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I used to rank really high for the phrase "characteristics of down syndrome" for this post: https://noahsdad.com/physical-characteristics/ but not I've lost almost all traffic to the post. Even if you search for "characteristics of down syndrome Noah's Dad" the post doesn't seem to come up. I have no idea what is going on.

If someone has a few minutes to take a look it would be very helpful. Also, I have lost almost all organic traffic to my site. I used to get close to 100,000 visits a month from organic traffic and now I'm getting 3k or so. So almost all of it is gone. I'm hoping whatever is going on with this post can be figured out so I can address and fix all of the other pages as well.

Thanks so much for your time.

Hi Mozers.

I blog about our son with Down syndrome (https://noahsdad.com) and you may remember me from this case study here on Moz. https://moz.com/blog/seventeen-ways-to-improve-your-blog-case-study

I was getting close to 100,000k a month in organic traffic to our blog, then it slowly started to decline to the point where I am not only getting 3k in organic traffic a month. So basically I lost all of my traffic. I honestly have no idea what is going on or why this happened. I know everyone is busy but would anyone be up for taking a peak into my GA and search console and seeing if you can figure out what may have changed and why my traffic dropped off so much.

Our website helps a lot of people so you'd be doing some good and it may even be a good case study post!

Thanks so much!

Thanks so much for the very helpful comment.

I don't want to have to write a post for every toy. That would take for ever as I would have to write a review on a post for every toy. No thanks.

I was thinking of making them more like this: http://noahsdad.com/gift-ideas-down-syndrome/

I wouldn't use the same product, and if I did I would say different things about it.

Thanks for your your very thoughtful. I'm not sure I would also do "top ten lists" if that makes sense.

Would this still work for things like Top toys, best toys, etc..

Also, I'd hate to get into doing lists like this then get to a category where I can't find then things and have to make a top 4 things...if that makes sense. And I'm not sure what you mean by the top level top ten page, followed by the 2nd level top ten lists....what would be reason for having  a top level top ten list before the actually list? Sorry if I'm not understanding.

Also I"m not sure if I'm understanding correctly, but are you suggesting I make a new post for every toy? So one top ten list would have ten posts that go with it?

Love to hear ideas from other folks as well.

We have a site where we write about our son who was born with Down syndrome. I had a question regarding some content I'm trying to create and structure and hoping you guys can point me in the right direction.

One of the things we are often asked by new parents is what toys we suggest for people to buy for their child with Down syndrome, or as gifts for a friend who has a child with Down syndrome. So I'd like to write some posts that suggest great toys for each year of a kids life (and continue that as Noah grows.) However, there are some variations of key words that I would like to rank for as well and it gets a little messy, which is where I need the help.

For example for each year I could have a post titled:

• Top Ten (I could also change out top ten for Best, etc..)Toys For A One Year Old with Down Syndr
• Top Ten Christmas Gift Ideas For A One Year Old With Down Syndrome
• Top Ten Birthday Gift Ideas For a One Year Old With D.S.
• Top Ten Learning Toys For A One Year Old With D.S.
• Top Ten Toys Under 25 Dollars For A One Year Old with DS
• Top Ten Developmental Toys for a One Year Old With DS
• Top Ten Fisher Price Toys for a child with ds
• Best Light Up Toys For a one year old with ds
• best muscial toys for a one year old with ds

I could also think of other variations as well. Also I can make each of these with the various ages. 2 year old, 3 year old, etc...

So I'm not sure what the best way to go is. I could easily have a ton of content that is all virtually the same (birthday gifts / christmas gifts..although I could suggest different toys) so I'd have a ton of different toys pages trying to rank for one term each that is good for google searchers but probably not so great for folks coming to my site as I would have toy pages scattered all over the site.

I also don't know how landing pages would fit in to all of this. Would I want a "Down Syndrome Toy Guide" landing page, or "Down Syndrome Gift Guide" ... or both...or something else, and then link all of those other pages on that page?

I have a few pages on my site now that I wrote before I started to think about all the different combinations I wanted to rank for: http://noahsdad.com/gift-ideas-down-syndrome/ and http://noahsdad.com/best-fisher-price-learning-toys/

I'm open to any feedback you guys may have on this.

I'd also like to do some posts on "Down Syndrome Books" and hope to use the same info that you guys give me and apply to books. (Therapy books, touch and feel books, resource books, new parents books, etc..)

Hoping some folks chime in as your help would really be appreciated.

I was recently told I should take the breadcrumbs off of our site, for if no other reason than that it would look much nicer, and I tend to agree. I was curious how much seo weight breadcrumbs add to a site, and if I would take a big hit if I removed them...

