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Category: On-Page Optimization

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

  • DragonSearch


    We have a local client who services are very broad and there is no one service, i.e. keyword or keyword phrase, that covers all that they do.  This is making it very challenging to select keywords to optimize the homepage for.  Basically they do everything from engineering, surveying, planning, environmental, etc.  We were thinking we would focus mainly on their most important service which is engineering and then use the other services as supporting phrases.  However, this feels very diluted and there will be pages on the site for each of these services where the keywords will be targeted.  Any thoughts or recommendations for this type of situation?

    | DragonSearch
    0
  • athosk


    Hi All, I'm new in SEOMoz and have some questions after I have already spend 2-3 days trying to resolve the problems identified from Crawling one of my clients websites. I get quite a lot of Duplicate Page Conntent and Page Titles warnings and trying to find a workaround through the forums and posts. I continuously get this error on most of my pages: URL: http://domain.com/benefits with the same Page but with a WWW in front URL: http://www.domain.com/benefits Any advice will be highly appreciated. Thanks, Athos

    | athosk
    0
  • Essentia


    Hi, We have an online gift store and we write new blogs every year. Question is, if we already had a blog that's called 'Top Valentine Gifts' from last year,should we update the blog content with the most updated data, or should we add a new blog called 'Top Valentine Gifts 2012' and rename the old one to 'Top Valentine Gifts 2011' (and 301 redirect the old URL)? Which one is more beneficial in terms of SEO?

    | Essentia
    0
  • zeepartner


    I have to optimize some online Shops and after Panda I really don't know what to think about thin content on product overview pages anymore... used to be that we could improve our rankings easily just by adding 1-2 sentences on such a page. This always worked for non-overly competitive terms. Now It feels like it doesn't work any longer, but I couldn't put my finger on it and I don't have the resources to test. Here's an example of what I mean: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/wandtattoos/aus_aller_welt.html 
    I would add max. 3 lines of text directly over the product thumbnails. What do you think? Is it worth adding some text on a product overview page or do I not even have to bother post-Panda?

    | zeepartner
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    If we allow users to embed our videos on their site, would that count as duplicate content? I imagine note, given that Google can't usually 'see' the content of videos, but just want to double check.

    | nicole.healthline
    0
  • mlqsko


    Hey folks! Newbie here, tried searching for it, but couldn't find a definite answer. I run a large video sharing site and recently started battling the duplicate title and meta description tags issues GWT reported. Here's an example: 2 different members upload a video described as "My BMW". Since the site is running on templates, both videos have the same meta title and meta description. Everything one the page is different, except the meta title and description. The only way I can make it unique is to insert the current VIEWS count in the meta title and description and they would look like this: Video 1 meta title/desc - My BMW video in Cars category | X views Video 2 meta title/desc - My BMW video in Cars category | Y views The problem is that the value of X and Y is changing all the time! Does this matter? Sincerely, H.Marinov

    | mlqsko
    0
  • theshortstack


    Morning all - I've been getting a bit of traffic recently for mobile phrases, so am thinking of putting a mobile optimised page on my site which users will be automatically directed to when they visit my site. My question is though, how will this affect the rankings of those current pages which are trying to target mobile users. For example, let's say I've got a page at www.betting.com/iphone which is ranking really well for those users looking to place a few bets on their iPhone. Once I stick my mobile optimised page up anyone clicking through to this URL will be re-directed to a generic mobile landing page at a different URL. Is this likely to effect my rankings of the original www.betting.com/iphone page at all given the fact that all visitors are being immediately  re-directed elsewhere? Thanks very much for your help

    | theshortstack
    0
  • ShaneO


    Hello! Advice is much appreciated. I'm targeting two keywords, primary and secondary. Should i bold just the primary keyword or primary and secondary? The same for the alt tag and URL. Should i include just the primary keyword or primary and secondary? Thank you. Shane

    | ShaneO
    0
  • hfranz


    Does anyone know the trick to have Google Rankings to be as good as Bing/Yahoo Results?

    | hfranz
    0
  • travelclickseo


    Quick question: I have been scouring SEOMoz.org along with webmaster forums looking for an answer, but we have a person who insists that the H1 tag be located in the Footer. I feel that is is fundamentally wrong because it is not the intent of the H1 tag, and I do not believe it is a best practice. That being said would we see what little value the H1 tag has disappear if we put it in the footer, would we be penalized, or am I being too vanilla by wanting to keep it in the Title position?

