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Category: On-Page Optimization

Explore on-page optimization and its role in a larger SEO strategy.


  • Hello All! I am currently updating page titles and metadata descriptions for a websites Q&A section and have run in to a problem while updating page titles.  Since it is the Q&A section of the website, all of the page titles are around 100 characters and some are up to 200 characters long.  Here is an example: Page Title:  My child is working below grade level in math. Do I have to purchase the curriculum from the grade below as well? The problem is that this is obviously too long for a SERP to display however I know it is best practice to have matching titles on both the title tag and page title.  My question is what hurts SEO value more:  the title tag and title of the page not matching or having a very long title displayed on the SERP?

    | Myles92
    1

  • Sorry for the second post, thought this should have it's own. Here is the problem I am facing amongst many others. Let's take the search term "Air Jordan Release Dates 2017" and place it into Google Search.  Here is a link:
    https://www.google.com/#q=air+jordan+release+dates+2017 Towards the bottom of the page, you will see a website that has SneakerFiles (my website) in the title.  The exact title is: Air Jordan Release Dates 2016, 2017 | SneakerFiles - Osce Now, this is my content, but not my website. For some reason, Google thinks this is my site. If you click on the link in search, it automatically redirects you to another page (maybe 302 redirect), but in the cache you can see it's mine:
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qrVEUDE1t48J:www.osce.gob.pe/take_p_firm.asp%3F+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us I have blocked the websites IP, disallowed my style.css to be used so it just shows a links without the style, still nothing. I have submitted multiple google spam reports as well as feedback from search.  At times, my page will return to the search but it gets replaced by this website. I even filed a DMCA with Google, they declined it. I reached out to their Host and Domain register multiple times, never got a response. The sad part about this, it's happening for other keywords, for example if you search "KD 9 Colorways", the first result is for my website but on another domain name (my website does rank 3rd for a different Tag page). The page I worked hard on keeping up to date. I did notice this bit of javascript from the cloaked/hacked/serp hijacking website: I disabled iFrames...(think this helps) so not sure how they are doing this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Note: I am using Wordpress if that means anything.

    | SneakerFiles
    0

  • The site I manage (Boutique Estate Law Firm) has at least 350 old blog post archived that were not well optimized for SEO. Would it be valuable to go through and optimize those old posts or just write new optimized posts even though they are on the same subjects? My boss loves to churn out 300 word posts.

    | SEO4leagalPA
    0

  • I am working on SEO for a Shopify store.  Their products are very similar, hence the pages are so similar that Moz shows them as duplicate content.  The only difference in the product pages is the title and model number.  I am going to "go for the gold" and try re-writing all the product descriptions.  It's incredibly difficult due to the products being nearly identical with just a minor variation.  I know I could go down the road of just creating variants --- but the customer is not down for that. Here's my question:  what constitutes duplicate content?  80% of the content, 90%???? If I can going to re-write the descriptions, what should I aim for? Thank you!

    | steve_linn
    1

  • Hello, I have two very similar pages. The first page is an apartment rental page with a map, rental listings and some neighborhood data below. The neighborhood data includes useful info about the area with photos, text about the area, crime rates, avg. rental rates, etc. The second page is a neighbourhood guide that includes virtually the same data as the rental page, but in longer form ie. more photos, more text, etc. I want the rental page to rank, while ranking the neighborhood page is not important as it would be used more for link bait. But since the information on the two pages is the same, I don't want them to compete with each other. I'm thinking of putting a cannonical tag on the neighborhood page pointing back to the rental page. Is that the correct thing to do in this instance? Thanks for your help. J

    | torontojon
    0

  • the original article was created with: /posts/shippers-looking-for-freight-brokers/ How can I fix this so a new URL is not created every time I add a tag to a new posting?

    | treetopgrowthstrategy
    0

  • hello, another problem i am facing is that if i see in my rankings over 90% of keywords are connected with my home page. When i go to moz pro in Page Optimization Score wanting to optimize the page to rank better there are some propositions the issue is that it is impossible to have over 100 keywords in home page title to optimize it better for each one of these. I have more specific build more specific sites for many of these keywords in the site but google continues to rank all those keywords for the home page and not for the more specific page that could also be optimized for every keyword it deals with. In adition the question i posted in moz with url: https://moz.rankious.com/_moz/community/q/greek-language-distinctiveness is also mainly connected with above issue. Please help thanks

