Intermediate & Advanced SEO

Is rel=prev/next necessary for ecommerce?

We are currently not using rel=prev/next for paginated categories. My predecessor instead canonicaled paginated pages back to the parent. This obviously needs to be fixed. The pages should self-canonical. Is using the parameter handling function of Google Search Console enough, or do we need to have our dev team implement rel=prev/next?

| Satans_Apprentice

0

User intent and ranking

Hello, I was doing search to see who ranks on the keyword "bike tours" i noticed a lot of website rank without content "text". Is it because they fulfil the user intent with a search box where you can search by date and destination, trip type and price that google ranks those webpages ? It is the same for the keyword Paris bike tours https://www.fattiretours.com/paris How do they rank with so little content (once again is it because the fulfil the user intent ) Thank you,

| seoanalytics

0

Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?

Hello, I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+). if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do? Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!

| fablau

9

Content suggestions and topics

Hello, In the list of topics that moz recommends, how many of the topics that are recommend should I cover just 2 or 3 or 10 of them ? is the more the better ? Then let's say one of the topic recommended is tennis should I just add the topic tennis once in my content or do I need to cover this topic multiple times ? meaning write the topic tennis 3 times across my content ? Thank you,

| seoanalytics

0

Silo Architecture and Mobile First

This goes to the age-old SEO argument - how many links in the navigation. We are a well-known brick and mortar brand We have 20,000 SKUs and over 500 categories and sub-catetgories. 95%+ of our backlinks go to the home page. We don't have a blog, but it's in the works. Our site is not responsive. It serves up different versions based on device type, but is not an "M Dot". Our rankings are pretty strong in spite of a large number of technical SEO issues (different discussion). Currently, our e-commerce desktop site is "Siloed" (I'm new to the company - I didn't do it). The home page links via the top nav to categories. The category pages link to subcategories via sidebar navigation, or via images on the category pages (instead of product images). It's pretty close to textbook silos, and it's very near how I would have designed it. This silo architecture passes the most link juice to our categories which target our highest search volume (head) terms. The categories pass link juice (albeit significantly less) to our subcats which target secondary terms. In terms of search volume and commercial value, our tiers line up very neatly. On average, the targeted subcat terms get about 1/6 of the volume of our head terms. The Silo concept has been around forever, and is evangelized by Bruce Clay and other respected SEOs. Every time I've siloed an ecommerce site, the rankings improve dramatically, so who am I to argue? So, what's the problem? Read on... Our mobile navigation, on the other hand, links to every category and subcategory via flyout navigation (I didn't do this, either). In theory, this distributes an equal amount of link juice to all categories and subcategories. It robs link juice from our categories and passes it to subcategories. Right now, this isn't a problem. Rankings are based on the desktop site, and minor adjustments are made for mobile rankings. When Mobile First rolls out, our mobile nav will be the default navigation for Google, and in theory, link juice distribution across the site will change radically, and potentially harm our rankings for our head terms. I always study site architecture for a number of respected ecommerce sites. Target and Walmart, for example, link to every category and subcategory through their mobile and desktop navigation. Wayfair takes a silo approach on mobile and desktop, linking in tiers. I would argue that Walmart and Target have so much DA/TF/CF that they don't give a damn about targeted link juice distribution - it's all about UX. Wayfair's backlink profile is strong, but it's not Walmart or Target, so they need to be concerned about link juice distribution - hence the silo approach. Have the Google spokespeople said anything about this? I see this as a potential landmine across the industry. Is this something I should be concerned about? Has anyone had any experience with de-siloing a website? Am I making a big deal out of a non-issue? Please - no arguments about usability. UX is absolutely part of the equation. Usability is a ranking factor, but if our rankings and traffic take a nose dive, UX isn't going to matter. This is a theoretical discussion discussion on link juice distribution, and I know that compromises need to be made between SEO and UX.

| Satans_Apprentice

0

Asking a natural question in H tags ?

Hello, I read that in H tags it is more natural to write the question a user would ask, does it really have any benefits in terms of seo For example instead of "Tour map" writing "what are the villages you visit ?" or instead of "Activity level" write " "what is the level like ?" Does it help in anyway ? Thank you,

| seoanalytics

0

IO Error - what does this mean?

