If you can provide links to both, I could help you out - but without seeing your pages or any data, it's impossible to say. There are a lot of possible reasons for that.
Best posts made by Lumina
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RE: Why would my sub landing pages have a higher Moz Rank than my home page
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RE: What is Considered Duplicate Content by Crawlers?
I would add that there's is no text on any of those three pages - any "text" one would see there is actually just embedded in an image - which is a huge issue for a number of reasons:
- Search engines see that there's no text - a big no-no.
- You're getting practically no SEO value from the content that would be there, even if there isn't much.
- It's heavier this way - which makes load times slower.
I want to clarify that there are many, bigger issues with these pages - but as your question concerns only duplicate content, I'll leave all of that out for the time being. To summarize, Google, Yahoo, and Bing are just seeing some duplicate banners, sidebars, etc. and then some images in the body of your pages. Hence, duplicate content.
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RE: Self linking - loss of link juice?
Could you show us an example of what you're talking about? Depending on what kind of link, it may be innocuous (like example.com/# for referencing a different section of a page) or pointless and harmful (like if the page example.com/X has an in-text link to example.com/X).
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RE: Where are all of my on page links coming from?
After looking at the source code for your homepage, here are the anomalies I've found:
- A dozen or so links like https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ are in your header. I assume these are due to having built your site through them, but these will still count.
- The "Loving @ Your Best etc." image at the top is a link to the homepage, but so is "Home". That's a bit redundant.
- Each of your navigational items (couples therapy, counseling, etc) is an on-page link which is probably an unnecessary design choice.
- The biggest issue s that you have both your desktop and mobile links on this one source page. That's a big no-no; instead, you should have the page that's fetched determined by whether a user is on mobile or not, and then have a separate page for both. This is likely the biggest source of your headache here.
I hope that helps, Travis.
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RE: Need help fixing the duplicate content that keeps growing
You'll have to be a lot more specific. Try answering at least some of these questions so we can help you:
- What content is being duplicated?
- Where are the duplicates?
- Is this all internal (on your site only)?
- Are you receiving any duplicate content warnings from Moz, Google, etc.?
- In what way does it "keep[s] growing?"
- What kind of content is this?
Once you provide answers to some of these questions, I'm sure we'll be able to help you fix the issue.
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RE: What is the Best Keyword Placement within a URL for Inner Location Pages?
I would suggest not placing "widget-dealers" in any of the urls aside from the page that actually has the location search and bulleted list (which I'd assume is http://website.com/widget-dealers). Any state pages or location-specific pages could simply be structured as http://website.com/dealers/tennesee and http://website.com/dealers/tennesee/nashville respectively. This puts both the state and location closer to the start of the url; not to mention that shorter urls are generally better.
However, if you're adamant about using one of the 3 options outlined in your question, option 1 would logically be the correct structure as it tends from general to specific. The structure, from what I understand of your site, wouldn't make sense in the other two options.
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RE: Where to use which keywords...
I don't think this is something you should take any speculation about. I suggest doing concurrent A/B testing for these terms; meaning, you should optimize the page for Keyword A for a month or so and record the data, and the next month, optimize it for Keyword B to compare your KPIs. That way, you have hard data backing whatever decision you make.
If, however, you don't want to do any A/B testing, or have time constraints, (and I can't stress enough that this advice should only be taken under those conditions) choose the higher-volume keyword as your primary and the lower as your secondary keyword. Optimize, and leave it for a bit. After a while, tweak things more toward the lower and, if your KPIs improve, tweak again. If your key data points get worse, however, then it's fair to assume that the higher-volume keyword is better for your traffic and such.
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RE: Should we pay for this attorney directory?
From experience with clients of my own (for which we develop websites and counsel), I can say that paying for a spot on a blanket directory is usually not worth it. The ideology behind that is twofold.
- If you can pay for it, so can anyone else. That makes the intended value moot.
- It's a common misconception that all directories benefit SEO or presence. Some actually hurt SEO. I don't know if the one you've mentioned would help or hinder, but the first point still stands.
