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After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

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  • I'm doing a bit of competitor backlink auditing and am curious how you view these domains? I also am doing this for others as a comparison and growing reference maybe of domains that they can crosscheck with their own backlink profile and make sure these aren't on there, in preparation for penguin algo release to core. Either chime in with known domains to be spam, and I will create a live list based on answers here. Domain                     Domain Rating directoryworld.net     64
    prlog.ru                     60
    torchbrowser.com     60
    jzip.com                    58
    localbiznetwork.com 58
    gimpsy.com               54
    pageonepower.com  52
    nashvillelife.com       49
    2thetopdesign.com   49
    seocounsel.com       48
    healthywealthyaffiliate.com 48
    hollinslegal.com        48 On a working Disavow list either in root domain or extended url form seocourt.com
    wldirectory.com
    onpaco.com
    lostdirectory.com
    ligginit.comligginit.com
    alivedir.net
    tiptopdirectory.com
    onemilliondirectory.com
    submittolinkdirectory.com I've read that sitewide footer links even from parent company sites will only count as one, regardless of how many links they have, I was wondering if that was true as well?

    Link Building | | Deacyde
    0

  • How many backlinks from one domain is too many? 1? 3? 10? For example, directory listings. If you have 5 separate links to one website in lets say DMOZ (good for you!), is it really only "juicy" one time? Or each one just as awesome? What about multiple guest articles on a related website?  If I had 2 or 3 articles on one website that each have different contextual links, is it just the same as if I had one article?

    Local Website Optimization | | Cantor-Crane
    0

  • Hi Mozzers, I have a client that has a totally legit retail business and they are getting lots of traffic organically that is adult in nature and totally off subject. The reason for this is their domain name contains keywords which while work well for their brand, when reordered and couple with a another keyword (such as picture or image) they get traffic for searches that have nothing to do with them and are pretty awful in nature. If this was Adwords I'd add a negative in of course but how can I stop bad traffic coming to the site organically? Any ideas? Cheers B 🙂

    Branding | | Bush_JSM
    0

  • Hi there, I have a question regarding Google My Business listings: We currently have a business with few offices (less than 10). Each office has it's Google listing under the same Google account.
    We plan on opening new offices at a certain pace, let's say two a month, which means we'll have more than 10 listings in the near future.
    As far as I recall, Google allows up to 10 listings per account, which means it won't suffice. On the other hand, We do not have 10 offices at the time being, which means we're not eligible for a bulk upload. Any ideas how to handle this situation?

    Local Listings | | OrendaLtd
    0

  • Excluding Screaming Frog, what other tools/software to use in order to crawl all image URLs in a site? Because in Screaming Frog, they don't crawl image URLs which are not under the site domain. Example of an image URL outside the client site: http://cdn.shopify.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png If the client is: http://www.example.com, Screaming Frog only crawls images under it like, http://www.example.com/images/this-is-just-a-sample.png

    Technical SEO | | jayoliverwright
    0

  • We're storing all our images in S3 bucket, common practice, but we want to get these images to drive traffic back to our site -- and credit for that traffic. We've configured the URLs to be s3.owler.com/<image_name>/<image_id>. I've not seen any of these images show in our web master tools. I am wondering if we're actually not going to get the credit for these images because technically they do sit on another domain. </image_id></image_name>

    Technical SEO | | mindofmiller
    0

  • My company uses a proprietary AB testing platform. We are testing out an entirely new experience on our product pages, but it is not optimized for SEO. The testing framework will not show the challenger recipe to search bots. With that being said, to avoid any risks of cloaking, what is an acceptable sample size (or percentage) of traffic to funnel into this test?

