Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi I have a small private blog on wine which, on Monday of this last week, took an overnight tumble and lost all its first page rankings for wine terms. The blog used to be housed at blogspot but in October I moved to self hosted wordpress. The original site was: wine90.blogspot.com and this now has a redirect to wine90.com. I paid for a professional to port the site from blogger to wordpress and to set up a 301 redirect. Firstly, is there anything wrong with the move? Could I have lost my rankings for this reason? Secondly, I haven't added a new blog post in nearly 3 months, would this cause such a drop? Thirdly, I have noticed that the hosting (I host with the same man who ported the site from blogger) has been poor and the website has been down a couple of times on the rare occasions I checked it recently. I'm looking for some help, although this is not a money making site, its only a hobby that I add to when I have time, but it is a shame to have written 200 articles and now to face this slap from Google. There are no messages in WMT and I do not actively seek links so nothing dodgy there. Any ideas? When I asked the guy who is hosting it he told me that this week there has been a big SEO update but I haven't heard of it?

Hi I have a small personal blog about food and wine that I recently moved from blogger to wordpress and it is currently being hosted by the company who moved the blog over from one system to the other. This week I've noticed an 80% drop in organic traffic thanks to losing pretty much every first page SERP, there's no messages in WMT, i dont pay for links, all that's on the site is original content about food and wine that I enjoy. I've never had a previous drop in ranking/traffic like it. The one thing I can say, is that the guy who took over the hosting is hosting it himself on his own server and the website has been down more times than I would consider reasonable, often for hours at a time (this is when I catch it and I don't check often). Would the site be penalised for this? If I move servers to a reliable co i normally use, how long will it take to recover?

Hello, Many websites now serve specific home page offers based on the location of the customer, my question is, how does link juice flow around a site when the links (this case from the homepage) are served up based on a visitors location? Internal links from your homepage are valuable for ranking that product well in the SERPs so how does Google deal with this? So, for example, a car hire website based in the UK. If you arrive on the care hire website sat in Manchester (Northern UK city), on the homepage the website serves offers of car hire deals in Manchester, Leeds, London and international destinations. If you arrived on this website from London (Southern UK City), you would not see the Manchester link at all but London, and other cities in the South. In this case, when Google crawls the car hire website, it will see internal links but a)which version and b) is there any way of sharing this link value around? Basically, we want to understand if Manchester in this case will get the benefit of an internal homepage link from Google even though we only show Manchester to people FROM Manchester, OR, do Google only give juice based on one version of the website, a generic UK version? Or to put it another way, is there any way of cashing in on both geo-targetting the customer based on their location AND getting link juice from those geo-specific home page links? Perhaps there is some code or way of telling Google that people from Manchester (a certain % of our visitors) will see a homepage internal link for Manchester that will pass some small % link value?

Hello, Not a direct question really, just a poll really of your experience - I work with a few companies and have noticed recently that there seems to be an increase in the time it takes to go from a) showing up in the index (quickly within a day or two) to b) getting a stable ranking. I see spikes over the first few weeks (even up to 3 months) before the rankings eventually settle. Have you noticed the same, is it taking longer to achieve a stable ranking, do you work with any sites that get indexed, rank, and stay in the same slot for moderately competitive terms comparing to a year or tow ago? Interested to hear other people's experience and how long we expect to wait for new content to settle Thanks

Hi I started a blog in 2006 on Blogspot, then everyone moved onto Tumblr and Wordpress, but in August (just) 2013, what should I be starting my brand new blog on? I dont want to have to migrate in a matter on months.

Hi does anyone know a good guide for moving from blogger to wp, without losing rankings and moving over content and comments? I also want to change from a .blogspot addres to my own .com any help?

I'm looking after a site that has around 400 pages. All of these pages rank pretty well for the KW they are targetting. My question is: if we add another 400 pages without doing any link building work, holding DA the same, 1) would the rankings of those 400 previously good pages diminish? and 2) Would the new pages, as more and more new ones are created, rank less and less well?

Hi We run a few websites and when we canonically tag to let Google know which is our main brand for duplicate content we use a canonical tag. However, we are also using noindex, nofollow and noarchive. Is this correct, will the link juice of the canonical tag still flow with these meta names, is it necissary? what is the best practice for the Robots meta name here? <meta name="<a class="attribute-value">robots</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">noindex, nofollow, noarchive</a>" />

Hi I know I can use Twitter and latest posts on Google & Blogs, but I was wondering what are the best tools at the moment to use if you are looking to write about up to the minute information about a certain topic. Say the topic is London, is there a website or tag cloud to understand what people are saying about London right now? Anything better than Social Mention?

