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Category: On-Page Optimization

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

  • 10JQKAs


    I run a Q&A site (Recessionitis.com), should I limit posts (questions) to 64 characters for SEO purposes?

    | 10JQKAs
    0
  • danlae


    Hi, My website provider made a huge rewrite of code to make the website more SEO friendly and add more functions. It absolutely was a big step forward and gave me more possiblities to improve our site seo wise. We were actually first webshop of 200-300 on the new platform - and thats not always a good idea i guess 😉 I need some help on the best way to solve 1 big problem for us. They changed the URL structure. Ive been building the brand pages and have 2-6 linking root domains to each brand page: for the brand ej sikke lej the catalogue used to be : http://www.epleskrinet.no/ej_sikke_lej/M_16 they changed it to http://www.epleskrinet.no/manufacturers/ej-sikke-lej . I told them the same day the new version was ot the the optimal URL would be http://www.epleskrinet.no/ej-sikke-lej . It wasnt utill i saw the crawl i understood what the URL change would mean to us. We have a decent amount of organic searches and now visitors come to an empty page with an error message. to the brand ej sikke lej i have 6 linking domains going to this page. The new brand pages are a lot weaker then the old one since they dont have the ingoing links.  Our site was indexed yesterday and the result rankingwise wasent pretty. How do i go about to fix this. Is it possible to -301 redirect old brad catalogues to new one ? They are not even in the new site map i am sending in. Thanks

    | danlae
    0
  • GeoffBatterham


    Hello, I am the proprietor of RacquetSource.com, Is there any merit to using keyword domains and have them redirect to the site, or a specific page on the site? For Example, the keyword term, Squash Racquets, if I were to purchase a domain name, squash-racquets.com and have it redirect to http://www.racquetsource.com/squash-racquets-s/95.htm will this effect positively to my search ranking of the keyword term Squash Racquets? Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Cheers Geoff

    | GeoffBatterham
    0
  • dbuckles


    If I have an h1 tag on the page that describes the purpose of the page, is it a bad idea to make all of the sub-headings h2 tags? A designer mentioned that it was frowned upon to make all of the secondary headings into h2 tags, or to use CSS to selectively style the heading tags.

    | dbuckles
    0
  • martincad


    Hi there, we redesign our Website, changing it for a jquery based version. This new design is much more usable and nice for our users, however the average page views for user decreased a lot. Basically this is due to the fact that once the user is logged in, it spends most of the time in the same Web form which is updated through jquery without refreshing it. We were thinking about adding a meta refresh tag, or ad some javascript for getting this task done in order to get the relation page views/visitor increased. Do you think refreshing the page every 4 minutes could be penalized by Google (or other Search engines) ? Which should be the interval between refresh ? Would it be better to make it very explicit (i.e. adding a meta refresh tag) or using a kind of hide javascript ? We want to increase the pageviews but of course, we don't want to get penalized

    | martincad
    0
  • TheVolkinator


    Interesting article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8863354/Google-to-index-Facebook-comments.html

    | TheVolkinator
    0
  • Bluesnapper


    Hi. Can anyone suggest apps that might be applied for SEO change/version control? I've tried using Excel and Word in the past but both fall short when dealing with multiple client sites. Nothing suitable pops up so far. Specifically I want to be able to log any on-page changes that might impact SEO for historical analysis and possible roll-back (manual) eg change date, page title, headings, url, anchor text, alt image txt, body copy etc. The ability to have one view that can be filtered in various ways including by client and by url would be ideal. Maybe this is something SEOmoz is considering for Pro campaign management? Surely there's demand... Thanks Andy

    | Bluesnapper
    0
  • fun52dig


    I want to check content (Keyword Density and such) for a page before I load it to the server.  The Term Extractor Tool is great for pages already loaded on the site but what if I want to scan content before I upload it?  Is there a tool out there where I can cut and paste content from a program like word and have it scanned for keyword relevancy prior to uploading it? Thanks
    Gary

    | fun52dig
    0
  • leaseman


    I'm branching out here from my novice seo status . . . In an effort to channel page rank to the pages I wish to rank for should I make all my non-money pages no-follow. Pages like "contact us", "about us", "application", etc. It seems to make sense to make these no follow so the page rank flows to the pages I wish to rank for. Am I on the right track?