I suggest that if you join directories, you handle that process by either asking clients (past or current) how they found you, or by researching which directories - if any - tend to bring traffic to groups similar to yours.
As an aside, I'm always suspicious/wary of any website that's poorly designed, and martindale.com is no exception.
Good luck, and I hope this has been helpful for you!
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RE: How to show on Google Maps for specific areas close to me?
Yes, but I'd also make sure to do it in small bits at a time. Meaning, don't change everything at once. Make a small change, wait a bit to see the results, and if they're good, then make another small change. If the results of the first change aren't what you want, then rethink your keyword strategy and try something a little different!
Good luck! Give an update in a while if you can. I'd be interested to hear what happens.
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RE: New non-www. web address but the domain is the same
Dirk is correct. However, it's important that you also go into Google Search Console (formerly known as Webmaster Tools) and add the new version (or both if you have yet to use GSC). You can then tell Google which version of your site (www. or no) you consider the "proper" one, among other great things. You can ensure your 301s are working correctly, submit sitemaps, and check errors that Google may find.
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RE: Does Anchor Text in Links Count When Google Looks at Overall Keywords on the Page?
Anchor text and other link-related text will definitely count toward keywords and overall in content, as it's an item on the page. As to whether or not these would push your page toward being seen as stuffed, depends wholly on three things:
- Is the rest of your content heavy with that keyword?
- Do the pages to which they link have content that isn't absolutely related to the topic suggested in the anchor text?
- Are there a lot of links with anchor text like this?
If the answer to any of these questions is "yes", then you may want to reconsider things a touch. The short answer is, yes, the anchor text for links is counted as part of the content of a page, and therefore will effect all aspects to which content can be hinged.
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RE: Should we pay for this attorney directory?
I'm sorry if I didn't clarify - what I meant was that the money put toward that directory, be it a one-time payment or a residual, would almost always be better spent toward other marketing or SEO efforts. If this doesn't greatly effect your budget, then it's worth considering (especially if OSE say's it's a quality link).
Most of my customers are SMBs, so I tend to counsel against paid listings/directories - but I didn't take into consideration that you might not have a similar budget.
Let's append my answer to: if you have the money to test the value of this, then do it.
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RE: Description on Google+ & ALL Citations the same or?
Descriptions don't really count when it comes to unifying your brand across different platforms/sites in the sense about which you're asking, but I would still try to keep your descriptions similar. If nothing else, it clarifies to users that your page on abc.com is the same business/etc as your page on xyz.com.
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RE: Static or Dynamic Home Page? Please Help!
Hi again Catinas,
I would say that, ultimately, worry less about SEO and more about what's best for visitors/customers. Especially because Google tends to think like a potential customer, so if you stick with that in mind, you should be OK.
That being said, as a gamer myself, I think the best method would be to keep your content dynamic. Also, is the article you mention actually useful for customers, or is it really only for SEO purposes? Because Google's becoming more and more savvy with its algorithms, and you may want to rethink that particular strategy. Good luck!
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RE: Embedded Traffic Stats?
I'm pretty sure it would be considered referral traffic because a different site is being used to load you content. Regardless, I'd suggest creating a Google Tag Manager account for the site, and setting up a traffic tag that only tracks traffic from embedded content. That way you can keep tabs on that without having to dig deeper into your reports.
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RE: What to do with mismatched blog content?
In general, I think it's never a good idea to outright remove or delete a blog post - especially one that may actually be helpful to proper visitors. In this case, I'd suggest setting blog posts that disrupt your site's flow/funnel or otherwise cause this sort of issue to "no-index". Deindexing posts / pages like this will remove them from SERPs, but will leave them accessible to visitors. Don't be too heavy-handed with de-indexing though. Do this to one or a few posts, and see how that effects your site after a month. Then, if it's had a benefit, you could de-index more (not all) posts like this.
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RE: Self linking - loss of link juice?
