Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi! Can you clarify your question a little bit please? You said "dropped domain." What do you mean by that? It sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that you had an old domain that was dropped from Google, but you are concerned that actual visitors to that old domain are able to find your new domain, without inheriting the bad link profile that may ahve cause the old domain to get dropped.

Honestly, you may not be able to accomplish what you are wanting. But I need to know more first so that's why I asked for clarification. I'd be glad to help if possible.

Cheers,

Dana

Thanks Caroline,

You are most definitely on the right track. Don't be discouraged by traffic being low at first. Ask any blogger, regardless of how well-known they are now, and I am sure they will tell you that it seemed like an eternity before they started to get some traction. Like most worthwhile things, it takes time, patience and intelligent, consistent work.

Not that I'm a well-known blogger (I'm not) but I've been blogging since July 2008. Take a look at an overview of 6 years of my own blog:

Just keep at it. You'll get there.

Czc4h64

Hi again Caroline,

Thanks for answering my initial questions.How much keywords research, what tools did you use and how long ago did you do it?

What is your main business objective with you blog?

Hi Caroline,

You are awesome. I love that you are passionate about SEO, in all of the right ways and you are really going about this the right way. I'm impressed.

Ok, so let's get down to brass tacks, check out what Rand Fishkin's real life experiment revealed when he moved a blog from a subdomain to a subfolder:

http://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating

You also mentioned results? What are you measuring? Rankings? Traffic? Both?  How's traffic?

Dana

Hi Manuel,

You did exactly the right thing. Now the problem is that those pages with the parameters will stay in Google's index for sometimes a long time before they drop off. Since there's only a handful, I'd recommend using the "Remove URL" tool in Google Webmaster Tools to remove the versions of the URL with the parameters from the index. I've done this before and Google can be pretty quick at getting them removed (as little as a couple of days). You don't really have to do this. It will happen eventually, but if you want to be proactive you can take this approach. Hope that helps!

Dana

Great question! Google Adwords Keyword Planner doesn't make the place where you can do this very obvious or easy to find. Here's where you can do what you need to do:

1. Log in to Keyword Planner

2. Click "Get Search Volume for a List of Keywords"

3. Upload your keyword list via the resulting popout screen

4. Run the report

5. In the subsequent screen, upper right, just below the chart is a link that says "Download Ideas" - Click that

Then you will have all the data in Excel, provided you are running something newer than Excel 2003 which I believe had limited capabilities (45,000 rows maybe?)

Does that answer your question or was I way off  Let me know. Hope it helps!

I believe the problem here is being caused by the fact that you are using relative, rather than absolute URLs for your canonical tag. I've seen this happen before on a site I was working on.  Thanks to awesome suggestions from Moz Q & A from community member George Andrews (endorsed by Dr. Pete Meyers), we updated all of our canonical tags to be absolute URLs instead of relative URLs. This completely solved the exact problem you are describing.

Here's a link to that thread: http://moz.com/community/q/what-is-the-proper-syntax-for-rel-canonical

The best news is, it's a very easy, inexpensive and quick SEO win. I love those!

Dana

Hi Garrett,

It really depends on the nature and use of the image. I'd really take that on a case by case basis. If you created unique images that received a ton of links or social shares, or they provided something important to your end users, than sure, recreating them on the same URLs might be a great idea. You might want to spot check a few in AHrefs, OSE and Google ANalytics to see if they were generating buzz, traffic, links or all three. Choose some likely candidates and find out what you see in those tools and let that guide how you proceed. Cheers,

Dana

If the images are no longer on the site it's perfectly acceptable to let them 404. Those 404s aren't going to hurt you. They should eventually drop out of Google's Index, although GWT can have a very long memory and hold on to 404 errors for what seems like forever.

If you think there is value for your end user in redirecting to a relevant image on the current site, that's fine too. I just wouldn't let your motivation be fear that 404 errors are somehow hurting you. If the 404s are resulting because the content has been removed, this is a perfectly acceptable reason to have a 404.

Hope that helps!

Dana

Hi Niners52, This is a server administration issue. Normally the IP address version of the site is 301 redirected to the preferred domain. It looks like your site has been cached by Google based on the IP address. Here's a helpful thread discussing the issue and how to fix it:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3833633.htm

Hope that helps! Cheers,

Dana

There are some great suggestions here. I would use all of them. One nifty tool not mentioned is http://www.found.co.uk/ppc-keyword-tool/  It concatenates lists of keywords. After getting all the possibilities there, go to Ubersuggest and plug them all in. If you want to do a whole bunch at one time without being bothered by turing numbers, try using ScrapeBox. Cheers!

Thanks for hopping in guys. You're awesome. This is a perfect example why Moz Q & A rocks Yes, my reason for asking was specifically related to site migration. Your answer is greatly appreciated.

Dana

Hi Trung, Thanks so much for your excellent suggestion. I'm going to try it out. You did confirm a hunch that I had a while back that the data in the Redirect Chains report wasn't spot on. I'll report back here with what I discover. I appreciate you responding!

Hi guys. I know that Screaming Frog has a nifty report for Redirect Chains and that it identifies chains of 301 redirects. What I am trying to find out is if it will identify chains of 302 redirects? If not, is there a way to configure a report or mine that data out of Screaming Frog (or any other tool)?

Thanks!

Hi! Okay, first, here's the hard data you seek:

http://beingyourbrand.com/2012/10/21/social-media-case-studies-twitter-successes-to-learn-from/

And then this, Facebook custom audiences....I don't understand why more marketers aren't using these:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34213/How-to-Use-Facebook-s-Custom-Audiences-Feature-for-More-Strategic-Ad-Targeting.aspx

Hi! I'm sure you are very excited to see your business get off the ground. Don't bother submitting to the Yahoo Directory. Yahoo announced that they are shutting it down:  http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/26/yahoo-to-shut-down-qwiki-yahoo-education-and-the-yahoo-directory/

How do you get more links...now that is the million dollar question. I have two recommendations:

1. Watch any presentation by Wil Reynolds on #RCS (Real Company Shit). Here's a handy dandy link: http://moz.com/blog/2012-mozcon-videos-are-here (scroll down, it's the 2nd video on the page)
2. Read this: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

If those don't give you at least a year's worth of ideas and things to do, listen and read them again. Cheers! I hope your site is a mad success!

Dana

You're welcome

Hi, You must be excited. I know how much work goes into a redesign. Here are some things I noticed while browsing the site on a PC using Internet Explorer (yes, the nasty, unforgiving IE...the bane of Web Devs everwhere!!):

1. There is a problem with the placement of some text in your Contact Us forms (I attached a screenshot)
2. In the blog, the "Like This" gets stuck on "Like Loading"....kinda reminds me of a spaced out Valley Girl
3. When I click "Share This" I am just popped to the top of the page...and I can't really share anything.

Screenshots attached. Hope that's helpful!

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Robert, I have thought the same thing many, many times. I mean, how can you thumbs down a post by Phil Nottingham on Video SEO...really? Or better, yet, an announcement of a feature improvement, new tool, or conference discount? Crazy people!

P.S. I was tempted to thumbs down this question just to mess with you, lol. Undoubtedly some negative Nelly out there will do it anyway...but it ain't gonna be me!

Moosa is spot on. His advice is absolutely right. Good luck!