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Hi David

I am getting the same issue when I use the Moz On-Page Grader, it is telling me I am using too many title tags, but surely this shouldn't flag an issue as these title tags are external from the head, or does this genuinely impact the ranking of the page?

Here is an example of an SVG our designer has put into a page (one of many) that is being flagged:

<title>Find Your Dealership Icon</title>

In addition do search engines read the title tag or is it ignored?

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help.

Thanks for the clarification EGOL, very useful!

For other users, here's the link to hidden text EGOL is talking about.

Hi Janice,

I have also been wondering the same thing. Although the above replies may have been relevant in 2012, now things seem to have changed. Being from a design background accordions and tabs have always been useful for both visuals and UX, but after reading Barry Schwartz’s article my outlook has changed and a work-around is required.

To conclude the above article, Google are stating hidden content is deemed as unimportant to the user so is 'discounted' and this is something that has been done for a while. If you want your content to have a positive impact on your page ranking it's better left visible unless it's something like FAQ and/or you're not interested in optimising the content on that page. Other members of Moz may have more information on this than me.

Thanks

Hi Dirk,

perfect, thanks a lot for clarifying.

All the best.

Sam

That was a helpful post - thanks for helping out.

Sam

Thanks a lot for your response here, Dirk.

Just to clarify - when you state to use the **correct **spelling on the page, am i correct in assuming you are meaning the spelling with the accent?

and with the foreign characters in HTML, by this are you meaning to use the proper HTML elements in every case rather than copy and pasting symbols in?

Apologies for asking these simple questions, but just wanted to make sure.

Kind Regards

Sam

Hi there,

thanks a lot for your response!

The franchise is a brand name, one that we look after but it is not anywhere in our own brand name. So if you think of a PC shop that sells Apple products, the brand name is Apple but the shop itself has nothing to do with apple and just sells their products - this is the case for us. Would this change your opinion on how to deal with it?

Thanks

Sam

Hi Guys,

My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards.

I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me;

Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway!

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Sam

Thanks again for your response Gary.

With regards to how many reffering domains and backlinks, it depends on how much i trust various bits of software (eg. Majestic SEO) when they tell me if the link is live or not.

In total there's about 3,200 referring domains historically with over 350,000 backlinks (lots of spam). Looking at whats live today, thats about 600 domains and 30,000 backlinks or so.

So far I've audited all links (from whats live) into keeping, changing to no follow or removing. Ive reached out to all no follows successfully and I've justified in depth the list of domains I'm keeping. I'm now in the process of reaching out to the poor quality links (first wave) and have covered about 200 referring domains.

The main question here is just exactly what to do with the rest of the links that majestic and GWT are telling me are no longer live (after checking some examples, there are some live that say they aren't live on majestic). Initially I was just going through them and throwing poor quality ones (even if they no longer link) straight into the disavow file to be safe. But since, I've worked with my developer to create a script to check which of the 2,500 none live domains are still live (and therefore cutting down my time considerably).

So overall, I am confident with my approach on links that are live (as this is the standard approach) and I am being as thorough as is possible. But when I wrote this question initially I was unsure whether I had to deal with the 'none live' domains (mainly because I didn't know whether to fully trust Majestic when its saying that they're not live) and so I wanted to check whether it was something I needed to do because it would be extremely time consuming.

Hopefully you understand where I'm coming from with this?

Sam

Thanks for your response Richard.

This is however an extremely generic response to quite a specific question. I didn't ask what a reconsideration request does!

Thanks for your clarification on that Linda, that does make sense I just had to be sure!

in relation to my earlier point about not all redirects showing as backlinks, I found out earlier that our developer has been migrating our old domains over to a new server (which subsequently removed the 301 redirect) and therefore the reason some of my 301 redirects weren't showing as backlinks was because they had been removed! (I've put them back in place now). So thanks for your response as It encouraged me look further into this, resulting in the above findings!

Sam

Thanks for your response Gary.

