Skip to content

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Active 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!


  • Hello, I've heard that relevancy of the content between the source page and the target page of outbound links in my content matters greatly. The outbound links I provide in my content should have a high degree of relevancy to the topic I'm writing about, or they aren't really worth including. Example: Don't just link to the homepage of an organization mentioned in the article, link to a page on their site that is related to the topic you are writing about. Is this true? Would including less relevant links negatively impact SEO in any way?

    On-Page Optimization | | DJBKBU
    0

  • Hello, I checked my website spam score in link explorer and found out it has got 28 %. What do you recommend I do ? should I ask for all the links to be removed (even though some of them are no followed) Is it possible that google has penalised me because of that score and de-ranked me ? Thank you,

    Moz Bar | | seoanalytics
    1

  • Hi All A couple months ago we got an email from google, telling us - Mobile-first indexing enabled for https://www.impactsigns.com/ Ran the test on MOZ, Mobile usability shows 100% Last week got an email from google - New Mobile usability issues detected for impactsigns.com Top new issues found, ordered by number of affected pages: Content wider than screen Clickable elements too close together I can not seem to figure out what those issues are, as all content is visible. How important are these 2 issues? Since we are now on the mobile first side?

    Algorithm Updates | | samoos
    0

  • When we checked valuable Top pages, we noticed two types of 404 pages listed in our domain Example 1 : www.test.com/www.test.com/ecommerce.html Example 2 : www.test.com/test/ecommerce.html But we do not see any such 404 page errors in the Google Webmaster tool. Moz Top Pages Section only shows these as errors So please advise, if these are major errors or not? If these are errors, please help us to fix this as we do not have such URLs in our domain Awaiting your urgent help

    Link Explorer | | Intellect
    0

  • moz academy

    I'm looking to learn more about SEO. Has anyone purchased the courses available through MOZ? If so, are they useful?

    Getting Started | | Stevepair
    0

  • Hi,
    I've just inherited a website that I'll be looking after. I've looked in the Search Console in the Crawl errors section and discovered thousands of urls that point to non- existent pages on Desktop. There's 1,128 on Smartphone.
    Some are odd and make no sense. for example: | bdfqgnnl-z3543-qh-i39634-imbbfuceonkqrihpbptd/ | Not sure why these have are occurring but what's the best way to deal with them to improve our SEO? | northeast/ | 404 | 8/29/18 |
    | | 2 | blog/2016/06/27/top-tips-for-getting-started-with-the-new-computing-curriculum/ | 404 | 8/10/18 |
    | | 3 | eastmidlands | 404 | 8/21/18 |
    | | 4 | eastmidlands/partner-schools/pingle-school/ | 404 | 8/27/18 |
    | | 5 | z3540-hyhyxmw-i18967-fr/ | 404 | 8/19/18 |
    | | 6 | northeast/jobs/maths-teacher-4/ | 404 | 8/24/18 |
    | | 7 | qfscmpp-z3539-i967-mw/ | 404 | 8/29/18 |
    | | 8 | manchester/jobs/history-teacher/ | 404 | 8/5/18 |
    | | 9 | eastmidlands/jobs/geography-teacher-4/ | 404 | 8/30/18 |
    | | 10 | resources | 404 | 8/26/18 |
    | | 11 | blog/2016/03/01/world-book-day-how-can-you-get-your-pupils-involved/ | 404 | 8/31/18 |
    | | 12 | onxhtltpudgjhs-z3548-i4967-mnwacunkyaduobb/ | Cheers.
    Thanks in advance,
    James.

    Technical SEO | | JamesHancocks1
    0

  • Hello my name is kyo- in japan.
    I saw the information on the elements contributing to the high-level display of GMB.
    The thing I wondered is the following items.
    What does this mean? ・Physical Address in City of Search
    →Is the searched area name entered in GMB? ・Consistency of Citations on the Primary Data Sources
    →whats the" the Primary Data Sources"? ・Consistency of Citations on Tier 1 Citation Sources
    →whats the"Tier 1"?A site that everyone knows? ・GMB Primary Category Matches a Broader Category of the Search Category (e.g. primary category=restaurant & search=pizza)
    →In Japan, the size of the category is not set. Italian restaurants are only Italian restaurants. Should I set a restaurant instead of an Italian restaurant? ・Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain from Locally Relevant Domains
    →Is this an LP inbound link?
    What is the locally relevant domain? ・Quantity of Inbound Links to Domain from Industry-Relevant Domains
    →Is this an LP inbound link?
    What is the Industry-Relevant Domains? ・Quantity of Citations from Locally Relevant Domains
    →What is the Industry-Relevant Domains? Prominence on Key Industry-Relevant Domains
    →I do not know what this means. Quantity of Citations from Industry-Relevant Domains
    →What is the Industry-Relevant Domains? Geographic (City/Neighborhood) Keyword Relevance of Domain Content
    →I do not know what this means. Driving Directions to Business Clicks
    →Driving Directions set? Enhancement/Completeness of Citations
    →I do not know what this means. Proper Category Associations on Aggregators and Tier 1 Citation Sources
    →whats the Aggregators and Tier 1 Citation Sources? Quantity of Inbound Links to GMB Landing Page URL from Locally Relevant Domains
    →How is this measurement done? Overall Velocity of Reviews (Native + Third-Party)
    →How is this measurement done? Proximity of Address to Centroid
    →I do not know what this means.

