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Hi MPO,

The competitor has a lot of points pointing to his root domain, but for whatever reason they do not point to the subdomain that you are comparing.

For example, if I point a link to example.com (no www), then the root domain metrics for the url www.example.com would be strong, but for the specific subdomain www.example.com they would be weaker.

(boy, this is so confusing when you try to explain it on paper. Here's a post from Rand on subdomains - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

Does it matter? Probably not much. It depends where exactly those links are pointing, and what's ranking in the search results. Keep doing what you're doing - getting good links from good sources, and you'll come out on top either way.

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!

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!

Both have metrics have merits. But because DA is consistent across your entire site, and is higher correlated with higher rankings, if I had to work on choosing one metric, I would choose DA.

That said, DA is only a predictive metrics, that is useful when prospecting for links and some other activities. I wouldn't build an SEO strategy around it. Instead, if you focus on getting a good variety of links from authoritative sources, your DA and other metrics will take care of themselves.

Great Video from Rand here:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-link-metrics-should-i-use-part-1-of-2-whiteboard-friday

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-link-metrics-should-i-use-part-2-of-2-whiteboard-friday

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

Hi lilactree,

Both tools use the same method of rank tracking, so they deliver the same results. But you might see different results based on how you have your campaign set up.

Here's where it gets tricky.

When you first setup your campaign, you have 3 options - domain, subdomain and directory. If you choose to set up your campaign on a subdomain with a "www", it will only track those rankings of your site that appear with a "www"

On the other hand, the Keyword Difficulty tool returns all results, whether or not they have a www in them or not.

For example, lets say you set up a campaign for www.example.com. If Google ranks example.com (no www) in the search results, this unfortunately wont show up in your campaign rankings because technically, that's a different subdomain. (frustrating, I know, but it's important to work this way because that's the way subdomains work)

Here's what I recommend you do: First, if you have available campaign slots, set up another campaign, just like the first, but make sure to select "root domain" as the campaign type. This will show you all your metrics for your entire root domain, and more accurate rankings.

Second, read up about www canonicalization errors. If your site is accessible using both www, and without www, you may have a problem.

http://seoappraisal.com/learn/www-vs-non-www-duplicate-content/

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Hi Thomas,

The layman's definition of a "top-page" is a URL that has a lot of links pointing at it. These are URL that have more links and authority pointed at them then other URLs on your site, so they are considered "top pages"

OSE updates about 1x month, so is it possible that these URLs used to exist, but now have moved? For example, did you rearrange or delete any images? Off the top of my head, this is the most reasonable explanation.

In this case it's probably not that big of deal, as it appears that there were no external linking domains to these URLs. When the photo disappeared, I assume the internal link on your site to it disappeared as well.

That said, best practice is to redirect any missing URLs via 301 to an appropriate location, so that when search robots or visitors try to find them they aren't left with a blank page, and you preserve all the authority you've earned in link juice.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!

I thumbed up Brent's answer, because that is typically the case. It's super easy to go into OSE and look at metrics to a domain either with or without the "www" when you meant to do the opposite. So when the numbers don't match up this is the first thing I check.

Also, OSE tends to update faster than the Competitive Domain Analysis, so occasionally there is a lag time of about a week. In this case however, the numbers are so far off I suspect this is not the case.

Let us know if we can be of any help. Thanks!

Hi Niall,

This isn't a case of the canonical tag being properly applied, but a case where two or more pages are so similar in code that they are setting off the SEOmoz duplicate content flags.

First of all, those pages look different to us humans. But 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 98% HTML similarity. And 99% text similarity.

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:mdybPKIjOxUJ:www.fredaldous.co.uk/craft-shop/general-crafts.html+http://www.fredaldous.co.uk/craft-shop/general-crafts.html&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1

That, as we say, is a lot of links!

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.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

Disclaimer: I just answered a question just like this on another thread, so I literally copied and pasted my response from there, and edited where necessary.

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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 98% similarity. (but only 75% text similarity, which is good, but not great)

SEOKeith is absolutely right that there's very little on those pages to help them rank. Without text, you're fighting an uphill battle.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

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.

Hi Darren,

Sorry, but I'm a bit confused. Technically, both duplicate content and 4xx errors (404s) both qualify as "errors" instead of warnings.

An error is usually considered something that could harm your SEO. For large sites, a few errors wont hurt you much and are to be expected, but these are definitely something you want to address.

Feel free to let us know if you have any questions.

Yes, Google is smart enough.

Two years ago Google stripped toolbar PageRank from most of the profiles on SEOmoz. The links here still pass some value, but build too many of these links and you're much more likely to incur a penalty today.

This entire school of link building discussed on this page is dangerous - and filled with snake oil salesman who care nothing about harming your rankings. I've never heard of Linklecious, but it looks like they've been de-indexed by Google, so it's safe to say they were penalized.

Instead of risking burning your site to the ground with low quality links, invest your time in long-term payouts by producing good quality content and earning the links others can't earn.

White Hat SEO works.

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!

Hi Erik,

Everyone here has given you good advice, so let me just add my 2 cents.

301's using htaccess can be tricky, so if you get in over your head don't worry too much about it - the canonical tag should do the trick. Every time you use a canonical on your site, you'll see a notice in your crawl diagnostics dashboard. This is just a "notice", not a warning or an error. We just want you to know our spiders found a canonical in case you didn't intend to be there.

Best of luck with your SEO!

Sometimes you do want to get links removed if you suspect they are hurting your site. Richard Baxter wrote a great article today about how to determine the quality of your backlinks.

https://seogadget.co.uk/bad-backlink-checking/

Unless you've suffered a penalty, it's usually easier just to build up more good links than worry about the bad.

As for SEO SPYglass, to be completely honest, I've tried the free version of SEO SpyGlass, and although I can't say anything negative about the service, neither did I feel compelled to upgrade to a paid version.

That said, I appreciate Olga's comments. I'm not here to promote SEOmoz or provide product comparisons to a competitor. As an SEOmoz employee, We're both certainly biased, and truth be told, I've heard others say good things about SEO SpyGlass. (but of course, I've heard a lot of people say great things about SEOmoz.

You should try out both the SEO SpyGlass free version, and sign up for the 30 free trial of SEOmoz, and see what you like best.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO.