Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Alan,

It's not uncommon for Bing/Yahoo to vary in search results from other search engines, but the scope of the difference you describe does seem a bit odd.

Although I can't tell you exactly why it isn't ranking there are a few things we can look at:

1. The site is in Bing's cache. That's reassuring. And the last crawl date was pretty recent.

2. To analyze problems, I'd check the site through Bing Webmaster Tools. If you don't have a Webmaster account, I'd take a few minutes to set one up and verify your website. Once you do this the webmaster suite has several diagnostic tools you can take advantage of.

• SEO Analyzer
• Link Explorer - Enter your URL and see if Bing has indexed links to this particular page
• Fetch as Bingbot - See if the Bing crawler discovers any issues when crawling the page

It's pretty common for Bing/Yahoo to index far fewer pages than Google, and indeed you can see the huge different numbers reported for your site

• 20400 for Bing
• 1,300,000 for Google

Which seems like a really big difference. Bing does a pretty good job of removing low quality pages from its index, but I can't be certain that's what happening here. It might be worth a look to see what pages are being indexed, what ones aren't being indexed, and finding out what the difference is.

Regardless, hope this helps, if only a little. Best of luck with your SEO!

Hi Diane,

A few possibilities here.

1. Small changes can have a big impact. Even changing a single paragraph can cause your grade to go from an A to an F, or vice versa.

Fortunately, the complete report will tell you exactly how it scored your page. If you drill down into the report, it will even tell you what areas you need to fix.

You can see the full drill down by clicking on the keyword in the report overview. Here's a screenshot.

2. Check to make sure it's the same URL that is ranking. The On page report generates a report for the URL that is ranking for the current week, which can change from time to time. If a different URL is ranking this week from last, then the On-page grader will grade the new URL, which might have a completely different grade.

3. Unfortunately, without knowing the URL or keyword it's hard to tell you exactly what's going on. Feel free to ask a private question, or ping the help team if you want further help and you are not comfortable sharing this information in public.

Good luck!

Hi Logan,

I've read through this entire thread, and both Alan and Jeremy have some good points, but after reading your last comment I'd strongly opt for directories instead of subdomains.

As far as the display URL goes, Google will allow up to 35 characters, so you could possibly use
EmergencyDental.com/Omaha

I think what you propose...

Take:

• omahaemergencydental.com
• desmoinesemergencydental.com
• seattleemergencydental.com
• etc...

And make it:

• omaha.emergencydental.com
• desmoines.emergencydental.com
• seattle.emergencydental.com
• etc..

...is diluting your domain authority amoung too many subdomains. As Alan said, you want to be careful about inter-linking all of these subdomain. Whereas if they are all on the same subdomain (but in different folders) than interlinking is less of a problem.

Aside from preserving Domain Authority, I think you have the opportunity to create a stronger brand voice using "Emergency Dental" than all the subdomains which emphasize the city first.

Ultimately, there are few instances where subdomains make sense, and I could be wrong based on the information presented, but the circumstances would have to be pretty convincing for me to create a subdomain structure like you propose.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Hi Rusty,

Great question. Those traffic reports - URLs Receiving Entrances Via Search - are taken directly from your Google Analytic account. So the best place to see more is Google Analytics.

Here's the best way to do this:

1. Under Advanced Segments, choose "Non-paid Search Traffic" Hit Apply.

2. Under reports, choose Content > Site Content > Landing Pages

This gives you the basic report that shows up in SEOmoz. For even greater detail do this:

3. Under "Secondary Dimensions" from the drop down select "Traffic Sources" and "Keywords"

This will tell you not only your top organic landing pages, but the exact keywords sending traffic to those pages.

