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We are mostly a Branding agency, and have not put a lot of effort into SEO for ourselves...

SEO tends to take a backseat to design most of the time,  making it a little difficult for me at times when it comes to SEO.

We recently launched a new site, http://Roninadv.com/ and the developer and I have done quite a bit of work to make it work well for Google.  I was really looking forward to a new crawl report from Roger, but alas, It's like Roger crawled the old site?  The new site has been up since last Monday.

Is there a way to clear out the old errors?  Do I just need to give roger more time?

Well thats no good.  I guess we have to be really careful.  Unfortunately this is one area where I think development has outgrown the ability for crawlers to determine what is happening.  We aren't trying to do anything malicious.  We just want to create a good engaging site.  I'll keep trying and continue to post if I have more luck with our method.

Thanks Carla for the reference.  So if I'm understanding the way this example site works.  Your pulling in the content on each "subpage" dynamically so that Google will never see the content twice when visiting the page?

I like the way this works, although I wish you didn't have to see a loading graphic when the page pulls in the content.

I agree that this method looks good, and I would love to get rid of the hashbangs but thats just part of what makes everything work in our current use case.

Certainly I think this site is a move in the right direction.

Thanks for the links and pointers

We are working on a project that uses parallax to provide a great experience to the end user, and we are also trying to create a best case scenario for SEO.  We have multiple keywords we are trying to optimize.

We have multiple pages with the parallax function built into it.  Basically each member of the primary navigation is it's own page, with all subpages built below it using the parallax function.

Our navigation currently uses the hashbang method to provide custom URL's for each subpage.  And the user is appropriately directed to the right section based on that hashbang.

www.example.com/About  < This is its own page

www.example.com/about/#/history < This is a subpage that you scroll to on the About page

We are trying to decide what the best method will be for trying to optimize each subpage, but my current concern is that because each subpage is really a part of the primary page, will all those URL's be seen as duplicate content?

Currently the site can also serve each subpage as it's own page as well, so without the parallax function.  Should I include those as part of the sitemap.  There's no way to navigate to them unless I include them in the sitemap, but I don't want Google to think I'm disingenuous in providing them links that don't exist, solely for the purpose of SEO, but truthfully all of the content exists and is available to the user.

I know that a lot of people are asking these questions, and there really are no right answers yet, but I'm curious about everyone else's experience so far.

Hey Kelly,

First congratulations on taking your first steps towards optimizing your site.

The main thing holding you back(and every other photographer I ever worked with) is content.  Your site has plenty of beautiful images, but you have almost no real content/words on your site.

Google does not see images at all.  They will see alt tags if you add that to the code of your images.

Also there are some real issues with the code of your site.  I would highly encourage you to learn a little more about how your site is built.  Theres several sections on your site that use blank heading tags(h1, h2, h3) to space things out.  Heading tags are a key indicator to Google about what your page is about.  Using them to create spacers could be a real problem.

Last look at who is ranking number 1 for your key word "Houston Wedding Photographers".

All of the results at the top are actually Google Places listings and not just websites.  Maybe the key to more business is as simple as creating a Google Places listing!

Good Luck!

I think you should focus less on your page content and more on how your website is coded and your inbound link profile.

The title tags and description tags on both of your sites contain special characters that shouldn't be there, like bullets and Check marks.  Clean those up first.

On your tiling website you've included your phone number in the title tag, thats a definite no no and I've seen sites penalized for that in the past.

Just taking a brief peak at your inbound links, I'm guessing links from sites like this is more likely to be the reason for you problems than over optimization: blackhatpwnage.com/how-to-get-high-page-rank/

Your back link profile overall is very key word specific.  That combined with all of the above is the more likely reason for your problems than "over optimization" of your keywords.

Best of luck!

I agree that it sounds like penguin or some other penalty is probably occuring, but all to often I think people forget to look at who took the top spot and why they are suddenly ranked.  This might offer some insite as to what you might need to do to regain the position besides just reviewing your backlink profile.

Best of luck!

Glad to hear you agree with the coding issues.  It really is a mess in there, and I completely understand that other factors are causing the issue.

