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Hi John,
You could create a custom variable in Google Analytics to track the payment method. This way you would be able to segment your traffic by payment method for whatever report you want to use.
Justin Cutroni did a decent post on custom variables to use for ecommerce sites - check it out.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Looks like it will actually be a "waste of time", per Google's John Mueller.
"Google's John Mueller in a Google+ hangout was asked this at 51:40 mark and answered they will be going away. He said "it is kind of a waste of time" since "soon they will not be shown at all." - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-emoji-waste-of-time-20258.html
Hope this helps.
Mike
You are correct with your approach.
And as Paddy states, once you launch, remove the disallow and the crawlers will find you.
I would also suggest that once you launch that you submit a sitemap to all of the major search engines to be found even quicker and to help ensure that all of your site pages are crawled.
Mike
You shouldn't have to worry about it.
I would reference this article where Matt Cutts explains that if you are professionally translating it for usability... you are good; however, if you use Google translate to spam your content in a bunch of languages... that is bad.
Hope this helps and answers your question.
Mike
I think it could be a lot of different things. One of them is that Google's SERPs are always going to be more up-to-date, hence the Next rankings update: XXXX in the bottom right-hand corner of the Rank Tracker tool page.
Here is some more information from SEOMoz about Rank Tracker:
"Why do the rankings returned by Rank Tracker sometimes differ from what I see when I check the search engine? Don’t worry – it’s perfectly normal. Rankings are constantly in flux and rarely universal. Some factors that may affect rankings include:
Luckily, trend data is quite good, so even if the positions you see vary slightly from what Rank Tracker reports, the gains or losses are indicative of relative performance. Don’t expect to see precise correlation, but do keep an eye on ranking trends over time."
Hope this helps.
Mike
In many cases, most websites will redirect a trailing slash to the non-trailing slash version, but it all depends on your configuration. Here is some info from Google Webmaster Central on the subject.
I think what you are looking for is breadcrumb rich snippets.
Hope this helps.
Mike
You would need to setup Google Analytics with a www version and a non-www version to view traffic information. Same goes for managing your site, you need to setup both version in Google Webmaster Tools if you want to see data for both.
Google views the non-www version and the www version as two separate sites, that is why you need to set it up twice if that is the route you choose to take.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
I guess I would suggest you don't.
Hidden text and links: "Hiding text or links in your content to manipulate Google’s search rankings can be seen as deceptive and is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines."
As far as structure is concerned, having the same layout and navigation will not get you into duplicate content troubles. Have the same content will.
You should set up 301 redirects. Doing this will redirect visitors, as well as link juice, from your old blog posts (linked from social media, blogs, other websites, etc.) to your new blog posts.
If you choose to do 301 redirects, you will not need to worry about searching for, identifying, and changing all of your old social media mentions to reflect your new URL format.
Does that make sense?
Mike
Sorry. I was under the impression that you wanted to more or less shut down the penalized site. That is why I suggested the mass-redirection. It also would allow you to move all of your content from the penalized domain to the new domain and you wouldn't have to worry about rewriting completely new and unique content.
Solid idea about using an image. The only downside would be that users would not be able to copy and paste the URL into the address bar... but it would really be just removing "the"... so I would like to assume they could handle it 
I would probably shy away from popups, because depending on a user's settings, they may be blocking popups or may disregard the popups if they think they are an advertisement.
Mike
Hi Jack,
Server errors. Redirect loops. Disallowed pages in robots.txt. etc.
Here are some suggestions from www.seomoz.org/help/crawl-diagnostics:
"Why didn’t you crawl all my pages? I only got a one page crawl. Looks like you missed a bunch!
If you suspect you didn’t get a full crawl, or Rogerbot missed some of your pages, there could be several reasons why this happens.
If you are certain you don't have any of the above problems, then I would suggest contacting help@seomoz.org
Good luck.
Mike
It sounds to me like you already have a pretty good plan in place.
I would maybe suggest redirecting all of the sub-pages of thewebhostinghero.com to the homepage of thewebhostinghero.com. And on the homepage write something like, "Our website has moved. Please visit webhostinghero.com for blah blah blah." I would leave this as plan text so that you are not passing bad link juice to your new domain.
