Active Questions
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Link baiting with bloggers:
Are there any risks of getting penalized by Google if one was to publish a blogger competition on a corporate blog, in which participating bloggers have to include a link* on their blogs to enter? Bloggers also receive a small prize (CD, book,..) to thank them for participating. After what happened with Overstock.com do you think this kind of link-bait is risky? *each blogger has to write an original article and the links are organic. Thanks for your help. o1rRl.png
Link Building | | ref.price0 -
Question about Hm Pg Redirects
This question is for MichaelC who was helping me with a previous question that is now closed. Please refer to my question with Subject "Double 301 Redirect" It was about redirecting /home.aspx to simply "/" because that was an old URL and we have some backlinks pointing to it. If the best I could do is redirect "/home.aspx" to something like "#hm", would that work, since everything after the hash symbol is ignored? Thanks Clint
Technical SEO | | poolguy0 -
H1 tag proper uses
Ok I see this happening all of the time. I get my hands on a new website and there are one of four header tag issues: 1. There are no H1 tags at all 2. There are multiple H1 tags on the same page 3. Every page has an identical H1 tag 4. Header tags are used all out of order Do any of these have a negative impact on rankings? I've always tried to get one H1 tag on each page, have it be the first header tag, and make it unique to each page. Is this a waste of itme? Could improper header tag use hurt a website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster1 -
Google place page Images
Is there any real difference in uploading an images directly to your google places page or linking an image from another site? I have heard that you get better results if you upload a photo to photo bucket then to insider pages then post that link to your google places page. To me it just seems a bit odd to do things this way. I get that it's suppose to give you more back links however I don't think it would necessarily be relevant or useful for the user. Any thoughts??
Algorithm Updates | | christinarule0 -
Results in the On-Page
I put one site (www.fmredesdeprotecao.com.br) and register some keywords, but the keywords don't appear in the results On-Page like the other campaigns. How can I solve that?
On-Page Optimization | | Ex20 -
How much weight does Google give to Exact Match Domains?
I'm building a site on a virtual host and now it's ready to go online, but i still have to choose a domain name. One of the main keywords i want to rank for is a 3-word keyword phrase with 9000+ exact match searches per month. Here's an example to better understand my question: 'Guitar training lessons' My main competitor's domain is only 5 months old but it does have the full keyword phrase in it with '4u' added at the end: www.guitartraininglessons4u.com I wanted to go with www.guitartrainingcenter.com (notice that 'lessons' is left out of the domain name) but i'm wondering if my main competitor would have a big advantage by having the full keyword phrase in his domain. How much weight does google give to sites that have the exact search query in their domain name? Does a domain still qualify as 'exact match' if a word (info) is added to it? How much harder would it be to outrank this domain as apposed to a site that doesn't have the keywords in its domain name? Thanks in advance Freek
Competitive Research | | ZeroGrav1 -
How to do SEO for famous fortune 500 companies
Hello SEOmoz, I have a question to you guys. How typically SEO should be done to fortune 500 comnpanies who are very much famous offline. The problem I see is any links built gets attention and media can make a big deal out of it. For eg: The recent JCPenney SEO issue. Though their paid links got them penalized, other traditional methods can also not fit their stratgy. Here are the traditional methods and how it can not be applied to them. Commenting on blogs - Well, it is reputation here. If some one sees a link on blog comments, it might be fishy and can be named as blog spammers. Forum marketing - Same here. The reputation of clients can go down. Paid post / Paid links - Again risky Please suggest how to build link for type of famous clients. Please do not give stratgic level of advice, but be more specific in your answer. For eg: Do this kind of link building and don't do y. etc., Looking forward for ur answers. Thanks
Link Building | | SamuelDarwin0 -
Is there such thing as a site free from errors?
Or is this a given? I am new to SEO and SEOmoz. One of my campaigns is completley free of errors...the others are a work in progress. Now I realize that SEO is never done, but can a site actually be free of errors? If so... I just gave myself a pat on the back.