    | travelclickseo
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    Just came across this article: http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/tips-for-avoiding-thin-content And, it states, "Google says that it will ignore pages with less than 200 words of body text " I submitted a comment to the author, but was wondering in the meantime if anyone knows where Google says this?

    | nicole.healthline
    0
  • ChristiMc


    Good news!  I have my first real SEO gig and now I have to be able to actually deliver. I'm up for it but I want to be sure I'm seeing what I think I am before suggesting any changes.  I'm working my way throught Danny Dover's excellent book SEO Secrets and learning tons! To see if there is duplicate content on the site, I've taken a sentence from one of the pages on the site and searched for it:  i.e., site:storybooksforhealing.com "Some of the most quiet moments are often the most difficult after a loss. Mornings, late nights, time alone." The SERPs show 7 pages that have this text on it.  It seems like this is duplicate content, right? This is a Wordpress website so what's happening is the actual page is here: www.storybooksforhealing.com/publish-cup-of-joy/ but there are several archive pages that show excerpts of this text, too. If this is duplicate content (first question) then how would I go about remedying it? Should I set the canonical reference to /publish-cup-of-joy page? Thank you for being patient with my NOOB questions.

    | ChristiMc
    0
  • Dallas


    Hello Team, I purchased a domain that's been around for a long time and I have built some decent pr to it. However, when I Google the domain name/future company name VIP Real Estate, it doesn't appear anywhere. Could it be that the domain name has a penalty? Thanks!

    | Dallas
    0
  • kylesuss


    We use some Wordpress shortcodes in our theme and they aren't in the meta description at all. For certain queries, the shortcodes show on the SERPs when Google chooses the description for us -- is there any way to clean this up or prevent it? It's annoying because it includes the entire shortcode, not the markup that gets generated as a result of the shortcode...

    | kylesuss
    0
  • jjtech


    Hi, I'm reviewing somebodies site and just realized that it's overflown with duplicates. Like these: <colgroup><col width="3496"></colgroup>
    | www.joannalark.com/store/products/24"-Sting.html |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/products/24"-Sting.html?setCurrencyId=1 |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/products/24"-Sting.html?setCurrencyId=6 |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/products/24"-Sting.html?setCurrencyId=7 | It also produces something like this: | <colgroup><col width="3496"></colgroup>
    | www.joannalark.com/store/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages.php?pageid=8 |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages.php?pageid=8 |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages.php?pageid=8 |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages.php?pageid=8 |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages.php?pageid=8 |
    | www.joannalark.com/store/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages/pages.php?pageid=8 | |
    |
    |
    |
    |
    | I don't know what to do with that and would appreciate any help Thanks, JJ <colgroup><col width="3496"></colgroup>
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |

    | jjtech
    0
  • HCGDiet


    Our title tag is "<title>HCG</span> Diet - HCG Drops - Example Weight Loss - HCG Diet Weight Loss</title>" But in google it is only displaying "HCG diet" Reasons? What can I do to fix this? I'm trying to get this fixed asap, as it is our homepage that is being effected by it.

    | HCGDiet
    0
  • ClaytonKendall


    Hi all, The website we run is B2B and we have a very difficult time getting customers to write reviews. We have some ideas in the works to get some organically, but I'm exploring the option of using Mechanical Turk. I want the reviews to be sincere, or at least somewhat insightful for customers, but mainly I'm looking for unique content. Does anyone have experience with this or advice on the matter? Thanks in advance!

    | ClaytonKendall
    0
  • apresley


    We're new to SEO, but have two keywords that are really not quite the same, but Google has targeted the same URL for us ... which means that SEO Moz is recommending we optimize the same URL, for opposite keywords (using the on page SEO). For example, the keywords (these aren't our keywords) of say, "beer brewing" and "ways to make beer for small breweries" are both pointing at our home page. The on page SEO is showing that "beer brewing" is a rank of say, a google ranking of 9.  However, "ways to ..." is a google ranking of 47. So ... what am I supposed to do now?  Do I rewrite the page to have "ways to ..." more prominent?  I cannot really have the title and h1's include both ... What do I do now?  We have about 3 or 4 of these "pairs". -- Anthony

    | apresley
    0
  • thenorrisgroup


    We upgraded our CMS system in September and then had an explosion of new errors appearing in SEOMOZ. Most concerning was the too many links area. Our main site is www.thenorrisgroup.com.  Many of the links on the page are set up as no follows and nothing else changed so I don't understand why it's tracking differently all of a sudden. Any ideas?