I don't know how co-occurrence (webhostingher.com being listed in text on thewebhostinghero.com) would play any role in your rankings; however, doing this would hopefully help eliminate some of the confusion your old customers would have and redirecting all of your sub-pages to the homepage would help ensure that you wouldn't have any duplicate content issues on the new site.
Does that help/make sense?
Mike
Without additional information, I can only make a guess on your first comment, "I have set my preferred domain to www..." - are you talking about doing this is Google Webmaster Tools? If so, that is simply telling Google that you would prefer they index your www version versus your non-www version.
Depending on your CMS, you should be able to write some code to automatically redirect all non-www calls to your site to their www counterparts. If you are using IIS, you'd edit your web.config file. If you are using Apache, you'd edit your .htaccess file.
Does that make sense?
Mike
Hi B,
If I am understanding your question correctly, there is no SEO benefit in what you are suggesting.
For instance if you are suggesting changing www.domain.com/topic.html to www.domain.com/topic that will not make any SEO difference.
The main reason for people removing the extension is that it looks cleaner/friendlier. Also, if you were to switch your platform/CMS, you would be able to continue to use the same URL if you do not use an extension.
Does that make sense?
Mike
I would think it would be difficult to rank locally if you do not have a physical office; however, depending on the competition, you may be able to do so if your page is really optimized and you get some decent backlinks pointing to it. Now... for clarification, I am not talking about a localized SERP where it has local businesses and addresses, but a search where someone is including the location in the query and Google returns a regular 10 item SERP. (if that makes sense)
And cracking those top positions can be difficult. You just have to keep at it. Create a better website, create better content, create a better following than your competitors - you may not get into positions 1 or 2; however, if a prospect clicks through 1 and 2, then gets to your site, it will be a no-brainer for them to choose you if your site and content are better.
Don't fixate on ranking, worry about building your brand
Good luck.
Mike
I would have a single locations page that lists all of your businesses locations by city, state.
I would link the city, state to a landing page for the specific city,state.
Each city, state landing page would have a unique, URL, title, headings, content, etc that would use a format like Keyword | City, State | XYZ Company - because if someone Googles your company name, you should already come up... it is more important to have the keywords, then city or city, then keywords in your title - do some keyword research on this to see which is best for you.
THEN register each of those city,state landing pages using GetListed.org - this will help you build up your local presence in those areas since you have a physical office location.
If you wanted, you could do the footer idea... I think that gets to be kind of spammy, but I guess it all depends on the industry and the number of locations.
Hope that helps.
Mike
Depending on the size of your site I would think from a usability standpoint that may be confusing, but you could implement breadcrumbs to remedy the confusion.
From an SEO point of view, I would think that it would be a lot easier for Google to see the differences between two products. For instance, if you have two products DX600 and NX600...
/cameras/point-and-shoot/sony/DX600
/cameras/point-and-shoot/nikon/NX600
would be pretty easy for a crawler and/or user to figure out what the page is about.
If it were just /DX600 and /NX600 that might be a little more complex for users and crawlers - is it a camera, computer, coffee maker, napkin dispenser???
And depending on your site, CMS, and industry, you may have to get creative with your URLs so you do not create duplicates and it may even be difficult to manage if you do not know exactly where to find a page is that you need to edit.
That is just my personal opinion on the subject. I would be interested in viewing the webinar you are talking about - if you have time, please post a link.
Again, I am not saying this is a bad idea by any means, but I think it definitely could make for some interesting issues if not planned out well beforehand.
Mike
You don't need to really worry or stress about the missing meta descriptions and long titles.
Meta descriptions do not impact your rankings and Google will automatically create a description for your page if it appears in the SERPs.
Title tags that are too long do not impact your rankings... at least not directly. If your title tag is over by 10 or even 20 characters, it will not impact whether your pages ranks or not. The 70 characters is a suggestion as that was the number of characters that would display in the SERPs; however, now it is based on pixil width. The only other important info you need to know about titles is that you put your most important keywords towards the beginning of the title.
If you are unsure about how or are unable to edit these pages to add or edit the description and title, it isn't going to make our break your site from a ranking standpoint.
Some CMS will automatically generate 301s if you edit a URL's structure. It does this so that any old links pointing to the old URL will be brought to the edited URL. The CMS will not fix broken links that point to the old URL, but on the server side, if someone clicks on an old, broken link, they will be brought to the edited URL page - if that makes sense.