    | anavasis
    0

  • We are at a crossroad and it's time to decide which direction to travel. We had 4 physical locations represented by 3 websites, August 1st we now have 6 addresses and are going to redesign our websites. Heritage Printing .com is our primary and does very well in DC for printing & signage. Heritage Printing Charlotte .com does well in NC for signs. How would you proceed? Build 2 more websites for a total of 5: Heritage Custom Signs & Heritage Custom Signs DC .coms Build a unified site under Heritage Printing .com (w/ subdomains or locations folders) I fear losing our Internet Presence and Page Rank w/ Google by unifying but also fear fueling the ever growing fragmentation of our brand. FYI: We recently Trade Marked Heritage Printing & our logo So fellow Mozzers, what do you recommend and how would you proceed? TY in advance KJr

    | KevnJr
    0

  • Hi Guy's, Whats the best way to set internal links on your website: 1. href=: /page/
    2. href=: https://domain.com/page/ Thanks!

    | Happy-SEO
    0

  • I think we all know that ecommerce sites have a lot of repeating functional texts on them. Is there a benefit from hiding this text from Google's crawler? Take this page for example, http://storage3.static.itmages.com/i/16/0805/h_1470425505_1090542_224cc344d4.png Some of the most dense words on the page are "Add to cart", "Add to Wishlist", "New", and "Sale".  Is there any benefit to hiding those words from Google? The method of hiding I am talking about is not cloaking, but this, https://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/gsa/docs/admin/70/gsa_doc_set/admin_crawl/preparing.html#1076243  using the google:off index tag. So the content will be there still, but it will not be indexed.

    | LesleyPaone
    0

  • Are there any best practices on phone number formatting regarding using periods XXX.XXX.XXXX vs dashes XXX-XXX-XXXX? What about using parentheses on the area code (XXX)XXX-XXX? This is regarding a phone number on a contact apge...

    | WorkhorseMKT
    0

  • Is Disqus comments useful as per SEO? We have some comments on each of our pages and its time taking to moderate them, so wanted to know if its beneficial in any ways for SEO?

    | bsharath
    0

  • Hi All, I came across some pages on our site that have multiple robot tags, but they have the same directives.  Two are identical while one is for Google only. I know there aren't any real benefits from having it set up this way, but are there any detrimental effects such as slowing down the bots crawling these pages? name="googlebot" content="index, follow, noodp"/> Thanks!

    | STP_SEO
    0

  • Hi Everyone, I'm not a designer/developer and am an not extremely knowledgeable in SEO, but I'll try to be as clear as I can. One of the designers here is creating a recipe section on our website. He created it so that it's a container (or iFrame?) on the page. Basically, no matter what you click (different sections and recipes) the URL stays the same. I was told to find out from an SEO perspective if it's better to do things this way or have a separate URL for each section and recipe. It's been brought up that from a social/sharing standpoint separate URLs would be better so people can send a link directly to the specific recipe they want to share. Any thoughts/comments are appreciated! Thanks for the help!

    | AliMac26
    0

  • We're trying to standardize the use of tags on our site amongst writers/editors, and I'm trying to come up a list of tags they can choose from to tag posts with - and telling them to use no more than 10 (absolute maximum) per post. We are also in the process of migrating to a new CMS, and have 8 defined categories that will all have their own landing page within our "News" section. TLDR: Do blog tags have any impact on SEO anymore? Are they solely meant to help users find articles related on popular topics, or does creating a tag for a popular topic help to improve organic visibility? Full Question: With the tag standardization, I want to make sure we're creating the most useful and effective tags; and the UX/SEO sides of my brain are conflicted. To my understanding, creating a tag about a high volume topic in an industry helps establish the website's relevance to Google/other search engines about that topic and improves overall relevance; but the tag feed page (ex: http://freshome.com/tag/home-protection/) isn't really meant for organic search visibility. So my other question is, is it worth it to noindex the tag pages in the robots.txt? Will that affect any benefit to increased relevance for Google (if there is any)? I'm interested to hear others' thoughts and suggestions. Thanks in advance!

    | davidkaralisjr
    0

  • My Main keyword ranks no where in the top 100 for any pages in my site. for / I am ranked at number 10 for a great secondary keyword. Really want to get this secondary keywordranking on /secondary-keyword.html , should I focus my main page only on my primary keyord and remove any references to "Secondary Keyword"? What I feel here is that I would be sacrificing my rank for "Secondary Keyword"

    | Adamzoz
    0

  • This may seem like a minor issue but it is something that has been bothering me. When I write a blog post and place images within the text, is it better to have the image linking to nothing or link to the image url. I am guessing that unless I wish the image to rank for a certain keyword then it is not worth it linking to the image url. But would just like clarification if there is a more deep seated reason. Thanks Mark

