Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks Chris, appreciate the help!

Tom

Hi Chris,

The website will basically be a "European version" of the current site. Is there any way we can let Google know that it is just a .com version of our .co.uk site without it affecting either of the websites?

Thank you

Tom

Hi guys,

Currently, we are using Magento Enterprise to run two separate ecommerce websites, for arguments sake lets say these two websites are ElectronicsX.com and electronicsY.co.uk.

ElectronicsX.com isn't doing too well, it has little traffic, makes next to nothing each month and is just a waste of resources.

ElectronicsY.co.uk on the other hand is getting 30,000 unique visits every month and is over exceeding every month in terms of revenue in sales.

At the moment, the only traffic we get from Europe tends to be the odd "word of mouth" customer and English customers who have emigrated to Europe but still like to use English companies.

We can't rank on Google FR or ES or anything like that because the website we have "electronicsY" is on a .co.uk TLD (a GeoTLD). So what we want to do is take ALL the content from electronicsY.co.uk and place it on electronicsX.com so that we can start targeting Europe and ranking in the serps internationally.

What sort of effect will that have in terms of penalisation from Google? Or because the websites are on the same C block, would it have any effect at all?

Thanks guys

Tom

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have the word "cupones" in your domain which is Spanish for "coupons" (I imagine, no good at Spanish, just going on assumptions!) so could it be that because your domain is not a geoTLD, Google may not realise that your main keyword is actually not in English?

This isn't factual, this is just suggestive, but maybe try using a .es domain name?

Hi there,

I have a Magento Enterprise store based in the UK and we have an Irish version which we created after finding an increasing amount of traffic from Ireland.

One thing that I don't understand, is that if I search for one keyword on Google, the websites are displayed differently, when effectively they are identical websites.

Here is how a result looks like for my UK store: http://i.imgur.com/NKSt4Qq.png

And here is how a result looks like for my IE store: http://i.imgur.com/Cynv8Mz.png

They both have the same Meta description, barring a few geographical words and terms. Both have on page descriptions as well as products. Yet the IE results display the description and the UK results display products and a tiny snippet of the description.

Any ideas on how I can make my UK pages display like the IE one? Or, just why they are both displayed differently?

Thanks

Very eye opening stuff in there! It seems he is linked with lots of spammy "false" blogs made to look like human generated blog posts but are exactly the same content wise across several "joe bloggs" websites just giving a review on a product they happened to buy from this company.

Very interesting... Looks like my years of doing things by the book will eventually pay off if he carrys on like this and gets himself a nice penalty from Google

Thank you!

Hi there,

I have 3 main competitors who I keep my eye on within Moz and I am always comparing pages as they are all sell similar products in the same way but we're increasingly getting more things put in place to make ourselves different, which is why we rank number 1 in the UK for their competitive keywords (without blowing my own trumpet!).

One thing I have noticed, a competitor seems to be doing things the old school way. He has around 15 competitive keywords in his pages meta tag (irrelevant) and then has a huge 400 - 500 word description on each page describing whats on the page, what products are in that category (if it's a category page) or localised information if it's a company page.

What seems to be odd, is that before penguin/panda their website had around 1,200,000 total links. Then after panda, he went down to around 300,000 total links.

In the past few weeks I've noticed that he has gradually increased in total links from 300,000(estimate) to now 961,811 total links in a matter of weeks.

Is this an error/glitch within Moz or is he doing something that may be classed as "blackhat" or is it something I shouldn't really be worrying about?

Any feedback appreciated

Tom

I had the author change the link to an updated URL. I believe this to be the problem with it temporarily being removed from OSE.

Hi there,

I also run an eCommerce site. And we rank number one for many keywords in the Disco, DJ and Lighting product categories. You have told me exactly why you failed to rank in your first opening line: "I copied".

Google doesn't want content that is identical to an already existing, larger company. Why should it include your website in SERPs when you're just a copy of a much larger website?

I personally don't see anything blackhat about Zappos. But I've literally just grazed over it.

What you need to do is be unique. All content should be unique to your website. No copying manufacturer descriptions, no keyword stuffing your descriptions, using correct title tags, h1 tags and alt tagging your images.

We have competitors who have been a PR 5 and ranking better with certain keywords for years. Thankfully, Penguin and Panda took care of them and we were boosted to that beautiful number 1 spot in the SERPS.

