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Category: Intermediate & Advanced SEO

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  • Moz Community, So we have a website that we are moving to SSL. It has been 4 years since we submitted our disavow file to google via GWT. We decided to go through our backlinks and realized that many domains we are disavowing currently (under Since we are moving to SSL I understand Google looks at this as a new site. Therefore, we decided to go through our backlinks and realized that many domains we are disavowing currently are no longer active (after 4 years this is expected). Therefore, is it ok to create a new disavow file with the new profile on GW (ssl version of our site)? Also, is it ok the new GW disavow file doesn't include urls we previously disavowed with the non https version? Some links from the old disavow we found were disavowed but they shouldn't have been. Moreover, we found new links we wanted to disavow as well. Thanks QL

    | QuickLearner
    0

  • Hi Guys, Have a site which has 302 redirects installed for pages like: https://domain.com.au/ to https://www.domain.com.au/ (302 redirect) Is it worth changing the redirect to a 301? This is a large site, like 10,000 pages. Also does anyone know how can this be done via Magento? Cheers

    | bridhard8
    0

  • Hi guys, Have a large e-commerce site 10,000 pages as a client and they are currently not getting much organic traffic to their level 3 sub-category pages, the URLs are like: https://www.domain.com.au/category/s...-category-type These pages have been on-page optimised, category content added, yet hardly any traffic. However the site level 1, level 2 pages do quite well. So this suggests this might be an internal linking issue? The site is definitely not penalized and as enough authority for these level 3 pages to rank. Any ideas would be very much appreciated! Cheers.

    | bridhard8
    0

  • 2 sites have the same urls but the owner wants just the 1 site. So I will be doing a 301 redirect with .htaccess from https://www.example.co.uk/sportsbook/SOCCER/today/ redirecting to https://www.example.com//sportsbook/SOCCER/today/ There are a lot of urls that are the same, so I was wondering what the rule is to put in the file please that will change them all to the corresponding urls? Would this be correct?... RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS_HOST} ^example.co.uk [NC,OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS_HOST} ^www.example.co.uk [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com$1 [L,R=301,NC] Or would a simple rule like this work... redirect 301 / http://www.new domain.com/ If not correct could you please give me the correct rule, thanks! Then of course doing a change of address of address in webmaster tools after. Also... do I still need to do the forwarding from the https://www.example.co.uk/ domain provider after as well? Many thanks for your help in advance.

    | WSIDW
    0

  • We are having, say around 100 products, cakes to be specific, with different flavors, available in more than 100000 areas of 200 plus cities. Now to make it SEO friendly, we have an algorithm which creates a unique page for each cake name, with area name, and few keywords, so that if customer is searching for cake delivery in any specific area of specific city, the user will easily find the right page. Now the thing is - when creating such unique pages for different combinations of cake, city and areas, it is also creating some content. So we wanted to know how much is the importance given to Grammatically correct statement compared to incorrect statement in ranking a page. for example: there is 1Kg Chocolate Cake, available in Satellite Area of Ahmedabad city, which one of the following Page title will have higher ranking? Case A: Send 1Kg chocolate cake to satellite area ahmedabad online Case B: Online 1kg Chocolate Cake delivery in Satellite Ahmedabad In Case A: the statement contains all keywords, but there are some grammatical mistakes in formation of statement as well as Capital Characters are not used for Satellite (Area name) and Ahmedabad (City name) In Case B: the statement is grammatical proper, as well as capital characters are used for Area name and City name. Does all search engine also have their algorithm designed to analyze the grammatical structure of page title or it just scans the keywords? Thanks in advance. Team Midnightcake

    | midnightcake
    1

  • Hello Client got website with javascript generated content. All links there (from mainpage to some deeper page) are js generated. In code there're only javascripts and other basic typical code but no text links (<a href...="" ).<="" p=""></a> <a href...="" ).<="" p="">The question is: are those js links got the same "seo power" as typical html href links?.For example majestic.com can't scan website properly and can't show seo metrics for pages. I know google crawls them (links and pages) but are they as good as typical links?</a> <a href...="" ).<="" p="">Regards,</a>

    | PenaltyHammer
    0

  • A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page  is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?

    | ostesmorbrod
    0

  • Hi, I recently found I can no longer view our web pages in Google's cache. I get 404 errors. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ashop.nordstrom.com%2Fc%2Fwomens-shoes&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&oq=cache%3Ashop.nordstrom.com%2Fc%2Fwomens-shoes&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.3575j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 I did a fetch and render in Search Console and found our header includes a "cache-control: private" entry. The 404's started happening recently. Would this response be the culprit? If Google cannot cache the website, is this bad for SEO? On the surface of it, it sounds bad.

    | shop.nordstrom
    0

  • Hello, I am working with a client in the indoor / outdoor wicker furniture area.  They have "wicker" in their domain.  However using the moz keyword ranking tool they do not appear at all in 51+ results.  There was a time that we were appearing on page 1 but then dropped off. Anyone have any ideas on what could be causing us not to rank at all for that generic term?  Our google places listing does come up for when people are local to the store and search, but the website does not.

    | creatingdigital
    1

  • I've recently taken over an in-house role at a property auction company, they have a main site on the top-level domain (TLD) and 400+ agency sub domains! company.com agency1.company.com agency2.company.com... I recently found that the web development team have a demo domain per site, which is found on a subdomain of the original domain - mirroring the site. The problem is that they have all been found and indexed by Google: demo.company.com demo.agency1.company.com demo.agency2.company.com... Obviously this is a problem as it is duplicate content and so on, so my question is... what is the best way to remove the demo domain / sub domains from Google's index? We are taking action to add a noindex tag into the header (of all pages) on the individual domains but this isn't going to get it removed any time soon! Or is it? I was also going to add a robots.txt file into the root of each domain, just as a precaution! Within this file I had intended to disallow all. The final course of action (which I'm holding off in the hope someone comes up with a better solution) is to add each demo domain / sub domain into Google Webmaster and remove the URLs individually. Or would it be better to go down the canonical route?

    | iam-sold
    0

  • Hi Mozzer... so, i keep thinking of this... what is the bad effect of submitting the sitemap frequently? is it something like google would smell something suspicious and begin to decrease my website's authority? and is there any supporting articles for it? my website is an e-commerce website by the way... so please, help me with this.. Thank you 🙂

    | ricoplaza
    0

  • Hey Guys, **My site is **http://www.citymetrocarpetcleaning.com.au/ Goal: I am checking if there is an HTTPS version of my site (duplication issue) What I did: 1. I went to Screaming Frog and run https://www.citymetrocarpetcleaning.com.au/. The result is that it is 200 OK (the HTTPS version exists - possible duplication) 2. Next, I opened a browser and manually replace HTTP with HTTPS, the result is "Image 1" which doesn't indicate a duplication. But if we go deeper in Advanced > Proceed to www.citymetrocarpetcleaning.com.au (unsafe) "Image 2", it displays the content (Image 3). Question: 1. Is there an HTTP vs HTTPs duplication here? 2. Do I need to implement 301 redirection/canonical tags on HTTPS pointing to HTTP to solve duplication? Please help! Cheers! uIgJv DsNrA El7aI

    | gamajunova
    0

  • Hello, I have a website that has been existing for years. How long does it take if I have a good content on a page for it to rank ? I read here and that that it can take 4 to 6 months but it never says if it is for a brand new website or a old website that has an authority and some links. I also read that some people publish content and rank within a week on competitive keywords. So who is right, what is there to read in between the lines ?

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hi - I was just wondering whether a URL with extra trailing slashes should actuall redirect to the version without the extra trailing slashes... e.g. www.domainname.com/folder////// should automatically resolve to www.domainname.com/folder/ - what is your opinion on this?

    | McTaggart
    0

  • Hello, I just published a blog page a few days ago and it currently ranks on 3 rd page for the keyword "loire valley bike tours". Something I haven't managed to do for years with my page that talks about tours in the loire valley. My guess is that I have better content on it. Now my question is : will it continue climbing (if so at what rate) or will it stay there unless I improve my content and get links to it or will google calculate its PR and have it slowly climb over time...without changing anything. Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hi We've recently had a product launch for one of our clients. Historically speaking Google has been quick to respond, i.e when the page for the product goes live it's indexed and performing for branded terms within 10 minutes (without 'Fetch and Render'). This time however, we found that it took Google over an hour to index the pages. we found initially that press coverage ranked until we were indexed. Nothing major had changed in terms of the page structure, content, internal linking etc; these were brand new pages, with new product content. Has anyone ever experienced Google having an 'off' day or being uncharacteristically slow with indexing? We do have a few ideas what could have caused this, but we were interested to see if anyone else had experienced this sort of change in Google's behaviour, either recently or previously? Thanks.

