Welcome to the Q&A Forum

This is something that I've had many heated debates about, but I think I proved that Author Rank is a factor, and this is how I did it...and it was a mistake by the way. But you could try it too.

(Unfortunately, because my client data is confidential, I can't share too many intimate details.)

I had a client who has a responsive WP theme. However, they have so much content, the responsive theme just isn't the best solution-- not as good as a mobile site-- for this particular client.

I put up a mobile site at mobile.example.com and I set up the canonical link to point to the main domain, just as it should. The mobile site was also a WP site.

However, when I made the mobile site, I accidentally left myself as the author. (I built the mobile site before I added the site owner as a user.)

A couple of weeks later, MY FACE started appearing in the Google results instead of the attorney. In other words, the attorney used to rank on page 2 for "What are the consequences of DUI in Arizona?"

And it was at something like: example.com/consequences-dui-az-something

But suddenly mobile.example.com/consequences-dui-az-something  appeared on page one of Google, with my face. The rankings changed and Google preferred to believe that I was the author, rather than the attorney with his brand new authorship.

So even though I added duplicate content and a canonical tag, Google preferred the content that was authored by me, and chose to display that over the identical content that the attorney wrote and had been previously indexed and given author credit for. All of a sudden, the mobile site took precedence. When I changed authorship back to the attorney, rankings dropped slightly again and Google chose to display the MAIN site (as it should have), rather than the mobile.

I don't care what anyone (even Matt Cutts) says about Authorship. I've seen a real life example. Perhaps they are using it in certain markets and not others. But when it comes to attorneys, my primary client, I've seen it matter.

Yes, if you redirect URL B, it will not be indexed as content. It will be ignored by Google.

Well... Not ignored, but Google will acknowledge the URL B shouldn't be indexed.

Irrelevant? Alex, Google is a database. Each search is a database query. If you don't have an education in systems analysis, you might be a decent SEO, but you aren't going to have original thought or do any ground-breaking stuff. You're just doing what you've learned on the internet.

It's like knowing how to use a calculator really well, but not understanding why 2 + 2 = 4.

And if one has never written an algorithm, how could one propose to be an expert on algorithms? In order to best understand the algorithm, an SEO should be able to write an algorithm. Otherwise, it's just a guy in his basement testing correlation and causation...which Google goes out of it's way to foil.

You need to use the rel=canonical tag.

All of the duplicate pages (content/pages) need a tag in the head (the canonical tag)-- which points to the original.

That will solve your duplicate content problem.

I don't know if you'll need to do this, but depending on the coding language, you may need to have an if/then statement in your PHP, ruby, ASP...whatever.

IF this page isn't the original page THEN

ELSE

Do Nothing

END

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

You mean MOZ.com considers it duplicate content, right?

Duplicate content, as in having pages with duplicate content will cause you a "ding" in your rankings-- but mostly when it's duplicated from domain-to-domain. I have never seen evidence of duplicate content on the same website, harming a website, no matter what Google says about canonical links. (I still think you should use canonical links.)

But assuming that having some duplicate content on your site is really very harmful...

Google knows the difference between a page that is actually duplicate content and plain old blank pages. MOZ may consider blank pages duplicate, but MOZ isn't nearly as sophisticated as Google.

I wouldn't sweat it myself.

If the site has only been live for a few weeks-- they may have an old robots.txt file indexed.

So... What Wissam said.

I agree with Miriam. There is a company in Phoenix that calls themselves "Phoenix SEO" in the maps- even though that's not the name of the company. When you search for Phoenix SEO, one company dominates the search. Very odd. But it will surely be worked out.

Thanks Peter. Yes, I think the new back-end is confusing. And it was worth a guess, but that wasn't it. Thanks for playing though!

I don't understand the purpose of the 301 redirect. If you are redirecting your fancy URL, that is "SEO optimized"-- then you are doing nothing. The only thing that will be indexed will be the non-fancy URL. If you 301 redirect anything, that page will not be indexed, so making a keyword-rich URL is useless. Instead, I would use only canonical tags.

So, for example, let's say you have a product page. And it's at example.com/product-name/

But it's also in other places example.com/tags/vases/product-name/

General accepted SEO practices would say that all of the additional or supplemental pages should have the rel=canonical point to the "original." (Not redirected back to the original.)

However, because Google seems to be favoring breadcrumbs more than ever-- you might want to pick a page with breadcrumbs (Page B) and make that page the canonical. You could try it both ways with different products and see how it goes.

Now, please bear in mind that I just thought of this as I was answering your question, and this is just something to think about- I haven't actually tried this, but I might...

In other words, if I had:

example.com/400-watt-halide-bulb/

but I also had it in:

example.com/light-bulbs/halide/400-watt-halide-bulb/

I might point all examples of that product to the longer, breadcrumbed URL with the canonical link. But again, just thinking out loud.

I have about 12 campaigns in my account. One of them has disappeared.