I understand that you want to attack warnings and notices and get things perfect; however, sometimes it just isn't possible. Whether it is a CMS issue or knowing how to fix something complex - what does matter is that you investigate each warning and notice and make sure that it is not negatively impacting your site. From the sounds of it, the handful of warnings and notices you have are just fine.
Hope this helps answer your question.
Mike
I don't completely understand where you are saying the noindex/nofollow is located. If both are in the head, it applies to the whole page; however, "nofollow" can be used specifically for links (in most cases blog comments).
The easiest thing you can do is ask yourself, "Do I want this page to be indexed by Google?" If no, then you want to use the noindex directive; however, if you want the page indexed, you will want to make sure you are not using the noindex directive.
As far as nofollows are concerned, those can/should be used for blog comments. Nofollow can be used in other instances, but it generally isn't a tag that you throw around much.
This Matt Cutts article talks about how the nofollow directive works in relation to link juice... it is worth a read.
Hope this answers your question Gina.
Mike
Keri's example of Moz's "top secret project" is a good one.
If you Google "top secret project" they are appearing at the bottom of the second page SERP.
What tool are you using to get your backlink profile?
Can you provide your domain?
Mike
It does not matter from an SEO standpoint whether you link to https or http from your homepage to a secondary page.
What does matter is that you only have one version. You do not want to have http://domain.com/second-page and https://domain.com/second-page on your website.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Hi Mark,
It can sometimes take a while for those cached pages to disappear.
You can either:
As long as it isn't a huge deal if the public can see those pages, I would let the process happen naturally. If the public can see privileged information, I would go with the removal request.
Hope this helps.
Mike
I would suggest contacting the customers as a common curtsey. We do customer quotes, but we pull them from success stories, which the customer knows we will be publishing already. While the customer did send you an email with a review or quote, they probably didn't know you would be making their comment public.
I personally would feel better asking the customer, even if you don't plan on using their name or initials, it would still be good. Also, I think if when you contact them you ask if you can use their name, that would be good. I think seeing a name associated with a quote gives it a little more oomph and shows that you aren't just make up quotes.
Just my thoughts.
Mike
If you currently have a 302 in place directing http to https, you are only utilizing the backlinks of the https version. Once you implement a 301 from http to https, you will be gaining the backlinks that the http version has pointing at it and directing them to the https version.
No. If you need to use https, you need to use it. It is not looked down upon or more difficult to rank for or any of that... merely personal preference or need based.
Does that answer your question?
Mike
I personally do not think that they are good for SEO; however, they potentially can be good for PR and getting your company name out there.
The backlinks you gain from PR directories are usually pretty low quality and not counted for much.
Maybe create a PR section on your website, then use social media to give teasers about it, linking back to your PR section... that would potentially drive traffic to your site and get people to follow you to hear about PR news.
Hope this helps.
Mike
If I were you, I would change the 302 redirect to a 301.
A 302 redirect tells search engines that it is a temporary redirect and to not pass any link juice, because it is a temporary redirect and will be changing.
A 301 redirect tells search engines that it is a permanent redirect and to go ahead and allow link juice to flow from one page to another, because it is a permanent redirect and will not be changing.
Make sense?
Hope this helps.
Mike
Hi Ed,
First - cool websites! Visually they look really nice.
According to Matt Cutts, Google does not consider bounce rate as a ranking factor. Think of it this way, if you Google weather in Minneapolis then click on the weather.com page, and see the high today is 36 degrees <sigh>then leave the page, you are bouncing. BUT, does that mean that weather.com didn't answer your question and should be ranking lower because of a higher bounce rate? That is why Google claims they do not consider bounce rate a ranking factor, because users could easily find the answer to their question and leave a site within seconds.</sigh>
That said, if you look at OpenSiteExplorer.org you will see that your SparrowMakeup.com.au site has very high authority, while your Make-up-Artists.com.au does not.
If I were you, I would incorporate the cool functionality of your portfolio into your main SparrowMakeup.com.au site. I understand your reasoning for having two separate sites, because of the different look/theme; however, I think when people are looking at a portfolio, they expect to see something more artsy and different looking. I think you could definitely get away with incorporating the same functionality from your portfolio site onto your main site.