    | punchseo
    0

  • I cannot find hard and fast direction about the following issue: It looks like the Robots.txt file on my server has been set up to disallow "account" and "search" pages within my site, so I am receiving warnings from the Google Search console that URLs are being blocked by Robots.txt. (Disallow: /Account/ and Disallow: /?search=). Do you recommend unblocking these URLs? I'm getting a warning that over 18,000 Urls are blocked by robots.txt. ("Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt"). Seems that I wouldn't want that many urls blocked. ? Thank you!!

    | jamiegriz
    0

  • I've got an FAQ plugin (Ultimate FAQ) for a Wordpress site with tons of content (like 30 questions each with a page full, multi-paragraphs, of answers with good info -- stuff Google LOVES.) Right now, I have a main FAQ page that has 3 categories and about 10 questions under each category and each question is collapsed by default. You click an arrow to expand it to reveal the answer.I then have a single category's questions also displayed at the bottom of an appropriate related page.  So the questions appear in two places on the site, always collapsed by default.Each question has a permalink that links to an individual page with only that question and answer.I know Google discounts (doesn't ignore) content that is hidden by default and requires a click (via js function) to reveal it.So what I'm wondering is if the way I have it setup is optimal for SEO?  How is Google going to handle the questions being in essentially three places: it's own standalone page, in a list on a category page, and in a list on a page showing all questions for all categories.  Should I make the questions not collapsed by default (which will make the master FAQ page SUPER long!)Does Google not mind the duplicate content within the site?What's the best strategy?

    | SeoJaz
    0

  • Hi guys. I've just been watching this whiteboard Friday.   At 2.01 mins Rand mentions something about a penalty that Google gives for certain internal linking practices.  I'm a little confused about it. Something along the lines of... 'stuffing keyword rich anchor text in the footer and nav bar' Does Rand mean repeating keyword rich anchor text in these areas? Or just that it's stuffing by nature... because it's on every page of the site? Hope that makes sense. I've attached a screen shot of our footer.  Could you let me know if this is bad form? Thanks in advance 🙂 CLYGpiI

    | isaac663
    1

  • We just migrated to https and created 2 days ago a new property in search console for the https domain. Webmaster Tools account for the https domain now shows for every page in our sitemap the warning: "Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt."Also in the dashboard of the search console it shows a red triangle with warning that our root domain would be blocked by robots.txt. 1) When I test the URLs in search console robots.txt test tool all looks fine.2) When I fetch as google and render the page it renders and indexes without problem (would not if it was really blocked in robots.txt)3) We temporarily completely emptied the robots.txt, submitted it in search console and uploaded sitemap again and same warnings even though no robots.txt was online4) We run screaming frog crawl on whole website and it indicates that there is no page blocked by robots.txt5) We carefully revised the whole robots.txt and it does not contain any row that blocks relevant content on our site or our root domain. (same robots.txt was online for last decade in http version without problem)6) In big webmaster tools I could upload the sitemap and so far no error reported.7) we resubmitted sitemaps and same issue8) I see our root domain already with https in google SERPThe site is https://www.languagecourse.netSince the site has significant traffic,  if google would really interpret for any reason that our site is blocked by robots we will be in serious trouble.
    This is really scary, so even if it is just a bug in search console and does not affect crawling of the site, it would be great if someone from google could have a look into the reason for this since for a site owner this really can increase cortisol to unhealthy levels.Anybody ever experienced the same problem?Anybody has an idea where we could report/post this issue?

    | lcourse
    0

  • Hello, I am wondering how to deal with internal anchor text. I read here and there that it shouldn't be too optimised but I also read that this is how google understands what my page is aout. I have breadcrumbs with my main keyword in the anchor text and can't change that it is automatic. In other words if i have 10 breadcrumb going to my top page with the keyword can I be penalised ?

    | seoanalytics
    1

  • Hi Guys, A lot of our pages we updated with new category based content on our e-commerce site I noticed haven't been cached for a while like This is Google's cache of https://www.domain.com/makeup/eyes/mascara. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 15 Jun 2017 11:37:52 GMT. Does this mean that google hasn't reviewed this page yet? Could this be due to poor internally linking or something? Cheers.

    | bridhard8
    0

  • Hay Moz Community. I really hope you can shed some light as I am going round in circles. If you do a search in google UK for Oak Furniture Land you will see the two result is www.oakfurnitureland.co.uk and then www.oakfurnitureland.com The problem I have is only the UK site should be showing. Both have hreflang implemented and targeting in search console for UK and USA respectively but it seams that google does not want play ball. Any assistance is greatly appreciated Alex Mxdst

    | Alexcox6
    0

  • We face a seo problem of losing traffic after 301 redirect.We have used 301 redirect from a sub-domain url to main domain, after a few month, we discovered that the traffic in google is dropped 40% as well as yahoo dropped 50% without reason, we have updated sitemap already, but we cannot find any reason for the traffic dropped till now..The original url (more then 5000 links)https://app.example.com/ebook Redirected Urlhttps://www.example.com/ebookThank you for your help!

    | yukung
    0

  • Hello! I have big problems with website promotion. It's been 7 months and the attendance on the site is 1-5 people a day. I do not understand the reason. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Site: www.azartlist.com Many thanks.

    | Bobic
    1

  • Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    1

  • Hello, I am wondering if having my privacy policy page at the bottom of my site (meaning being linked from every page on my site) can hurt me in terms of flow of juice ?