The first thing I notice is that bcspeakers has many more pages indexed by Google, about 6000 to 700.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Awww.bcspeakers.com%2F&pws=0&gl=us

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Awww.psbspeakers.com%2F&pws=0&gl=us

This in itself doesn't begin to explain why one site might rank higher than another, but it illustrates that not all things are equal between these two sites. Link metrics like Domain Authority are great for comparing sites under the theoretical assumption that all other factors are equal. So given two equally optimized sites with identical inbound link metrics, one with a DA of 50 and one with a DA of 40, the DA 50 site will likely rank higher.

But with large complex sites like these, things are never equal. Both sites have different anchor text, the internal link structure varies (I suspect PSB has a better internal link structure) and dozens of other factors.

To get a clearer answer, I'd run both these URLs through the SEOmoz Keyword Analysis Tool, and then run an advanced report (if your a PRO member) The tool will examine on-page factors and might paint a clearer picture.

We're really talking about 2 separate definitions of "brand"

1. Within SEOmoz or Google Analytics, a branded keyword is simply one that relates to your company name or website, This makes it easier to segment who is searching specifically for you, and who is finding you through more broad, generic terms.

SEOs see different value in branded and non-branded search. For example, the type of visitor on this site who searched for "SEOmoz" is likely very different than the type of visitor who arrived her after searching for "SEO tools"

Also, you tend to rank very well for your own brand, so branded keyword volume can be an indication of your overall marketing efforts.

2. But to Google, brand means something slightly different. A "brand" in Google's eye means a thing. If enough people search for your website, or product, you become an entity.

Bill Slawski explains it better than I ever could:

http://www.seobythesea.com/2012/01/named-entity-detection-in-queries/

and if patent talk isn't your thing, Rand makes it a little more accessible in this Whiteboard Friday:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/search-engines-and-brand-entities-whiteboard-friday

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

This goes to show that there is no longer anything such as "rank"

Over the past couple of years it's gotten to the point that no two people ever see the same result, even unpersonalized, so we tend to think in terms of "average position"

The SEOmoz PRO platform takes great pains not only to

1. Depersonalize results but also to
2. Display non-localize results.

It's important to do both. The best way to estimate your rank is still to add &pws=0 to the end of your search query. To non-localize it, set your location (left hand side of Google's results page) to the county you reside in. For the US this would be "United States".

I wrote a post on this here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-personalized-search

Regardless, hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Hi Jamo,

Looks like you've done some good research. Here's some more tips:

1. Use the Keyword Analysis tool to give you an even more in-depth view of why your competition is out-ranking you. Be sure to run a full report, and you can add your own url for comparison.

http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty

2. Don't forget anchor text. A few high authority links with the right anchor text - containing exact or partial match keywords - can go a long way in helping an otherwise poorly optimized page to rank.

3. As others have said, it's all about building high quality links to your site. Unfortunately, this takes time, patience and energy, but it's well worth it in the end.

Oh, and instead of using "total links" as a metric, try looking at "total linking root domains" instead, as this is a better indicator or ranking potential.

Hi Raymond,

Unfortunately, this is all too common. I work with a lot of clients who fall victim to this type of thing. What's even more unfortunate is sometimes, the "SEO" company doesn't realize they're doing anything wrong. Some of these techniques used to work in the very near past, and a few folks still think they're selling legitimate services.

Regardless, Google will most likely discount most, if not all of these links, but in the meantime you want to take steps to make sure these links don't hurt you.

1. Monitor your organic search traffic and keyword rankings. If they start to fall, take action.

2. Watch for messages in Google Webmaster Tools for penalties or warnings of unnatural linking.

3. If you need to, try to get the links removed. Unfortunately, the people in the best position to do this may be the same folks who built the links in the first place. As distasteful as it may be to actually pay more money to get the links removed, this may be your highest ROI option.

4. There are several do-it-yourself link removal resources out there. Here's three:

• Rmoov
• Remoov'em
• Link Clean-Up and Contact from SEOGadget

5. If you've received a message via Webmaster Tools, consider a reconsideration request. Document everything. Be truthful. Tell them everything and your exhaustive efforts to get links removed.

