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I'm curious why you think you would be negatively impacting your SEO by removing 'by' from the line?

I think this falls under a UI consideration, what makes the most sense for your readers. It's a very small aspect to the overall content of the page. I wouldn't worry about SEO impact for this change.

http://moz.com/blog/hacking-keyword-targeting-whiteboard-friday

Checkout Moz's latest Whiteboard Friday post - their byline includes the date, author, and a few categories the article is posted in. The categories are mainly there to allow the reader to easily find other related articles and keep them engaged with the site (move from one article to another article they may be interested in quickly and easily).

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.

I believe it is because Sephora is using a recommended 3rd party product review aggregator, Bazaarvoice.

They most likely share their product reviews with Google through a data feed file and Google understands enough to implement the reviews in the Organic search. I've only seen reviews shared this way for the purpose of includes reviews in Google Shopping (previously, PLAs), but not organic search.

Yeah, I don't really like the 'theory' I listed, but sometimes you aren't left with very many options. If a business has been trying to go out it organically for as long as the OP has, then maybe it is time to consider something farther outside the box.

Hi - Well, I did use a general term with 'any,' but generally speaking, on the desktop version, it is highly likely that content that is deliberately hidden from users, such as content that is revealed when a user clicks on a tab or 'expand to view' type of link, may be discounted when it comes to ranking that page.

Sources:

• https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-mobile-content-okay-19626.html
• https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-content-tabs-19534.html
• https://www.seroundtable.com/google-hidden-tab-content-seo-19489.html

The above also includes links to hangouts where people like John Mueller have specifically spoken to the topic. Now, I don't think that hiding content like this is considered to be black hat. Only that the content in these areas carry less influence when ranking their pages for the terms included in that content.

Based on what the SEO community has seen and my own work with high traffic websites, I do think Google is at least tweaking this factor as a ranking signal. Therefore, any content that I know I want to have the most influence on the SERPs as possible, I bring to the immediate front, even if it means having a longer page. E.g. valuable content such as user reviews and product questions shouldn't be shown behind tabs, although it is a very popular UI design.

Well, this is unfortunate to have happen - and really hard to look at as an SEO. It puts you in a tough position.

The content is obviously duplicate, they don't even bother to update the brand name in much of it, nor the meta data and other on-page factors completely.

They are hosted on the same account, same IP address.

Their NAP is the exact same.

They even share Google Analytics IDs. Maybe someone knows why this stays out of sight of the algo updates, but I'm not sure.

In theory, you could purchase a keyword rich domain, copy their URL structure, and copy their content. Then see if that website ranks in the SERPs. if so then I would do it with 8 more websites and dominate the SERPs. Once the page is spammed full of the same content, Google should catch on and penalize all the sites. All the new duplicate sites should be on a different web host than your primary domain. Just a theory though...

There are a few considerations to think about here:

Each search engine treats a 302 redirect differently, so just because it could be a correct use case in one search engine, doesn't mean that it won't negatively impact you for another. This is a major reason why most SEOs do not recommend using 302 redirects, they are more harmful then beneficial.

a 302 redirect, in the situation you explained, could be a correct use case if the redirected destination was on the same domain. So, if www.thisisyourdomain.com 302 redirects to www.thisisyourdomain.com/temporary-site then it could be a correct use of the 302 redirect. However, the first point above is much more important and I wouldn't recommend doing this.

If you do want to put up a temporary site for that downtime, then I do suggest you apply canonical tags back to the original site AND you prevent search engines from indexing it entirely to be safe from duplicate content penalties. Then, I also suggest not to have a 302 redirect, but an error page that says your team is working on fixing the problem and they can use this alternate site (provide a link) in the meantime.

However, I would avoid it altogether. If your site must remain online during these unexpected downtime experiences, then it is probably because you are losing a substantial amount of revenue (e.g ecommerce websites with frequent transactions). If that is the case, then I recommend investing in a server setup that can accommodate this scenario - they can be expensive, but you're generating revenue so it should fit into someone's budget.

You can also go the route of using a CDN to deliver cached content to allow the visitor to continue to browse a cached version of the website while it is offline. You won't be able to take transactions, but if the downtime is short their experience may not be interrupted - look at Cloudflare's Forever Online feature.

If your site isn't losing revenue while offline, then improve the setup to minimize downtime, throw up a nice error page letting people know, and don't mess with those redirects.

There's quite a bit going on here

'av' could stand for a lot of things, such as anti-virus. Most people know the acronym, but having the url as /av doesn't help you in terms of SEO - use friendly URLs that identify a specific topic, such as you've suggested with /video-conference

For each specialty/service, create a unique page and add content that demonstrates your value proposition to the reader.

Make sure each of these pages has the proper information hierarchy applied - H1, H2, H3, and the rest as necessary. Your <title>and <h1> tags should be human readable and highly targeted to the topics you want to rank for.</p> <p>Any content that is hidden behind tabs (i.e. you click a link and new text appears) is now known to be discounted for rankings. I highly suggest that you put all highly relevant content that you want to help you rank in front of the user without them needing to interact with your application.</p> <p>I hope this helps you get started creating those new pages!</p></title>

Hi Jess,

I suggest considering the following for your page:

• Add in an h1 tag - currently, it is missing from the page and it is an important on-page ranking factor

• Add a transcript of the video

• This can add a lot of content and structure to the page (more headings). It also improves usability, there are many people out there that prefer to read through a transcript rather than sit through a video.

• Wrap your video and its pertinent details in the proper Schema data

• https://schema.org/VideoObject

• Create a video sitemap

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80472?hl=en

These should help you increase the ranks and fill out those video pages.

No problem, glad I could help!

There are a few ways to view that info in GA, here is one method:

Go to your Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns report

Then, make sure the correct 'conversions' goal is selected (should be a dropdown in the Conversions section)

Now, input the campaign name you created for the tracking URL into the filter input field. That field is right above the Conversions section of the report and has a small magnifying glass next to the input field (to the left of the 'advanced' link). That will allow you to only view the traffic coming from that campaign and its metrics.

You can also simply click the campaign name if you see it among the list of campaigns.

Well, the Google URL builder is most likely what you are trying to do. If you set the correct parameters, you will be able to track the traffic that has come from that campaign. Then, you can see the goals that the traffic originating from those emails have completed, their behavior, and the outcomes.

A proper URL may look something like this...

www.YOURDOMAIN.com/?utm_source=EMAGAZINEname&utm_medium=email&utm_content=EMAGAZINEnewsletterID&utm_campaign=EMAGAZINEnewsletter

• Update your domain to match your website
• the source should be the domain of the emagazine
• medium is email or newsletter
• content should be the name of the newsletter that your advertising in
• campaign should be a unique campaign name for your advertising strategy

I hope this helps! Once setup, you can track those conversions and goals that came from the traffic of the emagazine

If possible, have the development team wrap the NAP (Name Adress Phone number) in the proper schema: http://schema.org/LocalBusiness

Consider bringing all of your content from the 'real estate' and 'faq' tab to the front and no longer use tabs (tabbed content is suspected to be discounted, from a recent hangout with John M. of Google).

Nofollow that 'Web3' link in your footer.

Whichever URL you choose to go with, stick with it and allow it some time to adjust properly in the SERPs. 301s do pass authority properly still, but the search index needs time to adjust that change.

I think you really need to consider improving the content on your home page. I read through it, but the information presentation is not easily digestible (blocks of text rather than easy, readable sections of text) and the value proposition isn't immediately recognizable. Maybe add some additional headers and break apart the content to clearly showcase the lawyers' area of expertise.

I don't see why not - I haven't seen any rules against it and I don't think it would be 'frowned upon.' We're all about analyzing strategies, techniques, and technical issues so if providing a website helps the community do that then I would post it.

If anything, your competitor should be on top of their brand mentions and see that their domain was mentioned, which may invite them into the conversation.

If I'm wrong about that, the Moz staff will set me straight.

You can PM me directly if something is sensitive. However, if the community can also respond I prefer to have all questions available to the public.

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

Well, that' an understandable position to be in. Unfortunately, I cannot speak directly to the following:

"I was also told by our current SEO company that google only penalises sites that have duplicate content in the same localised areas...."

I'm guessing your developer means country specific areas and not necessary city/region, which would be susceptible to penalties in this situation.

