Hi David. Yes, lots of penalties (in the sense of algorithm changes) cause sites to change in rankings as do changes in the competitive landscape, changes in search volumes, changes in link profiles, and so on. During mid 2013, many Panda updates came across (https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change#2013) and could have been the cause, especially if your site was / is struggling to maintain high quality content. Take a look at the timeline though and your ongoing history and you'll likely see a fairly distinct pattern emerge. Typically a manual spam action causes a near complete removal from the index. Cheers!
Posts made by RyanPurkey
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RE: Can Google penalize your site without sending you a Manual Spam Action?
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RE: Drastic Drop in Link Juice
Hello. Which services have you been using to keep track of link counts? Have you been keeping archived records to help pinpoint where the links went missing? Are the numbers you're reporting aggregate for both domains? Have you lost certain listings based on regions? (EU, US, South America, etc.)
Getting insight into some of those questions will begin to point you in the right direction. Cheers!
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RE: Keyword stuffing - on page grader count
Hi Jason. Beyond the body text, the term physical therapy shows up heavily in many ways.
- Alt text. 6 times
- Tag Anchor text. 12 times
- As 'physical-therapy' in links. 260 times.
- As 'physical+therapy' in links. 21 times
- Body text. 4 times.
If you look at the code, it's a pretty heavy usage of the term on the home page and throughout the site in on way or another. I'd work on reducing the presence in links and making alt text more descriptive of the image being described than as a box to tick for the keyword location. Cheers!
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RE: Website architecture - levels vs filters and authority loss - Enterprise SEO
Folders tend to be useful for large structural sections of a site, especially when addressing issues that may arise within a given area, i.e. using folders for blog, forum, FAQ, etc., due to how each one may be running different software and need different analysis with Analytics.
Once those different sections are identified, using filters within those sections is fine, and often a default naming convention for a given software solution. Ultimately SEO is a consideration in URL structure, but not the only one you're going to make. As Andy says above, it's largely dependent on the needs of the site. Plus, getting page-level engagement and sharing will outweigh the URL structure benefits. Cheers!
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RE: Seeing lots of 0 seconds session duration from AdWords clicks
Like Mike requests, being able to view the landing page plus keyword combination is pretty key to discovering the low session duration. Knowing what the ad copy is would help as well. Currently though you're dealing with way too small of a sample size of 14 users. Something like 140 users would be more indicative of trends, while 1400 users would be even better.
Aside from the low sample size, the basic reason low time on site happens is because people are expecting something different than what they're getting from a site so they leave rather quickly. Specific reasons it could be happening: slow loading pages, poor design, poor matching keyword or ad copy to landing page content, poor user to content match, accidental clicks, etc. Cheers!
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RE: Second anchor text on page. Does it count?
This is also a question of usability / user experience. If your page incorporating in-article anchor links is laid out well and has engaged users clicking those links to explore the different sections of the page, you're likely getting a lower bounce rate and better numbers in-terms of users bouncing back to the search results from your page.
In ATPs case, those links were likely causing navigational confusion and/or potential keyword stuffing flags. Cleaning them up served his site better.
In either case, I don't think it's a simple question of solely how many links count, especially in real world usage. Cheers!
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RE: Galleries and duplicate content
Hello. I wouldn't be too concerned with this as a thin content issue as the content of each page is the image, its attributes, size, etc. Several sites--Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr, etc--are almost all purely image based content with the great bulk of their pages being one image on one URL and very little other content.
Google is aware of image heavy sites and gallery formats and has a system in place for aiding in indexing this type of content, their Image Sitemaps: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636 I'd use that system for indexing your separate image URLs and then monitor the success via Search Console.
If your search console (Google Webmaster Tools) is displaying a manual action for thin content, it's likely not the image galleries. Cheers!
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RE: Google webmaster… Zopim Live chat blocking the resources
Hello Madhukar! It's likely that Zopim has blocked some resources (javascript, css, etc.) from crawlers on their URLs (not yours). What you'll want to do to get more granular detail though is do a fetch and render of a specific page with the error then scroll to the bottom of that page where it will list the blocked resources.
This discussion on Google's Product Forums outlines the process that a user with a similar issue used to get visibility into it: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/vwQnFkGCNaE
The main point form that discussion in relation to your question being, "[when checking] the zopim.com urls, more specifically the us30, they have their own robots.txt file blocking all from the crawlers. I would assume the remaining zopim.com urls all block crawlers as well." That is most likely what is generating the errors that you see. Cheers!
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RE: Thousands of links coming from an iframe
There are likely enough signals to consider the link similar to an internal link which has similar numbers, meaning: even though they're technically on separate domains, your ownership and relationship of both domains make links between the two more like internal than external links. So doing nothing is definitely an option, but doing something that enhances user experience should be the guiding force if you do change. Cheers!
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RE: Can I use nofollow to limit the number of links on a page?
That's something you'd want to test with your users. Generally though, the easier it is to get from Point A to Point B to Sale the better.
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RE: Can I use nofollow to limit the number of links on a page?
I think Wikipedia does alright using nofollow... ;^) Still, Paulo would probably be better served by limiting the number of links on a given page, preferably by design to promote certain aspects and conversion paths. All in all though, this is likely a pretty minimal expected improvement.
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RE: Can I use nofollow to limit the number of links on a page?
Sure, you can nofollow duplicate links, but the benefits are fairly minimal. Gaining domain and page authority and making sure page load speeds are at their fastest possible levels will go a lot farther than nofollow, in terms of priorities. Cheers!
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RE: Can I use nofollow to limit the number of links on a page?
Hi Paulo. Typically allowing links to be followed is fine, but you might consider using noindex instead for pages that would be drawing search equity away from your target landing pages. Good candidates for noindex would be: my account, login, duplicate / close to duplicate category listings, and so on. If you really want to limit your links, it's best to do so from design and CRO point so that people are better using and converting within your site.
Another thing to consider is setting up canonical tags for your root product and category pages. Lindsay Wassell wrote a nice article discussing pros and cons of this technique in addition to others here: https://moz.com/blog/restricting-robot-access-for-improved-seo
Still another resource--while specifically for Magento--is here: https://moz.com/ugc/setting-up-magento-for-the-search-engines You'll find a lot of parallels though between the settings discussed there and your own ecommerce implementation. Hopefully these help point you in the right direction. Best of luck!
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RE: Thousands of links coming from an iframe
On your own site you might consider removing the text based link or being more specific and linking to the calculator page on: www.solarguide.co.uk. I'd also do an analysis of visits from www.renewablesguide.co.uk to www.solarguide.co.uk via the calculator text link in order to see how users behave when following that link. Is there a higher bounce rate than average? Are they viewing many pages on the solar site? Few? And so on. You'll get a decent idea though of the user experience from those specific visitors and whether or not the link is worth keeping or in need of better UX optimization in order to really benefit your users. Cheers!
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RE: Is it worth creating an Image Sitemap?
I'm also in the camp of do it if it's so easy. Sitemaps are far superior to meta keywords because they're an actual technical specification of a quantifiable thing (image, page, etc.) versus a subjective listing like meta keywords.
Haivng easily and readily indexed images can also help with your backlink profile. XKCD has a great example of allowing for such promotion here: https://xkcd.com/license.html Obviously his content is more likely to be shared, but even in your case if it's a little help it's still help and is unlikely to hurt. Cheers!
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RE: URL Errors for SmartPhone in Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools
Hi Tim. Can you share the domain name that is experiencing these errors? If it's private, feel free to DM it.
Broadly, I'd look for any backlinks that are pointed at a missing /m/ or /mobile/ folder, sitemaps that are pointing at such, internal links that are doing likewise. If the site is completely new and unresponsive I'd do as you suggested yourself and throttle down the crawlers until you're ready to fully launch. Cheers!