Remember, you only have to do this if your ranking/traffic tank. In the meantime, to guard against these links hurting you down the line, work on building as many quality, high authority links as possible. Here's some ideas to get you started.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Great answers here.

Keep in mind the idea of "keyword stuffing" is a fluid concept. A well-written Wikipedia article may use the same keyword 60 times without being flagged for stuffing.

Context is key. If it makes sense to use your keywords multiple times than it's usually fine. The biggest violators that we usually see are in the title tag "Buy Cheap Florida Homes - Florida Home Finder - Your Best Florida Home Broker" - ouch!

As for plurals, Google will rank different pages differently based on what they perceive as searcher intent. I don't know of any hard and fast rules here - some plurals are considered synonymous with the singular version, while other times it can make a difference in ranking.

Hi KS,

In a short answer, directory submissions have been abused over the years and we've seen a marked decrease in their effectiveness even as recently as the past 12 months.

The old rule for directory links was to build them in a 2:1 ratio. That meant for every two directory links, be sure to build at least 1 regular, high quality link. Today, the ratio is more like 1:1, or even reversed to 1:2.

If a directory is easy to get into, it's probably not worth your time. Too many of these links can lead to a drop in rankings. Done judiciously, they can give a small boost to your rankings, help round out your link profile, and help target specific anchor text phrases (again, when done in moderation)

Here's an article we published a few months back you might find helpful: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-link-directory-best-practices

As for classified submissions, I'd be wary as I've never seen any evidence that they help SEO, and like low value directory links, too many "easy" links can harm your rankings.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Yes, Google has indicated they won't count links to a page that either 404s or 410s. Most SEOs would suggest a 410, (permanently removed)as there is some indication that Google will drop these pages out of the index faster.

After this, you might consider using GWT Remove URL feature. This would be easier if the URLs were all in the same directory, and you could wipe the entire thing out at once. But a disclaimer: even though this would speed dropping the pages from the index, I'm not sure if it would speed in dropping the links to those pages from the ranking algorythms (but one can hope, right)

After this, since you relieved an unnatural link warning, you should strongly consider filing a reconsideration request. I might wait a few weeks before doing so, to make sure the incoming links were dropped, and check Google's responses.

As you mentioned, I'd be careful about using the new disavow feature. It's so new and untested we can't really predict the results at this time.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Hi Thomas,

Great question. Fortunately, there's a super awesome resource on just this topic. It's called:

21Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic (updated for 2012)

To be fair, the best ways to promote a blog really haven't changed that much in the wake of Penguin or other algorithmic updates.

If you are creating useful content in a way that engages your audience, and then apply smart marketing to promote that content (see Rand's post above) then your blog will be above 95% of all other blogs out there.

If you're specifically looking to build links, there's a ton of good ideas here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4

Best of luck!

Good question, because those pages look different to a human. The SEOmoz web app uses a similarity threshold of 95% of the html code. This takes everything on the page, both hidden and visible into account.

In this case, it's counting all of the navigation and sidebar as well, which is significant. What's left of the unique content - the part that matters, makes up less than 5% of the code.

Here's a tool you can use to check the similarity: http://www.duplicatecontent.net/

I ran the pages through a couple of tools which showed 96% HTML similarity.

(but only a 92% text similarity - which is good, but not great)

For perspective, take a look at Google's cached versions of one of these pages. This is how googlebot sees the page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4fKrbNTUnegJ:www.gear-zone.co.uk/blog/september-2011/win-a-the-north-face-nuptse-2-jacket-with-gear-zone+http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/blog/september-2011/win-a-the-north-face-nuptse-2-jacket-with-gear-zone&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1G

Since Panda, when I see a site with this many navigation links, I usually advise them to restructure their site architecture into more of a Pyramid shape, so that you reduce the overall navigation on each page.

There are 2 ways to look at this: First of all, Google is much more sophisticated than SEOmoz at detecting duplicate content, and they are also better at contextual analysis - so they can probably tell these are not true duplicates.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

I agree with Peter 100%. On the other hand, most people abuse directories and Google has devalued 95% of them.

For the minority that do it right, it's not such a problem. But we should probably take that off the list.

Thx!

So you basically have 2 different arguments here, both of which are probably true.

1. Raw +1s don't directly effect search rankings  (What Matt Cutts said)

2. Sharing on Google+ likely has secondary benefits that help search engine visibility. (What I said in my Moz article, although not as clearly as I would have liked)

Matt Cutts wasn't refuting the article directly (as far as I could tell) but debunking the conclusion that many people were drawing from it.

Regardless, we know links are important, and good content is important, and the type of content that earns good links is also often the type of content that earns +1s. Hopefully, you can find a way to pursue it all at once.

Hi Colt,

Looks to me like you're getting a duplicate content errors because your page templates are so large, they are tripping the SEOmoz duplicate content filter, which goes off if more than 95% of your code is similar between 2 pages.

For example, take a look at these 2 URLs.

http://www.federalautoloan.com/Why-Shopping-for-an-Auto-Loan-is-Good.aspx

http://www.federalautoloan.com/Regarding-Dealer-Financing.aspx

With the gazillions of links at the bottom of the two pages, the pages have 98% similar code. (You can check it out yourself with this duplicate content tool) The good news is the TEXT content similarity is less than 40%.

1. Google is more sophisticated than Moz, but it would be a good idea to remove some of those links and put them into categories. If you could get these 100 or so links down to 20, that would be closer to ideal

2. Just a recommendation > most of your text is in a scroll box. I'd reformat your page so that all the text was visible without the box. Not sure if this is hurting you or not, but it seems contrary to best user experience, so I'd be inclined to think Google doesn't look to favorably on it.

3. Noticed you blocked a lot of files in your robots.txt, including your css. Unless you have a very specific reason for keeping Google out of these files, I'd let them crawl as Google uses CSS to render your page to see what content is above and below the fold.

4. Best practices is to redirect non-www to www versions of your site (or vice versa). If you can't do this, a canonical tag will do just as well. But how about redirecting everything WITHOUT the /index.aspx? That would look cleaner in search results.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Hi Anton,

We've done a lot of studies here at Moz and what we've found is this:

• There does seem to be a slight correlation between site speed and rankings (keep in mind that correlation is not causation)
• Our studies have not found a relationship between CDNs and higher rankings.

So the evidence would seem to suggest that CDNs can help your website speed, and it's possible to help your rankings, simply using a CDN by itself is no garentee.

The other answers here give you some fine tips for speeding up your site, so I'll stay out of the advice business. Some recommended reading from the Moz Blog

• http://moz.com/blog/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website
• http://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte

Hope this helps! Best of luck.

Good question. Technically, I can't find a robots.txt directive that would prevent Google (or Moz) from crawling those feeds, although Google says otherwise.

Bit of a mystery. Let me check with our engineers and see if they can shed some light.

Hi Curtis,

If I understand what you are saying, you have 1000 "showall" pages - is that correct? And some of these show all pages are duplicates of another?

I suspect you are not talking about classical pagination problems, the kind that Adam Audette addresses here. Instead, you are talking about an entirely different case altogether where your showall pages duplicate themselves. In this scenario, you have a product page that list a certain number of items, and a link that says "show all"  When you hit "show all" it shows the exact same items, but the URL has changed. Is this correct?

1. The best way to do this would be to automate it, so that a canonical tag was automatically added in each of these cases. If your CMS doesn't allow this, you might find a developer who can build it in for you.

2. If it's truly a matter of parameters, you can adjust the parameter settings in Google Webmaster Tools so that they ignore the "showall" parameter

3. As a last resort, if a technical fix is beyond your capacity, you could place a "nofollow" on the link to the showall pages, and block robots from crawling those pages by using a robots.txt file. Eventually Google would drop those pages from the index. This isn't an ideal solution, as it would take several months, but it might help long term.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.