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More likely than not, schematic markups aren't a high priority for Moz at this point. With a thousand and one other items to address and work on, prioritization and allocation of resources kicks in and schematic markups might not be as important for Moz. I also think that Google does a pretty good job of marking up Moz's content without active intervention on the part of Moz's staff, so they've de-prioritized that.

Hi,

Wow, that's a really broad question! (And one that I'd love to have the secret formula too)

In all honesty, I follow a pretty simple framework for optimizing a new site or working on a new project.

1. Find out what's the main Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the site. For example, if it's an e-commerce site, then the main KPI is most likely conversions into sales ($) rather than just traffic. So in that case, the aim is to get ranked for high converting keywords. If it's a local business with no e-commerce function, then localized search ranking for relevant keywords might be best. So find out what's the KPI before anything else.

2. Do the keyword research! This is pretty much the MOST important part to me. Rankings can be worked on and improved, but if you start off on the wrong keyword, it can be a massive pain to redo the entire site, just because the targeted keyword is wrong! I've got the most experience working with e-commerce sites, and what I do typically is to run some traffic for a first batch of targeted keywords via Google Adwords (if it's not too expensive!), to see if the traffic is useful in converting to actual results. AdWords will take a few minutes to set up, but to optimize the site for organic search is a bigger project! If the traffic from AdWords pans out, then it's probably a good set of keywords to work on for organic search too.

3. Once I've established the keywords, the next thing i work on is the on-site stuff. Site architecture, URLs, domains, page titles, content relevancy, internal linkages, the whole works. It might be a while before you look at all these stuff once the site is up and running again, so you want to make sure it's all right and in-place.

4. Prep for the launch of the site by creating all relevant social media pages/profiles. Social's a big part of search too and for overall marketing purposes too. For search optimization, it's also best to ensure that all your social media profiles are linked to the site you're working on.

5. Once the site is live, tap on whatever quality backlinks you have. I'm pretty certain most of us here have a secret cache of backlinks that we secretly hoard. So tap on those to give your new born site that little bit of boost at the start. You can also consider a few (just one or two) directory links. For directory links, I'd highly recommend DMOZ since it's free (might get a link or might not, but definitely worth a try), and Yahoo's directory (paid inclusion at $299/year but actually worth it).

6. Now that everything is in place, this is where the real work begins! Ensure a constant (and quality) presence on social media, continue to create good quality, relevant and most importantly, share-worthy content for the site, build relationships and get links either organically or through social engineering, try to get PR coverage if possible (not press releases, but relevant and hopefully good coverage of the business), and grow your traffic!

Hope this helps!

Hi agsIn,

Domain authority has a ton of other factors beyond just domain age. Rand Fishkin from Moz actually did a great video on it, but for some reason, the videos aren't accessible right now, maybe someone from Moz can check on them? It'll be great to take a look at those videos again.

http://moz.com/blog/whiteboard-friday-domain-authority-page-authority-metrics

Also, I took a look at the site you mentioned, and though it was registered back in 1996 (which is really old), its backlink profile isn't fantastic and includes quite a few backlinks from link exchanges and pay-for-links directories. I think it would be a good idea to take a look at this infographic: http://searchengineland.com/seotable/

I use it as a constant reference point for optimizing a site and it was great for helping me learn more about optimizing sites in general too.

Hope this helps!

Hi Zippy-Bungle,

Personally I think it's definitely worth it. It's great if you've found a vertical directory that lists companies in your relevant industry! When I built my site, there weren't any great backlink opportunities immediately available, so I created business profiles in the few general directories recommended in the book Rand Fishkin co-wrote 'Art of SEO'. These were BOTW, JoeAnt and Yahoo's Directory. I pretty much saw the effect these links had in about a month or so, bringing up my brand-new site up to the first page for bunch of semi-competitive keywords.

Because my site is an online marketplace, I couldn't find any good vertical directories. If your business has a relevant vertical directory like azom.com, go for it! Besides the backlink, they could also bring you organic leads too!

Hope this helps!

The general answer would be 'Depends on the agency'. 
I've worked with agencies in the past that would charge USD$500 per campaign set up, but this also doesn't include the creatives and coding of landing pages as those would be additional costs. For the monthly management, 15% of the total adspend is the usual fee.

Hey Issac,

Not necessarily true. The PA is calculated quite similarly to the site's DA. Which means that (as a rough example), the older blog post you checked the PA as 33 on, might have earned more backlinks, been around longer etc. It's not a confirmed thing that the page with your backlink will eventually have the same PA.

PA and DA are interlinked in the sense that DA will affect PA, but often times, you'll actually see a wide spread of pages with different PAs under every site. For example, my site's home page PA is 42, but a lot of my other pages have PAs ranging from 1 to 19, depending on how much emphasis I've put on them, or if they've earned more backlinks over time.

Hope that helps!

Hi Bob,

I ran through quickly the site you're trying to rank, as well as the others, in particular InstantPrint.co.uk

The very first thing that stood out to me is the massive amount of links that InstantPrint.co.uk has versus your site FastPrint.co.uk. IP (InstantPrint.co.uk) has (according to the MozBar), 10,908 links from 83 domains, versus your site's 758 links from 115 domains.

Couple of things I can suggest right off the bat here:

1. Keywords ranked on: You've done a great job of pulling out the raw data from SEMRush for the keywords via which the traffic is coming in for. I noticed that according to the data from SEMRush, IP is getting a very large amount of traffic from the keyword 'business cards' ranking 3rd, versus FastPrint which doesn't seem to be ranked on that keyword. Have you pulled the entire list of keywords from SEMRush's crawl of IP and tracking them via Moz? That will be my first step here. To see which keywords IP is ranking above you on. Once you've tracked that for a couple of week and know where you stand, then the next step will come in. The first step I'd take is to identify what are the keywords most relevant to the business. Once I've done that, I've established the main baseline to measure the optimization work to be carried out.

2. Content creation: You've created some lovely tools and infographics, but a side-by-side comparison of the the two landing pages targeted at the keyword 'business cards': http://www.fastprint.co.uk/business-cards/ versus https://www.instantprint.co.uk/businesscards show that IP's landing page for 'business cards' has a Page Authority of 34 versus FastPrint's Page Authority of 24.

One particular item I noted was that IP has placed their key landing pages for keywords like 'business cards', flyers & leaflets', 'banners & POS' etc on their footer, meaning that throughout the entire site, the internal links are continually pointing back to the key landing pages, while FastPrint doesn't. I'd strongly suggest further optimizing the internal linkages pointing to the FastPrint key landing pages.

3. Amount of Links: While it looks like IP has FastPrint beat in terms of the overall amount of links, I realized that the FastPrint site actually has more overall domains linking in to the site. I took a look at the backlinks pointing to IP and FP, and I think there's a lot to be learned here. If you take a in-depth look at the backlink report for IP, I think you'd find a massive amount of links that can also be pointing to FastPrint. Both businesses are in the same field, so I'd strongly suggest you take reference from the sites you've identified and figure out how they earned the backlinks they did, and apply the same to FastPrint.

Hope that helps!

Hi Aleksander,

As what Claudio and Kate have already mentioned, there might be other factors in play. Just a question though, in the screenshot you posted, was the search retrieved from your normal browser or an incognito/private tab? A simpler explanation for the rankings might be that whilst using your normal browser, your search results were personalized. When someone (in this case you), performs a search, the results are influenced by not only the relevancy/links/DA etc, but also whether the sites have been visited by the user on other queries in the past (or someone else using the same browser).

A simple way of finding out is to open up an incognito tab (Chrome), or a private window (FireFox) and using the same keyword to search again. If the results are different, then it might simply be a case of personalized search influencing the results.

Hope it helps!

Trust me on this one. I've cancelled my  Moz Pro account and sometimes neglected due to expired credit cards or updated payment methods etc and so far have never had an issue with any lost of data in my campaigns etc. in the past 5 years. That's one thing that keeps me coming back to Moz after having been a paid member for so long.

Hi brianflannery,

I'm not sure if you've already gotten a response on this, but I actually just went through a similar situation recently. We changed the navigation structure of the site (e-commerce marketplace) significantly, such that previous category URLs that were already ranked (some no longer existed), were removed. I'm not sure how significant a change in your site's navigation you're intending to make, and whether it was as drastic as ours.

We definitely saw negative effects from the change in the site structure, but it lasted for about 2 weeks or so. Our site was really new, only 6 months old at that point, so it took us a significant amount of time to recover from the navigation structure change. Back then, while desperately searching for a solution, I found this article, it might come in handy for you too. Hope it helps!

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3707-SEO-Identifying-the-Impact-of-a-Site-Redesign

Hi Fubra,

First thing that I can recommend that you do is to go into your AdWords account, then into the campaigns, then into the tab titled 'Keywords'. Once there, click into the tab titled 'Search Terms'.

Once in the 'Search Terms' tab, you should see all the keywords that triggered your ad to show. In this tab, look for the specific keyword that is unwanted. Select this keyword by clicking on the selection box on the left and you should see a bar pop up that allows you to select what you want to do with this keyword. Select the option 'Add as Negative Keyword' and that should stop the ad from triggering each time someone searches for the unwanted keywords.

Pro-tip: As part of your PPC optimization process, you should also be looking in the 'Search Terms' section of your campaigns/ad groups on a regular basis to see exactly what search terms are triggering your ads to show. There's bound to be search terms that are non-converters and also irrelevant search terms. By continually adding those to your list of negative keywords, you make your PPC campaigns more cost-effective.

Good luck!

Ecommerce marketplace for local classes here. We have over 3K SKUs on the site and I'd agree with what Dimitrii suggested. As an add-on to what he said, I'd also strongly suggest that you ensure the site's overall SEO architecture is well positioned to rank on a variety of keywords (depending on what your keyword research says of course).

For example,

• Our home page targets the broadest keywords (local classes etc.)