    Local Listings | | yamayamax
    1

  • Hi all, Rand Fishkin once tweeted about success story of Quickbooks blog as they deleted their old and outdated content to show only high quality content to their audience. We are planning to implement the same strategy to our blog which consists of 800+ blog-posts. I'm just wondering the best way to proceed on this and planning to follow as below. Please correct me if I'm wrong and if there are any better steps of follow: Get the list of blog-posts. Check the traffic of each blog-post. If the blog-post needs to be existed, update any info on the blog. If the blog no more needed, do I need to delete or noindex or redirect? What's the better way to measure the success? Thanks

    Reporting & Analytics | | vtmoz
    1

  • Hi everyone! Over the last year and a half, we've ramped up our content generation and have now hit our stride with a steady stream of blogs and videos. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, we are seeing great results. The problem is that the qualitative feedback is always passive. When we see clients, partners, etc. in person, they tell us that they love the content, but no one ever leaves comments or uses the call to actions to submit their info. There are some social shares, but now that LinkedIn no longer has a counter, it's hard to tell how much. I'm looking for advice on strategies to get more active engagement with our content. The ideal outcome would be active conversations and lead generation. Thanks everyone!

    Content Development | | Enertiv
    2

  • ANOTHER mobile first question. Have searched the forum and didn't see something similar. Feel free to passive- aggressively link to an old thread. TL;DR - Some content would just clutter the page on mobile but is worth having on desktop. Will this now be ignored on desktop searches? Long form: We have a few ecommerce websites. We're toying with the idea of placing a lot more text on our collection/category pages. Primarily to try and set the scene for our products and sell the company a bit more effectively. It's also, obviously, an opportunity to include a couple of long tail keywords. Because mobile screens are small (duh) and easily cluttered, we're inclined _not _to display this content on mobile. In this case; will any SEO benefit be lost entirely, even to searchers on desktop? Sorry if I've completely misunderstood mobile-first indexing! Just an in-house marketing manager trying to keep up! cries into keyboard Thanks for your time.
    Ross

    Technical SEO | | MSGroup
    0

  • I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish
    1

  • We are writing a series of relevant and informative "power pages" on our site. In the past these have been 2,000 to 3,000 words and our audience has shown to be highly engaged with these pages and they converted well. We have decided to expand our new pages to capture more relevant keywords/topics and the result is they are a bit over 5,000 words. Is there a point where long content, even if highly relevant and engaging, is too long to benefit SEO? Is there any reason we would limit ourselves to 2,000-ish word long form content? I ask because I have read multiple blog posts that suggest that long form content that has ranked well in Google ranges between 2,000 and 3,000 words.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia
    0

  • Hi guys. I've heard a lot of SEO professionals, Google, (and Rand in a couple of whiteboard Friday's) say it's really important to build a 'good' website if you want to rank well. What does this mean in more practical terms? (Context... I've found some sites rank much better than they 'should' do based on the competition.  However, when I built my own site (well-optimised (on-page) based on thorough keyword research) it was nowhere to be found (not even top 50 after I'd 'matched' the backlink profile of others on page 1). I can only put this down to there being 'good quality website' signals lacking in the latter example.  I'm not a web developer so the website was the pretty basic WordPress site.)

    Algorithm Updates | | isaac663
    0

  • Rankings have been jumping across 3 of our websites since about 24 October. Is anyone seeing similar? For example ... jumps from position 5 to 20 on one day, then back to 5 for 3 days and then back to 20 for a day I'm trying to figure out if it's algorithm based or if my rank checker has gone mad. I can't replicate the same results if I search incognito or in a new browser, everything always looks stable in the SERPs if I do the search myself

    Algorithm Updates | | Marketing_Today
    0

  • Let take a medical example. Flu symptoms How does google know who has the best answer ? Thank you,

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
    0

  • I have been working on a project, this is a local business. Recently we migrate the site, to a new domain name http://www.oldwebsite.com https://www.newwebsite.com I use Moz Local and Moz Pro to track the site Performance. Obviously when we updated the domain name the local score when from 89 to 60. So my question How many time takes to Moz Local to update the info for the main partners? If I claim a listing on a third party website, and import that listing, how many time is going to take to update? I mean there's a lot of local directories out there, and I want to build business profiles with links pointing to my site. What happens to the Mian Partners, Example I have control over the Bing Places Account. What do I need to do, 1 update the info manually or Moz local will synchronize the info Thanks for your help

    Moz Local | | Roman-Delcarmen
    2

  • If I were to spin up a new site what do people recommend as the best template, services, etc. Do you have an example of the perfect structure, I want to point my team to an example page and say - This is perfect, do this but for our product (structure, content amount, etc) Thank you,

    On-Page Optimization | | Jamesmcd03
    0

  • BACKGROUND Im looking at redesigning the website for a creative consultancy to improve the user experience. The website is mainly an image portfolio along with “press”, “our services”, “about us”, “contact” pages. I originally designed the website a few years ago and when we did, we wanted to make the image portfolio the most important feature. So we made it a full screen JS image slider with lazy loading of images, so that there are about 40 full screen images on the homepage that rotate. From a users point of view i still feel this is the best system as it very quickly allows them to browse the portfolio, which we looking for a creative consultancy is their UPS (unique selling point). The site has a very strong backlink profile compared to its competitors in the SERPS it has about 20-25% increase in PA and DA. But our site has been slipping down the rankings in recent years / months. From spot 1-2 to about spot 5-7. MY HYPOTHESIS I think that the reason the site may be dropping back in the SERP is that although its a very usable site, all its portfolio information is “too easy to find / view” and results in a user coming to our site, seeing everything they need to see, then bouncing back to the SERP. Our site has a bounce rate of 40-60%. Where as on competitors sites, their “portfolio” is a separate page off the homepage, so a users has to click through to a separate page, and even if they don't like the design content of the portfolio it doesn't get logged as a bounce. MY QUESTION Does bounce rate affect SERP ranking ? Could the sites SERP performance be improved by redesigning the site to put the portfolio on a separate page so a user would have to click through to it, if that would get the bounce rate down, would the site see a benefit even if people still clicked back to the SERP results eventually after seeing our portfolio, even though it wasn't a true 1 page bounce ? Dose time on site affect SERP ranking ? Is there a way i can see a competitor's bounce rate ? Would welcome any other thoughts inputs on this matter.

    Web Design | | sl_pa
    0

  • As marketing agency we have for each client a Google My Business account. This means that we have more than 100 Google My Business accounts. We know that GA has a limit of 100 analytics accounts (free version),  but is there a limit in Google My Business too? For now, we have created multiple accounts that own different Google My Business accounts of our clients. Can I just change all the different e-mail accounts of  our marketing agency and change it to one? So we can manage all the Google My Business accounts of our clients in one e-mail account?

    Image & Video Optimization | | conversal
    0

  • I have a ton of old backlinks for products that I no longer carry but I have redirected them to other pages within the site. I was told by an SEO expert that these links are hurting me rather than helping because people click on the links and then leave. These backlinks are from reputable blogs, news sources etc and my spam score is only 1%. Are these links really hurting me?

    Link Building | | CatBoxer
    0

  • redirecting domain redirect former site

    Is it best to redirect an old website to a new website page by page to like pages or just the entire site all at once to the home page of the new site? I do have about 10 good pages on the site that are worth directing to corresponding pages on the new site. Just trying to figure out what is going to preserve the most link juice. Thanks for the help!

    Technical SEO | | photoseo1
    0

  • What is the best way for SEO to set up categories for an ecommerce site selling beauty products.  I have currently built my product categories so that if a person looks under the hydration category they find our body lotion, but also if they look under the body section of products they also will find the same body lotion.  Is this a problem for SEO?  I think it helps the customer find the product.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuhliff
    0

  • Hi all i launch my site 2 month ago here is site link seotoolscloud.com my site is index in google but not article index now even my article also written by self?? any one tell me how can index fast and what is best solution to rank my site??? help help help

    Link Building | | 63bxbbzhsj
    0

  • I have a page from a state agency linking to my website.  They have good PA and DA.  How do I tell google to "do follow"?  It is already showing up as linked to my site, I just want to make sure I'm getting the SEO juice! 🙂

    Link Building | | Kuhliff
    0

  • Hi, Hope you guys are doing well! I need help from experts, I have a query that "Does google allows SEO for websites related to crypto currency ?" If yes, what is best way to do SEO for crypto currency website ?

    Technical SEO | | JessicaThompson
    0

  • Hi everyone, Recently Moz discovered a lot of old backlinks to my url. Some of them don't even exist anymore. I don't understand how Moz has found these links, even if they don't exist? And why did Moz find them suddenly all at once? Can anyone help me with this question? Thanks!

    Link Explorer | | Online_Marketing_Monkey
    0

  • Hi everyone, I've been working hard on my on-page SEO lately so I can gain visibility for my website. The results have been great and I am now on top of the SERP for the services I propose. I think that my content is almost fully optimize and** I've respected all the best practices (both on-page and technical SEO)**. However, there is one problem I just can't deal with for I don't have the knowledge, hence this post. I'm pretty sure that this issue is quite common for SEO experts. Here the thing: I offer dental emergency services, which is my core business. I'm ranked 4th for that request in my area, which is good, but I'd like to rank 1st as** I have a better DA and content than the 3 websites outranking me**. Also, I'm the first result for any other related services such as "dental services" or "dentist". However, when it comes to the theme "dental emergency", I'm constantly outranked by the same 3 websites. I ran an audit on their website but **my content and technical SEO is way better **than theirs. I suppose that the only reason I'm behind them is because they used "dental emergency" in their **Brand name **and, therefore, in the Home page URL. Every time someone is looking up online for "dental emergency", these websites will be on top of the SERP as I think that Google is unable to know whether the users are specifically looking for their websites (aka Brand) or for "dental emergency" services. Here is an example of a competitor: https://www.urgencedentairedemontreal.com/ (urgence meaning emergency in French). His whole Brand name and URL have been built after the "dental emergency." service. On the contrary, **my Brand name does not mention "urgence". ** I see that as a trick that is confusing Google. The fact that my competitors named their Brand after a specific service I also offer is real pain for my SEO.  I also think it's really unfair as I've put a lot of effort in designing a nice website with great UX and content. This is the kind of practice that should be penalized in my opinion. Please, does anyone know any way to resolve this issue?

    On-Page Optimization | | AlexTL
    0

  • What is your favorite tool for getting a report of URLs that are not cached/indexed in Google & Bing for an entire site? Basically I want a list of URLs not cached in Google and a seperate list for Bing. Thanks, Mark

    Technical SEO | | elephantseo
    3

  • Hi most of our pages are rated as "medium" for optimisation by the google page speed tool and with an average speed of 2.5 seconds compared to my competitors whose pages are rates as "fast" and have a speed of less than 1 second! We use the DNN platform & my web dev has said that he cant squeeze anymore from the platform and that to get the same speed as my competitors will need a platform development which it out of our control. My question is, is it worth moving our site to another platform that can achieve these fast speeds or is the difference between medium and fast not worth it - i am mainly looking at it from a google ranking signal perspective. Ash

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep1
    0

  • How long does it take Google Webmaster tools on average to detect links to my website? What about OSE? My site is fairly new (launched in January) and I've done some guest blogging -- I would think that some links from 3-4 weeks ago would be showing up by now. Am I just being impatient?

    Link Building | | atstickel12
    0

  • Hi, would you guys recommend using a backlink service like this? https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/gain-30-links-from-30-top-newspaper-sites-in-the-uk/396519Or is this the kind of thing that leads to being penalised?Over the years, I've always been told this is black hat and dodgy. Is that always the case?

    Link Building | | landport
    0

  • domain seo redirecting domain

    Hi guys, An email software vendor managed by a different area of my company redirected 100 domains used for unsolicited email campaigns to my main domain. These domains are very likely to get blacklisted at some point. My SEO tool now is showing me all those domains as "linking" to my main site as do-follow links. The vendor states that this will not affect my main domain/website in any way. I'm highly concerned. I would appreciate your professional opinion about this. Thanks!!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anagentile
    0

  • Suddenly in October I had a spike on inbound links from forums and spams sites. Each one had setup hundreds of links. The links goes to WordPress internal search. Example: mysite.com/es/?s=⚄

    White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Arlinaite47
    0
  • Unsolved

    domainoverview

    Why on Domain Overview are there only 4 countries to choose from? I am in NZ and need to check websites that operate businesses in NZ not Canada, US or Australia?

    Getting Started | | KapitiGirl
    0

  • I am wondering how people set up their Google My Business listings to appear in the search results similar to this business, Hulme Orthodontics. I attached an image below that'll give more details. I am working with a client that has two locations similar in distance to Hulme Orthodontics, and I have tried everything and have come up with no answers as to how I can properly get Google to format the search results in this way. I assume that there is no actual way to manage this and that Google decides this on their own. However, if anyone has any insight regarding this manner, that would be much appreciated! Thank you for your help! UsEr3rK

    Local Listings | | DylMar
    1

  • How do I work with 'longTails' in Moz? how do I get correct keyword and tails do I write 'keyword and tail' or could I write 'tail and keyword' - I think of order how many words could be used? Three: 'Keyword/Head' and 'modifier' and 'tail'? what do competition do? could I set longTail phrase/words as normal keywords to see ranking in  compartion to competition? etc.

    Moz Bar | | astridhelene
    0

  • How do I work with 'LongTails' in Moz? how do I get correct keyword and tails do I write 'keyword and tail' or could I write 'tail and keyword' - I think of order how many words could be used? Three: 'Keyword/Head' and 'modifier' and 'tail'? what do competition do? could I set longTail phrase/words as normal keywords to see ranking in  compartion to competition? etc.

    Keyword Research | | astridhelene
    0

  • We carry a product line, cutless bearings (for use on boats). For instance, we have one, called the Able, that has the following meta title (and searched by View Page Source to confirm): BOOT 1-3/8" x 2-3/8" x 5-1/2" Johnson Cutless Bearing | BOOT Cutlass However, if I search for it on on Google by part number or name (boot cutless bearing, boot cutlass bearing), the meta title comes back with whole first part chopped off, only showing this : "x 5-1/2" Johnson Cutless Bearing | BOOT Cutlass - Citimarine ..." Any idea why? Here's the url if it will hopefully help: https://citimarinestore.com/en/metallic-inches/156-boot-johnson-cutless-bearing-870352103.html All the products in the category are doing the same. Thanks!

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Citimarine
    0

  • Hi, I hope you are doing well. I want to know what are the best SEO plugins for  wordpress website? https://www.myqurantutor.com/

    Reporting & Analytics | | Bigbrand
    0

  • When I run monthly reports, it looks like keywords are down, when they are actually up compared to the previous month.  Is there a way to get the monthly reports to show how many positions up or down a keyword is compared to the prior run report?

    Feature Requests | | bizmarquee
    0

  • Hi All, I'm a freelancer specialising in marketing and advertising for small businesses Creative Express and I was wondering what I should concentrate on first in terms of SEO? I know that targeting the right keywords are important, as are backlinks, but also TOS etc. I haven't built up much of any, but the time has come to put in significant effort in SEO. Is there something that I should be putting the most effort in to? Is there a list somewhere that shows priorities? Thanks in advance, Dan

    Image & Video Optimization | | CreativeExpress
    0

  • We need help to figure out what seems to be an error in our sitemap.
    We have submitted the sitemap to BING and the sitemap includes 1,2 million pages that should be crawled.  After initial submission, Bing says in the dashboard that 1,2 million pages have been submitted.  Then always after 2-4 days the number drops to either 500.000 pages or like now 250.000 pages.   Why is that?  is there an error in our sitemap and BING in excluding pages, and it lowers the submitted number after going through them and discovering the error ?.   We need to figure this out and fix so that BING can crawl and index all our 1,2 million pages.   See the screenshot showing the BING dashboard.   
    We are also having issues with google but we can't figure out what is going on. Here are the sitemaps: https://imsvintagephotos.com/google_sitemap/sitemap.xml and here: https://imsvintagephotos.com/sitemap.xml. Your website is www.imsvintagephotos.com qqp6gj

    Technical SEO | | IMSvintagephotos
    0

  • We have Pro subscription in the name of Convonix and we are not able to perform more than 10 tests on https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/ Also, we are not able to see all 10 rows for "Top Followed Links" Request you to help us in this case.

    Moz Pro | | Convonix
    0

  • keyword explorer

    Hi I wanted to check the volume of a keyword in German but unfortunately, it shows no data available.?
    Is this actually possible to research German keywords with your tool?

    Keyword Research | | Raymonda
    0

  • Hi our site is set up typically for a key product (money page) with 6 to 12 cluster pages, with a few more associated blog pages. If for example the key product was "funeral plans" what percentage of the internal anchor text links should be an exact match? Will the prominence of those links eg higher up the page have an impact on the amount of juice flowing? And do links in buttons count in the same way as on page anchor text eg "compare funeral plans"? Many thanks
    Ash

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep1
    1

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.