I would really like to hear from someone else in the Moz community with more direct experience on this international issue - hopefully someone speaks up soon

With Screaming Frog you would need to crawl, generate, and submit the sitemap (or upload it to your server) whenever it changes (you add/remove a page).

Glad to see you got most of the reporting needed.

You may also want to submit a feature request over here and see if the community and Moz team can plan to implement your feature.

As your sites are currently configured, you do run the risk of a duplicate content penalty. Your site's appear to be the same, except for the URLs (same content across each domain name).

I'd start by asking why you need to have country specific domains. A .com ranks very well internationally. I understand the importance of having the unique domain names from a trademark perspective, but if the content will not be unique I suggest having them all 301 redirect to the .com domain. If possible, have the site translate to the country language when choosing from the international drop down, rather than visiting the country specific domain.

This cuts down on a lot of the maintenance needed for multiple domains and prevent duplicate content penalties.

If you want to keep the domains separate and have the content be mostly duplicate, you would need to look into cross-domain canonicalization. From what I saw, you do not have any canonical tags on the site at this point. Plus, we need to remember that canonical tags are only a suggestion for the search engines to follow and they may choose not to adhere to the tags you put in place.

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.

The keywords would need to match exactly to make sure the Vlookup works properly. If you're tracking keywords that are not in the difficulty list / vice versa then the Vlookup would pull a N/A value, which would let you know the keyword is not on the list.

Hi promfgsystems,

A report like that is not available within the Moz tools with all the information in one place. However, is you're familiar with Excel then combining a few reports together to create that dashboard is not very difficult with the help of Vlookups.

• Download the Tracked Keywords report - This will give you...

• Keywords

• Labels

• Ranks

• Download the Keyword Difficulty and SERP Analysis report - This will give you...

• Keyword difficulty

• Bring all your keywords to the Google Keyword Planner Tool - This will give you...

• Global search volume (Moz cannot shot Google search volume)

Then you would put all of these reports into a single Excel workbook and use a Vlookup to put the information into 1, simple report.

Hi Paul - You're correct from the start, you want to 301 those dead pages to their closest related page. Maybe the sports team or sport category. From what you've written, I'm sure you can figure this one out - nice job!

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.

Hello Keenan-price,

Welcome to the Moz community!

Moz is reporting these duplicates correctly. Each of the listed URLs are seen as unique URLs and unique pages. This is a common problem when a website does not have the proper canonical tags and 301 redirects in place for these URLs.

You'll want to decide on how your website should be displayed (which URL you prefer) and implement the canonical tag and 301 redirects.

the 301 redirects could be done with your .htaccess file, depending on your site environment. The canonical tags would depend on your site's environment (wordpress, custom development, ect).

Also, make sure to go into your Google Webmaster Tools account and specify a single page as being the correct page, once you've decided on how you want the URL to be displayed.

PageA.html's links still exist in the wild and haven't been updated to reflect the new page. When calculating the page authority, we still see all the links pointing to pagea and it calculates an authority for the page, although it has been permanently redirected to pageb.html.

Then the calculated authority is transfered through the 301 redirect. But, since all the external links exist, you won't see that PA vanish completely for pagea.

As much as copy that is needed to add quality information to your readers and clearly communicate your value proposition.

The industry has moved away from 'a minimum of 300 words is needed' to focus on the quality of content provided to the readers. Branding also influences a home page - some brands prefer a clean, minimal interface and already have the traction (word of mouth, referrals) needed to keep themselves sustained.

I recommend adding enough content to your home page that clearly explains why someone would want to use your product and the benefits they will receive from using the product. If I can get that from your home page, then it is a successful user experience.

Of course, keep that content targeted to your main topic / terms, but don't think that optimizing only the major on-page components will keep you high in the rankings.

I like to target a major city and then use location bid modifiers to increase/decrease the bids in the appropriate locations. If your ad copy can be generic enough and still successful, then it could save you a lot of time by targeting London and modifying the bids for successful cities in the immediately surrounding area.

If, however, those smaller cities have enough traffic then it would be best to set them up with their own campaigns to have the highest level of targeting and focused ad copy possible.

I agree with David's suggestion of setting up location specific campaigns and including the services offered as ad groups, with the addition of bid modifiers as appropriate.

Have you compared the site traffic to the major algorithm updates? If not, check out this simple and free tool to do so easily: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

That might give you some missing insight and immediate direction.

Edit for a better answer - duh, sorry you specifically mentioned 'direct traffic.'

When it comes to direct traffic, I immediately go to customer loyalty. Have you seen a decrease in the amount of purchases a customer is making (if ecommerce)?

If it is a content website - has the quality / quantity of posting decreased? It would help to know what the niches of the website are and how they add value to the visitor. But, I always think of loyalty when it comes to direct traffic.

Also, direct traffic includes not only visitors that type your URL in, but any errored or dropped referral URLs.It could be that you adjusted the way Analytics is tracking your traffic and it better understands which source to put the traffic into and report it properly. Sometimes, a decrease in traffic is a good thing.

Generally speaking, if you setup your AdWords account to match the Site's Navigation structure, then you get a clean and manageable AdWords architecture. I almost always setup my client accounts by matching their navigation structure. If that structure is confusing, then the site's navigation structure is probably also confusing and needs to be optimized.

I believe the 'diagnostic' category was removed when they restructured the menu. I don't recall a specific tool being removed, they were simply placed into other categories (HTML suggestions, for example, are under the Search Appearance menu as HTML Improvements).

The best way is to provide high quality, value-added content without spamming keyword rich anchors back to your blog. Guest posting, when done properly, can still be an effective link building strategy if it doesn't minimize the content.

For example, find a highly related niche website and write up an insightful, lengthy article (none of that 300 word crap). In that article, touch briefly on a related topic that you've expanded upon in detail on your own website - like an aside note where a reader can visit to gain deep understanding on a supplemental topic. If both articles (the guest post and your own article) are unique and high quality, the contextual link should be a positive addition to your link portfolio.

You want it to be seen as natural and appropriate - not spammy and an obvious tactic at only receiving a link. Keep the readers' best interest in mind and you should be ok, as long as the quality of the website you're guest blogging on also executes legitimate link building strategies.

What topics are you intending to write about?

If you guys create a simple link network between one another, then no it probably won't help much and you're risking being seen as manipulating links.

Instead, I suggest each writing up quality content that your site's focus on and provide a contextual link to one another. This way you are giving your users valuable content and if the article focuses on each of your own niches it then makes sense to provide a link to the site.

Hi Jeremy - Wow, we're getting a lot of these keyword traffic estimates questions this week. Unfortunately, Moz cannot provide Google estimated traffic. However, I wrote this lengthy answer earlier about how you can acquire the Google estimated traffic and which tool to use. Hint: The Google Keyword Planner

http://moz.com/community/q/use-of-keyword-analysis-tool-espcially-regarding-search-volume

Sorry, my response was unclear. The theme is choosing to use the wrong title for the H1 which results in both the <title>tag and the <h1> tag being the same.</p> <p>As Oleg pointed out above, you'll want to update the theme to use the function mentioned to keep them separate.</p></title>

Hi World_Learning,

Welcome to the Moz community!

• Is there any way to see the Google Search Volume instead of the Bing Search Volume? The overwhelming majority of our organic site traffic comes from Google, so it seems silly to look at the Bing search volume.

I prefer to go straight to Google to get the search volume, tbh. That tool is located here. Unfortunately, I only show Bing traffic volume as well, but maybe someone knows of a setting that I've overlooked.

With that said, you do not want to disregard Bing traffic. It does only account for a small portion of traffic, but the search behavior (and conversion behavior) could be wildly different from the traffic it brings to your website. You might be able to identify some very important terms that drive your KPIs and have them be unique to Bing.

• How do you deal with the fact that this tool only returns search volume based on an exact match? As we know, there are some many ways the same general query could be entered, but it seems ridiculous for me to sit there and run the tool against every iteration I can think of just to get a general sense of the search volume.

I've found Keyword traffic estimates to be very limited with almost every keyword tool out there. Again, I prefer to go straight to the source when analyzing a keyword's traffic volume, which is the Google Keyword Planner. Where Moz Pro adds value, I've found, is around the competitive SERP analysis - what sort of difficulty am I looking at, who are the people in the top 10, and how did they get there so I can emulate and out-perform. However, the initial traffic estimates are more accurately received from Google themselves.

• What do you find helpful about the Keyword Analysis tool and how does it inform your SEO work?

The competitive an difficulty analysis. Their tools will help you identify what a SERP has done right to get there, what the sources of links are, what their linking profile looks like, and then you can deduce how to out-perform your competitors to get above them in the SERPs.

• What other tools do you recommend to help determine Google search volume for keywords?

Only the Google Keyword Planner - there isn't much of a reason to use any other tool. It comes straight from Google, they give you additional, related keywords and volume, and help you group them into common themes. This is my first and sometimes only tool for keyword traffic analysis.

That's seems like your themes error - they set the h1 to be the same as the page title.

Hi Noah - Sorry to hear that you're having difficulty with Yoast. TBH, Yoast is the best WordPress SEO plugin out there and is very effective when used properly.

Have you adjusted the general settings so that the auto-generated titles are to your liking? The H1 tag ends of being the Post/Page Title that is manually entered when editing the post/page.

Also, make sure that your screen options, on the edit page, are set to show the Yoast SERP simulator. There you can further adjust the SEO settings to yours needs.

I agree, your Page Title and the H1 tag should be different - targeted towards the same topic, but creatively different to get the most benefit.

Moz provides a list of recommended agencies to work with.

http://moz.com/community/recommended

The list isn't updated often, so if you've already considered those and need more direction I can be emailed through Moz's PM system and/or contacted through the website in my profile.

Hi Rob,

One strategy I didn't see mentioned was the use of Case Studies. Case studies can be used to help convert clients with similar goals - they add a lot of confidence in the ability of the service provider and provide a direct example of success.

I also suggest getting on the phone as often as possible with potential clients. I've found it much easier to convert a client when speaking to the client's needs directly over the phone. Sometimes, the goals and needs can get lost in email and speaking with them directly allows me to align both parties; and a sense of unity is a great conversion tactic.

Hi Richard,

I've never had a good experience with Yext. As far as I know, they may even create these nuisance listings to drum up more business for themselves - stay clear of Yext is my stance.

Unfortunately, there is no easy process for listing removals when they are involved. You need to send in a message to them directly. Provide a link to the listing, explain that Yahoo! is directing you to the Yext database for removal, and get a verified listing up ASAP to outrank the unclaimed listing.

Then you have to wait 4-6 weeks to even see if it is removed. PITA. You can hangout on this page and wait for one of their operators to come online to speak with directly, that may get you faster and more direct results.

You're correct and good catch! If you want that Ad History to remain, you'll need to duplicate the ads and update the URLs.

It's great that you've identified issues like this. I also suggest that if you know certain parameters are generated often and not necessary to index, that you go into your Google Webmaster Tools account > Crawl > URL Parameters and proactively set the crawl rate to 'No URLs' is appropriate. I do this with certain custom parameters for sites that are prone to having these extra URLs indexed mistakenly.

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.>

Hi Theodore - You pose an interesting problem, are you currently experiencing this issue? I don't see why someone would create a bunch of random non-existent links to your site, but if they did (and the pages were receiving low quality traffic) then I would proactively disavow those domains that created the links. That would be enough to prevent any penalties you're afraid of receiving.

If, however, you're noticing that specific 404 pages are receiving quality traffic (maybe an old page was removed but good traffic is still sent to the page) then you would want to 301 that page to its closest relative page that deserves the traffic and authority.

Does that help? Maybe a little more information around you specific problem would allow me to tailor the advice better.

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!

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

Generally speaking, a 301 redirect transfers 98%+ of the authority when implemented properly. However, I would do a complete evaluation to see if a new domain is the strategy you want to move forward with. Even though Toyota may be narrowly targeted, can you create subdirectories (toyotaparts.com/maza-tires) that are intuitive? If so, it may be more effective to keep the original domain intact.

Also, since you have an authority website, creating content on both and intelligently linking from the old domain to the new domain (creating quality content on both site and linking from toyotaparts.com to mazdatires.com) may also be immediately effective for certain keywords.

I think what you need to consider is the quality and amount of traffic the current domain is receiving. If the rankings are shot and the site isn't receiving quality leads, then starting a new domain may be the best idea.

Changing from a singular to a plural should be enough - however, I would also want to change hosting providers to ensure no related IPs are associated with the domain as well.

Are you certain that your new efforts are not gaining traction?