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It's pretty common to see fluctuation like this from one Linkscape index to the next. Also, SEOmoz is constantly working to improve the index, and from time to time changes the way it crawls the web.

Domain Authority is calculated fresh with each new update, and it's a comparative metric based on other sites on the web. This means it's better to compare your DA to your competition with each update, than to compare small fluctuation against yourself from month to month.

To your point about OSE - to improve efficiency, OSE only records the first 25 links for every domain because after the first few links, each additional link makes very little difference in rankings or correlation data.

Howdy,

Let me address your question from a technical point of view. Disclaimer: I am not a Data Scientist at Moz, nor do I know the precise algorithms that comprise DA and PA. That said, I am comfortable discussing these metrics in broad terms.

Q. "I was wondering if our very low PA pages are bringing the overall DA down?"
A. In short, no. Generally speaking, low PA pages won't bring down a site's DA.

Q. "If I delete low PR pages, would that help my overall DA?"
A. Again, no, but this is a more interesting question! If your site was hit by Panda, or has lots of low-quality duplicate content pages, then in many cases removing the worst offending pages has sometimes been shown to improve search rankings.

This won't be reflected in your Domain Authority score, as DA doesn't take Panda-like considerations into its algorythm. And this isn't to say you should remove low PA pages based on this consideration. But if you suspect low-quality pages (not the same as low PA pages) are hurting you and serve little purpose to the visitor, or you suspect a Panda penalty, then this is the only case I'd suggest considering removing pages.

Hope this helps!

-Cyrus

These are the ones I recommend:

1. Moz: https://www.youtube.com/user/MozHQ
2. Brian Dean: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx7J37QuXsGL7QG6SMIpqKg
3. Ahrefs: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWquNQV8Y0_defMKnGKrFOQ

Hi Ahtisham,

You mentioned both Duplicate Content and Rel Canonical errors. There might be some confusion because rel=canonical is not an error, but a warning. In most cases you don't need to do anything about it.

But it's good to fix the duplicate content errors. Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin is usually the tool to do this (although it doesn't work in every situation - depending on your Theme)

Duplicate Content in Wordpress is often caused by:

• Category Archives
• Date Based Archives
• Tag Archives

If these are creating pages that are very similar (mostly empty or repeating pages) you may want to stop search robots from indexing these pages. The Wordpress SEO plugin can help with that under the "indexation" tab. You can check the boxes to disable indexation of these categories - but be careful! You don't want to block something accidentally. This is a very powerful tool, so use it wisely.

Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about - https://skitch.com/cyrusshepard/8et13/indexation-above-the-fold-wordpress

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Hi Alex, (nice looking website)

This is a really good question. There are a couple issues to address - let me touch each one of them individually.

Do keywords in your domain help you to rank? Yes, it certainly helps - although the power of exact match domains has fallen over time. There are several ways keywords in your domain can help you

• Possible higher CTR (clickthrough rate)
• *Possible higher rankings
• When you have keywords in your URL, it helps you to earn anchor text links that also contain those words, which in turn help you to rank

That said, recent evidence seems to suggest the power of keyword rich domains is not as strong of ranking factor as it used to be. http://www.theopenalgorithm.com/c...

The Google Keyword Tool is famously misleading. You want to make sure you're searching for "exact match" and "local monthly" searches to get an accurate estimate. Using these settings, you'll find a much, much smaller number for the number of estimated searches for almost any keyword. And that number includes all searches, whereas a #1 ranking usually gets less than 20% of all clicks. Sort of depressing, I know. ;(

You could migrate your old site to your new domain, but is it worth it to change? I can't answer that for certain. If you saw your rankings decrease because of a less-than-stellar backlink profile, then 301'ing your site to a new domain means you are most likely bringing your backlink profile with you.

Your new name (designorlando.com) will likely also be affected by these bad links if you redirect your old domain. It will not have an automatic ranking advantage just because of it's keyword richness. It will still take a lot of hard work to get it to rank.

It's possible, if you "burned" your old site, it may be easier simply to start over on a new one, without 301'ing anything. Either way, you'll have to build up new, high quality links, or clean up your old backlink profile.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Hi Matt,

I fall in the camp of SEOs that would avoid this strategy.

We've seen lots of cases of this backfiring, especially in the past year. For a specific example of site-wide footers devastating a business, see Ross Hudgen's piece on WPMU, and how they recovered....

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update

Here's the problem. Google tends to devalue:

• Site-wide, boilerplate anchors
• Anchors in the footer
• Over-optimized anchors

Since Penguin, these three have been pounded especially hard.

I'd much rather have a single link from a single page - preferably in the body text - from each website built than a sitewide footer. I'd also vary the anchor text from link to link. This could be offered as an incentive, such as $100 off if the client includes a link (although this technically violates Google's guidelines on paid links. Gasp!)

If you do build footer links, I'd try NOT to build them to your homepage. If you ever incur a penalty and need to "cut" the links, it's very hard to return a 404 from your homepage.

Also, generic, branded or complete URLs are "safest" for sitewide links, because they aren't over-optimized.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Howdy,

So this is a Top Pages report that you ran on your own site in Open Site Explorer?

