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I was actually also looking for an answer to this and found threads way back 2013 with the same advice that keyword density doesn't matter. What I found using MozPro is that target keywords should be mentioned in the meta title, description, H1, URL (if possible), and at least once in the copy without breaking the keywords apart. I also found that mentioning a target keyword in a 500-word copy more than 15 times is flagged by Moz as stuffing. I just use these as a rough guide. When I'm feeling particularly worried that some keywords have been mentioned too much, I use a free keyword density analyser to see how many times they appeared and reduce if necessary (especially if the copy doesn't read too well because of too much repetitiveness). Hope this helps!

Hi, I contacted Google about not receiving the pin after multiple attempts and they gave me an option to send photos of the place showing the sign and entry. Once you have verified this old address, you have to change the address to your current address and verify one more time.

If you absolutely can't verify the old address, there's also the option of creating a new Google My Business for your current location. Once that's verified, contact Google about merging the two businesses.

Here's also a post from Moz about dealing with duplicate locations - https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing

and from Google My Business help - https://support.google.com/business/answer/7005371?hl=en

Hope this helps.

Hi, like what Bryan said, it's better if you could avoid having redirects. Because of the extra step, redirects can affect your PageSpeed. We've always used redirects however - it's difficult to avoid - and it's very rarely flagged as a major issue when running the site in Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. The one thing we found that really has an impact on PageSpeed is a redirect chain, which should be avoided. This happens when a redirect goes to another redirect. Example: non-www redirected to a www version of the site, and then later on redirected again to an https www version. PageSpeed sites flag this as an issue, and so does Moz.

Hope this helps!

If you redirect a redirect, that's going to cause a redirect chain. Having too many redirect chains will result to slow page speed. For every step in a redirect chain, about 10% of authority is also lost. The best thing to do is a 1 - 1 redirect if possible. Have a read of this blog post about redirects - https://moz.com/blog/heres-how-to-keep-301-redirects-from-ruining-your-seo

Hope this helps!

Both help in SEO. Internal links for ensuring that bots crawl and connect your pages together. Backlinks for improving your site's authority. The latter has more weight in terms of outranking competitors.

I think it's best to respond as a company rather than as an individual. Company responses seem more legitimate and help to build trust especially when responding to a negative review. Personally, when I see these responses, I don't really think it's the actual owner but are representatives of the company.

Hello there, according to this guide there is no SEO benefit with choosing one over the other - it all depends on preference. Whatever you choose, let Google know your preference through Google Search Console. With regards to technical differences, adding www acts as a hostname that helps with DNS flexibility, restricting cookies etc. non-www doesn't have the same technical advantage according to the guide.

Hi everyone, we noticed while doing last month's reports that even the best performing campaigns have a few keywords that slipped - some up to 10 positions down. We know keywords fluctuate every month, but May was just a weird month for rankings. While looking at possible issues that caused this, we noticed that these campaigns' clicks have gone up. So while keywords have gone down, their visitors seemed to be on the rise.

Is there a correlation? Maybe Google saw an increase in visitors and decided something's up and lowered the rankings (this sounds ridiculous - sorry! May just be pure luck, but thought I'd ask anyway). Has anyone seen a drop in their rankings for May also? I checked everywhere, and I don't think there has been a major update going on.

Thanks!

Hi Jack, try to copy-paste your keyword list directly into the ad group list on the right hand panel. From there, download your list and it should show the search volumes of all keywords on the list even if they've been grouped originally on the 'keyword ideas' table. You would also find that grouped keywords have the same search volume individually. Hope this helps, let me know how you go.

Thanks, Donald and Miriam! It amazes me how I can get more useful responses here than from Google's actual support team.

Using a canonical depends on how much duplicate content you'll have on the page. If it's a sentence or two, an attribution at the end of the article should be enough. If more than that, you may have to add a canonical tag on the section of the page in order to avoid the duplication issue. If a page has a canonical, Google would likely not index the page and index the original source instead.

Hi Martin, thanks for sharing the article and for the tips on what to check! I need that article right now to help me calm down

Hi, I would wait it out a few weeks. There was one instance where we updated metadata and content on a page and the rankings visibly dropped a couple of days later. We thought it was because of this change, but decided to wait it out so we can be sure. A few weeks later, the rankings went up higher than where it was originally. Try resubmitting a sitemap in search console so Google can reindex your pages quicker.