Since it appear that you don't have any text on the portfolio page, it isn't super likely that you'd rank for that page, but directing someone to an "external" website might be confusing, since the portfolio is essentially an extension of the main site. If you want to continue to have it be a separate site, that is fine; however, I would recommend that you open your portfolio page in a new window... that way, once/if they close your portfolio window, they are brought back to your main website.
Does that all make sense?
Hope this helps.
Mike
The full subdomain of your website in this case would be www.mysite.com. The www is considered a subdomain.
I just responded to your other question and was guessing that you had a campaign setup for your non-www version and that is why you are getting the 301 redirect notice.
As Joram suggests, you can remove the non-www version from your campaigns.
Mike
Crawl Notices are merely a "heads-up" notice. You having a 301 redirect from http://mysite.com to http://www.mysite.com is perfectly normal and correct if that is the very you want displayed to users.
One thing to note, you may be getting this message if:
Hope this helps.
Mike
Not knowing the product kind of makes it difficult to go on that; however, some of these ideas may work.
I would create a landing page for the physical product, then additional pages optimized around the product launch:
Create a landing page that is specific to any question that a visitor would/could have about the product.
Does that help/give you some ideas?
Mike
Screaming Frog - I usually wait for SEOmoz or Webmaster Tools to identify issues, then use Screaming Frog to verify that I have fixed them. It is a great tool and FREE if your site is under 500 pages.
Here are the SEOmoz definitions of the other warnings you are talking about:
"Meta Robots Nofollow - When the meta robots tag for a page includes 'nofollow', no link juice is passed on through the links on that page.
Blocked by Meta Robots - This page is being kept out of the search engine indexes by meta-robots."
I am guessing someone put the following in the head of those blog posts:
It is just telling Google to not index the page and to not pass page rank or anchor text for any links on that page.
Typically the "nofollow" is used in blog comments, so commenters cannot provide links back to their personal websites.
"noindex" shouldn't have any affect on rankings. It is just telling Google that certain pages are not worth putting in their index (copyright, terms of use, etc.).
"nofollow" links if not implemented correctly can look kind of spammy to Google, but in most cases you should be fine.
Does that help?
Mike
I think part of it has to do with the link in your articles section, heading in the article, url, and title tag all matching or being REALLY close.
For instance, if I Google Dynamic Spin Release, I see your website's article; however, if I Google Dynamic Spin Release and the Energy of Your Mind, I do not.
I am guess that is because your title tag and url pull more weight than your listing and heading:
listing: Dynamic Spin Release and the Energy of Your Mind
heading: Article on Dynamic Spin Release and The Energy of Your Mind
title: Dynamic Spin Release
url: Dynamic Spin Release
When you are writing or posting these articles, I would try and match the listing, heading, title, and url to almost match each other if those are the types of queries you are hoping get typed into Google.
I hope this helps.
Mike
If you scan with Screaming Frog, you can easily find missing meta tags, titles, broken links and more.
It is what we used prior to going live with our website and it was a life/time saver!
And here is a guide done by SEER Interactive that illustrates all of the different things you can accomplish with this tool.
Mike
Hi Bob,
I looked at the top 7 articles on your articles page.
Here is what I found by Googling the titles or headings of these articles:
Is there an article in particular that you are not finding via Googling the title/heading?
Mike
Duplicate content?
Dynamic Spin Release and the Energy of Your Mind
http://www.nlpca.com/DCweb/Dynamic_Spin_Release.html
http://www.nlpiash.org/Articles/RecentArticles/tabid/250/EntryID/12/Default.aspx
Choice Building: Changing Synesthesias Through Choice Building
http://www.nlpca.com/DCweb/synesthesia
http://www.nlpco.com/library/therapy/choice-building/#axzz2Qk3i4Sh6
Are these articles supposed to be on multiple sites?
Mike
It sounds like you are maybe trying to target multiple keywords on a single page?
This can be extremely difficult as the purpose of the page is not clearly defined.
As Jesse suggests, create a new page and follow the guidelines here for creating a perfectly optimized page.
Hope this helps.
Mike
After diving deeper, it looks like it is a matter of breadcrumbs and other types of navigation.