    | leaseman
    0
  • jannkuzel


    Firstly I would like to comment on how helpful this site is. I haven't posted much before but have been reading tonnes of answers for many months now and have been finding it really useful. I used the SEOmoz scanner and the main problem highlighted was duplicate content so I started to add 'customer product reviews' I had received and unique 'further information' to each page (hopefully this was the right thing to do to solve duplicate content! : ) ) Then I looked at heading and title tags. Currently I set title tags for each product page to be "Brand Name- Product Name" but after doing some research we are thinking of putting Keyword Description of Product | Product Name | Brand Name (around 60 characters long). So is this the advised thing to do and create unique titles that are relevant to each specific product page for over 200 pages we have? In addition, any advice on setting optimum tags would be great. We keep reading varying tips online. I gather ideally h1 needs to be a shorter keyword rich version of the title tag? Many Thanks

    | jannkuzel
    0
  • esarge


    Hi, Based on the answers to my question about how to put the spatial location in the URL I'm now thinking about whether and how to flatten my information architecture. My main content is trails and courses. For both categories I have most content for Vancouver, BC (over 100 trails). I have some trails from California and more trails from other areas in BC (5-20 trails for 3 separate counties). My current site architecture is: trails -> country -> state/province -> county/regional district -> list of trails. So a trail page is 5 clicks away from the root. My course structure is: courses -> course list (I have far fewer courses but need to start structuring them) I did a search for site:example.com and found that my course pages rank most highly (probably because I have more inbound links for them) then I get workout pages then I get trail pages last of all. I want to be set up to scale for the rest of the world but I think I have to start winning in my local area first. What ideas might be good for a better site architecture? I'm thinking of doing this: trails -> location page -> list of trails for county. The location page would be a single page with a tree hierarchy from country to county - nicely styled to help the user. Something like: Canada -> British Columbia -> -> Greater Vancouver -> -> Okanagan-Similikameen -> -> Squamish-Lilloet United States -> California -> -> Marin I would make the urls be /trail/ca-bc-greater-vancouver/baden-powell-trail. I'm considering whether /trails/ca-bc/ (i.e. to get the state) should return a list of the counties. I'm worried about duplicate content for doing this. Curiously, my competitors don't have this structure at all. Access to their trails is by searching. Thoughts? Many thanks in advance

    | esarge
    0
  • theLotter


    Most pages on my website contain many numbers above the actual text on the page.  This is useful for users and looks good on an actual view of the page.  However, when a bot reads the page it appears as rows of numbers with a few sentences at the bottom of the page. Does having these number have a negative SEO effect? If so, should I change them to something such as an image so they aren't readable by search engines?

    | theLotter
    0
  • PeterSEO


    Could anybody explain what does it mean anchor_partial_atpiu in ranking factors http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#metrics-1

    | PeterSEO
    0
  • mrkingsley


    What is the recommended practice for badges and seals on the home page. They are currently at the bottom of my nav. menu and thus appear on every page. i have them nofollowed but does that still consume page rank. Is it best to get them on to the footer lower on the page or to perhaps not to have them on the home page and place them deeper on the site.

