Latest Questions
Have an SEO question? Search our Q&A forum for an answer; if not found, use your Moz Pro subscription to ask our incredible community of SEOs for help!
-
Bounce Rates - How would you deal with this scenario?
Greetings! I actually don't have a definitive answer to this so wish to throw it out to the community for thoughts and feedback. I have a client who we shall call "Site 1", but they also have a job board, we shall call "Site 2". A product of their own success, they have a high bounce rate with visitors landing on Site 1, seeing a job they want to apply for and bouncing straight off to Site 2. The problem is that this is resulting in Google seeing some of these pages as having bounce rates of 80% to 100%, based on this formula: Bounce rate = total number of visits viewing only one page / total number of visits Now, I hate anything black hat or grey hat so wish to know how you would deal with this... If the results from Site 2 were displayed in a new framed page on Site 1, would this still be classed as a bounce? If when they click on a job on Site 1, they were taken to an intermediate page on Site 1 saying "Thank you, you are being redirected to your chosen job" for 5 seconds before being taken to Site 2, would this be classed as a bounce? Perhaps the job they wish to apply for 'pulled' from Site 2 and actually displayed in a new page on Site 1 would be a better way to go? I think that option 1 might work, sure that number 3 would but not so sure about number 2, but look forward to your comments and thoughts. Regards, Andy
Reporting & Analytics | | Andy.Drinkwater0 -
Difference forum and QA
I read the post about question and answer on your blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-reasons-why-qa-sites-can-boost-your-seo-in-2011-despite-googles-farmer-update-12160 What is from SEO view the difference between a forum and QA ? Jan
Link Building | | turnon0 -
Linkbuilding from different niche!
Hi Mozzers, I have a small question. If my website niche is Rent a Car, and lot of friends, people around the world, have restaurant, for example friend of me was a CHEF of restaurant for about 15years, and now he started working with Cars, how is danger if he receive backlinks from the restaurant websites? Its this danger? can google penalize the site if receive backlinks from different niche,different cctld domains,and language too? Thanks
Link Building | | leadsprofi0 -
How I can deal with ajax pagination?
Hello! I would like to have your input about how I can deal with a specific page in my website You can see my page here As you can see, we have a list of 76 ski resort, our pagination use ajax, wich mean we have only one url, and just below the list, we have a simple list of all the ski resort in this mountain, which show all the 76 ski resorts.. I know it's quite bad, since we can reach the same ski resort with two différents anchors links. Thanks you very much in advance, Simon
Technical SEO | | Alexandre_0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a main sales page and then we have a country specific sales page for about 250 countries. The country specific pages are identical to the main sales page, with the small addition of a country flag and the country name in the h1. I have added a rel canonical tag to all country pages to send the link juice and authority to the main page, because they would be all competing for rankings. I was wondering if having the 250+ indexed pages of duplicate content will effect the ranking of the main page even though they have rel canonical tag. We get some traffic to country pages, but not as much as the main page, but im worried that if we remove those pages and redirect all to main page that we will loose 250 plus indexed pages where we can get traffic through for odd country specific terms. eg searching for uk mobile phone brings up the country specific page instead of main sales page even though the uk sales pages is not optimized for uk terms other than having a flag and the country name in the h1. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0 -
Will building up the page rank of a page you have a inbound link bring any benefit?
Right then here we go You have a link in an article on a well known national newspaper site that points at your website. Is there any benefit of linking to the newspaper article in order to build up the PR of the article page and therefore passing over some link "juice"? Sub questions 1. Would it be more beneficial simply to gain links to your main website? 2. What are the chances of the article going into the archives and then at some stage being deleted? 3. If the article link points to a domain, which then forwards to a another domain will this pass on any "juice"? 4. If the article points to a domain that then 301's to another domain will this pass on any "juice"? 5. Does Google simply register the link and "juice" on the first pass or will it revisit and upgrade the "juice"? 6. What are the negatives? 7. What are the positives?
Link Building | | therealmarkhall0 -
Juicy Link Finder - Geo Targetting
Is there a way of geo-targeting the Juicy Link Finder so the results only contain websites from the UK?
Link Building | | Spreader73760 -
Why would PA be 1 (0 links from 0 root domains) if it's linked to internally?
Question just about said it all: I've seen a number of pages on sites that have a PA of 1 (with the metrics being 0 links from 0 root domains) when I can see on the site that it is linked to internally - from the main nav (which is CSS, not Javascript) and also from the footer, if not other places. Why would this be? Update: upon looking further at the site, it appears that there's some kind of redirect going on, where the page linked to from the nav actually redirects to the real page. Would that eliminate PA, even if it's a 301? And additionally, is whatever is causing this lack of PA a reflection of how Google would relate to the page? Thanks, Aviva
Moz Pro | | debi_zyx0 -
Templated content = duplicate content?
I'm curious where the line is drawn for "duplicate content" by the search engines. Obviously the same article, or even the same article with minor edits, can and should be detected as duplicate. I have a use case where there is a database of similar, but not duplicate, content that changes as time passes. I want to serve this content up via html template but don't want the 1000 pages to be considered duplicates of each other. Example: Imagine local weather. You could create a template for city name, longitude, latitude, altitude, and current weather conditions. The values for all fields would be different for each of the 1000 database entries (cities) and one of the "current weather conditions" would change frequently (hourly, let's say). Now, if I have a nice heirarchical index pages (first one maybe points to 50 state sub-pages, and each state page points to 20 city pages) that point to the 1000 city-specific pages, would the city-specific pages be considered 'duplicate' since they are based on the same HTML template but all have different values in key areas? Does the answer change based on the % of the template (or visible text) that changes for each city? My goal is to get these 1000 subpages as part of my site, have them indexable, and have them each flow a little bit of link juice to my home page. Best practices? What should I be careful of? Thanks!
Link Building | | scanlin0 -
What article directories (if any) are still worthing posting to?
While article marketing my not be at the top of the SEO strategy heap, it has, thus far, had a place small place at the table. In light of the Panda-Farmer-Anti-Demand-Media-Content update, I'm re-thinking article marketing altogether. Which, if any, general article directories are still worth adding content to in terms of links and eyeballs? Should these general article directories be avoided altogether?
Link Building | | Gyi0 -
Crawl Diagnostics bringing 20k+ errors as duplicate content due to session ids
Signed up to the trial version of Seomoz today just to check it out as I have decided I'm going to do my own SEO rather than outsource it (been let down a few times!). So far I like the look of things and have a feeling I am going to learn a lot and get results. However I have just stumbled on something. After Seomoz dones it's crawl diagnostics run on the site (www.deviltronics.com) it is showing 20,000+ plus errors. From what I can see almost 99% of this is being picked up as erros for duplicate content due to session id's, so i am not sure what to do! I have done a "site:www.deviltronics.com" on google and this certainly doesn't pick up the session id's/duplicate content. So could this just be an issue with the Seomoz bot. If so how can I get Seomoz to ignore these on the crawl? Can I get my developer to add some code somewhere. Help will be much appreciated. Asif
Moz Pro | | blagger0 -
Blog URLs
I read somewhere - pretty sure is was in Art of SEO - that having dates in the blog permalink URLs was a bad idea. e.g. /blog/2011/3/my-blog-post/ However, looking at Wordpress best practice, it's also not a good idea to have a URL without a number - it's more resource hungry if you don't , apparently. e.g. /blog/my-blog-post/ Does anyone have any views on this? Thanks Ben
Technical SEO | | atticus70 -
Google vs Bing/Yahoo SERP results?
I see large differences in Google and Bing/Yahoo SERP results for many keywords. Google shows many of our primary keywords in their top ten, while Bing/Yahoo rank the same one 40-50 or above. Do you have any insight on their differences that might account for this variation? We are legitimate, long time, white hatters at a small manufacturer that is one of the leaders in our industry. The only thing I can think of that might describe this issue is PPC advertising. Their algorithms wouldn't be that inconsistent would they? (We do much more paid advertising on Google) But generally this should have no affect, right? Thanks, George...
Reporting & Analytics | | rhawk0 -
Any Tips for Link Building for Boring Topics/Businesses?
I have a number of clients that own businesses in 'boring' sectors, such as: Toxic Waste Removal Steel Erecting Household Plumbing (Boilers, etc...) Link building for these sites is quite difficult. Creating compelling content and 'link bait' is particularly tricky. I found a good post from Michael Gray on the subject, but I don't think food (or McDonalds in this case)is a particularly difficult subject to write about. Any more tips on how to approach this would be appreciated. Thanks
Link Building | | cmaddison0 -
What is the length for Open Explorer and/or Google to pick up on Blogroll links?
I'm just a little curious about this and thought I would make use of the new Q&A system. This is my first open question. I recently acquired some blogroll links on 3 fairly popular and well trafficked sites, some with more authority and pages than mine (Get Right Music). I was wondering if anyone is familiar with the time frame in which I should start to see that affect my rankings in Google. Also, the time frame when I should start to see those domain links appear in Open Site Explorer. I'm just curious. Thanks everyone. Jesse
Link Building | | getrightmusic0 -
Tracking new inbound links
I suspect there might be an easy way to do this.. but alas Icould not seem to find it with by performing some search queries in the Q and A thus figured I would just ask :).. sorry if being repetitive with this question. I have all sorts of tools to track the number of overall inbound links to my site, but is there an easy tool to check for specific new inbound links from one specific page/site..aka if I set up a link in a directory or I get a mention in an article.. what is the easiest way to search to see if this link has been picked up by google and how much link juice it might be giving to my site? Thanks for your time, John
Link Building | | JohnHerrigel0 -
Passing Google Analytics Variables Through Javascript?
Alright so here's my situation and hopefully someone can help... I want to be able to pass Google Analytics variables onto my affiliate links so I have some better conversion tracking data (not PPC traffic so no easy dynamic keyword insertion variables). I want to do something like this: User searches "keyword" in Google > User lands on mysite.com > search data is assigned to global variables that I can use in my affiliate link redirect script. afflink.com/?id=123&keyword=[GA keyword variable] Anybody know how I would go about doing that? I've seen other Non-GA tracking scripts do this but I can't figure it out here and it's driving me crazy! Thanks,
Affiliate Marketing | | drewhammond
Drew EDIT: Just figured it out after a lot of guess and testing... I'm not sure if the way I'm doing it is the fastest, most optimized way but it works. Solution: I can pull the GA cookie and break it down to retrieve the keyword using PHP. For anyone searching for this in the future, here's how I did it: $gacookie = $_COOKIE['__utmz'];
$keyword = substr(strstr($gacookie, 'utmctr='),7); ?> Then I can use the $keyword variable wherever I need it. I haven't actually tested this on a live site yet but everything is working fine as of right now. If anyone has a better solution please feel free to answer.0 -
SEOMoz Campaign shows Warnings for pages with >200 and <300 links
We currently use SEOMoz's campaign tool to review the SEO progress of our site. One thing we are unsure of is that SEOMoz gives us a warning for over 1000 of our pages because we have around 200 links on those pages (all in the Menu Drop Downs). I read the post and watched the video, Whiteboard Friday Flat Site Architecture a while ago and Rand mentioned there is no issue with having a web page with 200 to 300 links and he even encouraged it. So why would these show up as warnings in our Campaign?
Moz Pro | | PBCLinear0 -
What has to be changed to improve rank?
What has to be changed to improve rank? We had "hip hop jewelry" keyword for a while, position 4. All of the sudden it dropped for position 6 and never went back. We did some on page optimization and got couple of links here and there... but so far we still at position 6. Please suggest us what has to be done?
Technical SEO | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Exact match domains
I know buying new websites hoping to 301 redirect them to achieve higher rankings before they’re established is not a good idea, but what about uploading a info pages + on-page SEO + some link-building and when the site is established (it ranks) direct visitors to a landing page? Buying a new domain for the SINGLE purpose of 301 redirecting won’t boost the rankings (don't think it would get penalties either, unless it’s the only link building activity). Not planning to redirect to the homepage, but to the related sub page on our main site (specific landing page). Will this pass the appropriate anchor text and link authority to the right page on our website and help those pages to rank for their keywords? Only thinking of a few pages (no more than 3).
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Ranked on second page for keyword; now not within first 1000 listings?
