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?

Hi guys,

I work with a company that has a business to consumer (B2C) website and a business to business (B2B) website selling the same product.

The content will differ but the structure / templates will be similar across both sites.

Any recommendations or suggested reading to ensure both sites appear in Search?

Many thanks in advance!

Richard

Hi Barry & Andy Many thanks for the replies. Re registrar level - would that not remove the 1:1 301 redirects already in place? Re Webmaster change fo address - indeed, but I was holding off doing that till I had the home page issue sorted. Perhaps I should just do it? Many thanks once again guys!

Hi, the company has changed it's name so now under a different domain. All pages have been 301 redirected on a 1:1 basis apart from the home page. For some reason IT cannot 301 redirect the old home page to the new website home page. At suggestions? Perhaps canonical it? Meantime the old home page copy has been changed to say the company name has changed and a link to the new website. Any help greatly appreciated.

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

Tom is very right - you cant have the best of both worlds with your current set up.

Your partners need to attract visitors on their site through content they write and publish - not yours.

All the best.

Richard

Hi

I have just looked at Open Site Explorer - I suspect it is a penalty.

You have loads of links from different places all for either 'Used Cars New Brunswick' or 'New Brunswick Used Car Dealership'.

You may want to clean those up before asking for a reconsideration.

Hi Diane, just seen you are a 'journeyman' status so apologies if its likely to me my previous comment was simply telling you what you already know!

Best of luck in finding a fix,

RIchard

Hi Diane

Looking at page you mention I cannot see a meta description - its blank - therefore Google has no choice but to try and pick the most appropriate words from the page.

Bear in mind their is no guarantee Google will display the meta description - it will either pick the description or copy from the page - depending on which it thinks is most appropriate for your search.

On its own the meta description does not influence your position, however by being a powerful marketing message opportunity the better written ones may get more clicks... so being more popular may improve the position.

Sorry I dont know my way around Joomla so others are better to help you with the exact fix however hope the above may help in the direction you go.

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

Hi Try putting in a email to seomoz. If you do get a reply could you update this thread with the answer.... Would be interested to know to! All the best Richard

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

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

Hi Greg Is everything okay in Google Webmaster Tool? Nothing silly like wrong geographical location or robots.txt? Have you tried a reconsideration? Would be interesting to see what others suggest Richard

I agree with Brighton College.

Dont do it if your sole purpose is SEO.

Hi Abi

Not 100% sure of your question however:

Should H1 and H2 on the same page differ? I would say yes. It would look odd to a reader so perhaps odd to Google to.

If I've not answered the question you were after you can find my number on my profile.

The thing to be wary about is building a website for search engines - focus on the user needs and that the page 'reads and looks right'

All the best

Richard

HI Abi

Well done, much better and visually looks good to.

One thing though.... you still have two H1's on the home page. It looks like the rogue H1is related to your logo. Look around line 139 in the source code.

If you are a pro member try running the SEO web crawler (goto Research Tools). Its a good way to pick up other things. Otherwise drop me a line.

Enjoy!

Richard

Hi Abi

Getting there.... but you should only have one H1 on a page (you've now got 2).

You can have multiple H2's and H3's and so on.

The H1 on your home page is important - should contain your keywords, be readable and to the point.

I would suggest 'Expert Locksmiths in Bristol Bath, South Gloucs, North Somerset and West Wiltshire'.

ie dropping the vertical spacer ' | '

Personally I would drop the 'Welcome to Lockcity' (as you currently have 3 headings) but add in a paragraph of standard text that starts with a welcome, mention what you do, the 1 hour pitch and location (as you are rather light on overall page copy,)

All the best

Richard

PS Nigel is my middle name but it was confusing so amended to Richard - see my profile for more

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

My pleasure.

To answer your question - the post code does not need to be a link to the contact us page - just have a link called 'Contact us'

The contact us page should have tel, your full address and postcode and good idea to imbed a google map.

I have not tried it but there are some wordpress plugins that allow for multiple addresses in one map.

By the way on your home page your heading 'Looking for a expert locksmith? Welcome to Lock City.....' is currently a H2 - it should be a  H1.

It could be cut back and more focused eg Expert Locksmiths covering Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire' ... even that is a mouthful so consider do you really need to mention all locations?

I would also suggest adding in a paragraph of home page copy - maybe this could include reference to the locations (so you can get the H1 back) and end with the 'Contact us' you asked about.

Also give your images alt text which makes reference to location. The urls for the images could also include a location.