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RE: MOZ Local Issue - Having Problem submitting multiple offices in the same city
Hi Joel. It looks like James has answered your question pretty well, I'd only add that you'll want to make sure you're logged in to the corresponding Facebook and Google + accounts for the location that you're trying to set up in Moz Local. So if you're trying to do all five at the same time, you'd have five browsers running with five separate logins while also logged into Moz Local. That way when you get to the Facebook or Google verification link it will do so properly.
Cheers!
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RE: Moz Local UK?
Hi Gareth. I see. When I first read your question I thought you were asking about the initial launch. You'll have to get an answer from the staff regarding full feature set implementation. Best of luck!
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RE: Moz Local UK?
Hi Gareth. Moz Local UK is part of the regular Moz Local tool identifying UK addresses via postal code. Input your UK postal code into the tool and you should see the feature set available. More here: https://moz.com/blog/check-listings-uk-moz-local Cheers!
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RE: Can you no index a page in Wordpress from just Google news?
I think you will as I'm unaware of any plugin in Wordpress that would give you this level of granular functionality. It might have to be something custom coded. Good luck!
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RE: Can Mobile Results show on Desktop results?
Hi Cayenne. This can happen in cases where Google views the mobile site as a non-mobile or as the only available result to a desktop search query. Here's a recent blog post from Google during at the time of the change: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-mobile-friendly.html
What you'll want to check is the mobile friendliness and load speeds of both the mobile and desktop sites. At times people have seen very slow loading desktop sites with lots of PageSpeed issues get outranked by the lighter mobile versions. Next, use the various checks mentioned on that page to ensure that mobile.domain.com is indeed viewed as mobile by Google. And here's Moz's guide to provide an overall picture of what the mobile site should accomplish: https://moz.com/learn/seo/mobile-optimization
Cheers!
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RE: I have removed a subdomain from my main domain. We have stopped the subdomain completely. However the crawl still shows the error for that sub-domain. How to remove the same from crawl reports.
Patrick's answer gives you a great check list. I'd only add that you within Moz Analytics you can customize the crawler to only report on a certain portion of the site if problems still arise in displaying your data. Still, by using 301 redirection from the old subdomain to new location, cleaning up any old referencing links, and blocking further indexation you should see the errors disappear. Cheers!
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RE: Can you no index a page in Wordpress from just Google news?
Hello! You'll want to block Googlebot-News via your robots.txt file from the items you do not wish to be in the Google News index. Here's there help article on it: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/93977
Google Search and Google News support two different 'bots', namely Googlebot and Googlebot-News, that you can use as meta tags or in your robots entry to control where your content appears.
In other words:
- If you block access to Googlebot-News, your content won't appear in Google News.
- If you block access to Googlebot, your content won't appear in Google News or Web Search.
Note that Google respects the more restrictive interpretation of your bots choice.
Cheers!
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RE: Is the content on my website is garbage?
Hi Landon. Google has written several support documents on what could be the reasons for them sending you the note in webmaster tools. From https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604719...
Here are a few common examples of pages that often have thin content with little or no added value:
- Automatically generated content
- Thin affiliate pages
- Content from other sources. For example: Scraped content or low-quality guest blog posts
- Doorway pages
And https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66361 is another checklist. If your site falls under any of those descriptions you'll likely have on-going issues. Rand did a great White Board Friday recently outlining what your content goals should be, in short 10x better than anything else you can find out there: https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday Cheers!
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RE: HUGE spike in Google Analytics Traffic
Ah, is your embedded blog on a different domain and being iframed in? The analytics would be more detailed looking at the direct blog data. It sounds like something within the blog went mini-viral and is producing the spike.
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RE: HUGE spike in Google Analytics Traffic
Thanks for the clarification Lauren. Have you been able to determine if the organic results are news based? Based on the landing pages are you aware of any rankings that might have jumped up recently? If you can get any insights from Google's Search Console you might get tipped off to some new rankings that are accounting for the spike.
