Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Li,

It's a common problem in E-Commerce sites. Remember, Google crawls dynamic URLs  so I wouldn't say it will deadly harm your page but yes that URL structure is not considered as SEO friendly and it carries some weigh to effect a bit.

So my recommendation is to go with SEO base friendly URLs and set a canonical tag that will tells the search engines to use the base version of the URL. That way you can still use dynamic URLs like http://www.costumedirect.com.au/search.php?search_query=edward to get your data, but the search engines will consider the basic version as the final.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hi,

Rae Hoffman is a very respectable figure in the industry and I'm quite sure Pushfire serves in a good manner. If the pricing fits your budget, I'd suggest you to give it a shot for a short-term contract to check up things and then extend it (which you will likely do)

Good luck!

Umar

Hi,

I do not think it will hurt your SEO as the primary city of the story is "Denver" and it's ranking well there. You can put up a small editorial note on the top like Moz does to show people it is primarily related to Denver and how it applies to other cities or you can use cities breadcrumbs in URLs.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hi,

Yes, I have worked with the client that in the lighting business. Could you please elaborate what do you mean by general metrics here? As far as I know, the general metrics of conversions always remain the same for every site/industry but the ways of achieving targeted results are different.

Thanks,

Hi,

I don't see anything wrong with this strategy unless the URL D is related to the other URLs that you intend to redirect. If they all are different then you need to find out the other way.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Marc,

I agree, there are some limitations in the plugins but you can add your desired schema manually as well. Though, it will take some effort but it's possible.

Checkout these guides:
http://www.bloggingspell.com/add-schema-org-markup-wordpress/
http://www.paulund.co.uk/add-schema-org-wordpress

Hope this helps!

Umar

If a site has high DA or PA then you, it doesn't mean it's a high authority site.

Search sites that matters to you and invest your money and time there. In the end, you will be on upper edge.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey,

Have you tried to use  "#Redirect 301 http://site.com/folder-old/page-old/ http://site.com/folder-new/page-new/"

This should work out if you still face any issue try to do it with this plugin.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Michael,

Welcome to the SEO World.. I really like you analytical approach to learn and implementing things perfectly.

Coming to your question, it is always a good approach to keep an eye on competitor's backlinks and make efforts to get the links on same places. I assume you're a MOZ Pro subscriber, start using Fresh Web Explorer also to keep an eye on every mention your competitors are getting and try to create something more meaningful assets so that you can easily target all those sites.

Remember, link building is on going approach and you don't need to rely only on competitor's backlinks. Get in touch with bloggers or influencers who belong to your industry (you may use Followerwonk for that) and try to obtain links in a way that it's become extremely difficult for your competitors to copy you.

Contrary to PPC, SEO takes time and you have to be patient to see things going in your way.

Use Moz analytics smartly and do let us know if you like to ask more specific questions.

Good luck!

Umar
Umar

Hey Rishi,

You must identify the areas on which you want to rank for. Find out those areas by looking at your industry's direction and then start doing research on creating web pages. There are multiple great resources available for finding best and most effective keywords for your site. I'd highly recommend you to check out these posts:

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/keyword-research
http://www.seonick.net/keyword-research/
http://backlinko.com/the-definitive-guide-to-keyword-research
https://www.distilled.net/resources/how-to-use-semrush-for-competitive-keyword-research/

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hi,

You might want to navigate on these threads for getting detailed information about Trust Pilot:

https://moz.com/community/q/schema-aggregate-ratings-and-trustpilot
https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-get-star-ratings-in-serps-using-trustpilot-reviews

For the competitor's site, they just have one review on Google which is kind of a negative. I guess, it's a coding tweak.

Let's see what other suggests.

Umar

Hey Denise,

Have you tried to test the tool on some other browser? If it's still not showing, I reckon you're missing out something and yes Google won't be able to read it either.

Please reference to these links for implementing the Schema correctly:

https://moz.com/learn/seo/schema-structured-data
https://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-generating-rich-snippets/
http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/20/schema-seo http://www.searchenginejournal.com/schema-101-how-to-implement-schema-org-markups-to-improve-seo-results/58210/ https://blog.kissmetrics.com/get-started-using-schema/

Hope this helps!

Umar

I agree with Todd. You should have come up with strong points that makes google to relate your branded search query with your web. As your brand is the real one and been in business from many years, they are more experienced, understand the needs of audience and surely can supply ample amount of knowledge as compare to other company.

Though, it will take bit time and lots of effort but it's worth time investing.

Good luck!

Hey Heather,

It's good to know that you're very passionate about starting your website again and planning to do SEO yourself.

