Latest Questions
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Create a new XML Sitemap for a blog subdomain?
What would be the best way to go about this? A site just put a blog on http://blog.domain.com/ Should there be a separate XML Sitemap for that particular subdomain or should the original XML Sitemap for the main domain be sufficient? Looking forward to your responses. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Link grow from month to month
Using SEOmoz tools what is the best way understand what are the new link only acquired from month to month? For example if I had 450 links in February and then grew to 500 in March? I would specifically like to know what those 50 are that grew. How can i do that?
Link Building | | inetteam0 -
How Google finds landing page?
whats would be some crucial numbers for mr. Google to chose Landing page over other pages? Your thoughts? Your experience?
Link Building | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Meta Title Keywords and Company name
Currently our meta title says "Network Security Audit | Pivot Point Security" which is pretty broad considering how many services we offer. In trying to restructure our keywords, marketing and SEO focus, I came up with a new title. The problem I have is figuring out which keywords to use in the title, and with a company name with 3 words - I am running out of room. The new title idea is "Information Security Assessments - Penetration Testing | Pivot Point Security" So my questions are the following. Do I need to put the company name? Should I choose different keywords? I'm sort of at a stand still trying to figure out the best possible title since meta keywords or description won't really help ranking.
Technical SEO | | pivotpointsecurity0 -
Best multi-language site strategy?
When reading about multi-language site structure, general knowledge says that there are 2 right ways of doing it right: Assign one domain per region/ language: www.domain.fr www.domain.de www.domain.co.uk ... If a country has more than one language, such as Switzerland, you can create folders for those languages: www.domain.ch/fr - in french www.domain.ch/de - in german Have a unique domain www.domain.com for the whole site and create folders for language region: www.domina.com/fr www.domain.com/uk ... If a language is spoken in more than one country, you can create subfolders www.domain.com/fr-ch - french in switzerland www.domain.com/de-ch - german in switzerland At first sight, it seems that option 1 is the right one. However, sites such as www.apple.com are using option 2. I am unable to decide... what would you recommend? Any objective criteria?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hockerty0 -
Should I robots block site directories with primarily duplicate content?
Our site, CareerBliss.com, primarily offers unique content in the form of company reviews and exclusive salary information. As a means of driving revenue, we also have a lot of job listings in ouir /jobs/ directory, as well as educational resources (/career-tools/education/) in our. The bulk of this information are feeds, which exist on other websites (duplicate). Does it make sense to go ahead and robots block these portions of our site? My thinking is in doing so, it will help reallocate our site authority helping the /salary/ and /company-reviews/ pages rank higher, and this is where most of the people are finding our site via search anyways. ie. http://www.careerbliss.com/jobs/cisco-systems-jobs-812156/ http://www.careerbliss.com/jobs/jobs-near-you/?l=irvine%2c+ca&landing=true http://www.careerbliss.com/career-tools/education/education-teaching-category-5/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0 -
New ways to get links (excluding on site link bait)?
Fellow SEOs, I’m looking for a new way to reach out to bloggers and site owners for links. There are quite a few link bait techniques to lure bloggers thanks to = amazing content, infographics,...but there are not so many articles on ways to contact bloggers/webmasters and ask for links... We all know that contacting site owners directly and politely asking then to place a link on their home page is as useful as a comb in Bruce willis’s hand. Link exchange is as dead as the Dodo and business partner links are usefull and easier to get but opportunities are often limited. I have been organizing contests for bloggers recently and it has been quite successful up to now, but I always like to have a spare trick up my sleeve. So if any of you have a decent method to reach out to bloggers/webmaster and get decent links please let me know, I will be forever thankful ; ) Cheers
Link Building | | ref.price0 -
Why sudden change in rankings?
I have been working on a domain for site which has only been up for a few months. I have mainly been working on building trust and authority for the site, with only a few links to my keyword phrases, which I was saving for the end, and concentrating on good quality non-spammy type links. It was progressing nicely until last weekend when I went from the first page on Google to the 3rd and 4th pages. Was there some kind of update?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Rel=Canonical to Rewrite or original URL?
Working with a large number of duplicate pages due to different views of products. Rewriting URLs for the most linked page. Should rel=canonical point to the rewritten URL or the actual URL? Is there a way to see what the rewritten URL is within the crawl data? I was taking the approach of rewriting only the base version of each page and then using a rel=canonical on the duplicate pages. Can anyone recommend a better or cleaner approach? Haven't seen too many articles on retail SEO when faced with a less than optimized CMS. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AmsiveDigital0 -
How to set up SEOMOZ to track multilanguage sites?