Hi We use the Cross Domain Rel Canonical for duplicate content between our own websites, but what about affiliates sites who want our XML feed, (descriptions of our products). We don´t mind being credited but would this present a danger for us? Who is controlling the use of that cross domain rel canonical, us in our feed or them? Is there another way around it?

Hi Im looking at a site with multiple products available in multiple languages. Some of the languages are not complete, so where the product description is not available in that language the new page, with its own url in the other languages may take the English version. However, this description is perhaps 200 words long only, and after the description are a host of other products displays within that category. So say for example we were selling glasses, there is a 200 word description about glasses (this is the part that is being copied across the languages) and then 10 products underneath that are translated. So the pages are somewhat different but this 200 word description is copied thru different versions of our site. Currently, the english version is not rel=canonical, would it be better to add the english version where we lack a description and do the canonical option or in fact better to leave it blank until we have a translated description? As its only part of the onpage wording, would this 200 word subsection cause us duplication issues?

Hi Some advice appreciated.  Started working on a site and found out that they are giving their unique content to their affiliates (an XML feed so appearing on another domain). In this case, if they want to provide the data like that, how can we protect ourselves? Should we use author tags in our html, is that necessary? Is there any fix other than "stop doing that and give them different content"? Thanks

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-plus-content-replaces-ads/41452/ We have a Google plus page, but the results aren't coming up there Do you need a certain amount of people in your circles, what is the criteria to get your brand here? Any links?

Hi The site I'd been following over the years last updated in May, so it's clearly not the authority it once was, I know there's a PPC post here about once a month but I was wondering where do the PPC brigade spend most of their time? My work is 50/50 atm but was once much more PPC focused, is there an SEOMOZ equiv. in the Paid Search world?

Hi We've spent a month putting together a really complete and awesome video guide, it really is a beautiful and useful thing and is hands down the best bit of content online on this subject. - Great... but Getting the eyeballs and getting the links? Related Bloggers and Influencers.... Egobait (anyone who is in the video) Customers (inform those who already use our site) But who am I missing, this is our first guide, and a months work deserves a really good push, how else can I push this content for a) links and b) views. Whats your checklist? All suggestions welcome, I will revert with success of this afterwards.

Hi I mentioned yesterday how one of our sites was losing rank on product pages. What steps do you take to improve the SERPS of product pages, in this case home/category/product is the tree. There isn't really any internal linking, except one link from the category page to each product, would setting up a host of internal links perhaps "similar products" linking them together be a place to start? How can I improve my ranking of these more deeply internal pages? Not just internal links?

Hi Scratching our heads here over SERP drop for some of our product pages, Although they are all uniquely titled with the product name, we have recently added 4 words at the end of our title, like a slogan which are repeated on every one of our product pages. However, we've also seen a drop, but not as far, on related category pages, these have unique titles. When we talk about "unique title" being important for SEO, does that mean 0 reptition between page titles? I see many companies use their site name in the title (even here see | SEOMOZ Q&A - would four words at the end of a title do this? Or am i barking up the wrong tree entirely? Ive seen so much movement over the past few weeks its hard to correlate anything we do with the result, so even after advise I think i'll wait a week

Hi Im seeing our competitors use sites like 24-7pressrelease.com to release rather uninteresting and dubious press releases and it seems to be, looking at their link profiles, the lions share of all links to these particular landing pages. Yet since I've joined SEOMOZ all i've seen is that PR sites don't work and arent worth it. So far, I've resisted doing any PR stuff and have just kept on creating and promoting content which is severely time heavy work. Is there really 0 value in these? If i have 0 PR currently and add just a couple is that worth it? The co. we compete against are at it every week with this site and similar paid sites. Are they making a mistake?

Hi We've just finished a great bit of video content for a page we're trying to push up the serps. I've done some reading around but there are lots of conflicting views. We have created this content (its a city guide) for the purpose of becoming the resource on this topic but we are a new site and we need the links we hope to generate from this, we don't want the links to youtube. Where would you upload the video? Everywhere? One place? Vimeo? Thanks

Hi I've read that creating an RSS feed for one of our ecommerce sites will help the products get indexed faster. Currently it takes google 4-5 days to index our new products, we want to speed that up. Will an RSS feed of the new products we have help? How do you create an RSS feed for this? Our blog gets indexed within minutes, but our main website, 4 days. Help!

