Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Due to a (now fixed) bug in Q&A, this thread is a duplicate of this thread. Though I ask that future discussion be kept here, there are two responses from Peter Nikolow and Martijn Scheijbeler there that are worth your time.

Due to a (now-fixed) bug in Q&A, this thread is a duplicate of this thread. This thread is locked to future responses, but please feel free to continue the discussion there.

Thanks Peter! The reposts were due to a bug we ran into yesterday. I'll lock this thread to further responses.

Hi Seng,

Thank you for posting in Q&A! That's a very, very big question that could have any number of answers based on the specifics of your site. I'd suggest getting started by reading through our Beginner's Guide to SEO.

Hi freshs!

Thank you for posting in Q&A! I just want to let you know that job listings actually aren't allowed in this forum. I am glad, though, that Peter was able to give you some suggestions, and I'd like to recommend the Inbound.org Job Board as another place to look. I hope you find the consultant you need!

At this point, I'm going to lock this thread to further responses. Good luck!

Alright, a fix has been deployed. Again, please let us know in this thread if this issue keeps coming up.

We think we've found the issue, and are trying to push a fix today. I'll update here when I'm given the word, so let me know if you still see this afterward.

For the moment, yes, unless it's possible to reconfigure the SSL software. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience!

Hi there! I'm afraid that, no, at this point there are not YOY reports.

Hi Chris! Did that post help?

Hi Katherine! Did Peter's suggestion take care of it?

So sorry for the lack of response, Jay. I think it's fair to say that no one is aware of a tool that meets those needs.

It's also worth noting that our last index update was on 11/12, so Domain Authority hasn't changed since then.

Huh! Fair enough.

Hi Giorgio!

You can find your MozTrust and MozRank in the Links section of Moz Analytics under Competitive Metrics, or in Open Site Explorer under Compare Link Metrics. The right score for your website will depend on the scores of your competitors. Higher is always better, but you should at least aim to be ahead of the sites you compete with for rankings.

Since those are link metrics, you'd probably benefit from a competitive link analysis. Rand explains that in this Moz Academy video.

As for a technical audit, the Beginner's Guide to SEO covers a lot of the factors, as does the Web Developer's Cheat Sheet. There are other resources in the Learn section, and a lot of the tools in Moz Analytics can make the process much easier, as well. It's up to you whether you feel comfortable running the audit yourself, but if not a consultant would be a good idea.

That help?

Thank you EGOL! Yes, this is going to become a regular thing.

I LOVE your process here, especially your very controlled research phase and your guidelines for offering guest content. I think it could be very valuable to our other community members.

That's super interesting! Just to clarify, did you do anything to share those older articles in their new locations?

Ah, my mistake. I'll ask around on our content team and see if they haven anything.

Hi Tony,

SEO can, frankly, be frustrating. As others have noted here, it takes time, even if you do everything by the book.

Have you ever used the Keyword Difficulty Tool in Moz Pro to run a competitive analysis? It might give you some insight. There's a video on it here.

Hi Giorgio!

It's worth noting that Spam Score is correlative—it simply indicates that the page in question has features that we've seen on sites that've been penalized for spam. It's possible that the issue isn't coming from any one like, or type of link.

If you haven't, I recommend checking out this Whiteboard Friday and this blog post. Let us know if you still have questions then.

Page Authority is a measure of a page's link strength, so to raise it you'll likely need to get some high-quality external links to those pages.

Check out this article on Page Authority (and this one on Domain Authority).

Did Peter answer your question, Adam?

Hi Paul!

Did EGOL settle this for you?

Hi Michelle!

Did Oleg settle this for you?

This is definitely a frustrating issue. We ran a couple blog posts this year that may be able to help:

https://moz.com/blog/how-to-stop-spam-bots-from-ruining-your-analytics-referral-data

https://moz.com/blog/stop-ghost-spam-in-google-analytics-with-one-filter

It's entirely possible that indexation issues are contributing to what you're seeing, Matt. I'd also suggest reading through this Q&A thread by Rand:

https://moz.com/community/q/da-pa-fluctuations-how-to-interpret-apply-understand-these-ml-based-scores

Hi there, Moz Community!

It's Thanksgiving here in the US, and this year I'm thankful for the release of Moz Content. With that in mind, I'd like to revisit Kelsey Libert's November 5 Moz Blog post on creating and distributing content to kick of a community discussion to hold us over during this long weekend. Kelsey said:

"Some content is designed to “go viral,” while other times a piece of content intended to stay among friends takes the Internet by storm. But whether planned or unplanned, rapidly-shared content has several commonalities. One of the key factors is that the content creates a strong emotional response in viewers."

What do you think? How much effort do you put into getting your content distributed? Do you have particular strategies for creating your content? What are they?

Hm, that actually sounds odd. Would you mind emailing us at help@moz.com so we can dig into the campaign?

It's extremely unlikely that you'd rank two pages for one term, so I personally wouldn't recommend optimizing two pages for the same keyword. I also suggest you be very careful about optimizing for an exact match keyword like that, as it could make your copy sound stilted and unnatural ("We're the best dog walkers NYC around!"). If it's very clear that your service is dog walking and that your located in NYC—perhaps use schema markup to establish the location, and make sure to have a presence on the relevant directories—I'd think you'd be fine.

