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Hello EGOL,

thanks for your reply and some interesting ideas. I'll take it into consideration!

Hallo Andreas,

Let's keep it in Englisch on Moz ;). Thanks for your comprehensive answer. I started optimising this page about 1,5 month back. Arabisch Lernen does have a lot,lot,lot more search volume. Way more then other relevant keywords like arabisch kurse, fernkurs arabisch or fernstudium arabisch.

Wenn I checked the page with the on page grader from MOZ it didn't say that the content was stuffed with the keywords Arabisch lernen. it's under the 15 times. With externel linking the page passes link juice to the other page, how thus this help this page?

Hey All,

As a rookie on SEO, I optimised this page http://www.nhad.de/fernstudium/sprachkurse/arabisch/sprachkurse-arabisch/arabisch.aspx for the keywords Arabisch lernen. I saw a huge improvement from position 100+ to position 45. but now it's stuck around this position. Are there any things I missed on this page? Are there still things to increase the ranking? I hope to learn from you. thanks in advance!

Hey,

when I googled one of our products i came up with this strange result, see attachment. I searched for: kurs praktische psychologie on google germany.

These words also come up in the meta description of this page:** Praktische Psychologie** Fernkurs mit professioneller Betreuung. Testen Sie den praxisorientierten Kurs über die Grundlagen der Psychologie 4 Wochen kostenlos.

and in the body: _Sie glauben der Mensch lässt sich trotz all seiner Facetten durchschauen, wenn man sich nur Mühe gibt ihn zu verstehen? Da liegen Sie vollkommen richtig! Der Kurs "Praktische Psychologie" vermittelt Ihnen hierfür alle Kenntnisse und Fähigkeiten, sodass Sie schon bald das Mysterium Mensch ergründen. _

Why is Google still showing this description which i obviously don't want to be shown, and why does it state _spring naar (jump to) Kursgeburh _and how can i avoid this?

yd1DStW

Wincher.com is a tool I work with and shows your rank with search volume and is also cheap.

Hi Howard,

As for the 'have to', I'd say no, you don't really have to use unique descriptions with your content on those networks. But I'd keep in mind that your audience is on several of those networks because they want to find different kinds of content or want to engage in a different way. Thus by copying descriptions and make something potentially unique generic, you might miss a good opportunity to connect with your audience on one or more of those networks.

Just my 2 cents, hope this helps you

LinkPatrol is meant for controlling outgoing links, not inbound ones. It could still be useful on a WordPress site / blog of considerable size, though.

Hi Wizard,

Thanks! That's certainly helpful. Google's nudges aren't unknown to me, but the fact that this particular phenomenon only occurs under aforementioned circumstances made me doubt if it could not be a technical issue after all.

Hi all,

When googling our company, I see our main page pop up with 2 different meta descriptions, depending on the search query.

The situation
The search query 'nha' (on google.nl) returns the main page with a meta description that looks like a random grab from the code by Google itself, starting with 'Ik volg een cursus bij de NHA...'

The search query 'nha.nl' (on google.nl) returns the main page with the proper meta description, starting with 'Aanbieder van thuisstudies met onder meer MBO-opleidingen...'.

So yeah, I'd like to have the main page only appear with the proper meta description, the latter one. We did have a redirect issue (duplicate homepages) a few weeks ago and programming fixed it. Could this have something to do with a redirect?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

Hi Lyam,

You say that what you're seeing is probably penalization. If so, it's possible that there are issues to be addressed in your Google Webmaster Tools. You might have fixed most of them, but did you also file a reconsideration request with Google on the manual action page in your WMT? It might just be that Google's systems still have your URL flagged as penalized, even though it's clean again.

About the sessions that originate from abroad: from what traffic sources do you get these visits? Are they all organic and direct traffic, or is there affiliate, ppc, e-mailtraffic among them?

Hi Lynn,

I'll be sure to update our webteam so we can tackle this. Thank you!

Hi guys,

I'm puzzled because of my affiliate campaign URLs not showing up properly in my Google Analytics reports. I'll try to explain what I did and I hope some of you can provide advice on how to proceed from there on.

What do I want to do?
Actually, what I want to do is quite simple. I tagged a few URLs for Google Analytics to show up in my campaign reports. I used the URL builder to do so. Example: http://www.nhad.de?utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=zanox&utm_content=banner&utm_campaign=105x139.

Is that the entire URL?
Uhm, no. Because of the active de-duplication script on our website, I need to put some characters in front of it: **www.nhad.de/affiliate.aspx?NETWORK=ZANOX&NEXTURL=**http://www.nhad.de?utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=zanox&utm_content=banner&utm_campaign=105x139.

Yikes. Yes, I know.