    | markmiton
    0

  • Hi, My website cache is missing on SERP month ago and its not come back anymore also same on description too. I checked on my coding META Description still there.I no idea about this how to retrieve its back to show on SERP.Any suggestion about this?Thank you.,

    | Joycee_psp
    0

  • I have a large website, almost 1500 pages that each market different keywords for the trucking logistics industry. I don't really understand the new Canonical URL Tag USAGE. They say to use it so the page is not a duplicate but the page that MOZ is call for to have the tag isn't a duplicate. It promotes 1 keyword that no other page directly promotes. Here is the page address, now what tag would I put up in the HEAD so google don't treat it as a duplicate page. http://www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php 1. Number 1 the actual page address because I want it treated like its own page or do I have to use #2 below? 2. I don't know why I would use #2 as I want it to be its own page, and get credit and listed and ranked as its own page. Can anyone clarify this stuff to me as I guess i am just new to this whole tag usage.

    | dwebb007
    0

  • Hi, to cut the story short, i hired a seo guy to do work on my site, paid a lot of money, but then when he was let go all the links to the site were stripped and other work had vanished. I want to know if there is a way to prove this and to also check on any other damage that he could be doing at the moment to my site. The site was running high in the search engines and then dropped a short while after he was let go.

    | in2townpublicrelations
    0

  • Hi all, I'm planning to create a .cn site. If I simply translate the existing content on my site (.com.au) into Chinese, do you think Google will see the .cn site as a duplicate of the main site? Will this cause any duplicate content issues? Thanks

    | QuantumWeb62
    0

  • Looking for input please on best process from an SEO point of view: We hold a webinar We promote webinar in the website (wordpress) as an event When the webinar finishes we un-publish the event and create a resource page for the recorded webinar and copy the content of the original event post I'm seeing 404's due to the webinar event pages being unpublished. Should I be 301'ing the events to the resource page or keep both? or some other proposal? Many thanks!

    | w4rdy
    1

  • Hi, We are using custom wordpresss posts to showcase different services we provide, these are then grouped within custom archives. These custom archive pages are our main keyword landing pages and traffic generators (although ranking is fairly average). It's come to my attention that these custom posts have also been listed in the wordpress standard categories, with an identical title, excerpts and near identical urls as the custom archives. This appears to have been the case for quite a while. We are concerned that this is may causing duplicate content issues and unsure how to proceed. We have been advised to simply no-index the redundant 'standard' categories but as they have been indexed for some time we are cautious of causing any upset with search engines (although the categories are indexed they are not ranking for any major keywords) Are we best 301ing the redundant category to the custom archives or using a canonical tags or simply no-indexing the categories like other archive pages? Any advice is aprreciated Many thanks BC

    | benct
    0

  • I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change: to where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life 🙂

    | abisti2
    1

  • My Moz Analytics report shows a 404 error on a page which I think should not exist at all.  The URL is http://henryplumbingco.com/portfolio-item/butler-elementary/feed/.  When I checked webmaster tools, it looks like there are a number of random /feed urls throwing 404 errors. I am using WordPress and the Enfold theme. Anyone know how to get rid of these errors? Thanks,

    | aj613
    0

  • Hi there, Has anyone experienced incorrect capitalisation of their brand on mobile - we've tried lots of different things to correct it, but so far none have worked. Any ideas (issue is only on mobile)? Thanks Vic

    | Vict81
    0

  • So, from a semantic point of view, it's really clear that this isn't the best practice. My question is, does anybody has a REAL experience with this case? Like changing the logo and having some improving (or not) on the general ranks. Please, I am not speaking about "general recommendations", I am speaking about real cases. 'I checked most of the previous answer and couldn't find a answer with "proper experience", only "general semantic recommendation".

    | Nobody1556904963398
    0

  • Hi, I was curious, if I have a guide with 20 categories, and that guide is in 10 different cities, can I have a category description for each city that simply swaps out the city name? Seattle Big Widgets
    We offer the largest selection of widgets in the Seattle area.  We have small widgets, medium widgets, large widgets. We have so many widgets, most people in Seattle are blown away by our selection. Portland Big Widgets We offer the largest selection of widgets in the Portland area.  We have small widgets, medium widgets, large widgets. We have so many widgets, most people in Portland are blown away by our selection. Would this be considered duplicate content, if it's followed by distinct city listings? Writing 20 decriptions would be nicer than writing 200. Just trying to think about SEO, resources, best use of time, etc. Thanks

    | EBKMarketing
    0

  • should a website's logo be linked to the "abc.com/index.html" page or to the "abc.com" domain root? Is one better for the search engine robots?

