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I hope there's some hardcore Analytics shark out there, with a quick reply

I am setting up a store with multiple languages for a client and need to be able to track multiple sub-domains as a multiple languages in analytics.

Example:

dk.somedomain.com -> Danish language
www.somedomain.com -> English language
no.somedomain.com -> Norweigen language
.. and so on

Now what the client would like is to have one single entity with multiple profiles in analytics, like this:

somedomain.com
-> www.somedomain.com
-> dk.somedomain.com
-> no.somedomain.com
ex..

So if the client want's to see stats for the English language then he just vlivks the www profile and in case of danish he clicks the dk profile and so on.
 problem here is I can't find an analytics help that addresses this specific issue. I have found this but that doesn't seem to cover it:.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

have decided that I'm just gonna try and see how it reacts, will report back when I have the conclusion.

Just thought of a possible solution.

On the mobile site I guess I could do something like:

And on the normal site:

Does anyone have any experience in using meta data to command the google-mobile-bot?

Hi everyone

I seriously hope you can come up with an idea to a solution for the problem below, cause I am kinda stuck

Situation: A client of mine has a webshop located on a hosted server. The shop is made in a closed CMS, meaning that I have very limited options for changing the code. Limited access to pagehead and can within the CMS only use JavaScript and HTML. The only place I have access to a server-side language is in the root where a Defualt.asp file redirects the visitor to a specific folder where the webshop is located.

The webshop have 2 "languages"/store views. One for normal browsers and google-bot and one for mobile browsers and google-mobile-bot.In the default.asp (asp classic).

I do a test for user agent and redirect the user to one domain or the mobile, sub-domain. All good right? unfortunately not. Now we arrive at the core of the problem.

Since the mobile shop was added on a later date, Google already had most of the pages from the shop in it's index. and apparently uses them as entrance pages to crawl the site with the mobile bot. Hence it never sees the default.asp (or outright ignores it).. and this causes as you might have guessed a huge pile of "Dub-content"

Normally you would just place some user-agent detection in the page head and either throw Google a 301 or a rel-canon. But since I only have access to JavaScript and html in the page head, this cannot be done.

I'm kinda running out of options quickly, so if anyone has an idea as to how the BEEP! I get Google to index the right domains for the right devices, please feel free to comment.

Any and all ideas are more then welcome.

I completely agree on every point (as I tried to explain above) and I could not myself come up with a better solution, but thought I might give you guys a chance before jumping the rel-canon band wagon

To be honest I didn't expect any amazing ideas but one could hope that I hadn't thought about everything, unfortunately it seems I had.

thx for your time everyone

Hi and thx for your reply.

I agree with you, as I tried to explain in my post. But this doesn't really help me with the users from Google not getting served with the correct picture. Possible leading to a high bounce rate. Plus I have the added problem that Google will see the master as less relevant for the colors as keywords. Since the keyword won't be in the page title, h1,h2,ex.. so all in all the page will have a very low relevance for the key-phrase  "blue t-shirt".

Hence I'm looking for a different solution

or maybe my explanation is just crappy

Hi there and thanks for your input. But what you mention is exactly what I already have (maybe I just explain it badly), I was kinda looking for a different amazingly brilliant solutions that I hadn't thought of myself

But your thoughts and time is very much appreciated. If you have any other ideas do let me know

Looking for some input on a SEO situation that I'm struggling with. I guess you could say it's a usability vs Google situation. The situation is as follows:

On a specific shop (lets say it's selling t-shirts). The products are sorted as follows each t-shit have a master and x number of variants (a color).

we have a product listing in this listing all the different colors (variants) are shown. When you click one of the t-shirts (eg: blue) you get redirected to the product master, where some code on the page tells the master that it should change the color selectors to the blue color. This information the page gets from a query string in the URL.

Now I could let Google index each URL for each color, and sort it out that way. except for the fact that the text doesn't change at all. Only thing that changes is the product image and that is changed with ajax in such a way that Google, most likely, won't notice that fact. ergo producing "duplicate content" problems.

Ok! So I could sort this problem with a "rel canon" but then we are in a situation where the only thing that tells Google that we are talking about a blue t-shirt is the link to the master from the product listing.

We end up in a situation where the master is the only one getting indexed, not a problem except for when people come from google directly to the product, I have no way of telling what color the costumer is looking for and hence won't know what image to serve her.

Now I could tell my client that they have to write a unique text for each varient but with 100 of thousands of variant combinations this is not realistic ir a real good solution.

I kinda need a new idea, any input idea or brain wave would be very welcome.

actually I don't mind shared hosting if they can surply the bandwith that I will potentially need. Am actually looking for something like a scaleable cloud solution would be awesome.

I'm not quite sure how much traffic the site will generate yet but potentially allot. Wich is why a scaleable solution would be perfect. But I can't have the site go offline because I have exceeded the monthly bandwidth.

probably won't need support what really interests me is the uptimes and bandwidth

what are your experience there?

I'm aware that this is not SEO related, but bare with me:

Launching a new business venture and need some advise. the site will be located in the UK (for legal reasons) and since I have no experience with UK webhosts. I kinda need your help on selecting a good webhost.

Money is not importants but what is:

- excellent up times

• unlimited bandwidth

So if you could share your experiences it would be much appreciated.

thx in advance

Honestly no.. and noone seems to know the answer (I ofcause havent tried to ask google). I have tried everyone from Search Engine Land, SEOmoz, webmaster forums, googles webmaster forums, other experts within the industry.. and noone seems to have any idea or have ever experienced it for that matter. What I wound up doing was:

1. make a new landing page for the subject and did a ton of link building paying close mind to the anvhor texts as always.

2. make a 301 redirect to the new page.

After some months the problem stopped.. I have however never found the reason for the problem. And no one seems to know the answer

the reson is: Back in the day (I do not know if it still does this, havent tested it or had cause to do so.) google indexed example.com/page/ and example.com/page as two different pages.

The quick fix is to make a RegEx that "tests for the excistense of a trailing slash at the end ofg the url" and then use that in your .htaccess to redirect all urls without to an url with. In other words add a trailing slash. (makes sence I hope.)

You could do the same thing with rel=canonical (even easier imo. since you can use php and do it in the relevant templates)

Here is Matts word on trailing slashes: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/#comment-8260

usually they don't have links from the same places so if you get all the links they have and more you have beaten them hands down, and then after that well I guess google is your friend

In my experience no

Have you made a competitive analysis and checked where the strongest competitors get links from? That's usually the way I go

1. if the rest of the content is different and there is enough unique content) then no i shouldn't be a problem.

2. If above is ok then 2 won't be a problem

3. Yes just like any other link building will help you.

That said I would advice on making a few landing pages on the site and use it as a portal for the main site. Just keep the content unique and relevant and you won't have any problems. Plus you should get a proff. designer to make a nice user friendly landing page design that works.

I could probably be of service but since I'm Danish You'll have to give me an example of a "trailing" slash.. A guess it's a slash that tips the left? eg: "" or is it this one: "/"

if you help me understand what you mean I might be able to help you

Ahh ok sry misunderstood the question (my bad):

If you have a page (the one linked to with an anchor text) and this page contains do-follow links then some of the "value" (for the search phrase in question) will flow to the other pages. But! (there's always a but since only a small percentage of the value will flow, the value of the other pages are most likely to little to show up in any search result, since other pages will probably out weigh it in the SERP's.

In other words: Yes anchor text flows just like link-juice

A link passes link juice internally and externally. Since the link helps the Authority and Trust of the entire domain. If you have a link to a page and that page links to another page, then some of that link juice will flow from page one to page two.

They have a "learning machine algorithm" so the servers do a best guess. When searching for apples it just looks at what most users where searching for and displays that result.

Have you considered loading the landing page in a div when they click on it (as a pop-up)?

The pros of opening things in a new window is that when you link off site,the user won't leave your page and can return later. The cons well.. to many pop ups can be annoying for the user. If the page is something they might use as a reference then opening it in a new window can be a good thing, think size guides for a shoe-store. You can browse the products but still have the size guide as a reference.

The example you mention is a perfect example where it might serve you better to think "what is best for our users". And since you don't link off site (at least it doesn't sound like it) I see no problem with linking to it in the same window.

2: completely up to you and what you think serves you users best

For SEO I would recommend HTML, with the option to download a PDF. That being said you should also consider how much time is wasted on doing it HTML. Can the company earn more money by spending their time on something else? I mean how often do people actually search for a certain dish when they are about to go out for dinner. My bet is that they are more likely to do a search like: "Italian restaurant in downtown Berlin" rather then "Broccoli slightly roasted in white-wine". Do you see what I mean?

ohh yeah do us all a favour and keep it whitehat or at least grey.. don't join the dark side

Getting links from that site is a good thing but I would advice you to work at getting links from other sites as well. remember to focus on your niche so you get top quality links from your niche. And always try to get the right anchor text but remember to vary the anchor text or Google will get suspicious. It's not often that one site gets 100 links to a single page with the same key phrase as anchor text and the SE's know this.

You might a bit. But more links are (almost) always better. You should try to get both high quality links and some low quality (easy) links. The easy links (yes link catalogues) can work quite well if done in conjunction with the heigh quality links. Sure they won't be as effective as the high quality ones but allot easier to get. But try to keep a reasonable spread, for each heigh quality link try to get 5 or so low. Keep a natural link acquisition rate.

Sry I didn't have the time to answer before I went home for the weekend, and I have a strict politic to try not to work during the weekend. I usually fail but try to keep it to really important stuff

Anyhow now that I'm back. What Dan said could help but I also notice that the PR of at least 2 of the above is higher. Apart from that there might be a very important unseen factor that you can't really do competitive research on. I am thinking about bounce rate, if your bounce rate is heigh, the other sites might outrank you even though your site has a better PR and so on. Plus the links the other sites have might have better A tags, have you tried doing some competitive link research?

To be frank your site could use some design work and give the visitors a reason to click on to a new page (to lower your bounce rate).

depending on the competion one link won't have a huge effect. But more will help allot. But more links even from only one site is always better then none. But try to get links from other sites as well and try to vary the anchor texts and the pages you get links for. Not all links should be to your frontpage. But a PR4-5 link will work but don't expect a miracle from only one linking root domain.

Our company blog started out with a completely new domain. 3 months later, with almost no link building and roughly 10 domains pointing to it (1 PR 5) it has a PR of 3 closing in on 4.) ok we have done allot of tweeting and social activities. But building PR is hard work, and we don't have the time.

Quality links from quality articles (guest blogging ex.)  and quality content + social activity will get you up there quickly. But 1 link from a PR 4-5 site won't help allot.

The best advice I can give is look through the quality blog posts on seomoz about link building (and check out the whiteboard friday as well) and you will be well on your way to the top

A bit more info: could you give an example of a key-phrase your trying to target? So I can compare you to your competition?

type error:

• now that we are mentioning other languages.. It would be equally sweet if it would see the correlation between Ø and OE, Å and AA and so on.. (scandinavian chars for those of you who don't know) again the SE's do

Update with images: as you can see, what OnPage O sees and what Google shows me.. 2 very different results

even when logged out or tried from a completely different town at the opposite end of the country

it would be helpful if I could change and force it to look for the right page

Udklip-OPO.PNG Udklip-google.PNG

I've been using your on-page optimization tool allot lately, I must say it simply is a great checklist to run a page through and it forces you to think about it a bit more and you notice stuff that you might otherwise have overlooked (read forgot) . But! ('cause there's always a but..) I have noticed a few issues:

• it could be optimized to recognize plural endings, given this is a hard one since there's allot of languages.. but It would be awesome if it did.. right? (just like the SE's do) I would be more then willing to help with the Danish. Since you already specify what version of google you wanna target eg: ".DK" it might not be all that hard to implement plural?

• now that we are mentioning other languages.. It would be equally sweet if it would see the correlation between Ø and OE, Å and ÅÅ and so on.. (scandinavian chars for those of you who don't know) again the SE's do

For German letters I expect (not sure though, I'm not German, I speak it a bit though, so if your German feel free to correct me that the SE's would see the letter Ö as an OE.. Ü as UE, Ä as an AE and so on.

Why is the above important? well because that many still use those versions of the letters in URL's. Even though all browsers/mail clients now a'days are able to understand punycode.

or you might be experiencing some panda effect or it might just be that your in close competition with your competitors. It could be many things, no need to be alarmed yet, if it persists however you should probably take action

Yes you have understood it right, it seems. I would recommend googles own shortner though, since it will help google understand your tweet.

I just dusted off my memory banks (the hardware ones in my brain) and if I am not mistaken (don't know if it still there) there were a paragraph in the Google terms of use that stated that explicit content has to be at least 3 clicks away from the front-page. But on the other hand I just did a quick search on porn and none of them live up to that condition so it doesn't seem like that rule is being enforced if it was ever there. It is interesting but I must admit I have never had a reason to research the subject since I have never had a client that had explicit content.

I doubt it but have no real proof.. except porn sites and so on tend to rank very high

Both the urls u posted seem identical to me

1. nope

2)since they are both just the original url, yes

3)both the parameters I wrote were examples. you could call the BigBearBunga or whatever you like. Call them whatever makes sence to you

If what you say is true they have made some horrible SEO since Google will index their product pages and search pages there are some serious duplicate content issues to worry about.

you should always tell Google not to index the search result page to avoid this problem. you don't want your search results indexed, you do however want your product category pages indexed.

sry m8 I have been busy with work, and am going to be for greater parts of today.. I will however do my best to find time to answer you l8er today.. so fear not I have not forgotten about you

The easy way for you to do it is like this:

The url you wan't to tweet: www.youdomain.com/yourart.html

Now you need to add some parameters to the end of the URL f.ex:

medium=twitter and date=08043011

so the url will look like this:

www.youdomain.com/yourart.html**?medium=twitter&date=08043011**

pass it through an URL shortener like bitLy or googles own. and tweet it.

In GA you should now be able to filter your search so you can check the traffick the tweet generated. Because you can track the URL and see how many came to your artcle by that URL. Next time you tweet someting just change the date and you can track that specific URL. same thing goes for facebook, email ex.

actualy theres a WAY easier way to do it:

grab your link pass it through biutLy. bitly will generate an URL for you. use this for the tweet. You can now track trafick (in bitly) from twitter, facebook exc.

Clearly the easiest way.. you don't even have to think

yup

"I suppose this can be done in   Traffic sources > All traffic sources. Am i right ?" sounds about right or in other words, yes

"I really, really would like to know what specific tweet traffic was generated."
each time you make a new tweet where you want to link to an article on your site, you should run through steps 1-7 and then use the link generated.

If I were you though I would read som tutorial on URL's and query strings to get the know how behind what your doing. that way you won't be shooting in the dark and will be able to write those URL's by hand.

When doing SEO, SEM and SMM its a good idea to have a basic understanding in HTML/CSS and how URI/URL's work. And know Analytics/adwords tool set by heart.

To be a good SEO: you should be able to read and write HTML, CSS and Javascript + have a basic understanding of DNS records and domains.

To be a great SEO: You should be all of the above and be able to write some basic PHP/ASP/ASP.NET and have at least a basic understanding about servers.

Hope it helps. If there is something you need me to elaborate please tell me what and I'll try to do so

actually google has the answer, right here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75712

I always try to do what google recommends even though something might work just as well.. just to be on the safe side

you can't submit a sitemap in GA so I'm guessing you mean GWT

Whether or not you put it in the robots.txt shouldn't be a problem. since in each sitemap, the urls would look something like this:

Sitemap 1:<url><loc>http:/yoursite.coim/somepage.html</loc></url>

Sitemap 2:<url><loc>http:/yoursite.dk/somepage.html</loc></url>

I see no need to filter what sitemap is shown to the crawler. If your .htaccess is set-up to redirect traffic from the TLD (top level domain eg .dk .com ex.) to the correct pages. Then the sitemaps shouldn't be a problem.

The best solution would be: to have a web in web. (a folder for each site on the server) and then have the htaccess redirect to the right folder. in this folder you have a robots.txt and a sitemap for that specific site. that way all your problems will be gone in a jiffy. It will be just like managing different 3 sites. even though it isn't.

I am no ninja with .htaccess files but I understand the technology behind it and know what you can do in them. for a how to do it guide, ask google thats what I allways do when I need to goof around in the htaccess. I hope it made sense.

If you don't care what tweet the visitor comes from then you can just see it in GA. But if you want to know what specific tweet traffic was generated by, the yes, you need to do something like what the article stated.

You need to build a new url for each tweet or you won't be able to track the specific tweet.

I hope it made sense else ask me to clarify and I'll do so

you could use an url shorten-er like bit.ly but GA can tell you this whitout the use of all that, so why not just check the trafic sources in GA?

I would suggest both, since someone might be searching for it while on a trip or visiting the family during the weekend and hence might not be geographically in the town at the time of his/her search.

I see no need to use robots.txt for that. use Google and Bings webmaster tools. Here you have each domain registered  and can submit sitemaps to them for each domain.

If you want to make sure that your sitemaps are not crawled by a bot for a wrong language. I would set it up in the .htaccess to test for the entrance domain and make sure to redirect to the right file. Any bot will enter a site just like a browser so it needs to obey the server. so if the server tells it to go somewhere it will.

the robots.txt can't by it self, do what you want. The server can however. But in my opinion using bing and google webmaster tools should do the trick.