Moz Pro | | AtoZion0 -
Does Google Use Security Seals As A Trust/Ranking Signal
There are quite a few secuirty seals/site safety tools by some big antivirus/trust companies Mcaffe site secuirty, verisign etc. Does Google, or any other big search engines use these as a trust/ranking signal?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhysmaster0 -
Basically duplicate sites that act like they're two different businesses. How do they not get dinged?
I bought supplies recently at barcodesinc.com. While searching I noticed it is clearly the same site as barcodediscount.com. How do they not get hurt by duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | jotham20 -
Banned from google !
Hello, I realize (with GAnaltytics and command "link:") this morning that my domain host (share one) : "mlconseil.com" under which several websites are hosted has been banned from google. Here below the websites : www.amvo.fr :
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mozllo
www.apei-cpm.fr :
www.armagnac-les-vieux-chenes.fr
www.centraledelexpertise.fr
www.cleaning-pc-33.com
www.internet-33.fr
www.territoires-et-ntic.fr
www.vin-le-taillou.com
www.maliflo.asso.fr I don't kow why, i use since end of january 2011 IBP, only for some submissions to directories and for managing some lists of urls. I submitted about 30/40 directories never at the same time , but raher day after day, smoothly. On www.territoires-et-ntic.fr and www.amvo.fr which are blogs, i have installed some external rss feeds to display as articles, i decided to stop that but i don't know if it's related to such "blacklistage" from google. I don't use any nasty "blackhat" programs or else.. I'am really upset about that, i claim this morning with the same words as now, a new indexation but i don't know how long it will take ?Any idea ? Which are the tools which could help me to scan for maybe any malicious maleware on my hosting provider ? Many tks0 -
Google dropping pages from SERPS
The website for my London based plumbing company has thousands of specifically tailored pages for the various services we provide to all the areas in London. It equates to approximately 6000 pages in total. When google has all these pages indexed, we tend to get a fair bit of traffic - as they cater pretty well for long tail searches. However, every once in a while Google will drop the vast majority of our indexed pages from SERPs for a few days or weeks at a time - for example at the moment Google is only indexing 613 whereas last week it was back at the normal ~6000. Why does this happen? We of course lose a lot of organic traffic when these pages don't displayed - what are we doing wrong? Website: www.pgs-plumbers.co.uk
Technical SEO | | guy_andrews0 -
Whats the best tools for site architecture
Look for tools that can visualise a sites architecture (idealy automated). Also looking for tools that can visualise internal linking sturures
Technical SEO | | Motionlab0 -
On Page Report Card... with or w/o local modifiers?
Hey all! So I am curious how you recommend using the "on page report card" (which is really helpful) along with the concept of local modifiers. IE, here is a term I am going after: business forums but really I care about a specific location: business forums | Greensboro NC So the word I hear is typically to do your keyword research & page optimization FOR the primary term, but then tack on your local modifiers after. So which do you run reports on? Probably both is the best answer, eh? Obviously my local sites won't have a shot at ranking nationally/internationally for such a broad term as "business forums", especially with some monster sites out there with some serious clout. This is more of a best practices question. Thanks dudes.
Moz Pro | | nsmcseo20 -
How can I update On Page Optimization Reports following 301 redirect?
A few weeks ago I ran the SEOMoz On Page Optimization Reports for one of my sites. At the time, the site homepage was duplicated .com/ and .com/index.html (I know!). The On Page Optimisation Reports I ran at the time obviously included both as individual pages. I've now corrected the duplicate issue with a 301 but the On Page Optimization Reports are still looking at the rankings for .com/index.html and therefore showing "not in top 50" for keywords where I'm actually ranking 1st - any idea how I can get the reports to update so they don't continue to look for .com/index.html? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | trbaldwin0 -
What constitutes a "paid link"?
I know that link building is one of the more important tools for great ranking and know that "paid links" may hurt a sites ranking. How do I know if a company offering link building will be classified as "paid links"
Link Building | | stevecounsell0 -
Seo for flash home page?
