Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Hey Miriam,
Whatever happens, I would LOVE Google to roll out a more comprehensive way of exporting Google My Business data - the API is still massively limited and the manual process of exporting data for clicks, calls, website visits etc. is an absolute killer!
Referring to your prediction number 3 on voice search, I'm thinking there's going to be way more of a focus on geolocation and we're going to see another huge rise in 'near me' searches.
All the best,
Sean
Hi there,
That might be a hard question to answer - it could depend on a number of factors including:
I've ran link building campaigns that have had as low as 2-3% response rates all the way through to campaigns that we expect nearer the 50-60% mark. There are so many factors at play that you can never predict what would happen.
Seeing as though the sites you've mentioned already mention other competitor products, they're likely to be more open to adjusting that content to include you in it. With this in mind, you might have a strong 'in' to your campaign so I would expect a higher response rate because of that.
I hope this helps.
Sean
Hi,
You'll likely be charging them for the click, however Google does have tools in place to identify invalid clicks - i.e. multiple PPC clicks from one IP address. They'll likely be picking up on the number of clicks you're making in a short period of time and it's likely that your competitor may not be charged.
There's more information you can find here:
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/42995?hl=en-GB
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hey there,
I would say the easiest way to do this would be through Google Tag Manager. If you can put the container on all pages of your website, it has a bunch of support for adding 3rd party tags (such as Facebook, Twitter etc.) within the interface and you can add your tag and deploy the container in seconds.
All the best,
Sean
Hey Neil,
Historically, each redirect chain caused a link to lose a small portion of equity.
A few weeks ago, Google announced that this is no longer the case and 301 redirects DON'T lose any equity any longer. This update now means that domain level redirects won't result in equity loss - if anything, it's best practice to ensure your URLs are HTTPS.
You can check out the blog here - https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo
All the best,
Sean
Hey there,
It looks like the 'Boutique Hotels' page has been optimized for the term 'boutique hotels' more effectively than the homepage. Google takes into account a whole bunch of figures when determining the best page on your domain to rank for a particular term. You might find that users stay on site/convert more often when they enter the site on that page - Google might have picked up on that and chosen to serve this page as the best entry point for that journey.
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hi,
I would stay clear of automated software such as SEnuke TNG.
It 'simulates clicks' and 'builds links for you' - basically your one-way ticket to a Google Penalty. Yes, there's a chance that this may give you a short term boost in traffic, but rest assured your site will be laid to waste when Google picks up on it and it'll take you months to get it back to normal again.
My advice, don't touch it. Keep your 'white hat' on and do SEO right.
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hey Becky,
I would say to check out the competition for this - for example, search for 'same day delivery {your business service}' into Google and see what comes up.
An example search on my screen turned up a bunch of local retailers that have optimised their '/delivery-information' pages to shout about the 'same day delivery' option. Almost all of the top 10 mentioned their 'same day delivery' option within their page title and meta description also, with a couple of them featuring the whole 'same-day-delivery' term within their URL.
If you're going for the local searches such as 'same day delivery {your business service} in {location}', then I would recommend writing a section about the delivery option within each of the location pages for search engines to pick up. It wouldn't hurt to mention this within their page titles and meta descriptions also.
I hope that helps!
Sean
Hi There,
The best way of doing this is to log into Google My Business and ensure that your business listing is fully populated. GMB allows you to add further details such as:
Once this has been fully populated, this information will pull through into search results, be that in the Knowledge Graph panel or in the local pack results (as per your screenshot).
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hey there,
There are so many factors that could be affecting this - geo-location, search history, the Google account you're using when you browse - all of these things will be personalizing the search results that you see.
To get a fairer comparison, either go incognito in a fresh browser window with browser cache/history deleted or use another rank tracker to compare another set of unbiased results.
All the best,
Sean
Hey there,
Welcome to the world of SEO!
The best place for beginners to start would be here: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Feel free to utilize the Moz Community for any questions you have and any help you need.
All the best,
Sean
Hey there,
In an ideal world, I would recommend maintaining the NAP (Name, Address & Postcode) you use anywhere else on the internet. This allows search engines (and users for that matter) to have some degree of continuity between your business listings.
Moz local is a decent tool for analysing your business listing and checking that your NAP is the same across the internet. It'll even highlight sites where this isn't the case so you can manually update them.
All the best,
Sean
It's likely that if you have a redirect rule in place to take users from the http to https version of the site, that you don't need to worry as the http version could never be fully accessed anyway.
If, however, both versions of your site can be accessed, then it's likely that the tools you're using could be reporting incorrect information.
My advice - implement an http to https redirection rule (as it's SEO best practice anyway) which should solve any issues.
Once you're done, check it with Varvy Redirect Mapper to ensure there are no redirect chains or issues with your site wide redirects.