Before going further, I'd like to tell you SEO is a full time and time taking job. If you're doing it first time, it's better to do it under someone's supervision so that you can learn and implement good strategies.

Checkout these resources:
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
http://www.quicksprout.com/the-advanced-guide-to-seo/
http://backlinko.com/on-page-seo

And you are anytime welcome to post anything on SEO here. We're all will be happy to help and answer you

Good luck!

Umar

Hey,

I guess you and your competitors are following similar link building approaches

It might be a co-incident but we have to see that trend from every way before reaching to any conclusion. You have to see is time span also the same? Plus, what was your link building approach at that time? Then only, you can have a solid answer.

Umar

Hey Henya,

I think having the local number does matter.. In this way, google relate way better with your local business as it considers that your business does belong from that location. Same goes with the users.

Umar

Hey Paul,

What is the main reason of removing the extension? If you already have SEO+user friendly link structure and getting good organic traffic, I don't think you should mess around with anything. As this .php is really better than scary dynamic codes in URLs.

The thing is, this change can cause you a massive traffic and ranking drop. If you can take that risk, all you have to do is to make redirection of every link and update your sitemaps. And when you're doing this, make sure to launch aggressive campaigns to maintain the flow of traffic.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Abbas, if you also publish 3-5 features post, I'd love to know the bounce rate, traffic stats and social count of them. If they are low, it means you need to seriously work on the promotion strategy.

For handling those 404s, it's better to redirect them on relevant pages. Check out these resources for handling redirection:

https://moz.com/blog/how-should-you-handle-expired-content
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
https://moz.com/community/q/best-way-to-handle-404-errors

Apart from that, do consider my above suggestions.

Umar

Dear Abbas,

Thanks for posting your question.

Your blog has good authority and the design is quite simple. It's good to know that you're using Yoast for handling all the on-page things.

Problems:
Abbas you really don't need to post 4-8 posts every day for the sake of traffic. Quantity of posts will never bring you desired traffic unless you achieve some significance. Another thing that I notice is the low word-count and absence of interactive content (videos, images b/w the posts, etc) in majority of your blogs.  I think you might have a high bounce rate also.

Solution:

1. Do aggressive keyword research before writing.
2. Find out the crawling issues that search console highlighting
3. Post in-depth and interactive content.
4. Start content marketing activities.
5. Promote your blog to all the related communities.
6. Cite external high authority links in your content (you can put nofollow if you're conscious)
7. Allow Guest contributors and add a separate page for that. (This thing instantly grab the attention of fellow bloggers)
8. Conduct experts round-up posts and interviews.

I am pretty sure that, the above things will surely help you out.

Good luck!

Umar

Check the anchor "cheap jordan shoes online" on this links:
http://www.laurawijnhold.nl/fotos.php?commando=fotobekijken&nummer=461

"cheap jordan shoes online" for a music blog, doesn't make any sense to me.

I guess, you should go for a link building audit if you'r not aware of these kind of links.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Roberto, I guess you should try out this method. I'm sure, it will work.

Do let us know if it works out.

Hey Damon,

It's good to interact with the musicians

Damon, I suppose you're referring to www.damonsongs.net here.. I checked this site, it's DA is 21 not 35 and the spam score is raising 2 flags. Please see the shot.

Damon, though 2 flags doesn't indicate any serious action but I still feel there are some links that you need to gt rid of asap. For instance, look out these two links:
http://www.laurawijnhold.nl/fotos.php?commando=fotobekijken&nummer=461
http://www.iopinio.cmslogic.nl/NL/dagdenker/169/46-de-ondemocratische-euro.html

From no way, there is any connection to get the links for a music blog from these kind of sites.

By the way, start writing some more content I'd love to be in your subscriber list

Hope this helps!

Umar

WsS8u2g

I don't see anything wrong in this approach unless you're using the canonical tag. But for KB, I'd suggest to structure in a way that, it's not seems to be the page full of links.. Rather, write 3-4 unique lines with every link. In this way, your KB will look more powerful, credible and because of fresh content the chances of getting it ranked will increase.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Luke,

Refer to this fantastic post of Modestos for better understanding:

https://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

This will certainly help!

Umar

Hey Marina,

Yes, this method will work out without affecting your root domain. This question has already been answered at the following threads, please refer them for more details:

https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-remove-an-entire-subdomain-from-the-google-index-with-url-removal-tool
https://moz.com/community/q/dev-subdomain-pages-indexed-how-to-remove

Hope this helps!

Umar

This sounds really scary! I have to look at the URL before making any final comment on this.

IMO, there could be several reasons for this. You have to explore this from every way. Are you sure, the site is completely recover? I have some reservations on that.

