Latest 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!
-
Mozcheck.com not working with API, anyone else having this problem?
There's currently no issues on our end with our API. Since MozCheck.com is not actually run by us and runs by using our API, you'd have to contact them in order to understand what's up with their site. Sorry for not being able to give you better news.
API | | EricaMcGillivray0 -
AdWords Device-Level Bid Adjustments for Tablet not working for me
Yeah, expanded text ads are out. I jumped on those the very same day. Anyway, good to see I'm not the only one with the problem and that Wordstream probably jumped the gun.
Paid Search Marketing | | UnderRugSwept0 -
These days on Google results, it also shows the site map. I submitted my company's sitemap and it still does not show?What am I doing wrong?
Agree with Andy, here's another great resource on how Google considers Sitelinks. Hope this helps, B
Technical SEO Issues | | BritneyMuller0 -
Will Amazon outrank our Online Store?
Hi Frank, It looks like you are the manufacturer of the products you sell. Going on Amazon could expose your products to new customers that otherwise would not find you. I guess the question is are your competitors on Amazon? If you're happy with sales as they are, you can choose to stay away, but if you are looking to expand, it might be worth a try. Their fees are significant and they are always coming up with ways to get in your pocket. Also managing them will add hours to your week. If you do decide to do it there are a few options. Vendor Central and Seller Central. There is a great group on LinkedIn named "Amazon Vendor Central (AVC)" you should look at. You can learn a lot there about negotiating your deal with Amazon before you jump. Also the pros and cons of VC and SC. Good Luck!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris6610 -
Very different results for 2 different pages
Hey Brian, Andy's suggestions are good ones, and I'll just add to this that your Charlottesville page exists in a much less competitive market than your Atlanta page, by dint of population alone. Barring any technical issues with the website, it may be that Google simply finds your bands by location page to be too weak to compete in Atlanta.
Link Building | | MiriamEllis0 -
Title Tags & Keyword Order
I've been hearing this question more and more often as of late. Here's the basic information on Title Tag construction, as provided by Moz: https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag Moz suggests: Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. Moz also mentions that since Google only displays the first 50 or so characters of your title tag, it's imperative to get your keyword in those first 50 characters so users are able to see them in the search results when the title tag is displayed. In fact, if you scroll down on the page, you'll see that Moz specifically suggests placing important keywords close to the front of the title tag, citing: "According to Moz's testing and experience, the closer to the start of the title tag a keyword is, the more helpful it will be for ranking—and the more likely a user will be to click them in search results." I hope this is helpful!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueCorona0 -
URL structure change for pages without traffic: 301 redirect or not ?
You should always 301 redirect if you change a URL in any way! However, be aware that redirects do affect your SEO ranking, so if you're able to leave a URL as it is on a page with decent traffic, it's typically suggested that you do so. I hope this helps!
Technical SEO Issues | | BlueCorona0 -
Canonical URL Tag Usage
In a roundabout way, yes, that is the general idea. Decide on the page, create a title that suggests the objective of the page (Learn about Heavy Haulage | Freight Etc Inc). Google is very good at understanding that Haulage will also mean Haul, Hauliers etc, so try to fill the page with lots of related information. Talk about transporting of abnormal loads, types of trailers, training required, etc. Make the page as informative as possible. When it comes to finding the keywords to use and research, look for what others talk about that are doing well in Google and then give your own spin on this - although I don't mean spin the content. Spend some time making your content better than the sites above you. -Andy
On-Page / Site Optimization | | Andy.Drinkwater0 -
Received A Notice Regarding Spammy Structured Data. But we don't have any structured data or do we?
It's highly unlikely you'd get a manual penalty for incorrect Open Graph markup (especially since Google itslef doesn't use it for anything.) Instead of trying to test one-off pages with the data testing tool, have a look in your Google Search Console under the Search Appearance > Structured Data report. Here you'll see what Google's crawler thinks about the structured markup on all the pages of your site it is able to crawl. Much better chance that the crawler has caught and reported it than that you'll find it checking one page at a time. One of the really common types of markup that earned manual penalties recently was recipes (due to certain plugins not implementing it correctly.) Since your site doesn't include recipes, the other area to check closely is reviews/ratings. If Google thinks you're trying to use these manipulatively, they'll slap you hard, since these actually generate rich snippets in SERPS. In the brief look I had at your site, it didn't appear your reviews/rating were using markup, but that's where an exhaustive check using the GSC report would be vastly more effective than my cursory check. Hope that all makes sense? Good luck! Paul
Technical SEO Issues | | ThompsonPaul0 -
Indexing product attributes in sitemap
Hello Localwork, By "product attributes" do you mean URLs associated with product variants, like color and size? From the context of your question, I'll assume for now you mean that each product attribute / variant appears on it's own URL (e.g. /?color=red and /?color=blue) and you want to know whether these should be included in the sitemap. As Andy mentions below, more information is needed before prescribing a best practice specifically to your situation. However, in this case you should probably only have the one "canonical" version of the product URL (e.g. without variants). There are many ways to handle this and I recommend Googling "SEO for product variants" to familiarize yourself with the pros and cons of each. To answer your question about sitemap segmentation, yes it is a good thing to do for several reasons, most important of which is easier diagnoses of crawl issues, such as which "sections" of your sites have indexation problems. It also helps on large sites with issues reaching URL limits in sitemaps, and is a more logical tree-like structure for people and machines to follow than having every URL in one sitemap.
Technical SEO Issues | | Everett0 -
Is the image property really required for Google's breadcrumbs structured data type?
I agree that it doesn't make a lot of sense for Google to require the image itemprop - it's not the only example of Google requiring an itemprop that doesn't really make sense (for example, OperatingSystem is required for the WebApplication property, which doesn't make sense since it's...you know...a web application). For what it's worth, even though the documentation says it's required, BreadcrumbList code that doesn't include the image attribute validates just fine in the Structured Data Testing Tool, and pages without the image itemprop in place are still getting breadcrumb snippets in the SERPs. So it may not be as "required" as Google says it is.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuthBurrReedy0 -
Robots.txt Disallowed Pages and Still Indexed
And don't forget to remove disallow in robots.txt first, if you want to remove it from index. Because if you add meta nofollow while the page is disallowed it won't go anywhere, crawler will not check it and it will stay indexed. Allow > Add meta noindex > wait for it to be deindexed > Disallow
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Igor.Go0 -
SEOMOZ Toolbar for FIREFOX [Moz Extension Firefox]
Hey, We have temporarily disabled the MozBar for Firefox due to ongoing issues with the newest version of the browser. Due to difficulties with the review process to update the bar, the Firefox bar is significantly out of date. We would recommend switching to the Chrome version to get the best experience at this time. To find out more about these issues and anticipated resolutions, please check out Roxana's blog post here: https://moz.com/community/q/mozbar-login-change-update-firefox-temporarily-disabled Eli
Other Research Tools | | eli.myers1 -
Affiliate Links Dilemma
Thank you Everett, I think what you wrote makes sense and I'll see what to do. I'll analyze again all my affiliate links and assess the risk of getting rid of those links. If I see I could risk losing rankings in some way, I'll consider to disable the stronger affiliates last. Thank you again.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Multiple language in site links on SERP
Alright GAB I think I got you here. The answer you are looking for has to do with your XML Sitemap and using a nifty little tag called (Here comes a mouthful) "rel=alternate hreflang". Here is a little MOZ article that talks about how to utilize these things. I think once you get these setup correctly on your site, Google.ca in English should show English and Google.ca in French should show French. If you want a bit more information on this here is a Google Webmasters Support Article. And because I am a nice guy and honestly just wish somebody would have shown me what a Wild XML Sitemap looks like that utilizes this I give you this: view-source:http://www.adobe.com/dma-amo-hreflang-sitemap.xml It is actually pretty surprising the number of sites that still do not use this. Hope this helps!
Local Listings | | DRSearchEngOpt0 -
Is there a way to find out who is trying to damage my site
Bad SEO can be really disruptive to your ranking performance. It sounds like this person may have been using black hat link building techniques and decided to remove them once you parted ways. There are ways to monitor and remove bad links that may negatively impacting your rankings. We have done this for many clients at GetBackOnGoogle.com to recover rankings after bad SEO work. It involves identifying incoming negative links and strategically requesting removal. In some cases you may need to disavow backlinks through Google Search Console, but the best option is to get them removed manually if possible first. You can use the Moz Open Site Explorer to review and monitor inbound links. If you truly think someone may have done something malicious, I would also recommend a full SEO audit to see if the setup of your website or SEO plugins have changed in any way and to make general improvements since your rankings have dropped. You'll also want to start working on content and building legitimate backlinks of your own from related sites in your industry. Mark / AdFicient.com
On-Page / Site Optimization | | Chris_Hickman0 -
Not sure where this url has come from
Hi in2townpublicrelations! Definitely let us know if you figure it out, ok?
Other Research Tools | | MattRoney0