I have a client who insists their home page be a single graphic image of their logo with php menus linking to all of the other pages up top. This appears to me to be an seo nightmare. They seem to be unwilling to have anything to do with changing the appearance and want to rely on seo for "all the other pages" on the site. What's an SEO to do in this situation? Is it possible to have a flash image that lands on a "homepage" for google to crawl, rather than a single image? What's the best seo approach here?
Web Design | | peaceland0 -
Subfolder v Root Domain for attaining ranking
Hi, We are working with a site that we can refer to as: www.clientsbrand.com.au It has a subsection of our clients services at www.clientsbrand.com.au/keyword The client has now decided that this subsection is in fact the most important thing they should be trying to rank for. A large amount of the content that is already existing under clientsbrand.com.au/topic1 /topic2 /topic3 etc would fit naturally under clientsbrand.com.au/keyword/topic1 etc The root domain is currently not ranking for the keyword they wish to target. I am planning on moving a lot of this content to the subfolder to try and boost that silo and get things going for that keyword. As long as we 301 the old URL's to their corresponding new position are there any issues any of you see with doing this? I am worried there may be some traps for young players I have not considered. Thanks in advance for any responses.
On-Page Optimization | | MrPaulB0 -
Good SEO Companies
Can you recommend any reputable SEO companies for someone with a smaller budget? Mainly just looking for link building.
Link Building | | bigboy7250 -
Longer Tail Keyword for URL and Anchor text
Hello If I am trying to rank for the term blue widgets as a primary, and also the term shiny blue widgets , and big shiny blue widgets as secondary - would the url /blue-widgets or /shiny-blue-widgets or /big-shiny-blue-widgets be better (all else equal) Would the word shiny / big dilute or affect of KW in the domain for the rankings for blue widgets (all esle equal) Regarding anchor text of inbound links, if the anchor text is shiny blue widgets, is that going to help me rank for both queries "blue widgets" and "shiny blue widgets" equally? (all else equal), or would including shiny, affect my ranking for "bliue widgets" Or is it better to keep the anchor text as just blue widgets (of course we could vary it) but Im trying to get a feel for how that would work as we are builfing some links I can control the anchor text. I hope this was clear enough Thanks Sam
Link Building | | Impact-2015550 -
Google Quality Algorithm Update
I'm curious what correlations or impacting variables SEO professionals have found that have increased or decreased ranking with the most recent algorithm change. It appears that many innocent sites have fallen victim, especially larger sites. It also appears that Google is maintaining that specific sites were not targeted... Meaning there must be proven characteristics.
Technical SEO | | douglaskarr0 -
Up to my you-know-what in duplicate content
Working on a forum site that has multiple versions of the URL indexed. The WWW version is a top 3 and 5 contender in the google results for the domain keyword. All versions of the forum have the same PR, but but the non-WWW version has 3,400 pages indexed in google, and the WWW has 2,100. Even worse yet, there's a completely seperate domain (PR4) that has the forum as a subdomain with 2,700 pages indexed in google. The dupe content gets completely overwhelming to think about when it comes to the PR4 domain, so I'll just ask what you think I should do with the forum. Get rid of the subdomain version, and sometimes link between two obviously related sites or get rid of the highly targeted keyword domain? Also what's better, having the targeted keyword on the front of Google with only 2,100 indexed pages or having lower rankings with 3,400 indexed pages? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Hondaspeder0 -
Seriously? where is my first question?! is it deleted?
Did you delete my first question? where is it? I cant find it on My Questions.... And if it is deleted i NEED to know why, i am currently on trial for PRO MEMBERSHIP, and getting my question deleted without any news is definitely not a good idea.... If i did something wrong, i need to know what is it.... (i dont understand , how on this green earth asking a question would be wrong though) Please responds, PS : My Last question was posted on "On-Page / Site Optimization" It asked 3 questions, all related to Search Engine Visibility, and the primary question is about "If i used php script to detect google bot / yahoo bot / bing bot, and then redirect them to page that have EXACTLY same content, but a much more SEO Friendly one, will this effect my seo standing" The website in question is http://atlantagenset.com In which case that website is full flash BUT it can be opened through any phone (I have built a php that detected IF you are coming from any mobile devices, it will redirect you to the right HTML version of that page) arghhhh i have asked the question, and have not got any responds for 6~7 days, and it got deleted??!