If I deactivate every campaign I have, the dashboard still says that I have one campaign active. Yes, I know which campaign is active-- it's the missing one. The only evidence I have that the missing campaign is still "there" is the one active campaign that remains open, but not displayed anywhere.

Yes, I am absolutely sure I didn't delete it.

But that's only my first problem. So now that all of my campaigns are visually archived, I can go in and activate them one at a time, and that works.

Except for one campaign. I have one campaign that simply will not allow me to activate. It does not give me an error message when I click activate. I just get the jquery "waiting" animation and then...nothing.

This is kind of urgent and I emailed moz during normal business hours with no response yet.

You need to use the rel=canonical tag.

All of the duplicate pages (content/pages) need a tag in the head (the canonical tag)-- which points to the original.

That will solve your duplicate content problem.

I don't know if you'll need to do this, but depending on the coding language, you may need to have an if/then statement in your PHP, ruby, ASP...whatever.

IF this page isn't the original page THEN

ELSE

Do Nothing

END

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

First of all, PR is not as important as people think. Nothing to get that worked up about. What matters is: Has your traffic dropped? Has your ranking dropped?

I agree with Miriam. There is a company in Phoenix that calls themselves "Phoenix SEO" in the maps- even though that's not the name of the company. When you search for Phoenix SEO, one company dominates the search. Very odd. But it will surely be worked out.

When you redesigned the site, did you change the URLs?

For example, did you change--

example.com/miami-homes/ to example.com/miami-homes.asp?

And if so, did you 301 redirect all of the old pages to their new locations?

With the info provided, that's my best guess.

I don't understand the purpose of the 301 redirect. If you are redirecting your fancy URL, that is "SEO optimized"-- then you are doing nothing. The only thing that will be indexed will be the non-fancy URL. If you 301 redirect anything, that page will not be indexed, so making a keyword-rich URL is useless. Instead, I would use only canonical tags.

So, for example, let's say you have a product page. And it's at example.com/product-name/

But it's also in other places example.com/tags/vases/product-name/

General accepted SEO practices would say that all of the additional or supplemental pages should have the rel=canonical point to the "original." (Not redirected back to the original.)

However, because Google seems to be favoring breadcrumbs more than ever-- you might want to pick a page with breadcrumbs (Page B) and make that page the canonical. You could try it both ways with different products and see how it goes.

Now, please bear in mind that I just thought of this as I was answering your question, and this is just something to think about- I haven't actually tried this, but I might...

In other words, if I had:

example.com/400-watt-halide-bulb/

but I also had it in:

example.com/light-bulbs/halide/400-watt-halide-bulb/

I might point all examples of that product to the longer, breadcrumbed URL with the canonical link. But again, just thinking out loud.

No... I mean your SERPs...

Did you lose position your SERP for your keywords?

Because if your pagerank went down, but you kept your ranking positions, and traffic increased--

Who cares?

That just adds to my original point: PR doesn't matter much.

Search for "fighting breast cancer"

Or "fight breast cancer"

Or "delayed diagnosis of breast cancer"

or "failure to diagnose breast cancer" (highly desired by attorneys)

Look at the site (in the Google results) fighting-breast-cancer.com

It has a low page rank, but I that site ranks well for any phrase related to breast cancer. It has very few links and low PR.

I can give you lots of examples of sites on Page 1 of Google with very low page rank.

Yes, if you redirect URL B, it will not be indexed as content. It will be ignored by Google.

Well... Not ignored, but Google will acknowledge the URL B shouldn't be indexed.

Honestly, not trying to be a smart ass here, but I would just Google "SEO guru." Then, pick someone from page 1 who has a decent website and lives in the same country as you.

Clearly, if you need an SEO guru to help you do well in Google, I would start by asking the Googlebot who it determines would rank for such a term.

Make sure the person you pick has a very high AuthorRank and regularly publishes content, either on his own blog or other important websites. Someone who offers "white hat" SEO or is a "white hat SEO guru" would be ideal. Like you said, you don't want your credentials turned over to just anyone.

If you need help with local SEO, why not search for a local search guru? Or even a Google local search guru?

I also happen to know that one of those SEO gurus (that ranks in the first few results in Google) is just now currently taking clients.

The interesting thing is that when people are looking for an SEO guru, or expert, or consultant, or what have you-- they often place a classified ad or perhaps post in a forum such as this. But all you need to do is "Google it."

The first thing you should ask an SEO person is: What do you rank for? What longtail keywords do you rank for?

Next: What did you study in school? (If it's not computer-related, you can probably move on.) Personally, I think a strong understanding of systems analysis and database development is the most useful.

Google is a system. A good SEO analyzes that system, so an SEO is really just a systems analyst.

**Edited: And I agree with Alex below. Marketing helps too, when it comes to search engine marketing (such as PPC and landing pages), R&D, maybe copywriting. But for organic SEO, my opinion is to hire an experienced systems (DB) analyst. **

And be sure to ask what kind of link building they engage in. You don't want to get nailed by a penguin.