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Agree with Nicholas, keep track of what you do and then go for it. You won't know unless you test and if the product page has ranked highly before there is a good chance it will rank highly again if you de-optimize it's competing blog post page.

Shorter is better, we often use https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo as a guideline for on-site stuff like this, and we have seen increases in rankings wiht shortening a URL to just include the target keyword and then setting up a proper 301 redirect as well.

Agreed, we see that all the time for locally competitive searches. We recommend utilizing the Moz Link Explorer to do a link profile comparison between your website & a website that is ranking high for one of the target keywords that you are not. 9 times out of 10, they will have more authoritative, relevant links.

Great to see a company actually adjusting to the needs of their users in a timely fashion. Well done Moz and I am really loving the new Moz Link Explorer as well! Keep up the awesome tools and SEO articles!

Nice! Excited to check this out more. Thanks for always keeping your best tools up-to-date and improving on them!

I would try to optimize your homepage for your main keyword, but it is ok to also optimize the main keyword category page as well (maybe a good opportunity to use LSIs in Meta Title?). Your home page will generally get more initial inbound links if you are a local business or have your brand name mentioned a lot online. Best case scenario is both pages rank, which I have seen happen on occassion as well.

This is a great question, in doing A/B testing with some of our clients we have generally seen improved rankings for a specific city if we include that city in the meta title of the website page. Since you are targeting 3 cities, I would consider writing unique "city landing pages", for each city and then only mention that one city in the meta title. If you do this, try to make each city landing page as unique and helpful as possible, with unique city data, customer review/testimonials from that city, etc.

I would make sure the file name and alt text is still the same as it was before the compression. Simply reducing your image sizes on your website should not alone cause a decrease in rankings.

We have not disavowed any links since late last year, and Google announced they would be "ignoring" low-quality links and not"penalizing" because of them. We have not seen any of our clients rankings since we stopped disavowing. There is a great Moz post by Marie Haynes that you may want to check out- https://moz.com/blog/do-we-still-need-to-disavow-penguin. It was published in April 2017, so as I write this it is still relevant. Hope this helps and best of success!

I am assuming this is a matter of competitor and also internal/external links pointing to the particular page. I would increase the quality (add more unique content, pictures) of the unranked page, add some internal links to it, and re-index it with Google Search Console's Fetch and Render tool.

Curious on this topic, as websites that are image heavy, but have little written content can have depend on alt text for "readable content". I am aware the "best practice" is to write it as if you were describing the image to a blind person, but are there any SEO strategies that people have seen good results with?

Some examples I've heard are:

"unique keyword phrase"

"unique keyword phrase + brand name"

"Unique Keyword Phrase + LSI Keyword"

Interested to hear feedback from the Moz Community! And thanks in advance for sharing your insight.

They are just trying to follow "best practices", but you're one "dollow" link to their website is not hurting their SEO. Either your link is actually helping them a little bit, or it is being ignored by Google and has no factor in their rankings.

The easiest way to test this is to go to https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool. Just taking a glance at it, it definitely looks like normal Schema code, I would use the tool to be sure though.

Google should take into account grammer, but I do not think they have confirmed that they do. Either way, you also want to optimize for a user who lands on your website. I would think a page with a ton of obvious grammatical errors would have a bad user experience, higher bounce rate, and less conversions.

If the cases you are describing above are for the Meta Title only, it is slightly less of an issue, but if they are littered throughout the website and landing page I would attempt to fix them.

This could be due to a number of factors, however as of this morning (9/8/17) there is talk of a potential Google algorithm update- see more talk about it at https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-algorithm-update-24433.html. This is just speculation but Google is showing a lot of SERP volatility in the last 24-36 hours.

Backlinks and Anchor Text. For example if you Google "click here" you will see alot of businesses that do not have "click here" on there website or meta title, but they have a lot of websites linking to them with the anchor text "click here", as an example.

Removing the pages is an option, but I would recommend adding a CTA, breaking up text for better readability, adding headers, or changing the pages' design to decrease the bounce rate. Since theses pages are getting alot of traffic, I would assume they are ranking high on Google for some search terms on a national level. Rand did a WhiteBoard Friday that somewhat covers this topic at https://moz.com/blog/landing-page-seo-conversion-or-both-whiteboard-friday. Also HubSpot, another leader in inbound marketing had a great infographic about this as well that you can check out at https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/decrease-website-bounce-rate-infographic.

Having a page like what you are describing is also a great opportunity to get some potential backlinks from people in the industry maybe using it as a resource. I would try to improve the page to take more advantage of the traffic, instead of deleting it. Hope this helps and best of success!

Having "wicker" in the domain is only one small ranking factor of 200+. Although they used to be ranking higher, a drop in rankings could be due to a number of different factors, especially if you are talking a few years ago or more. There have been many Google updates that could have had an impact on your client's site.The first thing I would do is a competitor analysis on the top 3 ranking business that are showing up in the SERPs you want to show up in. Some of the following questions and comparisons would be a good starting point.

• How Many Domains Do They Have Linking To Them? What are their top 5-10 backlinks?
• How Much Unique Content Do They Have On The Page Ranking? Is It Well-Written & Structured with Pics and/or Video?
• What Is their Meta Title (What you click on in the SERP)? How Close Is the Keyword To The Beginning of Their Title?
• If Attempting To Rank Locally.. What is Their Moz Local %? (https://moz.com/local/search)
• How Fast Does Their Website Load? (I like using Pingdom and Pagespeed Insights for this)

Compare those answers with what you see for your clients website and I am sure you will see some areas for improvement, but it will also give you very good goals as far as content creation, link opportunities, technical SEO edits, and more.

This is a common thing we see especially when your meta title is "(Keyword Phrase) | (Company Name)". Keep in mind that the Yoast plugin only "strongly suggests" the Meta Title to show up in Google's SERPs, but Google can alter it, and often will if they think it is too keyword heavy or if they want to put the business name first instead of last.

I would test "Towing Services Alberta | Jack's Towing | 888-888-8888" if the client is ok with having their phone number in, this would put the business name in the middle of the title, which in our experience makes it less likely to be changed in SERPs. If the client does not want their phone number in SERPs you may have to experiment with it.

To speed up the testing process, use Google Search Console's Fetch & Render tool and re-index the page to see Google change the result in their SERPs alot faster (usually). Hope this helps and best of success!

We have never had to nofollow internal links within any of our websites, I am sure their are some circumstances where you could, but since Google's algorithm no longer "penalizes" links I don't see a need to as they are simply ignored. Just avoid spammy tactics like having 100 links under the footer or a bunch of affiliate links, etc.

I don't believe you can submit it too frequently. I would only do it when there is a change or once-a-month personally though.

This could just be normal ranking fluctuations, or your website could be a victim of the Google "Fred" update which I believe penalized thin-content affiliate websites, as well as others. I would add more "readable" content to the page and try to pursue some of your top ranking competitors backlinks as well.

You used to be able to do this in the YouMoz section of the Moz Blog at https://moz.com/ugc. However, the last post was almost a year ago, and according to a note on https://moz.com/posts/ugc_guidelines, the submission process is closed for the time being.

I believe it won't matter that much, but would go ahead and use the https for all citations you build moving forward. As of last year, 301 redirects no longer lose any "link juice". See https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo by Cyrus Shepard.

Good questions. I would assume it could be due to alot of uniquely generated content in a short amount of time that Google could tell was real and that page probably had a high CTR and Time on Page metrics, etc. Another theory could be that the discussion got linked to or shared somewhere that increased the discussion's thread authority in Google's eyes. It likely would have not ranked high long-term, and Google could have almost treated it like a timely, relevant news story.

I would if I were in your shoes. Having all profile and/or comment links be "do-follow links" can cause alot of spam and potentially be the downfall to the longevity and credibility of your forum.

Footer Links are usually thought to provide little to no value, and if you are utilizing them it is best not to overdo it. From the image you shared it looks like there would be quite a few footer links going to different posts on your website. I would personally not recommend this, but rather focusing on adding an internal link or two from each blog post that you want to potentially rank to other blog posts you want to potentially rank. Using a sidebar with the top 5 or so most recent blog posts is probably not a bad idea either. You just don't want to have 50 or 100 links in your footer.

We have run into the same issue in the past. We found that if you just have a basic free FourSquare account, you can go in and manually add a business and Foursquare seems to publish it immediately (https://foursquare.com/add-place). This is annoying and not as easy as just using Moz Local, but it is a way to get your client's FourSquare profile and NAP shored up. I would love if Moz was able to fix this also.

Alick3000 is correct. I would not strictly pursue getting nofollow links, but if there is an opportunity to get one and it could help with getting your brand name our there or driving referral traffic to your website, it definitely won't hurt! If you are also actively building links on a monthly basis, it is probably a good idea to have a few that are nofollow in your link profile

Great question, maybe a Mozzer will jump on for more clarification, but I believe Rand was referencing doing the "repeating footer links", as in having many footer links with exact anchor text or anything similar. A "sitewide link" that is simply just one link at the footer, often used by web development or design companies, will not get you a Google penalty. With that being sad, footer links, especially, sitewide ones, do not carry much value for increasing rankings. They can be good for referral traffic though. Hope this helps and best of success!

• Do keyword research to decide what phrases you want to rank for in Google
• Do Competitor analysis on the top 3 businesses/websites in those searches (look at how many backlinks, where they are from, do they have a blog, content on ranking page, etc.)
• Attempt to duplicate links, and write more and better content compared to top 3 competitors

I don't imagine the site being down will hurt your SEO work or rankings. If it has to be down for multiple weeks you may see your rankings drop, but once it is live again you can request Google to re-index your website in Google Search Console using the "Fetch and Render" tool. I don't expect there to be a lasting negative SEO impact.

Well this is quite the question, you're probably not doing anything wrong, but could maybe do more "right" things to help. I would recommend engaging in social media more, working on getting more quality backlinks to your website, maybe do some on-site SEO (depending on what you are trying to rank for on Google, Yahoo, and Bing), and a blog with a monthly post would probably not be a bad idea either.

