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Hi, I've no background knowledge of affiliate programs and am wondering if this would be a good idea for our company, www.vintageheirloom.com? We sell for the most part expensive, vintage bags and jewellery. Would an affiliates program be appropriate or possibly annoy and hinder customer loyalty rather than promote it? I'm using WP with Woocommerce and have seen a plugin that connects Woocommerce with Ambassador. Does anyone have any previous experience with this company, worked well, any things to watch out for etc. One issue that puzzles me if that I get the idea that you can put a tracking code on say a 3rd party blog banner, person clicks and buy product, that gets tracked. But what if customer abandons sale, comes back later directly to site and purchases? I'm guessing this isn't tracked. Is that right? As an aside I've a blogger friend who I'd like to pay for sending traffic that leads to sales. Is this the best way to track? Would the addition of 'How did you hear about us' question during 'Add to cart' process be a back up method? Any downsides to that, other than customer ignoring it? Thanks a lot for looking & any suggestions you may have! Kevin

Hi & thanks for looking, I'm not sure if I've adopted the best SEO URL structure for my site, www.vintageheirloom.com For instance, www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/ Works great for the top level category 'All bags', as I'm trying to keyword authentic designer vintage bags. However the sub categories for instance 'Clutch bags' appears as, www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/vintage-clutch-bags/. As you can see at the moment this URL contains duplicate terms vintage & bags. I'm guessing that duplicate keywords in a url isn't too smart, but should amend with Option 1, 2, 3 or something completely different? Option 1 - keep the top level category url the same, change the subcategory: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer-vintage-bags/clutch/ Option 2 - amend the top level category: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/authentic-designer/vintage-clutch-bags/ Option 3 - amend the top level category as this: www.vintageheirloom.com/product-category/bags/authentic-designer-vintage-clutch/ By the way I'm using WordPress with Woocommerce. I've asked but it's not possible with some technical issues to remove the /product-category/ section. But each product is for example just: www.vintageheirloom.com/shop/vintage-coach-yellow-duffel-sac-bag/ .... sweet. Thanks again !!

Hi Mozzers ! Thanks for looking. I have a new shop in development (http://www.vintageheirloom.biz), I'm now using WordPress & Woocommerce. I've asked Woocommerce whether it is possible to remove the 'shop' and 'product-category' categories. They say it is, but it isn't recommended, it can slow site speed & create possible duplicate pages. I'm wondering what seasoned SEO experts opinions are on my particular structure? I've heard that a flat structure is recommended, but ecommerce shops as I understand pose their own issues, so any feedback would be appreciated.. Here's some URL examples: http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/bags/ - this for the category bags http://vintageheirloom.biz/product-category/bags/shoulder-bags/ - this for shoulder bags a child of bags category http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/2-55-bags/vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/ - a product The last URL contains the category 2-55 bags. The products name also includes the phrases 2-55 bag. Should this level of repetition be avoided or is it best to keep the whole phrase 'vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/' for SEO purposes? Thanks for any help you can give me around this issue! Kevin

Hi Moz, My very humble attempts at SEO has been doing very well for over a year with the keyword phrase 'vintage chanel bags'. Recently, about 3-4 months ago I noticed it dropped from rank 1 to rank 5. I've slowly but steadily been building up more social marketing interaction (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram mostly), brand awareness in company is increasing more searches for 'Vintage Heirloom', great in-links from reputable companies & bloggers. What I'm confused about is that one of our competitors Rewindvintage now appears as no.1 for this keyword but tracking with Moz every metric we outperform them on, namely domain authority & Page Authority. I have noticed they have 4 anchor text links (dubious quality wordpress comments), with the anchor term vintage chanel bags and we have none despite ranking no. 1 for so long?? I'm trying to use the Moz science here, just a bit confused. Any help, insights, similar experience would be much appreciated. I engage only in white hat and look for slow & honest SEO growth (as far as I'm aware ! ). Thanks for looking Kevin

Hi Mozzers ! I'm running a small online vintage bag and jewellery store (www.vintageheirloom.com). Items are unique and need to be written up individually. Whilst the details condition, age etc are unique many of the items name's aren't. For instance, we have over a year had several bags that we've named: Vintage Celine classic box bag Naturally Moz has pulled up these as duplicates, same product title. I could append a unique database id number at the end of each title but it looks strange for the customer. I could add a few details like condition, age & price e.g. Vintage Celine classic box bag - B+ 80s 90s £425 but I don't think this would be entirely unique either. Has anyone a good strategy for creating unique product titles that looks ok and informative to the customer? Thanks for looking. Kevin abut some items do have the same Does anyone have a strat