I don't see any reason why those would be harmful, since they're not actually links - they're references to JavaScript itself. That means that it's not going to affect rankings or anything of the sort. But it also seems unnecessary to use JS for a menu in that way. Users aren't going to notice or care, but I think it's an odd choice from a UI perspective.
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RE: Can anyboday spot on ?
Or at least the url to whatever view you're talking about.
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RE: Url lenght/depth - Short or specific?
I think that's fine - typically, the more specific the content of a page, the more specific (longer) a URL should be to it. I think that's a fine way of doing it, though if you want to compromise length and specificity, you could always remove the "region" section and use sector/city/business-name.
Another option would be to add 301 redirects and **rewrites **so that while the actual URL will be as long, the way it looks is shorter. That might be an option to consider if you're concerned with the aesthetic and not the functionality.
Hope that helps!
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RE: Is it a good idea to have campanion site?
Hi Ikkie,
If you mean a companion site, then I would say it depends on what content you plan to host on it and how that content will not only differ from your main site, but how it'll add to it.
If you mean a campaign site, then I'd say so long as the campaign is strong and you're doing a lot with social media to promote it, then I can't see it being a bad idea.
I hope that helps, and if not, please provide more details so we can help you out as best as possible.
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RE: How is best to use Permalinks for Wordpress /category/postname or /postname
In the short-term, even using 301 redirects may have a slight negative effect on the weight of your links, but in the long-term, they shouldn't be affected by it really.
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RE: Should I change my listing title or even my domain
That really depends on what your analytics say. If the trade-off between the volume you do get for "yard care" would remove a lot of traffic, or your site is well-ranked for that, changing to "lawn care" may hinder you more than hurt. Again, this depends on your rankings, keyword goals, and how much a difference the switch might make. All that said, from what you're saying it sounds like the switch to "lawn care" may benefit you in the long run.
Another important note: if you're going to change the branding/name from "yard care" to "lawn care", make sure you do it everywhere. In every directory you're active on, all social media, and other branding. It's important that those things be universal.
One last note: While changing your keyword focus, I'd suggest still having content for "yard care" as a keyword so that you don't lose as much of the work as you may have put into it.
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RE: Duplicate Content - But it isn't!
Hi there Astute Media,
Unfortunately, what you have here is the definition of duplicate content. The body text of the page is exactly the same on both pages. Even though your titles are different (and even then, not by much), Google sees that the body text is exactly the same.
It doesn't help that the page has 2 short paragraphs of text, either. These two things are big red flags to Google that a website is spam - but there are ways you can fix this.
My suggestion would be to write something specific to each page. Meaning, the second page is for a hotel rather than the resort - maybe add information about the hotel, or what general complaints have been filed. Another option would be to have 1 page with the information in your body text, and have links to pages that go to the specific resort/hotel/etc. This would require a redesign of your site's navigation, so you may wish to go with the prior rather than the latter.
Either way, I can tell you that you DO need to do something to fix the duplication. Good luck!
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RE: Shortened page titles and changed urls to match, will this effect my page rankings?
If I understood what you're saying, it seems as though you may have mistaken page title and URL for the same thing. You can alter a page title without affecting the URL and vice versa. For example, in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), the blue text shown for each result is the page title, while the URL is in green text.
Now, with that said, page titles shouldn't exceed about 150 characters. This is because after this point, the title will be truncated and the entire title will, therefore, not be shown (only part of it will).
Regarding switching the URLs back to their originals, I'd recommend simply changing them back to what they were rather than redirecting them. Either way, it sounds like this whole endeavor has hurt your SEO, and either method may have implications. When you do this, any URL that is not hardcoded should be fixed by WordPress automatically. What this means is, while links populated internally (ex: in menus, navigation, footer) should be changed by WordPress without you having to do anything - though I'd strongly suggest you double-check these manually. However, the hardcoded links (ex: links in body text, images, some widgets) might not be resolved by WordPress automatically. These you will probably need to tend to on your own. Meaning, if in the second paragraph of blog article A, you link to blog article B: you'll probably need to edit the page for blog article A and replace the old URL with the new.
If you need any clarifications or further help, please ask! And sorry if I mistook anything you'd said.
