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I can personally recommend DeepCrawl, its an amazing tool. Use it almost every day.

Hi

I was just looking at a competitors new site in OSE and it had a DA and PA of 1 which I would expect and also no links, which again I would expect, basically the guy used to design stuff for me and thinks he can do a better job so he is giving it ago.

But he has a spam score of 9/17 but no links - how is this even possible.

Thanks

Andy

yeah i was going to suggest searching the code of the page for a link - just because you cant see it, it doesnt mean its not there. I have links from full stops before etc.

I wouldn't recommend changing the url structures, however what you could do is create specific landing page about boutique apartments or flat and list all the relevant products.

Also you could use this space to really sell the experience, why you should pick a boutique hotel over a normal standardize hotel.

I am personally not a fan of changing url structures on websites once indexed by Google.

On all 1500 hotel pages, you would need a way of linking back to the main "category" page.

This is just from experience over the years of changing urls and expecting to get the same traffic etc. During a redirect you lose link juice so the hotels might not rank as highly etc.

Thanks

Andy

I am not a huge fan of changing urls once Google has indexed them, to make them more appealing you could appealing so it look something like:

https://www.thisismyurl.co.uk/ > spacehoppers > special-spacehopper - this is a pretty easy fix and something I would recommend on all eccomerce sites.

Also there is so much more you can do with Rich Snippets that would make a difference  https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/products

Meta descriptions are what you request Google to display, these are a request and Google does sometimes use other information if it feels its more relevant.

This isn't new and I've seen it numerous times over the last 5 or so years.

Dr Pete even did a blog article on this (very old 2011 - https://moz.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description but its still relevant.

Also the question has been asked and answered on here before: https://moz.com/community/q/google-not-pulling-the-right-title-tag-meta-description - I could cover the same answers in this post, but we all know Google hates duplicate content.

Yes this is a bad idea, you want the blog on the main domain.

You could put a wordpress blog within a folder on your server and just use one instance of wordpress for the blog away from the main site.

It does require a bit of set up, but it would be much better than having a blog on a different url (does require keeping it up to date etc, users having two logins. One of the main site and one for the blog) - it's not an ideal solution but much better than having the blog on a separate domain.

Hi

Firstly it seems like you did all the right steps to resolve the issue. A while back I had a similar issue with my site and later a client's site that got hacked. They were both WordPress sites so now always recommend Wordfence plugin (premium) to stop the hack in the first place.

I wouldn't worry too much about the drop in DA, DA goes up and down all the time - it's only relative to your competitors. If your competitors go up and you go down that's when I would worry.

You are right in wanting the disavow file - its needs an audit and updating. I would just keep chasing and explaining you are potentially losing revenue and profit (they probably don't get the impact of rankings, but if you explain it in something which they do they will respond quicker). Once you have the file it's up to you to audit and amend as necessary, but this won't affect your Moz DA.

I would also ask them what processes they have put in place to stop getting hacked again if your doing all this work and the client hasn't changed how they operate, it could be a lot of time spent for nothing.

Thanks

Andy

In theory yes it shouldn't make a difference to your international rankings. It's just making sure Googlebot (which does come from the US) is able to crawl your website.

For every other country, because it's for legal reason I would suggest just block them, but you need Googlebot (and other bots like Roger) to crawl your website.

Instead of completely blocking traffic from the US, would it be possible (and I don't know the legal requirements) to detect if the visitor is from the US and show them a different page? "Sorry, we can't help you but here are some great resources" and link to some American sites. Hopefully, Google would still crawl your website as would be able to see your sitemap.

Sometimes if it's a legal requirement you have to do it, even though it may potentially harm your rankings (I have a similar issue with a finance client, where some of the legal requirements go against Google / UX best practices but they have to be done to trade).

What I would do is once you have blocked US visitors, is monitor Search Console and your server logs to make sure Googlebot is still crawling your website as frequently and as deeply.

I want a tweet from Roger too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe he is busy crawling your website to give you some useful tips and tricks.

I think he will be in touch soon on twitter.

Thanks Vijay, its only on my windows machine (I really only use it for Server Log Analysis) and the above seems like to much work. Its working fine on the Mac - so will just install and leave it off the windows machine.