Hi Mozzers, I've been mulling over whether my URLs could benefit a little SEO tweaking. I'd be grateful for your opinion. For instance, we've a product, a vintage (second hand), red Chanel bag. At the moment the URL is: www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/2.55-bags/red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag-1362483150 Broken down... vintage-chanel-bags = this is the main product category, i.e. vintage chanel bags 2.55-bags = is a sub category of the main category above. They are vintage Chanel 2.55 bags, but I've not included 'vintage' again. 2.55 bags are a type of Chanel bag. red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag = this is the product, the bag **1362483150 **= this is a unique id, to prevent the possibility of duplicate URLs As you no doubt can see we target, in particular, the phrase **vintage. **The actual bag / product title is: Vintage Chanel Red 2.55 classic double flap bag 10” / 25cm With this in mind, would I be better off trying to match the product name with the end of the URL as closely as possible? So a close match below would involve not repeating 'chanel' again: www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag or an exact match below would involve repeating 'chanel': www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag This may open up more flexibility to experiment with product terms like second hand, preowned etc. Maybe this is a bad idea as I'm removing the phrase 'vintage' from the main category. But this logical extension of this looks like keyword stuffing !! www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/vintage-2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag Maybe this is over analyzing, but I doubt it? Thanks for looking. Kevin

Hi Mozzers, Just wondering what your thoughts are on repeating Shipping Info on each product page? Example: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/classic-black-tweed-shoulder-bag-1368793069 I guess I could simply link to the Shipping Page, but it takes the user away from the product page, not good user experience. Other big brand sites seem to do this, but it just struck me this could be looked as duplication. Any thoughts on anything I'm doing wrong, always appreciated. Cheers, Kevin

Hi Mozzers, I've just read this great article: http://moz.com/ugc/how-to-build-a-great-online-fashion-brand-34-things-that-really-amazing-fashion-retailers-do I'm working with my wife on a small (hopefully, growing) fashion website www.vintageeheirloom.com One of the points was not to directly sell on the homepage, rather draw customers into different areas of the site. Seems good advice and it's followed by many big brands online. As a small company, doing fairly well for some targeted keywords, do you think it would be a good or bad idea for me to remove most, or all of the text on my homepage. The main emphasis of our site is vintage Chanel and using the tool nTopic I score 99% relevancy for 'Vintage Chanel'. Removing would certainly affect this. Obviously I could amend my Vintage Chanel shopping category to include all this. I'd be grateful if you have any thoughts / similar experience. Thanks ! Kevin

Thanks for looking. Site is: www.vintageheirloom.com My homepage seems slower than the rest of my pages, & erratic load times, 2 -6 secs. It looks like it loads twice when run through Pingdom tools (http://tools.pingdom.com)? On the results page I can see the html script object at the top http://www.vintageheirloom.com/ and then reappears at the bottom again. Load time 1st is approx 761 ms then 1.35 seconds. I've looked for images that might be loading the site, I saw this as a reason, but I can't see this being the problem. I've seen mention of looking in my .htaccess file if that is the cause. I've removed chunks of code to see any changes but couldn't spot any, still loads html script for www.vintageheirloom.com twice. Thanks Kevin .htaccess file details: <code>RewriteOptions inherit # 1.To use URL Alias you need to be running apache with mod_rewrite enabled. # 2\. In your opencart directory rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess. # For any support issues please visit: http://www.opencart.com Options +FollowSymlinks # Prevent Directoy listing Options -Indexes # Prevent Direct Access to files <filesmatch "\.(tpl|ini|log|ds_store)"="">Order deny,allow  Deny from all</filesmatch> # Prevent Direct Access to files <filesmatch "fbcindex"="">Order deny,allow  Deny from all</filesmatch> # Use PHP 5.3 AddType application/x-httpd-php53 .php # SEO URL Settings RewriteEngine On # If your opencart installation does not run on the main web folder make sure you folder it does run in ie. / becomes /shop/ RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ index.php?route=feed/google_sitemap [L] RewriteRule ^googlebase.xml$ index.php?route=feed/google_base [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.*\.(ico|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|js|css) RewriteRule ^([^?]*) index.php?_route_=$1 [L,QSA] ### Additional Settings that may need to be enabled for some servers ### Uncomment the commands by removing the # sign in front of it. ### If you get an "Internal Server Error 500" after enabling any of the following settings, restore the # as this means your host doesn't allow that. # 1\. If your cart only allows you to add one item at a time, it is possible register_globals is on. This may work to disable it: # php_flag register_globals off # 2\. If your cart has magic quotes enabled, This may work to disable it: # php_flag magic_quotes_gpc Off # 3\. Set max upload file size. Most hosts will limit this and not allow it to be overridden but you can try # php_value upload_max_filesize 999M # 4\. set max post size. uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields # php_value post_max_size 999M # 5\. set max time script can take. uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields # php_value max_execution_time 200 # 6\. set max time for input to be recieved. Uncomment this line if you have a lot of product options or are getting errors where forms are not saving all fields # php_value max_input_time 200 ## INCREASE PAGE SPEED HTACCESS MODIFICATION ## <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header set Connection keep-alive</ifmodule> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css text/javascript application/x-javascript BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html <ifmodule mod_headers.c="">Header append Vary User-Agent</ifmodule> ## END INCREASE PAGE SPEED HTACCESS MODIFICATION ## ## DIVERT NON WWW TO WWW http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-an-easier-way-from-the-server-to-prevent-duplicate-page-content ## <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC] RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]</ifmodule> ## END DIVERT NON WWW TO WWW http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-there-an-easier-way-from-the-server-to-prevent-duplicate-page-content ## # BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> # END WordPress RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^authentic\-preowned\-designer\-handbags$ "http\:\/\/www\.vintageheirloom\.com\/authentic\-second\-hand\-designer\-bags" [R=301,L]</code>

