Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Tom

Many thanks for the quick reply, it's much appreciated.

All very clear, thank you!

Cheers

Richard

Hi guys

I read the seomoz article about sitemap.xml dated 2008. Just wanted to check views on:

1. Is it worthwhile using the 'priority'
2. What if everything is set to 100%
3. Any tips to using the priority

Many thanks in advance!

Richard

Hi Paul

Many thanks for the swift reply, much appreciated.

I will check why the nofollow was originally added, but as you say by removing it from the pages will allow it to pass the juice onto other internal pages. Point taken re your last comment.

All the best.

Richard

Hi guys,

A website has many venue pages, for example:

www.example.com/venue/paris

For some reason the parent www.example.com/venue/  is 301 redirecting to a minor page elsewhere on the website.

Should I remove the 301 redirect and then create www.example.com/venue/     page that then links to all the venues?

My thinking is:

• Google will expect there to be a /venue/ 'parent' page

• So if the parent page is redirecting to a minor page elsewhere within the website its telling Google all the venues like paris must be even less important.

Should I do it? Any suggestions from fellow SEOMoz's would be appreciated!

All the best

Richard

Hi Paul,

Can I ask a related question,

I am looking at a page within a website, it has this

I think the page has the nofollow as it contains a single link to an external website.

Would it be better to have the nofollow on the specific external link rather on the page?

Many thanks!

Richard

Thank you Peter, very clear information

All the best!

Richard

Many thanks Martijn, your help is much appreciated.

All the best

Richard

Hi, any help with this one would be great....

www.example.com sells widgets online. They are also promoted on a 3rd party website www.partner.com.

Currently www.partner.com links to a page on www.example.com that is completely branded with the 'partners' design, style and unique copy (you would think you were still on 'partner' website).

I saw this interesting article from 2011: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-seo-value-from-your-affiliate-links (in particular idea 1)

Do you think adding a rel=canonical on www.example.com's partner page is still safe?

All the best & thank you,

Richard

Great stuff Matt, many thanks, much appreciated.

The B2B website has been live a few months, while the B2C website is just built and goes live in a few days.

I only started with them this week so no involvement in their decision to build a second website, however the B2B domain name would not be appropriate for a B2C market.

I would suspect in the months time they may integrate & redirect the B2B domain to the B2C domain (using 1:1 301's). Having just one domain would be much better for SEO (and day to day website management to).

Many thanks again Matt, you're a star!

Richard

Many thanks for that.

I was thinking perhaps there might be some hosting issues to be aware of?

No-index your pages and you will be fine for the quality score All the best Richard

You mention not chosen your preferred domain - I assume you mean in Webmaster tool

Setting it to say 'www' will mean if Google finds links to the non-www then those will be attributed to the www version.

You do need to registrer your ownership of both www and non-www in Webmaster tool to do this.

Consider carefully whether you pick www or non www if you do mobile / social where every character counts.

In terms of 301's - do you expect to hit targets over your busy period if you do nothing else to sort the problem? If so then perhaps focus your time on conversions of existing traffic, then do the rest when things are not so busy.

Nigel

Hi Eric

I agree with Moosa the days of simply using Google Analytics to see a good picture of keywords is gone.

Have you looked at your Google Webmaster Tool?

In Webmaster tool goto 'Traffic' > 'Search Queries'. Here you will find useful information in terms of search terms, clicks, click through rate and average positions.

Here it is recommended you review the query list for expected keywords. Also compare impressions and CTR to identify how you can improve your content.

On the left hand side of this Webmaster Tool page click 'Search Queries' for more detailed info.

Hope you find it useful

Richard

Hi Sara

If the non branded website is identical to the main website then you could use the canonical tag.This way Google would pass the seo benefit onto the main website.

You could also ensure the robots.txt is used to stop the search engine bots. For more info on this look in your google webmaster tool.

All the best

Nigel

Hi You mention rebuilding on another platform - I assume you made sure if pages changed URL you put in redirects. A blog will tend to have a higher bounce rate as it is something people read and then go. Try adding in more useful links within the content to get people to click through your site. Have you checked the keywords your blog is attracting? Maybe they are not aligned to the blog content. Unless your blog is accounting for the majority of page views and visits I don't think the bounce rate is likely to be your main issue. A high overall bounce rate tells Google people don't find what they were looking for - thus is a contributing factor to search results. You don't mention your website so can't give specific suggestions but have you checked your moz rank / compared to your competitors - that might indicate what else is wrong. All the best Nigel

Hi For 1: I would suggest a custom friendly 404 page. This means the user sees a page saying something like 'Sorry the product / page you were after no longer exists. Here are some useful options ( then list a handful of popular page links). You could even includes a site search or your tel number / email to contact. This means the user knows what has hppened, had somewhere useful to go but it returns a 404. For 2: If the page is being moved - use a 301 redirect on the existing page. If you are simply not selling that product anymore than do a 404 as above. In both cases monitor your GA and GWT for 404s and fix where applicable. All the best. Richard

Many thanks for the quick replies guys. That's a great help!

All the best

Richard

Hi

Have a look at this very recent Webmaster video from Matt Cutts.

http://youtu.be/hy3_Rjc0Tso

Hope this gives help!

Nigel

Hi

Your website is indexed for about 140 pages - try this in the Google search bar: site:www.award-certificates.com

Are you a Pro member? If not then I suggest sign up for free trial and check the reporting for issues.

If you search for Badminton Certificates in Google you appear on the first page.

Decide on your keywords and track their ranking position. It maybe some of your keywords have very little demand so your search traffic will be small no matter how good you are.

You dont mention what you have done so far for SEO, so it maybe wise to buy a book on SEO or look at some of the useful reports on this website and start ticking off what you have / have not done.

Best of luck

Hi Scott Take a look at this http://wordpress.org/support/topic/duplicate-url-in-posts All the best Richard