    | thenorrisgroup
    0
  • stephenfishman


    Within my e-commerce site I have jewelers who using uncommon techniques and maetrials.  I have a few long tail type article ready to publish about these niche topics. My site navigation has each jeweler as a category with their often changing products within their category.  I am thinking I would add an article to the artist-category content. But in the past, I have put "how to" or "what is"  content in an article section of the site.  This way I could link to it from several places. With the long tail in mind, would I be better off adding the article to the jeweler's category page? If I have a 2nd jeweler using this same technique, I am thinking I would rewrite the 1st article including different long tail phrases. Thank You for Helping- Handcrafter

    | stephenfishman
    0
  • Grumpy_Carl


    Can I ask how long after changing the Title and Description tags on a website do people have to wait to see these changes reflected in Google? I changed a site of mine a couple of weeks back, pinged the site to google and had well over 5,000 googlebots to the page (not a result of pinging, I get that anyway), yet Google continues to display the old listing. Any secret techniques to speeding this up? Thanks

    | Grumpy_Carl
    0
  • ociosu


    I have o activate SEF URLs in a website. Regarding SEO, is there any difference between using / or - ? I mean, Is it better to write URLs like this: http://www.domain.com/folder/folder/page or like this: http://www.domain.com/folder-folder-page ? Is there any difference? Thanks!

    | ociosu
    0
  • qurve


    As people who may have seen my past questions know, I run a small website which acts as a business/review directory for local businesses in a specific niche. Right now every business has a page on a url such as: http://site.com/businesses/business-name which shows the top 5 reviews with a link to the full review list which is located at: http://site.com/businesses/business-name/reviews The problem(?) I have is that even for a business with 0 reviews, the latter URL is available and responds with a 200 status code, but ultimately just says "There aren't any" which results in search terms for "business name reviews" often leading to these dead-end pages when I would rather have them land on the business page itself. How is everyone handling URLs? Until the business has has reviews, this URL is useless, but it is a completely valid URL. Some ideas I've had are in order of what I think is best to worst: Return 200, but with a meta 'noindex' tag if the business has no reviews at the time requested Return 404 if the business has no reviews at the time requested Return 302 back to the main business page if the business has no reviews at the time requested Anyone have any better ideas than above for how to handle this situation? One other option is to completely get rid of the full review list and rework the main business profile page, but that would obviously require a lot more development. I'm looking for the best option in the meantime. Thanks in advance for your insight.

    | qurve
    0
  • ostiguyj


    Hi, 
    I really don't understand why I have this message "No data available for this URL"
    in my SEOMOZ campain. (www.bienchezsoi.ca) When I look at my page rank, I get a score of 0 I have no idea of to fix it. Please help. Thanks

    | ostiguyj
    0
  • devonkrusich


    Just finished on page optimization for a client that was on page 2 for the keyword.  Went from an on page score of D to an A.  But we are still slipping down the rankings.  We were towards to top of page 2 now we are towards the bottom.  Is there a time that it takes to change or does the on page not really make a big impact?

    | devonkrusich
    0
  • FrontlineMobility


    Greetings Mozfriends! http://www.google.com/commercesearch/product.html I was wondering peoples thoughts were on Google Commerce Search, and if it is an effective tool. Justin Smith

    | FrontlineMobility
    0
  • FarkyRafiq


    I have a site where most of the pages don't use images. i use the logo on each page as part of the header. As the header is on each page, if i added a keyword into the alt tag, relevant to the specific page as below Would that be bad SEO? Thanks, Farky

    | FarkyRafiq
    0
  • careeron


    Hi, this question might not be SEO specific but i was wondering how seomoz implemented a direct search from the chrome omnibox (you write www.seomoz.org and the press TAB)? BR Carl

    | careeron
    0
  • ENSO


    On page analysis wanted me to add a canonical url tag. However I added then re ran the on page analysis and it came up with an error. What is the proper way to add a canonical url tag in the head of an index page? ie. add a canonical tag to www.hompeage.com/index.html would it be ? Or should I ignore this for a home page? Because I add it then run the analysis again and get this? Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Moderate fix <dl> <dt>Canonical URL</dt> <dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd> <dd>So do I add it or not? If I don't I get a lower page rating if I take it off I get a higher page rating with room for improvement. </dd> </dl>