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RE: We are being penalized for one specific key word (and phrases it appears in), how can we figure out why?
First, I'd note that using the same strategy for similar keywords doesn't necessarily mean they'll have similar results. Sometimes, keywords need very different strategies, content-association, and have different competition / difficulty.
Is it only you who are having ranking issues for this brand, or are other websites having the same issue?
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RE: How Does Google Consider a Business Name as Duplicate?
In business listings and directories, it's best to have a consistent NAP (name, address, phone). Meaning, the name listed on Google+ should be the same as Facebook, as Linkedin, as BestOfTheWeb, as Yellowpages, etc. However, this will have no direct effect on SEO or rankings whatsoever. Search engines (including Google) are typically smart enough to figure out that these are all the same company, even if there are slight discrepancies.
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RE: Should extra content be added to item page or resource center?
I'd place them in the resource center. Pumping the SEO of product pages is great, but being a resource of information is both good for SEO and great for customer retention / growth. Furthermore, if you or a customer were to send someone the link, having it on a product page may seem more aggressive. Sometimes it's better to gain a lot of people churning in your sales funnel than it is to gain a few new sales.
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RE: Why does our Facebook not show up when searching for our business name?
Taking what Rebecca's said, there are two things I'd suggest you do:
- Sort out the fact that there seem to be multiple pages for your business.
- Get your branding on key. "NJ & PA Personal Injury Attorney Richard P. Console Jr." is entirely different from "Console & Hollawell Facebook", which is entirely different from "myinjuryattorney". Your branding is all over the place and not at all unified. Yes, "myinjuryattorney" is a nice url-bit, but it has nothing to do with the name or branding. Even with schema, that's going to be hard to mitigate.
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RE: If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. But yes, that's correct. You can, however, build up a certain degree of reputability as long as your base domain has a history of reputable behavior and ranking - but I wouldn't advise making this a regular method for your site.
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RE: Duplicate Google Plus and Google My Business Listings
I had this same issue not more than a few months ago; it seems that the option Google recommends is to delete the listing(s) you don't prefer. Unfortunately, this is currently the only viable option. If you have followers on the one you intend on deleting that aren't followers on your preferred listing, I suggest inviting them to follow the one you save.
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RE: Thin Content pages
I strongly disagree that more content wouldn't help the user. You could write about each client, how you approach work with clients, describe each portfolio item, each project therein, etc. There are so many different things to write about within these pages of yours - stick to the who, what, when, where, and why and go from there.
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RE: Consolidate to one robust web property?
You're very welcome Trent. I'll give you a few more examples you may want to research:
- Having a higher number of product pages creates a more robust e-commerce experience, while also ensuring customers can find **related products **where they otherwise wouldn't.
- It generally costs more to host and maintain several websites rather than one (something that a lot of people overlook).
- If/When you have a blog (and you should), you'll have one centralized website which will hold its influence and SEO benefits.
- Working with any CMS or back-end development will be much less costly and more efficient.
- If you have reviews or any other customer interaction, they'll hold more worth in one place than spread across several sites.
- You can more accurately use analytics, create goals and objectives, and estimate ROI on your efforts.
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RE: If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
A different domain will always have different stats, regardless of how you connect it to other domains. You CAN pass some of your link-juice, but that will only take your subdomain so far.
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RE: Yahoo Directories or Best of The Web: If you had to choose one?
I'd probably go with Yahoo, if only because it's a search engine that people do still use. However, another option to consider would be to join Yahoo local business (which is free) and BOTW.
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RE: PDF Instructions come up in Crawl report as Duplicate Content
Yes, you absolutely should add unique text to each of these pages. Not only so that they aren't flagged as duplicate, but because it's always an SEO benefit to have more good content. If you don't have the capacity to write such content, however, you may want to remove them from indexation.
The reason that these pages are being flagged as duplicates is that Google isn't parsing these PDFs. Which means that, all Google and others see are pages with no content and an iframe. It's also pertinent to note that Moz will flag anything with more than 90% overlap as a duplication.
I hope this helps!
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RE: Philosophical: Does Google know when a photo isn't what your meta data says it is? And could you be downgraded for that?
Certainly an interesting question. It's becoming more and more evident that image recognition software (more specifically, subject recognition) is gaining traction within big names including Facebook and Google. The software (still in development) can recognize subjects, objects, settings, etc. - to the point where they can "name" an image based on these factors. Which, of course, is extremely relevant to this conversation.
That said, I disagree with the notion that incongruities between an image name, alt-text, or title and the recognized subject of that image will have any factor at any point in time. I have two main points on why I suspect this will never become practice:
- Naming an image based directly on its contents has never been a suggestible convention. Historically, naming an image has been more about the "message" or intended use of that image than about its direct, visual content. To push content creators to start doing this would be overly heavy-handed (yes, even for Google).
- The web would be utterly polluted by images with the exact same name, all over the place. As you'd brought up stock photography and its proliferation across the web, I'd counter that this is exactly why it won't happen. The amount of images by this convention that would be named "man in suit at laptop" alone is staggering. More to the point, Google and other curators prefer specificity; so much so that it would be impossible for them to accurately define more than the visual assets - which often don't make up the bulk of a pictures meaning.
TL;DR version: Do I think what you're suggesting is possible? Absolutely. Do I think it will happen? No; this would go against naming conventions and Google's own desire for specificity.
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RE: RE: Custom Report Notices - "To make changes to this report, simply edit your report settings."
It's extremely unclear what you're asking about without you giving a little more background. If this is an email you were sent by Moz, then here are answers to each of your 3 points as well as an additional point:
- Correct, clients can't login or make changes - however, whomever is using Moz can. Meaning, if you're running a campaign for a client and they want a change, you could make that change. This is what I'm guessing is the situation, but if you want to provide more information, I could revise my answer accordingly.
- In most business settings (and generally), it's unwise to give multiple people direct access to a login for any analytics platform. For security reasons, as well as protecting data and ensuring it's unaltered, it's best to keep one person to a login. However, if more than one person should want/need to see this data, then sharing these reports is the best solution.
- If this was sent to you (presumably the Moz user), then it makes sense for this to be in an email sent to you.
If I had to guess, you're forwarding this email directly to your client (again, please correct me if that's not the case). This email isn't generated with the expectation that Moz users will outright forward it to their clients; I think the intention is that you'd download the report and write your own email. As such, the intention of this email is disparate from an email you should send to a client.
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RE: Competing pages in the purchase funnel
I'd suggest having your developer(s) add a redirect to step 1 in the case that no tracking/form information is being passed when going to wwww.exmaple.com/step2. Meaning, if I open wwww.exmaple.com/step2 from Google, information I'd have filled out in step 1 isn't present, so I'd then be redirected to wwww.exmaple.com/step1. If you don't have visitors filling out anything in step 1, you can still have a cookie passed when going to step 2. However, if I've gone through step 1, clicking on a link to step 2 will act normally. That's the best I can think of as an alternative.
Keep in mind that this is only a suggested alternative, however. I don't know enough about your funnel, process, or product to say if this would have any impact otherwise. Good luck!
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RE: Search box within search results question
Depending on how long ago it was that you added the search box feature, it could very well be that Google's recently swept one site but not the other. As that's something more or less out of your control, I suggest looking through the code for the in-SERP search box and making sure that it's 100% accurate.
Other than these things, I can't think of any reason why the search box wouldn't be on one but the other.
Hope that helps!
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RE: Tracking time spent on a section of a website in Google Analytics
Use Google Tag Manager: http://www.google.com/tagmanager/
Google Tag Manager allows you to set different "goals", "events", and other criteria. It also links directly to GA, showing the data from GTM as you set it. For example, on one of my client's sites, we use GTM to see how many people use a special offer we have set up, as well as how many conversions are made directly from the homepage, and how many visitors view but don't purchase anything from the small delivery pages we made.
