Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I totally agree with Marie,

Alexa's data is always behind almost every other provider, it's stats are highly skewed (like Marie mentioned, it only tracks traffic from visitors w/ the toolbar installed), and it's used mainly for estimating a domain's worth based on ad clicks.

I wouldn't worry too much about what Alexa has to say. Google Analytics and SEOMoz's Open Site Explorer are much more useful tools.

Alexa reminds me a lot of Nielsen's TV ratings... it gets a lot of attention, but the sample size for the data doesn't exactly yield accurate information.

I agree with both you guys...

Gone are the days of outbound links hurting your authority. Be useful to users. Users enjoy usefulness. Google gauges your site's usefulness by the behavior of it's visitors...

What's better for your rankings?

A user clicks through to your site, then realizes "This isn't what I'm looking for" and clicks the back button... bouncing to Google in hopes to find the content they're actually seeking OR...

A user clicks through to your site, exclaimes "Hallelujah! I found it!" and clicks from your site to the content... they give it a good look, and the click back to your site, which was so very helpful.

You get the point. Too many hours in front of the screen for me today.

Donnie said it in a sentence...

Hear hear. Thumbs up.

Just like Bede said,

UBL = Inexpensive and quick, but can lead to some issues. It's more about posting your listing in as many places as possible, but not managing the content once it's there. Not bad at all for the money though.

YEXT = More expensive. More control. Better management of content.

If your goal is to simply get your business listed in as many places as possible to increase impressions and awareness, I'd go with UBL.

If you're looking for more of a full fledged reputation management solution that allows for each listing to be easily updated with new specials, content, images, etc, then YEXT is probably the way to go.

If you've got the money - go with both.

Mark - Got ya man. Long day here too. Old No. 7's taking care of me though.

Hi Pete,

Good question.

First thing, don't worry too much about keywords in your meta descriptions. Google will make them bold, which might draw some attention to your listing on the results page, but keywords in meta descriptions don't actually improve rankings.

Instead, use the meta description area to entice the searcher to visit your site. What set's you apart from the competition... do you offer free shipping?... any special promotions? Using the Meta Description as an informative snippet and a call to action is much more effective in increasing CTR (Click Thru Rate) and Conversions than packing them with keywords.

Secondly, some pages (like the Shopping Cart or other customer specific pages), you don't really want showing up in Google, so it's best to instruct Google not to index these pages (either via the robots.txt file or meta-robots tag). If Google doesn't index the page, then there's no need for the Meta Description.

Lastly, I'd recommend investing the time in writing good Meta Descriptions for the pages that you anticipate will be receiving the most impressions and traffic, and use a default description of the site for the pages that will likely rarely appear in results.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Anthony

Hi Streetwise,

I've never actually A/B'd a subscription mechanism like the one you're talking about, but I definitely agree that people are NUMB to the word "Subscribe" and that setting yourself apart a little bit would help.

One of the thing's I really appreciate about SEOMoz is the inventiveness and originality they employ in converting visitors to customers... worked on me

From greeting me with a nice warm "Aloha" to having Roger personally tell me I've reached a 404 pages, it's that kind of personal customer engagement that seems to be leading to more conversions these days.

I'm not sure what your niche is but a few suggestions to replace "Subscribe Now".

Stay Informed.

Keep me Informed.

Update me.

Keep me in the loop.

I think even eliminating "now" could help, and having the button simply say "Subscribe"

Last one...

Hop on the Bus, Gus.

Kidding... but you get the point. Be different.

Take a browse through seomoz.org and you'll see plenty of examples. (Might want to log out first to get the full effect.)

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony

Hi Sofia,

Two things you need to consider when troubleshooting this:

The actual robots.txt file (located in the root directory of your site) and the meta-robots tags in the section of your HTML. When you say you checked the source code and the robots instructions were missing, I think you were talking about the meta-robots tags in the actual HTML of your site.

Webmaster Tools is probably referring to the actual robots.txt file in your domain's root path, which would differ entirely and not be visible by checking the HTML on your site. Like Nakul and Brent said, if you'll let us know your site's URL and paste the content of your robots.txt file here, I'm sure one of us can help you resolve the problem fairly quickly.

Thanks!

Anthony

Great point Tom, and great handle.

While I've gotten a few leads from Facebook and Twitter, the true reason for my investing any time at all in those outlets is that potential customers often check these places to validate the popularity, or even the success of a business. If a fan page on Facebook has 4 likes, or a Twitter account has 17 followers, it's not a good signal to a potential customer, especially one researching web marketing providers.

The fact that Google now incorporates social metrics into their ranking algorithm also had some bearing on the energy and resources I've allocated to increase my company's presence on FB and Twitter.

The problem with Google+...

Nobody looks. Nobody cares. That's my experience.

I've invested a very little bit of time and money to add a few +1s to my website in order to increase the rankings, but that's it. I did see an improvement in rankings, and there wasn't much work involved at all, so I consider it a win.