Hey,

The better place for this kind of post is  Inbound.Org Jobs Portal.

Thanks,

Don't use Fiver for "30 High PR Backlinks" kind of gigs.

I always use Fiver for voice overs, content re-writing and some small graphics projects.

Good luck!

Umar

Kashif,

This is the common problem in E-Commerce world. I'm sure Christy will give you the best solution for this.

I'd suggest is, if the products are low in number, it's better to replace the content with fresh copy or at least provide some user-gernaterd content on the pages to stand out.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Eddie,

I believe if they are not focussing on Local SEO, there will be no effect on their rankings. Yes, I agree it's not good for the visitors if they don't find any mean of communication and this might affect them in a long run.

Umar

Hello Mitesh,

It takes bit time to implement if you're doing it first time. I referred these amazing guides:

https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/google-analytics-api-made-easy-google-docs-magic-tutorial/
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v3/quickstart/service-java

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey,

You're right! LinkedIn is indeed very important for every business. Right now, I'm also working on LinkedIn campaigns and so far quite satisfied with the results.

Check out these guides, if you're working on your first campaign:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/9-linkedin-marketing-tips/
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/8-linkedin-marketing-tips-from-the-experts/

Hope this helps!

Umar

Susan,

Yes, you got me right. I will not suggest you to do this database global change.

As far as your SEO approach is concerned, you don't beg people to link you. Although, this is what you want but you need to play your cards smartly. If your aim is to build relationship instead of links, all your campaigns will be transformed accordingly and the links will automatically comes.

TL;DR: Focus on SEO

Hey Susan,

It's never too late if you're open to accept your mistakes.

Coming to your questions:

1. There is no fixed number for internal links.. It depends on the content length, flow and format. For an average, if the post is 700 words long with 5  sub-headings, I will add 3 links. But again, it depends.

2. You don't need to change all of them. Go to your analytics, filter out your most traffic acquiring pages and fix them first. Then, gradually fix the rest.

Susan, your traffic is indeed very good but I'd see the bounce rate as well. If social media is really driving a potential and good traffic, I believe if you start focussing on SEO, you will get the good rankings soon.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Falguni,

From how many days you've been seeing this? Is it a new site? This problem usually happens because of the hosting servers and latest installed security or firewall plugins/modules. Are you using any free hosting service? If not, then you still need to discuss this issue with your service provider. Also try disabling the plugins if you installed.

If none of these applies in your case, please tell us the URL so we can check.

Hope this will help!

Umar

Hey Jaume,

Sorry I couldn't get the first part of your question, I'll comment on the English version.

On which grounds you can say that the link Moz Spam score showing are good? Could you please tell the spam score of those links?

If you're quite sure that those links are indeed good with good authority, getting powerful links from other sources in natural ways and you're able to manually check them from every other angle than you don't need to worry about. But as I said, we need to consider the score first.

Do check out these links for the better understanding of Spam Score,
https://moz.com/blog/understanding-and-applying-mozs-spam-score-metric-whiteboard-friday
https://moz.com/blog/spam-score-mozs-new-metric-to-measure-penalization-risk

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Nighat,

If you're on Wordpress, you can use this plugin. I would suggest you to assign this talk to your developer if you're doing this first time because this can create lots of problems for your site if not done correctly.

Please refer to these resources for better and clear understanding of each phase:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2377744/your-guide-to-301-redirects-for-seo
http://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/how-to-create-301-redirects

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Sarah,

It's always recommended to use words that makes sense to people and search engines. For punctuations in particular, Google usually ignore them with the exception of some.

The punctuations that you can use are: hyphen, underscores, pipes & colon.

The punctuations that should be avoided are: ' + . , | ! " $ %  / ( ) = ? ^ * ;   > ] [ @' For more details, refer to this article:
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/watch-your-punctuation-online.html

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey,

Yes, it does. If you're getting a link on a particular page of yours, PA (Page Authority) of that page will definitely gonna increase and the other linked pages on a root domain level also get the benefit. This is how your overall Domain authority or PR build..

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Jawahar,

It very much depends on the "free blogging sites" you pick.. If you're referring to article directories or web 2.0 kind of sites for getting links on your anchors, I wouldn't suggest you to go with this approach.

As the authority of these sites are pretty much on stake and after the ever going Penguin saga it's good to avoid them. You may try to reach out decent blogs from your niche and try to obtain links from them.

Be safe!

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Mike,

One of my friend who owns a software company used their services couple of months ago and he was quite satisfied with the quality they provided.

Let's see what other experts suggests.