SEO in ecommerce requires patience, beautiful content, unique descriptions, SIMPLE navigation and customer experience.

You need to find the thin line between a fantastic user experience and a crawlers dream!

I don't take any "examples" from any website. I do my SEO how my website needs to be done. I know my website, I know my products, I've studied the keywords and phrases people give Google to find certain products and I have utilized those keywords to create content people WANT to read as well as content that crawlers are going to love.

Being the biggest does help you rank. However, if they try any blackhat techniques, Google will penalize them just as hard as you or I. But do you need to use Google to reach Amazon? Or do you just go directly to Amazon? They have no problem with paying $$$$$'s a month to sit pretty at the top of the serps sponsored section.

Just my two cents

Tom

Hi there,

This is a blackhat technique known as "Page Stuffing" it's probably not as easy to do these days due to Panda and Penguin, but the technique would involve ranking for one page (say a homepage) for a certain keyword and then duplicating the content so that each page would rank, pushing the competition down by up to 10 ranks so that one website is flooded for a certain search term.

Luckily, crawlers can now determine if a page is duplicated and just won't rank it and Google will penalize the offender.

Hope this helps.

Tom

Hi,

I have been using OSE to check competitor links, DA, PA etc. And recently noticed that an author at Gizmodo was kind enough to link us to a blog post of his.

This is great news as Gizmodo has a DA of 94 and a PA of 50 (Which is pretty big compared to our DA of 30 and PA of 42).

The link to the post is here: http://gizmodo.com/5956401/everything-you-need-for-the-best-trick+or+treating-house-in-the-neighborhood

And the link to our website is: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/lighting-effects/lighting-effects/strobe/ffa0144

It was showing on OSE for the past few days but now it has vanished and it is showing channel5 (TV Channel in the UK) as the highest DA linking to us, which is still pretty good. But I just want to know why the link has stopped displaying on OSE

Any help or insight is appreciated!

Tom

Hey,

I have an online store selling dj equipment, sound & light products such as speakers, lasers, decks, pa systems, karaoke systems etc.

I just bought a new domain but I registered it under a different name and address (my personal details). And I plan on hosting the website on a seperate server so it has no connection with my eCommerce store.

The main purpose of the website will be to review the products I sell, write detailed how to guides for DJ's, party planners, mobile DJ's etc.

There will be links on the current ecommerce website (which currently gets around anything from 500 to 1000 unique hits a day) going to the new blog website. But would I be better off keeping it on the same C Block even though they are going to be two very different websites and the blog may not always necessarily be about the products on my ecommerce website and may be products on say eBay, Amazon, etc. (In otherwords, it's going to be it's own website with an unbiased opinion, but the ecommerce site will be linking to it on certain products that are reviewed on there).

Any help is appreciated

How badly 'damaged' do you believe your domain to be?

I mean, changing a domain name can be an issue depending on how much branding and money you've put into it.

But, on the same breath, you could say it's easier to cut your losses and if you have a strategic plan of action, then it could be a better option to start again a new.

What's your domain name, out of interest? Feel free to PM Me.

Tom

As you know, I run an ecommerce store too. I think the difference here is that we have a full time team here who write copy for all of our products. We take as much information as we can from the manufacturer and then we give it our own personal touch.

We sell a lot of DJ, Audio and Lighting equipment and we are all connected with music somehow, so our writers are passionate about what we sell. We know what bad speakers are, we know high quality when we see it (or hear it), so I think the key with our store is definitely the amount of effort we put into our listings.

Just by copying content from a manufacturer to your website is not going to do well with Google.

Here's just a few key things that we do:

• Never copy content from a manufacturer... ever! - The description is where you need to sell the item to a customer as well as use it to make the product page more exciting and attractive to search engined.
• Never keyword stuff! - This is something we have always tried our best to avoid. Our main keyword for Google UK is "disco speakers" and we have sat at number one for nearly 5 years. And it's simple: You write your content and then you keyword your page to the KEY words in the content. A lot of people think it's okay to say "Right, I want to rank number one for 'refurbished iphone 4' so I will make a website and in the title I will have 'Buy Refurbished iPhone 4' and then I will add a huge chunk of text on every page about refurbished iphone 4." - This isn't going to work. It's not a natural way of writing. Of course it's important to fit in the MAIN keywords the best you can, but if one of the writers here can't fit in "high quality audo cable" into a listing, then they don't put it in.
• **Be forever uploading **- This may sound confusing, but we upload new products (or previously out of stock products) every day. We are forever writing content for new products. Our website is never static. It's changing every day. By changing I mean growing bigger. We currently sell over 4,000 lines and attract around 20,000 hits a month or more (depending on season) and that's down to our team of content writers and inventory managers.
• Be unique - I hate this word... a lot! Because nothing is unique. But we rank quite high for images as well as keywords for our pages because all of our products are photographed and they get the whole photoshop treatment to look really appealing to our customers. As well as this, we keyword the alt tags very well to describe the image as well as match the content of the page.

That is the basics.

A few other little tips would be: **BLOG ABOUT YOUR PRODUCTS! **You need to have a blog that tells a story about your products, gives people an insight of what they can do with your products. Get excited about the things you sell and with a blog, your content will be dynamic and fresh and you WILL See an increase in traffic if you blog well about your store and products.

If you haven't got a blog and don't mind giving away a few products, find a blogger who does product reviews for products in your market, in return just ask for an honest review (so send a good product, hehe) and a backlink to your website.

You need to be vigilant with online stores, it's not a part time job by any means and you need to have your finger on that button 24/7.

Hope some of these points are of some help to you and good luck!

Tom

Hey,

Have you checked out the Penguin Tool: http://www.barracuda-digital.co.uk/panguin-tool/

You can see which algo your website was penalised for, thus giving you an idea of what you need to work on.

Hope this shines a little light on your problem!

Tom

I've been tempted by such services in the past, but if everyone was able to spend $xxxx and get a great page rank then everybody will be sitting pretty with a high PR.

But I know that sometimes it can be a bit of a temptation to pay some money to "see how it goes" but before you know it your website is on a link farm somewhere and ultimately you lose domain authority and such and it really isn't worth it!

Just my opinion

Hi Alex,

Just as an outsider looking in and haven't used this website before (or any like it to be honest), I would say that anything that offers services for "link juice" and is only promising you page rank (although there site is only a mediocre PR 2), I'd personally say spend your money on maybe getting a bit of SEO consultation.

Or failing that, you're on a website filled with fantastic SEO advice and resources, you just have to check out the previous Moz seminars to get started.

What you need to remember is that a good ranking website isn't based solely on Page Rank. Page rank is just one factor of hundreds that search engines take into consideration.

I personally wouldn't spend that sort of money on a service that says it will give me a better page rank. It's not all about the PR!

Tom

Hi there,

I run an eCommerce website and we don't actually change the language (even though we do ship to all of Europe aswell as England).

Mainly because of what Matt Cutts teaches us in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyWx31GeQWY

Unless you're committed to changing all of your product listings to the language in which you aim to sell in (manually) then it really isn't worth it.

I mean, by using a .fr domain name you're localising your website to just France, so you will only appear in Google.fr. But Google may pick your website up as "spammy" if the content is just thrown into a translator from English to French.

It's a lot of hard work if you're up to the challenge, but personally I'd stay away from it and if you do choose to do it, make sure you have a translator who can rewrite the pages into native French and not just generated french.

Hope this helps!

Tom

Hi there,

I'm assuming you're using Wordpress? I think having the categories in the URL is a must if you're trying to rank and the category is one of your keywords for your website.

Personally, if I was having trouble with long URL's for the longer post titles (e.g. How to gain 1000 genuine followers on twitter, quickly and free == domain.com/social-media-tutorials/twitter/How-to-gain-1000-genuine-followers-on-twitter-quickly-and-free") I would probably remove certain generic words from the URL that Google wouldn't even search for anyway, so that my URL structure would become: domain.com/social-media/twitter/how-to/gain-1000-genuine-followers-twitter-free or words to that effect.

You are able to change the URL of the post (within Wordpress) as you Publish your post (under the post title field).

Hope this is of some help!

Tom

Hi Greg,

Small world indeed!

This is just my opinion, but perhaps these bigger stores may be already ranking so high that the need of a department/category/subcategory url is just not required because the SEO is done perfectly elsewhere, I don't know, just a hunch!

The URL's are definitely something to take into consideration, whether the niche is something completely random like bomber jackets for cats or something, no one wants an ugly looking URL and with so many shopping cart CMS' around these days, it's relatively straight forward to set up a whole manner of URL's. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it though.

Also, the Amazon ranked number 1 link for "Proel Rubber Microphone Holder 22mm - 26mm" is actually our Amazon store too! Hehe. Cheeky

Tom

That's right.

A soft 404 is still a missing document, but it allows the user to continue through the pages without leaving the website.

Tom

Hi there,

A similar question was asked here: http://moz.com/community/q/trailing-slash-at-end-of-url

And it seems that the REAL answer probably is: It's completely down to your own preference.

All I would recommend is that if you do decide to have (www.)example.com**"/" **then make sure whenever you are linking to your website from another website to include the **"/" **at the end.

Always be uniform in how you link to your website. It's the easiest way to avoid mistakes, in my experience!

Hope this is of some help.

Tom

Hi Greg,

The URL structure for me has always worked best WITH the categories in the URL. In the UK, my company ranks number 1 for "disco speakers". This could be down to the fact that our URL's APPEAK somewhat long, but in fact help us gain much more traffic than it would if we didn't include the categories.

For example, this is for our active PA speakers category:

http://www.electromarket.co.uk/speakers-audio-equipment/dj-pa-speakers/active-powered-pa-speakers/

It does appear rather long, particularly as there will be a product code after that URL for the actual product page.

But what works well for us, is to keep the URL structure like this on the website (So if you click department >> Categories >> sub categories >> product) but allow people to navigate to the website using just the product code in the url. So http://www.electromarket.co.uk/speakers-audio-equipment/dj-pa-speakers/active-powered-pa-speakers/PRODUCTCODE just becomes http://www.electromarket.co.uk/PRODUCTCODE.

But yes, in my opinion, keeping the categories in the URL like a sort of "breadcrumb" has always worked best for us and we're using Magento Enterprise.

Hope this is of some help!

Tom

Hi there,

What Wesley said is true to a certain extent. This would probably be the best way to do it (301 Redirect) but as an owner of many eCommerce companies, I'd have to disagree. Mainly on the basis that a "soft 404" would be more generally accepted than just being redirected to the homepage for no explanation to why.

Here's an example, your client is selling TV's online and they're using Magento Enterprise. Let's pretend that they have a TV from Sony, it's a 62" LED SmartTV, Full HD, the works and your client has 200 of these in stock and they're selling them around $/£300 cheaper than the competition. The link gets shared around amongst Facebook, Twitter, HotUkDeals etc.

So let's say after just 7 days, they sell out of this awesome offer... Somebody see's the link late (Facebook, Twitter, etc, it happens) and when they click on that link the website loads but the product doesn't, they just see the homepage. They're going to waste around 15 minutes perhaps searching for that product that you and I both know, doesn't exist anymore.

So what we tend to do, is create a "soft 404" page, which is basically a page apologising for the missing product, explaining that it may be out of stock, temporarily removed from the website etc, but at the same time we will have an array of SIMILAR products that may interest someone who wanted a 62" LED Full HD SmartTV.

I don't know whether I'd say this is a great SEO advantage or a great marketing advantage, but either way, in my personal opinion, I'd say this is a much better option than just pointing the customer/browser to the homepage when they are in search of something specific and don't get a reason to why they're seeing the homepage and not the fantastic offer they've seen!

Hope this answer helps you, even if it's just insightful!

Tom

Hi Rachel,

There is no reason, rather than just personal preference (to an extent).

I'd like my customers to share a product with their friends on Facebook etc. so I like to get straight to the point in the URL. Maybe having domain.com/department/category/subcategory may be a better option for you, depending on how keyword friendly your categories are.

For example, my DJ company ranks number 1 on Google in the UK for "disco speakers" and this is how I have the URL structured: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/speakers-audio-equipment/dj-pa-speakers/active-powered-pa-speakers/

That is just for a specific type of speaker.

This has worked best for us, but it completely depends on how deep your categories go. We try to make all of our most popular categories as closely linked to the homepage as possible.

Hope this helps!

Tom

Hi Erik,

Is the website ALL in flash?

If so, Google cannot read SWF files and can only read text (And alt tags, meta data etc.) I checked the page source and found this:

There are no keywords set and there is no meta description.