That does make sense and to be honest is something that worries me! I am putting faith into software here (ie. I haven't gone through every single domain manually and checked that the link is still live) which is telling me whether the link is still live or not. If Google's software tells them otherwise when they review my reconsideration request, then all my other efforts are most likely wasted. I take it from this that you would advise addressing the none active domains too?

Note that this is a manual penalty though, so fortunately no waiting for Penguin refreshes.

Providing I've given all possible evidence I can about the links being live or not to Google, do you think that disavowing all poor quality links that APPEAR to be no longer live is good enough in Google's eyes? Obviously for all links that are still live (as far as i can see) I have outreached to at least 3 times and disavowed if I can't get in touch.

cheers

Sam

Thanks for your response, Adam.

Would you say the same for domains that are still live but no longer contain links to your site?

Thanks

Hi All,

I'm currently in the process of creating a reconsideration request for an 'Impact Links' manual penalty.

So far I have downloaded all LIVE backlinks from multiple sources and audited them into groups;

• Domains that I'm keeping (good quality, natural links).

• Domains that I'm changing to No Follow (relevant good quality links that are good for the user but may be affiliated with my company, therefore changing the links to no follow rather than removing).

• Domains that I'm getting rid of. (poor quality sites with optimised anchor text, directories, articles sites etc.).

One of my next steps is to review every historical back link to my website that is NO LONGER LIVE. To be thorough, I have planned to go through every domain (even if its no longer linking to my site) that has previously linked and straight up disavow the domain (if its poor quality).But I want to first check whether this is completely necessary for a successful reconsideration request?

My concerns are that its extremely time consuming (as I'm going through the domains to avoid disavowing a good quality domain that might link back to me in future and also because the historical list is the largest list of them all!) and there is also some risk involved as some good domains might get caught in the disavowing crossfire, therefore I only really want to carry this out if its completely necessary for the success of the reconsideration request. Obviously I understand that reconsideration requests are meant to be time consuming as I'm repenting against previous SEO sin (and believe me I've already spent weeks getting to the stage I'm at right now)... But as an in house Digital Marketer with many other digital avenues to look after for my company too, I can't justify spending such a long time on something if its not 100% necessary.

So overall - with a manual penalty request, would you bother sifting through domains that either don't exist anymore or no longer link to your site and disavow them for a thorough reconsideration request? Is this a necessary requirement to revoke the penalty or is Google only interested in links that are currently or recently live?

All responses, thoughts and ideas are appreciated

Kind Regards

Sam

Hi Linda,

It seems only some 301 redirects show up on my websites backlink profile. Perhaps this is an issue with these 301 redirects thats causing it, rather than the backlink software!

I've done some more digging in terms of the specific URL's and I now have more of an idea why there are so many there. My question now is; Is having so many URL's redirected like this a negative thing in Google's eyes?

Thanks

Sam

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently doing quite a large back link audit on my company's website and there's one thing that's bugging me.

Our website used to be split into two domains for separate areas of the business but since we have merged them together into one domain and have 301 redirected the old domain the the main one.

But now, both GWT and Majestic are telling me that I've got 12,000 backlinks from that domain?  This domain didn't even have 12,000 pages when it was live and I only did specific 301 redirects (ie. for specific URL's and not an overall domain level 301 redirect) for about 50 of the URL's with all the rest being redirected to the homepage. Therefore I'm quite confused about why its showing up as so many backlinks - Old redirects I've done don't usually show as a backlink at all.

UPDATE: I've got some more info on the specific back links. But now my question is - is having this many backlinks/redirects from a single domain going to be viewed negatively in Google's eyes? I'm currently doing a reconsideration request and would look to try and fix this issue if having so many backlinks from a single domain would be against Google's guidelines.

Does anybody have any ideas? Probably somthing very obvious.

Thanks!

Sam

Thanks Ryan.

So essentially, if the folder structure is solid then you wouldn't be too concerned about the order beyond this? Obviously so long as the URL's are as neat and concise as they could be.

