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Category: On-Page / Site Optimization

Explore on-page optimization and its role in a larger SEO strategy.


  • Ideally, you should use both, but I realize that could be a lot of work. Canonical URLs will work well for the case you mentioned above. Just remember to link to your canonical URL on internal pages and have inbound links point to that canonical URL. You should ask site owners that host those inbound links to change if possible or use 301 to redirect those links that can't be changed. You may also want to consider creating redirect rules to add or remove the trailing slash for all URLs, because links with and without the slash are considered different URLs and will split link juice.

    | kwoolf
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  • Hi Denis, If I understand correctly, you have a PRO campaign that is grading a URL/Keyword combination that you didn't intend. The On-Page tool automatically generates reports for any of your tracked keywords that rank in the top 50, and it grades them against the URL that is ranking. So generally, it can only get these keyword phrases from your tracked keywords. Sometimes these are not the keyword/URL combinations you want to grade. Fortunately there's an easy way grade any keyword you want. Here's some instructions from the Help Guide I wrote... For example, your "Contact Us" page ranks #5 for the keyword phrase "Yellow Shoes" and the Web App grades it a B. What if you really want to target your homepage for this keyword phase? Here’s how: 1. Hit **Report Card **at the top of the On-page summary. 2. Choose your Keyword you want to grade. The keyword must already be included in your   campaign. Select Manage Keywords if you need to add keywords. 3. Enter the URL of the page you would like to grade. 4. Hit Grade My On-Page Optimization to generate your report. [image: ?name=custom_reports.png] Hope this helps!

    | Cyrus-Shepard
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  • Oooh, that's a big footer, with a lot of similar content on each page for each city. Those are being counted, and I'd work on reducing those. When I look at your page, it looks like it's being written for the search engines and not the user. On the city-level page, there's a bunch of content that's below the fold and the video. If I didn't look at my scroll bar, I wouldn't have known that was there.

    | KeriMorgret
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  • You could implement the canonical tag to eliminate the self-created duplicate content. Hope this helps!

    | lavellester
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  • Should not matter... people move registrars frequently.  I have moved established website domains from Asian registrars to a USA registrar without any problems.

    | EGOL
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  • Thanks And would you suggest removing the old sitelink to make room for the new domain? How could we speed up the process of getting the sitelink up for the new domain?

    | YannickVeys
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  • Really depends on the page itself... Like the autority of the page. The thing is with having a lot of links the pagerank it will pass to the sites links will be devided amongst them. Thats why i think it is better to have less then hundred even less then 50.

    | seoroyal
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  • Brian As far as which to remove, that's just up to him to decide. Unless I saw how the site was put together with plug-ins etc he should be able to determine which one is best to use.  Its whichever is easier for him really.  From an SEO standpoint you just need to choose one, it doesn't matter which. Hope that clarifies! -Dan

    | evolvingSEO
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  • I have never heard that - and I have never experienced it on my sites or those I manage. On the contrary; I think it helps rank a site for a phrase. I do know some people are afraid of linking out, but I am not. When I link out with my target text, one of the messages I am sending Google is " this is my neighborhood, and I am linking to it."

    | mjtaylor
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  • You'll need to check the source code, as you'll be changing redirects rather than removing them, redirects will still be in place. rel="canonical" href="http://noahsdad.com/story/" /> is a current Canonical. rel="canonical" href="http://noahsdad.com/story" />  would be the new Canonical ( without the / )

    | SimonCullum
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  • I concur with Ressler.  You are better off thinking of the end user than SEO on the finer points of navigation, IMO. You certainly don't need to repeat the category keyword as you drill down. Widgets/red-widgets/cool-red-widgets/<< might be too many widgets. Just as "beste SEO practice" suggests we only use the keyword phrase 1-2 times in a title tag, I would probably not overuse it in a path. Widgets/red/cool-red-widgets/ might be less 'keyword stuffed."

    | mjtaylor
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  • Gotcha! I say those pages should be excluded via robots.txt. Build static landing pages for any keyword term you wish to rank for and optimize those. Or rather than build a new page, take the top result of a search for keyword site:yourdomain.com, which will tell you what page already ranks highest for that target phrase, and and use that for your landing page for a term; optimize on page and build internal and external links to the page for the term.

    | mjtaylor
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  • Thanks Sparkplug, I appreciate the quick response.

    | apmgsmith
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  • Hello mrlolalot (nice name, lol!), As you already mentioned, Stores Direct has suggested what is about the best way to handle this, which is to not link the short description text, but to use it to improve usability. To that I would add, try to work in a few keyword phrases that are optimized for the page on which the short descriptions appear, which shouldn't be difficult since they are appearing on a category page that is relevant to the type of product they describe. I would also mention one potential downside of showing short descriptions on category pages is that products that live in multiple categories could have their short description showing on more than one page. Still, I think the reward is bigger than the risk as long as you don't have the same products in more than a couple categories. If most of your products are in four, five, six... categories than you're going to have a pretty big duplicate content problem on your hands. Also as you already mentioned, linking the short description isn't going to do you much good since you're linking the product title above it, which is probably a far-better link to have anyway, keyword-wise. Linking the title of a product is the epitome or relevant anchor text. And I'd stay away from nofollow linking any internal page on the site with the exception of perhaps cart and account type pages, which should be noindexed in the meta tag and/or disallowed in the robots.txt file anyway. But to answer your question: Yes, it can be a bad thing to display non-linked short product descriptions on the home page and category pages IF you aren't using the keywords for which you want the home and category pages to rank; and IF you are showing that same short description on several pages (i.e. multiple categories and the home page). But I do like short product descriptions to appear on category pages for reasons Stores Direct explained in his first answer. So my advice would be to adjust the keyword use if you can, while addressing the duplicate content problem if that is an issue. Sometimes with these established sites you'll find the category pages already ranking for the product-level keywords and you may worry that changing the strategy will cause the page to no longer rank. An example: Your widget category might rank for Small Purple Widget because you have a short description on there for your Small Purple Widget product. The question then becomes: Does your Small Purple Widget page also rank? If not, why not? That is what you, your users, and Google all want to rank. Everyone wants the same thing so it should be simple to fix. And if they both rank, then there really isn't a problem UNLESS - your category page doesn't rank for its own keyword, at which point you should think about adjusting the short description text (if it only appears on that one page) or removing it (if it appears on multiple pages). As always, testing is key. You can take them out and see what happens. It isn't that difficult to add them back in on most systems. Let us know if we're not understanding your question correctly.

    | Everett
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    | zuzz
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  • Hi Éber, In my opinion, it's totally legitimate to nofollow those links to your login page, assuming they are showing the same 302 redirect and login page to Google. This will cut down on excessive crawling and possibly help you out with your Google Crawl "allowance." If, on the other hand, you wanted to direct some link juice towards your login page, you could turn the 302 into a 301. There might be other solutions, such as blocking the page with robots.txt, or using clever javascript. That said, nofollow is probably the easiest.

    | Cyrus-Shepard
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  • Random presentation of items is not what you want.   You want to tightly control which items are displayed on your front page. Reasons to display items: Hot seller you want your customer (who might not have searched for it) to see. New Item you customer may not know about you want them to see. Items you want want a little extra juice to flow to so they rank higher in search results. Items you want to get crawled faster (often new items)

    | EugeneF
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