Ok, are any of the pages ranking. If not I would look if Google can easily find these new urls from your nav / internal links.

Also I would recommend checking your server logs, if Google can't / haven't crawled the pages they can't index them.

Final point, if these pages are completely off topic and the rest of the site is about toothbrushes and you add pages about cars, Google might be unsure about these new pages and how authoritative you are in the niche especially if these fall into the YMYL categories. If its the last issue you would probably need to work on link building into this section of the site from authority sites within the niche.

Your current redirects are fine and the best way is if its live to test it. Even thought I knew I had done it right recently when i went to https, I still do several random checks. They all came back as working - but no harm in testing.

Your point 2 is doable and as I am not on my laptop I don't have the code to hand. I will update in a few hours when back in the office for you, but your point 1 is correct.

Hi Mozzers

I am geting this very annoying message keeps popping up

"Confirm

Oops!

Something went wrong while trying to get your API Credentials. Please try again or check out the Help Hub if you are still experiencing issues"

Issue is I cant even read it on my screen as it gets cut off and there is no scroll so had to copy and past into word to be able to read it.

I had the issue for the last sever hours, is this my account or more general.

Thanks

Andy

Is this a brand new site or new pages added to an existing site.

Hi

Yeah, I have used quite a few tools.

My personal favourite is HP autonomy, you get the full management team, they help set up the test, do the analysis, suggest tests etc. It's a wonderful service, but it comes with a high price.

Something similar which is slightly cheaper is www.optimizely.com again these are more the enterprise end but do offer a free 30-day trial. It might be worth looking into these two, they may offer a self-service option.

Some more reasonable price platforms that target mid-size companies.

One of my clients I have just taken on uses unbounce and while I haven't yet manage to use their solution. I did get one of their reps at Mozcon to show me the platform - looking forward to using it. Seems like a very very good platform for the price.

With most of this software it's all about what you do. You have the find the test, set them up and analyse them, but so long as your putting in good tests you will get great results.

If you use the Adobe stack they offer A/B testing suite.

Also, there is Maxymiser its been a few years since I used it, but was good at the time and it's probably evolved since.
There are loads of options to choose from. If you use a platform like Shopify or Wordpress it might be worth while seeing which ones of these integrates with your current site to make your life easier.

While this article from Mashable is pretty old it does cover some good platforms and some I've never heard of but might be worth checking out: http://mashable.com/2015/01/30/ab-testing-tools/

Thanks

Andy

Sean right I would check to see if your site has been hacked, I would also click on the keywords and see which page is being shown - this will help identify the issues.

Or comments on your website, have you got comments on your articles etc. Could be comment spam?

Million dollar question - firstly does your site deserve to rank. Do you actually answer the query or is it a 50 word answer and your just hoping Google will rank you. You need to be writing 10x content (https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday)

Assuming you have a decent answer, the next question is. How often is Google crawling your website (the only way to find out is to look in your server logs). It could be that Google hasn't even crawled the page yet, if it hasn't crawled the page its not going to rank.

Finally assuming you wrote a great article and Google has read it, how authoritative are you in this niche. If you website is all about cars and suddenly you write an article about pens because its low competitive and you want the traffic, Google is smart enough know to understand you have probably written the article for SEO traffic and probably won't rank you high.

They don't happen to have multiple logins (different users) do they and keep creating a new user for themselves.

I would recommend changing your password, and then looking at all the other users - do you know them or can they be deleted.

At least you did it the right way and created them a login, the amount of people I know who they just sent across their own login details.

If its not the first option, please let me know I do have another idea - but the above idea is the easiest to explain and fix.

Thanks

Andy

I would do some keyword research and look at doing some mid to long tail keyword articles. The articles which aren't as competitive and easier to rank for.

I would also look to add more content on your category pages to help Google determine what the pages are about. While Google might be smart enough to work it out, but the easier you make it for them the better, plus if your leaving it to a machine they could incorrectly work out what the page is about.

I don't know if its just me, but the page takes a long time to load - if that's not just me that will be a bad signal for both Google and the users.

Links are only part of the ranking algorithm, content and technical are the other two. But if you can source high quality links back to your site this will help with rankings.