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Totally agree Bryan.

Just look at Google webmaster tools to be sure there are no external incoming links. Then go ahead and move it.

I'd keep my eye on it for a while longer vzPro. Maybe it's a temporary thing, and your rankings will recover.

I do have a couple of suggestions though, based on what you've said above. The suggestions probably won't help you recover from such a drastic change, but could help sustain your rankings after recovery.

• I'd try to diversify my reviews if I were you. Too many coming from a single source might look forced or unduly influenced to Google.
• I'd embed a Google map on your landing page.

It's good you fixed your categories, and I agree that using a local landing page for your listing is appropriate.

Are your competitors significantly closer to the city or town center than your client? It looks like the Google local algorithm update released a week and a half ago might be giving that more weight than it did in the past (although I find that hard to imagine, and it's probably too soon to tell).

Hi Sneha,

I don't think there's an easy answer to your question.

One place to start is with Moz's explanation of how scores are calculated. That'll give some insight into what to look for in a site that would ordinarily trigger SPAM flags in Moz's algorithm. Look at the table under the spam flag details sub-heading. It explains what triggers a flag. You can look at the same criteria for the site you're concerned about to get a sense of whether or not it might have a problem.

I'd also just do a gut check. 65 is a pretty high domain authority. Who links to this site? Are they well respected sites themselves? Are they linking in context? Do both sites cover the same topics?

That makes sense. But I really want to make sure I (and others) understand because of EGOL's earlier referenced comments (June 2011).

"If I kept my category pages out of the search indexes I would be walking away from hundreds of search engine visitors per minute.

Do analytics to see how much traffic is coming into these pages from search, who is linking to them, how much revenue they earn and also consider their future traffic potential.

Its not good to follow generalized advice blindly." and (February 2012) ...

"I have two wordpress blogs and category pages are where most of my search engine traffic enters.  Some bring in thousands per month.  Most of my post pages bring in very little traffic.

If you are not having any problem with duplicate content at present maybe it would be a good idea to allow indexing of the main page, the post pages and the category pages.  They if you do have a duplicate content problem you can remove from the index the pages that bring in the least amount of traffic."

So is the key then, ensuring the category pages contain unique content in addition to whatever else is on the category pages? I would have thought the mere fact that you're creating a unique combination of unique content by the grouping excerpts from identically tagged posts might have been enough. That content would also get updated each time a new post gets published.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this Erica.

Lulu,

You ask a really good question. How to do local keyword research is a question that comes up time and again in local circles. Bottom line is that while there are a bunch of keyword research tools out there, none are aimed specifically at helping achieve your goal. Moz's tool is no different. So my answer is not to recommend a specific tool, but rather to suggest you take a look at a couple of source of really helpful how-to information from Moz and Bright Local.

(1) Someone else asked a similar question on Moz back in May 2014. Miriam Ellis, a Moz staffer, gave an excellent answer. Check it out!

(2) Bright Local published a how-to article with some really helpful tips and tricks in July of this year - http://www.brightlocal.com/2014/07/22/effective-local-keyword-research/. It's well worth reading.

Hope that helps.

I don't think you can use Screaming Frog for that. It will certainly give you a ton of information about a single website, but it doesn't allow you to scrape Google search results and derive meta data for the top X results. Unless I'm missing something....

I misunderstood what you said about having 3 reviews. I thought that was all you had and they were all from Yelp.

I'm stumped too, based on your information. Hopefully it's a temporary thing and you'll soon recover. Do you want to share the name of the firm and the terms you're trying to rank for so I can take one last look?

I see everyone's responses and understand that DA is based on a variety of factors, but I also agree that a domain authority of 26 seems unusually high for this site.

Majestic reports a Trust Flow of 0 and Citation Flow of 31 and 35 incoming links from 8 different sources, both of which would lend me to expect a lower domain authority for this site. That said, a couple of the recently discovered incoming links are coming from powerful sources, most notably:

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-us-publishers-owe-china/2015/05/26/0b100ff8-02fd-11e5-bc72-f3e16bf50bb6_story.html?utm_term=.1ad4d52de865; and
• http://blog.livedoor.jp/takemiya31/archives/51761738.html

It's possible Moz found these links and just isn't displaying them in Open Site Explorer.

It's not unusual to see dramatic fluctuations in DA when a site has few incoming links. If it was me, I'd wait to see what the next API update reports before concluding real progress has been made. Did you bump up the volume of content on the site recently?

Erica, Thank you for sticking with this and continuing to share your thoughts. It's very helpful and much appreciated!

Hi there Sika,

As Ryan says, it's normal to see fluctuations in domain authority and the number of links each new update. That's because the sample size and sources fluctuate from update to update. I'd worry if I saw this pattern continue over several updates or if I saw warnings in Google Webmaster Tools.

Domain authority and link quantities also naturally end to diminish over time unless you're making an effort to bolster and sustain them. That means you need a strategy and plan to continue to grow inbound links from authoritative sources to your site. If you're not doing that, you should be.

Have you really lost links, or is it an outcome of the sampling? To answer that question you'd need to have a baseline of the number of inbound links to your site from a variety of sources including Moz and maybe Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO or Ahrefs, and a few others. Then you'd need to compare your baseline to whatever you have today. Just remember none of the tools are perfect. They all sample rather than inventory, so you're just checking for patterns.