    | mtishman
    1

  • I have some basic rules set up in my .htaccess file and just curious as to the implications of them as I seem to have a website ranking very low on Search indexes for no particular reason that I can fathom. My question is a follows I have a htaccess rules set up in my application application that first strips the file suffix and then adds a closing brace for example Rule 1:  http://www.domain.com/my_page.php becomes http://www.domain.com/my_page
     Rule 2:  http://www.domain.com/my_page becomes http://www.domain.com/my_page/ Will this rule expecially Rule 2 effect ranking or will these rule have no adverse affect on the website as my MOZ reports still seem to have pages listed win the Top Pages by PA section without the www? Below is an example of the htacess file. RewriteEngine On Redirect Trailing Slashes... RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /+[^.]+$
     RewriteRule ^(.+[^/])$ %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L] Redirect non-WWW to WWW... RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^contractor-accounts.co.uk [NC]
     RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.contractor-accounts.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301] Handle Front Controller... RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
     RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
     RewriteRule ^ index.php [L]

    | ecrmeuro
    0

  • We're working on a new buildout, and this one is really important to us. We've put a lot of resources into it. Before we launch, we want the structure to be just right... and this one question is nagging at me. How to structure urls? Consider these two options. The fictitious domain is "icesurfing.org". Including all 50 states in the keyword, there are nearly one million searches per month for "ice surfing [state]". We have a page for each state to focus on this traffic. But how would you structure the urls and titles? **icesurfing.org/state ** icesurfing.org/ice-surfing-state One concern is that the duplicate keywords in option 2 seem redundant, and a little spammy. When presented with google search, the matching tags are not as clean. Texas - IceSurfing.org Ice Surfing Texas - IceSurfing.org But Yoast automatically suggests option 2. Is this really the best practice? Is there are definitive article on this? THANK YOU!

    | RetBit
    0

  • I am doing some content analysis with over 200 URLs to go through! Does anybody know of, or can recommend any bulk on-page word count checkers which would help with the heavy lifting? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

    | NickG-123
    0

  • Hi all, I have a subscription based website with a members login. For our branded terms, this login page is outranking the homepage and we're unsure what, if anything to do about it. One suggestion was to deindex it, but the counter-argument was that we'd be taking away one of our spots on the first page. I feel from a user experience, it would be best to deindex it to try and get the homepage ranked #1 since the login page not optimised towards new visitors. Another suggestion was to just optimise the title and description to make it look a little nicer. I would love to hear your thoughts Thanks!

    | CupidTeam
    0

  • I notice that the MOZ Page Grader considers "/keyword1/keyword2-keyword3" in a URL string to be less effective than "/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3". Is this correct from Google's perspective? If I am trying to maximise my SEO for the page title "Business building tips", for example, does Google think my URL is more relevant if it's in the form: 1. www.website.com/business-building-tips
    2. www.website.com/business/building-tips or
    3. www.website.com/business/business-building-tips My instinct tells me 3 is more powerful, but logic tells me if I have a whole section devoted to "business" and one of those pages is "business building tips" then 2 should work just as well, possibly better?

    | Gavin.Atkinson
    0

  • I run a price comparison site, so we have TONS of outbound links.  Should my outbound links be marked with 'rel=nofollow'?

    | lancerpanz
    0

  • There is a lot of debate as whether or not having comments on your blog is helpful from an SEO perspective. Proponents believe that more comments (1) creates more content, which search engines love, (2) creates more relevant keywords that can be searched, and (3) helps with "freshness" of the site/content leading to greater site authority. Others like Joost de Valk believe that comments can actually hurt SEO because keyword density cannot be controlled.  He argues that his top SEO content are pages not posts for this very reason. What is your opinion?

    | marcperry
    0

  • Hi everyone. I'm currently doing some SEO for a client, at the moment he has some landing pages which are categorised, but the category is set as a 302 redirect. I have a dilemma whether to 301 redirect to the landing page or make a page for each category. The link structure is as follows - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/product/ so currently this is set as a 302 redirect - http://examplesite.co.uk/products/fire/company-1/ Do I make this page a category page and link the page to the children with some on-page optimisation or 301 redirect it?

    | Unbranded_Lee
    0

  • Hi, Let say there is a company which resell products and services of other companies. What do you think should be the strategy for putting the description of every service/product? 1. Should I copy the text from the original website and paste it on my page. In this case we get a website that has a lot of copied content, although it is a valid content. I notice that this is quite popular practice with local distributors who sell products of other (multinational) companies. If so, should I rel=canonical to the original product? But than I wouldn't rank for this product on local market right? 2. Should I come up with original descriptions? Would that give me and advantage over the websites that have copied the description from other pages? Appreciate your answer!