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edmundsseo
    0

  • Hey Moz, It's actually my first post - although I look at the Q&As on a daily basis! I was hoping to get your opinions on how to handle dynamic product url that can change regularly. Before we start, our product page urls get populated by the product titles. So the situation is this. Let’s say we have a product url: /product/12345-abcde-fghj/ Then the client decides to change the title a week later, so the url changes with it to): /listing/12345-klm-qjk Another week later, the agent changes to: /listing/12345-jkhfk-jhf-kjdhfkjdhf So to note, the product ID will always remain the same. Naturally, 301 redirecting every time would cause a bit of page authority to be lost every time 301ed. Also potentially creating new a few hundreds of 301 redirect daily sounds totally mental. (I have been informed by the dev we expect a few hundreds to change url daily) Although I understand there’s no limit on how many 301s you can have on a single domain, this would look completely unnatural - really not ideal. So the potential solution we thought was: we’ll keep the original url, and make sure that is the only url that will get indexed**/product/12345-abcde-fghj/**and put canonical tag on any of the new urls, directing to the original url. The problem we will have then is that the most current url may not exactly match the description of the product -wouldn’t be ideal for ux. Has anyone had dealing with issues like this in the past? Would love to get your input! Many Thanks

    Technical SEO | | MH-UK
    0

  • Hi team, Can anybody please help me to find how my preproduction website and urls are  getting indexed in Google.

    Technical SEO | | nlogix
    0

  • Hi I have been involved in the redesign/development of a website which has up until now had a lot of international traffic.  On day of migration I uploaded all the 301 redirects to the website (wordpress) using Simple 301 redirect plugin.  I tested a number of them and they appeared to be working. I also submitted the new sitemaps to Search Console. Since migration international traffic - particularly from countries such as india, Phillipines, Sri Lanka etc have significantly dropped off whereas the local traffic and some of the international traffic such as USA has remained fairly consistent.  Looking at Analytics and entrances recently it appears as though search results are/were showing a number of pages with 404's (one in particular which received significant traffic and for which I had created a 301 redirection) - I have checked this page using the old url and it re-directs correctly for me and today asked a colleague in India to also check - he is getting the redirection fine.  Does Google.in take a significantly longer time to pick these up in search results? Or am I missing something?

    Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing
    0

  • Hey Moz, I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced. I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction. I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website. Nicer than most design/content. They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here. The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April. Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough. Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds. There is no way that the traffic is real. It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me. How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | placementLabs
    0

  • Hi guys, This drives me nuts. I hear all the time that any time value is exchanged for a link that it technically violates Google's guidelines. What about real organizations, chambers of commerce, trade groups, etc. that you are a part of that have online directories with DO-follow links. On one hand people will say these are great links with real value outside of search and great for local SEO..and on the other hand some hardliners are saying that these technically should be no-follow. Thoughts???

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley
    0

  • Hello, When i scan with SEMrush it shows all such pages do not have ALT Tags http://img.youtube.com/vi/iJ4pmmRSZxc/hqdefault.jpg What should the ALT be for them and how can i control as we have 1000's of Youtube videos displayed on various parts of our website Thank you

    On-Page Optimization | | ktrinkqao12
    0

  • Howdy gang - as you probably saw, we launched our biggest new tool in Pro in many years today: https://moz.rankious.com/_moz/explorer If you're a Moz Pro subscriber, you've already got access. We went ahead and gave folks who were at $99/month before today 300 queries/month. If you're signing up new, $99/month doesn't have KW Explorer access, but the other levels - at $149/month and above, do (5,000+ queries/month). You can read the blog post here for lots of details, but if you have questions or product suggestions, please don't hesitate to ask!

    Moz Bar | | randfish
    14

  • Hey Mozers! Moz Crawl tells me I am having an issue with my Wordpress category - it is returning a 5XX error and i'm not sure why? Can anyone help me determine the issue? Crawl Issues and Notices for: http://www.refusedcarfinance.com/news/category/news We found 1 crawler issue(s) for this page. High Priority Issues 1 5XX (Server Error) 5XX errors (e.g., a 503 Service Unavailable error) are shown when a valid request was made by the client, but the server failed to complete the request. This can indicate a problem with the server, and should be investigated and fixed.

