Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi there

I am not seeing Offer schema on this particular page.

Was this format working before a week ago, or did you make changes within the last week and now it's not working?

Let me know - thanks so much!

Hey Jeremy

Visit the Moz Local Help Center.

To quote...

How do I update my listings if something changes?

You create listings on Moz Local by uploading a CSV spreadsheet with all your locations' data. To update your information at any time, just upload a CSV with the new data for any locations you'd like to update. You can also click on the edit icon next to the published listing to update it via the UX.

Try this - good luck!

Hi there

I would see if I could get this link nofollowed. Now, that will probably sound counterproductive, but remember, you're not link building for rankings - you're link building to provide a relevant and quality experience - you want to add to the conversation, not distort it. Plus, brand mentions are a great thing.

I'd rather have the link and have it nofollowed than have the link followed thousands of times and it ultimately be considered counterproductive or spammy. That's just me though - it's upto you to research and weigh your actions!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Here's a fantastic resource on Moz that can give you quite a bit of information and direction. There's a lot there, so make sure you take the time to go step by step through it.

I'd also take a look at these content audit and backlink audit resources, especially to find potential links to remove or update for the old site.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Redirecting a site depends on a few things:

• Is this competing brand now gone and over with?
• Is the old site relevant to the site you wish to redirect it to?
• Does it compete for the same queries you have?
• Does the new site have a place for old content to redirect to?

If yes to all of the above, redirect it, but make sure that you follow the steps in Moz's Website Migration Guide. It will help make sure that you move the website properly and take advantage of optimization opportunities, such as URL mapping. I would also look into the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console. Also, read through Google's resources on site moves.

I would perform both a content audit and backlink audit as well on the old site - what content can be updated, removed, or consolidated from the old site? What backlinks currently pointed to the competitor's website should be updated to yours, and which links could be removed & disavowed because they are spammy or irrelevant? Remember, if you inherit a website and redirect it, you don't want to inherit their spammy or toxic links, you just want the good ones!

If you redirect the site and migrate it properly, the old site will fall from the SERPs, but your site should capture the vast majority of that traffic and rankings. Especially if your on-site SEO and content is as good, or better, than the old site's.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Moz pushes your information to Infogroup, who sends information to Citysearch. You can see that information here.

When did you send your information to Moz Local? If it was recent, it may not have updated, but if it's been a long time, you may have not updated your information in Moz Local. Try doing that, and it should update.

Hope this helps - otherwise a Moz Staffer will be by soon I'm sure! Good luck!

Hi there

I just answered a question that I think will help you here - you can check it out at this Q+A thread.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Mark

Here's Google's stance on Infinite scroll search-friendly recommendations using this page created by John Mueller as an example - Quicksprout also builds on this with some tips of their own.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Matt Cutts actually made some suggestions depending on the size of your site as to what you can do with eCommerce 404 pages. You can learn more about that here.

Here is a resource with some best practices for your 404 page, as well as some great examples that you can take advantage of to make the best user experience possible for 404 pages.

Remember - at the end of the day what matters most is the user experience; if there is a place that they can be redirected to that's relevant to the product or category they were looking for previously, send them there. If there isn't, provide a valuable 404 page that allows them to search, navigate, see other products, coupons, etc. so that they can continue to move through your site instead of getting frustrated and leaving.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

While I am definitely interested to see how the community answers the removal of rules on the redirect file, I wanted to offer a couple of ideas.

I would pull a list of old URL backlinks from:
Search Console
Majestic
Ahrefs OSE

I would see if you have any links pointing to old URLs that could be updated to the new URLs, that way you don't lose those links from your actions on the redirect file. There may be links you'd want to remove or disavow as well.

And yes, you could search to see if these URLs are still being indexed by searching them. You could look into the Removal-Tool from Google, but I would use that with caution.

I will back out now for the answer to removing rules from your file, since I am really not sure there.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

I would noindex your category pages and also canonicalize all tags or category post variation URLs to the proper post URL. From there, I would run through this resource from Moz on WP optimization.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Marty

I would take a look at the following resources:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)
Use hreflang for language and regional URLs (Google)
Auto change currency based on location (Shopify - this will depend on your eCommerce solution, however)
Product Markup (schema.org)

What eCommerce solution are you using? They should have a resource on how to do this auto change.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Joshua

Google actually offers a Website Optimizer service. You can read more about that here.

