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Wow - thanks! I found a plugin for now but I will definitely save this info. I appreciate your help!

Thank you. I understand. I just need a tutorial on how to take a deleted URL and redirect it to the most relevant URL. I am a novice when it comes to HTML etc.

Alright, that is good to know. I deleted that plugin to stop the bulk redirects. I just don't know how to redirect the 404s since I already deleted them I don't know how to manipulate them.

Should I just create the category pages again? I suppose the URL would be the same right?

I deleted a bunch of category pages (renamed mostly actually and thought they'd be auto redirected like my blog posts are but they weren't) so I used a plugin that reroutes any 404 page to the homepage. Is that the best thing to do in this situation? Google Webmasters says there are about 84 404-errors and this should get rid of those right? Is there anything SEO BAD about doing it this way?

I am doing well with a category page and I just ran a report card and am having issues with self-cannibalizing. I have a signature at the bottom of each blog post that links to this category page because it is my MAIN category. So I changed the anchor text so it didn't have the exact same keyword but underneath each post, it shows all the categories that post belongs to. Usually it is at least 2. So should I change the name of the category page and then have the SEO title be for the keyword I am ranking well with? Or should I just self-cannibalize? Or should I not have all the categories show underneath each post? I was thinking that would help lower my bounce rate since it would lead them to another page that interests them.

Edit: To be clear, all these links are linking to that very category page. So linking back to itself. They are not linking to a different page with the target keyword.

Also I am worried about reducing internal linking power if the anchor text is not the keyword I am trying to rank with?

Help appreciated!

I am making some big changes to my site based on Moz's advice. How can I get google to see all of them? I submitted them to Google Webmasters. Is that the best thing to do? How long until Google updates all my pages?

Thank you. I do work hard at getting quality backlinks which helps. I just started a google plus page for my blog so hopefully that improves my rankings as well. I have read about google author but I just don't feel comfortable putting my real name and picture out there....yet. I just ran a report card for the category page that I want to boost and that gave me a few ideas.

Hello! I have a blog that is doing really well. Low bounce rate, search queries going up pretty fast, more organic traffic than my first blog. I shot up to spot 5 for my main keyword which was a thrill. But I have dropped back down. According to Google Webmasters I was at spot 11, then 12, and today 13. I worked on doing a lot of internal linking to the page that was ranking at # 5. It is a category page although I'd like my homepage to rank high for that same keyword one day. My site is less than 2 months old and I know it takes time but I am seeing so many signs of great potential. I am looking for ANY advice on how to boost my rankings for this one particular keyword. Thanks!

I am using Wordpress. I am hoping there is a plugin that makes it easy to deal with this? Any recommendations?Can I just redirect some of them to the homepage? They don't all have a new, relevant category to redirect to.

How? I suppose I should have done that instead of deleting them.

I recently revamped all my category pages to make them Google friendly. I did a lot of keyword research and ended up deleting categories and renaming categories. Now Google Webmasters is showing a ton of 404 errors. How can I get rid of them? Do I have to remove the URL one by one with Google Webmasters? Is it something that won't hurt my rankings and will go away in time?

Well I am hoping if I got there once - I can get there again! Can you explain what white links are? I am only familiar with the term follow links.

Edit

I was thrilled that my new blog catapulted up to spot # 5 on google last week for a great keyword. I worked hard on creating internal links to my category page as well as improving my content and getting a couple good external follow backlinks. But today, the report says I dropped off the top 50 list. How can I find some insight as to why this happened??

Thanks. This is the category page for all maternity and pregnancy related deals. I have sub-categories for maternity clothes and more specific items. This page has everything - clothes, pregnancy pillows, prenatal vitamins, stretch mark creme and so on and so forth.

I am trying to improve the SEO for a few key category pages on my blog. I have two ranking really well so I want to boost them and bring up some others.

Can I put two keywords in the meta title?

Example: Maternity Deals | Pregnancy Deals

Or should I just stick with one?

Thanks!

Dang, you are awesome. That helped a lot and I appreciate it. Today I am working on cleaning up my category pages and making sure everything is filed properly. I am really happy to hear that getting backlinks to a blog post in one category will pass value to the category. Thanks!

I am ranking high with a certain category page and I am reading that I need backlinks to that page. It is going to be a challenge to get a backlink to that specific category page but how about this?

Category page URL:

www.mysite.com/category/name

Backlink to this URL:

www.mysite.com/category/name/specific-blog-post (EDIT: Apparently these types of links don't exist! I went into the category page and clicked on a blog post and it just gave me the www.mysite.com/blah-blah-blah)

Will that count as a backlink to the category page? Right now I am only getting backlinks to these blog posts:

www.mysite.com/this-is-a-blog-post

Any help appreciated!

EDIT: Well I guess now my question is worthless. But if you have any input, it would be appreciated.

Thank you. The guest blogging idea is great but will be a challenge. I haven't started with social networking yet but it is on my TO DO list.

Can you get me a little more info on power internal links? I have a signature item that goes at the bottom of every post. It encourages readers to sign up for the newsletter. Should I have a link there to the category page as well? It is my MAIN category - it basically contains all my blog posts.

Just to follow up on this - I am ranking # 5 for a category page and it's a competitive keyword. So I am not sure deindexing category pages is the best idea and I am glad I didn't do it with my second and new blog.