    | LeszekNowakowski
    0

  • Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages.  This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks

    | GTAMP
    0

  • Hi Guys Been reading one or two posts about 'naked domains' v the 'www' derivative and was wondering... What is your opinion on this, is there a definitive benefit to your business in making the switch in terms of ranking? Apart from the Google released info, do you have any further recommended reading on this subject matter? Thanks in advance Daren

    | ITsoldSEO
    0

  • I currently have a Wordpress platform website and previously I noticed that when I optimized my pages, if I indicated what I wanted my page names to be (through an application like SEO Yoast) that most times, the keyword would show up exactly how I had it typed in. Recently I have noticed that the title of my website is showing in my page titles too. So for example: Before: Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company Now: XYZ Company | Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company In SEO practices, I know it's most often best to have the keyword you would like as close to the front of your title tag, but now this recent search adds my website title first. Plus this also seems to be making my titles longer. I know Google ultimately has the 'final say' in a page title and I have ensured that I have the "rewrite titles/descriptions option" check in Wordpress to allow me to overwrite titles, but I am hoping someone can possibly provide me with a tip or trick to avoid this in search rankings. I think it's important to have the name of my site entered through Wordpress so that any pages that I have no optimized default to the page name and site name, but the ones I have optimized seem to be showing differently all of a sudden. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

    | MainstreamMktg
    0

  • And should I use one of these to create a nice looking site, invest time, energy, resource, money or will I simply regret it later and stick to the main TLDs? First question on Moz (yey)

    | LGG123
    0

  • Hi, I have submitted my pages in Google fetch for consideration tool but they are not indexed yet in the Google search. Additionally, there is also no error shown by the Google.

    | seo.kishore89
    0

  • We are planning to make our site available to several language, using the plugin WPML in Wordpress. The site should look with /es/, /fr, etc. If someone point to an URL in the spanish version, the english version get any benefit from it? (better search ranking or something like that). Some side question: WPML works fine with SEO and Moz?

    | carlostinca
    0

  • Google say that their quest to make websites more mobile friendly impacts mobile search results - https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/03/continuing-to-make-web-more-mobile.html But I am wondering if having a website that is less mobile friendly effects desktop SERPs as well? We require Adobe Flash as a tool for people to upload their images to us but not on the landing pages we're trying to rank. So our landing pages are not as mobile friendly as they could be (which we're looking to improve) but am worried this is effecting desktop search results even though Google do not claim they do.

    | KerryK
    1

  • Currently http://aoi-corp.com/safety-monitors/series-1000 ranks #4 for Oxygen Deficiency Monitor, the newer product http://aoi-corp.com/oxygen-deficiency-monitor/series-1300-oxygen-deficiency-monitor needs to rank for the same keyword. Will I hurt the Series 1000 ranking? Thoughts/advice on strategy? Thanks.

    | JJSAMRA
    0

  • Do you guys think it's a bad idea to put a review aggregation page in a product's navigation? Such as: "Which Brand of Men's Shampoo Is Best for You?"​ Rand suggests against it in this Whiteboard Friday as it interferes with a product's funnel, but I wonder if including it in navigation will give a domain and that page increased authority for a head keyword, such as "men's shampoo." What do you guys think?

    | Edward_Sturm
    0

  • I made some changes to my site and many of my keywords improved dramatically. Its odd however, that the changes caused the domain authority to go down by 3 points, from 20 to 17. Is this a short term thing caused by recent changes and likely to recover?

    | KrisIrr
    0

  • Can someone explain this to me, as I just ranked a page on our website and intended to do the same for 3 other pages. our home page is currently ranked well, but after reading this (below from Moz) I'm concerned if i'm doing more harm then good. I just ranked the page 3 days ago, I haven't seen any drops yet. When multiple pages with the potential to rank well are combined into a single page, they not only stop competing with each other, but also create a stronger relevancy and popularity signal overall. This will positively impact your ability to rank well in the search engines. Thanks in advance, Lauren.

    | MissThumann
    0

  • Hi All, I'm running through MOZ analytics site crawl report and it is showing numerous duplicate URL errors, but the URLs appear to be unique. I see that the majority of the URL's are the same, but shouldn't the different brands make them unique to one another? http://www.sierratradingpost.com/clearance~1/clothing~d~5/tech-couture~b~33328/ http://www.sierratradingpost.com/clearance~1/clothing~d~5/zobha~b~3072/ Any ideas as to why these would be shown as duplicate URL errors?

    | STP_SEO
    0

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