Hi, I am managing a site in 5 different languages/regions. Our language structure is as follows: www.domain.com/en-us/ - For US www.domain.com/en-uk/ - For UK www.domain.com/fr/ - For France ... However, SEOMOZ does not allow to set up a domain with "/" as a campaign. How can I do it? Thanks
Moz Pro | | hockerty1 -
Linkbuilding URL Problem
Hi, I work for Perfectly Engraved. A lot of our links point to http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/. However that address forwards to - http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm. Should we ensure our links point to http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm or does it not make difference? I've put our forwarding code below. <%@ Language=VBScript %> <% Option explicit Response.Buffer = true Response.Redirect "http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm" %> Also, would it help if we did a 301 redirect from http://perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm to http://www.perfectlyengraved.co.uk/ecommerce/scripts/default.htm? As both addresses for every page on our site return the page with or without www Thanks
Link Building | | Aardvark0 -
Do links from a Tumblr blog count as inbound links?
That's it. I'm thinking of making a Tumblre blog (s) for inbound links. Is it worthwhile?
Link Building | | Spreader73760 -
What can be blocking the link juice?
Hey all, I recently found an issue on the website of one of my clients, so I want to hear what could be the reason for it. We are working with that client since September last year and we had created around 300 links to it. However, I recently found out using Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer that for every page there are like 3-4 links passing value... I checked the whole report immediately, but the thing is that all links are in place and they have relevant URLs and anchortext as wel. I am thinking about an onsite issue, which can be blocking the links (I checked the robots.txt and the http header to see if they return any errors, but no luck). Any suggestions.... Any help is greatly appreciated 🙂 Best Regards
Link Building | | GroupM0 -
Local Keyword vs Business Name in URL
I am working with a local business owner who has purchased multiple domains. One includes the geographic area she serves and the type of business she runs. The other includes her business name and the type of business she runs. She is unsure of which domain she would like to use as the main URL for her business website. When choosing a domain for a small, local business, would you consider it advantageous to have the main geographic area that the business serves in the URL rather than the actual name of the business? What would be the best use of domain name which isn't selected from a SEO standpoint?
Image & Video Optimization | | Neustop0 -
How often is Open Site Explorer updated?
Or perhaps my question is actually how often does the seomoz bot crawl the web? I ran some benchmark link counts for a number of websites about this time last month and I noticed when I went to update them for this month the data is the same. Thanks.
Moz Pro | | WCR1 -
Website Ranking Issue
Hi, We have been performing our own onsite of offsite SEO along with external assistance and have ranked well over the years with minimal impact from Google updates. Howevr the last so called Panda update has affected us heavily pushing our main phrase 'web design melbourne' from 2nd to 7th where we have been for almost 2 months now on Google.com.au irrespective of onsite or offsite work. We have been trying to find signs of any onsite, IP, duplicate content, titles or other issues that may be holding us back to no avail. The only flag that Google webmaster tools is showing is a number of bad internal site links, which I think is a glitch with the CMS we are using. Even the SEO MOZ tool gives us a higher ranking compared to most competitors on page 1 of Google.com.au for our main phrase. The biggest difference between us and competitors is we chose to target an internal page specific to the topic rather than our homepage. With this sadi we have also reduced our keyword density and content quantity inline with the other sites homepages. Can anyone help shed some light on this? and perhaps something obvious that we have missed, or where we should be looking? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | paulsid0 -
Major Slipping of highly important keywords in a few days
Realized some major slipping on some of my most important keywords- mn realtors and minnesota homes for sale- my site is joeandcindy.com After months of working on traffic, blogs etc, wondering what could slap me 10-25 spots in just a few days. There were no errors showing up on the report that I can see. Just looking for some quick advice on what I might be missing and some quick action steps I might take to reverse the trend. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | jjwelu0 -
Should I put a No follow on each link in a Javascript dropdown menu?
I have a javascript dropdown menu on every page of my site. It lists all the wineries I write about and sell. About 300 links. I've been told that google doesn't like so many links on a page, but that it doesn't spider javascrpt. Then I hear that it does. Am I being penalized by all the links? Or does the spider really not see them? I don't want to give up my javascript menus, unless I have to. Should I put a no follow on each link inside the code? And on the other hand, am I losing google juice by not letting it see all the pages on my site that I link to in the javascript menu? Thanks in advance for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | JeanYates0 -
Duplicate Content Question
On the home page of my site I have a read more link that takes you to a different URL with basically the same content, just more of it. Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/ Read More Link on Home Page: http://www.opwdecks.com/deckmaintain.htm I think this may be affecting my seo. Any suggestions on what I should do about this? Should I add a canonical to the home page and/or on the other page? Both pages are indexed by google. Thanks for any help or tips.
On-Page Optimization | | opwdecks0 -
No-Follow Tag and Advertising
Hiya! I've got a relatively new domain, and one of my goals is to be 100% white hat, squeaky clean as I really would love to see my site succeed in the long term. So far my linkbuilding efforts are going pretty well. I'm beginning to buy some ads, and some of the bloggers I'm buying ads from don't use advertising networks, they just host your jpeg from their own blog... For the little picture that will show up in the side column of their blog should this be no-followed? And if it's not do we know if google assigns a penalty? I'm ok with asking the blogger to do that, but I notice my competition is not (and I know they know better) so I feel like it puts me at a bit of a disadvantage. Secondly - I'm 100% avoiding sites that sell text links (even ones with high pagerank, like pagerank 6), is this the right path to go? I read this article from Matt Cutts and was wondering if this is still true, reputable sites that sell links maintain their pagerank but aren't able to pass pagerank? http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/ "Reputable sites that sell links won’t have their search engine rankings or PageRank penalized–a search for [daily cal] would still return dailycal.org. However, link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext)."
Link Building | | super990 -
Use 301 redirects when deleting old products?
I'm removing old products (wines) from my site, and I've been using 301 redirects for each product page back to the winery page. My question is, am I using best practice? I want people who search for these now nonexistent products to go to the winery page where they will see what is now available. But does google approve? I've also tried leaving the product's page intact but saying that it is no longer available and putting a link in the text that points to the winery page. Which is better, in the eyes of the god google? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JeanYates0 -
SEO Value of Within-Page Links vs. Separate Pages
Title says it all. Assuming that you're talking about similar content (let's say, widgets), which is better: using within-page links for variations or using separate pages? I.e., do we have a widget page and then do in-page links to describe green, blue, and red widgets, or separate pages for each type of widget? In-page pro: more content on a single page, thus more keywords, key phrases, and general appearance of real content. In-page con: Jakob Neilsen says they're confusing. Also, for SEO, you only get one page title, rather than a separate page title for each. My personal bias is for in-page, since I hate creating dozens of short pages for what could be on one page, but my suspicion is that separate pages are better for SEO.
On-Page Optimization | | maxkennerly0 -
Keywords in front of the title element and on page keyword optimization
After running one of my landing pages through the SEOmoz on-page keyword optimization tool, I see that my keywords are 13 characters from the front of the title. My page is already receiving an A letter grade. The 13 characters in front of my keyword phrase are not vital, but they related to the keyword phrase. Is it that important that I drop the related word, in order to get my keyword phrase to start at the front?
Moz Pro | | Ticket_King0 -
Does Geo Targeted IP Delivery Present Any Risks?
Can you get away with providing totally different content to US visitors and UK visitors from the same url. watch?v=XWfqyy7J34s
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO-Doctor0 -
Redirect Flash Site for Google Only - Is this against TOS?
A photographer client has a flash website, purchased as from a (well respected) template company. The main site is at the root domain, and the HTML version is at www.example.com/?load=html If I visit the site on a browser without Flash installed, I am re-directed automatically to the HTML version. I'm concerned as the site has some great links and the HTML version is well optimised, but doesn't appear anywhere in Google for chosen keywords (ranks perfectly for brand related searches). Google is indexing the Flash version of the site, but I would rather it didn't (there's no real content (just Javascript to load the SWF) and all of the pages load under one URL). How can I block the Flash version from Google but still make the incoming links count towards the HTMl version of the site? If I re-direct Google to the HTML version, is this cloaking, and is it frowned upon? Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Technical SEO | | cmaddison0 -
Does RogerBot read URL wildcards in robots.txt
I believe that the Google and Bing crawlbots understand wildcards for the "disallow" URL's in robots.txt - does Roger?
Technical SEO | | AspenFasteners0 -
Is robots.txt a must-have for 150 page well-structured site?
By looking in my logs I see dozens of 404 errors each day from different bots trying to load robots.txt. I have a small site (150 pages) with clean navigation that allows the bots to index the whole site (which they are doing). There are no secret areas I don't want the bots to find (the secret areas are behind a Login so the bots won't see them). I have used rel=nofollow for internal links that point to my Login page. Is there any reason to include a generic robots.txt file that contains "user-agent: *"? I have a minor reason: to stop getting 404 errors and clean up my error logs so I can find other issues that may exist. But I'm wondering if not having a robots.txt file is the same as some default blank file (or 1-line file giving all bots all access)?
Technical SEO | | scanlin0 -
Is it a bad idea to include a single keyword phrase at the end of the business name in Google Places?
I'm concerned about this for local SEO and citation purposes. It's not spammy and it flows well, and it sounds like a logical extension of our name, but I'm concerned that it will make it harder for Google to pick up our citations. Any thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | greghard0 -
Google results inverted in a different country
Hi My site and a rival site are bothl UK based. If I search google.co.uk for a keyword I'm above him, yet if I search the australian results, he's on top. How come? I'd really like to put this right and grind his face into the dirt -- if only as revenge for repeatedly stealing my web content. Thanks
International SEO | | Jeepster0 -
Street name or Highway number- which is best ?
In Google places my address shows up in two different ways. I want to establish a consistent way of listing my business, but how do I determine what's best at this point? My listings now show up as the street name: "122 Maple Street" and in other listings as the Route number: "122 Route 44 " The locals all know this street as Maple Street, but we are a tourist business and tourists probably know the Rt. # better. Is there a systematic way I can determine which is going to be the best way to list this? I have the same question about variations like using Rt. or St. versus Route or Street. Thanks Tio
Image & Video Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Acrepairdallas.net went away
OK, so I launched a website some time ago and it has always placed real well. the site is www.acrepairdallas.net It is a word press site with a custom theme. I updated the content to the sitemap pages this last week and the site went from #3 on google to GONE! i do a site: search and all pages show up except the home page. everything is DO FOLLOW and DO INDEX.. HELP!!!
Search Behavior | | SEOSHARK0 -
Onpage linking
On my homepage, I currently link to about 40 internal pages. I'm considering altering the internal linking structure to have 50-100 links on the 2nd level pages. If I was to do this, I'd only need 8 homepage links. Do you think the 8 pages linked from the homepage would go up in the SERPs as the pagerank would be less diluted? I've heard so many mixed views on this. Be interested to see what people here think. Thanks, Pete
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Dynamically-generated .PDF files, instead of normal pages, indexed by and ranking in Google
Hi, I come across a tough problem. I am working on an online-store website which contains the functionlaity of viewing products details in .PDF format (by the way, the website is built on Joomla CMS), now when I search my site's name in Google, the SERP simply displays my .PDF files in the first couple positions (shown in normal .PDF files format: [PDF]...)and I cannot find the normal pages there on SERP #1 unless I search the full site domain in Google. I really don't want this! Would you please tell me how to figure the problem out and solve it. I can actually remove the corresponding component (Virtuemart) that are in charge of generating the .PDF files. Now I am trying to redirect all the .PDF pages ranking in Google to a 404 page and remove the functionality, I plan to regenerate a sitemap of my site and submit it to Google, will it be working for me? I really appreciate that if you could help solve this problem. Thanks very much. Sincerely SEOmoz Pro Member
Technical SEO | | fugu0 -
What is the max of back links per day?
Hi, I have one existing web site, I am building the backlinks by myself and also hire some people to do it for me in blog, forum, bookmarks, articles etc. Questions: 1. what is the max number of backlinks per day which will not trigger google to put my site into the sandbox? I heard some people said 100, some people said 30, and some people said it does not matter if this is not a brand new site. 2. I have 5-6 pages which I want to promote, does the Max number of backlinks apply to the whole site or to the particular page? I am also building a brand new site, is the restriction more tighten for the a brand new site? I heard some people said for the brand new site, the first month, you can only have 10 backlinks per day, now sure it is true or not. Please advise. Thanks -David
Technical SEO | | David6800 -
Will google punish us for using formulaic keyword-rich content on different pages on our site?
We have 100 to 150 words of SEO text per page on www.storitz.com. Our challenge is that we are a storage property aggregator with hundreds of metros. We have to distinguish each city with relevant and umique text. If we use a modular approach where we mix and match pre-written (by us) content, demographic and location oriented text in an attempt to create relevant and unique text for multiple (hundreds) of pages on our site, will we be devalued by Google?
Algorithm Updates | | Storitz0 -
What passes more value, a contextual link or a 1-to-1 301 redirect?
