Latest Questions
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301 vs 410 for subdirectory that was moved to a new domain, 2-years later
Google is adding and removing URLs from its index fairly slowly right now, and it's not uncommon for changes to take several weeks to filter up into the index, especially for site: searches. This is very annoying (even more so for people who are trying to launch brand-new sites), but not a huge deal since, to Laura's point, these URLs are most likely not showing up for any searches, they just haven't filtered out of the index. I would give it another week or two and see what happens. You may also want to do a Fetch+Submit in Search Console for a few of the subdirectory URLs, to make sure that Google revisits them and registers that they are 410s now - if they've been redirecting for 2 years, Google may just not be crawling them that frequently.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuthBurrReedy0 -
Description in the snippet varies from search to search.. Have you seen that?
Well, yes and no. Because of how varied any relevant search could be, you can't necessarily hit every single variation to a good enough extent that Google's algorithm would then never change your description. You _could s_tuff literally every piece of info into the meta. Or you could write more naturally and make sure all the proper meta and/or schema and/or other tags are implemented properly. You just need to make sure you are hitting your targets for descriptions, that they are good for the user experience, and that they are not stuffed or spammy. In the previous example, you could have updated your description to mention "Seller of Red Widgets & Green Widgets!" and the original [green widget] searcher might now be seeing your actual description in the SERPs. But another [green widget] searcher just spent the earlier part of their day Googling [widget coupons], [widget sales], [coupon sites], [internet coupon pages], [groupon], and/or [widget deals]. Now, after an hour of looking for coupons they search [green widgets] and you'd think your description would show up like it did for the other searcher but instead Google notices that you have schema tags for an upcoming sale listed on Green Widgets that was nestled somewhere halfway towards the bottom of your page... and all of a sudden your description is algorithmically changed to include that Green Widget Discount info even though it wasn't in your description. But the page was relevant and contextual information lead to an improved description. (this though is a hypothetical best case scenario, its not always that amazing and contextual... sometimes its just Google randomly truncating a sentence cause they feel the middle of the paragraph is most relevant)
Keyword Research | | MikeRoberts0 -
How do you optimize for online catalog PDFs in regards to Page load time?
Hi there, Full Media! Any way you can provide the info Everett is looking for?
Web Design | | MattRoney0 -
Lost SEO contract, new SEO wants us to do the following - can you explain why?
Hi Simon, It's likely they've noticed an issue with the old domain (maybe a problem with the link profile?) and they're migrating to a geo-targeted TLD, hence the .co.uk. In this instance, it would make sense for them to do the https swap at the same time if they planned to do it in the future. The reason for the redirects being done on a per-page basis is that they're trying to retain as much strength from the existing domain as they can. Setting up a 301 will retain ~80-90% of that strength though it will also retain the backlinks so maybe the link profile isn't the issue after all. The last points are really just about improving the site speed and I would assume that since they're asking for a blanket removal of all canonicals, they've come across something else that concerned them or perhaps they're input manually right now and they plan to template them instead. If my assumptions are correct, their requests seem above board. The larger question I'd have in this scenario is why you're tasked with doing their job!
On-Page / Site Optimization | | ChrisAshton0 -
Duplicate content penalties - MULTI STORES - B2B consumables to 5 industry segments
Thanks very much for the great answer Andy. Really appreciate it. Regarding the sub-domain versus separate domain route, it was a hard decision. We want each of the four websites to feel like definitive specialist businesses, and in that case treat the 'main website' as more of a 'corporate site/main site'. I guess it could be regarded that each website could almost be 'sold off' as a separate business. i understanding your comments about strengthening the brand. All the url have our main name as part of the url, and our logo is on each site, along with a different colour scheme. or did you mean more that Google will give much more punch to the subdomain option? The information in your google webmasters link about canonicals is from 2009, and very informative and relevent.. I guess it is still current? The main website of the group has about 10000 different products on it, and each product/sku has a different url. Would this mean that i would have to create a canonical for up nearly 10000 entries x 4 websites, back to a preferred url? Can I instead do Product Category urls? (i would love the option to send the category "Bandages" to the healthcare site by canonicals, even though it is on 3 of the sites) Is there an efficient way to do the canonical in bulk? or should i just concentrate on the top selling products? What penalties could apply because i don't manage to get them all done in a timely manner? Thanks in Advance!!
Online Marketing Tools | | craigar0 -
Where can we see voice search impressions/searches?
Jazom, Good Question! I think the search algorithms see voice search the same as any typed search since the request is after the voice recognition software has exercised its duty. My answer doesn't provide much help, but your post was compelling and intriguing. KJr
On-Page / Site Optimization | | KevnJr0 -
Mobile Redirect - Cloaking/Sneaky?
Thomas great info above, quick follow up question for you..... I have always wonder why is Google using the "640px" in the ? many people have been asking the question lately if 640px is an old example or is it the required size? (phones are larger nowaway) the website I manage are non-responsive ocated in a /mobile/ folder such as: http://www.example.com/mobile/page1 and our mobile size cut off is actually 1023px. .... should we be using 640 or 1023px in the rel="alternate" tag? thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jrpare0 -
Setting A Custom User Agent in Screaming Frog
Setting a custom user agent determines things like HTTP/2 so there can be a big difference if you change it to something that might not take advantage of something like HTTP/2 Apparently, it is coming to Pingdom very soon just like it is to Googlebot http://royal.pingdom.com/2015/06/11/http2-new-protocol/ This Is an excellent example of a user agent's ability to modify the way your site is crawled as well as how efficient it is. https://www.keycdn.com/blog/https-performance-overhead/ It is important to note that we didn’t use Pingdom in any of our tests because they use Chrome 39, which doesn’t support the new HTTP/2 protocol. HTTP/2 in Chrome isn’t supported until Chrome 43. You can tell this by looking at the User-Agent in the request headers of your test results. [image: pingdom-user-agent.webp] Pingdom user-agent Note: WebPageTest uses Chrome 47 which does support HTTP/2. Hope that clears things up, Tom ujNvaad.png t49XhGi.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueprintMarketing0 -
LinkedIn Versus Google Adwords for B to B Advertising
Here is a good blog post on FB b2b targeting. Not sure about company size, but the other options as well as employer name and job title are options for sure. You can even hypertarget ads exclusively to people who work for a specific company, or if you know enough about an individual, target ads at a single person. For testing, I would try a budget of around $250 each on FB and LI, and around $500 on AdWords. Then, simply compare you average cost per lead on each. And if possible, follow the leads through to evaluate quality as well as quantity of leads. Hope this helps! Ira
Branding / Brand Awareness | | irapasternack1 -
LinkedIn 999 HTTP Errors
It seems like this is an issue with BLC, I don't think it will actually cause you any issues. This post suggests adding LinkedIn to the BLC exclusion list to address the issue. The only problem there is you can't actually depend on BLC to check those links. Based on a review of various reports of similar issues, this problem is not limited to BLC, but any attempt to check too much/too fast on LinkedIn.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irapasternack0 -
Comparing New vs. Old Keyword Difficulty Scores
I have to agree with Russ. I think the old KW Difficulty model was making that keyword look stronger than it is, and the new one, while maybe a bit low, is more accurate. I'd also suggest, as Pete did, that using any keyword in isolation is unwise. Compare scores for similar terms you might target in the same sector, against the same sorts of competitors, and use that relative data -- KW Difficulty, and indeed PA, DA, and keyword volume, are all far more useful as comparative metrics than absolute ones.
Moz Tools | | randfish3 -
How to address reviews that show up in Google but come from a business's own website?
I think that if you want to call this vendor dishonest you need to delve deeply into how the Reviewability service works, learn enough about it that any reasonable person would consider you to be an expert on how their system works, and then come to a conclusion that is firm enough to present in court. Many review services allow vendors to contest reviews, place reviews on hold while disputes are being settled, hand-pick the reviews that they will display on their website, show only reviews above a certain score, and more. These are frequently-employed practices that any vendor can adopt - if they subscribe to a review service or not. It is always good to back your clients when you have solid information. In many instances, weasel hunts are best turned over to attorneys.
Reviews and Ratings | | EGOL2 -
Will MOZ Local Claim the Foursquare listing for me?
Thanks, Kevin. I think I figured it out. This is a brand new business so there are not listings anywhere, including Foursquare. So I created the Foursquare yesterday and I assume it will be found and then I will have to claim it. I am still learning what bits moz creates and what bits it just keeps track of. Thanks for your response.
Moz Local | | SEO-Buzz0 -
New Website & DA Score
Hi Kevin! I just want to confirm that DA is a link metric—it's almost entirely based on your backlink profile. The best way to bring it up is to build high-quality links.
Moz Tools | | MattRoney0 -
Large Domain Authority Drop - Please Help
Hello, I ran your site through ahref.com and saw 16 backlinks, when I looked at follow backlinks I saw 10, of those 10 backlinks I see that 8 of those 10 backlinks contain the same anchor text for the same article " The Great History Freeze to preserve photographic negatives: Join The Great History Freeze and help preserve a collection of invaluable and irreplaceable negatives. " This I'd imagine is what is costing you your DA drop, since you basically have 3 follow backlinks, if google is even counting that as legitimate links. You could be suffering a negative SEO issue from those domains using the same text, as well it seems pretty spammy. Now a days google seems to be counting backlinks that are bad less or not at all. I'd imagine that this would be the case and could bet a DA increase would happen if you could acquire even 3 to 5 more backlinks from legit sources. So far, I've seen more correlation between DA and backlinks than I have DA and SEO. I see sites with crap for SEO but a decent backlink profile climb higher and faster in DA than a site with epic SEO and a handful of backlinks or even hundreds of crap backlinks. Quality always matters over quantity.
Technical SEO Issues | | Deacyde1