Sam

Hi all,

I am currently in the process of re-writing my companies website URL structure. Compared to the way the website is structured at the minute, there's going to be a lot more URL's as the previous structure has missed out on a lot of search avenues that i intend to include within the rebuild.

one of my issues is basically deciding under which category certain URL's come under, I can think of reasons for both sides but can't quite decide on which is optimal. My company is an automotive/car dealer so we sell cars for certain manufactures as well as offering a number of other services.

what I'm curious about is what makes more sense in terms of the category that comes first in the URL. Here's what I am torn between;

/(car manufacturer)/servicing

OR

/servicing/(car-manufacturer)

To give you some more info that might influence the decision;

• In terms of generic keyword targeting, the majority would search in the order of '(car manufacturer) service' as opposed to 'service for (car manufacturer)'.

• Currently on our site, the sections /(manufacturer) are some of the most authoritative pages that we have on the website, but we've done very little work on /service in the past. For me, this would suggest that naturally the pages flowing from that URL would get an advantage in terms of authority/ranking.

With either URL structure, the URL's are eventually going to cross paths - I just need to decide which one is best and should therefore feature first.

Hopefully this is somewhat clear. I'd appreciate any suggestions or if you don't quite understand what I'm asking for then general URL advice is also appreciated.

Many thanks

Sam

This is a great question - I'm really intrigued to see what people think on this.

I'm having a very similar issue with my site. Currently I am completely re-structuring the sites URL's ready for a rebuild.

My thoughts are that with option a). its much easier to target keywords better in the URL (if this is really necessary), but then I would also be concerned that it might seem a bit spammy.

with option b). its a shorter, more concise URL without any repetition (which is better for SEO within itself), but then it doesn't flow as well (when reading the URL) in terms of describing what the page is about.

Hi Tom,

Thanks a lot for your response, this has really helped!

I've just set up about 10 recipes on IFTTT after discovering what it does, amazing tool, can't believe I didn't know about it before!

I haven't successfully set up the Moz side of it as it stands because Moz keeps telling me there is a redirect loop, but I look forward to trialling that out.

Thanks again for the tips.

Sam

Hi Guys,

I've got most of the software I need for general link analysis, Moz/Majestic etc. But what I am lacking is software that would give me an update when one of my websites receives an incoming link? That is if there is such software available.

All suggestions and help appreciated.

Sam

Hi Amelia,

Thanks for this response.

I definitely agree that it seems to be just us SEO's out there on Google +, which would be great if my business was a digital agency - I just wish more automotive focused clients would get on there!

From this, I think our business needs to look a bit more outside of the box and look for companies that are somewhat relevant to our business although not directly competing in an attempt to get our content out there.

Great idea, I should really start working on my own Google + following so i can use it as a tool to promote my companies ideas too.

Sam

Hi Ruben,

Thanks for your response.

It would so far appear that our target audience are not particularly heavy Google + users. That being said, with it being the automotive industry that my company works in, this should mean that our customer base are very versatile (as almost everyone owns a car) and should therefore include at least some types of people that are Google + users.

So you're suggesting to reach out to other business owners in attempts to get our content out there? this isn't something that we've tried as such so far, although definitely something I will now look into. I think the trouble will be finding these businesses which have a Google + following that is worth pushing.

Sam

Thanks for your response, Bruce. It's very interesting to see how Google search results changes for users based on their Google + account behaviour.

We do post (probably not as much as on Facebook and Twitter) regularly, but it always feels as though its falling on deaf ears, probably due to our lack of followers.

Is there no way to kickstart a Google + page? for example, with Facebook you could do some paid advertising to get an initial following or on Twitter you could do a competition (standard retweet this and win this kind of deal), but what can you do on Google +?

Sam

Hi All,

My company has done fairly well with regards to achieving followings on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. BUT one that we REALLY struggle to get a following on is Google +.

We have about 25 Google + followers, compared to 1.2k Facebook likes and over 2k Twitter followers. We do relatively similar things on each of these.

