Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey pikka,

You can actually use both rel=next/prev and rel=canonical on the same webpage, but you have to be careful on how you use them.

If you don't have a view-all page, then DO NOT use rel=canonical on the review-pX page to point to the main product page. That's like saying "This page has identical content as the other one, so please disregard this one and use the other instead". It's somewhat of a 301 redirect, which would DEINDEX your review-pX pages.

However, using rel=next/prev is perfectly fine, and it's actually the recommended method when there's no view-all page. You can still use rel=canonical but only to point to the current review page (so basically you would use this just to filter out session IDs or any other parameters that lead to duplicate content).

So, in your case, you should use them like this (let's say we're on page 3):

<-- current page, "clean" url
<-- previous page, can contain parameters
<-- next page, can contain parameters

Do NOT use this:

Hope this helps, here's the Google support page on this issue and Maile Ohye's excellent video explaing it.

PS: Almost forgot, regarding your avatar:

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Hey Jean,

You shouldn't worry about that. There are people who had domains parked for years before starting to build content.

Write quality content, promote it, and Google will take notice regardless of when you launched your blog.

Cheers

The Just-Discovered section uses Twitter for new link discovery. As it says on OpenSiteExplorer:

"The Just-Discovered Links report indexes URLs within about one hour of being shared on Twitter, as well as the URLs linked from those tweeted pages."

Hope this helps!

Hey,

These are actually called one-line sitelinks (also known as mini sitelinks), and have been documented on the Google Webmaster Blog here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ro/2009/04/one-line-sitelinks.html

Basically, they're a more condensed (up to 4)  form of the normal sitelinks, and can appear for results other than the first result. Google uses them to show users other pages on that site related to their search term. Like the normal sitelinks, you can't really control when they show up.

Hope this helps, cheers!

Hey Lori,

It seems you're on ranking on the second page of results on Google. Except one or two, all your competitors have better metrics including Domain Authority, Linking Root Domains and number of links. You'll just need to keep getting good references and citations, and you'll slowly move up the ladder.

Hope that helps, good luck!

Hey,

I wouldn't worry about this. Your page has enough unique content so Google won't consider the snippets as being duplicate content. In addition, you interlinked the blog and the website, so Google is likely to see the relationship between the two and consider them as part of the same entity.

The only disadvantage you might have from not hosting the blog on the same domain is that a link to the blog won't provide the same link equity to the website. Other than that, I wouldn't change anything.

Hope this helps, good luck with your business!

Hey Tim,

You can still access it here: http://pro.moz.com/tools/crawl-test

Don't really know if they plan to remove it or they just forgot to include a link into the new version.

Hope this helps!

Hey Margarita,

Try using the Googlebot User-Agent for Screaming Frog, since other bots might be blocked via .htaccess.

Hope this helps!

A major on-page problem for this website, check out these two URLs:

http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/tri-tronics-g3-g2-exp-collar-receiver-strap-5621150-blue/

http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/tri-tronics-g3-g2-exp-collar-receiver-strap-5621140-red/

According to the Copyscape Compare tool, they're 98% similar, so Google will certainly see them as duplicate content. Even worse, there are two more like it, for the yellow and green versions.

This problem is present with other product options, like pack quantity:

http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/2-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/

http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/4-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/

http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/6-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/

http://www.petstoreunlimited.com/10-pk-invisible-fence-battery-replacement-r21-r22-r51/

You've got two solutions:

• use a single rel=canonical for the pages that contain the same product so that they all point to a single version of this product (easier)
• use a single page for the product and allow users to see colors/size/etc. on the page either via a "Colors"/"Pack size" radio panel or dropdown, with optional JavaScript to change the photos if needed (more complicated).

Hope this helps, good luck!

Hey Joni,

1. There's no problem crawling those links (Google campaign tracking uses parameter-based URLs as well). To ensure these links don't cause duplicate content issues, either set Webmaster Tools to ignore these parameters or use a rel="canonical" tag on your pages to indicate the correct URL (the last method would be better since it works for all search engines).

2. You can either use the Google Analytics campaign tracking by changing the name of your parameters to match the ones used by GA, or you can use event tracking with your own parameters through JavaScript (you can see an example of using this for tracking keyword ranking)

Hope this helps!

There's no clear cut limit of how many heading tags you can use. As a rule of thumb, if it makes sense, use them.

Careful about placing too many however and using keywords in all of them, as Google might regard this as keyword stuffing.

Hey Wilkerson,

Since these bloggers are hosted on blogspot/wordpress, you can't use the Moz DA metric to screen for quality blogs like you would a normal website.

Instead, try using the subdomain mozRank, mozTrust and Linking Root Domains (you can see them in the Mozbar popup under the Subdomain column). Check the image attached to see where these are.

Even better than using the above metrics, check how popular the blog is (this includes blog comments, twitter followers, etc)! Try to think more in terms of visibility and direct traffic and less in terms of how much will the actual link help you in the search results.