    | mrkingsley
    0
  • OptioPublishing


    I'm optimizing a website for a dentist and I'm looking for the best approach to incorporating the location into the keyword terms. For example if a dental practice in Boston has a page on Cosmetic Dentistry what would be the best approach for optimizing for "Boston Cosmetic Dentist", "Boston Teeth Whitening" and "Cosmetic Dentist in Boston"? How should I handle the repetition of the location name? Will I get the best results by using the full keyword terms several times on the page "example a" or will "example b" provide similar results? Title Tag: a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Boston Teeth Whitening | Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
    b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Teeth Whitening H1
    a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Boston Teeth Whitening | Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
    b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist | Teeth Whitening keywords to sprinkle through content
    a) Boston Cosmetic Dentist, Boston Teeth Whitening, Cosmetic Dentist in Boston
    b) Boston Cosmetic Dentist, Teeth Whitening etc... It's important to rank for all 3 keywords but the pages would be flooded with the words Dentist and Boston if I use each phrase exactly. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance,
    Jason

    | OptioPublishing
    0
  • PerchDigital


    Hi All Which strategy from below would be best for the purchase of an exact match domain... 1) www.shiny-blue-widgets.com 2) wwwshinybluewidgetsshop.com Wondered if there was much difference in either as I know both have plus and minus points.

    | PerchDigital
    0
  • Lakeside


    Hey Mozzers, I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way that I can stop google reading a certain part of text within my H1 texts? My issue is that I have individual office pages on my site, but many offices are based in the same city; such as 'London'. I want to keep London within the H1 tag for user experience but I do not want it to be picked up by the search engines and start a canonical issue. I've seen some people say to use document.write or use an image. Does anybody know of a correct way of doing this? Many Thanks.

    | Lakeside
    0
  • Webat


    I am wondering if the urls should be in alphabetical order or if they should be set out in a way that reflects the sites hierarchy? Thanks.

    | Webat
    0
  • frank-244375


    I've been told for a while now that quality is king, and as far as the top level down goes, I have improved the quality of these pages incredibly, working from the landing page down to the categories. Now the problem comes when I know that if I describe each product dynamically with great content, this give the best result, yet doing this on over 1500 products is just a mammoth task for anyone, isn't it? I want a way to have good quality content on each of those pages without writing a million words.... is this possible?

    | frank-244375
    0
  • reallyitsme


    Google indexes alll our internetal searches: search box is brand - clothes types - size type - and for each page it creates a page that which creates duplicate page title and unnecessary content. Should I do a nofollow on the advance search or a no index. Many thanks for the info. Sonja

    | reallyitsme
    0
  • amandahx2


    I am using the "page attributes" tool for a guideline for what I am filling in on each page of my website. I feel like I've done my homework on this, but I can't figure out what "html text" is. URL Page Title Meta Description Meta Keywords H1 H2 **HTML Text ** ... not sure what to put here, how long it should be, what it's purpose is, etc. Any SEOMoz links helping me figure that out? I'm not finding it in the "Basics of Search Engine Design" article posted here on SEOMoz.

    | amandahx2
    0
  • aprilm-189040


    Hi. I installed the SEOmoz toolbar for Firefox, and analyzed my home page, then clicked on 'get a full site analysis at Site Explorer'. This is what came up: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.frs-solutions.com%252Fcontent%252Fhome/a!links?src=mb I hope that link works. If not, the URL is www.frs-solutions.com Anyway, there are about 57 different URLS within my site all pointing to my homepage! I have no idea where they are coming from. Can someone with an experienced eye take a quick look and tell me what I might be up against? Thank you!

    | aprilm-189040
    0
  • harryholmes007


    A client's site has HTTPS versions of every page for their site and it is possible to view both http and https versions of the page. Do the search engines view this as duplicate content?

    | harryholmes007
    0
  • ClaytonKendall


    How is it determined which terms and associated urls are chosen when SEOmoz tracks your On-Page Report Card? I'm receiving a lot of F Grades for terms I'm not really interested in and a lot of terms I'd like to be tracked aren't. Is there a way I can manually choose which terms and pages I'd like to be shown?

    | ClaytonKendall
    0
  • MBLT


    Is it bad to present a link to SE robots as a no-follow link, while normal users see it as a do-follow link?