Hope this helps

Nigel

Hi Abi Don't worry about the left hand side or global navigation items - Google will focus its attention to the copy and links within the main body of the page. You are correct - if the body copy has two links going to the same location then only the first will count. Links nearer the top of the copy will get more link juice than those further down the page, so put the important stuff nearer the top. The more links you have the more diluted (less effect) those links will have so don't try and cover everything - for example if you sold many different types of cars you could have a 'BMW cars' link, then on the BMW cars page have links to the different models. Make sure you have copy referring to your location / zip / postcode. Have a contact us page with your full address and map. Make sure you have listings / links on local websites.... All the tells Google your location. Finally check Google Webmaster is targeted on your country. Best of luck Nigel

Many thanks Neil All the best, Nigel

Hi I would not worry if you have 2 links to the same page, especially if one is in your global nav. You can add a no follow however I would not worry about it. Many websites have the contact us in the global nav - Google knows about navigation items so instead pays more attention to links in the body of the pages. Google will only follow one instance of a link so it won't double up on the link juice being sent to the next page.. Finally dont have too many links on your home page - the page only has a certain amount of link juice so you end up diluting the juice too much if you have loads of links. All the best Nigel

Hi

I have www.example.net  however trying to judge if it is better having www.example**.**co.uk instead  (as it will be targeted for UK people).

I could use Webmaster tool to geographically target UK - however perhaps best to use a .co.uk domain instead.

Any views on using a .net ending domain?

Many thanks

Nigel

Hi Cary

From what you say it suggests to me the subdomains have gone / dead / been removed.

Therefore you only need to remove it from WMT and ensure only the correct people have access to your WMT / GA etc as I outlined above.

All the best

Nigel

Hi Cary, you are getting that message as the subdomain cannot be reached by Google.

On the Google Webmaster 'Home page' click the dropdown on the right - there should be 3 options.

First click 'Add or remove users' to ensure and deal with users you no longer want.

Then click 'Delete site' to remove the subdomain (make sure you delete the right one!)

Other things you may want to consider:

Check your main site has the right users accessing it.

Did you have Google Analytics on the subdomians - that data will still be there. You may want to consider who has access to that in future.

Check if the affiliates had any access to email, documents, regular reports or other tool you may want to lock down on.

All the best

Nigel

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

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 Michael

In short, it could be many reasons. A few things to consider:

Have you checked your Google Webmaster tool for clues?

Have you seen a drop in actual visitor traffic through GA?

Does the drop match the dates of some of the Google updates?

Have your competitor sites had the similar fate?

Are the red and yellow errors in your SEOMoz campaign reports increasing?

Checked Site Explorer for issues?

From of the three things you mention the first one maybe one to check - perhaps you are suggesting some iffy link building had taken place?

I assume you have had a capitilisation issue for ages so that in itself wont have caused a sudden drop.

Its more likely a series of things you need to fix so check back whats happened on the site in the past few months.

Finally, has it effected your bottom line? - sales / leads etc? That is what really matters.

Best of luck

Nigel

Your a star!

Many thanks Mike

Nigel

Hi

Within Google Webmaster Tool 'Crawl errors' report by clicking 'Not found' it shows 404 errors its found.

By clicking any column headings and it will reorder them.

One column is 'Priority' - do you think Google is telling me its ranked the errors in priority of needing a fix?

There is no reference to this in the Webmaster tool help.

Many thanks

Nigel

Hi Martijn & Matt

Many thanks for your quick replies, good stuff!

All the best

Nigel

Hi

Website A is moving to Website B.

Website A has a number of PDFs - obviously I cant do a '301 redirect' on them. Any suggestions what to do with the PDFs?

Many thanks in advance

Nigel

Hi Devanur

Many thanks for the reply and the information. That is very good of you.

Kind regards

Nigel

Hi there,

My company website has 3 main sections, two of those sections (each containing approx. 50 pages) will be moving to a separate website.

The new website will also be owned by the same company. The new domain does not yet exist.

I read this guide http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-guide-how-to-properly-move-domains , its very good, however it refers to moving the whole domain to a new URL.

Are there any specific differences to consider in my situation for a partial move?

Many thanks in advance!

Nigel

Hi Cale, just to clarify re picking either www or non www - if you have a long domain name than having an extra 3 characters (www) just makes it even longer.

So if someone tweets or you do a say a newspaper advert then generally the shorter the 'address' is the better due to the physical limitations of characters.

Hope your busy period goes well!

Nigel

Hi

Indeed www.example.com/house has no content. There are a number of pages like this where the parent has no content but the child does. (something historical by the person who set up the website, not ideal)

Interesting though, some of the empty parent pages are being indexed even though they are empty.

I was thinking these parent pages are useless to visitors so if the company does not plan to add copy them then best noindex them...

Would you agree?

thank you

Hi, sorry its a Friday question...

Page A: www.example.com/house/

Page B: www.example.com/house/kitchen

Can I 'no_index' page A without it effecting page B being indexed?

Views?

Many thanks!

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