Hope that helps.

Nothing's wrong. That's the way it should be.

Google guidelines are to link your home page to the publisher signifying ownership of the site. POSTs point to individual authors. Here's some background in case you're interested - http://moz.com/ugc/google-plus-authorship-one-critical-thing-you-need-to-know.

I suggest you get some legal advice before you start using "Pop Warner" without their permission, even when you're being clear, as others have suggested, that you're an alternative and not an affiliate.

I'm not a lawyer, I just know clients who have received cease and desist letters when they used another company's brand name when trying to position their website in search results. The brand name could be interpreted as everyday language - "sell my house" for example. They ran into problems when they used it in their domain, title tags and page headings.

I recommend erring on the side of caution or speaking with a lawyer before potentially overstepping. Even if you're totally in the right, it could take a lot of time and money to sort it all out if you're perceived as crossing the line. Who needs that? If money is a concern, maybe there's a parent in your organization that has the legal expertise you seek?

I'm confused when you talk about a content strategy and your spreadsheet looks like it's addressing only a subset of what I would expect in a strategy - that what, when and where.

So maybe I'm just caught up in semantics, but I'm really wondering about your objectives, who your audience is, where they like to hang out, the information they want and need, and how you'll measure progress and/or know when adjustment is needed. I think those questions need to be asked and answered before you get to your spreadsheet.

• The content marketing institute has a very useful guide for developing a content marketing strategy that I look at from time-to-time.
• This mozinar provides some excellent tools and examples.
• I also like this 2012 Moz post by Stephanie Chang because of it's practical and manageable for most small business owners. I have no idea if you're a big or small business. Just say'in I find it easier to learn by starting small.

I agree with Michael Edwards, that you maybe don't need to post the same thing to all platforms. The one restriction we all face is time and ties back to my other questions. Do you really need to be in all those places? I'd start narrower and have a plan to spread after have met with some success. The plan would include how to reuse existing content. For example, bundling post charts and images into slideshare presentations or webinars.

The site command doesn't always show you every page that is indexed. You can:

• look to see if it has been cached (like you just did); or
• execute a specific site:domain.com/pagename.html or site:domain.com/section/ command to see if Google returns an indexed result; or
• look at Google Analytics to see if the page is receiving any search-engine-sourced page entries.

It sounds like your pages might, in fact, be indexed.

As to the wrong directory content getting indexed, I'm assuming you've no indexed one of them or assigned canonical tags indicating your strong preference. Both of these are only "suggestions" to Google. It can ignore you and when that happens, the situation like the one you describe happens.

The other thing to bear in mind is how long ago you noindexed or tagged your pages. It can take Google days, weeks, months and sometimes forever to catch up to your requested changes. You have to be patient and cross your fingers.

Think of domain authority like you would the stock or bond market. They fluctuate over time. Sometimes an individual stock or bond's value will go up or down as a result of that specific stock's assessed risk / benefit. Sometimes the whole market will shift based on factors that have broader influence. Stock and bond valuations fluctuate real time. Website valuations (as measured / quantified by Moz) fluctuate roughly monthly. You've observed what equates to a "market shift" likely resulting from the size and characterization of the websites in Moz's sample.

Stock and bond valuations fluctuate real time. Website valuations (as measured / quantified by Moz) are derived from a large and lengthy process that involves going out and collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data from millions of websites, billions of URLs, and trillions of links. The numbers that spit out at the end vary based on a whole bunch of factors, not least of which is the size and nature of the targets of evaluation.

You've observed what roughly equates to a "market shift". It's likely not a coincidence and due to the sampling process.

**Does it help to include a town name in your title tag when KW planner shows no evidence that anyone is searching for it?  **

I agree with Patrick_G and RangeMarketing that yes it does. The KW planner tool doesn't necessarily give you comprehensive results. Rand Fishkin published a post in February 2012 that showed evidence that Google chooses to hide some of it's keyword information unless you specifically ask for it. If your goal is to rank organically for a keyword + town then yes, you should use your town name in the title tag on your most important pages.

Does Google deliver local results based on location names in title tag if the query didn't mention it?

Google looks for and delivers local (vs organic) results when the search query maps to a local business category for which it has results. If you include a town name in your title tag it will help boost your local search result ranking, but you have to be an indexed local business to begin with and it sounds like you're just talking about organic listings.

Maybe share the client's business name and G+ page so we can take a look at it. Perhaps, as Dennis suggests, the business page is not verified. Perhaps it's tied to an individual and not the business. Perhaps it's miscategorized.

I imagine they have a variety of ways. If they're like most social media channels, they'd probably look at things like:

• who and where the +1's came from
• are you connected with them on other social media channels
• do you hang in the same circles
• how active are the connected accounts
• what kinds of thing do they post and engage with
• are the accounts verifiable
• do they have a profile photo
• is it purchased or real
• who else they associate with online.

Hi Dan,

You might find this Q&A helpful. It offers suggestions for what to do when an unexpected page is ranking for your targeted keyword phrase. I think most, if not all, suggestions apply in your case as well. Good luck!