What can we do to increase our following specifically on Google +?  As it stands we do pretty similar things, it would just appear that there's not much taste for us on Google +!

What kind of things have you guys done to boost your followings on Google +.? All suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks

Sam

Hi Guys,

I've been looking into my company's analytics's data recently to establish where most of our traffic is coming from. More so, I want to get an indication of the percentage of organic traffic that is coming from branded and none branded terms.

Not provided takes up 80% of my organic traffic and the vast majority of keywords that are provided all mention the brand name. Does analytics's provide you with all of your branded traffic but just block others that it doesn't want you to see? Or is it just coincidence that the majority of the terms I can see are all branded?

I am just trying to establish how strong our brand is and how much traffic the brand name brings against none brand terms. All help is appreciated!

Thank you!

Thank you for your response.

this is really helpful, so essentially 20% is the minimum, but more than this would help?

HI There,

Thank you for your response.

THe purpose of the text is not as such to sell the car to the user (in this instance), we do have text on each individual car about its perks, technical specs etc. This page is simply for displaying lists of cars, with the content only really needing to introduce the cars as to appease search engines.

So essentially the content is for the search engines benefit in the sense that it will differentiate it from other pages and is hopefully therefore more likely to get indexed and bring us traffic for the long tail keywords that are being targeted.

Lots of content might definitely overwhelm users so really im trying to find the right balance of uniqueness and quantity!

Hi All,

I'm currently working on creating a variety of new pages for my website.

These pages are based upon different keyword searches for cars, for example used BMW in London, Used BMW in Edinburgh and many many more similar kinds of variations. I'm writing some content for each page so that they're completely unique to each other (the cars displayed on each page will also be different so this would not be duplicated either).

My question is really, how much content do you think that I'll need on each page? or what is optimal? What would be the minimum you might need?

Thank for your help!

Thanks for your response, you've clarified a lot for me here.

Essentially, so long as only the unnatural links are removed I should not harm my sites ranking?That is, so long as Google agree on which links are the unnatural ones!

I better get to work auditing all of these links - see you again in afew years! haha.

Hi Guys,

A while back, my company had a 'partial match' manual penalty from google for 'unnatural links' pointing to our site.

This glorious feat was accomplished by our previous SEO agency for quite heavily spamming links (directories, all kinds of low quality sites).

That being said, when the penalty hit we really didnt see any drop in traffic. In fact, it was not long after the penalty that we launched a new website and since our traffic has grown quite significantly. we've doubled our total visits from prior penalty to now.

This previous SEO also did submit a couple of reconsideration requests (both done loosely as to fool Google by only removing a small amount of links, then abit more the next time when it failed - this was obviously never going to work). Since then, I myself have submitted a reconsideration request which was very thorough, disavowing 85 Domains (every single one at domain level rather than the individual URLs as I didnt want to take any chances), as well as getting a fair few links removed from when the webmaster responded. I documented this all and made multiple contacts to the webmasters so i could show this to Google.

This reconsideration request was not successful - Google made some new backlinks magically appear that i had not seen previously. But really, my main point is; am I going to do more damage removing more and more links in order to remove the penalty, because as it stands we haven't actually noticed any negative effects from the penalty! Perhaps the negative effects have not been noticed due to the fact that not long after the penalty, we did get a new site which was much improved and therefore would naturally get much more traffic than the old site, but overall it has not been majorly noticed.

What do you guys think - is it worth risking drop in rankings to remove the penalty so we don't face any future issues, or should I not go too heavy with the link removal in order to preserve current rankings? (im really interested to see peoples views on this, so please leave a comment if you can help!)

Hi guys,

I recently started using Moz Analytics's for my site and it has told me that the vast majority (perhaps all) of my pages have duplicate content because Google will be indexing the version both with and without www. in front of it as seperate domains.

I've done some research and have come across a few suggestions of what to do, but i'm not sure which to go with or how to actually implement it.

Any help, advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks