Questions created by TomKing
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Duplicate Content Pages - A Few Queries..
I am working through the latest Moz Crawl Report and focusing on the 'high priority' issues of Duplicate Page Content. There are some strange instances being flagged and so wondered whether anyone has any knowledge as to why this may be happening... Here is an example; This page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/destinations/cruise-breaks-&-british-isles/bruges/ ...is apparently duplicated with these pages; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/excursions http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/cruises-from-the-uk http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/norwegian-star-europe-cruise-deals Not sure why...? Also, pages that are on our 'Cruise Reviews' section such as this page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-reviews/p&o-cruises/adonia/cruising/931 ...are being flagged as duplicated content with a page like this; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/destinations/cruise-breaks-&-british-isles/bilbao/ Is this a 'thin content' issue i.e. 2 pages have 'thin content' and are therefore duplicated? If so, the 'destinations' page can (and will be) rewritten with more content (and images) but the 'cruise reviews' are written by customers and so we are unable to do anything there... Hope that all makes sense?! Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Duplicated Meta Descriptions on Dynamic Paginated Pages
If the title didn't put you off please read on! 🙂 According to our latest Moz Crawl Report we have circa 700 instances of duplicate Meta Description on pages that are both dynamically created and also paginated, however, I believe that number to be greater! We are unable to manual make changes to these pages (because they are dynamic) and so we need ask our web devs to create a change in how the Meta is created... If I am not making myself clear (and there is a good chance that I'm not!) then here is an example of what I mean; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/silversea-cruise-deals/ There are 92 pages of cruise deals for this particular operator with the results of each page having the option to sort by 4 categories; Recommended Cruise Price Sail Date Best Value 4 x 92 = 368 instances just for this one operator! The current Meta Desc is; A selection of the best Silversea cruise deals taking in over 800 destinations across all 7 continents. ...which isn't great I know! The problem is how to make each page (in each category) unique If any of you have incurred anything similar and have any kind of solution or recommendation then please respond - I would be most grateful! Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
18,000 'Title Element is too Long' Errors
How detrimental is this in the overall SEO scheme of things? Having checked 3 of our main competitors, they too seem to have similar issues... I am trying to look at a solution but it is proving very difficult! Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Problem Downloading Crawl Error Report PDF's
I am trying to download the PDF reports for the various 'crawl errors' - now some of them are quite large but would that justify why I am unable to download - the error is a straightforward one, see attached. Any ideas? Andy aDlViIN
Moz Bar | | TomKing0 -
Removing Bad Links
Hi all, I am in the process of conducting a Link Audit and I am faced with quite a lot of seemingly poor quality examples, such as; http://gotogetaways.com/tag/cunard/ http://jobhiringlocalandabroad.blogspot.com/p/job-hiring-for-cruise-liner-orchestra.html http://lumukixu.xlx.pl/p-o-cruises-aurora.php To me these should be removed \ disavowed but I am getting a little resistence from stakeholders regarding the amount of links I am seeking to rid ourselves of - all are of a similar quality to my examples above... Just so that I know that I am not being 'over eager' with my audit, I welcome your opinions Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Robots.txt
Hi all, Happy New Year! I want to block certain pages on our site as they are being flagged (according to my Moz Crawl Report) as duplicate content when in fact that isn't strictly true, it is more to do with the problems faced when using a CMS system... Here are some examples of the pages I want to block and underneath will be what I believe to be the correct robots.txt entry... http://www.XYZ.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=search&do=viewNewContent&search_app=members&search_app_filters[forums][searchInKey]=&period=today&userMode=&followedItemsOnly= Disallow: /forum/index.php?app=core&module=search http://www.XYZ.com/forum/index.php?app=core&module=reports&rcom=gallery&imageId=980&ctyp=image Disallow: /forum/index.php?app=core&module=reports http://www.XYZ.com/forum/index.php?app=forums&module=post§ion=post&do=reply_post&f=146&t=741&qpid=13308 Disallow: /forum/index.php?app=forums&module=post http://www.XYZ.com/forum/gallery/sizes/182-promenade/small/ http://www.XYZ.com/forum/gallery/sizes/182-promenade/large/ Disallow: /forum/gallery/sizes/ Any help \ advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Duplicate Page Content Issues Reported in Moz Crawl Report
Hi all, We have a lot of 'Duplicate Page Content' issues being reported on the Moz Crawl Report and I am trying to 'get to the bottom' of why they are deemed as errors... This page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/about-us/job-opportunities/ has (admittedly) very little content and is duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/explorer-of-the-seas-2015/ This page is basically an image and has just a couple of lines of static content. Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-lines/costa-cruises/costa-voyager/ This page relates to a single cruise ship and again has minimal content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/faq/packing/ This is an FAQ page again with only a few lines of content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/exclusive-canada-&-alaska-cruisetour/ Another page that just features an image and NO content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/free-upgrades-on-cunard-2014-&-2015/?page_number=6 A cruise deals page that has a little bit of static content and a lot of dynamic content (which I suspect isn't crawled) So my question is, is the duplicate content issued caused by the fact that each page has 'thin' or no content? If that is the case then I assume the simple fix is to increase add \ increase the content? I realise that I may have answered my own question but my brain is 'pickled' at the moment and so I guess I am just seeking assurances! 🙂 Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Writing the perfect Meta Descriptions
I have a lot of Meta Descriptions to write and so this got me thinking, what is the 'perfect' way to write one? I tend to stick to 165 characters and I now write them with the aim of getting the prospect to 'click through' and visit the intended page, I don't 'keyword stuff' though if I can include a keyword in the flow of the description then I will... In this example, I need to write a Meta Description for a 'worldwide cruise destination' called Okinawa which is the largest in a group of islands between Japan and Taiwan... Here is my Meta Description effort; Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, steeped in history but has developed into a captivating worldwide cruise port with a wonderful and relaxed culture. How would you rate my effort in a score of 1 - 10? How would you write it better? Thanks for your time! Andy
On-Page Optimization | | TomKing0 -
Duplicate Page Content Errors on Moz Crawl Report
Hi All, I seem to be losing a 'firefighting' battle with regards to various errors being reported on the Moz crawl report relating to; Duplicate Page Content Missing Page Title Missing Meta Duplicate Page Title While I acknowledge that some of the errors are valid (and we are working through them), I find some of them difficult to understand... Here is an example of a 'duplicate page content' error being reported; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com (which is obviously our homepage) Is reported to have 'duplicate page content' compared with the following pages; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/gratuities http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/holland-america-2014-offers/?order_by=brochure_lead_difference http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/about-us/meet-the-team/craig All 3 of those pages are completely different hence my confusion... This is just a solitary example, there are many more! I would be most interested to hear what people's opinions are... Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
New Web Page Not Indexed
Quick question with probably a straightforward answer... We created a new page on our site 4 days ago, it was in fact a mini-site page though I don't think that makes a difference... To date, the page is not indexed and when I use 'Fetch as Google' in WT I get a 'Not Found' fetch status... I have also used the'Submit URL' in WT which seemed to work ok... We have even resorted to 'pinging' using Pinglar and Ping-O-Matic though we have done this cautiously! I know social media is probably the answer but we have been trying to hold back on that tactic as the page relates to a product that hasn't quite launched yet and we do not want to cause any issues with the vendor! That said, I think we might have to look at sharing the page socially unless anyone has any other ideas? Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Internal Linking From Blog to Website
Hi all, I'm just seeking opinions on something an external company have told us about linking from our blog to our website... Our website is; www.XYZ.com and our blog is www.XYZ.com/blog I add content to the blog on an almost daily basis and generally link on average 3 times from the blog (internally) to a various relevant pages on our website. Today I was told that by doing this I am 'diluting' the link juice which I understand but don't agree with... All I am doing is a form of internal linking which as far as I am aware is a good on-page technique? Just curious to learn other people's view on this... Many thanks Andy
On-Page Optimization | | TomKing0 -
What To Do With Content From SEO Perspective
With all the SEO focus now on creating and sharing unique and high quality content I ensure that is exactly what we do, however... All we seem to do is add this content to our blog with some good quality images to break up the text. Our articles are at least 800 words in length and they are always informative... Once added to our blog we share the content across the 'big 3' social platforms (Facebook, Twitter & Google+) I also do a little bit of 'internal linking' from the blog post to a relevant page on the main website - the blog is actually part of the website! So, my question is... in light of the recent 'guest post' scaremongering and the fact that every blog owner I seem to 'reach out' wants payment should I look at Web2.0 platforms such as; Squidoo Hubpages Quora Triberr ...and the many other similar sites that exist to add some of our content to? Also what about Article Directories? Ezinearticles GoArticles I know this seems like a 'throwback' to 2-3 years ago but I just wondered whether the above still have any credence? Obviously I would be very selective with regard to 'back linking' and would ensure that I vary the anchor text - to be honest, as much as a link would be useful, it's more about brand exposure ... Any advice \ recommendations would be greatly appreciated! Andy
Branding | | TomKing0 -
Have You Ever Used Tools Such as; TribePro, Onlywire & SocialAdr?
Hi all, We create approximately 8-10 circa 800 word articles every week with the majority being added to our blog - I do tend to internally link from the blog to relevant pages on our website... I have been introduced to some 'syndication tools' such as; TribePro Onlywire SocialAdr ...and wondered whether these are deemed as 'gaming the system' and so potentially 'grey hat'? I would appreciate comments from anyone who has a view and particularly from anyone who has possibly used any of these tools... Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Would This Be Highlighted as Duplicate Meta Desc?
Due to the nature of our business we literally have hundreds of web pages and so we recently asked our Web Developers to create the Meta Description for many of the pages that they create - unfortunately they don't seem to understand SEO but before I go back to them I wanted to run this by the MOZ Community... Here is a snippet of the Meta Desc they have created, personally I'm not happy with it BUT I need to be certain on one thing... Will Google determine that it is (almost) duplicated Meta content? Why not visit Cape Town on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Casablanca on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Durban on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Port Elizabeth on an Africa Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Aukland on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Christchurch on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Melbourne on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Sydney on an Australasia Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Orlando on a Caribbean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Central America Cruise on a Cruise Destinations with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, benefits and special offers. Why not visit Acapulco on a Central America Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Puntarenas on a Central America Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not visit Sharm El Sheik on an Egypt And Red Sea with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive club benefits. Why not take a European Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book with us today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive cruise club benefits. Why not visit Bangkok on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Halong Bay on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Hong Kong on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Kuala Lumpur on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Okinawa on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Phuket on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Shanghai on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Singapore on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, offers and exclusive benefits. Why not visit Tokyo on a Far East & Indian Ocean Cruise with XYZ Cruises? Book today for great cruise deals, special offers and exclusive benefits. Like I said earlier, there are hundreds of pages more! I think that if I want total uniqueness then it's going to be a laborious task of doing them all individually but I want to make sure that it is worth it?! Thanks Andy
On-Page Optimization | | TomKing0 -
Domain Factors
Now that Page Rank seems to have been 'put out to graze' by Google with no further PR update planned, what would you say is the 'main factor' when looking at a domain? Is it Moz DA? or Moz Links? or Majestic TrustFlow? Or none of the above or is it a combination of the above?! Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
I'm getting there, I can see the light! 🙂 I have covered one complete audit of the link profile and I am now going back over it looking at the links I had 'question marked' - I should have this completed by the end of this week and I will then focus on using DISAVOW for the links that I am really struggling with, the foreign sites that are in Chinese or Russian, the sites that have absolutely no 'contact us' information and have been privately registered (in WhoIs) I have come across this domain which links to our site about 8 times and although I cannot find any contact info I can't quite make my mind up, to be honest I would rather get rid of it BUT I'm trying to avoid taking the easy option of disavowing where I can; http://www.askives.com/ Fo anyone who has gone through what I am currently going through, please help me just this once and tell me 'should it stay or should it go'?! 🙂 Many thanks! Andy
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomKing0 -
Local SEO (UK)
Hi all, Question about 'local SEO' or 'Google Places' or whatever it is now called! 🙂 My day to day work is in house for a UK national travel agency and I pretty much know what is expected and what I need to do with regard to SEO. However, I have a friend who owns an 'upmarket' hair salon in my city of Sheffield (UK) and after a rebrand and a complete new website he has asked for my help with regard to 'local SEO' This is my dilemma, because the salon only wants to target the local area of Sheffield (5th largest city in UK with approximately 500k inhabitants) should I focus solely on 'Google Places' and if so, can anyone recommend any guides, books, or training that will give me an overview of what is required? I have previously 'touched' on citations and claiming the 'Google Place' but I could seriously do with a refresh! Many thanks Andy
Branding | | TomKing1 -
Consensus on Paying to Remove Links
Hi all, For discussion... I am painstakingly working my way through a link profile, highlighting 'unnatural links' and contacting webmasters to try and get the links removed - I haven't got as far as 'disavow' or a 'Reconsideration Request' I have found a large number (around 150) of links from http://www.bookmarks4you.com and when I have attempted to contact the site for link removals I have had a payment request in order to do so. Now the amount being requested is low and so it may be worthwhile, however, I wondered what the consensus was with regards to this sort of demand? I know I could simply add the links to my 'disavow list' but for the sake of a small payment, I could get rid of them much quicker! Also, the majority of sites that I am contacting only have a contact from as opposed to an email address that I can use directly - what I am doing is taking a screen print of each contact form in order to have proof that I am actually doing the 'hard graft' as opposed to simply adding sites to a disavow list - is this a worthwhile exercise? Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Unnatural Inbound Links Warning in GWT
Hi all, A bit of a long questions so apologies in advance but please bear with me... My client has received an 'Unnatural Inbound Links' warning and it is now my task to try and resolve through a process of; Highlighting the unnatural links Requesting that the links be removed (via webmaster requests) Possibly using the Disavow Tool Submitting a Reconsideration Request So I downloaded my clients link profile from both OSE and GWT in CSV format and compared - the amount of links returned was considerably more in GWT than it was in OSE...? So I set about going through the links, first filtering into order so that I could see blocks of links from the same URL - I highlighted in colours; Red - Definitely need to be removed Orange - Suspect, need to investigate further Yellow - Seem to be ok but may revisit Green - Happy with the link, no further action So to my question which relates to, is it 'black & white' - is it a case of 'good link v 'bad link' or could there be some middle ground? (am I making this process even more confusing than it actually is?) As an example, here are some 'Orange' URL's; http://www.24searchengines.com/ (not exact URL as it goes to the travel section which is my clients niche) - this to me looks spammy and I would normally 'paint it red' and look to remove, however, when I go to the 'contact us' page; (http://www.24searchengines.com/texis/open/allthru?area=contactus) and follow the link to remove from directory, it takes me here; http://www.dmoz.org/docs/en/help/update.html DMOZ??? My clients has a 'whole heap' of these type of links; http://www.25searchengines.com/ http://www.26searchengines.com/ http://www.27searchengines.com/ http://www.28searchengines.com/ ...and many many more!! Here is another example; http://foodys.eu/ http://foodys.eu/2007/01/04/the-smoke-ring-bbq-community/ ...plus many more... My client is in the 'cruise niche' and as there is a 'cruise' section on the site I'm not sure whether this constitutes a good, bad or indifferent link! Finally, prior to me working with this client (1 month) they moved their site from a .co.uk to a .com domain and redirected all links from the .co.uk to the .com (according to GWT, over 16k have been redirected) - a lot of these 'spammy' links were to the .co.uk and have thus been redirected, should I even consider removing the redirection or will that have severe consequences? Apologies for the long (long) post, I know I'm heading in the right direction but some assurance wouldn't go amiss! 🙂 Many thanks Andy <colgroup><col width="1317"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing
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4 Weeks In - Need to Develop my SEO Strategy
Hello All, 1st post \ interaction on Moz! I'm now half way through my 4th week in an 'Online Marketing' role for an established travel operator \ agent in the UK and I now want to really start working on my SEO (and linkbuilding) strategy. I'm using Moz for most things and I have highlighted (via crawl diagnostics) lots of warnings & errors (15,000 pages crawled, 12,000 errors and 26,000 warnings!) which I will be addressing with the web design company next week... We engage (but not as much as we should) in Social Media and I have an excellent content writer who can write unique, interesting and informative content about our niche - which is quite large! I am obviously keen to focus my SEO efforts on the content and I have created accounts on Web 2.0 (Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger etc), Social Bookmarking (Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit etc) and I have started to engage with other webmasters within the industry in the hope I can submit one or two 'guest posts. Adding to that we have an excellent blog that 'sits off' our site and already has some great content on! I am also looking at other content ideas such as; lists, infographics, quizzes, surveys etc So my question is; do I continue with the 'content strategy' and if so, should i continue with the platforms I am currently using (as above)? I don't think that I'm a million miles away but any advice would be greatly appreciated! Andy
Social Media | | TomKing0