However if you ever needed a good reason to justify spending the time/resources to fix your site here it is:  yes I do believe it is a factor in your rankings if for no other reason than page load speed.

I've always practiced the clean house, clean mind principal, and I believe that applies to websites as well.  Anywhere things can be condensed for simplicity's sake it will be better. Imagine you are a search engine spidering sites all day and you come across that mess of code.  Not only does it take twice as long to get through all of the site's code, but in addition there are multiple and <title>tags.  Which ones are right?  Are they trying to game the system somehow?</p> <p>There are so many little things adding up to a well coded/seo'd site I find it hard to believe that it would have zero impact on your rankings.  At the same time I'm not sure what the overall impact is on your site.  To me that all comes down to how well you compare to your competition.  If every one you compete with has a site with messy code, its probably a non issue, but at the same time that means in order to get ahead all you need to do is clean up a little.</p> <p>Hope that helps!</p></title>

I'm not an expert with Joomla by any means, but based on your original post you seem confidant as to what the description tag should be, but then its not showing up in the actual code, so I feel like something with your Joomla setup isn't working.  Or possibly you have two plugins that are conflicting with one another?

Hi Muhammad,  If you go thru the code on the page thats shows in your google search above, I found multiple title tags in the code causing the issue.  You have your normal title tag around line 350(in just normal view source mode)  and Then around line 1112 you have a second title tag in the code.

Overall in viewing the source of your site, there seems to be a whole lot of embedded code.  I would definitely recommend working on a way to trim out the amount of code being used, it seems there should be a better way.  In addition to extending the load time of your site, it makes situations like this extremely cumbersome to debug.

Best Of Luck!

Google Local seems to be pretty finicky.  I can honestly say I haven't really figured out an exact reason for how they rank things.  I have found that the more interactivity there is a on the G+ page the more likely it will show up.  And not just posts by you, but also interactivity by other people on your page.

In addition make sure you filled out as much applicable information in your Google Local Profile as possible.  That always seems to make a difference.

It doesn't appear to me that google has picked up o the latest changes you've put thru.  When I search for Pixel Primate the title tag I get is completely different from what is currently listed on the page:

In Google: Web Design for Leicester, London and UK | Pixel Primate

Whats in the Code: Web Design Leicester & London | Website design by Pixel Primate

Beyond just that it does appear that it's a pretty competitive search space, so some time and effort will most likely be needed to get any real first page results.

Good Luck!

If your unfamiliar with your hosting console you may want to test the process before you actually follow through with it.  Or plan to do it super early or super late in the day to minimize downtime if you hit a snag.  There are so many different hosting consoles and possibilities that are impossible to cover here.

I'm going to make the assumption that your host will allow you to redirect a domain to a different folder.

so:  www.example.com  -points to ->  /htdocs

and dev.example.com -points to -> /dev

In the past I typically just use the wordpress console to make the change under the general settings to the correct domain(note this will break the wordpress for the moment on the development domain dev.example.com).  I then redirect my primary URL(www.example.com) to the folder I'm using for the development domain.

IF your host doesn't allow this, there are other options besides changing the data at the database level within PHPmyadmin.  If your comfortable with PHPMyAdmin then go for it.  Either way it wouldn't hurt to setup dev2.example.com and follow thru the process just to test things out and know the steps before you break anything.

Good Luck!

Hey Larry,  You should be able to put the URL directly into the browser and see the file: http://www.example.com/robots.txt

Ok so first we need to determine if Google has re-indexed all the page on your site.

In WMT look for a "wrong" key phrase bringing impressions for your site.

The last column on that page will show your average position under that key phrase.  We are looking for a "wrong" key phrase that has a really high position(first or second page hopefully).  Really this is just to make it easier to find in the results.

Now that you've got a key phrase do a google search for that phrase and scour to see if your website is still showing in the results.  Keep in mind the data in WMT is an average position, not an exact position.  So I usually dig a souple of page down if I don't see it right away.

If you are in the results still, What is the Title and Description for your site showing?