Hi There's a question today about paying for Yahoo directory - I wondered if these kinds of links would help with getting indexed. We're adding about 10-20 pages of new unique content each day, but it takes google about 4 days to list it and then it only lists a few pages of that 10-20 pages, we have other older sites and blogs that are within the hour. What tips can you give me for getting at least a same day index, and a thorough one at that, so if we publish 20 pages on Thursday by the end of play Friday they're indexed? Would the Yahoo Directory help?

Hi We recently trialed some new page titles which seriously helped our CTR on serps, so we thought we would roll them backwards to our other product pages, only about 5% of the SERPS show the new titles. Do I need to change more on the page to get google to notice these changes?Or just hold on and wait?

Hi The Googlebot seems to come around healthily, every day we see new pages that we've written the week before get ranked, however, if we are adding 12-15 new products/blog entries/content bits each day, only about 2-3 ever get indexed per day and so, after a few weeks, this builds up to quite a time lag. Is there any way to help step up the amount of new pages that get indexed every day? It really will take 2 or 3 each day, but no more than that, it seems strange. We're fairly new, around 6 months creating content but domain name 18 months old. Will this simply improve over time, or can something be done to help google index those pages? We dont mind if the 15 we do on Monday all get indexed the following Monday for example?

Hi We have a set of reviewed products (in this case restaurants) that total an average rating of 4.0/5.0 from 800 odd  reviews. We know to use schema/restaurant for individual restaurants we promote but what about for a list of cities, say restaurants in boston for example. For the product page containing all of Boston restaurants - should we use schema.org/restaurant (but its not 1 physical restaurant) or schema.org - product + agg review score? What do you do for your product listing pages? If we get it wrong, is there a penalty? Or this just simply up to us?

Hi, Is there a way to get the benefits of rel=author for protecting site content but to disconnect that from the face photo on the SERPS? We added rel=author to our unique and individually written product descriptions and reviews. This has led to a decrease in click thru thus far. I suspect this is because when searching for a product to buy the user sees the face and thinks "review" or at least "not corporate". I don't nec. want to dump rel=author in the sea yet for our ecom pages, has anyone had success with product page rel=author? Four our keywords, we are the only company of 10 well known travel sites that have the face in the SERPS, far from improving our CTR, it has trashed it. Any ideas?

Hi Like everyone I've read a lot about rel=author but is there a reason not to use it? For instance, if you're running the content, as I am, for a travel company, we have individual writers writing the content and guides to cities/hotels/tours etc, but none of our competitors are using rel=auithor, so we certainly do stand out. But does the "personal" touch of rel=author dilute trust in some cases? For instance, if you're booking a specific hotel in London and you type in the hotel name looking for the best rate, do you really want to see a face you don't know beside a "corporate result"? Is anyone in an industry where rel=author is being used in conjunction with products/product reviews. It will work for Gary V and wine, but will it work everywhere? Rel=author is touted everywhere as a sure fire bet... but are there times to back off from using it?

Hi We're an affiliate travel site, and not only are we outranking the site who provides the rates, we're also outranking some of the very big travel companies that provide rates to them. Of course, that's great. But it's also worrying, following the advice of SEOMOZ to the letter we've managed to acheive great ranking for product names and even cities/place, we've got 100% unique content (the affiliate site offer XML but we haven't taken it) with our own pictures, reviews and videos, but is this going to be enough? I'm concerned that, outrank these bigger companies on enough keywords and they will either a) complain to google or b) stop providing us with rates. What steps should I take in this situation? I feel it is our "competitors" job to up their game, rather than for us to try to sail under the radar, but unfortunately and I've been involved in SEO where this has happened before, if you start to rank well, they'd rather pull the plug on you than up their game. Is there any advice out there on this type of thing, how I can at least stay in Google's good books if a competitor does decide we don't "deserve" our ranking?

Hi There, I'm a consultant and am used to working for brands that have their own product. Currently I am advising a hotel site that is an affiliate of another branded site. They do rather well at what they do but I am looking for some advise. I am aware that google tends not to "like" affiliates, I assume this is because the product is not theirs or that they have thin content. With this affiliate they have not used any XML information, they have built all their own pages, taken non of the content from the master site, but eventually, in the buying process the customer has to go off to a white label version of the master company site. Even though all the landing pages have unique content and are currently doing well in the SERPS im concerned that with a Google update sometime in the future, perhaps there will be a penalty. We've done all we can content wise (videos, unique photos, unique words, social etc). q1 - is there any way to link the two sites, the white label and the main content site so google doesn't see it as leaving one site for another? q2 - how is this situation best handled?