What this report shows is the top pages as determined by the link authority features of your incoming links. It is actually not based on a crawl of your site.

So here's what can, and often does happen: External websites link to pages on your site that don't actually exist. A brief glance suggests this is what happened here. Those links look like auto-generated spam to me, and likely were made by a wayward robot.

The good news is that because your server is returning a 403 response code (Forbidden) those pages on your site don't really exist, and the effect of those links is basically null. If you returned a 404 (which would be more common) the effect would be the same.

So why does OSE report on Top Pages if they don't actually exist? The real value is when you find links coming into broken or misdirected pages (think 404, 302, etc) and you can then fix those pages to take advantage of the link juice.

Hope this helps. If you like, you can dig around OSE to try and find where those links originated, but it likely doesn't make a big difference either way.

This refers to the difference between Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA)

Where Domain Authority measures the predictive ranking strength of entire domains or subdomains, Page Authority measures the strength of individual page. The same is true for metrics such as MozRank and MozTrust.

It's completely normal to have a homepage PA that is higher or lower than your overall DA. If your homepage PA recently dropped while everything else remained constant, it could indicate that Linkscape didn't find some links pointing to your homepage that it found previously. Normally, this isn't anything to worry about, unless you've seen a corresponding drop in traffic. In this case, I'd check your backlinks.

It's also normal for both PA and DA to fluctuate from update to update. It's a comparative metric, so these metrics are best used when comparing yourself to your competition, instead of tracking your metrics in isolation.  For example, if your DA rises 5 points, this in itself means nothing unless you are comparing it to another domain.

Looks like you're ranking really well in local results for Charlotte Electrician, around #2. Here's a screenshot: https://skitch.com/cyrusshepard/8cht3/fullscreen

I also see this when I remove localization and personalization effects, so it's safe to assume you're actually ranking pretty well for this term, even if you're not listed in the "regular" results. Google has been constantly changing the way it displays and mixes local results with "regular"  - but I'm going to step out on a limb and say that these days, your good showing should be considered equal to a regular result, for all practical purposes.

As for you ranking for "Electrician Charlottte", you may receive an F grade, but Google is more sophisticated at interpreting natural language, use of synonyms and intent, and obviously understands your page deserves to rank for this term even if you don't spell it out in concrete SEO defined terms.

All in all, looks like you're doing a lot of things right. Good luck with the rankings!

First of all, I would say you made the wise choice by removing the 301 from internetgamblingsites.net, especially if it had a shady backlink profile, as I've seen evidence of Google passing penalties through 301s.

That said, I'm not sure how long it would take to recover after removing these links. I'd give it a couple weeks to a couple of months to be sure. Google may have to recrawl and reindex all those old pages that contained the bad links before it gives you credit for removing them.

Here's another possibility: A few weeks ago Google deindexed several large link networks. Even if you didn't use link networks like BMR for your backlink profile, it could still affect you as a secondary effect if the folk who linked to you were hit. It's sorta like you once had rich friends, but now they are poor because they built shady backlinks, and now they can't pass any link juice to you. In the gambling niche, this is common these days.

Regardless, seems like your one the right track. I'd let the dust settle for awhile before making any judgement. One way or another you'll need to work to build up more high quality links. And diversify your anchor text, as it appears like a very highly optimized profile:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?page=1&site=www.gamblingsites.co&sort=domains_linking_page&source=phrase&target=domain

Best of luck with your SEO.

Wish I could give you a definite answer, but because it's algorithmic, over-optimization is a shifting target.

"Over-optimization is the amount of optimization that makes your rankings go down."

With meta descriptions, if often dealer's choice. If you don't provide a meta description, Google's search snippet will pull the relevant text from your page that matches the user's query, which sometimes may help click-through rate.

On the other hand, a well crafted meta description can also help attract the right kind of clicks.

In this case, however, I fear it was just plain oversight. We update this page a lot, and I believe the meta description simply got lost in one of the many development cycles. So thanks for the heads up!

OSE does allow you to export backlinks to a particular subfolder, but it can be a little tricky.

1. On the OSE homepage, enter the exact directory path you want OSE to explore. This is the screen you want to enter it on, not the advanced report screen. Hit search.

2. The directory needs to end in a backslash "/". Sometimes OSE will try to redirect you to a directory without a slash. For example, it tries to redirect "seomoz.org/blog/" to "seomoz.org/blog" (no slash). But it gives you the option to see your original entry. Always choose the entry with the backslash.

3. After this, on the Advanced reports tab, choose the "Links that Link to;" option that says Any page in this subfolder. Choose any other options you want on this screen.

Viola. You are done!

This should return links only pointing to the subdirectory you specified in step 1. If you have any trouble, feel free to contact customer support.

This is such a nuanced question that depends on so many different factors, I fear I can't give you a complete answer. But I can tell you some of the questions I'm asking in my head.

-What happened to the old para-sailing pages on Site B? Do they redirect to the salespage/homepage? Does the site still rank for and receive traffic for para-saling? What did those old pages rank for?

-Are you trying to rank the new site for para-sailing queries? If so, it might seem appropriate to redirect the old para-sailing pages to the next most relevant landing page. This is what Google would prefer, anyway.

