Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi WMCA,

Unfortunately, I doubt that the community can provide a resource that says 'if you improve local seo, your traffic will increase by x%' - you're assumption that these numbers are highly dependent upon the locale and website is correct.

You can do something like the following:

• Identify key, local terms that your company will target
• Determine the overall local search volume for the above terms
• Use search term ranking estimates for each term (i.e. come up with a SERP rank for each local term)
• Estimate the CTR for each term (use your historic CTRs with estimated improvement)
• Use the above to conclude to the total new traffic your site will get if all criteria is met
• Use an estimated ecommerce conversion rate (again, based of historical data if possible) and AOV to calculate new revenue earned

Hi  ImprezzioMarketing,

I suggest adding localization to the URL structure of the blog and removing the keyword stuffing from the titles and such. For example: www.domain.com/chicago-plumbers/title-of-the-blog-post

With the above structure, every post listed in the local are would include localization in the URL and not require him to stuff the keywords into the other areas. You'd still want to try and localize the content as much as possible. E.g. talk about specific jobs successfully executed in the Chicago area.

Also, try and consider the human readability of the keywords. Would you search for "plumbers chicago?" I bet more people search for "chicago plumbers" instead.

Google adjusted to understand 'tags' in blogs and discount those links. I do not put much weight into tags, they are more used for UI/UX and allow for visitors to quickly find content related to the current content they are viewing / search the site easily. As with most SEO strategies, make sure to diversify as appropriate.

I'd like to add to the answers above.

First, I agree - do not block foreign visitors. There are many reasons for this, do not worry about their bounce rates.

Second, and the part I'm adding, is I suggest setting up a Filtered View in your Google Analytics that only tracks your target demographic, in your situation the UK visitors.

This Filtered View will allow you to see more accurate metrics for the people you're targeting and allow you to do a better analysis of your web analytics. Make sure to add that filtered view and not overwrite your unfiltered view, so if you ever do expand into the other geographic locations you can dig into their performance analytics as well.

Hi Bertrand13,

Unfortunately, from Page Authority alone, we cannot determine if a page has been penalized by G. The page could be new, thin content, doesn't have many links pointing to it, hosted on a new domain, ect.

You're on the right track for auditing the PR services. When pages, such as the one you've identified, are found the next step is to do a manual review of the page.

When visited, is the page:

• Very spammy
• Little to no content
• Bombarded with comment spam
• Includes a ton of external links
• Completely unrelated to your niche
• Stuffed with keywords

If so, then I would say you want to disavow that link and ask why/how your PR firm acquired the link.

Next steps:

• Identify the keywords you'd like to improve your ranking for

• Identify the pages you'd like to rank for those keywords

• Go into the Moz grade page tool and grade each page for the assigned keywords

• Optimize the pages for an 'A' rating

• Make sure to add the keywords to the Moz tracker to see how your SERPs change over time

The Moz index is usually refreshed once a month, however, it's been longer than that since the last update this time around. Moz has a big index update schedule for the 28th, I believe.

http://moz.com/products/api/updates

Make sure to 301 the old URLs to the new URLs - this will pass along 99% of the authority and you should see an increase in the SERPs for your new URLs.

If you can't find an advanced search operator to find what you need through Google Search, here is an alternate method to achieve the list of URLs you're looking for:

1. Access the site's Google Analytics account

2. Go to Reporting > Acquisition > Channels

3. Select the 'Organic Search' channel

4. Set the 'Primary Dimension' to 'Landing Page'

5. Export all of the Landing Pages that received visits through Organic Search

These are all the pages, that GA was tracking, that received a visitor from a search engine. They may not be all that are indexed, but these are the ones that may be most important since they actually attracted a visit from an organic search.

6. In Excel you can use a variety of methods to find the landing pages with double hyphens, it should be as simple as a Ctrl+F .. now plop the URLs you need to track into a clean sheet and use your favorite tool to see when they drop from the search engines.