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • I have run into something i have never seen before. A friend has a website with two country domains, so page titles for the homepages of both websites look like this: Rent your care here | carrentals.de Rent your car here | carrentals.co.uk The thing is, both are perfectly well set-up in Yoast. Yet when googling, the different URL's both appear like this: Rent your car here | carrentals.co.uk How could this happen?

    | Boostability
    0

  • Hello, I have a top menu coded this way with an (it is automatic with my wordpress template). Can google read pass the juice and read the anchor text with this type of code or no ? <nav id="top-menu-nav"> myanchortext </nav>

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Is it frowned upon by Google to create 3 different pages with the sames content yet different titles to secure the top three results in SERPs? For example: Luxury Care Homes in Liverpool Care Homes in Liverpool Private Care Homes in Liverpool The page titles are different with slightly different meta data but the user content is exactly the same, would this be considered a cheeky win or negative to rankings?

    | TrustedCare.co.uk
    1

  • Hello all, I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example. Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?

    | McTaggart
    1

  • Hi, I remember reading that links within the text have more value than breadcrumbs links for example because in context links are surrounded by the right content (words) but google search engine optimisation starter guide says breadcrumbs are good, so which one is recommended ? Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hello, I have my most important pages in my menu. Those pages are present on all my pages because they are on the menu. Are those pages considered to be linking between each other because they are in the menu or should I create links between those pages in my text if I want them to link with each other ?

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hello, I just redid my website and suddenly saw a spike in the crawl rate for about 2 weeks and I am now back to where I was on average. Is it normal ? My guess it that this increase was due to the change in site and new links ? However,I just want to make sure it is normal that it is back to a "normal rate" now that it has discovered all the links. Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hi guys, For a button based link, can you define the anchor text google will use. I have attached screenshot of what i mean. Cheers. geavig

    | bridhard8
    0

  • On the google search console, the website data is all showing for the www.promierproducts.com. The images however are indexed on the non www version. I'm not sure why.

    | MikeSab
    1

  • Good afternoon, Mozzers! My boss and I noticed a weird thing happening in the rankings for one of our clients. Just in case the niche has anything to do with it, the client is an HVAC company. When my boss is in an incognito window and he googles "commercial HVAC Portland" - The client showed up at #8. BUT ---- When I googled the same keyword-string in an incognito window, the client showed up at #14. We are both on the same IP. And we did these searches within minutes of one another. Does anyone know why / how this might be happening? We'd love to hear your thoughts!

    | TaylorRHawkins
    1

  • Hello, Just wondering google follows on clicks links (links create in a nice button)  and anchor text. Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hi, I'm looking to implement breadcrumbs for e-commerce store so they will appear in the SERP results like the attached image. In terms of implementing to a site, would you simply add HTML to each page like this Google example? Which looks like this: Books › Science Fiction Award Winners Then is there anything you need to do, to get this showing in the SERPs results e.g. doing something in search console. Or do you just wait into google has crawled and hopefully starts showing in the SERPs results? Cheers. wn3ybMMOQFW98fNQkxtJkA.png [SERP results with bread crumbs](SERP results with bread crumbs)

    | jaynamarino
    0

  • Hi SEO Community, The title says it all; we are running a content strategy that is targeting relevant low volume, low competition keywords published on a high authority domain. How would you design your promotion / reachout / linkbuilding / strategy in this context? Would you assume internal linking would do the job or are there easy wins to earn rankings in this low competition environment? /T

    | ppseo80
    0

  • Hi Guys, I have a html5 page located here: https://tinyurl.com/yc6s3xs2 I know from some online discussions having multiple h1 tags on HTML 5 pages like this, shouldn't be an issue. Any thoughts on this? Cheers,

