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Sure, without /category/ in the URL structure I can't block Googlebot using the robots.txt

No problem, now I can use the noindex for all the posts.

Thank you so much Oleg.

Regards,

• MIke

Hi Oleg, thanks for your help.

I did just some tests and does it seems to work fine.

Do you think is possible to block Google bot to indexing all the post of a category?in this way (disallow/ in the robots.txt) I could save the Google crawle budget for the pages of my site that I want to index.

Thanks a lot for your help Oleg.

Have a nice weekend,- Mike

Hi everyone!

I would like no-indexing all the posts of a specific category of my wordpress site.

The problem is that the structure of my URL is composed without /category/: www.site-name.ext/date/post-name/
so without /category-name/

Is possibile to disallow the indexing of all the posts of the category via robots.txt?

Using Yoast Plugin I can put the no-index for each post, but I would like to put the no-index (or disallow/) a time for all the post of the category.

Thanks in advance for your help and sorry for my english.

• Mike

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a review for my new site www.interlive.it

Could you please let me know what do you think about the work that I did for my site.

I'll be very happy to receive your suggestions.

Regards,

• Mike

Thank you so much Tommy!

Hi Tommy, sorry for my english, I'll do my best to explain you why I would like to change the structure of my site.

I think that for SEO is better to have the category index and push it is better than tag. The main problem is that at the moment my site has 61.000 tag more of them with zero post in: don't you think that it means bad content for Google?

Also, don't you think that it means high bounce rate?

Thanks for your advice and have a nice day!

Hi Oleg, thanks for your answer.

So what's your final suggest?

Have a nice day.

Hi David, thanks for your answer.

I usually use the plugin Wordpress Seo By Yoast to "Strip the category base (usually /category/) from the category URL" but in this case I'm not able to use it because It makes conflict with the pages url.

Regards.

Hi all,

I would like to ask you what's the better way to eliminate the slug /category/ form the wordpress category pages. I need to delete the slug /category/ to make the url seo frendly. The problem is that my site is an old site with the page indexed by Google for a long time.

Thanks for your advice.

Hi everyone,

I need to update the structure of my site www.chedonna.it

Basicly I've two main problems:

1. I've 61.000 index tag (more with no post)2. The category of my site are noindex

I thought to fix my problem making the category index and the tag noindex, but I'm not sure if this is the best solution because I've a great number of tag idexed by Google for a long time.

Mybe it is correct just to make the category index and linking it from the post and leave the tag index.

Could you please let me know what's your opinion?

Regards.

Hello,

I have been a member of the Moz community for a long time. I very seldom ask questions here but this time I really need your help to make sure I will not make mistakes that will negatively affect my site. My site monetizes according to the number of impressions visualized by the users who visit it. I now want to try to optimize it by using all those nice SEO techniques I have learned through Moz. My goal is to make sure that if I use the various SEO strategies, I will still be able to obtain the high number of impressions I get now. If not, I prefer to leave the situation untouched and I will not start optimizing the site for SEO. Please kindly read the situation below and give me a little support to make sure I am doing the right thing.

I would like to ask for your professional advice to solve and issue related to duplicate content. Please visit my site: www.chhedonna.it. The sitemap has indexed 21.890 articles, but if I digit the command 'site:www.chedonna.it', I obtain 158.000 results.I believe that the duplicated content has emerged due to three errors I would like to indicate in order for you to tell me whether my interpretation is correct or not:

1. The article writers made a mistake in that although the content of the articles is different, they have employed the same title for all of them. Therefore, you can see 5 articles with similar/duplicated Tag Titles but the content of said articles is different. For example, http://www.chedonna.it/attualita/cronaca-rosagossip/2012/12/03/heidi-klum-senza-trucco-e-parrucco-foto and http://www.chedonna.it/attualita/cronaca-rosagossip/2012/12/03/heidi-klum-senza-trucco-e-parrucco-foto-2/ are different articles (i.e., the content of the articles is different from each other) that have been published using the same titles.