No, generally a 301 redirect will transfer 99%+ of the authority to the new link. I would anticipate waiting about 2 weeks before noticing the new URLs rank as high as the old URLs.

If you change the URLs back to the old structure, those rankings should return more quickly. However, if you new structure is more user friendly, it may be a good idea to make the change now rather than later, when the URLs gain even more authority.

**I'd like to think not ALL duplicate content is bad. **

I agree. However, more often than not, it is bad. It's best to approach each situation with caution.

As long as your site has been crawled and that page is already in the SERPs, and the new website puts a link to the original article on your website, I don't think there should be any issue.

I don't feel that confident in this statement. In theory, yes the original article would get the attribution. However, in practice, that can not be the case. If the site posting the duplicate content has higher authority and traffic, they may get the attribution even though you published the content first. Google does a decent job in figuring this out, but it's an area they need to drastically improve upon.

I personally would re-work a new article or ask them to summarize your article, to be on the extra safe side. But that's just me.

Summaries are a good idea. Still, you can't beat new unique content. Use the article for inspiration and create a new article that takes a point the original article made even further. Definitely include a link back to the original article, if possible. This strategy would give you a better gain the simply posting or summarizing the original article with a link back.

Is it similar to ranking a website?

Yep, you would go about it the same way you're trying to rank a website. You jsut want to make sure to keep it targeted to your long-tail keyword(s) for that page, get authority backlinks, and do some internal linking to try and get it raised higher in the SERPs.

PPC and Organic tend to work together. In Adwords you can see the click through rates and numbers when a term is in both the organic and paid section. Try and figure out how many additional clicks you're getting because you're now doing a branded campaign.

You may be getting a better CTR and/or increased organic traffic simply because you have two campaigns targeting the brand term now (organic and search). If so, then the worry you have would be false, since the engagement has increased overall.

To answer directly, I would not be concerned that your organic rankings are affected because some clicks moved to the paid channel. However, if you identify a lot of cannibalization, maybe you want to stop the paid campaigns simply because you're paying for the traffic instead of getting it for free. But, cannibalization doesn't happen too often (as mentioned, the campaigns more often than not work together).

Hi Mikedelseo,

Sorry to hear about the drop in rankings, these situations are definitely frustrating.

You were very thorough with your question, but I didn't see any info around the 301 redirects from the old site to the new site. Did you ensure that all of the old, high ranking content was 301'ed to the new URLs? Those 301s are extremely important to preserve rankings.

I'll take a deeper look if so, but lmk that first.

Also, if you've changed the business name/listing, make sure to update all the local listings as needed. Moz Local will help you with that: https://moz.com/local/

I think that the most important piece is the content itself, not the author.

If you think that the author's name will be a main attraction (i.e. if the president has his name as the author it will be more attractive to link to) then it may be worth editing it to their liking and publish it under their name.

However, I don't think that is the advantage. The advantage is putting out quality content around the topic you've found. If you have it edited for the president, make sure they are willing and knowingly speaking as the subject originator. If there is something controversial in the article, it will be viewed as the president's opinion - which can have greater negative effect than positive.

Googlebot won't be able to see the full community member profiles, since it is hidden behind a user login wall. However, the duplicate content error is an issue you want to correct.

• https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/member/1041/
• https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/member/2373/
• https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/member/1301/

All of the community member pages produce an error, if viewing logged out. Unfortunately, the URL remains the same and only shows an error, it does not redirect the user to an error page. This results in all of the community member profiles having unique URLs, all with duplicate content.

You should add a noindex tag to community member pages and, if possible, redirect the user to an error page rather than the unique community profile page for those viewing while logged out.

As long as you keep your URLs the same, you shouldn't see an impact on SEO.

However, if your previous host was causing site performance issues and you expect the new host to serve your website faster and more efficiently, than you can see an SEO impact through site performance.

Make sure you get those rewrite rules consistent on your new host prior to switching, you don't want to change URLs, if possible.

Hi Lorne - Welcome to the Moz community!

It's great to see you questioning your IA and usability, it is a continual process and there is always improvement to be made. I like to consider the following:

My main navigation should include all highly relevant, top level links. These are usually links to categories and very important pages. Your current nav structure does not include very many links, so I'm not seeing much of a need to adjust it as it stands.

I consider my Footer Navigation to be a secondary navigation. Google does discount links in the footer, they understand that this area is mainly used for supplemental links to pages like contact and company information. If a page/section of your website needs to be within 1 click of the homepage, but not necessarily a core part of your service, then it is a good link to put in the Footer. For example, Moz puts its Affiliate Program links in the footer - it's not a section that deserves much exposure, but should be within 1 click for the user.

I think you could clean up the language of your nav a little bit - what exactly are 'Other Quotes?' I think it is quotes that can't be instantly generated, but maybe other text is more appropriate. 'Humour' also isn't self-explanatory and I suggest considering a different label for that menu item. Finally, I always like to see the use of Semantic HTML and the<nav. tag="" whenever="" possible,="" that="" helps="" search="" engines="" and="" certain="" readers="" understand="" ia="" better.<="" p=""></nav.>

Honestly, there could be a very real world impact on your SERPs without you understanding it. I suggest not blocking all traffic from foreign countries.

Let's take this scenario as an example:

I have an ecommerce website that only sells to the United States. I really only care about the US traffic, since that is where my sales can come from. However, many of my inbound site links seem to be coming from Outside US traffic. This outside US traffic cannot buy from me, in fact, they cannot buy many of the products I sell because they are not available in their country.

Even so, when investigating my link profile, I notice that some users are getting the products I sell from somewhere and then blogging about how they love the product. They include a link back to my site since they know I sell the product.

Now, it's true that most traffic from that referral source will not convert to paid users. But, the links they provide are helping me in the SERPs, which brings in the qualified traffic that converts to sales.

In regards to the bounce rate =: You're not actually decreasing the bounce rate. Instead, you've identified the accurate segment of users to be measuring bounce rate from. In your Google Analytics, you should filter out the foreign traffic so that you're only measuring the correct segment of traffic that is important to you.

Now you have the best of both worlds - your reports show the accurate target segment and its metrics, as well as, any benefit that comes from the foreign traffic and link building.

Everything is to be as expected - in time Google will adjust appropriately and drop the old domains from the index to include the newest domains (which are 301'ed to the new URL).

there is definitely a 302 redirect - the developers should be able to recognize this and ensure that the site is only using a 301 redirect when appropriate (e.g. non-www version 301'ed to the www version).

I cannot suggest a fix for the .asp / IIS environment, but your developers should be able to recognize the 302 redirect and implement the correct redirect in your htaccess file.

Cross-domain canonical tags?

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html

Hi Jeremy,

Welcome to the Moz community!

That's an interesting position to be in. On one hand, Bible verses do not change and you may want to include the verse on your page. However, that copy is most certainly around the web and can easily be identified as duplicate content.

One strategy could be:

• Make each verse its own page, if the verse is length then try to break up the verse between multiple pages

• On each page, expand upon the verse.

• What information from each verse is important to the reader, explain it in plain language

• Include an interpretation of the verse and key components of the verse

• Explain how the verse is applicable through real world examples and experience

You can probably see the theme above - expand upon the non-original content with original content through interpretation and experience. You definitely want to outweigh the duplicate content for each verse.

If you're only trying to create an archive of the verse, then you may want to create a special area of your site that includes the original verse and have that noindexed from the search engines, to prevent any duplicate content penalties.

and all my MD cares about in being page one for liquidation

Wow, talk about setting unrealistic expectations. Your MD needs to understand that you sometimes cannot just set a keyword target and expect to rank for that term. Over 50% of the time, Google thinks the user's intent when searching for 'liquidation' isn't even related to your website, it's related to ecommerce transactions. Why would Google rank your insolvency related liquidation resource when they believe the user is searching for wholesale ecommerce products?