    | MBLT
    0
  • joshcanhelp


    I'm seeing a duplicate title for the home page, both the static file name and the domain. like: http://domain.com
    http://domain.com/index.cfm I know how to set this in Google Analytics but how would I make sure this isn't seen as an error? It's accounting for both a duplicate title and duplicate content. Thanks!

    | joshcanhelp
    0
  • idv


    Hi When looking for our site 'mpn windows' on Bing www.mpnwindows.com it brings back no results for the site?  It has been registered in bing webmaster center with pages starting being indexed on the 3rd October as we only recently included it in Bing. In Google it is showing up ok however?

    | idv
    0
  • MitchellStoker


    There's a site that contains "+" signs in the URL in order to call different information for the content on the page.  Would it be better to change those to hyphens (-), or not that much value will be gained, so leave them as is? Thanks!

    | MitchellStoker
    0
  • svdg


    It is important for me to get good search results for keyword + city name For instance: tulips amsterdam What would be better: renaming index.php or adding the cityname to the URL? www.example.com/amsterdam/tulips OR www.example.com/pages/tulips-amsterdam

    | svdg
    0
  • ThomasHgenhaven


    Hi Mozzers, I am working with a website with very decentralized ownership. There are two different languages, each with a different owner. Owner A keeps linking to crap sites, that hurt the entire site. My question is this: Is there a way - through .htaccess or robots.txt - that Google can be asked NOT to crawl the links to external crap sites? The problem is that Owner B cannot control Owner A's html, and thus not implement rel="nofollow" on links. Thanks!

    | ThomasHgenhaven
    0
  • PIXUS


    Hi, I am creating an e-commerce website and will obviously have a number of category pages i.e. T-Shirts. Each category then has a number of products with the word t-shirt mentioned in the name i.e. red t-shirt, blue t-shirt. Now obviously I would like to search engine the category page with the keyword t-shirt but how do I go about avoiding keyword stuffing as well as self-cannibalization?

    | PIXUS
    0
  • JohnHerrigel


    Hello, I am about to change my sitewide template from a table based one to a div based one.  I am obviously worried about losing ranking and optimistic it hopefully may improve rankings. Any thoughts/experience on this? I have done my best to keep all content, tags (H, alt, title, etc) the same but figured I would see if anybody had any good tips/suggestions? Thanks!

    | JohnHerrigel
    0
  • reallyitsme


    Hi, we have a fashion shop and we try to keep the page title as unique as possible. However google also indexes the search so the say search for brand gucci - type - dress - size 8 - then  it indexes it with the homepage title rather then what the searched for. Should I block google from indexing search variation (because there could be thousand of variations) or is there a module that would use the search as a page title so gucci dress 8 for example. Many thanks for your time.

    | reallyitsme
    0
  • bThere


    I am creating a new site and am looking for some advice on how to structure the site Using Google's keyword search tool it seems like I have a dilemma in that about 50% of the keyword pairs are contained in 10 keyword pairs that are similar The first two pairs have about 49% of the traffic and only differ between plural / singular, not quite sure how to handle that, or if google has a method to make these more or less synonomous The last 8 pairs are roughly similar in distribtuion As an example (not my case, just for visualization) Mountain Bike Classes Mountain Bike Instruction Mountain Bike Workshops Mountain Bike Training Etc ... which all more or less give the same results (yes some difference but they all deal with learning how to ride a mountain bike, again this is not my exact case, don't care a whit about mountain bikes 😉 I don't see giving each of those kinds of pairs their own page since the content would be pretty much the exact same, making it substantially different would also be problematic (if I am thinking about this correctly) I have a clean slate to work with from a site perspective so I am wondering how people here would, or better yet have handled similar situations

    | bThere
    0
  • Mattbyo


    I was looking at the competitiveness of ranking for the keywords "patio furniture" & "outdoor furniture" and was shocked to see www.southernhearth.com ranking so well.  While I am just getting into the research, I was unable to see anything that would justify it's rank.  What are your thoughts?