Our website www.clientfirstfunding.com ranked 13th for the keyword "structured settlement". After this weekend we are no longer ranking for this keyword at all. We haven't made any changes at all to the site and i haven't gained any backlinks that appear to be spammy. We have held this position for the last several months. I can understand a drop in SERPs but one this drastic is shocking. Any ideas as to what could have caused this would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Tony19860 -
Url re-write / minimal subfolders
<colgroup><col width="411"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu
| One of the most common warnings on our site www.sta.co.uk is the use of parameters in URL strings (they're crawled ok, it's mainly duplication content issues we're trying to avoid). The current traffic manager suggested ‘stage 1’ - remove the unwanted folder structure but wouldn’t tailor the dynamic url I'd say it is difficult to quantify what result this would have in isolation and I would rather do this update in tandem with the ‘stage 2’ which adds structure to the dynamic urls with multiple parameters.(Both stages will involve rewriting the page url and redirecting the long url to the short) Any thoughts, please? Is there any benefit in removing the subfolders (1) or should we wait and do it in one go? Thanks everyone, |0 -
Run a batch of keywords 1 by 1 through Adwords Keyword tool
Hi, I'm looking for a tool that will be able to run a list of keywords 1 by 1 through the Google Adwords keyword tool and place them together in a list, in order to get as much long tail keywords as possible. Thanks for any suggestion!
Keyword Research | | DeptAgency0 -
API returns only 3 results
Hi all, I'm using the links seomoz API, and it's working great for me, except it only appears to return 3 results. Seems to only return 3 results on the anchor text api also. Is there something basic I'm not doing to get more results? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | jimbo_kemp0 -
Avoiding duplicate content/same pages
hi I have been checking through all the Q and A but i i'm still not sure how you get http://www.domain.co.uk/index.html to be just http://www.domain.co.uk/? Do you add canonical to the index page to point to the page you prefer and then add a 301 redirect? thanks
Technical SEO | | challen0 -
Google Local Results and URL Titles
After searching for (city name) (business type) a number of my competitor's sites come up with the title of their web page as the results (including geographic descriptors). However, my site is listed by name and does not reflect our URL title. How is this possible (did someone manually change the title of our listing?) and how can I change this back so that the title includes a geo descriptor? Do I simply edit the listing under google places or will this have a negative effect on our rankings?
Technical SEO | | helliottlaw0 -
Am I losing link juice with 302-redirected faceted navigation?
My site has faceted navigation that allows shoppers to filter category page results by things brand, size, price range, etc. These pages 302 redirect to the same page they came from, which already include canonical meta tags. I added the rel="nofollow" attribute to the facet links and added the line "Disallow: /category_filter/" to robots.txt. One of our SEO consultants told me that this is likely diluting the potency of the page's link juice since they are divided among all the page's links, including the links I am instructing crawlers to disregard. Can anybody tell me whether I am following the best practices for links that redirect to the same page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TahoeMountain400 -
Linkbuilding in unrelated blogs
Does google penalize you for linkbuilding in blogs that are non related to the topic of your website? Are there any positive benefits to link building in unrelated blogs?
Link Building | | 13375auc30 -
Rich Snippets Displayed in SERPs?
I've recently deployed rich snippets for a site that includes reviews on individual company profile pages. We passed the Rich Snippet Testing Tool and notified Google of our pages. It's been 2 months since we deployed this and still nothing. Does anyone have any feedback on the average time it takes Google to recognize these markup and include in on the SERPs? Or any articles that reference which industries they will include reviews in the SERPs for and which ones they won't? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DustinSEO0 -
Best Practice for Deleting Pages
What is the best SEO practice for deleting pages? We have a section in our website with Employee bios, and when the employee leaves we need to remove their page. How should we do this?
On-Page Optimization | | Trupanion0 -
Ranking Testing
At times when I change something on my site it effects my rankings. For my business I care mostly about my rankings in certain locations (not local). How can I see how I am ranking in various locations at a given time? I see several tools out there, but none of them seem to work. For example I recently I added a badge to my site and my ranking dropped a spot locally, but I do not think it did elsewhere. The value of the badge is worth that if it is just local, but if it made me drop a ranking in one of my major markets it would not be worth it.
Reporting & Analytics | | RobDalton0 -
What to do with the Golden Egg?