I did a quick check on https://validator.w3.org I got this error IO Error - java.security.cert.CertificateException: Certificates do not conform to algorithm constraints What does this mean?

| BeckyKey

0

Uppercase/Lowercase Reading As Duplicate Permalinks

I cannot figure out if this is an actual SEO issue or just a crawl reader error. I use Screaming Frog to crawl my site and use their SEO features. When I look at page titles and duplicates it shows all our pages twice... some with 1 letter capitalized and the other not. I don't REALLY have duplicate permalinks do I? I also noticed when I use some open site explorers and paste in both permalinks the specs will show for the permalink that's all lowercase but it won't find anything for the "duplicate" permalink that is capitalized. Below I included a few screenshots. Thank you Moz Fam! Q6866xZNUfpF cxXacVajCBGb

| LindsayE

0

SEO Migration Options

Hi Guys, We have a www.sitename.com.au domain name and looking to move into the US market, and other markets in the future such as UK, Canada, etc. We are reviewing our options. Currently the .com.au is ccTLD to Australia so won't perform well in US. It seems the best option at this stage is to get a generic domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like a .com. Then create different sub-folders for each country for example: .com our main country .com/us/ target us .com/uk/ Then in Google Search Console don't set country targeting for entire domain but use Hreflang Tags to specify the targeting for each page? -- This seems like a complex strategy to execute so i just want to check if this would be a optional option? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.

| cerednicenko

0

Website Snippet Update in Search Console?

I have a company that I started working with that has an outdated and inaccurate snippet coming up. See the link below. They changed their name from DK on Pittsburgh Sports to just DK Pittsburgh Sports several years ago, but the snippet is still putting the old info, including outdated and incorrect description. I'm not seeing that title or description anywhere on the site or a schema plugin. How can we get it updated? I have updated titles, etc. for the home page, and done a Fetch to get re-indexed. Does Snippet have a different type of refresh that I can submit or edit? Thanks in advance https://g.co/kgs/qZAnAC

| jeremyskillings

0

Why Is this page de-indexed?

I have dropped out for all my first page KWDs for this page https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates Can anyone see an issue? I am trying to find one.... We did just migrate to HTTPS but other areas have no problem

| BeckyKey

0

HTTPS Update - 1 Category Dropped Out of Google

Hi We updated to HTTPs last week, we haven't had any major issues and most categories on the site are OK, apart from one. We have completely dropped out of ranking in Google at all for our Dollies section: https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates We've always ranked well on the first page for a number of keywords, now we're out of the top 100 - I am trying to hunt for an issue but I can't seem to find one. Can anyone advise? Thanks 🙂

| BeckyKey

0

Entities and Properties

Hello, For example can the keyword " Burgundy bike tours" be considered an entity by itself having certains properties or is it considered as 2 separate entities " Burgundy" with certain properties and "Bike tours" with other properties. Thank you,

| seoanalytics

0

How Can A SubDomain Out Perform A Root Domain?

Hi guys! I have a rather strange SEO question. It may not be that strange at all actually. If a site has a subdomain or a shopping cart that is on a subdomain through a third-party shopping cart provider, can the third party shopping cart transfer value to the subdomain causing the subdomain to have greater domain authority than the main site or root domain? Another question, this subdomain, up until yesterday, blocked google from crawling it with robots txt, however it has a much higher domain authority than the root domain. The root domain has a really low domain authority, despite not blocking google from crawling it. How is this possible? I hope these questions make sense. I am a little stumped & trying to figure out why the subdomain is out-performing the main site despite being hidden from search, if that's even the case. Please let me know if I have it all wrong..

| Prae

0

Tool to identify if meta description are showing?

Hi we have a Ecommerce client with 1000s of meta descriptions, we have noticed that some meta descriptions are not showing properly, we want to pull and see which ones are showing on Google SERP results. You can use tools like screaming frog to pull meta description from page, but we want to see if it's showing for certain keywords. Any ideas on how to automate this? Cheers.

| brianna0

0

Too much content??