On-Page Optimization | | M4G1C14N0 -
Broad match Vs Exact match
This may sound a little basic, but i'm going to ask anyway. On Googles keyword tool Ive always used broad match, knowing that they are never 100% accurate, and obviously inflated by other SEO's searching for their keywords, but used it all the same to get an idea of global monthly searches and potential targeted traffic. I have seen recently, on SEOmoz, and a post fromJill Whalen not long back, that unless you change the match to "Exact" your data is useless? Could somebody explain why this is the case? My initial thoughts were, a search for SEO on broad shows 6,120,000 per month Yet a search for the same keyword in exact match shows 673,000 per month. I had presumed that the broad match would include "learn SEO" "What is SEO" etc etc, where as 673,000 just search exactly for SEO. Is this correct? 3 points go to Richard Q&A answering animal dude Getz if he gets this first! Thanks in advance
Keyword Research | | Yozzer2 -
Should I try to optimize for SEO a site that lives only for 5 days
Hi, we are actually building a new microsite that will live on promo.domain.com. The site will have a promo for about 5 days and will be changed for a new promo after 5 days. Considering that the site www.domain.com has a high autority (67) and is well indexed in search engine, should I try to optimise this site for keywords such as promo "keyword" rebate "keyword" cheap "keyword" even if the site will be optimized for those keywords only for 5 days. We are already doing PPC campaign on these keywords but I am wondering if Google will have the time to rank us in the top 10 results in those 5 days or if I am loosing my time. My other option is to leave the TITLE of this site always the same like Groupon is doing and focus on very generic keywords. Which option do you think is the best?
Technical SEO | | Adviso0 -
Scheduling crawls between certain time periods
Hi, today SEOMoz crawled our site and it interfered with an email campaign that we sent out and pretty much brought our site to a crawl (seoMoz even reported numerous 4XX errors). Is there a way to tell the crawler to only allow indexing between certain time periods?
Moz Pro | | RugsUSA0 -
Using 1 main site for many branch office locations
I have 1 main site with many many city/state pages within the site. I would like to use this site as the 'website' on the google local places pages for all my branch office locations, however I am worried that if my domain authority isn't high enough for the site, google will think I am spamming 'google places'. Are there any best practices I can follow to do this? Ideally I would like my blended search to show www.site.com/boston not as www.site.com
Image & Video Optimization | | ilyaelbert0 -
I have both a ".net" and a ".com" address for the Same Website.....
I have mysite.net and mysite.com......They are both the same age, however, we always had it so that the mysite.com address forwarded to the mysite.net address. The mysite.net address was our main address forever. We recently reversed that and made the mysite.com address the main address and just have mysite.net forward to the mysite.com address. I'm wondering if this change will affect our rankings since a lot of the backlinks we've acquired are actually pointing to mysite.net and not mysite.com (our new main address)???
Technical SEO | | B24Group0 -
Viewing Specific Links in OSE - For a Specific Month
(1) Can I use OSE to see the number of links per month a site acauired over the past year (month by month)? For example, I might be interested if I see a competitor acquired a surprisingly high number of links during December, 2010. (2) Can I use OSE to see the a list of links a site acquired during a specific time, such as December of 2010? For example, if I see a competitor suddenly acquired an unusually high number of links in December, 2010, I'd like to see a list of those links, to figure out how they acquired those links. Thanks!
Competitive Research | | GregMoore0 -
Title tag on sitemap.xml
The SEO moz is showing an error on one of the sites within my SE Moz account campaign under Crawl Diagnostics: Title tag missing or empty. No problem here but the file associated with this issue is sitemap.xml and that just dose't look right as as far as I know xml files are title tag free. I've searched around and i've been able only to confirm my initial thought that sitemap.xml dose't use a title tag .. like any other xml. is this an issue ? (the error that is) or i should let it slide. can it be fixed ? if yes, how ? Thanks !
Moz Pro | | eyepaq1 -
How do you rank in the "brands for:" section in Google's search results ?
There's a "brands for:" section that appears above the first organic listing for certain search queries. For example, if you search for "dedicated servers" in Google, you will see that a "brands for:" appears. How do you get listed there? Thanks, Brian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InMotionHosting0 -
What is the best top menu linking structure (for SEO) for my site: A or B?
I don't know if these two scenarios are any different as far as SEO is concerned, but I wanted to ask to get an opinion. On my website: http://www.rainchainsdirect.com you can see there is a top menu with "About" "Info" "Questions" etc. Some of these links lead to further pages that are essentially a indeces for multiple further links. My question is: in terms of SEO, is it better to A) have all links (that are now on the pages that the menu links lead to) displayed in a drop down menu directly from the top menu (and bypassing an intermediate page) or B) to have it as it is now where you have to click to an intermediate page (like "rain chain info") to get access to the links (and not have such a large drop down menu) Is there a difference in terms of SEO? In terms of useability it almost seems like a toss up between the two, so if there were better SEO value to one of the other, then I would choose that one. By the way, I know that the way it is structured now is strange, where there is only one drop down that leads to the same page as the top menu item, but that will be fixed, fyi. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | csblev0 -
How do I get Google Places to pick up my reviews from other sites?
I have reviews on Yelp, Insiderpages.com, and Citysearch. All of my contact information matches up, but Google does not seem to be finding them and adding them to my Google Places page. Is there anything I need to do to make this happen?
Image & Video Optimization | | vinnyb20000 -
Sub Domain SEO
I am thinking to Add Sub Domains to get better rankings for Local Searches. So I will develop City Specific Sites with Specific Language. For Example qatar.wisnetsol.com. IT will be in Arabic. If my Good standing and Ranking on Google for wisnetsol.com will help my subdomain to rank better? if we setup wisnetsol.com/qatar, how it can target Qatar in Google Webmaster tools? Will links for qatar.wisnetsol.com and wisnetsol.com are seprate? What do you think about this strategy? Is it good or bad?
Technical SEO | | Khuram0 -
When URL rewrite can lead to un pretty URLs
Hi Mozzers. I've a client that has done a little bit of mess rewriting the URLs of its site. In fact, also the data base driven URLs are rewritten, but the dev forgot to change the space with "-", so that now the 95% of the URLs are like this one: http://www.portalesardegna.com/search/Appartamenti e Residence/ Obviously not really a pretty URL. I am not so sure if this issue has an SEO consecuences (in fact, the site ranks pretty well also with those kind of url), but I am thinking more on usability issue. Could you suggest me any easy fix to this rewrite problem?
Technical SEO | | gfiorelli12 -
International (greek) characters in the URL
For one of our sites we are considering restructuring the urls. This is about a Greek site and we are toying between the following options: a) English URLS e.g. www.domain.com/cars b) Greek URLs e.g. www.domain.com/αυτοκίνητα c) "Greeklish" URLs (Greek words spelled with latin characters) www.domain.com/aftokinita Normally we would imagine option b is the best since it would reinforce the main and most relevant keyword that is already present within the page content. We see many people search in google using greeklish (e.g. they are lazy to switch the keyboard locale all the time). Since we would also like to capture this part of the SE traffic but cannot obviously write in "greeklish" within our main page content maybe option c is a good compromise?
International SEO | | achatzakis0 -
301 redirect (www.domain.com/index to www.domain.com)
Hello, Please let me know what are the exact right steps in order to get rid of the duplicate content issues related with: www.domain.com/index.html same as www.domain.com without creating an infinite loop. Do you have a step by step guide posted within seomoz including 301 redirect for non www to www for all urls and index.whatever to main domain name without going into a infinite loop ? btw how to you spot the loop ? is it obvious like never ending refresh of the home page ? thanks a lot !
On-Page Optimization | | eyepaq2 -
Optimising a website for multiple keywords and multiple towns
Hello, We have a clients site who we are trying to rank for 10 keywords accross 20 towns so a combination of 200. What would be the best way to tackle this. Their url is www.abbottclarkeifa.co.uk. Thanks Shehzad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gareth_Cartman0 -
Duplicate content when uploading articles on other websites
Hi, We regularly write articles on our website and then submit them to different websites with link backs or sometimes without link backs. If google crawls these websites and our website, will it penalise us for duplicate content? Does it make a difference if we put link back to our site or not? If Google sees it as duplicate content, what should we do as a solution? Thanks
Link Building | | Essentia0 -
Domain position on site:domain.com search
Hi, After the last week Google algotithm update, my web site index appears on 4th position when I search for site:www.domain.com If I make a simple search for domain or domain.com it ranks on first position. Is this a sign of a penalty ? What would be the cause ? Thanks
Link Building | | tranquilito0 -
Is the copy-paste function under tynt.com SEO friendly
Hello you suggest http://www.tynt.com/publisher-tools/copy-and-paste-to-share-content/ in your pro tipps but I wonder why you are not using it for your own blog under seomoz.org. I noticed that when somebody copy and paste something form my blog a strange code is added to the link: Expample: http://www.janik.cc/webdesigner-blog/2011/02/sample/#ixzz1FQvadWNV Is the #ixzz1FQvadWNV maybe not that good in a seo view of point?
Technical SEO | | MichaelJanik0 -
Farm update
Has anyone noticed any changes since the Farm Update from Google allegedly affected 11.8% of all US queries? Seems like we got some extra long tail traffic from the US - but its too early to tell if that is a coincidence or a more permanent change. I guess its one of those days where its good not to be a content farm 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | ThomasHgenhaven0 -
Competiting In the Small Business SEO Market
I deal with primarily small businesses in the construction and maintenance industries and I'm looking for some advice. Traditionally in these categories you find absolutely awful websites with the below attributes, all ranking 1-5 in the SERPs. Weak/Limited content No blog Awful title tags Minimal backlinks Poor on-site optimization Ect. In most cases I am going to assume that these sites have been indexed for the last ten years, and that is why they are retaining such high rankings. My issue is trying to compete with them! So far I have worked to have my client's website submitted to and accepted by all of their competitor's backlinking site (which didn't take as long as you might think). I've also listed my client in several of the top paying and free directories (dmoz, joe ant, ect.) and still I see limited results. Lastly and most annoyingly my clients website, according to SEOmoz is currently leading the domain authority race in every category. Does anyone have a suggestion as to what is going on.
Technical SEO | | calin_daniel0 -
In page analysis
Hello, Seomoz did a crawl of my whole page, but under in page analysis grade rankings there have been no crawls? how can I initiate one?
Moz Pro | | AdamGymyGym0 -
Am I missing something?
Hey guys, First of all, a big thanks to SEOmoz and the community. I've been an avid reader for about a year now and have seen some great improvements. I'm always focusing my efforts on strategies that work well for my niche. Although I've come accross one of my competitors that doesn't seem to have much going for him, although he ranks very well. His root domain is ****E and the URL where (seemingly) spammed links point to is ***. If you do a site: command he has 1000+ pages although most consist of "events calendar" (empty). Also, I ran some of his content through copyscape and there seems to be multiple versions of it throughout the web. After all this, he ranks very well for money keywords in our niche, although his on-page is horrible so there are many opporunities I've capitalized on. Is there something I'm missing? I'm trying to find the value in his website but its not very clear to me since his backlink profile is (seemingly) junk and his on-page goes against all I was told to implement.
Technical SEO | | reegs0
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