-Do you take up 2 SERP positions now?

That's off the top of my head. Would probably have some more questions if I saw the site and knew more about the particular queries.

Most of the time you don't need to specify a base URL. The browser already knows this location. In some situations defining a base is helpful, such as mirrored sites when the URL used is not the same URL that is needed to resolve files.

Is your clients using a universal base tag that is the same across the entire site? I can't tell from the question, but this is a common situation that could potentially cause problems.

There's nothing inherently wrong with using a base tag. Most of the time, if you use it, you simply want to set it to the URL of the current page.That said, to avoid complications, the only time you really want to use the Base tag is when relative URLs wouldn't work without it.

You might want to test how the links on your site resolve and see if removing or modifying the base tag helps clear up your broken links.

Hi Mark,

The best directories (or link cataloques) are going to be the ones most related to your website. For example, if your site is about dentistry in Denmark, then a Denmark directory of dentists will be your best best.

There's no particular disadvantage to using .com directories. What's more important is the relevancy and trustworthiness of the directory itself. A few things to look out for are: Make sure the directory hasn't been penalized, make sure it only links out to good sites through a selective, editorial process. If the directory accepts anyone, you don't want to be there.

A word of caution: over the past year Google has cracked down hard on directories, and websites that contain mostly low quality directory links in their profile have been hit equally as hard. Directory links are still okay, but make sure you balance them out with high quality "earned" links or you are asking for trouble. The SEOmoz Directory List is a good place to start. These have been vetted as not being penalized, but it's still very possible to overdo it. Proceed with caution.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO!

Under normal circumstances, the meta descriptions will change quite dynamically as Google crawls your site. It also changes dynamically depending on the query.

But, I've head and read that in certain Google local searches, you can throw these expectations out the window. I found this especially disheartening thread over at Google Places support forum where other users are experiencing similar frustrations.

Apparently Google Local caches their snippets differently, and at this time there seems to be no valid solution for correcting it.

If anyone stumbling upon this thread has come across a solution, please share in the comments.

There are different names around this concept - search visibility, web visibility, keyword visibility etc. Ideally you want a tool that will quantify your website's "visibility" for a particular set of keywords or niche.

Any such tool or report would take not only keyword volume into consideration, but also weight based on rank. Because of what we know about click-through rates, positions 1-3 are much more valuable that position 25. In fact, SEOmoz doesn't rank keywords past position 50 because the return on investment for webmasters past that point is almost nil.

Google Analytics tries to provide some of this data in their SEO Reports, but the information doesn't include competitor data, and is an estimate at best.

The best "out-of-the-box" tool, to my knowledge, is the visibility score offered by Advanced Web Rankings.

Perhaps a better, and free, way to get this information is laid out by Ben Estes in this post about Defining Your True Competitors. Requires a bit of Excel wizardry, but it's an excellent method.

SEOmoz is constantly updating it's Rank Checking capabilities. If this is a feature you would like to see, I encourage you to fill out the survey located at the soon-to-be-replaced Rank Tracker, or submit a vote at the feature request forum.

Further Reading: Search Engine Visibility as a Metric

Hi Zach,

Good question. In the old days, this was referred to as "PageRank scuplting" - a process where you would place the nofollow tag on your unimportant links in order to pass more value to the links you wanted to count.

Then, in 2009, Google supposedly "plugged" the nofollow hole. Rand and team did a classic Whiteboard Friday on the topic. I still remember watching it the day it came out:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-how-do-we-plug-the-nofollow-leak

Today, you don't hear much about PageRank sculpting. Most SEOs don't bother with it, partly because of it's decreased effectiveness, but also in part because there are more effective ways of controlling the influence of links.

This is where the issue becomes more complex. Link "equity" or PageRank, (or MozRank), is only one small factor in the overall value of a link. Anchor text, position on the page, and a host of other factors all influence how much influence any given link can wield. Here's a good introduction on the subject (again from Rand)

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Sometimes you just have to upgrade your platform. When this happens, it's also sometimes a good time to change your URL structure - especially if your old URLs were long, ugly, full of parameters, and in general bad for click-throughs.

As Ben said, if it makes sense to keep your old URL structure (and it's technically possible) this is your best bet. Barring that, moving everything via 301 redirects is not unsimilar to an entire site migration across domains, although it is simpler.

Keep in mind there is some lose of "link juice" through a 301 redirect. I can't give you a precise number, but most SEOs believe it's about 80%.

With this in mind, it's important to build new links after a large URL structural change, and make sure your internal link architecture is solid.

One piece of advice. I would make sure to maintain 2 xml sitemaps. One containing the old URLs, and the second containing the new URLs. Submit both to Google via Webmaster Tools. This way, Google will still try to crawl the old URLs and process the 301, dropping the old page from the index faster. Without this step, Google may keep both pages in its index and ding you for duplicate content.

The process may take a couple of months for Google to index all the new URLs and deindex all the old ones. When this happens, make sure to remove the old sitemap. For more tips, you might find some value in these site migration guides.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos

https://seogadget.co.uk/domain-migration/

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!