Here is an example of how different pages are linking to /Mens_Bags-600/:
/Electric_Goggles_and_Electric_Sunglasses~65
/Surfdome_Mens_Bags-600/132
/Bags-372/
As you can see, depending on the page, the linking structure can vary greatly on your site. I didn't dive extremely deep into your site, so there definitely could be other instances of other types of linking structures on different page layouts. This would definitely explain why some of your pages have MANY in links, while others don't.
I hope this helps; otherwise, like I said, Screaming Frog can pinpoint exactly where your in links are coming from, which can help you figure out the entire linking structure of your site.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Hi Gina,
You should try to fix any errors. Errors can impact your users' experience, as well as interfere with web crawlers and even impact your rankings.
404 errors:
Warnings are more or less a "if you have time and can, you could fix these". They really do not impact your rankings, but if you are trying to be perfect, you could fix them.
Notices are just a "heads-up". They do not impact rankings, UNLESS you are blocking robots ; )
Long story short, fix Errors, work on Warnings when you have time, verify you already knew about the Notices.
Hope this helps.
Mike
Hi Carlos,
I think part of this has to do with the breadcrumb functionality you have built into your site.
So for instance, /Mens_Wetsuits-598/ has a ton of inlinks. Part of this is because your top navigation is linking to /Men_Wetsuits-598/ on every page on your site, then your breadcrumb functionality is linking to /Mens_Wetsuits-598/ on each of your 252 men's wetsuit products.
If you want a further look at internal linking structure, I would recommend Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It will scan your entire site and can show you all internal in-links and out-links for each page on your site.
I hope this gives you some insight as to what is happening. It is not of course a comprehensive explanation, but you can see how something as small as a breadcrumb can easily inflate the number of internal links.
Mike
I am pretty sure the SEOmoz toolbar uses the same metrics as Open Site Explorer, which is only updated a few times per month. In any case, creating a new page means you are starting off with little or no authority PA:1; however, once you include 301 redirects to that page, internal linking structure, and links from external websites, that authority will grow.
As for your other page being at the same Google position as before, that is good; however, that is not always the case. You are correct in stating that a 301 helps transfer the link juice from one page to another, but it is not a 1:1 transfer... which means that in some cases you could lose traction in your current Google position.
All of that being said, it sounds like you have everything set up correctly with your 301 sending link juice and traffic from your old page to your new page. It will take a couple weeks (typically) for SEOmoz to update Open Site Explorer and the SEOmoz toolbar to reflect these changes. Also, it can take some time for Google to rank your new page accordingly, as it must built some trust and authority with Google.
Hope this helps.
Mike
According to Yahoo, "...If you need to make a change to your listing in the Directory (this includes changing the URL, title, and/or description of the existing site), you must use the change form, NOT Yahoo! Directory Submit."
I think this is the change form and here is some additional info from Yahoo on "How do I suggest changes to my Directory listing?"
Mike
Rand talks about co-occurrence/co-citation in this WBF video.
He gives some great examples of how this can potentially increase rankings. It is a very interesting video.
Hope this helps.
Mike
You are correct in saying that you would have to divide your link building efforts if you have multiple sites. If you use subdomains, you would get some of the value of linking across all of your sites; however, I don't think that would be good necessarily for your example.
I would suggest that you have landing pages specific to each category of law, then subpages under each landing page that are pertinent to that specific category.
For instance, you could have a Family Law page, which would then have subpages of Divorce, Child Custody, Child Support, Adoption, etc. You could still very well rank well for each of your categories and subcategories.
I would think that your clients would think you were experts in each of your category pages, but I am not too familiar with lawyering
Hope this helps.
Mike
You should attempt to create a listing here: http://listings.local.yahoo.com/overview.php
You may be prompted that you already have a listing; however, I would think you should be able to claim it if you can provide the phone number, address (sometimes they will send you a postcard), or company email address.
And since you are on the "local directory" topic, I would suggest using GetList.org to see where your company is listed and list your company in any of the directories which it is not already listed in.
Hope this helps.
Mike
In FireFox, click View, select Toolbars, then make sure you have a checkmark adjacent to SEOmoz Toolbar. If you have a checkmark, the tool bar should be appearing.
Hope this helps.
Mike