I can only assume the missing meta data as well as the website being completely made in flash is what is stopping Google from crawling your website and adding it to the SERP.

I believe there is a way in which you make a "copy" of your website in a text version for search engines to read (Hopefully another member can point you in the right direction for that).

All I can recommend is not to make websites in flash. In my opinion (and it's only my opinion) is that flash is dead. And the beautiful things you used to be able to do in flash, you can no do even better in Ajax and other javascript as well as having fully readable websites by search engines!

Hope this answer is of some help to you!

Tom

Hi there,

I currently use Magento Enterprise and this is how we have our URL structure set.

Depending on the software you're using, there is a chance you could have shorter URL's for sharing purposes (e.g. domain.com/category/subcat/product-title-here == domain.com/productcode) but make sure that this URL isn't actually a "page" but is in fact just a redirector. (Unless you want to get involved with "rel canonical" see here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/)

Getting back to your URL structure, this is definitely the way I would recommend anybody set up their URLs. Especially if your domain name doesn't have the keyword in it. E.g. your shop is called LuckyCharms.com and you sell jewellery, a website that is called weselljewellery.com may rank quicker because the keyword is already in the domain name. But with the URL structure set to include the category, the URL now becomes LuckyCharms.com/products/jewellery/bracelets what have you.

The URL is read by search engines and I think it can only be a positive thing to have as much in your URL as you can without making it look messy. Two categories deep is the limit. E.g. domain.com/category/subcategory/product-title-here

Hope this is of some help to you!

Tom

Hi Anthony,

This is a common rate among other Twitter and Facebook tools.

I believe the formula for FollowerWonk is as follows: Engagement Rate = # Of Replies + Retweets / # of followers x 100

So in a day you have 10 replies and 5 retweets = 15. Divide that by the number of followers times by 100. Then that's your percentage.

Credit: http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/467-formulas-revealed-the-facebook-and-twitter-engagement-rate

Hope this helps.

Tom

Hi Allen,

Thanks for that! Really helpful. I'll look into it right away.

Tom

Oh okay, so yeah a lot of 404's! Ha.

The website currently has ~4100 products including product packages (2x 1 speaker etc.)

What I had in mind was using electromarket.co.uk/product code as a URL redirector or forwarder.

It will be a long process and it's going to take a lot of patience I imagine. But for now, having duplicate content (in theory) on the same website, is that going to cause problems with Google? Will Google see that it's the same URL and not take action or will I be penalized for it? That's my main concern at the moment!

Tom

Hi Antony,

This is a very vague question and you need to work out what it is you'll need from your web host before you can start to consider who is best to go with.

Personally, I use Eleven2 for a personal reseller account for my own blogs and friends blogs. But I use FireHost for commercial websites such as Magento hosting etc.

With Eleven2 I have a cPanel which I can set up everything from DNS zones to email accounts to installing online software.

But what I suggest you do is find out exactly what it is you need your web host to deliver and then ask that question again for a more precise answer, rather than just people (including myself) giving you a company name on a biased opinion just because it's the company they use and it works for them. E.g. I drive a Ford so I will only recommend a Ford to a new buyer looking for a car.

Tom

Hi Ben,

Thanks for that! I shall look into it. I'm a bit wary about turning the category URL off as I am currently getting around 1200 unique hits a day and wouldn't want to jeopardise that by sending potential customers to a 404 page (all be it a soft 404).

I know that if I change a URL to a product, magento set up a URL redirect from the old URL to the new URL. Is this an option with Magento for your URL change suggestion or would I just have to live with the 404's until my customers/previous visitors start to use the new URLs?

Thanks

Hey,

My website: http://www.electromarket.co.uk is running Magento Enterprise.

The issue I'm running into is that the URLs can be shortened and modified to display different things on the website itself. Here's a few examples.

Product Page URL: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/speakers-audio-equipment/dj-pa-speakers/studio-bedroom-monitors/bba0051

OR I could remove everything in the URL and just have: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/bba0051 and the link will work just as well.

Now my problem is, these two URL's load the same page title, same content, same everything, because essentially they are the very same web page.

But how do I tell Google that? Do I need to tell Google that? And would I benefit by using a redirect for the shorter URLs?

Thanks!