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Hi Ryan

There's a lot going on here, but from the sound of it, I think you are going the right way with it by not just focussing on the URLs (which are important) but backing it up with good content using various media.

I think the structure you have for the URLs is good too as domain->location->product. All I would say is to be careful on the product part of the URL (alo relating to your page Title tags) that it is a term that people understand and would use. For example, I have no idea what a Jet Park is, but it is possible I have been living in a cave on this and it is an understood term by your target market.

As I said in the paragraph above, make sure your page Title tags are correctly optimised as that is probably more important than the page URLs.

Finally, if you changing URLs, don't forget to create a set of 301 permanent redirects or add to the set for each page address you change and make live. You will get a small loss in current SEO value by using the 301 redirects, but by better optimising which is your reason for doing this you will gain back the ground and more.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Jennie

Both URLs you listed do display metrics in the Moz toolbar for me.

In terms of the value of getting a link from there yes, there could be, the most value would be a link from it is going to a page displaying a wedding venue for hire.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi Guy

Giveaways are definitely a good thing to encourage inbound traffic and help to raise the profile of your brand, but that does not necessarily correlate to a higher rank in organic SERPs.

Pages in search results are delivered on the basis that the page is relevant to the search query, but where a page ranks in SERPs - if relevant to a query - is also dependent upon the competition for that query and a lot of other metrics.

I hope that helps,
Peter

It really depends on how big your site is and how complex your CSS. On a small site or if it has minimal CSS one is perfectly adequate. On a larger site with lots of pages and CSS it makes sense to break down the the CSS around their function.Peter

Hi Jennie

Yes, the consensus used to be that a link from trusted sites like .gov (that's if we can trust government websites but then that's maybe for another discussion!) increase the trust of the page it linked to. The Moz SEO guide says the same in its summary on TrustRank: Earning links from highly trusted domains can result in a significant boost to this scoring metric. Universities, government websites and non-profit organizations represent examples of high-trust domains.

That said, there was a video posted about 3 years ago by Google's Matt Cutts that suggested that links from .gov sites carry no more trust than, for example, from a .com.

I think to a larger extent the question is how relevant is the linking site? By that I mean, is the linking site an authority on the subject for the link being given?

The most important thing really is relevance. In the context of the linking web page on the Bristol City Council website, whilst that page has some authority, the Bristol City Council website is not really an authority on wedding venues and as such the value of that link is probably the same or perhaps only a little more than a similar link from another site. If you had a link from a trusted authoritative site all about weddings then because the site is more relevant, then you may find that carries more weight.

I hope that helps,
Peter

PS. This is the Matt Cutts video I referred to above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxTmZulcQZ0 - listen to the clip around 1:45 into the video.

Hi Gina

I agree with Jeff's comments. If it's a good design and works well then both your current and future customers will all benefit.

Peter

Hi Roxanne

Welcome to Moz! The community rank is based on how many Moz points you have accumulated when you have interacted on Moz by responding to questions, posting on YouMoz and also updating your profile. The more Moz points you accumulate the higher your community rank is, the lower the number the higher your rank.

3238 is a good starting point but it will get even better the more you involve yourself in the Moz community!

All the best to you!

Peter

Edit: there is more info on Moz points and how you can earn them here

Hi Ravijot

I assume you mean the diagnostic report in Moz and not anything you have seen in Google webmaster tools?

If the Moz report, you will see the column of pages it reports as duplicated. Alongside, you will see a number in the column which is titled "Other URLs". If you click the number, it will then show you the other URLs which are returning the duplicate page.

It's likely that these URLs are all pointing to the same page rather than you actually having duplicate pages.

Hopefully that will help you to find out what is wrong and fix it, but post back if you are still stuck.

Peter

Hi, sorry to hear you are having a problem with this.

It's an issue that others in the Moz Q&A forum have reported in the last day or so. From the report on http://health.moz.com/ it suggests that it's an issue that Moz's engineers are aware of and are looking to resolve:

Cannot add Google+ accounts
Our engineers are working to resolve an issue preventing Google+ accounts from being added in campaign settings. An update is expected later today so please check back for any new status! Common errors are returning: remote-authentication.failure.

I hope that helps. Just keep an eye on http://health.moz.com/ for an update.