    | ENSO
    0
  • RobertFisher


    I was just inspecting a wire frame that is going out to a client and realized that the slider may interfere with the "content above the fold." Can't believe this had not struck me on others. If the Header has basic business info, etc. in it and you place a slider to display images in the area just beneath the Header or slightly down from it, does that decrease the amount of content seen a being above the fold? Or, is content above the fold established by virtue of H1,2, 3, etc.?

    | RobertFisher
    0
  • WebDesignBirmingham


    We have a website that has hundreds of crawl errors due to duplicate meta tags. I could do with a tool to help compose unique ones in bulk so we don't exceed the recommended character limit and follow any other best practices.

    | WebDesignBirmingham
    0
  • rasmusbang


    Hi all, (Total newbie with fourth post of the last 7 days askin' for help!...sorry!) I've discovered that we have a lot of URLs indexed with for example: http://test.betxpert.com/some-odd-url This gives me duplicate content in the search engines. I have searched the web and i can not find a solution fore redirecting http://test.betxpert.com/some-odd-url to http://www.betxpert.com/some-odd-url. Can anyone help me what to write in the .htaccess file? Best regards, Rasmus

    | rasmusbang
    0
  • TommySwanson52


    Hi SEOmoz! I have a potential client who is piloting a web application in a specific geo market, but plans on expanding to 10+ cities in the near future (6-12 months). He wants to rank for "[initial geo market] + [service]". Should I optimize the homepage for this keyword (which will be relatively easy to rank for), or encourage him to build out a geo-specific template (could take a few months to add this to the application) for this market, and try to rank that so it's scalable? Thoughts are appreciated. 🙂 EDIT: In terms of the business type, this is a web application that helps people organize their travel. It isn't your local traditional restaurant that is trying to compete with others in their area. We would be competing with other nationally recognized travel applications (TripAdvisor, Yahoo Travel, etc), most likely.

    | TommySwanson52
    0
  • usef4u


    Hello Seomozzers I have a query, is it good to have links in h2, h3, h4 tags. Does it have a positive factor over on page optimisation or a negative factor. Thanks

    | usef4u
    0
  • Prime85


    Hello... I'm trying to do some analysis on my site (http://goo.gl/JgK1e) and SEOMOZ Crawl Diagnostics is telling me that I have 5,769 pages with duplicate content. Can someone, anyone, please help me understand: how does SEOMOZ determine if i have duplicate content Is it correct ?  Are there really that many pages of duplicate content How do i fix this, if true <---- ** Most important ** Thanks in advance for any help!!

    | Prime85
    0
  • Paul78


    Hi Everyone, I have written new content for a product page and at the same time put it on a different URL: example.com/product The previous URL was something like this: example.com/brand/type/product (PR4) So all in all this is an easy enough 301, however, we also have a shop page for this product: example.com/shop/brand/type/product_shoppage.php (PR4) Should I also do a 301 from this page to the new page?:  example.com/product Can you have two 301 redirects like what I am proposing? Kind Regards,

    | Paul78
    0
  • donford


    The best way I can explain why question is with an example. Lets say I have a parent parent page that is focusing on a broad keyword.
    I also have a sub-page which is focused more on long-tail keyword variations. When I make an internal link and give it a title tag, should I give it the long-tail keyword for the juice, or should I use the broad keyword for the parent page's relevancy? Thanks for any help, advise or pointers.

    | donford
    0
  • Bartell


    I have a client who is in the lead generation business for a specific aesthetic service. The company basically generates leads through SEO and sells them to hundreds of local businesses across the US and Canada. There is some serious competition for the main service keyword (this is not the real keyword) e.g. “liposuction” and over the past year we have seen rankings fall significantly (from top 3 to 13-15). But... what I have found is that most of the traffic, particularly the highly converting traffic, comes from local keyword variations e.g. “liposuction in san diego”. However, these keywords are also highly competitive because there are several local businesses in these areas. How would you suggest creating content for these pages when they are all extremely similar and we need to target 100s of cities? For example the page “liposuction in san diego” is very similar to the page “liposuction in sacramento”, ect ect. Thanks for the help!

