Latest Questions
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If Two Internal Pages Rank for a Given Keyword, Are They Competing?
You should be very happy that you're taking up more real estate in the SERP for a given keyword. They are of course "competing" - in the sense that every page in Google's index is being weighed to determine which is the best result for that query - but they aren't directly hindering each other. The last thing you should do is remove a well-ranking page. If you would much prefer one page to rank higher than the other, then I would find ways to pass a little relevance from page B to page A, such is with an internal link or additional optimization. Otherwise, remember that total clicks to 2 pages ranking lower on the page may very well be equal to or even exceed clicks to a single page that ranks higher.
On-Page / Site Optimization | | David_Veldt0 -
International foreign language SEO questions
Hi! First of all I strongly suggest you to check this wonderful deck on Slideshare by Fernando Maciá. That deck will answer many questions your asking. Then: Can you do SEO yourself if you are a native English speaker for a language you don't speak (like Chinese)? No! You cannot. Consider to hire a native interpreter to help you, if not a good native SEO 2) How do you go about doing keyword research for a foreign language? What tools are available? As Lynn said, Adwords Keyword Planner and (Google Trends) are a good start. But I would use these tools by Baidu, which is the most used search engine in China: Baidu Keyword Tool ; Baidu Index (equivalent to Google Trends) The best is using all three... and for that you need a native Chinese speaking person. In this article you can find useful tips and links about keyword search in Chinese. 3) How do you know what search engines you should optimize for in a different country? Use StatCounter.com for understanding what search engines are used in a specific country. The short answer is: Google is worldwide used and substantially dominant in every country Baidu in China is dominant Yandex in Russia is dominant Seznam is not dominant in the Czech Republic as it was once, but it still owns about the 20% of the search market share Naver (47%) and Google (44%) dominate in South Korea In Japan the 35% of the Internet users search on Yahoo! About SEo for Baidu you can check this guide, which is not perfect but could be considered a good start (aka: do your homework too!). About SEO for Yandex, I suggest you to dig into this site by Anna Oshkalo. And don't forget to read everything of the Webmasters' Guidelines of Yandex itself. As far as SEO for Japan, this essential guide can be a considered a good primer. About Naver, check this great starter post on WebCertain.
Search Engine Trends | | gfiorelli10 -
From page 1 to nothing
To start with, I'll ask are you looking at google.com or google.co.uk? At first, I just assumed it was google.com, which shows me local results for Worcester, Massachusetts. However, I then saw that your site is hosted in the UK, and I needed to go over to google.co.uk to generate local results for Worcester, England. Since others have commented on the off-page elements, I'll point out a few things I noticed related to on-page optimization: 1.) The primary keyword you mentioned of course makes your domain an exact match domain, and the influence that those have in search rankings has of course fluctuated quite a bit over time (see http://mozcast.com/metrics, click on "EMD Influence") but on the whole, has diminished and doesn't nearly serve the advantage it used to. 2.) Looking at the pages currently ranking for [driving lessons worcester], they all appear to be very locally relevant companies based in Worcester (applies both to Massachusetts and England). The first page even has map results. Your site doesn't appear to have any locally relevant information, or a local address, phone number, etc. It appears that Google made up it's mind that local businesses should get the upper hand on this query. If you are in fact based in Worcester, I would highly recommend adding your name, address and phone number to the footer and a contact page, adding local schema markup, gathering locally relevant links, etc. 3.) Only your homepage seems to be optimized and it is only for that one keyword. The rest of the pages appear to pull in "Driving Lessons Worcester" as a default ending to the title tag, which just results in every page having that keyword make up the majority of the title tags. If you flip through the site search results for your site, you can quickly see why Google might devalue your site for that keyword. I would go through and optimize other pages of your site for longtail variations and other keywords, and get rid of that default title tag ending. In short, Google probably sees your entire site as trying wayyy to hard to rank for a single keyword, which may have raised a flag. I hope that helps!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David_Veldt0 -
What do the 80,000 Plus 1's MOZ have on the Plus page mean?
Exactly, +1 and followers are independent. +1 I guess continue to rise because Google+ is becoming a more active network, especially for online marketing professionals.
Moz News | | wanatop0 -
Authorship Implementation - Is it needed to place Rel='Publisher' on every page on eCommerce
Hi Christy, Sorry for the delayed follow-up. I did play with it a bit and I do agree (and appreciate) with all responses but I think I can add something... It seems that the basic fact of having a "G Follow" on every page already covers the rel=publisher part and the Google Structured Data Tool @Adam here recommended does show my company as the publisher even though I did not specifically add rel="publisher" (simply because of the Follow button). This is also why I don't know if I need it along rel="author" since I have the "Follow" button on all pages but I assume that you are correct and the two are not needed together. Thanks
Social Media | | BeytzNet1 -
Why am I seeing so many referalls to my root domain from Facebook in Google Analytics?
Thanks for the responses. Visit duration for the root domain is 9:31, with an average of almost 10 pages/visit. And while we ARE actively promoting on Facebook, we don't have a link to that specific page. I'm doing an experiment this week - not posting anything at all and seeing if that affects traffic numbers. I have a feeling it won't. And no, we don't have any purchased traffic that I'm aware of.
Social Media | | TexAgs0 -
XML Sitemap and unwanted URL parameters
Our IT department is on a big project and we won't have any support for almost a year, that's why I was looking at other solutions. We currently add about 10 to 20 pages a month, so I probably could redo the sitemap once a month, right after the new content is published.
Technical SEO Issues | | jfmonfette0 -
Should we use brand name of product in URL
Agree with Brady & Adam on this one. Each great responses. I'll just add that, for the most part, the URL should be for the user first and then the search engine. A lot of times brands have funk looking URLs that have numbers and symbols in them - not user friendly. So, I'd recommend adding your descriptive keyword/producA/B/C into the URL if it'll help the user understand your product and navigate your site better Hope this helps!
Search Engine Trends | | CSawatzky1 -
A simple count (with list if possible) of the external and internal links on a website
Open Site Explorer gives you what you need. If you have a PRO membership with Moz then you will have access to OSE. Alternatively, if you have access to Webmaster Tools then this will also show you a list of links to the website. I would recommend using both really because you will see that both tools give you different URL's that the other might not show up.
Link Explorer | | KarlBantleman0 -
Second tier/level domains
Hi Bill Thank you for your response, I run my own business and also get involved in the SEO, so there are always interesting things to learn. Your thoughts are similar to mine and in fact we are currently working on our links, having recently moved to a cleaner quicker server. Again thank you for taking time to reply, Regards Mike
Branding / Brand Awareness | | saints0 -
Google Places and Backlinks
Hi Mike, Last July, I put this exact same question about linking to a Google+ Local page to Mike Blumenthal, aka Professor Maps. I think you'll really enjoy reading his thoughtful answer, which he turned into a blog post: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/07/02/should-you-do-linkbuilding-to-your-g-page-for-local/ Remember that it takes time to see the benefits of citation building, and that this is only one of the things that you need to be doing to promote a local business. Paramount is ensuring that you've obeyed all guidelines and rules (haven't made mistakes), and that the website is perfectly locally optimized. In addition to citation building, there is on-going content development, earning reviews, earning links and social outreach. If you're the new kid in a competitive vertical, you've got to work hard at a variety of disciplines in order to begin to move in on already-established businesses. Discovering their weaknesses can be one way to determine areas in which you can do a better job. Local SEO requires a ton of work and a big helping of patience!
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis0 -
Client is not ranking on Google For Brand Name Search but is on Yahoo and Bing
Just wanted to add my two cents and make sure you're all set. Pretty sure everyone here nailed it. The brand name is a little ambiguous and there are other things our there that could legitimately rank for that. It is a little curious how Google is not ranking it for the brand yet Binghoo is. One quick example, the Twitter account still links to their old domain - https://twitter.com/fsstudiodev - fix a whole bunch of little things like that and in aggregate they should add up to more clear brand signals. One thing I'll mention which no one else did ----> Rel Publisher - this connects the G+ page to the website and is probably THE most powerful brand signal you can easily send in Google's eyes. I would do that as high priority.
On-Page / Site Optimization | | evolvingSEO0 -
Bing ranking a weak local branch office site of our 200-unit franchise higher than the brand page - throughout the USA!?
Hi Scott, No offense intended. We all run into problems we don't know how to solve. This is pretty specialized - someone who not only knows Bing really well, but also, whether there are issues with their local algo that could result in a branch outranking a main office. It's the Bing part of this that I think makes the question hardest. I feel like I'm pretty good at Local SEO, but because of Google's dominance in this sphere, I simply don't know enough about Bing to have ready, helpful examples for you. Sorry about that, and I really do hope you can get this sorted out. I'd love to hear what you learn.
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis0 -
Too Many Outbound Links on the Home Page - Bad for SEO?
Not bad for the homepage as far as I know - but it does seem to be bad for the internal pages you link to as any 'juice' that is passed is diluted by the amount of links you have. Internal linking & navigation is good, but don't overdo it with spammy footer links that all point to keyword-rich anchors back to your site, especially repeated ones.
Web Design | | MattAntonino0 -
Removing Sub Domain & Improving Page Performance
Hi Anton I have seen this duplicate issue before and from my knowledge there are a lot of sites on the web that do this. My initial thoughts would be to not worry too much. Google will know this is a widespread issue and will deal with it accordingly. I would recommend looking at setting up canonicalisation on your site as this will help Google understand the issue and it will help Google show which page is the relevant one to index. This will effectively eliminate the issue for you. If you want any details on how canonical works see here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en. Or PM me and I will see if I can help. To answer your second question, I would not worry about the amount of external links. Having the limit at 100 links per page (as moz recommends in its on page analyser) is an age old tip because when Google was much smaller and had less server resource it rarely crawled past the 100 link. Here's a video that shows they dropped this guideline. Nowadays this is not the case. As long as you are not linking to hundreds of pages for SEO or Search Engine manipulation reasons then I would leave it as it is. Hope this helps. Adam
Local Strategy | | adammason0