    | Mattbyo
    0
  • TrendyHost


    Ok...so the other day I went from HTML to PHP in every part of my website. I want to know the best option for me for redirecting my pages from HTML to php. I had my site scanned with SEOMoz and I was given many 404 errors which is not at all good. I do not have any pages of my site linking to any of these html pages. All of the site links have been updated. I have checked 3 times. I have never created a robots.txt file so I would love to get a little help with this part. I was thinking it would be best to tell Google not to worry about these pages in the file. I kept the pages up and I plan to remove all code with them so that no content shows up if someone visits but the issue with that is my site is already indexed as HTML. I want to have the HTML pages redirect to the PHP without worrying that my visitors will land on my site via Google onto an HTML page. I hope I am making sense. What is the best advice you can give me. I need all pages to redirect to PHP. I used an htaccess redirect from all HTML to PHP but when I get so many of them added I get an error on my site saying too many redirects. Seriously need help.

    | TrendyHost
    0
  • bThere


    So I have read on here that page URL Hiearchy is important. My question is from a search engine standpoint which of the following methods would be the best to use (or another if not listed) COMPACT and naturally hierarchical MountainBiking.com MountainBiking.com/adventures ( a list of the pages below ) MountainBiking.com/adventures/in whistler (for each page) MountainBiking.com/adventures/in utah OR VERBOSE but reptetive MountainBiking.com MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking adventures ( intro + a list of the pages below ) MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mounting Biking adventures in whistler MountainBiking.com/Mountain Biking Adventures/Mountain Biking Adventures in Utah It seemed like the blog I read suggested the compact form, but it seems to me that the verbose (though admittedly a bit clunky) seems better so far as exact keyword match etc. Experience and or advice on this?

    | bThere
    0
  • Viktoria


    SeoMoz comes back with duplicate title errors. However these duplicate errors are /feed pages in Wordpress. http://www.guardianpoolfence.com/choose-pool-fence/feed/ http://www.guardianpoolfence.com/how-to-choose-pool-fence/feed/ Why does this happening with only selected pages? I have many more posts but only these two are coming up with duplicate title errors. Also how do I set up meta descriptions for categories and archive pages for example www.guardianpoolfence.com/2011/07 I am not sure how these pages were created and how to give these individual titles. I mean, titles at all... Anyone?

    | Viktoria
    0
  • bbelgard


    Someone recently told me that using branded keywords extensively in your copy and titles may be unnecessary so long as you have a substantial catalog of back links containing keyword rich anchor text. Can I take this to mean I can privilege non-branded terms over branded in my onsite SEO efforts?

    | bbelgard
    0
  • TroyDean71


    Hi Guys, First off, it's an honour to be a part of this awesome community. I'm using WordPress and getting top 3 rankings for great keywords and I'm very excited, however my page titles are in this format "keyword optimised title here - site name here" eg: "This is my keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is another keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is a longtail keyword - this is the name of my blog" SEOMoz is reporting errors because of duplicate page title tags due to the "this is the name of my blog" being in every page title. Will this hurt my rankings? Thanks in advance and keep up the great work! Cheers, Troy.

    | TroyDean71
    0
  • freezedriedmedia


    I signed up SEO Moz about a month ago as i'm currently rebuilding my site from scratch and wanted to learn from current mistakes. At present I use the forum software Invision Power Board to manage my site and one thing i've learnt is that it is terrible for SEO, there are so many thousands of errors listed by the crawler that it's not even worth trying to fix it. However because it has 5 or 6 years worth of content alot of which is on Google I don't want to totally remove it, rather I would prefer to archive it of with a big banner at the top letting anybody that visits it know that it's no longer in use and pointing them to the frontpage. I should note that it is in a subfolder already so the location of any of the links won't be changed. So the few questions I have are: The forum index has alot of link juice and I would like to redirect that to the new forum index, however for archive purposes the old index still needs to be accessible. Some topics are very popular and appear high in Google and have alot of backlinks. The important information in these forum topics will be available elsewhere on the new rebuilt site. Again I would like to redirect both link juice and users to the new page, however being a forum topic there are tens or hundreds of pages of old comments that need to still be accessible for reference. There are bound to be duplicate meta title and description issues with new similarly named categories appearing both on the new site and the old forum, is this going to be that much of a problem? So really what i'm asking is, how should I go about archiving this of without destroying content and rankings, but still making sure that the new stuff is getting the right exposure both to users and search engines alike?