Peter

Hi Iris

I can't help you with what you are seeing within Moz without seeing it specifically, but maybe some from support will be able to help you with that.

The ?db at the end of the web address for your site is called a query string. Typically, these are used to pass a string of text (in this case 'db') to run against a script on the site to do something as a result of receiving that string of characters. But it may be that it doesn't do anything and if, on the web server, there us nothing to process the query string, then it will be ignored. For example, if you try this http://www.bbc.co.uk/?db and this http://www.bbc.co.uk will do the same thing because there is nothing to process the ?db on the receiving web server.

You can only ask the person who created the link with the ?db to give the reason why.

I hope that helps in some way,

Peter

Hi, it should work but maybe you are not adding it correctly? You just need to put in your new Google+ name with a plus sign before it, e.g. +PeterLunn without any other parts of the URL.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hello Iris

Thanks for the extra info. I understand now.

The report you refer to is in Moz Analytics. "The Top External Inbound Links from Current Index" report shows backlinks to your site sorted in page authority order. Page Authority is a Moz calculated authority metric that scores the web page as to how likely it is to rank in Google's search results. Its calculation is based on lots of varied data.

In the case of the backlink you have had from dianibeach.com, Moz has assessed that of all the backlinks pointing to your site it has the second highest page authority. If its authority score is 27 that is fairly low, but it must mean that the authority of

To answer your concerns from your earlier post:

My worry is why it is reported as second top page?? Can that be?? Moz has assessed that of all the backlinks pointing to your site it has the second highest page authority. If its authority score is 27 that is fairly low, so that suggests that the authority of other pages back linking to your site must also be fairly low.

How this can harm my site? Don't worry, It isn't going to harm your site

Can it outrank my site or whatever? The page authority is not really a mark of page ranking, just of a score of its authority to rank. If the keywords your site rank for are the same or similar to the other site, then yes it could outrank you in a specific search, but that is not what this is about. In fact, if the page is linking back to your site, then it is likely passing some of its authority back to your site.

How is it even possible that it is found in indexed search? If there is a link on another site pointing to your site then that is how it has been found by the Moz crawler.

Is there something I should be concern about? No, don't be concerned. Focus on the searches you are optimising your site and pages for and do not worry about this one site. You have a good looking site that is easy to navigate and it seems to have lots of good information and images in what looks like a beautiful part of the world. Be encouraged.

I hope that helps,
Peter

That's a really good comprehensive answer Miriam - for everyone! Thank you.

Peter

Thanks for including that screenshot Iris.

Regarding villasdiani.com/?db being shown as one of your top visited pages, I think (and perhaps someone from Moz will confirm this) that because you have been receiving links to your site to villasdiani.com/?db and that is probably also being recording in your Google Analytics, it considers that to be a page when it actually isn't.

As I mentioned earlier in our conversation on this, villasdiani.com and villasdiani.com/?db are actually go to the same page. They are just seen as different because you have had inbound links to villasdiani.com/?db and as said before when the query string ?db is not processed by the web server because there is not recognised, it is then ignored.

I have run a search to see what external sites/pages are linking to villasdiani.com/?db and the following were some of the results:

http://dianibeach.com/airservices/index.html
http://dianibeach.com/apartments/index.htm
http://dianibeach.com/bedbreakfast/index.htm
http://dianibeach.com/books
http://dianibeach.com/carhire
http://dianibeach.com/golf

and they are showing as all having had the anchor text of "Raul".

Is Raul the name of this guy you know who said he was giving links to your site from the footer of your site?

I have checked the source code of some of the pages above villasdiani.com/?db.

The data being reported by Moz for these type of reports is not totally up to date but taken from the last crawl they made. You said at the start of this thread that you had asked this guy to remove the links to your site. Could it be that in the last few days or so he has done that and so from now on you won't be getting any links to villasdiani.com/?db ?

That's possible, but I cannot say that is definitive, but it would explain what you have been seeing.

Maybe someone from the Moz team can throw some light on this or one of the other more knowledgeable forum members.

Peter

Hi Cindy

If your current site at enchantingquotes.com is ranking well for your the main keyword for your business then I would not change anything.

