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We have a client who is launch some Google Ads campaigns, and they recently asked us to fix 304 "Errors" on their website as per this feedback: "When we inspected the website we came across a number of 304 status errors. In order to get the ads running, we will need all of the website domain status codes converted to 200. “ Of course, all of their website pages return a 200 Status, it's just the HTTP headers that additionally clarify with a 304 Response (not an error). Has anyone else ever run into this issue with Google Ads? IMHO it makes no sense to remove this functionality. Google has even recommended in the past to use this it: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2008/11/date-with-googlebot-part-ii-http-status.html Thanks for any tips or feedback!

BACKGROUND: We are developing a new multi-language website that is going to have: 1. Multiple directories for various languages:
/en-us, /de, etc....
2. Hreflang tags
3. Universal footer links so user can select their preferred language.
and
4. Automatic JS detection of location on homepage only, so that when the user lands on /, it redirect them to the correct location. Currently, the auto JS detection only happens on /, and no other pages of the website. The user can also always choose to override the auto-detection on the homepage anytime, by using the language-selector links on the bottom. QUESTION: Should we try to place a 301 on / to point to en/us? Someone recommended this to us, but my thinking is "NO" - we do NOT want to 301 /.  Instead, I feel like we should allow Google Access to /, because that is also the most authoritative page on the website and where all incoming links are pointing.  In most cases, users / journalists / publications IMHO are just going to link to /, not dilly dally around with the language-directory. My hunch is just to keep / as is, but also work to help Google understand the relationship between all of the different language-specific directories.  I know that Google officially doesn't advocate meta refresh redirects, but this only happens on homepage, and we likewise allow user to override this at any time (and again, universal footer links will point both search engines and users to all other locations.) Thoughts?  Thanks for any tips/feedback!

Hello! We are doing an image optimization audit, and are therefore trying to find a way to get a list of all images on a site.  Screaming Frog seems like a great place to start (as per this helpful article:  https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-perform-an-image-optimization-audit), but unfortunately, it doesn't include images in CSS.  😞 Does the community have any ideas for how we try to otherwise get list of images? Thanks in advance for any tips/advice.

A common question from anxious webmasters who have separate/smaller mobile websites is:  _"Will Google move my site over to mobile-first, even though I'm not "ready" yet?" _It's not an easy question to answer.  Here's what we know so far: Google is currently already migrating websites over that have a strong correlation between mobile and desktop content Google is taking the migration process very slowly, and for now, is not migrating sites over that are not "ready". Google has not announced any firm timeline for when they plan to migrate the remainder of all websites. In answering this question, I typically mention all of the above to help allay any fears. I then state that it could maybe be anywhere from one year to several years before the process is over - but with a huge disclaimer that this is pure speculation, and that only Google knows for sure. Lastly, I reiterate that Google in the meantime is strongly encouraging webmasters w mobile sites to ensure that they match the desktop version (URLs, schema, video, metadata, etc).  So the choice is to either to upgrade to responsive/adaptive, or upgrade the mobile site.  This is where the future is going. STILL - any additional feedback / thoughts / ideas / tips on this are welcome, because I continue to struggle with answering this question for clients.   Thanks!

Hello! I am looking for a spidering tool that: Is Mac-friendly Can render the DOM and find JS links Can spider password-protected sites (prompts for password and then continues spider, etc.) Has competitive pricing for 8+ users. Screaming Frog is amazing - and maybe we're just going to have to bite the bullet there.  But if anyone has any other ideas, I've love to hear them.  Thanks!

I've got a strange issue where if visitor is viewing a website from within the Google Search App, the app doesn't seem to be able to handle online forms. The form relies users on entering data, which is then POSTed to an external booking engine site.  Normally this works fine, except when Google Search App is acting as the browser, the post payload is empty and the URL breaks. We're a bit stumped as to how to move forward.  So far the only lead is that Android users can override having the app behave as a browser - but doesn't seem like iOS users can. Any additional ideas/tips are welcome here - thanks.  🙂

Does anyone know of a Wordpress plugin that allows you to create different tags for Open Graph (and potentially even Twitter) than standard Title and Meta Description Tags? As far as I can tell, most plugins just force OG and Twitter to use whatever the standard Title Tag and Description Tag are. But we'd like separate fields for each.  Standard Page Titles need a bit of extra keyword love, whereas social media titles we'd like a bit more freedom to focus on branding and creativity / CTR. Tips/feedback appreciated, thank you!