We have a new client and they don't have meta descriptions yet. However, Google has assigned descriptions for them now appearing on the SERPs. The problem is that Google added a phone number that's totally not the client's and goes to a different unrelated business. Our plan is to update the meta to reflect the correct information, however, we're just perplexed as to how Google came up with the incorrect phone number. Where does it get its information from? The page currently has all the correct phone number, hours, and content.

I've read that Google sometimes also doesn't recognise our meta descriptions if it thinks they could serve up a better one. My next question is, what if Google insists on showing the incorrect phone number. Is there a way we can fix this? Thanks!

If your current backlinks also average DA 20-30, that may be preventing your site to go any higher. Try obtaining links that are in the DA 40-50 range or higher. Having those quality sites consistently linking back to you should move the needle up.

Hi everyone,

I tried to create a Google+ account from a client's Google My Business, but found that 'Enable Google+' is no longer available on the sidebar of the GMB dashboard. I used this tutorial to do that before  - http://onlineownership.com/create-google-page-connected-google-business-page/

An update on that article:

Update: 31st October 2017
Google My Business has confirmed that enabling a G+ business page will no longer be available. Users will need to now create a G+ Brand page for their business on G+.

My question is: If we create a separate G+ Brand page, are we still able to tie it up with GMB or are they going to be completely different platforms? On the dashboard for our older clients we have a list that goes like:

Your Business is Live on Google

• View on Search
• View on Maps
• View on Google+

In light of this new change. Do we still really have to bother creating G+ brand pages? It seems like the newly launched Google Posts is more user-friendly and easier to update. The posts could be created on GMB and it's going to appear on searches within the local knowledge graph. Thoughts?

Hello, just some guidelines:

• Write simple and straightforward headlines. Add compelling content that explains what your product is and how it solves customers' problems. Your content should provide readers all the value that they'll get from buying your product.

-Avoid super long paragraphs. Try to write your content in a way that it's easy to read and understand. Break them apart into lists, add subheadings or Question and Answers.

• Use calls to action that entice users to click. Try to instill a sense of urgency in your CTA buttons. Depending on how long your content / page is, you should have a couple of CTAs.

• Add images and videos. Make sure the images are in sync with your content. Layout matters - it needs to guide your customers to the end goal, which is to convert. It needs to be easy on the eyes.

• To help improve web page speed, make sure that your images are optimised for web page use.

Thank you! Yes, we have a feeling the phone number came from a hidden code somewhere. We asked our client if their website was built by the same developer that built the site of the business where the phone number goes to. If this is the case, then that solves the mystery.

Hello, the canonical should be enough in this case as it helps Google determine which page is the original out of the many duplicates. 301 is used if you want the duplicate pages gone and its link authority transferred to the original page.

From Search Engine Watch:

301 – Hey, Search Engines: My page is no longer here, and has permanently moved to a new page. Please remove it from your index and pass credit to the new page.

Canonical – Hey, (most) Search Engines: I have multiple versions of this page (or content), please only index this version. I’ll keep the others available for people to see, but don’t include them in your index and please pass credit to my preferred page.

https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical

Hello there, according to this article by Rand - https://moz.com/blog/what-if-my-competitors-point-spammy-links-to-my-site Google is pretty good at determining spammy links and if you have such pointing to your site, they should be able to discount these links. However, your site is clearly being affected by this as shown by your rankings drop.

Have you checked that your site isn't hacked? http://www.isithacked.com/

Have you checked that you don't have any manual actions on your search console?

Have you checked whether you have some traffic coming from weird locations? I ask because there was a time when a site we're working on published a harmless blog on children and the use of snapchat and there was a spike of visitors searching for explicit materials landing on that page. As a result, we suddenly had a ton of backlinks with explicit anchors that go to that page. Their rankings went down. The page was deleted though and all went back to normal.

This article might also help you: https://moz.com/blog/preparing-for-negative-seo

The author, however, said that for an attack with the same scale as yours, it is a good idea to audit your links regularly and submit a disavow file. Hope this helps.

Hi Miriam,

Thank you for your response and sorry for the delay in responding!