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RE: HUGE spike in Google Analytics Traffic
Hello Laruen! You'll want to look at your direct pages and see if they're getting legitimate traffic in your referrals report: Acquisition >> All Traffic >> Referrals
From there you should be able to get an idea about what recent news or articles that have gone live that have been influencing your traffic. You can also use the Fresh Web Explorer here to see what pages might be mentioning you and sending larger amounts of traffic as well as various tools in Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools).
I'm not seeing spikes across clientele so your situation is likely unique to you in that some of your pages have been recently referenced on high traffic sites or has popped into the news cycle. Cheers!
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RE: Moz Tool Bar Annoyance - How do I make the green keyword difficulty box go away?
Glad the reinstall got it working for you. There's always the API route too for more custom needs. I'm a long time user as well but can get why they alter tools to display more of their toolset. It's likely a tested value-add for many and newer subscribers. Cheers!
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RE: Moz Tool Bar Annoyance - How do I make the green keyword difficulty box go away?
Hmm. Could be a bug because for me it stays off while using Chrome as a browser. Can you share your browser and OS specs? Staff should be able to better trouble shoot after that. Cheers!
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RE: Moz Tool Bar Annoyance - How do I make the green keyword difficulty box go away?
Hi Jen. If you click the Moz "M" to turn off the tool bar it will go away. Click it on if you want it and other features to display again. Cheers!
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RE: Google SERPs showing blog comments in Answer Box?
In short, due to the schema, I think Google mistook the comments for the author's twelve point outline.
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RE: Can Robots.txt on Root Domain override a Robots.txt on a Sub Domain?
Hi Dave. A workflow checklist should really help with this as well. There are probably a few other items you'll catch by meeting with the others involved and getting everyone on the same page. Cheers!
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RE: Self-Referrals
Hi John. You can also exclude by domain within Analytics. See: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2795830
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RE: Mobilegeddon subpages
Thumbs up to Tom. I'd only add that Analytics will tell you much in terms of priorities. From there you can see what percentage of your traffic was/is mobile to begin with and how mobile effects the conversion cycle. Often times the same users begin their research on mobile devices but then move to Desktop or Tablet to purchase. The basic idea being, you can get a solid estimate on your own cost/benefit by running through Analytics. Cheers!
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RE: Google SERPs showing blog comments in Answer Box?
That's a weird result. I suspect it's due to SEJ's use of .comment-author tags on the comments getting cross-referenced with rel=author that's attributed to Jayson Demers. If it was left as just .comment or .usercomment it might be cleaned up.
References:
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RE: Anyone Notice Google's Latest Change Seems to Favor Google Books?
This could also be due to intent based on what you're searches were; however, Google has given Google properties preferential treatment in the past as well. See: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change "Dewey — April 2008 A large-scale shuffle seemed to occur at the end of March and into early April, but the specifics were unclear. Some suspected Google was pushing its own internal properties, including Google Books, but the evidence of that was limited." Cheers!
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RE: 301'ing old (2000), high PR, high pages indexed domain
If you're saying that organically it's ranking well you'll see a dip from the redirection process. If you like the site and don't want the risks associated in redirecting, you should probably avoid redirecting it.
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RE: Exclude brand Traffic
Hi Ravi. You should create a segment based on the inclusion of your brand within search to separate the two within organic search reports. Here's the help doc on segment creation in Google Analytics: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3124493.
I recommend avoiding a process that lumps all branded search into "direct" as a direct visit is not representative of the user's behavior. For example, if you decide to run a search ad campaign around branded search visits, your numbers would be skewed when only considering them as direct. Further, many times the search flow of a user is:
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Generic search - site visit - site exit.
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Branded search - site visit - site exit.
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Direct visit - purchase.