I think you should try and adjust their mindset to understand that not everyone searching for liquidation is looking for the information you've provided.

With that said, if you want to rank for 'liquidation' it is going to take a hell of a lot more than looking at your on-page SEO efforts and pointing to that one article as a resource. You better get ready to start creating tens, if not hundreds, of liquidation related, high quality content resources and point them all to one fantastic page. You may even want to consider a niche liquidation website with a targeted domain, navigation architecture, and link portfolio dedicated just to liquidation related terms.

If he wants front page 'liquidation' exposure that badly, consider AdWords

Hi Mike,

Welcome to the Moz community and congratulations on your new website. It's great to see you here and doing your due diligence on link building beforehand, it will surely pay off in the long-term.

Moz has created a very handy and informative link building guide, especially for those in your position. Have you read through it already? If not, I highly suggest starting there.

Moz's link building guide: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.domain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/subfolder/$1 [R=301]

Something like the above rule may be what you're looking for. This would go into your .htaccess file and redirect all the subdomain urls to the new url with the sub folder. Make sure to check with your development team for any special considerations.

Hi George,

If you can upload the old pages to a private directory, you can then use Screaming Frog SEO tool to crawl all of the pages and retrieve the meta descriptions. That would allow you to easily export much of the on-page SEO, include your meta information.

Screaming Frog SEO spider is a mus have tool for SEOs - check it out if you haven't already!

Can you post your domain? Manually checking the robots.txt file would help.

I've checked many of my GWT accounts and I am not showing a sudden robots.txt error. It could be a false error, but I would take anything with the robots.txt file seriously. You'll want to make sure that it is in fact accessible to all the crawlers desired.

Hello Yan,

Fortunately, the on-site SEO for UGC is not very different from the on-site SEO of other forms of content. We can still apply those best-practices to the forums and UGC you're experiencing in forums.

Duplicate content / on-page factors

• Make sure the forum is using proper canonicalization
• use of rel=prev/next for paginated threads
• Semantic SEO where appropriate
• Make sure to have all on-page SEO factors optimized (title, headings, images optimized, ect)

Broken links

• Use Moz or a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to identify 404 pages. Redirect any important pages with a 301 to its nearest related page (save SEO authority for the important dead pages).

Are there more specific issues you are experiencing with the forum?

That would make me feel more confident of a false error being reported. Time to closely monitor the crawl logs, look at server stats, and keep an eye on GWT for a change in the reporting/indexing. I would also go into the GWT forums and post, see if anyone is reporting a similar error these past couple days.

do logged in-user and anonymous user should have the same behavior ?

For the most part, yes, however it depends on the forum you are running. The important piece to understand is that whatever is hidden behind a login wall, remains hidden to the search engines. So, you have to weigh that factor when deciding which content to display to everyone versus the content to display to only logged in users.

How do you suggest handling canonical in a UGC world ?

Canonicalization isn't too hard to manage. Your forum software should include canonical URLs, but if not you will want those implemented into the template as soon as possible. The use of the rel=prev and rel=next tags are highly recommended. This allows you to keep the main forum thread as the canonical URL and Google understands that the subsequent pages are related to the main page and how they add value.

Do you have specific editorial guidelines enforced on UGC ?

Again, that's up to you and your community. What work editorially for one forum may not be the most desirable for another (e.g. the use of profanity). As long as the content being added is of value, then I consider it good content. With forums, you can be a lot more loose with the guidelines and allow users to interact as they desire.

Don't let your forum become infested with Spam, obvious self-promoting threads, and make sure all links are nofollow. Many forums implement restrictions on users in regards to links and only when they prove themselves can they add links to their posts. Link and Spam management are very important for forums.

You do want to have a good balance between keyword rich URLs and friendly URLs - shorter is more friendly.

I'm inclined to prefer the first choice. Usually apartment complexes have an 'apartments' in the name - e.g. Lakewood Apartments. You could keep that keyword to the property name itself and keep the more finely tuned structure of the first URL.