Sean
Yes indeedy!
https://moz.com/products/api/updates
Check this out - contains a list of updates and the dates of the next update too.
Cheers,
Sean
Hey there,
I wouldn't just take the export and put it in - Moz's spam score metric isn't 100% accurate as it's looking at site metrics, rather than looking at individual sites manually.
Moz have said:
**"WARNING: **Please do not export this file and simply upload it to Google! You can really, really hurt your site's ranking and there may be no way to recover. Instead, carefully sort through the links therein and make sure you really do want to disavow what's in there. You can easily remove/edit the file to take out links you feel are not spam"
You can read the full article on this here.
They've also said only anything with a spam score of 14 or higher is definitely spa****m. Anything with a lower score could be valuable links.
In short, go through each domain you want to disavow with a fine tooth comb as there's always a chance that there could be some really valuable ones in there.
All the best,
Sean
Hey there,
Average page load time is a bit of a funny metric in Google Analytics and can often appear a little sporadic. Sometimes this can be erratic if your web servers are acting up during a certain period of the day. Similarly, if your site is being hit by spammy crawlers all at the same time (or DDoS), this can make the stats appear exceptionally high or low.
There's a full breakdown of how it works on the Google website.
Check it out here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2383341?hl=en
I hope this helps,
Sean
Your site is constantly trying to load an image file which is killing the connection.
http://a1bail.naked.digital/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/dial.png
On chrome browser, press CTRL+SHIFT+J to see developer tools and click 'Console' - you can see a bunch of red error messages that recur hundreds of times.
Sort out that image and try again.
All the best,
Sean
Hey There,
It sounds like Google Analytics doesn't have enough benchmarking data for your vertical with the extent of traffic you're receiving. It sounds like it's just a limitation you're going to have to wait for a fix for
I would imagine that this information would be made available to you over time when more retailers from your niche sign up to Google Analytics benchmarking.
All the best,
Sean
Hi there,
Historically in SEO, search engines used to use the 'exact match' text of a page (be that in the page title, URL, page copy, H1 etc.) to inform the term to rank the page for.
Nowadays, Google is a lot more understanding of related terms and synonyms since the 'Hummingbird' update. For example, if I optimised my entire site for 'advertising agency', there's a good chance that Google will understand that 'branding' is likely to come under my field of expertise and rank me for searches such as 'branding agency' or similar.
Their optimisation for the term 'branding agency' might not just be down to the homepage - the likelihood is that they have a page on the site explaining their branding services which helps the overall domain rank for that kind of term.
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hey Gill,
You can use multiple cases of local business - it's no problem at all.
All the best,
Sean
Hey,
I used to work for a company that had me loading on around 10,000 product SKUs into the system at one time. Rather than lifting the supplier descriptions of each item, we used excel to template up the descriptions of the products based on the stock information we had - ranges, sizes, materials etc. Page titles, however, we left auto generated by our CMS until we had a chance to go back and review them.
I would get them loaded on the site in bulk to get them indexed/available for product PPC bidding with the intention of coming back to them later to optimise - meta descriptions, page titles, product descriptions etc.
In the end I think we used a crowdsourcing platform like Elance to hire several freelancers to write the product descriptions uniquely. It was a great investment from an SEO and written copy perspective. Might be something to think about?
Cheers,
Sean
Hi Rob,
Historically, updating redirects by amending the URL at their source DID pass on SEO value as each redirect chain caused a link to lose a small portion of equity - I believe this is what Andy is referring to.
A few weeks ago, Google announced that this is no longer the case and 301 redirects DON'T lose any equity any longer. This update now means that webmasters no longer have to spend time updating links at their source, rendering the practice of outreach pretty much redundant.
You can check out the blog here - https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo
In short, I wouldn't bother with any outreaching as it'll provide zero SEO benefit.
All the best,
Sean
Hey Radi,
Historically there used to be 'Site-wide' and 'Partial' penalties for link spamming.
SEOValley covered this pretty well here - http://www.seovalley.com/blog/googles-manual-penalty-site-wide-matches-vs-partial-matches.html
If you've been hit with either one of these, it should appear in Google Search Console.
What you're referring to might be a more small-scale fluctuation that might indeed be based on a couple of the links that you weren't so sure on. Check the competitive landscape of the page and, if other sites haven't been improving their SEO substantially, consider evaluating those links you've acquired and remove them if you're not 100% sure.
Cheers,
Sean
Hi There,
Auto tagging is a great place to start.
If that isn't possible, it it's breaking, you can manually specify UTM values by adding a query extension to each landing page URL.
Google's tool for doing this is here > https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
All the best,
Sean
It looks like these are keywords that are causing impressions in search results - can you explain why these are 'bad queries' - is it that they are terms not associated with your website?
Check your website for any mention of these terms to see whether or not you've been hacked and pages have been inserted? I would also run a few of these searches into Google to see what pages are showing up and why?