• Category pages targets 2nd tier keywords (baking classes, cooking classes etc)

• Product pages targets long-long-tail keywords (macaron baking class in the east)

I find that this approach works very well for ecommerce sites with a broad range of categories. In your case, Evening Dresses might be a category of it's own, with each SKU page ranking for its own long-tail keywords. As Dimitrii mentioned as well, image search does contribute a fair amount of traffic on it's own, and we've even received backlinks from site-owners who found our image via image search, and credited our site with a backlink

It's best to optimize the images you post up to be as descriptive as possible. Being an ecommerce site owner, I personally know your pain with hundreds if not thousands of SKUs, but cumulatively, it does make an impact and will help!

Hi vtmoz,

I don't think there's any issues with a high number of internal links pointing to the homepage. In fact, for nearly all sites, I'd say that the number one linked to page would be the homepage. I've built and ranked multiple sites, all with the top linked to page being the homepage and have not had any issues. Could you post a couple of links that say otherwise?

Hello idosmaccount,

Sounds like your site is a news site? I'd probably need more information to help out.

There's multiple approaches to this issue. If you've no-indexed or blocked off the pages in your robots.txt, you also lose the possible search traffic that those pages could bring. What other news sites have done to try to resolve this is to build in a on-page paywall similar to this https://www.straitstimes.com/sport/pocket-rocket-packs-a-punch

This approach allows for a 'sneak peek' of the page's content, also allows for the page to be indexed, and also allows for the user that comes in via search traffic the chance to convert to a paid subscription that unlocks the page's content.

I've tried this before, but I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of SEO plug-ins in general. While I didn't really see any real negative consequences, I think that if the WordPress site isn't constantly curated, plug-ins tend to make a mess of the site's architecture and meta data.

For WordPress, the only plug-in I really use is Yoast for it's ease of use and how it makes fundamental on-site optimization easier.

Much obliged for the update! I was checking on a backlink profile just yesterday and had seen the domain authority increase to 21 and then when I checked back again today, it was down to 20 again. I'm curious on one thing. Moz Local submits to BOTW, but why do we not see the BOTW link in the backlink profile from Link Explorer? I'm guessing that BOTW should be one of the sites indexed as well correct?

Hi Jarno,

This happened some time ago and I actually exited the business.

In hindsight, what you commented on was exactly correct. At the launch of the business, I had 0 brand queries. A year later, I had over 2000 monthly brand queries.

What happened was that the press covered us in print, but we also became a 'resource' for the reporters. Every time they had a question or were writing an article for something related, for example seasonal trends in classes, or newly popular classes, they reached out to us and would often quote us in their articles.

Interestingly as well, offline articles in the newspapers eventually made their way online and when i found these articles indexed as well, I reached out to my new-found contacts there and they were glad to link the company's name over to the site.

Hi,

Cool question! I previously ran a startup that was essentially an aggregator, something similar to an OTA, but we were aggregating classes instead of properties/homestays. I found that the best way to structure the site was some thing like this:

1. Home (Targeting the biggest, baddest keyword you can find)
https://qualistay.com/

1.2 Category pages
Broad keywords in each category (in your case, 'tenerife south apartments for rent' etc)
You currently have this as https://qualistay.com/properties/tenerife/ 
I'd have gone with creating multiple 'category' pages like 
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/apartments
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/villas
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-north/apartments
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-north/villas

1.2.1 Sub-Category pages
Still relatively broad, but more specific keywords
You didn't choose to sub-categorize these pages even more, but here's what I would have done:
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/apartments/adeje
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/villas/adeje
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/apartments/arico
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/villas/arico
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/apartments/granadilla-de-abona

1.2.1.1 Property pages
Specific keywords
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/villas/playa-de-las-americas/villa-victoria
These pages would tend be targeting the so-called 'brand keyword' of each individual property.

Structuring your site this was enables you to include the targeted keywords in your URLs and enables you to rank almost every single page efficiently based purely on the location of each property. In this manner, you would be able to rank for the top tier keywords which I'm guessing is 'tenerife villas' and 'tenerife apartments', the 2nd tier keywords which would be 'tenerife south villas for rent', 'tenerife south apartments for rent' and the 3rd tier keywords which would be 'playa de las americas villas for rent'. You also get the benefit of ranking for each individual property's 'brand name' like 'villa victora tenerife south'.

If the property happens to fall on the same building, then you can sub-categorize it even further like 
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/villas/playa-de-las-americas/villa-victoria/level-1
https://qualistay.com/tenerife-south/villas/playa-de-las-americas/villa-victoria/level-2

Hope this helps!

It'll depend on the existing domain that you want to use to host the sub-domain. If the existing domain is already an authoritative domain that has been around for a while and has a high domain authority, it would make more sense to host it under the existing domain as that will enable the new sub-domain to 'share' some of the domain authority. Good way to check is if the existing domain is already ranking for similar keywords that your new Magento store will be targeting with it's products.

Hope this helps!

Hi AshShep1,

I came across this same issue while using the new Link Explorer. I think it's mainly because the new Link Explorer's index is larger than the previous OSE and thus showing us more links that were not indexed previously by OSE.

Regarding your question, if you feel that the links are undesirable, you can always use the Disavow tool provided by Google in the Google Search Console to disavow those links. https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

Moz has a pretty good article on this tool here: https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-googles-disavow-tool

Hope this helps!