Hope this helps, cheers!

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"So what I'm taking away is that the Root Domain DA of 95 is meaningless in this case and that I should look at Page and Sub Domain metrics such as Moz Rank, Moz Trust and Linking Domains."

Exactly!

"Assuming the latter metrics are superior to our site can I expect these links to pass "juice" and boost our organic search traffic?"

Links pass "juice" regardless if the site that's linking to you has superior metrics or not. You shouldn't pass on sites just because their metrics are lower than yours (but I understand if you'd want to prioritize those blogs with higher metrics/social impact).

Regarding the visibility and organic SEO efforts, you should aim for blogs with a high number of subscribers/followers first, and worry about the metrics later (plus, these blogs are the ones with the highest metrics most of the time).

I would even rather have a nofollow link from an influential blogger in my niche than a dofollow link from someone who hasn't written in 6 months. Reason is that, beyond the visibility and direct traffic, the first link might also generate more links in the long run from the blogger's followers and community, which would boost your organic SEO even more than in the other case.

Hope this makes sense, and have a great weekend!

Hey Francisco,

First and foremost, you should check why your traffic has dropped.

Check whether it has dropped on a certain search engine or on a certain set of keywords or landing pages, or is it a blanket drop everywhere.

Check whether your other sources of traffic have tanked as well (direct, referral, etc.) to see if you maybe have a website problem (Webmaster Tools can help you diagnose that as well).

Also check some of the Moz reports available. Moz cannot read Google penalties, so your Domain Authority (as well as your traffic) might have dropped due to a sudden removal of a portion of your backlinks.

As a side note, if your subdomain has been penalized due to spammy backlinks, there's a high likelihood your whole domain has been penalized as well.

Hey Scott,

Using tables for a website layout will not affect your rankings directly (aka Google will not give you a penalty for using tables).

However, since tables should be used to present tabular data and not full website layouts, there are certain disadvantages that you should be aware of, and they're very nicely summed up in this post: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/6036/why-arent-we-supposed-to-use-table-in-a-design/6037#6037

Hope this helps!

Hey Harris,

Moz currently offers API access to their Mozscape (formerly known as Linkscape), which is what Open Site Explorer uses, and the Followerwonk Social Authority, used for measuring Twitter engagement. As per their documentation, using their Mozscape API will only allow you to get access to these resources:

• URL metrics
• Link metrics
• Anchor text metrics
• Top pages
• Metadata

As such, there's no Rank API available right now.

Hope this helps, cheers!

Hey, let me take a swing at this.

As I understand, you would like to rank with the www.mysite.com/category/name page, and you can get backlinks to your blog posts instead of your category. Your problem is that www.mysite.com/category/name/specific-blog-post redirects to www.mysite.com/specific-blog-post, and you don't know if that counts as a backlink to your category page.

First of all, you're right, getting backlinks to your category page is usually pretty hard, and your best bet is to get backlinks to the blog posts that are featured in that category. This can be efficient especially if your internal linking is sound, so that on the blog post page you link back to the parent category (and not to many other parts of your website).

Second, there is no problem that www.mysite.com/category/name/specific-blog-post redirects to www.mysite.com/specific-blog-post. That's the way you set up your WordPress permalinks, which isn't bad and is actually fairly common. Google doesn't associate the blog post with a category based on URL, it associates them based on the relationships (internal links) it finds while crawling your site. Getting more backlinks to blog posts in one category will pass some value to the category itself, so naturally your category will also rise in ranking.

Hope this helps, cheers!

It can harm you only if any of the kw rich domains have been previously penalized by Google, in which case 301 redirecting it will likely pass the penalty.

Otherwise, it's just like using the same tactic to redirect typo or vanity domains. Won't harm you, but it won't help you with ranking either, regardless of the domain name or keywords used.

Cheers!

The .html plugin is not a redirect plugin, it's just using the permalink structure with .html at the end to also work on pages.

However, using permalinks does require .htaccess (it's how WP works), so I'm not sure how you're going to work around that.

Best of luck!

A subdomain isn't always considered a new site / domain in itself. In fact, other than blog platforms or websites that offer ugc subdomains, most subdomains seem to be closely correlated with the main domain by Google.

There are many examples including the main domain taking a penalty, bringing all the subdomains down with it, or vice-versa. Or you can just search 'bodybuilding', and see how Google integrates subdomains into sitelinks, which is a clear sign that Google sees those subdomains as part of the same entity as the domain itself.

Of course, to be safe, you should always try to opt for a folder option instead of a subdomain, since, as Rand put it:

"Subdomains SOMETIMES inherit and pass link/trust/quality/ranking metrics between one another

Subfolders ALWAYS inherit and pass link/trust/quality/ranking metrics across the same subdomain"

If you have no option as setting it as a subfolder, the next best option is indeed a subdomain. A root domain is the worst option of the three.

