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Thanks Dubs! Would any of these be able to do what I mentioned in my post?

Hi!

One of my clients has an online shop built on a custom platform. Following my on-page audit, I found multiple issues with the faceted & filtered navigation.

After doing some research, I've developed a good site architecture based both on keyword targeting and on user experience. Since the client's platform is custom and he is no longer in contact with the original webmaster, I'm looking to recommend an e-commerce CMS that would fix the issues he has and allow for proper navigation using facets + filters.

I'll give you an idea of how I've envisioned the new site architecture (with a random example):

The website has 3 main categories:

• Jackets
• Shoes
• Pants

These categories are completely separated, no products exist in more than one category.

Let's take the Shoes category. It has the following facets (these are like subcategories, in the form of links, indexable by the search engines):

• By Brand:

• Brand 1

• Brand 2

• Brand 3

• By Genre

• Men

• Women

• Unisex

• By Type

• Running

• Flip-Flops

• Boots

Each product of the Shoes category will belong to one of each facets (so you can have a product that belongs to Brand 1, for Women, of the "boots" type).

Now, each of these facets also display filters depending on the facet itself. These are non-indexable, and preferably done through AJAX. For example, if I select Shoes -> Men I get a list of filters that can also include options from the other facets (so I'll have filters for "Size", but also for "Brand" and "Type"). When I select Shoes -> Boots I won't have the "Type" filter anymore (or I can have it pre-selected I guess), but I will have the "Size" and "Brand" filters.

So, what I am looking for is for a CMS that can allow product attributes (like "Type", "Genre" or "Brand") to be used both as facet categories as well as filters.

The closest live example I could find is ASOS, where you can search products by Brand (facet) and have the refined afterwards by Type (filter) or you can search products by Type (facet) and refine them by Brand (filter).

So, any idea of an e-commerce CMS that would allow me to do the above (bonus points if it also allows entering descriptions for facets, similar to what ASOS does)?

Thanks!

Hey Simon,

If you're referring to the Link Intersect/Competitive Link Finder tool, you can check my recently published competitive link analysis guide for Excel, right here on Moz!

Hope that helps!

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.

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!

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 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!

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!

No problem!

I don't know exactly where Moz uses pagination, so can't really tell.

However, using rel=next/prev in the anchor tag is allowed as well as defined by w3.org, it's just that Google won't take those into consideration because, as Maile says, "we’re concerned that links in the section make it possible for spammers to find less secure user-generated content (UGC) sites and then inject irrelevant links totally unbeknownst to the webmaster".

As a recommendation, do not use article submission sites. Most of them are of low quality and contain a lot of spam. Instead try outreaching bloggers or webmasters for guest post opportunities on related-niche websites.

As for post the article on your blog vs another website, it really depends on a lot of factors, including the article's target audience, how popular is the website you'd be able to submit it to, where in the lifespan of your blog are you, what your goals are, etc.

There's an excellent article with a lot of opinions that cover this topic: http://thinktraffic.net/guest-post-or-own-site

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 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 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!

Hey Margarita,

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

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!

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!

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.

You would be fine leaving the link followed, as long as the widget would appear on just one page (not sitewide). I would generally use either the brand name as anchor text or the URL, though some people like to experiment with randomizing keyword-rich anchor texts with branded and other types.

Hope this helps!

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.

I also recommend using responsive design via popular frameworks, like Bootstrap or Foundation. You shouldn't have problems using those from an SEO perspective.

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

Hey francisco,

I'm not sure I understand, what do you mean when you say Google removed the backlinks? Google doesn't have control over websites that link to you (unless they're on Google's property, like the Blogger platform).

If the links (which, by the looks of that Moz report, were either on a big link network that was taken down or they were sitewide links on large websites) are actually gone, then there is no need to disavow them. Disavowing URLs/domains that have no links to you won't have any effect, even if they used to link to you in the past.

Hope this helps, cheers!

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!

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!