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hi there,
Absolutely - you can update your disavow file at any time in Google Search Console!
Just to reiterate your point - the effects that disavowing links has can be extreme and it takes some time to get back once you've made a mistake so proceed with caution.
all the best,
Sean
Ditto, although it sounds like it's going to have the most noticeable effect on websites breaking Google link guidelines. I doubt you'll see any great change, especially if your own sites/client sites are in reputable niches.
Hi there,
Do you have the URL for the webpage? It's hard to answer your question without knowing how it's optimised or the keyword its optimised for.
Check the following:
There are so many possibilities. If you can supply a URL, maybe we can help you?
I hope this helps,
Sean
I've definitely heard of this working with people using crowd-sourcing websites (such as Crowdflower) to pay next to nothing for thousands of people to Google a keyword and click on a specified listing.
Whilst the effects of CTR manipulation are pretty instant and it definitely works, it's often short lived and Google is quick to pick this up as an anomaly, rather than data of statistical significance.
In short, it works and it works pretty quickly but if you can't sustain the CTR metrics, you're going to fall back down the rankings.
Hey Anders,
My advice would be to put the links in where it feels natural. If you're mentioning each term 10 times within the article, don't put 20 internal links in it for the sake of it - it's spammy and isn't great for user experience. After all, no one likes reading an article that's littered with blue underlined links.
Maybe hyperlink the first mentions of each keyword within the article and then add a section at the bottom that says something along the lines of:
"If you want to know more about {keyword A} or {keyword B}, click here"
This way, people can click the links in the article if they so wish and, if they reach the end, they can be directed to logical next location in their website journey.
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hey Jason,
Check out something like BuzzSumo if you haven't already - it's a pretty powerful database of content marketing metrics and should help you understand what content has worked previously within your niche and why.
It's also got a pretty hefty influencer database which you can freely extract, even within the free trial period.
Failing that, I think Ahrefs has an almost identical content/influencer database which can be freely extracted also.
Regards,
Sean
Hey Rhys,
I've got you coming up at the top of page 3 for a search for 'biochemistry degree'.
Give it a quick check in incognito mode on your browser and let me know how you get on 
Cheers,
Sean
I would try and be as on the ball as possible with disavowing links that need it, even if there has been no penalty. One of the first things I look to do when onboarding a new client is review the current disavow file (if there is one) or looking at their backlink portfolio to find potential spam. The spam tool on Moz is quite good at finding these links but make sure you cast your eye over them first as it's likely some good links will have got caught up in there.
Just be careful - it's hard to come back from making a mistake with the disavow process!
Is the linking domain (not the link that links to that domain) relevant to your business?
i.e. is it an old domain that used to be active or is it just a dummy domain that was set up for the practice of link building?
Hey there,
You absolutely do need to. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not migrating their disavow file when they switch domains/encryptions.
Sean
Hi,
No, they shouldn't penalise. A lot of companies are bought out by bigger companies and then only have 1 page on a new domain to redirect all of their pages to. I would say that there would be little to no chance of any penalisation.
All the best,
Sean
Typically this doesn't really matter - links built to a domain will always benefit that particular domain, regardless of whether it can be accessed at 'www.', 'non-www.', 'http://' or 'https://'. I would bet my bottom dollar that there will be almost zero impact on your positions.
Remember to couple this change with a change in Google Search Console to set your 'Preferred Domain' appearance in Google Search results - this can be done under 'Settings' > 'Site Settings'.
I'm sure it would probably be valuable and pass on some SEO benefit but if it's likely that someone has purchased this domain purely for transferring the link equity of inbound links to your website, then there's always a chance that this is going to be picked up on.
A small chance, but a chance nonetheless.
Hey,
1.) Yes you can do this and it won't 'negativel impact it' but it might cause a couple of Search Console errors when you come to submit the URLs - blocking crawlers in the robots.txt file is a directive that instructs them not to crawl that particular page. With this being said, supplying them with a sitemap of all page locations will not mean that they crawl these pages, but it is an instruction to crawlers that these pages do exist. Personally, I would meta noindex these pages to make sure that they don't reach search engines as the blocking in the robots.txt file can often not be enough to prevent this, especially if you're also submitting a sitemap.
2.) In short, I don't think you can have a single XML sitemap containing URLs from multiple subdomains BUT you can have sitemaps for multiple subdomains hosted on the TLD individually. Google have broken this down really well in their Webmaster Tools post:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/75712?hl=en&topic=8476&ctx=topic
Hope this helps!
Sean
Hey Becky,
Check out the Moz Algo update page for more detailed information about algo updates:
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
All the best,
Sean
David's comment is pretty much bang on the money. As an addition to this, if you're using a separate mobile site, make sure it's tagged up correctly so as not to directly compete with the desktop version.