Plus, since BarkBud only offers dog walking, and only in NYC, a page like barkbud.com/dog-walkers-nyc/ is redundant at best, and spammy at worst.

Hi Brad,

What sort of historical data are you referring to? Do you mean in Moz Analytics? Which section?

You may want to consider approaching this optimization from a topical perspective, rather that trying to rank for multiple exact-match keywords. If you haven't, I strongly recommend reading through Cyrus Shepard's "Keywords to Concepts" to get a sense of how that works.

Hi Moshe! Did this ever work out for you?

Hi Brad! Was this resolved for you?

Yes. Domain Authority is recalculated with each new index. I'll quote Rand, from a comment on the blog post:

"Yeah - almost certainly related to this update, and very possibly to the quantity of domains we were previously crawling and counting from .cn and .pl. Going forward, PA/DA should keep getting slightly more accurate."

Very possibly. Domain Authority is calculated using the index, and updates along with it. If the new index indicates that a site's Domain Authority has changed, then it will update.

EDIT: Rereading this, I realize it's kind of misleading. Shifts in the index can affect Domain Authority whether or not anything has changed in the site's link profile. Because Domain Authority is always on a 1-100 scale, shifts in the size and composition of the index can essentially change the definition on a given score.

With this in mind, we generally recommend using DA to benchmark against competitors rather than as an absolute measure of link profile quality. If your DA has dropped but so have DAs across your industry, then you're actually in the same relative position. Does that make sense?

Hi everyone,

I'm very, very pleased to announce that the latest Mozscape index has been released five days ahead of schedule, and it's back up to the quality you expect from Moz!

It's no secret that we've struggled this year with our index. I can't overstate how much we appreciate everyone sticking with us—we know how hard this has been. The good news—well, apart from the early release—is that we've worked out the issue, and we expect to finally be back on track moving forward.

Director of Engineering Martin York has shared a post to the Moz blog explaining just what's been going so wrong, and outlining our plan for the future. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for being such an incredible community.

As for the folks who are seeing Domain Authority and Page Authority drops since the index release, please see Rand's recent post for more.

Hi Wendy! Did this get worked out?

I'm afraid that there isn't currently an option for a single-campaign subscription. I'll definitely note the feedback, though!

Hi Lance!

Moz Local is able to update listings on these partner directories:

Infogroup
Acxiom
Neustar/Localeze
Factual
Foursquare
Superpages
Best of the Web
Bing
Citysearch
Insider Pages

It will also alert you to inconsistencies in your listings on other directories—including GMB—though it can't update them directly. In short, that means you'll need to update GMB manually.

I'm not sure if you're also asking whether Moz Local can update your link to GMB on your site or if it can update the link to your site on GMB, but the answer is no, it can't do either.

Hi Deacyde! When you say they're showing as backlinks with link equity, do you mean they're showing up in Open Site Explorer? And would you be able to share the URL you're trying to analyze along with a few examples of the strange nofollow links?

Hi there! It's very possible that this is due to our last couple of indexes being smaller than previously, which is an issue that we're hoping to resolve with our next release. You can read more about what happened here:

https://moz.com/community/q/september-s-mozscape-update-broke-we-re-building-a-new-index

I'm not aware of any penalty based on image size. They can be as big as they need to be, provided the page loads reasonably quickly. You can read up on page speed here.

I hate to say it—and maybe John will have some suggestions and prove me wrong—but it's exceedingly difficult to suggest keywords from outside the business. There's a lot to consider when choosing keywords including your (or your client's) business goals, products, and market, among others. You'll probably have to do some keyword research yourself.

John shared the chapter on keyword research from out Beginner's Guide to SEO and I shared "Keywords to Concepts." I'd also recommend checking out this webinar on using your Moz Pro subscription for keyword research. A bit has changed in the app, but the advice still hold true.

Otherwise, I'd recommend Google's Keyword Planner—it requires an AdWords account, but you don't have to be actively advertising—and Übersuggest as good tools for getting started. Good luck!

For sure. Doesn't mean we couldn't clarify things a bit better!

Agreed. I'd also recommend checking out Cyrus Shepard's "Keywords to Concepts." It's one of my favorite approaches.

Thanks for that feedback, EGOL! Noted.

tigersohelll - EGOL and Moosa are correct. The guidelines in On-Page Optimization are intended to help folks stick to keyword targeting best practices, but the most important thing is to have natural, high-quality content that's useful for your visitors. For a brand name like "Levis" on an ecommerce site that sells Levi's, it'd be pretty reasonable to have more than 15 instances of the term.

Also, keep in mind that the same tool is used for more long-tail keywords, which could get pretty cumbersome if repeated too often. Say you were grading a page for the term "buy dark khaki levis 514." It'd be pretty tough to work that in organically 15+ times, and even tougher to make it seem natural! For something much more broad, though, like "levis" on its own, you should be perfectly fine.

Does that make sense?

Let us know if this works for you, Janet.