Hey Kael,

I won't recommend skipping H1/H2 tags for **. These tags have specific purposes and they should be use accordingly. Having H1 as the page/post title shows that what your page will about so it's better to use them.

As for the http://www.muscleandfitness.com, even they are using the H1 in post titles. For example, check out this link:
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/athletes-celebrities/news/jon-stewart-host-2015-summerslam I am not sure in which context your consultant recommended this but I'd love to know the impact of this if he has adopted this approach in past.

Hope this helps!

P.S:Sorry for Summer Slam link, I'm a huge WWE fan and can't wait for this Sunday

Umar**

Hey Michael,

Usually these kind of sites belong to a network that runs multiple sites.. Whois look up in the best option to track the details but if it's also not workout like your case, I submit another business with all the wrong details, IP address, fake email address and wait for the confirmation email. Once I get that, I contact them from my original address.

The other option that I lookout is to search on social media, though the chances are less to find the real pages or accounts but you can contact the people who shared something about them in past. For this site, I searched on Twitter.

If nothing works out, then you can clearly tell your client about the efforts you did. In most of the cases, they appreciate your efforts and you can move on.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hello Andi,

I think there is some confusion here "you can rank a page without backlinks with high DA".

Actually, Domain Authority is calculated with number of factors and backlinks is the most important one. So, if the DA of any page is high, it means that domain is getting good links.

Refer this guide for DA:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority If a Domain has good authority, yes the other indexed pages will get the benefit. For judging the worth of other indexed pages, there is another scale called "Page Authority" which tells you how that particular page will gonna perform in search engines.

Refer this guide for PA:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Johannes,

After implementing a 301 redirection, the previous links that your blog pages contained will automatically redirected to the new links.

For more details about redirection, please refer to this guide by Moz.

Hope this help!

Umar

Hey Mike,

I do not think Google will consider this as "Keyword Stuffing" as the ability of understanding keywords and the context has been quite matured over time. If you think "Roho" has to be present in your content, keep it and see how thing goes..

I'd also like to see the effect this practice has made so far..

Hope this helps!

Umar

Nathan,

I don't think every time copying a content on new pages is a very good idea. I'd do this way,

Create a main landing page for "Promotions" and list all the previous organized campaigns under that. URL structure would be like, ABC.com/Promotions (for main page) and ABC.com/Promotions/Aug-2015-Nike-Campaign(for a campaign). If Nike will come multiple times in a year and a company don't want users to see the previous campaigns, I'd redirect the URL to ABC.com/Promotions/2015-Nike-Campaign when that particular promotion ends.

In this way, I'll preserve all the links and the users will see the short, optimized and simple URL for every campaign.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Falguni,

These are the things I adopt before starting SEO of new sites:

1. Analytics & Search Console Integration
2. Sitemap and Robots.txt creation
3. Thorough Keyword research (SEMrush, Google keyword Planner, KeywordTool.io )
4. Competitor's analysis (Similar Web, Moz analytics)
5. On page SEO (Screaming Frog, Raven Tools)
6. Content Optimization (fixing duplicate, updating old content, adding more content on important pages )
7. Targeted link building campaigns (OSE, Ahrefs)

I guess all these things are quite essential for getting good rankings.

Hope this helps!

Umar

Hey Stephen,

First of all welcome to the world of SEO, I am sure you will get the grip on all the channels very soon.

I don't know what have you read about on page and link building yet, I'd suggest you to go through to these tutorial for better and deep understanding.

For learning On-Page SEO:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors
http://backlinko.com/on-page-seo

For Linkbuilding:
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building
http://backlinko.com/link-building
http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

For E-Commerce:
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-for-ecommerce-websites/
https://moz.com/blog/perfecting-onpage-optimization-for-ecommerce-websites

For your question regarding the on page fixing, yes you should fix all the pages. But, fix the important ones first. If you have analytics installed, go and check your important pages and start fixing them one by one. If you haven't installed the analytics, then target the pages that you think are important.

Currently your site requires proper on page fixing, plus the design needs some revamp. There are lots of white spaces that can be utilized. Plus, the header section is bit crowded too. Seems you haven't build lot of links for this also.

I'm sure after carefully reading the above links, you're be able to get the desired results.

Remember, SEO requires patience and it's the game of experiments.

Hope this helps!

Good luck!

Umar

Hey,

I agree, this site could combine these both pages not only to rank better but to get a very good response from users and attract links. I am not sure but seems they might did it intentionally to rank better on different keywords. Though, the idea is bit old but it's still working

I suppose that in this scenario, when Google (presenting two lines from the same site on first page) is easy to outrank at least one result by producing something more powerful and interesting. I did that in past once and it's worked out.

Umar