    | bridhard8
    0

  • Hi Moz community, My questions is related to the international SEO, esepecially sitelinks. The problem is that the users from US see in the search results the sitelinks which comes from different countries, e.g. users from US see the sitelinks from Australia or the sitelinks from our international website, which has obviously no specification. I must say, that we've done everything to be in accordance with Google interantional SEO recommendations, hraflang & lang attributes, properly set location in GSC. All of these were tripplechecked. I also need to say, that it happens only to the websites that include content written in English nad French. All other branches show proper sitelinks. It think Google can't properly locate the content, if the language is the same regardless country. Previously it could be solved with disavow tool, but today's I don't know about any manual action that could deal with the issue. I also noticed that some other pages are affected with the same issue.  To better understand the issue, please see the image link. The image shows the results from US. Despite the location, it shows sitelinks form UK or International website. Do you have similar experience? I will be thankful for any help. 1NNtJ

    | eset
    0

  • Hey everyone, Has anyone here worked with SEO + website translations? When should we use canonical or alternate tag if we want the user to find our page on the language he used on Google? Should we send all pages on all the different locales on the sitemap? Looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks!

    | allanformigoni
    0

  • Hello, I checked moz content suggestions and for one of my keywords “Burgundy bike tours”. It gives me expressions such as “Burgundy France” and “Burgundy wine”. My question is whether I should include the exact expression “Burgundy wine” in a sentence or if include burgundy somewhere in my text and wine somewhere else if it is fine ? PS : What is the real difference between marketmuse and moz ? and why do they sometimes give different suggestions ?

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hello, I have an issue with one my pages. I have a page about "Bike tours in France+ exclusively that has been existing for almost 8 years. Since day 1 I changed the web address a few times but I have the necessary redirect (actually only 1). I can't find this page  (pretty much since day 1) on the keyword "Bike tours France" and I am wondering why ? However, I can find my homepage rank on "Bike tours France" even though it doesn't only talk about "Bike tours in France" instead of my page which is only about "Bike tours in France". I am wondering why only my homepage shows and not the other one. For information, I have about 30 % of my external links that say Bike tours France and that go to my homepage because when I started my website I was only doing "Bike tours in France" Could google say we don't care about your page about "Bike tours in France" because you got so many links to your page with the keywords "Bike tours France" and could it be why I don't see it rank. However, it is index but doesn't show up in search results ? Or could it be the fact that made many content changes over the years on this page and that google is saying I will rank you but it will take years because of so many changes. What can I do to make my page about "Bike tours in France" appear in search results for the keyword "Bike tours in France". Thank you,

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hi there, Whilst there is plenty of information online regarding the devaluation of hidden content using tabs, it seems to be more difficult to get a clear answer as to how page rank is impacted when anchor text links are hidden. If an anchor text link is hidden using tabs, will the flow of page rank to the page the anchor text leads to be negatively impacted? If so, why? To add further context, whilst the anchor text link would be visible in the HTML, the tab would be dependant on JavaScript to function. Thanks,

    | SEONOW123
    0

  • I've searched around and I can't seem to find anyone else describing the issue I'm seeing. Basically for a very long time our website (snappages.com) has always ranked in the tens and twenties for "create a website". It's a high volume keyword and we get a lot of traffic from it. Around May 16th it suddenly disappeared completely from search results on Google and now it will sporadically show back up with a SERP in the twenties every 5-10 days for a few hours and then completely disappear again. This pattern has continued to this day. I've checked and there are no manual penalties and nothing has really changed dramatically from a content perspective or anything like that. I would understand if we got penalized and our ranking dropped, or even if it just completely disappeared? This is the only keyword that this is happening for, all the others remain unaffected. Anyone know how I can find out why this is happening or have suggestions on how to fix it?

    | stestone
    0

  • Hi, We are in the process of going through a re-design for our site. Am trying to understand if we need to use some sort of structured data either from Google Structured data or schema. org?

    | Krausch
    0

  • That appears on the top of my website ?

    | seoanalytics
    0

  • Hello, I have my homepage that has been existing for 10 years that is ranked in 18 th position on google for the keyword luxury bike tours. This homepage doesn't have any external link or internal links saying luxury bike tours and nowhere in the title or on the page do I have the word luxury. I only have the words bike and tours. I created a blog page 24 hours ago that has the word luxury, bike and tours in the title and it is ranked in 19 th position just behind my homepage. I am wondering how it can be there and my homepage just be one spot above with all the history and linking it has ? Is it due to the fact that I have the word luxury in the title ? Is it just because my internal linking structure is correct and this blog page is brand new and will my homepage rank higher in the near future but see that I just redid the structure I need to wait a few months ?

    | seoanalytics
    0

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