I have a client who ... in contrast to ALL of their competition ... has exclusive access to a music legend associated with their products. I can help my client draft exclusive content, like an interview. My client's competition are obviously on the top of SERPs, my client is at spot 20. How can I take this opportunity to increase my customer's visibility? This is a rare opportunity that will no doubt effect rank. I am about to craft a plan, but do not know where this exclusive content will have max impact. It will be on the customers blog social etc. But there may be a better place or method I was told to submit the content to the article farms, but I suspect this is cheap and may not work. I am able to help my client with many aspects of their SEO needs, but this is a special opp and I would love to learn where to turn. Any insight or wisdom is welcome. I realize their are a lot of missing details here. I am looking for basic guidance. Thanks Everyone!
Content Development | | Giggy1 -
Why does opensiteexplorer tell me I have 292 linking domains and google webmasteer tools says 528?
Does anyone have any idea why opensiteexplorer has a specific number of linking domains while google webmaster tools say another? I understand opensiteexplorer needs to update itself, but I have seen this discrepancy for months! Any ideas?
Link Building | | eric_since1910.com0 -
What is domain linking and linking root domains?
Hey guys! I am proud to be a new SEOMOZ Pro member! I ran the report on my site and it says what I am primarily missing is domain linking.... What is this? it says I only have 3 of them for the specific term / subpage I am going after. In addition what does Linking Root Domains mean in my report? Thanks much!
Moz Pro | | shandaman1 -
Facebook page vs Facebook place
Forgive this question, but I've always wondered is there a difference between a Facebook Page and Facebook Place page? What if a business has both? Thanks
Social Media | | christinarule0 -
User Signals A Factor?
Hi, To what degree do you think user signals like bunce rate, time on site, pages per visit are a factor in search rank? I know Google says they don't use Google Analytics to get data (and I believe them), but I don't think they would need to use G/A to know your bounce rate and other user signals. All things being equal, wouldn't a non-blog site with a 70% bounce rate (that doubled in the last year) have a big negative to overcome in how Google sees the quality of that site and how it then ranks its terms? Thanks... Mike
Reporting & Analytics | | 945010 -
Google Directory vs DMOZ
What is the difference between the Google Directory and the DMOZ if any?
Algorithm Updates | | BrandonC-2698870 -
Top Level Domains
Howdy Everyone, I have a website that will span multiple countries. The content served will be different for each country. As such, I've acquired the top level domains for different countries. I want to map the cop level domains (e.g. domain.co.uk) to uk.domain.com for development purposes (LinkedIn does this). I'm curious to know whether this is adviseable and if mapping a country-specific TLD to a subdomain will maintain local SEO value. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RADMKT-SEO0 -
What is consider best practice today for blocking admins from potentially getting indexed
What is consider best practice today for blocking pages, for instance xyz.com/admin pages, from getting indexed by the search engines or easily found. Do you recommend to still disallow it in the robots.txt file or is the robots.txt not the best place to notate your /admin location because of hackers and such? Is it better to hide the /admin with an obscure name, use the noidex tag on the page and don't list in the robots.txt file?
Technical SEO | | david-2179970 -
What is your traffic mix?
Read Rand's post on the blog about diversity in traffic source http://www.seomoz.org/blog/traffic-source-diversity-is-essential-for-successful-seo. I would be very interested to know from mozzers, how their experience has been with traffic share. While you answer, please be kind enough to share the following: 1. The niche of the website you wish to quote in your answer. 2. The means of promotion you use (SEO, Social Media, PPC, Display, Affiliate) 3. The reason you think you cited this example and do you think it has been a success or a failure or somewhere in the middle? Appreciate your time, thanks.
Search Behavior | | saibose0 -
Domain and Submain : which choice ? (open explorer tool)
Hi, 1/ Please could you tell me why Moztrust and Mozrank give not similar figures for subdomain and root domain ? 2/ Which is the best way for Google webmaster tool for configuring : Sub or Root domain ? 3/ Finally, regarding anchor text, Sub or root domain ? Tks for links or knowledge base about it....
Moz Pro | | mozllo2 -
De-Indexing URLs from a specific Locale
Is it possible to de-index a specific URL from showing up in a specific locale? For example, if I want to de-index http://www.example.com/category/product1 from http://www.google.co.uk but not http://www.google.com, is that possible?
International SEO | | craigsmith3330
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.