Hey Dan,

301 redirecting those domains won't really help you SEO-wise unless they have a good backlink profile to begin with. Even then, it's better to build quality content on those sites, get some good backlinks and then link to your main domain (instead of redirecting). That's basically how brands use micro-sites to promote themselves (Wil Reynolds has a nice video on the advantages and disadvantages of using micro-sites).

Just a cautionary thing: Google has lowered the value of keyword rich EMD domains in September last year.

Hope this helps!

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!

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:

I would go towards trying the permalinks option + plugin. It's quite easy to set up and check if it's working right away.

Let me know how it goes either way

Excellent insight Dana, I actually thought about that when I first read the article.

Here's my take: 301 redirect does actually pass full PR. What I think Matt Cutts was referring to w(hen comparing a 301 dissipating PR as much as a link) is actually linking to an URL through a 301.

As an example, siteA.com -> siteB.com would have the same effect as siteA.com -> bit.ly -> siteB.com, as in, the link from siteA would dissipate the same amount of PR whether it's through a 301 or not. Otherwise, there would be little sense comparing a 301 to a link, since they have completely different uses (it's not like you would move your site from one domain to another using links).

Again, this is just my take, which seems most logical to me (otherwise no one would use link shortening services ever again).

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!

Hey Chris,

You can still maintain .html extension in WP. For posts, you only need to add that inside the permalink settings panel. For pages, you can simply use this plugin: http://www.introsites.co.uk/wordpress/html-on-pages-plugin.html

If you decide that you do want to use 301s to change the links and don't have access to .htaccess, you can use this plugin to manage redirects: http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

The redirect-leaks-link-juice issue has been settled: http://www.seroundtable.com/redirects-links-pagerank-16419.html

Hope this helps!

This is a hard one.

If your link profile is small, I'd suggest going through it by hand, eliminating anything that's remotely spammy: low-quality directories, comment spam, footer links, paid links, etc.

If your link profile is large, you might have to use some tools to find out what links are hurting you, based on their source metrics, anchor text, and other factors.

Cyrus Shepard wrote a great response on what links to disavow, and included a few tools and resources to that end.

Here are a few more:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-know-which-links-to-disavow-in-google/50709/

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings

http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/604/identify-low-quality-links-easily/

Hope this helps, good luck with your link building!

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:

1104.jpg

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!

It is, but then again, that is what you're trying to do, whether it's through JS or the nofollow attribute.

Matt Cutts recommends letting PageRank flow freely around the website, and only nofollow links that don't make sense for the search engine to crawl, like a login page or the shopping cart. I would go with that since, as Eric Enge points out, they probably filter stuff like navigation and footer links anyway.

Hey Waqid,

You could create a javascript menu, just be careful that Google can access certain javascript.

Alternatively, you could just nofollow the new links so they don't dilute the other links present on the page.

Or, you could just leave it like that. Google does know how to separate elements present on every page (like navigation) to the actual content of the page, like the product information.

Hope this helps, cheers!

You shouldn't worry about them if they are marked with nofollow.

Nofollowed links will not damage your rankings because, as the Google's support page says, the nofollow attribute "means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links".

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!

Hey Jean,

Here's a fairly recent guide on how to track engagement with your embedded video in Google Analytics: http://www.analyticsresults.com/2013/03/youtube-video-tracking-into-google.html

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!

Hey Roy,

I haven't worked with ecommerce sites that also sell on stores such as Amazon, but I've found an interesting answer to a question very similar to yours, here: http://moz.com/community/q/amazon-product-descriptions-and-our-website-s-product-descriptions

As a solution, you could try feeding Amazon/Ebay only a small excerpt of the description, and not linking from your main site to the Amazon/Ebay products.

Cheers

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!

"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,

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 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 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!

NJjswFi.png

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 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 Jeremy,

You could opt to continue paginating comments, and use a rel="canonical" tag to ensure Google doesn't see comment pagination as duplicate content.

If i remember correctly, the Wordpress SEO by Yoast plugin should automatically take care of this, but you can also implement it manually via this code in the section of your template:

Source: http://www.shoutmeloud.com/wordpress-duplicate-content-problems-fixes.html

Hope this helps