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http://ranktracker.seomoz.org/

STILL DOES NOT WORK

I have used SEO moz for some time and the rank tracker almost never ever, ever works. That error message at the top of the screen has been there for days now. But even previously before then if it did work after you track a few keywords it stops working anyways. Terrible.

Hello Mozers

Our site has been on a dedicated server for about four years now. (no other sites, just ours on the server)

I have made the decision to move it to a much better and faster server than the current server we are on for more than one reason.

My big fear is Google will lose trust for my site because of the IP change. Ip's stay with the server at 1and1 they do not follow the website.

So, I have done my due diligence and copied over all code and databases and have tested it completely to insure there are no issues when I change the DNS to point to the new server.  Made sure 1and1 is giving me an IP that has never been used, I am Keeping the old server on until cached DNS records expire for it.

Is there anything else I need to do to make sure I do not lose current rankings in Google? I have heard nightmare stories about making these kinds of changes but at this point for our site there is no turning back this is a change that must take place.

Any pointers and advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Doug,

About 45 days ago I took advise of a user here in the forum to reduce my title tags to one target keyword phrase for each of my city pages (i have about 5000 city pages) and at the time was doing research about adding the "company name" at the end of the title tag if room permitting that it was not to long.

I targeted a lower hanging fruit than my original two keywords reduced my target keyword to one phrase and added our company brand name to the end of the title tags for every page and IMO that was the silver bullet for me along with page content improvements our traffic has increased by 40% and lead conversions have also increased on our site.

And at the time this user told me it was a good idea to add my company name to the title tags and reduce to one target keyword I was researching my competitors and a few of them where already doing this so i figured why not give it a try? It has definitely worked for us and instead of fighting for placement on page two of Google we are now for most searches on page one in the top five results for all of them!

SEO success story for sure using seo moz tools and taking some really good advice from a real expert on this forum.

Oh and also Google use to change my title tags also just as you mentioned...I can no longer find pages where Google is re writing them anymore. So I guess I did something right.

Good luck!

My Google PR in the toolbar has not worked since last night? Is it on my end or is anyone else have the same issue??

I have checked many of them and a big percentage of them are wrong. I even checked them from several different servers to make sure Google is not geo targeting my search result.

I have recently experienced the exact same issue.
Would be nice to get a solid answer for this.

Ryan you are correct,

The main search is not localized for what the original post is. But even if you take out the local search it still is #1 or #2 for every search. Drives me crazy but you are accurate in your response. You ever have those days you think to yourself how can I get there? I am having on of those days LOL!

I would be more than willing for anyone to give me a complete site exam!

Hi Ryan,

I am a kindergarten SEO myself.

Ok, Search these terms in Google and you will see for almost any city you replace my city with in the search term and rentals.com ranks #1 almost every single time.

orlando rental properties
houses for rent in tampa
houses for rent in jacksonville
houses for rent in denver
atlanta rental homes
california homes for rent

As you will find out this site ranks #1 for almost any high ranking search term you can think of.
Even though for many of these terms the search phrase is not even on the page that ranks #1 ??
Switch around the terms all you want to not match the title tag and you will see this theory is not always true with big domains like this.

I do realize the power of the domain but sometimes you just gotta say  "Come on Man!"  Really?

Robert,

Thanks for your help and great input for this issue. The 301 redirect so far worked just as I expected it would. Actually after the redirect the new site ranks better than the old site.

One thing I have heard many times is a "301 redirect does not transfer rankings" Well now I have solid proof that this statement is totally incorrect. Because as of today my 301 redirect has launched my target page to page one and ranks better than the old site.

Either way I do appreciate your time and input for this topic.

Thanks!

I can show you a company who ranks #1 for multiple terms in SERP'S for Multiple keywords with the same title targeting only one or two phrases. All day long. Even though I do respect your opinion highly but I will take that challenge. Good thread for sure going on!

Thanks!

They changed that since I looked the other night. December 28th has stuck in my head like a brick.
It will really be cool if they could ever build a "real time" backlink checker.

What is taking OSE so long to update?

The update schedule said the next update was going to be on Dec 28th.
If you open OSE it says "Last Index Update: November 28th, 2011"

Today in January 1st. Any thoughts as to why the delay?

Sub domains can also turn into a real mess!

I agree!

Angie,

I would have to say this is not a "bad practice" Matt does not say it is bad or spammy nor does Google. It also would really depend on your site structure as what the best way to do this. My site it structured just like this as well as all of my major competitors except for one.

They do use sub domains for example: Seattle.mydomain.com

And I have to tell you in my opinion it is not as effective as the way I and many others do it. A good example of what I am saying is in the real estate industry. Go to Google and search "seattle homes for rent" or "seattle homes for sale" And you will see what I am talking about. You also will see one company uses a sub domain plus a directory to target the location for the users search. the result looks like this:
washington.theirdomain.com/Seattle.

In this instance it does work well but if you do some searches in other major markets or just some different terms for this industry you will see all the big sites have the structure of www.theirdomain.com/target-city
And it works well and always have for years. But who knows if Google wakes up tomorrow in a bad mood or not?

Good Luck!

Thank Robert,

Your first paragraph may have answered my question. Although I have seen this proved completely wrong a few years ago when a major competitor was bought out and they did 301 redirects and it did rank them for the terms for the site that they bought.

The only reason I do not post my url's publicly is our competitors do use SEOmoz so I keep it private. I will send you a private message so you can see the urls directly.

Thanks for the reply Robert.

The main reason I think personally my main site will rank better for these search terms is the microsite is a city specific site and pretty small with no back links or content other than listings so i will not suffer any loss there.

So I want to take this city specific site that currently ranks on first page of Google for many terms and redirect it to my city specific page on my main site. The microsite does not get any traffic to internal pages so I think redirecting the main URL of it to the city specific page on my main site should transfer the page #1 rankings to my main site. I think i will just try it and see what happens.

This is my first time asking so I will try to be as clear as possible.

Ok, I have a micro site that is an (exact match domain) and the domain is a couple 3-4 years old and ranks very well for several search terms. The main two terms it ranks for are like this.

houses for rent in XXXXX

XXXXX homes for rent

(XXXXX equals a city name)

The issue is this site has no backlinks, zero advanced SEO, I only did basic optimization to it when i set the site up. Even site structure, url structure all are not good.
The only page I have ever even seen rank is the main root url. But with all that the site does really good in the top 1-2 results for key search terms.

Now, I have a main site that is a very big site that has steadily been climbing in search terms every month with great backlinks, optimized for the city and all.
It currently ranks on second page for the listed search terms listed above.

What I want to do is 301 redirect this microsite to my city page on my main site that is much better optimized for the key city terms.
The 301 redirect would point this "root domain"  (mymicrosite.com) to my city page that looks like this.

www.mymaindomain.com/city/XXXXXXX

If I do this will Google rank my main URL city page as well as it ranks this microsite with zero links, seo, etc, etc. What happens if it does not? Will I be able to turn off the 301 redirect and keep the microsite rankings?

My main reason for wanting this is I want this city page to rank well and I only want to optimize one site instead of both.

Any help would be great!