IMHO_, m_oving everything over and then setting up redirects is not going to be worth it for the time it will take to do it and the result could be a possible negative impact. By the fact that you are ranking currently means your current site is trusted for the search phrase. Moving everything could undo that trust.

For your other domain  enchantingwallquotes.com rather than just redirecting it you may be better using that as as a blog site or something like that has useful content on your target market and which then links to your current site.

I hope that helps<
Peter

Hi, there are a couple of issues here.

I could find no reference to the company "ConvertMedia" being called "Convert Media". It's a small difference I know, but it's enough to make a difference. Google is able to split words and understand where one word is made up of two, but because these two words as you say refer to a different service, then that is the main cause of the problem.

Google's mission is to return relevant results to the person searching and to do that it tries to fully understand (as much as their current algorithm is able) the **intent **of the search. If someone types in "Convert Media", Google will understand that the person wants to be able to convert some media.

The fact that there are a lot of services that offer that means there is a lot of pages Google can return for that search and as such, it makes providing a result for "ConvertMedia" much less likely unless you have a prominent brand. For example, "hoover" has become a generic name for vacuum cleaners, but if you search for "hoover machine" the hoover.com website is displayed top.

If however, you search for "convert media performance advertising" then that search shows a different intent by the searcher and the ConvertMedia website is returned in the search results.

It's a tricky one, but I would first do some analysis to check where exactly ConvertMedia do rank for "convert media" as that will give you an indication as to how far you need to climb to reach page one. I suspect it will be a fair distance.

The other thing you could do is produce a page on the ConvertMedia site that says something candidly about ConvertMedia does not "convert media", but can be mistaken for that service. Having said that, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that because I think it undermines your brand which is exactly what you want to grow and be known for performance advertising.

I am not sure the above helps much but I hope it explains the challenge you face is ranking better for "convert media".

Peter

Hi Laura

You can do a search of Google's index for a site by doing the following:

site:electric-heatingsupplies.co.uk

but that won't tell you which URLs have redirections on them. However by clicking each link you will at least see if they are going to the correct page or a page not found (404) error.

Peter

Hi Adnan

My experience with this is that more people tend to search with a town or city qualifier than at a county level. That is because they are really searching for a service or maybe a shop close to where they live and so with that as their intent they won't tend to use a county.

Regarding your question about how high a website will rank when optimised for a county for searches against the cities and districts, it would depend on how competitive that search was. If there are not many offering the service in the specific city then it's likely that Google will spread their net wider to bring in search results for other locations in the same area but by distance not by county.

I suggest you do some keyword research for searches with city/town qualifiers and compare them to the county results before going any further and make your decision on what to target after that.

I hope that helps,

Peter

Hi Guy

Whilst you have said you are using all new inbound marketing practices, it's a difficult question to answer with limited knowledge of the details of what you are doing for an eCommerce site you have not said what it sells. You may be doing some of the inbound things well but others not so well.

You've heard it before I am sure, but high quality unique content is very important - even for an eCommerce site, Does the site have a blog? Have you written articles about how to best use the products the site is selling, or how to look after them, or what people are saying about them, or the story behind how the products are created?

In terms of the sites ranking above yours, take a look at what they are doing, Can your site do it better than them?

And what about the site's brand identity? Are there ways you can grow the brand's fan base or a community of followers around the products you are selling.

Depending on the sector your site is supplying to, some or none of the above may apply, but primarily it is important to get inside the head of you customers, understand what questions are they may be asking and shape what you do on the site for them and not for the search engines.

I hope that helps,
Peter

Hi, I think the likelihood is your site is still suffering a kick back from Google. Whilst they have removed the penalty that doesn't mean to say, your status will be automatically restored and unfortunately, to some extent or another, Google will still treat your site cautiously from a ranking perspective.

Also, with the links you have disavowed that has still left a lot of domains from the numbers you have given for which links are still active. They may be good links, but with your site having so many it is possible that Google are still checking the large number remaining.

Restoration will take time I think and yes, the recent Hummingbird update may have impacted your site as well. The on-page optimisation looks OK but as a directory site with little "answering questions" type Hummingbird content, perhaps you need to establish conversations with potential customers using an on-site blog and through social media.

I hope that helps,

Peter