I have a question about how Mobile First could affect websites with separate (and smaller) mobile vs desktop sites.   Referencing this SE Roundtable article (seorountable dot com /google-mobile-first-index-22953.html), "If you have less content on your mobile version than on your desktop version - Google will probably see the less content mobile version. Google said they are indexing the mobile version first." But Google/ Gary Illyes are also on the record stating the switch to mobile-first should be minimally disruptive. Does "Mobile First" mean that they'll consider desktop URLs "second", or will they actually just completely discount the desktop site in lieu of the mobile one?  In other words: will content on your desktop site that does not appear in mobile count in desktop searches? I can't find clear answer anywhere (see also: /jlh-marketing dot com/mobile-first-unanswered-questions/). Obviously the writing is on the wall (and has been for years) that responsive is the way to go moving forward - but just looking for any other viewpoints/feedback here since it can be really expensive for some people to upgrade.  I'm basically torn between "okay we gotta upgrade to responsive now" and "well, this may not be as critical as it seems".  Sigh... Thanks in advance for any feedback and thoughts.  LOL - I selected "there may not be a right answer to this question" when submitting this to the Moz community. 🙂

Our number of followers on Twitter has suddenly dropped (yet not dropped) in a really weird way. Twitter Analytics shows follower counts in two places: Monthly increases in followers, and then also in the Audience Insights tab, where you can see three months of follower counts mapped in a chart. Month-to-month, the total number of followers continues to rise. What’s inconsistent, however, is the total number of aggregate followers shown in the cart. Twitter just dropped our to total count of followers by about 600. But it’s not like we just suddenly lost 600 followers last month (in fact we gained far more than that), but rather that Twitter seems to have adjusted the aggregate numbers across the board retroactively for all months. So while month-to-month continues to show gains, overall, we still went down. The only way we would have even noticed this, by the way, is because we have a record of the OLD total follower count that Twitter had previously displayed as recently as last month. So confusing. We’re trying to figure out what happened, and the only thing that seems to make sense is that Twitter may have done a huge spam account purge, and instead of making it look like we suddenly lost a lot of followers, they just updated the aggregate total # of followers across all time……? [For the record, we do not buy followers, but we don’t always do the best job at blocking spam followers when the do follow us either.] Any advice would be appreciated, thanks. 🙂

We received an HTML5 recommendation that we should change onpage text copy contained in 'section" to be listed in 'main' instead, because this is supposedly better for SEO. We're questioning the need to ask developers spend time on this purely for a perceived SEO benefit.  Sure, maybe content in 'footer' may be seen as less relevant, but calling out 'section' as having less relevance than 'main'? Yes, it's true that engines evaluate where onpage content is located, but this level of granular focus seems unnecessary.  That being said, more than happy to be corrected if there is actually a benefit. On a side note, 'main' isn't supported by older versions of IE and could cause browser incompatibilities (http://caniuse.com/#feat=html5semantic). Would love to hear others' feedback about this - thanks! 🙂

Hello - I am trying to help a biz w several dozen locations with their Google+ local pages. However, I'm not sure automation is the best solution: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3370250?hl=en In particular: Can you stipulate a Cover Photo and Profile Photo via Google's automated feeds?  I see that you can add "images", but not much more than that. Do we have to manually upload cover photo/avatar info?  If it turns out we have to, IMHO would be totally worth it even if time-consuming, but just trying to figure out the balance between automation vs manual factors.

Background: A business has 5 brick and mortar locations, in 5 different states, with 5 separate Google+ profiles. The corporate headquarters are in Michigan. The Michigan Google+ Local profile is the one that should be most closely associated with the brand. Problem: We want the Michigan Google + Local page to show up for branded searches nationwide: right now, it only shows up on geolocated searches in Michigan. Of course, it totally makes sense that the other 4 Google+ local pages will appear for users searching with IP locations (or logged in locations) near those states.  But for other states - is there a way to help Google understand or give preference to the main corporate location? What we're trying to prevent is someone in New York City searching for "company name", and then seeing a lesser location appear in SERPs associated with the brand, instead of our favored Michican location. Ideas so far: Continue to enhance out the Michigan location's Google+ page (check categories, photos, description, share content frequently, expand circles, get reviews, yada yada yada - we've already done much of this). _Maybe give this page more attention and content than other locations if we have to? _ Build links into Michigan Google+ page? Ensure general citations are up to date - use localeze/moz local etc. Website - We have a page for each location. While Michigan is featured, we also do promote our other offices as well - all kinda promoted equally on site in terms of metadata, content, etc. Any other brainstorming advice or out-of-the-box (oh no, did I just say "out-of-the-box"?) ideas to help Google associate the Michigan location as our "primary" one we want shown on more generic branded searches, even though of course the other 4 are impt too?  Tricky...

Hello, This is the first time I've asked a question here, but I would really appreciate the advice of the community - thank you, thank you!  Scenario:  Internal linking is pointing to two different versions of a URL, one with brackets [] and the other version with the brackets encoded as %5B%5D Version 1: http://www.site.com/test?hello**[]=all&howdy[]=all&ciao[]=all
Version 2: http://www.site.com/test?hello%5B%5D**=all&howdy**%5B%5D**=all&ciao**%5B%5D**=all Question: Will search engines view these as duplicate content?  Technically there is a difference in characters, but it's only because one version encodes the brackets, and the other does not (See: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp) We are asking the developer to encode ALL URLs because this seems cleaner but they are telling us that Google will see zero difference.   We aren't sure if this is true, since engines can get so _hung up on even one single difference in character.  _ We don't want to unnecessarily fracture the internal link structure of the site, so again - any feedback is welcome, thank you. 🙂