Hey Tim,

There have been quite a few signals that, outside blogging and similar platforms that offer websites as subdomains, Google generally treats a subdomain and its parent domain as the same entity. This has been actually reinforced last year when they changed how Google treats subdomains inside Webmaster Tools.

I'll also quote Rand Fishkin on an answer he gave on subdomains vs subfolders last year:

"Thus, having a single subdomain (even just domainname.tld with no subdomain extension) with all of your content is absolutely ideal from an SEO perspective. It's also more usable and brandable, too IMO."

Regarding your domain-per-city idea, going on what Rand said, it would make even less sense from an SEO perspective.

To answer your question, linking back from the subdomain to main site will likely not help you with any rankings.

Hope this helps!

Hey Neil,

The pagination tags do have to be implemented in the section to be properly recognized by Google. Maile Ohye confirmed this aspect.

As for an example, here's one I gave to a previous related question: http://moz.com/community/q/pagination-for-product-page-reviews

Hope this helps!

Hey Ceran,

I think you might be able to do that by setting a custom variable at page-level that takes the value of the auction status. You can then view it in GA by creating a custom report (the custom variables are included as Dimensions).

To use custom variables, I recommend reading this: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/gaTrackingCustomVariables

Hope this helps!

Hey Greg,

Don't worry about nofollowing links toward your blog. It's your blog, which, while not on the same domain, is still part of your business.

As an example, you can check out www.nbc.com. You'll see that they have a shop in the top menu which links to an outside domain. Also, on the main page, if you check out the footer, they have product previews from their shop, just like you have article previews from your blog. They haven't used nofollow, and you shouldn't bother with it either.

Have a great weekend!

Yes, the canonical tag is a good use for this situation, so that Google can consolidate links/metrics/equity under one URL. Just remember to implement it correctly, like the following example:

Hey Ramesh,

After a quick look in Open Site Explorer, your site seem to have a very unnatural link profile (lots of black hat including a lot of comment spam) and was probably caught in the latest Penguin update.

Your only solution going forward is to remove/disavow those links and do SEO the right way. Be sure to also check Webmaster Tools for any manual penalty warnings. The whole process will likely take you quite a few months.

Hope this helps, good luck!

Hey Shayann,

What errors related to rel=canonical do you get in your Moz report?

Inside the Crawl Diagnostics Summary, the rel=canonical tag is listed inside the Notices block. That means it's just a count of how many pages have this tag implemented, and doesn't imply there are any errors with it, but simply that the tag is present on your pages.

Hope this helps!

A 301 redirect would typically pass the old domain's link metrics to the new domain (and any penalties if they exist). Theoretically you would get a boost to the Dutch website.

However, there are a few things you should be aware of:

1. You won't be able to use the international version of the website again. Also, a 301 means "permanent redirect", so Google will likely deindex the old domain, and would be hard to get it back up if you change your mind later.
2. You should redirect page-to-page instead of redirecting all of the old domain's pages to just the homepage of the new domain. Otherwise the redirect will have a smaller effect.
3. A .nl domain is a ccTLD geo-targeted domain. You won't be able to rank as well for international queries (e.g. english) as you did with the .com gTLD. Consequently, some of the websites linking to you might also remove the links if they notice the website is now in Dutch.

Hope this helps, cheers!

Hey Gagan,

Indeed, if the Tag pages don't have any unique content on them (like unique descriptions), it is usually better to 'noindex' those since they add little value from a search engine perspective.

Cheers!

Hey Kyle,

I think that your problem is that you have the same (duplicate) category meta description for all categories, so Google discards it as being irrelevant. Your product meta descriptions on the other hand are unique, so they show up fine.

The solution would be to create unique descriptions for each category and subcategory.

Hope this helps, cheers!

Shayann, you should check which are the 2 Other URLs that create this issue, to check if they implement different rel=canonical tags.

Hey scoutzie,

This is actually covered pretty well in Joe Robison's blog post on fixing Webmaster Tools crawl errors: http://moz.com/blog/how-to-fix-crawl-errors-in-google-webmaster-tools

I'll quote the related info:

"One frustrating thing that Google does is it will continually crawl old sitemaps that you have since deleted to check that the sitemap and URLs are in fact dead. If you have an old sitemap that you have removed from Webmaster Tools, and you don’t want being crawled, make sure you let that sitemap 404 and that you are not redirecting the sitemap to your current sitemap."

Hope this helps, good luck!

Yes it should. However, as Alan mentioned below, if you still have links pointing to the 404 pages, Google will always attempt to crawl them, and will keep you informed that you have errors.

If you do have external links to those 404 pages, you can 301 redirect them to an appropriate page using .htaccess. This way you'll keep the link value and also get rid of the Webmaster Tools error.

If you don't have any links to them, then yes, Google will eventually stop trying to crawl them.