Only considering the final two steps as direct and / or not addressing the initial generic search in the customer conversion life cycle leads to faulty Analytics conclusions. Cheers!
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RE: Is there any benefit in using a subdomain redirected to a single page?
Hi David. The benefits associated with 301 redirection come from either relocating your site, combining sites, cleaning up 404 pages, aligning page names within your site architecture, things of that nature. If you have links or visits to those third level pages and want to house all pages on your root domain instead of third levels, then 301 redirection would be the way to go. Cheers!
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RE: Traffic Drop Observations: Google UI, Mobilegeddon
But one would expect a drop off in mobile not desktop. I'd dig deeper into the Analytics on this to get solid numbers the percentage shift could have been accounted for any number of reasons.
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RE: Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
There was a nice discussion here on tags: http://moz.com/community/q/wordpress-tag-pages-noindex that still applies. In general they tend to eliminate duplicate content issues when noindexed.
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RE: Traffic Drop Observations: Google UI, Mobilegeddon
So your loss came from desktop entirely?
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RE: Can I add all three branch locations of a small credit union to one Moz local listing, and if not, is it worth it to pay for three different local listings with MOZ?
Hi Mollie. Regarding Moz Local, the $84 charge is per location per year. If you've already created paid accounts with the sites where the branches are currently mentioned your cost will only be in hours by doing it yourself.
Regarding some of your location settings, there was a recent discussion here: http://moz.com/community/q/client-says-no-local-phone-number-all-locations-no-directing-to-centralized-call-center about the policy (Google's) around using a call center number versus branch specific numbers.
Listings in general need to be as specific possible in order for people to interact with locations. When you're talking abut mobile users, not having listings that are individualized would likely result in poor map listings and poor walk-in-mobile traffic. You'll likely want to do a cost-benefit analysis of whether or not having your branches listed individually and ranking well would bring in more than $252 / year. Cheers!
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RE: 302 redirect on http but not on https
Hi Ram. If Jon's fix above doesn't work, you might want to post the link(s) you're testing with Screaming Frog so that people here can see what's going on and give you specific recommendations. It sounds like there's a 302 in place on the http version of your site, but people will need details to see where exactly. Cheers!
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RE: I've had a sudden a increase in crawl issues as of yesterday (like 300 from a steady 10, does anyone else have this issue?
Hi Rebecca. Do you have a 301 redirect in place to set your preferred domain? i.e. If someone goes to http:// are they redirected to the www, vice versa, or do both work? If both work you could get crawling on both versions. Ideally you'll pick your preferred setup, add the 301, and also set that same preference within GWT and Bing.
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RE: My website's pages are not being indexed correctly
Ah. Regarding #3: If you have a disallow in the robots.txt the search engines won't pick up the noindex. Ensure the noindex code is in place on the applicable pages, remove the disallow, and the pages should be removed after they're crawled. getting that relationship straightened out might help with some of the other things as well. Cheers!
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RE: Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
Right. It's kind of a combination of categories you want to rank for and ones that are populated and active enough to rank. Brand C Shirts would be fine, but Brand C Short Sleeve shirts could be too diluted. You're on the right track.
Also, there are some instances where the Moz tool just doesn't align with what you would not consider duplicate content and in those cases feel free to ignore it, especially if those pages are ranking well and performing well in terms of conversion / funnel. Cheers!
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RE: Sitelink demotion
Without nuking the blog, the Google method is page by page, last caveat though is that they could reappear, "If you think that a sitelink URL is inappropriate or incorrect, you can demote it. Demoting a URL for a sitelink tells Google that you don't consider this URL a good sitelink candidate for a specific page on your site. Google doesn't guarantee that demoted URLs will never appear as a sitelink, but we do consider a demotion a strong hint that we'll try to honor when generating sitelinks."
Is the blog supposed to be behind a paywall or private to members? If it's not supposed to be publicly visible you should consider noindexing it in addition to securing it via login. Cheers!