    | freezedriedmedia
    0
  • First


    I have a client who recently expanded to New York from Miami, so now they have 2 active locations. They currently rank very well for local Miami terms both organically and on local maps. Any specific recommendations as to how to go about optimizing for the New York terms without compromising the Miami terms? BOTH organically and on Local map listings.

    | First
    0
  • holdtheonion


    Hello: I've been the publisher and SEO for Indie Rock Cafe since starting it in 2007. It's done great, and has #1 - #5 positions in Google for many strong keywords like "best new albums", "best new bands", "top new bands", "popular indie rock songs", and so on. However, for many of the results, the homepage keeps popping up over and over again. I thought I'd done everything right to get other pages on the site to rank for top keywords. Another potential issue is that I expected the homepage to have a 6 PR by now, but it seems stuck on 5. Any ideas? Insight from SEOs and experts is always enlightening and helpful, so thank you in advance for your thoughts and advice.

    | holdtheonion
    0
  • Martin_S


    Mornin' In your experience, how much constitutes duplicate content? A sentence, a paragraph, half a page, etc? What about quotes - are they considered duplications, too, if there aren't quotation marks? Over the years, the client has been a bit bad in taking a paragraph from here, a sentence from there, and coupling it all together as daily news on their site. I'm now in the middle of a purge. Oh boy! All hail originality.

    | Martin_S
    0
  • idv


    Hi I have just created a new campaign and it states that I have duplicate page content which would affect search rankings. Basically it is counting my site www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/index.php as two seperate pages. How can I make it so that only www.mydomain.com is visible reducing the duplicate content issue? Many Thanks

    | idv
    0
  • Paul78


    I had just made a 301 re-direct on one of our product pages which had a PR of 4, now that Google has indexed the new page, it's now got a PR of 0, i'm struggling to understand why this could be, i know that you may see a drop of 1, which has happened in the past, but this drop just does not make sense. Any ideas of why this could be? Kind Regards

    | Paul78
    0
  • KMack


    Hello, I'm confused about the recommendations for avoiding keyword self cannibalization. I have a niche blog and some of my sticky posts on the homepage contain my site's main keyword in their title. For example, say if my homepage has "dog training" as it's main keyword, then there are going to be links to more longtail pages with titles such as "dog training London", "dog training Liverpool" etc. When I do this SeoMoz's on-page optimization tool tells me that this is keyword self cannibalization.  I am building links to the inner pages using the longtail keywords only. 1. Do I need to rename pages with just "london" and "liverpool" etc and remove "dog training" from those links? 2. What is the best thing to do in this situation? Thanks, Kevin

    | KMack
    0
  • fleetway


    Hi there, I got some 404-errors in crawl diagnostics. How can I get the URLs where the broken links were found?

    | fleetway
    0
  • seoug_2005


    I would like to get advice about the site   http://www.wb-3d.com regarding what we should do to get it highly on Google. This seems to be a tough one as there is not enough content on the site. I would immensly appeciate any suggestion to improve the rankings. Specifically, what we should tweet and update on facebook. Thanks

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • fleetway


    I just read http://www.thoughtmechanics.com/does-nofollow-attribute-work-google-says-yes-studies-say-otherwise/ . Is it really better to avoid using nofollow for local links (from one site to itself)?

    | fleetway
    0

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