Hey Moz comm! My company is migrating all of our content manually from several subdomains into one new, unified subdomain next week. We will be uploading content at the rate of 15 blog posts/day or 75 posts/week--is it possible that we can get flagged by google for this, or is it always good to be adding lots of content? It's all quality stuff, but would they think we're spamming? Just wondering, curious to hear any insights or recommendations, thanks!

| genevieveagar

0

H Tags in Menu

Hi I am checking the H2 tags on this page https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates I have noticed my dev team have implemented H2's on the categories in the menu. Will this completely confuse Google as to what that page is about? In my opinion those links shouldn't be heading tags at all

| BeckyKey

0

Password Protected Page(s) Indexed

Hi, I am wondering if my website can get a penalty if some password protected pages are showing up when I search on google: site:www.example.com/sub-group/pass-word-protected-page That shows that my password protected page was indexed either before or after adding the password protection. I've seen people suggest no indexing the page. Is that the best method to take care of this? What if we are planning on pushing the page live later on? All of these pages have no title tag, meta description, image alt text, etc. Should I add them for each page? I am wondering what is the best step, especially if we are planning on pushing the page(s) live. Thanks for any help!

| aua

0

Website Not Performing after switch to HTTPS

We recently switched our client's website to HTTPS but after the move, we've experienced a huge decrease in rankings (off the map), and traffic. Our metas for the homepage are not being picked up by Google, although it was appearing correctly before the switch. We've implemented all redirects, resubmitted URL to Google, and updated GSC. GSC is also reporting errors in our XML stating there are no URLs to crawl. Has anyone had any issues similar? What do you all recommend? Help greatly appreciated

| SMRTCHInteractive

0

4 ads on SERP

As you know google preview 4 ads on mobile view, So I want to know How much is the CTR's PPC in mobile view? BYaRB

| Pintapin

0

Writing on the web, what is recommended

Hello, I was wondering what is best in term of SEO when writing on the web. Between those 2 sentences for example what is best to use 1)You are going to ride your bicycle to the town of Obernai. Today, your bicycle ride takes you to Obernai.

| seoanalytics

0

Are "feed" Backlinks an issue? - Vigorous Fickle in the rankings in past two months

Hi All! I have been observing a vigorous fickle in my rankings since past two months. Some first page keywords have moved to the second page. Some of my observations from the backlink audit rose below questions: Q1. Are large # of backlinks from "feed URLs" harmful in any way? If yes?
Q2. Am I supposed to get webmasters take these down or block their own feed URL?
Q3. The backlinks come in huge numbers from reliable websites. Do I need to remove the backlinks just because of the huge number?
Q4. What factors to look for if rankings started fluctuating in past 2 months? Note: these backlinks from "feed" are from the websites who posted our editorials. Backlink Example: http://xyz.com/categories/abc/feed/

| Ishrat-Khan

0

Can't support IE 7,8,9, 10\. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern browers while still providing a destination of IE browsers?

Hi, Our site can't support IE 7,8,9, 10. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern broswers while still providing a destination of IE browsers? Would their be an SEO penalty? Thanks!

| dspete

0

For a sitemap.html page, does the URL slug have to be /sitemap?

Also, do you have to have anchors in your sitemap.html? or are naked URLs that link okay?

| imjonny123

0

Whats the best practice for acquisition?

Hi, My company have just bought out a competitor. We wan't to dissolve their website and if possible steal some of their link juice. The site hasn't got any spammy links or 404's so i'm not worried in that department. What I am not sure about is which of the following is best practice? a. Redirect every single page (even pages like /?checkout) to a relevant page on our website. b. Only redirect important pages, category pages, contact pages etc and leave the other pages to 404? c. Redirect the important pages to a relevant URL and redirect the less important pages to our homepage. d. Redirect the entire domain to our home page (i assume this isn't a good idea) e. Don't redirect any of the pages just delete the site.

| DannyHoodless

0

Brand name not ranking in Google

Hi Moz'ers, Could you help me with something I cannot seem to figure out by myself. In June 2017 my company started a rebranding campaign. We've changed our brand name and launched a new website: https://spotler.com. Everything is going fine, but if you Google our brand name "Spotler" our website doesn't show up. How can it be? Our domain authority is 38. It would be wonderful if you could help me. Let me know if you need more information. Best, Simone

| Spotler

0

I added an SSL certificate this morning and now I noticed duplicate content

Ok, so Im a newbie, therefor I make mistakes! Lots of them. I added an SSL certificate this morning bc it was free and I read it can help my rankings. Now I just checked it in screaming frog and saw two duplicate content pages due to the https. So im panicking! What's the easiest way to fix this?? Can I undue an SSL certificate? I guess what's the easiest that will also be best for ranking. Thank you!! Rena

| palila

0

Conditional Noindex for Dynamic Listing Pages?