If it still shows "Watches..." etc in the Title/description, chances are Google Hasn't re-indexed that particular page.  Take that specific URL and do a fetch as Google through WMT.  Once it has done the fetch you should be able to submit the URL for re-indexing.

It will probably take a day, but that URL should be fixed pretty quickly.

On Scope, yes I'm talking about limiting the dates.  You should be able to do this in the upper right hand,.  If you can't find it send me a private message and I can try to show you another way.

Hey Diane,  Just following up on Richards post, but I'm guessing theres something bigger going on with your Joomla plugins because your description tag is blank.  I checked both of the "non pretty" url's and they are both directing to the same page with the same blank description.  So I would be looking for a missing checkbox somewhere in the setup for this particular page.

Hey Angela,

A majority of the keywords in WMT are related to impressions.  I would pick a few of the top improper key words and search them to see if your site is still showing up.

If yes: Is the Pharma hack title/description still showing up?  You can try resubmitting your pages for indexing through webmaster tools individually.  You could also resubmit your sitemap thru WMT if you have a whole lot of pages.

If No: Try limiting the scope of data you are looking at in WMT to when you know for sure that the issues were fixed.  Beyond just the issues being fixed though you need to determine when Googlebot actually updated its records to reflect the removal of the pharma hack, so keep limiting the scope until you see all of the pharma hack key phrases go away.

I've been the victim of pharma hack before, and unfortunately it just takes a little time for everything to clear up.  Hopefully the above suggestions are helpful.

If you check here there are a few specific reasons why your results might vary in more detail:

http://www.seomoz.org/help/rankings

About 1/4 of the way down they detail a few reasons for the differences.

They also mention trying "To turn off personalization, append &pws=0 to the end, so it would look like google.com/search?q=SEO&pws=0."

And then theres always the chance for latency: the difference in time between when SeoMoz does the search and then sends you the report.

Excellent, glad you have a sitemap.  Sorry I didn't look at the robots.txt for the sitemap to begin with.

So in looking at your sitemap I can't help but pay attention to your post frequency/or lack there of.  In addition to the newness of the URL, just over three months.

I always feel that post frequency plays a major role in how quickly your site is indexed, so if your updating the blog every 2-3 days you can expect a quicker indexation time.  Especially if you do this for a long period of time.

In your case I see some pretty long times in between posts.  They average out to about 12 days between posts.  Even though recently you've posted more frequently, you haven't really set a precedent to warrant Google coming back every two to three days.

I realize that dedicating resources to write content can be tough, but if you want faster indexation I have to recommend that you increase the post frequency.

Hope That Helps!

Are you logged into Google?  Do you have search history enabled?  What is your geo targeted location?

Any of these can drastically change the rankings you will see.  The effects of personalized search.

The fact that you are seeing a higher ranking in your results than what SeoMoz reports leads me to believe one of the above issues is causing your issue.

I usually have multiple browsers just for this purpose.  I tend to have at least one browser that I almost never use for the purpose of "checking" rankings(opera or safari).  I usually clear all cache and history from the browser to anonomize the results as much as possible. As well as to make sure that I'm not logged into Google.

Hey Edward, at first glance I don't see anything extremely out of place in your WordPress implementation.  However I did notice that you have a sitemap on your main site, but not on on the blog.  I've found my new pages always get indexed faster when using a sitemap that is submitted to Webmaster tools.  Possibly the addition of a sitemap to the blog would help.

Hey Guy,

I agree with Dorthea and Matt above, that both the newness of the site, and the freshness of blog content can be major factors.

To answer your initial question, no I don't think the Wordpress setup is causing the issue.  I think more than likely there is the possibility of an issue with your homepage.

There are so many little things that add up to a properly coded site and Wordpress takes care of a lot of that for you.  If your main page is a different type of CMS or statically coded page there could certainly be some basic issues that we can't address without seeing it.

I would definitely recommend that you plug your site into webmaster tools and take a look there, maybe that can give you the insite you need.

Hey Lisa,

Don't worry about the redirect.  Just go to webmaster tools and input the non www version of your site and go through the verification process.  Use the same method to verify that you did for the WWW version and you should be able to set the preferred domain after that.

Sincerely,

Paul