bookmarked them all!

My issue currently is I don't know how or where he implemented the schema on the site to edit/update it.

Is there a plugin you can recommend? I see a few options including:

• Schema App Structured Data
• Schema
• WP SEO Structured Data Schema
• All in One Schema Rich Snippets
• WPSSO

Our designer/developer recently implemented structured data on our pages. I'm trying to become more educated on how it works since I'm the SEO marketing specialist on the team and the one that writes and publishes the majority of our content. I'm aware it's extremely important and needs to be done, I just don't know how to do it yet.

The developer was on our team for over a year, we recently let him go. Now, I'm going through all the pages to make sure it's done correctly. I'm using the structured data testing tool to look at the pages and have been playing with the structured data markup helper.

I would REALLY appreciate it if one of my fellow MOZ fans & family can help me determine if it's done correctly. We do not currently have any schema plugs installed that I know of. So I'm not sure how he implemented the Schema code. I would like to know what I need to do moving forward to the additional content we publish as well as what to do to correctly implement Schema if not already.

When I manually look at one of our FAQ pages I see multiple schema data formats detected... I'm not sure if we're supposed to have multiple or just one----> https://www.screencast.com/t/TjHphL7jsI

I also noticed in the Question schema data for that same page... the accepted answer is empty. I would image that should have the short version of the answer to the question in it?--->https://www.screencast.com/t/e6ppXkhXd7QS

Here's a screenshot of our structured data info from Google search console---> https://www.screencast.com/t/KHj4BGgdrZ4m

HELP please!

• Our website consists of 25-30 "product" pages

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/plan-f/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/plan-f/

• We currently have about 75 FAQ pages and adding 4-6 per month. This is what brings in most our traffic.

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/faqs/2018-top-medicare-supplement-insurance-plans/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/faqs/2018-medicare-high-deductible-plan-f-changes

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/faqs/medicare-guaranteed-issue-rights

• We have 100 state specific pages (two for each state)

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/florida/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/florida/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/California/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/California/

• We have 20ish carrier specific pages

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/humana/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/mutual-of-omaha/

• Then we have about 30 blog pages so far and are publishing new blog posts weekly

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/blog/average-age-retirement-rising/

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/blog/social-security-benefit-increase-announced-2018

• https://www.medicarefaq.com/blog/new-california-bill-force-drugmakers-explain-price-hikes

Thank you for your responses! The QS did not decrease. Our hosting support said we had a setting wrong on their end that they had to correct. It was causing the website to go down due to being overloaded. Not sure if that would impact our CPC or not... does CPC go up if your site is having short outages? Or was that just a coincidence?

I'm the SEO guru... the owner is the PPC guru.

Roman, thank you so much for your response! We're on the exact same page, this was my thought process as well. Thank you for clarifying!

Not yet, we plan to do more site clean up but so far we've only implemented the changes to increase our page speed score. We used GTMetrix, Google Page Speed Test, Pingdom, etc to made the changes suggested that were impacting our score the most.

We recently moved our hosting provider over from WPEngine to Site Ground. We increased our page speed scores from D/F to a B this past week. However, we noticed an increase in our PPC cost per click due to the website speed being slower... we cannot figure out why this would happen. Has anyone else experienced something similar? A PPC landing page we have is---> https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/plan-a/

Hello Moz Friends!

I was wondering what the correct "SEO friendly" strategy is with badges and awards. We recently got BBB accredited and added their badge to the footer of the website. We also added a review badge from shopper approved to the footer. As I'm joining other communities, I see there's badges given to us. For example, Alignable. Great place for networking. They offer a badge that says "locals recommend us" or something.

Should I embed these badges onto our website someplace? Should I create a page for just badges or place them in the footer or sidebar widgets? What the best SEO practice for this?

Thank you!!

Yes, that makes perfect sense! That's exactly what I was looking for.

I will make the old content a draft and utilize it some place else.

Thank you!

I'm going through all our blog and FAQ pages to see which ones are performing well and which ones are competing with one another. Basically doing an SEO content clean up. Is there any SEO benefit to keeping the page published vs trashing it after you apply a 301 redirect to a better performing page?

Thank you! Yes, all of your suggestions are on my Q1 goals for neat year. I didn't build the website, a designer did. We're going to use Google Optimize for A & B testing of the homepage call to action. I definitely want to add a short form to the homepage to see how it converts. We're also moving our website off of WP Engine and onto Site Ground to start our overall speeding up of the website. We have a lot of cleaning up to do next year, speed is our priority. Also going to install AMP.

Not that I've noticed... I started with the company back in February and noticed it when I crawled the site with Screaming Frog. So they already had uppercase and lowercase permalinks back then. When I brought it to our developers attention they didn't seem to concerned. Then I saw something somewhere that discussed Google seeing them as potential duplicates. Which is when I posted to MOZ and got the response that it was fine since we have canonical URLs in place. So, it has not had any negative effect since I started that I can see. However, I don't know how to correct Screaming Frog from seeing as duplicate pages.

I was looking at our GSC internal links section and I saw that we have 901 internal links going to our compare rates form and 890 going to our homepage. At the end of most of our content I add a call to action to our compare rates form. Is this SEO friendly or should I have more pointing to the homepage and less pointing to our compare rates page?

I had the same issue in Screaming Frog and posted to Moz Q&A a few weeks ago about it that was resolved.

https://moz.com/community/q/uppercase-lowercase-reading-as-duplicate-permalinks

I've also seen a decent drop in our organic traffic the last two weeks, it started November 15th. Our longer tail keywords for our FAQs started to creep back up but our root high volume keywords show almost a 5% average position drop over the past 30 days. Our competitors did not experience this drop from my analysis and OSE tools. Nor am I able to find anything that we may have done to cause this. I'm assuming it's an algorithm update, just keeping my fingers crossed that our root high volume keywords start going back up sooner than later.

Gaston thank you so much!!! I appreciate your extremely fast responses and help with resolving this issue!

Yes, it seems that they are accessible...

https://www.medicarefaq.com/Medigap/

https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/

Should I do a 301 redirect for each page? I mean... that would be like a few hundred for us... ugh. Still not sure how this happened... my developer said possibly our SEO Yoast?? A quick Google search didn't show any issues with that.

There are no pages created for the permalinks that are capitalized, we did not create different URLs for these pages. We don't have any duplicate content on our website. When I put the permalink into Google it does show it capitalized in the permalink after it's loaded. Then when I put the same permalink that is not capitalized into Google it shows the same page. However, we most definitely did not create duplicate pages. So is Google seeing it as duplicate content then?

I cannot figure out if this is an actual SEO issue or just a crawl reader error. I use Screaming Frog to crawl my site and use their SEO features. When I look at page titles and duplicates it shows all our pages twice... some with 1 letter capitalized and the other not. I don't REALLY have duplicate permalinks do I?

I also noticed when I use some open site explorers and paste in both permalinks the specs will show for the permalink that's all lowercase but it won't find anything for the "duplicate" permalink that is capitalized.

Below I included a few screenshots.

Thank you Moz Fam!

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Google has been pushing out quality content algorithm updates the past month or so. We've been jumping all around but mostly positive jumps since we do produce quality content. I don't think anything is wrong, just riding the Google roller coaster. Give the SERPs a few weeks to settle before you make your next move.

I agree with Cesare, if your blog has been a big part of your website I wouldn't move it to a subdomain. You'll lose any authority you've built to your website with your blog content.

Agree, I love Screaming Frog!