Questions
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One company, 3 countries, 3 sites - best solution?
Gaston, your answer is correct (albeit not complete... see my answer below). Plus: when linking to posts and guides, even if they are by Moz, always explain why they can be useful.
Technical SEO Issues | | gfiorelli10 -
Should I disavow these links?
Hi there, Gaston's reply below is very helpful so I don't have too much to add apart from a couple of points. Personally, I think I'd disavow these links a bit at a time - perhaps submit a few of them to start off with and make sure there are no negative effects, then add more over time. Right now, no one really knows how Google handles disavow because on one hand, Google say they handle things automatically, but on the other hand they still provide the tool for us to use... 1. If you don't disavow now, just make sure you keep a note of all of these kinds of links (and watch for new ones in the future) and if you do experience any penalty problems, you have a list ready to go to submit. 2. If you do disavow now, take your time to get the list right and make sure you only disavow links which are purely manipulative and / or look spammy. If you haven't seen any traffic or penalty problems, you want to be extra careful when using disavow. At the same time, if links are clearly spammy, they're unlikely to help long-term anyway, so disavowing them may not hurt at all. I hope that helps! Paddy
Link Building | | Paddy_Moogan1 -
Which Google does a .ie website get shown in?
I see a lot of confusion in all the answers :-). The .ie domain is never treated as a generic domain name by Google. It's the country code domain for Ireland. Stop. A country code domain name is geo-targeted by default on its corresponding regional version of Google, but Google doesn't "block" its visibility also in others Google (i.e.: Google.com or Google.co.uk), however, a ccTLD will have more difficulties in ranking higher in another Google than its own. In other words: domain.ie is targeting by default Google.ie; but, it can be shown in Google.co.uk too; however, for ranking in Google.co.uk - because of its geo-targeted nature - it must have stronger signals like mentions and backlinks to justify its visibility than a domain.co.uk or domain.com.
International Issues | | gfiorelli10 -
Competing with doorway pages
Have I finally found a conundrum that the great Moz brain can't solve?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bee1590 -
GMB listing not showing for local searches
Hi Bee, So, yes, this definitely looks like Possum. When I search Google Maps for "Yacht Broker Port Adriano Spain" I see that there are numerous similar business in this location and that when I zoom in on the map, Marlin Marine Services does appear. So, a listing does exist for this business, but it simply isn't being judged by Google to be deserved of showing at a non-zoomed-in level. So, this brings us right back to my earlier comment regarding the need to do competitive research to discover the top competitor's strengths and your client's weaknesses so that you can create a plan for improvement. Hope this helps!
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis0 -
Pros and Cons of using rel=next on blog posts
I don't think that's the correct use of these tags. See here. Possible negative side effects are only the blog post considered as "page 1" would be indexed. Pagination is for paginated content where one blog post or article is split up into several pages. In this case you'd want to send readers to page 1 usually. I would remove the tags. You can have links to the previous and next article for the user though.
Technical SEO Issues | | ViviCa10 -
Duplicate content. Competing for rank.
Q1: Easier said than done, but definitely worth the time to rewrite the "chunks," especially if they are descriptions. I can see if it's something like safety information, where you'd actually want it to be known it's coming from a trusted source. But, descriptions should be rewritable. If not, you probably don't want to pass the copy off as your own, so best to keep it separate and say something like "site XYZ has this to say..." Also, if it can't be rewritten, gauge how much content is unique to each page, and consider what else can be written about the cars to help balance out the ratio of unique to copied content. Q2: Make sure the dealer's website has self-referencing canonicals if that's the original source of the information.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mgreeves0 -
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Writing very generous product descriptions can answer questions for the buyer. They can facilitate the buying decision or prevent purchase of items that are poor fits for the shopper - and thereby reduce returns.
On-Page / Site Optimization | | EGOL0 -
Moving from http to https - what do I need to do in Google Search Console?
I also leave the old profiles. My guess is that if Google does try and crawl the old sitemaps, they'll hit the redirects and will index the new urls quicker. It also helps if you have any urls that have somehow avoided the move.
Technical SEO Issues | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Maps: How to get business showing for [keyword] + [location]
Hi Bee, Provided your company makes face-to-face contact with its customers, then the discipline you need to start learning is Local SEO. Your efforts will involve a combination of website development and local optimization, content development that surrounds the topics that matter to your industry/geography/clients, building and managing local business listings on a variety of platforms whether manually or via a service like Moz Local, review acquisition and then additional forms of outreach like social media and video marketing. All of these practices combine to begin building your geo-topical authority. You'll be striving to earn local pack rankings relating to the city in which you're physically located, and, in some cases, organic rankings for other cities in which lack a physical location but which relate to your business in some meaningful way. There is a lot to learn here. If you have a more specific question, please feel free to ask!