Hi, We have dynamic listing pages that are sometimes populated and sometimes not populated. They are clinical trial results pages for disease types, some of which don't always have trials open. This means that sometimes the CMS produces a blank page -- pages that are then flagged as thin content. We're considering implementing a conditional noindex -- where the page is indexed only if there are results. However, I'm concerned that this will be confusing to Google and send a negative ranking signal. Any advice would be super helpful. Thanks!

| yaelslater

0

Robots.txt: how to exclude sub-directories correctly?

Hello here, I am trying to figure out the correct way to tell SEs to crawls this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/ But not this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory/ or this: http://www.mysite.com/directory/sub-directory2/sub-directory/... But with the fact I have thousands of sub-directories with almost infinite combinations, I can't put the following definitions in a manageable way: disallow: /directory/sub-directory/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory/sub-directory/ disallow: /directory/sub-directory2/subdirectory/ etc... I would end up having thousands of definitions to disallow all the possible sub-directory combinations. So, is the following way a correct, better and shorter way to define what I want above: allow: /directory/$ disallow: /directory/* Would the above work? Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance. Best, Fab.

| fablau

1

Disavow 401, 403, 410, 500, 502, 503

Dear people, I am cleaning my backlink profile and I am not sure if I should disavow links that drive you to a: 401, 403, 410, 500, 502, 503. I do understand that since last Penguin update, it won't be necessary, but I would like to be sure about it. Any hints out there? Thanks in advance 🙂

| Marta_King_ruiz

0

Should I remove the ?replytocom variables in wordpress?

I'm using Yoast's wordpress plugin and there is an option to remove the replytocom variables. I'm curious what everyone's thoughts were on that, and if I should do it. Here's the site if you need to see it. Thanks!

| NoahsDad

0

Conditional Noindex for Dynamic Listing Pages?

Hi, We have dynamic listing pages that are sometimes populated and sometimes not populated. They are clinical trial results pages for disease types, some of which don't always have trials open. This means that sometimes the CMS produces a blank page -- pages that are then flagged as thin content. We're considering implementing a conditional noindex -- where the page is indexed only if there are results. However, I'm concerned that this will be confusing to Google and send a negative ranking signal. Any advice would be super helpful. Thanks!

| yaelslater

0

How can I use AMP html on a CMS

I have been trying to research using AMP to improve our mobile speed. We have a whole lot of sites on the same platform managed by a CMS. From what I have read, AMP html can only be used on static pages. Does that mean we would not be able to incorporate this into the html through our CMS? I would like to implement this across all our homepages to test the effectiveness of it if possible, but there is no way to rebuild all our homepages statically. Any advice is much appreciated!

| chrisvogel

0

Does the coding of a website really what matter for SEO

Hello, Just wondering if a site that is not coded correctly can hurt your seo even though as a human I can totally understand what is going on on the page and the structure of the website. Thanks,

| seoanalytics

0

Do you recommend using tabs on desktop in 2017

Hi, I know google is moving toward mobile first world but I am wondering if tabs on desktop are still ignored by google those days and what you recommend ? Thank you,

| seoanalytics

0

Backup Server causing duplicate content flag?

Hi, Google is indexing pages from our backup server. Is this a duplicate content issue? There are essentially two versions of our entire domain indexed by Google. How do people typically handle this? Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks, Yael

| yaelslater

0

Dynamic Pages with No Results Causing Thin Content

Hi Mozers, We have dynamic listing pages that pull in clinical trial results for specific disease types. Sometimes diseases have clinical trials and sometimes they don't. This means that sometimes the page will have zero results and sometimes it will return results. We have a sizable number of these so that when there are zero results, these pages look like thin content. What is the recommended method of dealing with this? Is there a way of doing a conditional noindex where the page is indexed if results are pulled in and and not indexed when the page returns zero results? If we can do this, should we? Will it confuse Google and send negative signals? Any guidance/thoughts are much appreciated! Yael

| yaelslater

0

Hreflag Tags - English language & multiple regions

My client is concerned about duplicate content on their site which has versions of the same page in multiple regions. All pages are english language and the regions are; Asia, North America, Australia, Europe, UK and Rest of the World. The url just changes the location to a folder e.g. .com/australia My question is does anyone have any recommendations on how to handle this for Europe, Asia and Rest of the World? Any thoughts would be appreciated

| J_Sinclair

0

Are my language tags correct?