I have a client who is running a website which just lost a significant amount of rankings and by extension organic traffic in a redesign. Call it newsite.com. The client also has an older site that will no longer be updated, but has good authority that's built up over time. It even out ranks the current site for some queries. This website has no real value to my client. We want to try to pass the authority from oldsite.com to newsite.com as efficiently as possible. Each site has pages a good amount of matching pages, ie. oldsite.com/subject1 and newsite.com/subject1 My question is, would it provide more value to put a contextual link on the old page or simply redirect the entire page to the new site? oldsite.com/subject1 contains a link to newsite.com/subject1 oldsite.com/subject1 301 redirects to newsite.com/subject1 My guess is that the 301 would pass more value, but would like a SEOMoz opinion as well! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alder1 -
How to use overlays without getting a Google penalty
One of my clients is an email subscriber-led business offering deals that are time sensitive and which expire after a limited, but varied, time period. Each deal is published on its own URL and in order to drive subscriptions to the email, an overlay was implemented that would appear over the individual deal page so that the user was forced to subscribe if they wished to view the details of the deal. Needless to say, this led to the threat of a Google penalty which _appears (fingers crossed) _to have been narrowly avoided as a result of a quick response on our part to remove the offending overlay. What I would like to ask you is whether you have any safe and approved methods for capturing email subscribers without revealing the premium content to users before they subscribe? We are considering the following approaches: First Click Free for Web Search - This is an opt in service by Google which is widely used for this sort of approach and which stipulates that you have to let the user see the first item they click on from the listings, but can put up the subscriber only overlay afterwards. No Index, No follow - if we simply no index, no follow the individual deal pages where the overlay is situated, will this remove the "cloaking offense" and therefore the risk of a penalty? Partial View - If we show one or two paragraphs of text from the deal page with the rest being covered up by the subscribe now lock up, will this still be cloaking? I will write up my first SEOMoz post on this once we have decided on the way forward and monitored the effects, but in the meantime, I welcome any input from you guys.
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0 -
Is the all in title technique helpful?
I watched a tutorial on lynda.com about keyword research. And they said to use the All In Tittle trick to see how many pages on google are optimized for that keyword - do you reccommend using that method as well? In google, you type allintitle:"key word phrase" and the results show how many page titles are optimized for that phrase. Should I use this technique as well when choosing keywords?
Keyword Research | | aircyclemegan1 -
High bounce rates from content articles influencing our rankings for rest of site
We have a large content article section on our e-commerce site that receives a lot of visits but also have very high bounce rates. We are wondering if this is hurting the rest of our site's rankings. **When I say bounce rates I mean what ever metrics Google is using to determine quality content (specifically after the Panda update). ** We are trying to determine if having the content articles on our domain hurts us. We only have the content articles for link building.
Algorithm Updates | | seozachz0 -
Www or no www in search results??
I am working with a client, and when I check on SERP placement, I never see the "www" in the SERP's only nameofcustomer.com not www.nameofcustomer.com. Of course there is a redirect going on...Question is...should this matter at all? I dont understand the relationship between this kind of redirect and SEO. Thank Mozzers
Technical SEO | | Giggy0 -
Pagerank updates and expectations
My site (http://www.bluedotlandscaping.com) has recently been redone. Although I have been online for about 9 years, we have never before done SEO. My Google PR is 0. With a lot of work the last 3-5 months we have gotten a MozRank of 3.55. (DA 26 and MozTrust 4.36) What do you think are reasonable expectations? Does Google update often? Is a jump from a PR of 0 to 3 reasonable? If my site does go to a PR of 3, will I see a noticeable change in my keyword rankings? Thanks for your help. Rich
Industry News | | SCyardman0 -
April Fool's for Link Building
Is there a better day for link baiting than April 1st? The time has come for everyone to share their April Fool's Day link building campaigns! This is our second attempt at capitalizing on April Fools with the first attempt (2010) falling flat. http://bigfi.sh/aFd2011
Link Building | | RyanOD0 -
Does anyone know if certain DMOZ categories are blocked/never get indexed on google?
Hi all, After waiting many months I was happy to see a certain site listed on DMOZ, then months later still haven't seen the dmoz category indexed in google. It makes me wonder if certain categories don't get indexed or blocked or even previously penalized by google. The category in question is a regional one : http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/New_Jersey/Localities/G/Garfield/Business_and_Economy/ Anyone come across this before? Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davebrown19750
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