1 - No, there are no other businesses in the same category located at this address. I have seen instances where Google filtered out same category businesses in the same building - one of our clients is actually experiencing this! They are lawyers that share the same office as 3 other lawyers and our advice was to try and have the best ranking power out of the listings they're competing against.

2 - Camp Hill is a suburb in the city of Brisbane. Customers usually use the term "pool builders brisbane" or "pool renovations brisbane" when looking for local pool service providers. We want to rank highly for these terms and also appear in the local maps for these terms, but we are getting filtered out for some reason. I understand that results vary also on proximity of the searcher, however, where I'm searching from (Brisbane's central business district), the business doesn't appear readily on maps. The business is only about 4km away from where I'm searching from, but competitors that are as far as 19km away appear on maps with no issues.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Miriam!

Just to echo Andrew's answer above, making the heading, URL etc say what the page is about is also more user-friendly. If they're looking for more information about you, they may not know that this page contains the info they want.

You can change the URL back to about and request google to crawl and index the page (use the fetch tool). If they've indexed /storytelling, it's going to come up in the broken links section of Google Search Console. If so, yes, do a 301 redirect.

Hi, adding a canonical tag to your main site should allow Google to tell which one to index, especially if your 301s aren't working. More info about it here: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical

There is also the option of adding a noindex tag to a page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en

Hope this helps.

Hi everyone,

We are having an issue with this local business. The Google listing isn't immediately appearing on the map. You have to move the map or zoom in and out for the listing to appear. I find this really odd as our competitors - with no reviews and way further in proximity - are appearing with no issues.

The listing is only about 4km where I'm doing the search, while competitors with no reviews are about 20km away. We are ranking in the top 5 organically for the search term I used (pool renovations brisbane), but nowhere in local unless the map is moved. When the listing appears, sometimes the pin also looks grey instead of red, while others are red (if that makes sense).

On top of this, their organic rankings have also been on a downward trend since June. I'm currently doing a backlink audit to see if it's contributing to the issue. If anyone also has other ideas, could you please let me know? Thanks.

Hello there, from what I've read, so long as you write unique, interesting natural content, you don't need to worry about keyword stuffing. If content flows naturally and gives a lot of value to users, it should be fine. Unnatural keyword usage looks like this: "Bob's cheap Seattle plumber is the best cheap Seattle plumber for all your plumbing needs. Contact a cheap Seattle plumber before it's too late."

If you are worried, maybe try spreading the keywords around, using synonyms or adding more valuable content to thin out the keyword mentions. Hope this helps.

Hi everyone,

We are working on 5 websites that offer the same products but are of different brands and locations. They are owned by the same company, but each run independently. On the sites, they have content such as privacy policies, terms and conditions and guides that are the same across all brands. Will publishing these be flagged as duplicate content by Google? If yes, is it recommended to add rel=canonical to all duplicate pages across all sites pointing to one of the five?

We are just concerned that the 4 sites with duplicate content would be valued less than the canonical as a result of passed link equity. We are doing SEO optimisations for all and are trying to rank them well in SERPs.

If a canonical is not the best solution here, what would be the best to do apart from completely rewriting content? Is it noindex tag or turning the texts into images and adding to PDFs?

Thank you.

Hi Miriam,

Yes, these are very helpful! Thanks for the advice on doing a competitive audit. I will certainly do this for both clients!

Hi Alan, I don't think the extra 3 spaces would affect your SEO / rankings tremendously. Bots would still crawl and recognise the keywords in the URL. If you're after visibility on SERPs, you can optimise your meta title and description in a way that your brand & keywords are visible and clickable. As the meta title font is heaps bigger than the URL and description, that would be the first thing searchers see. Also, I doubt your URL will get truncated in SERPs with the extra 3 characters. Hope this helps!

Thanks for this! We won't be worrying about the T&Cs and such and will try to rewrite the product pages as we work on SEO on these individual brands and are trying to rank them all in their respective locations.

We use Keyword Planner to get a rough idea if a keyword has search volumes and worth tracking. But recently, it's showing zeroes (all locations) for very broad search terms such as "corn seed" "sorghum seed" "canola seed" and all variations of these three with "seed" in the phrase.

We checked trends and there are searches for it. Has keyword planner gone bonkers? There were search volumes for corn, canola and sorghum variations, just not words with "seed", which is very odd. "corn grain" has 9,900 searches and "canola plant" has 5,400 searches, for example. "canola seed" has 201-500 searches on Moz, so keyword planner, I think really filtered out seed words.

Is there another tool where we could just copy/paste or import a list and it'll show us the search volumes? I uploaded words on Moz, but we can only get search vol ranges and mostly don't have data yet for Australian searches.

Does SEMRush have this capability too? I couldn't seem to find where to upload a list.

If Google just filtered out these words, is there a way to get around it?

Thank you, I think that having only 1 backlink on the homepage footer is the best approach.

From what I read here, the use of multiple H1 tags depends on what HTML version you are using. If it's HTML4 or XHTML, only use one H1 per page, but if you are using HTML5 you can have one per section. HTML5 uses the new semantic elements like

<header>and

<footer>to work out the hierarchy, with headings only affecting hierarchy within one of those tags.

Source: https://moz.com/community/q/how-will-it-effect-seo-to-have-multiple-h1-tags-on-a-page

</footer>

</header>

Hi there, if it's not on htaccess and you're on WordPress, check if you have redirect plugins? If not on those two, the redirect was probably done via code. I found this article, which may hopefully help you - https://www.webconfs.com/154/301-redirects-how-to-redirect-your-website/

Yes, if your meta descriptions are duplicates, Google won't use these and instead get a snippet of content on the page. If you want Google to use your assigned meta description, write original and quality descriptions. If there's absolutely no way for you to assign individual descriptions on pages (I've seen some page structures built to share 1 metatitle & description - it's ridiculous), make sure the first few sentences of the page are acceptable as your description as Google would likely pull that info.

Hello there, I asked the same question here and we've followed this advice:

"This is a common issue and if you do a Google search about this issue, you will find a lot of discussion about this with many kind of opinions. Sitewide footer links are generally not a safe idea. Many people recommend making those links nofollow.

One solution could be to make the sitewide links nofollow, except the link in your customers frontpage footer. Then you'll get the link juice from the front page, but no penalty from sitewide links."

Try adding the areas you serve in your copy. Plus, on the footer and/or contact page - add your business name, suburb and postcode, hours and phone number. Even if you don't have your full street address on your website, Google should be able to tell the areas you are serving based on your website content and rank you for local searches accordingly.

Here's a comparison article for pitchbox, ninja outreach, buzzstream and mailshake - https://www.pointvisible.com/blog/outreach-tools-spotlight-pitchbox-vs-ninja-outreach-vs-buzzstream-vs-mailshake/

I've done a bit of reading and I'm having difficulty grasping it. Can someone explain it to me in simple language?

What I've gotten so far:

• Javascript can block search engine bots from fully rendering your website.

• If bots are unable to render your website, it may not be able to see important content and discount these content from their index.

• To know if bots could render your site, check the following:

• Google Search Console Fetch and Render

• Turn off Javascript on your browser and see if there are any site elements shown or did some disappear

• Use an online tool Technical SEO Fetch and Render

• Screaming Frog's Rendered Page

• GTMetrix results: if it has a Defer parsing of Javascript as a recommendation, that means there are elements being blocked from rendering (???)

Using our own site as an example, I ran our site through all the tests listed above. Results:

• Google Search Console: Rendered only the header image and text. Anything below wasn't rendered. The resources googlebot couldn't reach include Google Ad Services, Facebook, Twitter, Our Call Tracker and Sumo. All "Low" or blank severity.
• Turn off Javascript: Shows only the logo and navigation menu. Anything below didn't render/appear.
• Technical SEO Fetch and Render: Our page rendered fully on Googlebot and Googlebot Mobile.
• Screaming Frog: The Rendered Page tab is blank. It says 'No Data'.
• GTMetrix Results: Defer parsing of JavaScript was recommended.

From all these results and across all the tools I used, how do I know what needs fixing? Some tests didn't render our site fully while some did. With varying results, I'm not sure where to from here.

When Google rolled out Panda and Penguin, I assume these links have been discounted and any site punishment has already happened. The website is performing well, however, just recently these comment backlinks have started popping up again as "new" backlinks on Ahrefs. Being "newly-found", will this have a negative impact on the website? Should we be worried about these and start disavowing or is it OK to ignore them? Thanks.

Great article, thanks for sharing!