    Technical SEO | | RocketStats
    0

  • Hi all, Two weeks ago i noticed that one of our pages which normally ranks in the top 5 of search results dropped out of the top 50 results. I checked to make sure there were no Google penalties and checked to make sure the page was crawlable. Everything seemed fine and after a few hours our page went back into the number one position. I assumed it was a Google Flux. This number one ranking lasted about a week, today I see my page has dropped out of the top 50 yet again and hasn't come back up. again there are no penalties and there doesn't seem to be issues with the page. I'm hoping it comes back up to the top by tomorrow. What could be causing such a big dip multiple times?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes
    0

  • I own a site that that has about 15,000 pages that need some description content.  I plan to hire someone to retrieve or create content for each of these pages on my site. each page needs about 500 words. I was thinking that there is probably three ways i can go about this. If I hire someone cheap I can probably have them copy data from about 20 different sites. using about 5 sources for each page description. I can hire someone that has some experience writing english content, and have them go to a few sites and then in their own words summarize the description on my site. I can hire a great content writer, have them do research on each page, and create completely unique content. I probably will do some combination of these 3 things. (great content writer on a few pages, since thats all i can afford to do) and the rest do the cheaper route. Is copying sentences from multiple sources a good idea? or does the content really need to be original?

    SERP Trends | | moneymm22
    0

  • I've been seeing some search results for my site that look like the first result here, where the URL slug is used as SERP title: https://drive.google.com/a/fitsmallbusiness.com/file/d/0B37y4RslpuY-a0hQYjlJQ0NxeFJicDF6RVlURFVSNFN0aGhB/view?usp=sharing The article title (and Yoast snippet title) are both "28 Press Release Examples From The Pros", but for some reason I'm seeing "press-release-examples" in the search results. I've seen this for multiple articles, and I see it now and then with different articles. I'm aware that Google often changes the titles in search results, but it seems very weird to me that they would opt for just the URL slug here. Thoughts? Has anyone else seen this issue? Any idea what might be causing this? All help much appreciated.

    Technical SEO | | davidwaring
    0

  • Hi, we have a large international network. Our main website sits on .com domain and is used by the UK market. We have an international site in a subdirectory .com/dk/ for Denmark for example. We have also purchased the domain name www.ourcompany.dk/. Should we be forwarding the domain name (www.ourcompany.dk/) to point to the subdirectory www.ourcomany.com.dk/ so in the browser it shows up as www.ourcompany.dk or should we be displaying it as www.ourcompany.com/dk/? Are there any pros and cons to this method? Which one is best and are there any benefits in SEO. Ideally we want the .com domain name to have the best domain authority so would this impact it in any way? Any tips would be great.

    International SEO | | Easigrass
    0

  • ...when I fired my original web designer, did they sabotage coding?  I have never checked my Alexa/Google Analytics, or any blog ranking until last night.  Subsequently, I have spent the last 24 hours googling away, and finally joining MOZ b/c I'm desperate to find out WHY I'm not ranking.   I've googled and found many answers to a problem directly opposite of mine: (How to increase traffic with a high ranking), but I already have quite a bit of traffic (via Wordpress Stats), but can not be found on any ranking system.  So, fiddled with some NoFollow/NoIndex boxes in Genesis SEO settings thinking maybe when my domain name changed it messed everything up?  Most the boxes HAD been checked, so I unchecked them all. Anyhow, basically signed up for the monthly service so i could ask this question on the forum.   My site is hellowhitney.com **it's so weird---i have a LOT of organic direct hits coming directly to my blog (for instance a celebrity re-posted a post which gained a lot of traffic from Twitter to the page), but Google nor another ranking is seeing it.  IN FACT, it stops any and all ranking data back to FEBRUARY 2016 when I changed my domain name from Myscriptedreality.com to HelloWhitney.com Ignorance is NOT bliss in this case--would appreciate any help! #ForeverGrateful

    Reporting & Analytics | | hellowhitney
    0

  • Anybody have thoughts on dealing with search results where the same site gets listed multiple times? "weebly vs wix" is one example (same site #1-3, repetitive articles, not crazy high authority), but I see this now and then. I know Google likes variety, so it's weird for me to see results like this dominating search results. Thoughts? What gets these sites to take over the top rankings for a specific term? Any way to rise up in this situation, outside of the usual? Any tips on duplicating this kind of success?