We actually did this earlier in 2017 with a brand name change (going from Marketingxchange to Lure Creative) and url change (going to http://lurecreative.com/). We saw quite a drop in rankings and DA, but had all of our old website pages 301ed to the most relevant pages on the new website.

This was quite a project and now about 3 months later we are finally seeing an increase in traffic, we have gone through and updated a lot of our old brand name links and also sought new links with our new brand name as well, which is what I would recommend doing.

Our goal was to try and swing most of our external links anchor texts to be our new brand name (which we used Yext, and alot of time manually link building to do this). It still took multiple months, so it was a pain either way, but we are trending up again.

I would say that although it is not 100% relevant, if it is user-generated content and is a genuine thread or conversation that is driving up traffic, keep it. As long is it doesn't include a bunch of spammy links it should be ok and only help your website.

No problem, I would not emulate or try to duplicate it. You can report it if you would like to, but if they are all the exact same content and it is just the title and URL that are different I wouldn't expect them to rank high for very much longer. If they have just similar pages that are only slightly spammy, but all unique in content (although they have the same type of information), they could stay ranking high.

Yes! This could result in none of the pages getting ranked, and if they are currently ranking I would be very cautious as they could get the "Google Slap" anyday. I believe it would be worth your time to go into 2 of the pages and make them unique content or just focus on strengthening and improving 1 page and getting rid of the other 2 (since they both have the same info).

I would really try to get a ".com" even if you have to slightly alter your URL to not just be your brand name. Alot of people will add their city or a service that they are associate with or provide after their brand name ("www.abcwebsitedesign" or "adcnewyork" as examples).

It you are able to edit Meta titles and meta descriptions on the website I would start there. If you are unable to even access this info on the website, I would focus on social signals and link building. So have a strong social media strategy and then work on gaining backlinks from authoritative websites. If this is a local company that wants to rank for "(your service) + (your city)" you can also focus on building quality business directory citations (Moz Local is great for this!). Best of success.

Since this is a footer link it will likely not provide much value. I would not worry about it though as a lot of web design and development companies have tons of footer links from websites they built and they rank just fine.

No there is no harm, just keep in mind that content creation is only 50% of what matters, make sure each piece of content is properly promoted through social media, blog aggregators, publishing websites, etc. When publishing a lot of content at once, it can be easy for some pieces of content to not be properly promoted.

We have seen great results using City Pages for our clients, some of those being in the helathcare and medical field as well. Just make sure each city page is unique and helpful to the user. Mentioning parks from within each specific city on the appropriate city landing page sounds like an awesome idea actually, since it will further distinguish each page.

Very interesting, I have seen where a desktop website and a mobile website were both ranking in the same SERP. This was a non-responsive website though so the business did have a slightly different URL for their mobile website.

Trying to rank a homepage for all your keywords is a fairly difficult task in any industry, and usually service, product, and blog pages are used to target certain keywords so that you aren't putting some much pressure on your homepage to rank. The fact that you have "tens of thousands" of links is a little concerning to me, but if you believe they are all legitimate then more power to you. I would try to increase the content quality and quantity of the homepage and if possible decrease the amount of anchor text links as Google may be seeing this as spammy.

We agree with David above, if you are improving the title tags and keep them all unique and original from the other pages on your website doing a "Title Tag Cleanup" or going through and optimizing them should be a benefit. Some tips on Title Tags:

• Have The Keyword You Want To Rank For Be As Close To The Beginning As Possible
• Try to Make it short enough to were Google doesn't cut it off with "..." We use (https://www.portent.com/serp-preview-tool)
• Don't Duplicate Title Tags Across Pages, Try To Make Each One Unique
• Instead of Repeating A Keyword In a Title Try Using An "LSI Keyword" (For Example if you are attempting to rank for "marketing", use "marketing" once and then if desired, use a keyword like "advertising" or "media" etc.)

Hope this helps Luke and best of success!

Hi Trevor, I believe you will be ok and may even experience a rankings benefit for what you are trying to rank for with sciencetrends.com. To be honest, a lot of SEOs and website owners would love to be in your position lol.

I say go ahead with it and worst case scenario, if it causes any issues for you, just delete it from your profile and request a re-index of your website through Google Search Console.

Hard to say, I believe if each link to the homepage is relevant and helpful to a user on your website, then it will be ok, however a rule of thumb we try to follow with on-site SEO is to not link too much to the home page or contact page, and instead link more from internal pages to other internal pages (i.e. a blog page will link to a product or service page).

One way to test this would be to link to the homepage from 10-25% or your pages and see if rankings or traffic fluctuate more than normal. If nothing changes, or there is a positive trend, do another 25% or more.

Just my opinion, and although it will take longer doing it this way, I believe it is safer and more testable to do it in pieces.

We are a marketing agency in a fairly "corporate park" type area and have not ever had this happen to us. From some of the above responses I guess it is legitimate though? We are in the U.S. and will keep an ear out for this if it ever happens to us.