Hello, I have a Spanish website for Spanish speaking people es.example.com. I also have example.com for all English speaking people across the world. I want that users who go to google.es and search in English get our example.com site and others who search in Spanish on google.es get the Spanish site. Should the tags be like this: Or should we also have this tag aswell to specify? Otherwise we might only show the es.domain even for english queris? :

| advertisingtech

0

Can Google Bot View Links on a Wix Page?

Hi, The way Wix is configured you can't see any of the on-page links within the source code. Does anyone know if Google Bots still count the links on this page? Here is the page in question: https://www.ncresourcecenter.org/business-directory If you do think Google counts these links, can you please send me URL fetcher to prove that the links are crawlable? Thank you SO much for your help.

| Fiyyazp

0

Best server-side xml sitemap generator?

I have tried xml-sitemaps which tends to crash when spidering my site(s) and requires multiple manual resumes which aren't practical for our businesses. Please let me know if any other server-side generators that could be used on multiple enterprise-sized websites exist that could be a good fit. Image sitemaps would also be helpfu.l +++One with multiple starting URLs would help spidering/indexing the most important sections of our sites. Also, has anyone heard of or used Dyno Mapper? This also looks like a good solution for us, but was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this product.

| recbrands

0

Robots blocked by pages webmasters tools

a mistake made in software. How can I solve the problem quickly? help me. XTRjH

| mihoreis

0

How to solve this issue and avoid duplicated content?

My marketing team would like to serve up 3 pages of similar content; www.example.com/one, www.example.com/two and www.example.com/three; however the challenge here is, they'd like to have only one page whith three different titles and images based on the user's entry point (one, two, or three). To avoid duplicated pages, how would suggest this best be handled?

| JoelHer

0

Pages blocked by robots

**yazılım sürecinde yapılan bir yanlışlıktı.** Sorunu hızlı bir şekilde nasıl çözebilirim? bana yardım et. ```[XTRjH](https://imgur.com/a/XTRjH)

| mihoreis

0

Why is my website not ranking for it's brand name in SERPs but has been indexed by Google?

The website https://christchurch.crowneplaza.com has been live for a couple of months but is not being found in Google search results - even when searching for it's own brand name 'crowne plaza christchurch.' Google has indexed the site - but we are still not showing - https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fchristchurch.crowneplaza.com&rlz=1C1NHXL_enNZ735NZ735&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i58j69i59l2j69i65.896j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Any ideas as to why? I think it may be because their are two versions of the site, http and https, both with their own rel=canonical tags. Could this be the cause? Any help much appreciated.

| Timmy3

0

Major Landing page removed from Google SERP and replace homepage URL.How do I fix it?

Hi Major Landing page removed from Google SERP and replace homepage URL.How do I fix it? In an SPA website (angularJS), Why it happens?

| cafegardesh

0

301 Redirect - What happens to backlinks

Hello... One of my sites is losing rankings in G. I received the webmaster notification of unnatural links... My question is, should i do a 301 redirect of every page on my site to a new domain? If so, do the backlinks (which i believe are causing my rankings to drop) carry over? How about the good backlinks? Also, what would happen to the rankings i currently have on page 1? Thanks

| Prime85

0

Penalized domain, starting over. 302 or just add a link that site has moved?

Hello, our .com domain got a fred update and to be honest we need to start over. Now my first idea was to 302 the domain as the penalty should not come with this. Other option is just to have a landing page saying, we have a new address its www.example.es . What would be better?

| advertisingtech

1

SPA (angularJS) Ranking Problem

Hello dear experts; I working on SPA website with More than 20,000 indexed pages by Google there is a problem that I involved with: 1- Some pages had a good ranking on google.com but from a week ago, ranks one by one, dropped and homepage Replaced. for example, URL: https://cafegardesh.com/tours-dubai removes and https://cafegardesh.com replaced. Google still see the page when I use Fetch as Google tool. I can't understand what happens Is there anyone can find my site problems?

| cafegardesh

0

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