    Competitive Research | | davidwaring
    0

  • I'm working on linkbuilding and content partnerships to drive referral traffic and boost our page ranking and domain authority. I wanted to check and see if Medium and LinkedIn Pule backlinking work just as well as other sites? Best, Jonathan

    Link Building | | kjomalley
    0

  • Hi Everybody Back in december 2015 I came across this article https://gofishdigital.com/google-results-change-location/  explaining how to change location for local search results using the google emulation tool by setting up new coordinates. This was also picked up by mikeblumenthals' blog as being one of the best way of doing this. I tried it at the time and it worked very well. I tried using it last week and again this week but my location no longer seems to update. I have tried it on fifferent computers located in different locations and still it doesn't work. Does anyone know if this feature is no longer available and if not what else they'd recommend to verify local search results. Thanks

    Local Listings | | coolhandluc
    0

  • I'm currently writing a blog post about schema.  However I want to set the record straight that schema is not exactly the same as structured data, although both are often used interchangeably.  I understand this schema.org is a vocabulary of global identifiers for properties and things.   Structured data is what Google officially stated as "a standard way to annotate your content so machines can understand it..." Does anybody know of a good analogy to compare the two? Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
    0

  • Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath
    0

  • Hi, We have carried out changes in our website title tags. However, when I search for these pages on Google, I still see the old title tags in the search results. Is there any way to speed this process up? Thanks

    Technical SEO | | Kilgray
    0

  • I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath
    0

  • We're working with a client who gets about 80% of their organic, inbound search traffic from links to PDF files on their site. Obviously, this isn't ideal, because someone who just downloads a PDF file directly from a Google query is unlikely to interact with the site in any other way. I'm looking to develop a plan to convert those PDF files to HTML content, and try to get at least some of those visitors to convert into subscribers. What's the best way to go about this?  My plan so far is: Develop HTML landing pages for each of the popular PDFs, with the content from the PDF, as well as the option to download the PDF with an email signup. Gradually implement 301 redirects for the existing PDFs, and see what that does to our inbound SEO traffic.  I don't want to create a dip in traffic, although our current "direct to inbound" traffic is largely useless. Are their things I should watch out for?  Will I get penalized by Google for redirecting a PDF to HTML content? Other things I should be aware of?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atourgates
    0

  • We are considering signing up for a multi-business showroom co-op concept in our area.  Basically this space (1 address) has 10+ businesses that have their products represented at the location.  There is one person working that passes along the leads to the individual companies when someone visits the showroom and shows interest in a product.  I know at least 5 of the  businesses are using this address for a Google My Business profile, and we would like to also.  I am looking for some advice on best practices and strategy to ensure were not violating any of Google's policies.  Here is a link to the showroom:  http://www.brookfieldhomeandideacenter.com/

    Local Listings | | JohnWeb12
    0

  • Hey all, Was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue. Bing is showing title and description tags missing in the head of my wordpress blog. I can't seem to find any documentation on this. Thanks, Roman

    Technical SEO | | Dynata_panel_marketing
    0

  • Hello Everyone, On an average I am getting around 20 backlinks for 15 days. All these backlinks are done through proper outreach and guest posts in relevant websites. We have a team of four people doing only outreach and getting backlinks through proper guest posts. But I am worried on whether it will effect my website ranking in a negative way? Kindly get me clarified with my doubt. Should I continue this or should I reduce my numbers?

    Link Building | | sandeep.clickdesk
    0

  • Hey everyone! Apologise if this has been answered somewhere else, if so let me know. I work as an in-house SEO for a private healthcare company. Recently it's been a struggle to bring in consistent traffic and it's getting tougher to replicate traffic figures for the month before, let alone improve. Rankings are consistent if not improving in some areas and I've done work to maintain or improve CTR from page title and meta etc. I've been considering a few factors and making sure I'm performing the best I can be but, using both Keyword Planner and Search Console, I've noticed that search volume and impressions for our branded terms and industry specific terms like "nursing agencies" have dropped. My question is: Does this represent an industry trend and it's a case of trying to gain as much traffic from a diminishing pool? If so, this might make sense. It's worth me noting that we are a national company and recently there has been a amount of negative PR around our entire industry.

    Search Behavior | | grantcole91
    0

  • Hi, I have redirect a page using 302 but after redirect paid conversion is start appearing as organic conversion before that tracking was working fine. When I checked I found 'gclid' stripped after 302 redirect. How can I fix this ? Thanks

    Paid Search Marketing | | Alick300
    0

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