What do I see?
Basically, when I paste the above url and run it in (for example) Chrome, only this shows up in my browser: www.nhad.de/?utm_source=affiliate. In my Analytics reports, the campaign URL is not recognised, just the source in my traffic report. The medium is indicated with 'not set'.

What am I doing wrong, and what can I do to make my campaigns appear in Analytics?

Best,

Bas

Thanks, Dave. We're going to 301 it, since this page has good SERPs on certain keywords.

Hi Mozzers,

Just recently we acquired a domain (www.nhacaribbean.com) for marketing purposes. Our technical staff used a frame forward to redirect the domain to the landing page http://www.nha.nl/alles-over-nha/Caribbean.aspx, which is only linked in the sitemap (not in the navigational structure of the site).

Now, I'd personally just redirect the domain with a 301. But our CEO really wanted to keep the domain www.nhacaribbean.com visible in the URL bar. My question is: could this (potentially) really hurt rankings for our web site one way or the other?

I'd love to hear from you guys. Thanks in advance.

Hi!

First off, since your content can be accessed in multiple ways, I'd make sure that you're applying means to indicate duplicate pages as such to search engines. Easy access to great content is fantastic, but you can devaluate your own pages a lot when you're not careful. If you're not using it yet, I recommend implementing the rel="canonical" tag in your website.

To answer your questions:

1. It should cover all URLs that want indexed. Ideally, that would be every URL
2. I'm not sure what 'the best' tools would be, but I used http://www.xml-sitemaps.com a lot a few years back. Their sitemaps are free up to 500 URLs. There are payment plans for bigger ones.
3. I wouldn't update an XML sitemap for every new page you make once a month. Instead, let the search engine find their own way in that case. Should your entire site structure change, an XML sitemap can be a great way to help search engine understand your new site setup better.

I hope this helps!

Now that we're talking easter eggs... is that the only known easter egg implanted / found in moz.com? :))

I love easter eggs. All year through.

Hey Alex,

I'd photoshop that picture and add the extra item, then e-mail it to the client and explain that it looks confusing to me, let alone to a site visitor. There's already a (clickable?) main navigation item with that name directly above it (maybe mention that it doesn't have any added SEO value whatsoever). If they are still persistent, I'd ask them to explain to me why they are so keen to add the duplicate item and go from there.

I've been on the receiving end of those requests all too often and sometimes, the logic of a client is hard to explain from a developer's point of view. I think it's best to let the client rule out his own logic in that case

Hey Rob,

Your issue probably has to do with the localization of your operating system. You'll want to change the country / language settings of your OS version to English / US. You can then download and open the file and the information will be displayed in their respective columns correctly. Save + exit, switch back your country / language settings to their original state and you can then normally open and read the file.

Hope this helps

Hi Tiberiu,

As far as I can tell, a web site that has a low page / domain authority doesn't necessarily have to be an 'untrusted' web site. If a web site has great content, but the domain name has only recently been registered and it doesn't have a lot of links pointing to it yet, its authority on page and domain levels will be (relatively) low.

I'd review each of these sites individually and see which ones could (potentially) harm your own site's authority. You could do so by judging the way content is being presented (is it in between a lot of ads or being presented in a clean, well-structured manner), if there is interaction with the target audience of the web site, checking for 'underwater' optimized pages, etc.

So your situation might not be so bad after all. Relevant and trusted links can come from all sorts of web sites - no matter big or small.

You're most welcome, Dana.

In my experience, it doesn't have to be all business, not even on a company account. But do try to not stray too far away from what your target audience wants to read. For example, A humorous tweet (funny picture, quirky quote, etc) about SEO or online marketing-related matters is bound to make people chuckle and might invoke that 'she's a real person and not a link-posting engine' feeling. A click on the 'follow' button won't be far away at that moment. More personal things like talking about your kids might appeal to some people (who are parents themselves), but the ones wanting to follow you purely for business related matters might not feel motivated enough to actually follow you. Making a separate, more personal twitter account could be worth the effort, in that case.

Hi Dana,

I don't  know if you are, but don't send automated DM messages to new followers on twitter. Many people don't like that, especially not when that automated DM contains links. There's a big chance that your newly acquired follower will get discouraged from reading anything on your timeline rightaway and will unfollow you.

EDIT: I see you are actively engaging in conversation, so that's a good thing. Then the following comes to mind: are you following the 'right' people? If there are a lot of people who won't follow you back, they might not belong to your target audience.

I don't know where you heard such a thing, but that's just not true.

Organic search and pay per click are not related at all in the sense that if you pay for clicks, your organic results automatically drop or go up.

On a side note; I wouldn't categorize this question as a technical SEO issue