If I inserted the 'follow-noindex' tag to 3 of the 4 duplicates, as shown in the example above, would that be a solution? I fear that if I did insert the follow-noindex, I would cause a drop in the number of impressions visualized by my site's users. It is important to point out, in fact, that I monetize the site via the number of impressions I generate. Therefore, it is fundamental that I do not compromise the number of impressions that the site gets, if I try to optimize it for SEO reasons. On the other hand, I believe that the idea to operate via a 'rel canonical' would not be right, considering that the content of every post having the same title is different, that is, the articles are different even if they focus on the same topic. Also, I would not find it beneficial to use a '301 redirect', since the number of duplicated Titles Tags is very consistent.

2. The second error concerns the duplicate content due to the images that have been included in the articles. For instance, http://www.chedonna.it/che-donna-di-mondo/fare-la-valigia/2012/08/06/campeggio-vacanza-in-liberta/attachment/tenda/

http://www.chedonna.it/che-donna-di-mondo/fare-la-valigia/2012/08/06/campeggio-vacanza-in-liberta/attachment/tenda-2/

http://www.chedonna.it/che-miss/2012/12/04/tatuaggi-fiore-di-loto-significato-e-foto/attachment/tatuaggio-fiore-di-loto-2/

http://www.chedonna.it/che-miss/2013/03/15/tatuaggi-fiore-di-loto-significato-e-foto-2/attachment/tatuaggio-fiore-di-loto-2-2/.

I could solve this problem by preventing the media indexing. But I fear that this would produce a very high number of '404 error' messages. If such a thing did happen, my site would stop monetizing overall and I cannot allow this to occur, as you can understand. My very important question is the following: if I prevent the indexing of the photos, will I get in return a drop in the number of impressions that my site would normally generate?

3. Duplicate content generated by the indexing of archive subpages. For example:

http://www.chedonna.it/tag/angelica-e-ferdinando/

http://www.chedonna.it/tag/angelica-e-ferdinando/page2/

http://wwwchedonna.it/tag/angelica-e-ferdinando/page3/

If I prevented the media indexing, will I get in return a drop in the number of impressions and many 404 errors?

Thank you very much for taking the time to help me sort out this very important issue.

Cheers,

• Sal

Hello,

I am considering studying for the OMCP (Coached Master Certification) administered by Market Motive. I would like to hear from someone who has already obtained said certification. Do you consider it a good investment? Has the certification helped you land a job? Is  it true that the certification is recognized in the industry?

Thank you very much.

Hi Martin,

Thank you for the great reply. I'll follow your recommendations.

Cheers,

• Sal

Hi Ryan,

Thank you for your feedback and honesty. My idea is to build sites in fields that I am interested in, so that I can write good content about and try to earn links. I would like to create them focusing on keywords that are not too competitive, otherwise I will not stand a change to compete against the big guys.

Al best,

• Sal

Dear SEOmozzers,

I am focusing on those keywords I find using the "Keyword Analysis" tool that are not too competitive (among 20%-30% competitiveness). I then buy domains that include those keywords. The sites are in Italian and targeting the Italian search engines, so the competition is lower than it would be in the US. Basically, I'd like to build niche sites and I'd like to ask a few questions that I hope somebody with a good experience in this field can answer:

1. How do I optimize a niche site. Specifically, how do I go about link building? How many backlinks should I get to see some results?

2. How long does it take for a typical niche site to start appearing in the search engines for a certain keyword, after launching an effective link building campaign?

3. Please kindly provide any recommendations you believe to be important when building niche sites. For example, is there a company/professional you know that specializes in this field and who is trustworthy/reliable?

Thank you very much for your help.

All best,

• Sal

Thank you for your answer.

All best.

Merci mon frere. I'll follow your recommendation.

Hi,

I just have a doubt. I am building a site I want to optimize for the keyword "slot machine gratis". I have bought two domains: slot-machines-gratis.it and slotmachine-gratis.it. Which domain do you recommend that I use to target the keyword "slot machine gratis"?

Thank you.

Thank you, Dan!

All the best to you.

• Sal

Hi Dan

Thank you for your detailed answer. Since you seem very prepared in SEO and SEO related to WordPress, please answer this quick question:

Let's pretend I want to build a new site and I like the WordPress template that you can find on this site:

www.casinoaams.net

Is it bad, as far as SEO is concerned, that I build my site using the same template I find on another site? Of course, the content and all the structure will be different; the only similar thing is the template.