Thanks!

I'm trying to Facebook stats (engagement, exposure, etc) for the last 30 days instead of the last week...when I look at Facebook admin stats I'm only seeing the last week. Does anyone know if there is a tool (or a way to do it within Facebook) to see the stats for a 30 day time slot instead of just a week?

Thanks!

Thanks for your help!

Thanks for the feedback, categories and tags was what I was thinking of. We actually use a custom CMS that was made by the developer who did the site...

I work at a large church and we have an unique problem we're trying to solve.

We have a lot of media on our site. We have messages from every Sunday, plus mid-week services, and other events all on our website.

We have the messages organized into series, but would like to somehow organize these messages into topics as well, or some other way to organize them better.

We have over 5000 pieces of media! Here's a link to our current media page....does anyone have any experience working with this much content, and how we can do better?

By the way, SEO / organic traffic is secondary to helping users on our site find content better. We are also in the process of changing over our site search to google search to help give users better search results. But our end game is to help user find our content better.

Thanks for your help!

When using google keyword tool what type of match type do you find most helpful?

broad, exact match, phrase?

I know they all have their own benefits, but if you just want to test out which term gets more searches I'm not sure what the difference is between the exact match and phrase.

Thanks!

Thanks so much. I actually don't need any other staff people to see it. I just want some designers in other parts of the U.S. to see it.

The main this is how to duplicate it. Including all of the images, database, etc.

I've never done anything like this before.

Thanks.

I'm actually on a mac.

If I install it locally on my mac I can't let other people see it unless they are looking at my computer, correct?

I have other domains...would be better to use one of those, or to use a subdomain?

Thanks.

That's what I need help trying to create. I also want the staging site to be a duplicate of the existing site, but there so much content I can't do a simple import / export through Wodpress's admin panel...

I want to make some changes to my Wordpress site, and want to somehow set up a live staging area. Does anyone know of a good way to do this?

I want all of the same content there I just want to be able to make changes to it and try it all out before going live. Any thoughts on this?

Also I want to be sure the staging site doesn't get indexed since it will be a complete duplicate of my existing site.

Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestion. I thought about doing that but don't you think the content would be to thin or look like duplicate content? I'm thinking it would be better to keep that all on one page sort of like an iPad case buying guide.

I wrote a post that's doing really well in search and want to take it up a notch. It's about ipad cases for kids. I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on how I can step the page up a bit. Maybe add sub headings for the various iPads? Something else?

When I wrote this post the new batch of ipad's weren't out so I'm thinking I should add subheadings for the various ipads. Any other ideas?

Thanks.

At the bottom of my single page posts, I have some related posts. I'd like to set up some sort of GA tracking that lets me know how many people are actually clicking on those links. Anyone know if there is a way to do this?

Thanks!

We are often asked what our favorite toys, books, resources, etc, are and I want to make a page(s) with our top resources that is a nice clean amazon affiliate store. Are there are good resources anyone knows of to do this?  (I'm using a wordpress blog by the way....perhaps there is a plug in?)

Thanks.

I'm not sure there is any technique that can guarantee a new website gets crawled and indexed withint 24 hours. However here are some tips that will certainly help.

1. Make sure you set up a webmaster account with each of the search engines. Within the dashboard of that webmaster account (I'm thinking of Google WMT here) you can have the crawler fetch the page, than ask that Google crawl that page (and all linked pages on it.) While you are there be sure you submitting a site map as well.

2. Also the various search engines allow you to summit your content. For example: http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/website-owner/

3. You could try to build some high quality links on another site that get crawled on a regular basis.

4. If there is good content on the site you could share it on social networks, twitter, fb, stumble upon, etc. Just make sure there is quality content there, otherwise your social network may not like you very much.

5. This is perhaps the best tip: Share the link on Google +. I've had pages indexed within minutes after sharing them on my Google + page. Here's a White Board Friday that Rand did that talks more about Google + http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-every-marketer-now-needs-a-google-strategy

I hope these tips help you out.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Thanks for the info..

Thanks for checking. That's pretty crummy on FB's part. I hope they fix that because those bad images make us look bad!

Thanks Keri,

I agree with you. I noticed it's changed lately also. And you're probably right about trying to get more clicks...Not cool from a user perspective though, huh?

By the way, I just tried posting a picture on our timeline (it's the one talking about 20K likes.) Would you mind telling me if it looks formatted correctly to you (and the words aren't getting cropped.)

I promise, I'm not just trying to get some shameless clicks! hahahh

Hmmm, unless I'm misreading something 403x403 would be a square format..and that always seems to get cropped when I do that...

Thanks, but that is for a pinned picture. I'm looking for just a normal image. Like a meme or something to that effect. The pinned ones go all the way across right? (Actually that's the stared images.)

I'm more concerned with how it looks on people's timelines, as opposed to how it appears on the page, if that makes sense.

Thanks.

Does anyone know the best size for images that are uploaded to FB timeline? For instance if I make a meme, the worlds seem to always get cut off when they show up on people's timelines, or view them for their phone. Any thoughts on this? At first I thought square worked best (and looks like it does if you visit the actual page) but for people viewing on their phones or their own timeline (maybe?) it looks like they are seeing a 4:3 image. Is the image size that people see not universal? Thanks!

I'd like to be able to do some keyword research as follows:

Let's say I have two (or maybe more) separate keyword phrases I want to rank, is there a way to find out what combination and/or additional keyword phrases/descriptors are searched for the most?

For example, let's say I want to rank well for the following terms.

"Green widgets" and "boxes"

Is there a tool I can use that will give me ideas/suggestions on how to use those two keywords the best way? Especially showing me long tell keyword suggestions I may not even know about.

The tool may show me things people search for like "best boxes for your green widgets" gets more serach results than "best boxes for my green widgets."  (Helping me figure out which combo of words in a long tail phrase is better.

Or it may tell me a suggestion I didn't think about like "how to build boxes for your green widgets," or "how to put your green widgets into boxes," or "where to find boxes for your green widgets" or other combinations of things people search for using those two phrases?

This may be possable using google keyword tools, but if it is, I'm not sure how to do it.

Looking forward for any feedback. Thanks!

Thanks Dan and Ben.

I'm wanting to track someone clicking on a certain link.

I'll check out those docs!

Hey thanks Ben!

I was just curious how to do it. For instance if someone visits my page about blue widgets, how many of those people visit the link to "come learn about red widgets" also....

I'm just now getting my feet wet with the goals in GA. I'm trying to figure out how many visitors to a certain page, click on a certain link (which takes them no a certain page on my site.)

What's the best way to go about this?

Thanks.

I'm an editor for one of the categories, and depending on the catagory you're trying to listed in, it can indeed take some time.

By the way, I actually don't think a link from DMOZ is all that powerful any more...just my 2 cents.

Yelp, each of those sites that have the snippet have the potential to show up in the main search with the snippet showing.  It's a fairly new thing. Cool, huh?

Yelp, each of those sites that have the snippet have the potential to show up in the main search with the snippet showing.  It's a fairly new thing. Cool, huh?

I was wondering if anyone could suggest any resources on how to use GA and webmaster tools? I just sort of look and see my stats, etc...but I'd like to learn how to find my low hanging fruit, and try to help it rank better.

I don't really use those tools as well as I should. I know there various spreadsheet's you can use, etc, but I haven't found a good (and easy to understand) resource that helps you learn how to use those tools together well.

Thanks

Google is now indexing embedded youtube videos as rich snippets.

I did a search on your site and you can see you have lots of these rich snippets showing up. Good job.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ie=UTF-8&ion=1#q=site:betheboss.ca/&hl=en&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ei=OgA4UIKqDYPy2QWfkoGICg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=11e613fc21dc669b&ion=1&biw=1312&bih=1079

Thanks for the reply, very helpful info.

As far as server monitoring I don't think I have anything in place. Any suggestions?

Intresting.

I know that searching for upper case and lower case keywords do bring up different results. But that is keywords, I wasn't sure how url's were effected by upper / lower case.

@Paul,

Thanks for your very helpful post! It was great!

I never thought of selecting the option to auto delete spam comments on posts older than a month old. Once I did that, it cut down on 80% of the spam I was getting! So thanks!

Quick question on that. Does enabling that option cut down on the server resources? In other words, let's say it cuts down on 200 spam comments a day because they are auto deleted, do those 200 spam comments still get entered in as comments and therefore use server resources? Does this just save me the step of having to go through and delete them / clear the spam folder? Or does this save a huge amount of server resources? Either way it's a huge win!

I've read the info about how Twitter's bad seo effects ability to rank well for our twitter profile in some cases.

I've been unsuccessful at getting my twitter profile to rank higher than it does, even though all metrics on OSE seem to indicate that it should.

I've been linking to the non !#, non https, and non www, version of my profile, however it still is ranking as high as I'd like. I noticed today that the link URL has each letter of my name capitalized. I'm almost certain when I link to it I write out the name in all lower case.

I was curious if you think this has any effect on it ranking? I'm wondering what the best steps would be moving forward. I could start linking to the url showing up in google (with upper case letters in the url) or I could go into my twitter profile and change my name to all lowercase and see if that changes the url in google, thus fixing all of the other backlinks to the profile. (At least I think it would.)

What's everyone's thoughts on this? Thanks!

[IMG]]([IMG]http://i.imgur.com/vGIbf.jpg[/IMG]) vGIbf.jpg vGIbf.jpg

I've learned a lot through this site (and the community built around it) about everything SEO related. It's been extremely helpful in helping us help others to learn that all people (even those with a "disability") deserve respect and integrity. (Wow, that's a lot of helps!)

So I wanted to give a quick thanks to everyone on this site who has helped, supported, and encouraged us. We really appreciate it.

One thing I've been trying to do on my site is look at my categories and over all site structure. I've pruned a lot of things from the menu bar; pruned away and tightened up the categories, and even rearranged the navigation of the site. As you can see, I have several drop down categories up top.

I wanted to see if I could get some feedback on how what I'm doing looks thus far, specifically as it relates to my categories / menus / navigation. Although any feedback you'd like to provide would be more than appreciated.

One thing I'm curious about (and not sure how to tackle it) is regarding the top most item in the main menus. For instance you'll see I have a top level category called "Down Syndrome Resources" which takes them to all of the posts in that category. Under that, there is a drop down menus that gives them other categories, and even some pages that fall under the topic of Down syndrome resources. I'm not sure if people would know the top most item is a link, or just look at the ones below it. (If that makes sense.)

(On a side note I have therapy as a category as well as parenting, the truth is those could all be sub-categories I guess since everything on my site pretty much could fall under "down syndrome resources." Maybe this is a huge FAIL I made when setting up my categories.)

I'm also not sure if I should use some sub-categories as well. For instance I have a main category for Therapy. Under that I have posts about speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy. Right now they are all grouped into therapy. Do you think I should use sub-categories on those 3 terms, leave as is, or perhaps another option?

Another question I have is regarding landing pages. It seems like I need to have  a landing page for my top "key words." For example therapy. Now if you visit my /therapy you get the category index page, not a "landing page." Same would go for the sub-categories if I were to create them. So I'm not sure if I should make a new post or page naming it something else (maybe "Down syndrome therapy" another named "Down-syndrome-physical-therapy" etc) or something else. (Although therapy isn't really the keyword I want to rank for, I'm thinking more along the lines of children therapy, pediatric therapy, therapy for children with Down syndrome, etc. So maybe I need to rename my categories? I was going for shorter names, so I very well may have done this incorrectly.)

All of these questions are things I'm not to sure about, so I'd appreciate any feedback or advice you can give me. And since I'm learning, I could be doing things wrong that I don't even know to ask. So feel free to tell me what you see that's wrong, you won't hurt my feelings. I promise.

Thanks in advance.

I have akismet installed on my Wordpress blog, and it does a great job of filtering the spam comments, but for some reason my site (and server) gets slammed by the amount of spam comments akismet blocks. If I check my spam folder there will be over 100 spam comments in an hour. (which in turn puts a load on my server.)

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to put a stop to this? (Or at least slow it down?) I know I could use a captcha, but I really don't want to put any barriers on people commenting and I don't even like using those captcha's myself.

Thoughts?

By the way, does anyone know how spam like this works? This has been going on for sometime now. Are spammers just using automated software to do this?

Thanks man. I'm certainly check it out.

Thanks man. Do you know of any sites like that off hand?

I'm wanting to get a few things designed for our site, and I was curious if anyone has any experience using any of the companies online where you can hire graphic designers.

It looks like a lot of these companies use people over seas, and although some of them are talented, I don't think their styles are the same as I'm used to here.  (Hope that doesn't sound bad...I'm not meaning it like that.)

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good company to use online? Thanks.

Paul,

Thank you very much for all the feedback. Such great info.

I've been working on improving many of these items over the weekend. I'm only using total cache, I set up a CDN, i took off on of the tabs on the activity widget and just let the popular posts. I'm trying to figure out how to resize the images better on the sidebar tab as you're right they are using css to rescale the images.

I'm actually saving up to have the site designed by a designer instad of my non-design self. But that's down the road as having something designed professionally isn't cheap (although it is worth it.)

I'm going to be working on your suggestions for the rest of the site. Thanks again for the feedback and for the kind words about our site. I'm really trying to help people through this site, and from the feedback we are getting it looks like it's been doing that.

Now I'm on the journey to make it an even better experience for people.