    | Bartell
    0
  • msperformance


    The analysis said that I have two titles on our main page. www.msperformanceonline.com the 1st is "Camaro Accessories, Camaro Parts, MS Performance" and the second is ( and""). I have looked and can't find out where it is!?! I been looking for hours through the code. Is there anything else I can use to find it? I Anyone's help will be appreciated.

    | msperformance
    0
  • dmurtagh


    Why would my homepage be ranked lower (Page Rank 2) than my other pages on the site (PR3) ?

    | dmurtagh
    0
  • 77Agency


    Hi I have a question about URLs. Client have all URL written after domain and have only one / slash in all URLs. Is this best practice or i need to use categories,folders? Thanks

    | 77Agency
    0
  • KnutDSvendsen


    Google and Yahoo are the two major search engines in Japan. You can search using Western characters, and you often see English language results with Japanese (Chinese) characters next to them. As I don't speak Japanese, how do I approach SEO for my Japanese-language site? would appreciate any experiences and educational sources on the topic.

    | KnutDSvendsen
    0
  • drudalton


    How should I structure my product URLs for the best SEO results? Lets say my product is "American Apparel 2001". Would it be better to run the URL together or use a "-" between each word. Here are two ideas I had, but feel free to suggest others. realthread.com/products/americanapparel2001 or realthread.com/products/american-apparel-2001 Thanks for the help! Dru

    | drudalton
    0
  • onlinemediadirect


    I have a client who is concerned about the performance of his images ranking on Google Images. I have taken a look at the obvious things like - alt tags, title tags , file names. I am not sure why he is struggling quite so much to get his images ranked well as the sites he is competing against and who are already ranking are a very poor quality. This is his site - http://www.ukweddingfavours.co.uk Would really appreciate your feedback and I can dish out some good answers.

    | onlinemediadirect
    0
  • leighw


    Currently this page ranks for the phrase "keep calm and carry on" http://www.paper-source.com/cgi-bin/paper/item/Keep-Calm-and-Carry-On-Bandages/3307.010/413160.html This page is just one product of many in the Keep Calm category.  I'd rather this page be the result: http://www.paper-source.com/cgi-bin/paper/gifts/keep-calm-and-carry-on.html seomoz states: "To prevent engines from potentially seeing a signal that this page is not the intended ranking target and creating additional competition for your page, we suggest staying away from linking internally to another page with the target keyword(s) as the exact anchor text." So obviously I should remove the link from the product detail page, but what other things can I do to get the category page to rank higher than the one product page? Thanks!

    | leighw
    0
  • k3nn3dy3


    Newbie question: an internal link generally should carry keyword anchor text, so if the link is actually an image, what image attribute should contain the equivalent of the anchor text

    | k3nn3dy3
    0
  • dschreib_greenpeace.org


    Anyone have a recommendation for a simple way to measure page load speed?

    | dschreib_greenpeace.org
    0
  • HamiltonIsland


    Hi there, 2 part question: Is it best practice to try to rank for misspelled keywords that bring in lots of traffic or should you instead just try to rank for the correct spelling of that keyword and hope that you rank better on the misspelling as an indirect result? E.G. The misspelled keyword "Hamilton island accomodation" is a common misspelling that brings in traffic but we have an "F" rank for that term (obviously because we spell accommodation correctly on our site). We don't want to misspell anything but are there techniques to rank better for misspellings that won't hurt content quality? The On-Page Optimization tool says that our website doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Aus for "Accomodation Hamilton Island" or "Hamilton Island Accomodation" but when i do a manual search, we actually are the first result. Is this an error with the On-Page optimization tool? Thanks!

    | HamiltonIsland
    0
  • jonesatl


    Can you tell me if we've implemented rel="canonical" properly? We want this to be our primary: http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads- while this would be duplicate and refer robots back to the URL above: http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6054284 We've added the following to both pages: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads- "/> Thanks

    | jonesatl
    0
  • dmunchen


    I have a ON-PAGE optimized website, but seomoz research tool says that 24 pages are F graded, and i was checking the keywords and i noticed that the keywords seomoz research tool was analising wasnt the ones that i used. Let me explain its like this: My Keyword is : Santa and seomoz is running the keyword : Santa Claus Where did the tool got that Keyword from? Thank you

    | dmunchen
    0

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