Any amalgamation of pages, processes, triggers, goals, etc. can be made into a specific, tracked item with pertinent information. I also suggest taking time to acquaint yourself with the FAQs for GTM, as it can get as complicated as you desire.
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RE: Changing a domain name, pages redirection
Definitely. It's important to always keep track of the criteria for any project - no matter how simple it may be. Just make sure that whenever you update or change the structure of your site(s), that you update the excel as well.
I would also recommend you take this transitional period to commit an audit of your site, structure, keywords, titles, metadescriptions, etc. Not only will that help you measure the differences in traffic and conversions between the old site and new, it may expose weaknesses in your site that you can improve.
Good luck!
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RE: Categories which are frequently empty
I have to agree with Linda: Option 2 is your best option by far. Not only do you not continually have to manage, maintain, and remove/add these pages all the time, but they'll retain their link-juice and SEO properties.
However, I would disagree that this would require a lot of work as far as coding is concerned - even if there are thousands of pages. All you need to do is have each search page set to show set groups/images/products when results=0. Depending on how your site is coded, it could be very simple, or at least fairly easy to do.
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RE: How to Configure Custom Alerts for Real Time Traffic etc from Google Analytic API?
While I normally try not to answer a question with a question; for what purpose do you want an alert for real-time visitors?
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RE: Affiliate Url & duplicate content
Often, pages on a website will have different means by which they're reached. As an example, the logo on a website's top-left often links to the homepage, but the link (initially) would be something like: websitename.com/ref=logo or something to that effect. This is the same sort of issue as websitename.com/ and websitename.com/home being the same page. What's recommended in these instances is to create a 301 redirect for every duplicate page, to the base. Meaning, you would redirect websitename.com/home to websitename.com/, which tells search engines like Google that the prior should be replaced in search and in access to the latter.
This may help you find other duplicates that you have by searching **site:websitename.com **in Google (all one word, no spaces). This shows you every page on a website and can help you keep track of what pages you need to take care of.
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RE: How does google treat dynamically generated content on a page?
If by "switch around daily" you mean you'll be using the same 10 items, but changing the order in which they appear, I wouldn't worry all that much about the SEO effect of it.
If you mean that you'll be changing the 10 products that show, my concern would be less with SEO and more with UX. If I come to a website and see Items A-J are the "top 10", seeing items K-T as the "top 10" the next day or any other time would lead me to believe that "top" doesn't actually mean anything.
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RE: Community Discussion - Do you think increasing word count helps content rank better?
I don't think we can look at a word-count in a vacuum; not only because there are so many contributing factors, but because there are likely variables that effected this "magic number" (a concept that I feel is bunk) that weren't measured and considered or weighed in any way.
Most importantly, I don't think such a figure has any use to a specific person, business, site, etc. It's interesting data, but it says nothing about what any individual should do or expect. In my experience, my readers want anywhere between 300 - 2000 words; but again, this means practically nothing. There are different types of posts, subjects, content-uses, audiences based on these, and many other variables.
I think that, if one's data shows that their posts aren't doing well, word count is one area in which it may be worth exploring different solutions. But there are dozens of more vital and useful data points out there and readily available.
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RE: Is putting a manufacturer's product manual on my site in PDF duplicate content
I'd de-index them, since it's not only likely duplicate content, but it's also content you didn't create. I suggest erring on the side of caution.
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RE: Two websites, same business name, same NAP
If your client is adamantly opposed to having the better of the two consume the other business, then yes - the only other viable option I'd see would be to treat them as completely separate businesses that are only related by owner. Name, address(es), phone number(s), email(s), etc. should all be changed if that's the case. For all intents and purposes, they would have to be treated as two unrelated businesses.
I hope your client will chose the prior solution rather than this, but I imagine either would be better than continuing in their current state. Good luck to you.
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RE: URL Change Best Practice
So long as you set your 301 redirect up correctly, it's not an issue. A 301 tells Google that Page-A should permanently direct to Page-B. Because this is often done to replace or update a page, Google and others will know that the similarity / duplicitous nature of the pages is likely due to that very same thing.