The problem, in my opinion, is Google's almost Narcissistic approach to Google+. It's a Google product, so it matters. Why? Because Google says so.

I can't remember a platform that has had such little impact in the lives of real world users, yet such an effect on website rankings. Could be a good strategy on the part of Google, could fade away... we'll have to wait and see.

No problem at all. Happened to me more than once. Good luck!

If you use Firefox for you everyday browsing and you're logged in to a Google Account related to your site, that's probably the problem.

For example when I'm logged in to Google (Analytics, Webmaster, Google+, whatever) my site ranks #1 for one of my targeted keywords. If I'm not logged in, I'm #9.

It could also be your cookies, cache, location setting etc. that's causing Google to serve a site they think you prefer higher in the rankings.

Try clearing your cache and cookies in Firefox and logging out of any accounts, then check again.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony

Hey Frederick,

Here's your current meta data for robots on your home page (in the section):

name="robots" content="noodp, noydir" />

Should be something like this:

name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW" />

I don't think it's the robots.txt that's the issue, but rather the meta-robots in the head of the site.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Anthony

[moderator's note: this answer was actually not the correct answer for this question, please see responses below]

I think there's a very good chance that adding the Meta Robot instructions will resolve the problem. It's a pretty easy fix so I'd definitely try it out, and if it doesn't work, continue to troubleshoot.

Notice the last few lines of the report:

<dt>Recommendation</dt>

<dt>Ensure the URL returns the HTTP code 200 and is not blocked with robots.txt, meta robots or x-robots protocol (and does not meta refresh to another URL)</dt>

Though you're not technically "blocking" the meta robots, there's no instruction for them to index or follow the page. Also if the meta refresh is to another URL, that is an issue. well.

Hi Arti,

You'll just need to create a 301 redirect from www.yoursite.com/index.html to www. yoursite.com. This will permanently eliminate the /index.html version (which is a duplicate page) and fix the duplicate content error.

After that, build links to www.yoursite.com.

Hope this help. If you need more info on how to do the 301 redirect just let me know.

Hi,

I think the reason you're getting this error is that your entire site is essentially "blocked" from agents.

It doesn't look like you've disallowed the path in the report via robots.txt, so I think it's an issue with the section of your document not containing instructions for robots to index and follow the site.

The perfect goes like this:

<title>Title of Page |  Free iPad when you buy Cheap Viagra Online Pharmacy</title>

Apple Tablet save money on the best online pharmacy price of Viagra erectile dysfunction ED treatment pill capsule sample. " />

apple steve jobs ed erectile dysfunction best price on viagra pills pharmacy cheap discounts cialis pill Viagra Pill Viagre Viagrah capusle Canadian Viagra save money ipad ipad2 new ipad free best website for viagra" />

Kidding!

I think it's just the last line you'll need to add that let's robots know to index and follow the page:

You might possibly want to use the entire URL in the first line...

content="0; URL=http://yoursite.com//shop/searchresult.seam"

But I'm not positive about that. Like Red Clay said, the 0 second refresh could definitely be the problem too.

Hope this helps!

Anthony

Hi Charles,

What's the keyword?

The answer really depends on the search volume for each variation.

Is the non-plural version not receiving traffic because you're not ranking well for it, or because there's not as many monthly searches for it?

If you'll let me know what keyword(s) you're referring to I can provide a little more insight.

Thanks,

Anthony

Follow up:

I'm not seeing any errors when visiting the site (http://www.eindexamensite.nl/). It seems to be working perfectly. Could it be something client-side w/ your caching or system time?

Hi Maarten,

I'm not extremely familiar .htaccess or the typo3 CMS, but it could be the issue is simply a result of misconfigured file permissions for a specific directory or path.

I'd check the permissions on all of the paths that are affected by the .htaccess and make sure they're readable and executable (7,5,5).

This could explain why you get the 200 status w/o the .htaccess but the 403 error with it.

Good luck!

Hi Jason,

If you've implemented the 301 redirect to the non-www version of your site, then you'll get credit for links that are pointing to the www version.

Open Site Explorer uses SEOMoz's Linkscape Index to provide the data you're seeing, and it hasn't been updated since February. If you've done the 301 since then, OSE will still be showing the old data. Remember, that OSE doesn't display the real-time data for the site, it's based on the last index update.

The next update is scheduled for April 27th, so if you'll check back then you should see that all your links are now pointing to the non-www version of the site.

You can check out the Linkscape Index update schedule here.

Hope this helps.

Anthony

Hi,

It depends on the platform or Content Management System (CMS) you're using. If you're simply applying a new theme or template to a site, like in Wordpress or Magento, then the URL Structure and content should still stay the same. If you're completely redesigning the site, i.e. clearing the server and starting over from scratch, then I wouldn't optimize the pages if they'll be deleted.

If you'll let me know what platform or CMS you're using I'd be glad to help more.

Thanks,

Anthony

No problem at all. Glad I could help and good luck!