Thank you very much.

Hi,

I usually build WordPress sites and I was thinking about buying one of those ready-made Wordpress templates I found on a site that sells them to the public. FYI, the site at issue is: yootheme.com. I'd like to make sure that building sites using ready-made templates is NOT a bad thing. Could you please confirm?

Thank you.

Hi,

I have a question about the "4xx Staus Code" errors appearing in the Analysis Tool provided by SEOmoz. They are indicated as the worst errors for your site and must be fixed. I get this message from the good people at SEOmoz:

"4xx status codes are shown when the client requests a page that cannot be accessed. This is usually the result of a bad or broken link."

Ok, my question is the following. How do I fix them? Those pages are shown as "404" pages on my site...isn't that enough? How can fix the "4xx status code" errors indicated by SEOmoz?

Thank you very much for your help.

• Sal

My friend,

I've forwarded your answer to the person who redesigned the site. I hope she'll solve the problem. I wish I could do it myself, but I just do not know what to do.  How do I remove that horrible "noindex meta tag" from the homepage?

Thank you and all the best.

• Sal

Hi,

I have an important question and I hope you'll be able to help me find the answer. My site http://www.pokeronlineitalia.com had a PR of 3 (three). Then, I had it restructured to make it look more appealing in order to increase the conversion rate. The problem is that after it was redesigned, the PR dropped all of a sudden from 3 to 0. This is really bad, as it took me over three years to reach that point. Could you please analyze the site and find out what happened? I used SEOMOZ's research tools to try to understand and noticed the following message"

"Accessible to Engines Easy fix Crawl status Status Code: 200 meta-robots: noindex, follow meta-refresh: None X-Robots: None Explanation Pages that can't be crawled or indexed have no opportunity to rank in the results. Before tweaking keyword targeting or leveraging other optimization techniques, it's essential to make sure this page is accessible. Recommendation Ensure the URL returns the HTTP code 200 and is not blocked with robots.txt, meta robots or x-robots protocol (and does not meta refresh to another URL)".

Basically, the message said that the search engines cannot access the homepage (http://www.pokeronlineitalia.com). May this be the reason why the PR dropped? What do I have to do to solve this problem? Is there a chance I can reach a PR of 3 again?

Thank you very much for your help. It'd be great if you could help my site regain its SEO strength.

Hi,

Ok, I will follow your advise. Thank you!

Hello,

I often build sites using WordPress. The other day I read an article in which the author stated that the sites built using the free WordPress template are not SEO-friendly. Could someone please confirm this statement? Does this mean that I need to develop themes myself or buy WordPress templates?

Thank you for your help.

Hi,

Please forgive my ignorance: in the case you have illustrated, I will not have to delete the old page, right? I simply have to copy a page from the old site, add a 301 redirect, and then paste the page in the new site? Please confirm this.

Thank you.

Hi,

I've a simple question. Some time ago I built a site and added pages to it. I have found out that the site was penalized by Google and I have neglected it. The problem is that I had written well-optimized pages on that site, which I would like to use on another website. Thus, my question is: if I delete a page I had written on site 1, can use it on page 2 without being penalized by Google due to duplicate content? Please note: site one would still be online. I will simply delete some pages and use them on site 2.

Thank you.

Hi,

I think that is exactly what happened: a bunch of new Javascript and css files.

Thank you.

Hi,

Thank you for the response. I've hired a new web designer with expertise in WordPress who will take care of the factors  you have mentioned.

All best.

Thank you for informing me about WpEngine. That must be the right solution for making WordPress sites faster and more reliable.

All best.

Hi,

My site was built with WordPress. Very recently I had it redesigned. The problem is that now it takes a long time to download. I have spoken with a web designer who checked my site and said that after it was rebuilt, the template that was created included a lot of hard coding. Can this be the reason why my site now takes a long time to load? The hard coding factor?

Thank you for your help.

• Sal

P.S.: FYI the site only has a few plug-ins and the server is a good one.

Thank you for your feedback. It helps.

All best,

• S.

Hi all,

I have a quick question about the proper use of permalinks.

Let's say that I have a website about sports and I want to create an internal page dedicated to shoes. I know that the keyword "shoe" has 15.000 monthly visits, while the keyword "shoes" has 1.000 monthly visits. How do I have to name the internal page? http://www.example.com/shoe or http://www.example.com/shoes (with a final 's')?

I would think that by naming the URL http://www.example.com/shoes, the search engine would consider that page for the keywords "shoe" and "shoes", but I am not sure about it. Should I create a URL that only focuses on one specific keyword ("shoe", in this example) or a URL that may encompass more than one keyword ("shoe" and "shoes")?

I hope this is clear. Thank you for your time and help.

All best,

• Sal

Hi Istvan,

Thank you for the great reply. I understand now.

All best,

• Sal

Thank you Matt!

Hi,

I just have a quick question. Is it very negative to link to "bad" sites, such as online pharmacies, dating, adult sites, that sort of stuff? How much does linking to a "bad" site negatively affect a "good" site?

Thank you.

Hi,

I will ask a private question in March.

Thank you very much.

Hi Bojan,

Thank you for your feedback. I will follow your recommendation. Just one question: are you able to check the problems that a WordPress site has and fix them?

Thank you.

• Sal

Hi Dr. Meyers,

Thank you for the answer.

Your kind analysis is too technical and difficult for me to understand, so I'll just hire someone to check my site. As you may know it is always a risk to put one's site in the hands of other people who claim to know what they are doing in terms of SEO.

I'd like to contact someone who is an expert in WordPress, as my site are all in WordPress. Someone who knows the technical aspect of WordPress and knows how to optimize a WordPress blog. If you know of someone, please kindly let me know in private. If not, no problem and thank you for your time.

Best,

• Sal

Dearest SEOmozzers,

I am creating WordPress blogs and I would like to know from a WordPress expert how to better optimize the homepage of a site.

In particular, I'd like to know how to create an SEO-friendly homepage that I want to optimize for certain keywords. Do you think that it is better to show on the homepage the posts that I write, which change constantly, or a static, well-optimized text that will include the keywords I want to rank for? I have been naively using the changing posts, but after an analysis of the competitors I have noticed that most of them use a static text and show only the most recent post at the bottom of the page.

I'd really appreciate it if you could let me know the best practice to adopt to optimize the site.

Thank you.

• Sal

Hi Journeyman,

Thank you for the reply. One question I'd like to ask: is it bad to exchange links? The fact is that I have been offered a decent amount to show three links on my homepage. It's the only three links I am selling. I know that Google is against the sale of links, but do you think that only external three links on the homepage will signal Google that I have sold links?

Thank you and have a fantastic day.

Dear SEOmozzers,

I just have a quick question. Can you please tell me how I can find out how many DoFollow links I have on the page of a site? I did a link exchange with a person who claims that she found 50+ DoFollow links on my homepage. How did she do that? What tool did she use to find out the number of DoFollow links on my homepage?

Thank you.

• Sal

Dear SeoMozzers,

I have a question related to one of the sites I have recently changed the URL, going from http:example.com to http://www.example.com

I did 301 redirects, as I was recommended to do. In the past month I have noticed an incredible drop in Google's rankings for many keywords and checking the crawling errors appearing in the SEO Crawling Report I have witnessed mayhem with Canonical/301 redirect types of errors.

Now, things seem a little better. I have noticed a reduction in the number of 301 and Canonical type or errors (by the way, I still do not get the Canonical issue :-)). My little questions are the following:

1. Will I ever go back to the positions I used to occupy before I redesigned the site's URL structure?

2. I have now noticed that the SeoMoz Crawling report show "404 Staus" errors and one "505 Status" error. Can somebody please tell me how to fix the 404 Status Errors? Can I fix them by myself, or maybe I can ask the guys at the web hosting company, since I am really bad at taking care of technical issues?

Thank you for the time you took to clarify my doubts.

Ad maiora,

• Sal

Hi,

I have a question about one of my sites whose PR does not want to increase. It's more of a curiosity, actually. the site pokercasinomania.com has been online since 2007. I had developed a link building campaign dedicated to it, so I have many links directing toward it. I just don't understand why the PR is stil 1. Also, at one point the PR had raised to 2, but it went back to 1 after less than a week. Can someone explain why this happened?

Thank you very much.

• Sal