Make sure you're using 'rel=canonical' from the mobile version of the page to the desktop version of the page and 'rel=alternate' from the desktop version of the page pointing to the mobile version.
Full Google documentation can be found here: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls
Hey again,
I would first and foremost check that the script tag is firing on the page/site using Google's structured data testing tool - https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool. Just put in the link of the page where the code snippet exists/fires and this should debug whether or not it has been put in correctly.
Google can be a little picky about branded KG results and it often only shows some of the bigger brands - I would say just be patient and check every now and again? In terms of reviews, if these are associated with your G+, they should appear when your business appears as a knowledge graph or local business result - again, be patient with this as it might take some time.
I would advise using GTM to implement these tags - it's a lot more flexible than amending core page code each time.
All the best,
Sean
This does seem a bit odd. but the domain also doesn't have any inbound links which is what I believe is one of the main things that Moz tool picks up. Perhaps you should build a couple of inbound links to the domain and see what happens?
Hey there,
My advice would be to minimize those redirect chains as soon as you can, not just for potential SEO benefit but more to lessen server stress and speed up page load.
Interestingly, chained 301s don't lose equity in the eyes of a search engine now (see updates below) so it's interesting that you're seeing such a fluctuation.
https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo
For the .html to trailing slash pages, did you say that he did a page-to-page remap for all of them instead of putting a redirect rule in place to catch them all? That seems like a crazy thing to put in place! Your redirect file (htaccess or similar) must be enormous!
Hope that helps,
Sean
Hey Adrian,
In my opinion, none of the above are 'doorway pages' (sorry!).
A 'doorway' page is one of many pages that webmasters use as spam entry points to a website and are typically targeted towards the same keyword with a variable attached - most commonly 'locations'.
Here's an example - e cigarette online retailers tend to have little to no local presence within an area but they will build a list of pages to make it look as if they do:
In this example, they've even gone as far as to add in a list of these URLs (navigable from the footer) to ensure search engines crawl them - http://vapour-hut.co.uk/e-cig-town.php.
It's all a bit of a black hat tactic to grasp a whole bunch of search traffic that they otherwise shouldn't have. In your first example, the two pages for 'trumpet' and 'piano lessons', although similar, are targeting vastly different searcher intents which are relevant to the originating website - ergo they are not doorway pages.
I hope that makes sense
All the best,
Sean
Also, although not directly related to your question, this was a really helpful article to get to the bottom of how GMB insight metrics are calculated.
http://www.joyannehawkins.com/interpret-google-business-gmb-insights/3/
Hi there,
I would check your server logs for pages that have been serving up 404 errors when accessed via Google Search.
You can then add in the necessary 301s for these and you'll be good as new!
Alternatively, if you want a catch-all approach, you can use screaming frog to identify the 404 pages on the site. If you have a URL export from your old site, run these URLs through using the 'upload list' function on screaming frog to check their response codes individually.
All the best,
Sean
To be honest, it all looks correct and that would have been the way I did it. If Google is currently not ranking the correct URL, it'll likely update when they take the 301 into account when they next recrawl the page.
It might be a factor in why rankings have dropped but it's likely to pick back up again when their index is updated. My advice is to hold tight and hope it all fixes itself soon.
All the best,
Sean
This is exactly my point, the view=quick version of the page needs a canonical pointing back to the proper version of the page. Yes, it's not a normal webpage but that is now search engines are viewing it because it's missing the tag.
This will signify to search engines that the 'view=quick' version of the page is a duplicate of the normal page and that it should not be ranked within search results.
Hey Scott,
Interestingly, this is something I've faced with a client of mine recently and have gone on to write up a case study about it. My client is in the housing sector with a whole bunch of housing developments which we subsequently setup on Google My Business. Originally we thought this was a great way of increasing organic exposure and should be a doorway to more organic traffic. It was only after we implemented GMB listings for around 50-60 housing developments that we noticed organic traffic saw a sudden decrease.
This was to do with a section of the target audience no longer needing to go to the website to find out important details such as contact information (phone numbers & email addresses) as well as navigational details (postcodes and addresses) as these were now obtainable through search results and maps results. Fundamentally we were making the user journey more streamlined as there were less clicks needed to get to vital information and users could now Sat Nav their journey at the click of a button, BUT it did mean they were no longer visitors to the main client site.
My advice would be to check the date that you launched GMB and have a look at a cross section of 'organic traffic' and 'organic conversion rate' OR 'organic traffic' and 'organic bounce rate' (if you have no conversions set up) to see if you see a sudden increase in conversion rates (as less 'low quality' traffic is visiting the site) or a sudden decrease in bounce rates (due to users only visiting one page to find out contact/location information).
I would bet my bottom dollar that you're facing a similar situation.
Hope this helps,
Sean