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis1 -
Working out whether a site is http and https
You can write a single redirect rule that will apply to any request on the hostname. I'm not sure what server you're using, but if you use HTACCESS, there's a great post on StackOverflow on how to apply this rule: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29029049/best-practice-301-redirect-http-to-https-standard-domain
Technical SEO Issues | | LoganRay1 -
Taxonomy question - best approach for site structure
Bee159, I would look at two aspects. (1) How much content do you have? Does the amount of content you have point to one page, or two pages (or more)? (2) If this is a new build for an old site, what of your target market uses smart phones versus desktop/laptop browsers? If this is a new website, what is the demographic of your target market, and are they likely to use smartphones or desktops to find you? Why does this matter? Outside of the fact that Google has put the mobile index first, you want to keep your interface as simple as possible for the users. If they primarily use a cellphone to access your website, then you will want to have longer, scrolling pages. If they have to click around a lot on a cell, it can be harder for them to find and read your information, and that can affect your bounce rates. If your clients/customers are primarily desktop users, then I would focus on what makes sense in terms of your site structure to put on one page or more. I'm not trying to hedge my answer, but I know you could have a huge site, or a small one, and those inform the site design and taxonomy, along with the target demographic for your site's users. When it comes to SEO and taxonomy, I would opt for KIS (keep it simple). What makes it as simple as possible for your users to find the information they need? What is logical in terms of bigger topic ==> more granular. When it comes to naming your URLs, if you decide the content is small enough to put on one page only, you can always do: .com/dental-services/whitening-assessment-treatment .com/dental-services/straightening-assessment-treatment I do think when you use subfolders, you should try to keep the names unique (think unique identifiers, even though it is a folder) when at all possible or if it makes sense. Why? Because it reduces confusion for people and bots. So per your .com/whitening/assessment .com/straightening/assessment .com/whitening/treatment .com/straightening/treatment Has a lot of the same words used again and again. Instead, consider something like: .com/teeth-whitening/unique-keword-here-assessment .com/teeth-whitening/more-keywords-treatment .com/teeth-straightening/another-unique-word-treatment .com/teeth-straightening/different-keyword-now-assessment Using 2 word mid-tail keywords or 4 word long tail keywords can you help you rank better and improve the logic of your taxonomy. To summarize, base how much content you put on one page on how your users read your material (mobile browser or desktop or both) and by how much content you have. And how to judge that, I don't know how to tell you without seeing it. However you organize your pages and taxonomy, do your best to give the subfolders unique names even when they don't have the same parent. The caveat is if it is not logical to the human eye and understanding to use 2-4 word phrases, then don't. You don't want to overthink or over optimize it. Some other thoughts...keep to web conventions, as people are used to HOME SERVICES ABOUT CONTACT (etc.). The slugs you can name using more detailed keyword phrases. If you have older clients (50+), then I'd stick to a very explicit taxonomy and navigation. If you have younger users, you can be a little more creative, like use the much-maligned hamburger menu. Does this all make sense? -- Jewel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | impactzoneco0 -
Sreaming Frog vs. Yoast - meta description clash
Garrett - to my knowledge Google does not use og:description if the meta description is blank.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evolvingSEO1 -
Google overriding meta description - retrospective?
Unfortunately, this does sometimes happen when Google tries to establish what it feels is the best and more relevant description of the page thus overriding your meta description.. You may find it pulls from your opening paragraph or elsewhere. I would suggest looking to st re-indexing your changes - maybe resubmit your site via webmastertools (Google Search Console) )for a recrawl. Also and this may not be the case, but if you have a listinf on Yahoo or the OpenDirectory/DMoz, sometimes content can be pulled in from there to replace your descriptions. Maybe look to add the following meta tag to remove this issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes0 -
Correct setup: One business, one website, two bricks and mortar locations
Hey There! Hope these answers help: Yes, create a landing page on your website for each of the 2 stores and link all of your citations (including your GMB listing) to the correct respective landing page. There are several hundred factors that contribute to local rankings. You'll want to study: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors and https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist I'd like to ask some of the traditional SEO experts in our community to weigh in on this one, but technically, if you only have one business, you should only be representing it with a single website.
Local Strategy | | MiriamEllis0 -
:Pointing hreflang to a different domain
Hreflang is used at a page level, not at a site level. So no, you should not just set the hreflang tag on every page of www.mywebsite.com to read: So yes, if the German translation of the page www.mywebsite.com/page.html is available at www.mywebsite.de/page.html then you must do 2 things: 1. On www.mywebsite.com/page.html use <link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http: mywebsite.de="" page.html'="">and <link rel='alternate' hreflang='en' href='http: mywebsite.com="" page.html'=""></link rel='alternate' hreflang='en' href='http:></link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http:> 2. On www.mywebsite.de/page.html <link rel='alternate' hreflang='en' href='http: mywebsite.com="" page.html'="">and <link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http: mywebsite.de="" page.html'=""> </link rel='alternate' hreflang='de' href='http:></link rel='alternate' hreflang='en' href='http:> What this means is that the English page should link to itself and to all other language variants. And there should be "return tags", i.e. each of the language variations should link to themselves and to all other language variants.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickJasuja0 -
Pages with excessive number of links
There has even been a Google Webmaster Guidelines Update in February 2016 which states "Limit the number of links on a page to a reasonable number (a few thousand at most)." (Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en) So I really would not bother too much, especially not in a navigation - it often makes lots of sense to have lots of links there. (For example I have several alphabetical selections available on hover from main categories. It would not make sense to remove them just to have fewer links.) More links are of course not always better - consider what the user is likely to expect/need in navigation etc. Of course, more links mean that the relative importance of each link decreases; but google is able to identify navigation and repeating elements that appear on every page. I'd assume that they treat them different to main-content links. Because, well, they feel a lot different. Regards Nico
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Optimizing a product category vs. a bespoke content page
I get the best rankings when I have category pages that organize and link to a number of different product pages, each with generous amounts of unique, substantive text content and images. If I am selling brass widgets, I will first build many different pages for the different types of brass widgets that I sell. Each of those product pages will contain substantive content about that product, at least one photo - usually more, a buy button, and links to similar items (each with a photo, short description). Then I will build a category page that has a photo of each item, a paragraph of text about it that is substantive enough to stand as a product description, a buy button, and a link to the full page description. I believe that the above shows google that you have a large mass of diverse content about brass widgets, that consists of several substantive pages and a single page that summarizes your brass widget offerings. I use this approach on info sites and on product sites. The category pages are my most effective at rankings and pulling in traffic.
On-Page / Site Optimization | | EGOL0