Hello Ali & welcome to the Moz community!

There could be many factors influencing your SERPs position, especially for a new website. Since your site is new, Google is just learning about its content and performance. It could be that your article came up high in the SERPs and then Google noticed some significant pogo-sticking and lowered its rankings.

Have you checked the behavior metrics of the traffic that came through that day? I also suggest adding the term that sent you traffic to Moz's keyword tracking tool so you can monitor its SERPs progress and see how Google is adjusting the rankings.

It looks like you have canonical URL meta information in place. However, there is no 301 redirect from the non-ww version to the www version.

For instances such as this, you want users to resolve to a single URL, which I believe you want the www version of the URL. You should implement a 301 redirect from the non-www to the www URL.

Also, in your Google Webmaster Tools, make sure to configure the setting that tells Google what your preferred domain/home page is.

This should help clear up any duplicate content issues for this case.

I say to put all those comments on a single page. If I'm searching through comments, I hate skipping through multiple pages.

If comments are increasing your page load speed, then pagination may be the solution, but I would try to solve the performance bottleneck first. You would want a proper canonical tag and use prev/next rel tags.

As others have mentioned, using a 301 redirect in this situation is not the most efficient use case, especially if you want all versions of your site to be indexed and available to users.

For displaying regional content (e.g. you have the same content, but it is translated to a specific language on different page versions) you would want to use hreflang to tell Google that you have multiple versions and the regions they satisfy. This will allow Google to serve up the regional specific content to users in international Google search engines and Google will index/know which versions are appropriate.

Reference link: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

Additional reference: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#2

If your company plans on having the acquired domains redirect to your primary domain, then 301 redirects would be the proper method to use.

You'd set those up in the acquired domains' .htaccess file.

Hi AlanJacob,

If your client has physical retail locations, as you've said, then you'll want to get each location listed with Google.

Google provides a bulk location edit tool. You can review the protocol here: https://support.google.com/business/topic/4662257?hl=en&ref_topic=4539578

I recommend allowing Google to crawl those images. Google optimizes its crawl rate and once it has done a complete crawl it will understand how often to crawl certain areas of your site. My main concern would be that you are losing potential rankings and indexing from those images - if they are unique and high quality you definitely want them to index the images, understand the file names, and appropriately index them.

I wouldn't be concerned about Google bot eating up your server resources. If it does become a problem, then you can go back and adjust the bot access through the robots.txt, as you've done already. However, I would let them in first and only react if it becomes a problem.

I have tens of thousands of product images accessed by the google bot and it is no concern to my ecommerce company and the server resources. I'm not saying that it can't be a potential problem, but the benefit outweighs the risk of it being one - I choose a reactive stance in this situation.

Closely monitor your Google Webmaster Tools account, watch the crawl rate and statistics, and if it becomes an issue then decide on which image folders should or shouldn't be indexed.

Moz local is a subscription that is billed annually. Yes, I believe that it does auto-renew every year.

Sometimes search engines do not update as frequently as we would like them to. Since you've already verified that these pages no longer exist on your site, I would also suggest that you actively try to have them removed using your Google Webmaster Tools account.

Google source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en

At this time, Moz does not provide access from multiple users to a single account. It is on the product roadmap and a very popular requested feature, but we haven't seen it added to the service as of yet.

Currently, you'd need to email separate reports to your clients.

Source: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/20199538-is-there-a-way-i-could-add-another-user-to-access-my-pro-account

If you have implemented 301 redirects properly, then the old URLs (the ones redirecting to the new site) will naturally drop from the search engines as Google deems appropriate. There are a number of factors that influence when a page gets deindexed, such as the crawl rate for a website and how many links it may have.

If you really desire the pages to be removed, then as you've suggested you can ask for their removal from GWT. However, there is no harm is allowing them to stay indexed and waiting for Google to adjust appropriately.

"but use it carefully and sparingly"

Absolutely, this is how most should approach the disavow tool. With that said, there are some obvious link farms and spam directories that, if you're experiencing a problems with, can be domain disavowed without much worry.

+1 to Hashtaghustler for expanding on a fundamental piece of the disavow tool

Hmm, Moz Pro has a lot of research tools, but I'm not sure there is a tool where you can plug in a competitor's domain and receive back a list of their top keywords.

What I really like about Moz Pro is the ability to do in depth research around specific keywords and receive competitive information around those keywords - plus, being able to track all of the keywords, links, and site profile of my own website.

You may be looking for something more like http://www.spyfu.com, of which I am also a paid member. There you can plugin a competitor(s) domain in and receive back a list of their top ranking organic keywords as well as keywords used for paid search and their ad history.

Huh? Quotations for quotations?

Are you asking if you can have the community estimate, or quote, a project for you? I don't think so.. projects are not cut & dry and anyone quoting a project would want to ask many questions related to the client and the goals of the project.

I've consistently experienced problems with the Moz crawler - to the point of I no longer put much value into it.

I'm getting this error and nothing has changed in my robots.txt.

Instead, use GWMT and Screaming Frog SEO spider - that's all you need and does more than the Moz crawler.

I think auto-complete, in this sense, can work for you as an SEO and demonstrate the importance of organic impact to the client. If the client is noticing that a competitor is routinely being suggested as an auto-complete, then it's easy for that client to recognize the value of the organic result and therefore easier for them to decide to put more resources (money, time) into the organic strategy.

The SERPs are forever competitive and there are strategies you can take to help your client become that auto-complete suggestion from Google. Focusing on specific terms and using quality content to enforce those terms will help the client's website become a trusted resource for the suggested term. Start targeting those terms more heavily and propose strategies like reviewing a competitor's policy and try to rank for their own auto-complete.

Think creatively around these auto-complete suggestions and gain back some of that organic traffic. Then begin to think of how you can focus on varied auto-complete suggestions to get your own brand to become one of them. Why has the competitor become an auto-complete suggestion? Did they product articles around a specific topic that have been a steady resource for users? If so, maybe that content is becoming outdated or can be expanded upon - write up a new article covering the topic and become that better resource.

If you want immediate traffic from those terms, think of using AdWords targeted to auto-complete suggestions and write creative ads that compete on the value proposition the user was searching for.

While auto-complete may eat at your organic traffic, it doesn't have to and I think it is a good resource for ideas for content and strategy.

Here is an example of what a C Block is:

• 192.168.006.001
• AAA.BBB.CCC.001-254

So, the .006 in the above example is the C-block. Generally, IP addresses that have the same C-block are hosted by the same website hosting. For example, Hostgator, being a widely popular and cheap host provider, hosts a large number of websites in the same C-block.

It's recommended to diversify a link portfolio and you want to increase the locations of where are links are coming from too. They may discount links coming from the same location, although they are not coming from the same website.

Where was the exact location for the C-block metrics you're seeing in Moz?

Hi Alec,

It looks like your website is a custom built website, correct? No CMS like WordPress or similar. In this instance, you would want your developers to create an XML sitemap that auto-includes the new pages created for your site. If this is not possible, then you need to update the sitemap with the new pages as you create them.

Once you submit the sitemap link to Google / Bing they remember the URL to your sitemap and crawl the sitemap at their leisure (more popular sites get their sitemap crawled more frequently). So, once you submit a sitemap, as long as the URL remains the same, the bots will auto-crawl your sitemap for updates.

If you cannot have a sitemap autogenerated and do not want to always manually add the links (or do not know how to maintain an XML feed) then I suggest using Screaming Frog SEO Spider's sitemap feature. The tool will crawl your website and you can generate a sitemap for your site. Then, you can submit that sitemap as it changes to the proper search engines.

Since your websites are setup as unique domains, you would need to submit a sitemap with the unique URLs for each domain. Your other question about your 3 web properties raises some concerns, which I will try to address there.