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Thanks for the info!

I contacted Hostgator to fix the robots file because it had been blocking Google's bot for some time now. So that's the robot file they uploaded.

Yes I use wordpress, and apparently some stupid plugin had originally blocked google before hostgator fixed the robots file yesterday.

So to confirm you don't think anything else should be disallowed except for the /wp-admin directory. With the feeds, comments, etc, there isn't any SEO concerns like duplicate content or anything else that may work against me that should be blocked.

Is this safe to assume?

Thanks again!

Eddy

Hi

My robots file is currently set up as listed below.

From an SEO point of view is it good to disallow feeds, rss and comments?

I feel allowing comments would be a good thing because it's new content that may rank in the search engines as the comments left on my blog often refer to questions or companies folks are searching for more information on. And the comments are added regularly.

What's your take? I'm also concerned about the /page being blocked. Not sure how that benefits my blog from an SEO point of view as well. Look forward to your feedback.

Thanks.

Eddy

User-agent: Googlebot
Crawl-delay: 10
Allow: /*

User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /rss/
Disallow: /comments/feed/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /date/
Disallow: /comments/

# Allow Everything
Allow: /*

We've worked with Brafton for a while now and aren't happy with their service.

So we're looking for an alternative content marketing agency not a digital marketing agency.

Do you have any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks Tammy. It's good to have a second opinion confirming my suspicions. I agree the whole structure of the site needs a lot of work.

Thanks again!

So I've read a few articles about this here on SEOMOZ and other sites.

I understand the benefit of relative url linking from a developer's point view. I've also read that using either internal linking methods doesn't really have any real SEO benefits or cons that would impact your rankings greatly. (Except with the slight chance of getting traffic and backlinks from a scraper site.)

But I'm seeing examples where this may not be true.

I did a search for 5 star hotels in Vegas in google.

Some of the top results were Hotels.com and Expedia.com

Priceline.com was on the second page.

I used the search operator link: to Hotels.com, Expedia.com and Priceline.com  vegas hotel pages respectively:

Hotels.com: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&site=webhp&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotels.com%2Fde1504033-st5%2Ffive-star-hotels-las-vegas-nevada%2F&oq=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.hotels.com%2Fde1504033-st5%2Ffive-star-hotels-las-vegas-nevada%2F&gs_l=serp.3...3650.7043.0.7972.8.7.1.0.0.0.90.363.7.7.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1j2.4kALxt0jpxI

Expedia.com: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&site=webhp&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.expedia.com%2F5Star-Las-Vegas-Hotels.s50-0-d178276.Travel-Guide-Filter-Hotels&oq=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.expedia.com%2F5Star-Las-Vegas-Hotels.s50-0-d178276.Travel-Guide-Filter-Hotels&gs_l=serp.3...1681.3746.0.4076.6.6.0.0.0.0.100.348.5j1.6.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1j2.KxqwbH-YFV0

Priceline: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&site=webhp&q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.priceline.com%2F5-star-hotels-las-vegas-nevada-NV-filter-tk-s5-c291680-hl.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides&oq=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.priceline.com%2F5-star-hotels-las-vegas-nevada-NV-filter-tk-s5-c291680-hl.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides&gs_l=serp.3...11265.12321.0.12767.5.5.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.HYtfct4MS7M

The results were that priceline had no backlinks internally or externally to their vegas page. Whereas their competitors did, most of which were from their own internal pages. Looking at priceline's linking structure and architecture, they use a relative url structure and sessions ids to link to various pages. Their competitors don't. Wouldn't you argue that this may be adversely affecting their rankings. I know other things are to be factored in if you dig deeper. But that seems to be a major difference. It just seems that their content management system or how their site is coded isn't really passing link juice.

Hi Darin, You're right. I ran it using the URL that had some dynamic parameters attached to the URL and that caused the issue. Thanks for the quick response.

Hi,

I was using the On Page Report Card Tool here on SEOMOZ for the following page:

http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides

and it claims there is a canonical issue or improper use of it. I looked at the element and it seems to be fine:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides" />

Can you spot the issue and how it would be fixed? Thanks.

Eddy