Hi everyone, I'm still new to SEO so bear with me. I'm fairly ok with what determines good 'On page optimization' grading. Have a few good results but mostly for my ecommerce website. Now I'm building up blog content I'm often puzzled how SEO experts balance good editorial web page titles with how people actually search. An example: Buy Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses I have created the page title 'Buy Biggie Smalls Versace Sunglasses - Company' Created a and tag with the same keywords... drop the term a few times on the page, add to a few alt tags, add the term to the url.... but this looks contrived & isn't exactly an exciting web page title which would entice people to click through. Or is it? A more interesting web page title might be something like 'Versace & Biggie Smalls - his influence on a new generation of Hip Hop culture'. Ok this is a completely different long-tail keyword phrase. But do I need to do both? How would a seasoned SEO expert blend the dull search term into some interesting page title and hence all other on page optimization aspects. Hope you get what I'm trying to explain. Thanks for looking... Kevin

Hi there, I'm trying to decide which theme to use. My main concern is if the theme has been built using a stable framework to ensure plugin compatibility for SEO. Also a general question, does the homepage need to have a certain amount of text content for SEO, or can other pages be SEO optimised with text / keyword? Some of the nicer themes seem to have a sparce text to image ratio on the homepage. I quite like this as an initial 'welcome' but worry this isn't great for SEO. Any suggested themes / advice will be welcome. Thanks

Hi SEOmoz I received an email today that another scan has been performed but when I log into my account all the tracking details have disappeared? States Pages crawled N/A. Can someone please help? Temporary problem? Website www.vintageheirloom.com Thanks

Hi there, I'm down to just 6 duplicate page warnings but I'm not sure how to deal with this one: Information Page Not Found! http://www.vintageheirloom.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=6 My Ecommerce shopping site products are unique, 1 of a kind. So once one product has sold and been delivered we take the product off our website, hence the Information Page Not Found! As I understand when search engines re-index these warnings will drop off but new sold products would replace them. So redirecting seems like hard work and never ending. Is it ok to ignore these warnings? Thanks Mozzers..

Hi Mozzers, I'm wondering if I need to tweak my SEO friendly URL structure slightly. Example: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-celine/celine-bags would this be better for SEO if it was: http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-celine/bags Perhaps the repetition of 'celine' is unnecesary, but OpenCart ecommerce CMS requires a plugin / modification to enable multiple use of a single term like e.g. 'bags'. Any benefit for $30? Thanks!

Hi SEOmoz! I'm a newbie, first post, here goes... Working my way through On-Page Report Cards. Noticed this page http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel/vintage-chanel-bags flagged with 'Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document'. Keyword is 'Vintage Chanel bags' and there is just one instance of it on this particular category page?? Any ideas? Any general pointers for me on www.vintageheirloom.com would also be much appreciated. Thanks SEOmozzers...