You can also look into services such as Visual Website Optimizer, Optimizely, and also Hotjar. All offer great tools and features that can get you up and running fast. Also, they all offer good resources and ideas to help you think of different tests to try.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

According to Google...

Avoid errors**:** use absolute paths rather than relative paths with the rel="canonical" link element. However, they then say (under "Prefer HTTPS over HTTP for canonical URLs)...

Google prefers HTTPS pages over equivalent HTTP pages as canonical, except when there are conflicting signals such as the following:

• The HTTPS page has an invalid SSL certificate.
• The HTTPS page contains insecure dependencies.
• The HTTPS page is roboted (and the HTTP page is not).
• The HTTPS page redirects users to or through an HTTP page.
• The HTTPS page has a rel="canonical" link to the HTTP page.
• The HTTPS page contains a noindex robots meta tag

Although our systems prefer HTTPS pages over HTTP pages by default, you can ensure this behavior by taking any of the following actions:

• Add 301 or 302 redirects from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page.
• Add a rel="canonical" link from the HTTP page to the HTTPS page.
• Implement HSTS.

To prevent Google from incorrectly making the HTTP page canonical, you should avoid the following practices:

• Bad SSL certificates and HTTPS-to-HTTP redirects cause us to prefer HTTP very strongly. Implementing HSTS cannot override this strong preference.
• Including the HTTP page in your sitemap or hreflang entries rather than the HTTPS version.
• Implementing your SSL/TLS certificafe for the wrong host-variant: for example, example.com serving the certificate for www.example.com.  The certificate must match your complete site URL, or be a wildcard certificate that can be used for multiple subdomains on a domain.

Since I don't know how your SSL is configured, I can't tell you one way or another, but if you have a https version of your pages, then head that direction. Having a relative protocol won't seem to work here for what you're asking.

Read the above and let me know if that helps! Good luck!

Hi there

If it were upto me, I would suggest the URLs going something like this:

www.brandname.com/cupcakes/strawberry

This tells me the brand, the type of product, and then a specific product. The beauty here is you can do it with all of your products (if you have more):

www.brandname.com/cupcakes/carrot-cake
www.brandname.com/cupcakes/strawberry-lemonade
www.brandname.com/cakes/bundt

If you have variations below cupcake but above flavor, you can add that between cupcakes and flavors, so:

www.brandname.com/cupcakes/variation/flavors
or...
www.brandname.com/cupcakes/best-sellers/flavors
www.brandname.com/cupcakes/favorites/flavors

Either way, I wouldn't put your company name as a folder path because it should already be in the domain of your website.

Here are some more resources if you want to read a bit more into URL structures - here is a great resource as well from Rand - I suggest doing so!

Hope this helps a bit! Let me know if you have any questions or comments - good luck!

Hi there

At the moment, I don't think this is possible. You could, however, look into image markup and use "description" or "name" attributes to say this is a (surgery or procedure) before photo or an after photo. I have never used this tactic before, but it's something to consider. I would also take a look into health/medical types as there may be items there that can assist.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Ideally, create one page that serves both search engines and users, because you want users to find your page via search engines and you want search engines to be able to crawl your content. It's thought that Google is getting better at crawling Javascript, but you need to make sure that you text or content is readable in a text-based browser or is visible to Google with Javascript off. Here's a resource for you.

That being said, focus on having one page for the content you're trying to create, so you can put more SEO efforts into building the equity in that page. You can also build other pages around variations of that topic that link back to that page, and link to these new pages from the one main topic page as well. This will help build your site from both a topic standpoint and passing linking equity throughout your site.

Let me know if this makes sense or helps. Best of luck!
Patrick

Hi Adam

First, this is a heavy duplicate content issue - you have two sites with the same content. I would do the following (if this were my site):

• Choose a domain to focus on

• For all sites...

• Check backlinks in Majestic

• Check metrics in Open Site Explorer

• Check rankings in SEMRush and Google Webmaster Tools

• Redirect the other domain to this new domain

• Here is a URL mapping resource from Google

• Find any and all other domains you may have

• Use Copyscape

• Redirect those domains as well

• Do a backlink audit on all of the domains

• Keep and change backlinks you want

• Request removal of links you don't

• If any domain has a bad enough backlink profile, you may want to 404 the site, or 410 it

• You may need professional assistance on this so don't do that without second opinions

• Update your sitemap for the chosen domain

• Update your new sitemap XML in Google WMT and Bing WMT

• If other sites have a Google Webmaster Tools, look into into a change of address

• Correct any and all internal links to reflect this new domain

• I recommend using relative URLs

• Local search, Google+, & citations

• Conduct a Local Search audit

• Update citations - utilize Moz Local or Whitespark

• Make sure information submitted reflects chosen domain

• Update your Google+ Business pages

• Make sure all NAP information is up to date

• Make sure linked domain is correct

I would also take a look at your on-site SEO. A lot of these sites seem heavily optimized and a little spammy at points. While you are ranking now your URLs could set off spam filters, coupled with the on-site work that needs to be done, as well.

Just be mindful of your content and optimization going forward. There is a lot here, and without telling you what to do because I do not know your site at all (I would bring in a professional to help you and give you a strategy), these are areas and things I would start looking into. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Hope some of this helps - good luck!

Hi again

I see - sorry about that!

If you are showcasing different companies on your site then it should be...

/cake-company/cupcakes/type-of-cupcake

Apologies on that. Out of curiosity - are all of these companies separate and active companies? Or did they all merge into one larger company? Or is this like a listing website of different companies an their products?

Hi Joshua

In my opinion, yes the blog should be consistent with the theme of both the website and the brand. Users can get thrown off by different visual cues and it can create a less than ideal user experience. While the blog isn't going to be sales driven, it's important you give user's a consistent user experience. That's how brands are built and how your audience will remember you. Keep in mind - this will be the first time some of your audience will access and interact with your brand. First impressions are the most important.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

If you're guest blog posting to give your audience relevant and topical content, then guest blog posts will not be an issue. Just again make sure that it's not a tactic strictly to gain or influence link signals. Danny Sullivan actually wrote a great post on the issue back in 2014 which you can reference here.

Just make sure that you and your partners are on the same page that your guest blog posts should be topically relevant and provide real solutions. Make sure links reference data points or solutions sourced for your posts.

If you keep on the path of "is this information or link necessary?", then all should be well.

Let me know if you have any questions! Good luck!
Patrick

Hi David

I would line up the drop with the algorithm history; from there you can assess the following:

• Do I need to do a content audit?

• Do I need to do a backlink audit?

• Are my issues mobile related?

• Just because a site is responsive doesn't mean there arent other issues

• Do I need to look into my local SEO?

If it was a recent drop (within the last week) I would say it's probably based on mobile, but you would have to check your mobile traffic in your Google Analytics.

I would specifically look into that page and check your Google Webmaster Tools to see if any other issues have been happening or seen. Make sure your on-site SEO is on point, content is well kept and optimized, look into your backlinks (and your competitor's who may now be ranking - this is to be used as a guide - not a copycat), and you should find out pretty quick where the issue is.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Alan

Yes, combining those three sources would be great! It will give you multiple angles of your backlink profile, and since all tools crawl and show different links, you'll get a more holistic view of your overall backlink profile.

Here's where I pull my links from:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Majestic
• Ahrefs

Here's a tool I use for quick "scoring" of my backlink profile (still requires manual review):

• LinkRisk

A few questions to ask when assessing links:

• Does this link help my website?
• Is this link relevant to my website?
• Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
• Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
• If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

I would also take a look at Link Audit Guide for Effective Link Removals & Risk Mitigation - there are a TON of great tips in this article that can help get you on the right path for data collection, assessment, and action. For more tips on backlink audits, please read:

• How to Conduct a Link Audit (SEW)
• How To Conduct A Link Audit (SEL)
• A More Robust Process for Dealing with Link Removal Requests (Moz)
• Conduct a Backlink Profile Analysis with Excel (case study) (Moz)

Doing a backlink audit takes focus, patience, and knowledge. If you read all of the above and have a healthy data collection, you can find some amazing things. Sometimes, running a backlink analysis report isn't a bad idea, but if you have a small amount of backlinks, take the time to run through the process and learn what to look for in your backlink profile. That alone will pay off dividends in the long run!

Hope this helps - let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!

Hi Shalin

Check out this resource from wpbeginner called How to Properly Move Your Blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org - quite a bit of information but this should answer your question!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Moz actually created a fantastic migration guide that will give you a step by step process to properly move your website to it's new domain. I highly suggest reading it, as it goes into great detail and also includes a resources / tools list to help you and your team properly track performance. You can read all of that here.

Just wanted to let you know that this guide exists! I'm sure great answers are to follow! Hope this helps in the meantime, good luck!
Patrick

Hi there

You will want to add canonical tags to the indexing site to the site you want indexed. Is there a particular reason you have two sites?

Hi Alan

When I pull links, I do so from WMT, Majestic, OSE, and Ahrefs.

Reason being, you're going to see different links from different tools. No one source covers them all, so it's best to get as much data as you can from different places.

I will read into LinkDetox and tell you if anything is a red flag to me, but again, your statement from the other question thread seems like a lot money for automation and "too good to be true".

Please let me know if you have any more questions or comments - would love to help where I can and see you through! Best of luck!

I wanted to attach this image - in my crawl, I am getting a "noindex,nofollow" but your code isn't showing it. I would check with your web development team to see what exactly is happening and how this can be fixed.

71ytwLo

This is fair. I really like Tom's answer as well - lots to think about.

Have you considered surveying your audience or checking into what are your competitors doing? The issue is, this isn't an obvious yes or no, there are factors and you have to consider the audience, the industry, and how your site is set up. In my opinion, you're betting off testing these sorts of things as no two sites/audiences are the same.

I stood and applauded.

Hi there

Immediately, I would check your Webmaster Tools and see if you have a Manual Action of any kind.

If you do have a manual action - read through the Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal.

It seems like you are taking care of your On-Site SEO pretty well. I would also make sure you are using canonical tags on product and category pages properly.

I would also start benchmarking your sites as they currently stand and tracking progress as you go through implementations and changes to your site. Take a look at this competitive analysis resource from Moz, not to copycat, but to instead utilize for your own unique website and audience.

Make sure your mobile SEO is the best it can be. Also, make sure you are taking advantage of Schema.org as it can potentially help your website improve in rankings - here is Google's Testing Tool to see if your web development team implemented it correctly.

Take a look at Enhanced Ecommerce to see what products are giving you the best traffic and conversion rates. From there, you can structure your site in ways based on audience behavior and implement that behavior into your marketing strategy.

And lastly - start tracking your keywords in Moz and Webmaster Tools so you can see where you have opportunities and where you can improve.

Hope this all helps! Let me know if you have any more questions or comments! Good luck!

Hi there

Look into hreflang attributes - if you have the same site with multiple languages, this is a best practice.

You can also look into setting up Webmaster Tool accounts for different sites (if they have different country codes or subdirectories) and geotarget those for the country they are supposed to appear to.

Does this help? Let me know - good luck!

Hi Justin

While it won't show you what is converting, check out SEMRush. It's a great tool that will show you what competitors are ranking for, the estimated traffic they are getting for that keyword, as well as the landing page.

The beauty with this tool is that you can research from both a SEO and paid perspective.

You can learn more about the features and tools here.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

This is pretty common. Google sometimes shows varying numbers in Webmaster Tools and what actually appears in the index. When did you submit your sitemap?

Here are some reasons that Google may not index all of your pages.

Check your robots.txt to be sure, but give yourself a bit of time for the indexing number in WMT to update. The good news is that you are seeing your pages in search - so that's a positive.

I would also check to see if you have any duplicate or thin content on the website, dynamic URLs in your sitemap, check how deep your pages go (this is especially important due to crawl budgets), and also your website's canonical tag situation.

These are some things I would look into. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

That actually sounds backwards - Schema usually helps increase rankings.

I would run your pages through the Google Testing Tool and make sure everything is implemented correctly. I would also make sure that you didn't inadvertently delete content or something that your pages need.

How long after you implemented the Schema did rankings drop? Is the drop limited to the pages with Schema or the entire site?

Let me know, would love to help!

Hi there

If your site is on a template and you want to mark up product pages, it's not that difficult at all - it's just a matter of adding to the template.

I would have your web development teams walk through the process however and how many hours they think it would take.

I am not a web developer, but the product Schema I have added to ecommerce sites, as well as other sites, is not that bad of an implementation, but I don't know your website.

But again, have them break down their prices and processes and why they think the price is what it is. Price wise - the £100.00 sounds better, but again, there is some technical know how so you want to vet them properly.

Hope this helps a bit! Good luck!

Hi there

Google actually has a phone call tracking partners list, you can check that out here.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi Ravi

When you select "Text-only version", it's showing you the way that Googlebot, or potentially other robots and crawlers, see your website. This is an important tool because it can tell you if Google is picking up content on your site. If you see nothing, then Google can't see your content, and you need to change this. Luckily for you, Google is seeing content.

However, it looks like you may be missing some basic SEO opportunities on this page - take a look at On-Page Factors.

Here's a good post from Boostability Blog and SEO Theory with some good information on Google's cache.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi Saddat

This is a pretty loaded question. Focus on your on-site SEO, content, local SEO, and link building.

Moz offers extremely comprehensive guides and has a great Academy area to help you learn more about how you can enhance your site and visibility.

I would also suggest you look into:
Local SEO Audit
Content Audit
Backlink Audit
Information Architecture for SEO

These resources will help you engage your audience better, as well as help you find pain points on your website and optimization.

There's no blueprint answer from the Q+A forum - this will heavily depending on learning the above resources and testing your theories.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Take a look into hreflang attributes and language tags. This will help Google and Bing alternate the URLs and content. You can also do this in your sitemap.

There also great international SEO articles from Moz, especially this checklist.

You will want to geotarget your site variations in Google and Bing as well, if they do in fact target specific countries or regions.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Moz offers a great resource that can help you see how the conversion rate optimization process works and should be approached, from discovery to review.

You're going to want to collect your data, take an unbiased look at your website, make hypothesis on where the bottlenecks/pain points are in your website, and create a plan of potential tests you want to run to test those assumptions. Hotjar is a great tool for this.

Do not just start making changes to your website - test them. This is easily done with different tools, including:
Visual Website Optimizer
Optimizely

If you are weary about this process or don't have the time and resources to do so yourself, you should look into a professional that has experience doing so. You really should talk to a professional to begin with, as you want to be making the right decisions based on the right data, and sometimes this can get overwhelming. Moz has a great list of companies you can reach out to for the process.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Don't block pages or directories because they have duplicate/missing titles - instead, fix them - those pages may provide value and you could be missing some big opportunities.

"...we can leave things as is without worrying about the page being de-ranked/penalized." - you're blocking the page in your robots.txt, so you're already not being indexed. If you are looking to index these pages, you need to remove that robots.txt.

Go through, assess your titles and page content, and change your titles to be uniquely relevant to the content on that page. If you have the opportunity as well, do a content audit to see if pages can be condensed or expanded.

Hope this all helps! Good luck!

Hi there

Are you sure you are using all of the tools above properly? Not saying you're not but people make mistakes and it's just something to look into.

When did you implement all of the changes? Was it recently or was it a long time ago?

How is your organic traffic and rankings? Did you check if you have a manual action at all?

Let me know - thanks!

Hi there

Testimonials are great - they help build trust in your brand and work from a user standpoint, and can also help bring in search traffic by mentioning specific development, design, or industry elements in their critique.

You can also use these testimonials to develop case study or white paper content to showcase more benefits of using your business or your competition.

Hope this helps - good luck!

Hi there

You are right to assume that hyphens come across spammy in your top level domain. If it were me, I would pick a domain name that is going to branded and easy to remember. The issue I am having is your brand name sounds like exact match anchor text, meaning I would search "manhattan office space" or "metro manhattan office space" in search without even knowing your company is called that.

So, whatever branded domain you choose is going to see a bit spammy, but I as long as your local SEO and citations are consistent with the brand and NAP information, you should be okay as crawlers will recognize this as your business name.

I would also make sure that you take the time to go through this web site migration guide and a backlink audit to either remove toxic links or update the ones you wish to keep.

You have a lot of work ahead of you, but this will get you started in the right direction! Good luck!

Hi Joost

Did you happen to take a look at SEO Guide to Google Webmaster Recommendations for Pagination? There are some great tips in there that can help you implement this.

Also, View-all in search results & 5 common mistakes with rel=canonical from Google also has some tips.

Hope these help a bit! Let me know if you have any questions or comments! Good luck!

Hi there

Moz has had a couple of issues over the last few days, so check here and see if this applies to you. Also, does this drop happen in your Google Analytics?

You should check the Google Algorithm History page, as there are resources about a update that happened on May 3rd.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi there

For me, if you're trying to target specific languages with your new site, I would use subdirectories. If it's an issue to do subdomains, you're better off building directories and targeting those specifically.

Hope this helps! Good luck!