Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi there,

On one hand, I'd advise against only looking to increase Moz's metrics. Keep in mind that they are a private measurement and they are trying to guess what Google's Search Algorithm might consider important to rank a website higher, looking (mostly) at backlinks profiles. You can find more information about Moz's metics here: Link Explorer resources - Moz Help Hub.

On the other hand, for higher rankings there are many things to consider, some of them:

• Creating high quality and engaging content.
• Making sure GoogleBot can crawl and understand your pages' content.
• Focus on answering the user's questions and intents, not just creating content for the bots or for the sake of creating content.
• Engage with users and other publishers to get your content shown, eventually, some links will point back to you.
• A tip: Analize your competitors' rankings and what they are doing to rank higher.
• Another tip: Focus on understanding how and with which terms your potential users/clients are googling. Then create content for those queries, don't forget the 1st point.

Also, there are many more recommendations and more detailed in these resources:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide - Google Search Help
The Beginner's Guide to SEO - Moz
A Simple 7‑Step SEO Tutorial for Beginners - Ahrefs

Hope it helps,
Best luck.

My guess is that 2020 trends (and the big news around search) will be centred in:

1. More Structured data and more complexity under it.
2. Google absorbing niches with their products/Featured snippets.
3. Higher understanding and the need for more complexity in content.

We cannot deny that Google is getting better and better at understanding content and improving their knowledge about users. This means that, as its happening, there will be better results for users at the cost of websites offering better user-focused content and more "digested" data to google (structured data)

A fourth point would be that there will be less and less "organic" real estate in SERPs that websites can compete for. We have enough data proving that every time there are more and more SERPs with 2 or more Featured Snippets (image carousel, PAA and Knowledge graph, just to name a few).

Best of luck to everyone in the incoming year,
Gaston

Hi there,

Yes, what you are seeing in your web browsers are personalized results, the same for everyone searching for that specific keyword.

The most reliable way to track the average position is with GSC, but you have to keep in mind that:

• Those results are for a specific country and for users that google chose to collect data.
• That metrics depends on the selected date and for the type of search(web, mobile, desktop, etc).
• From day to day positions can change rapidly.
• The last position you might find in GSC is at least from yesterday and might be different from today's ranking.

My advice here is to rely on GSC and/or use a private tracking tool to compare, such as Moz's rank tracking tool.

Hope it helps,
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi Mike,

There is no big deal on having tons of 404s when those pages are safely removed and don't carry any importance to users.
Even when those tag pages are noindexed, there is less risk there.

Google won't dimish your "SEO status" for having 404s that are correctly removed.
Here, John Mueller in a Webmasters Hangout said that 404 or 410 won't impact website rankings

Hope it helps.
Best luck,
Gaston

Hi Mike,

I wouldnt worry too much about this.

Having old pages or removed pages returning 404s is completely fine by Google. Eventually, they will drop those pages from the index.
If you are worried about those pages and/or they are being shown in SERPs and want to remove those urls faster you can use the URL removal tool from Search Console. Sadly, you have to manually submit each url and you cannot do it in bulk.

Hope ir help,
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there,

The posting frequency is not that relevant as the content of the page you are posting. I wouldnt worry that much about strictly posting once a month.

My advice here is to focus on content, give users the content they are looking for when searching on Google.
This could be a good moment to refresh and have a deep reading on the beginner's guide to SEO - Moz and also to what google officially says in their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) starter guide - Google Search Console.

Hope it helps, best luck.
Gaston

Hi there,

I'm considering that you have over 500k URLs, to be worrying about crawl efficiency. If you have less than that, please don't worry.

Having 404s is completely fine, and google will eventually lower their crawl frequency to those pages. 
Blocking them in robots.txt will cause to google stop crawling them, but never to never remove them from the index.
My advice here: don't block them in robots.txt

As Rajesh pointed out, you could force those 404s into 410 to tell Google that they are gone forever. Yet, Google said that they treat 404s and 410s as the same.
John Mueller said over a year ago that 4xx status codes don't incur in crawl wastage. You can check it our in these Webmasters hangout notes - Deepcrawl

Hope it helps,
Best luck.
Gaston

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DONT REDIRECT  404s TO THE HOME!

This is terrible advice. Doing that you'll turn those 404s into soft 404s, making them more problematic than ever.

Hi Alex,

Actually, the website age is not that big of a ranking factor anymore. You can rank in the top positions with a website a few months old.
Also, with just guest-posting is not enough to rank high.

I'd suggest you take a deep and comprehensive read to the Moz's beginners guide to SEO. I think that there are quite a few things to optimize that you are missing.
For example, title tags. You should make them more descriptive and focused on the main keyword/phrase you are willing to rank.

Hope it helps,
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi Shawn,

1, if you spot clearly spammy and unnatural links.. go ahead and disavow them. Keep in mind that there is the possibility to disavow entire domains. Here for more information about it. Disavow backlinks - Google Search Console.

2, No, sitewide links from a blog or in any part of your own website won't be a cause of penalty like this one. Google is able to recognize sitewide links a few years back. I wouldn't worry about that.

3, There are many areas to focus after an organic penalty. I'd suggest trying to understand which queries and URLs are the ones losing traffic and rankings, mostly from Google Search Console. Then, analyze what's going on with the User Experience and Site Speed, comparing your website with the ones that outrank you. And, last but not least, content! Check your content whether is the one that should be answering user's queries.

Hope it helps,
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there,

As you said, its been proven that an exact match domain (EMD) does not help at all in rankings for that specific search term. At least when it comes to Google ranking factors.

Indirectly, if you are building a brand, It might help users identify what your website is about. I'd advise against using an EMD as you might want to change or focus on other products in the future and having an EMD can make things a little more difficult for your brand.

Hope it helps,
best luck.
Gaston

Hi there,

When it comes to internationalization, there is a simple solution for google search: use hreflang tags.
Here what they say: Internationalization and multi-language websites - google search help.

Hoping that you have different URL for each store and that you've places hreflang tags correctly, you should not be worrying that much. OF course, you have to check rankings, traffic and other metrics that are important to you.

Referring to placing nofollow tags, this won't make any difference in this case. Keep in mind that nofollow tags are there to tell google not to look what's there on the links; to not crawl (follow) them. Here more information from Google about nofollow attribute.

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi there,

First of all, having more indexed pages is not what you should be aiming for. As its know that having more pages indexed can cause cannibalization, duplicate content and thin content problems.

In your case, I'd try to analyze why those pages are being left off by Google. 
-> My guess: poor or thin content, as it is UGC.

Here some other questions that might help you work out the issue:
1- How long and how interesting is the content on those pages?
2- How many links are pointing to them?
3- Are pages with high internal traffic being left out?
4- Were any of them indexed just for a short period of time? On what query? 
5- Are there "better" pages on your website that resolve user questions on Google search, rather than the UGC pages?

Hope it helps,
Best luck.
Gaston

Hey grocare,

Its a little bit confusing what you are saying because canonicals are used when there is actual duplicate between pages. Internationalization is a specific case where two pages targetting different countries **ARE NOT **duplicate content, even there are really small differences.

I don't see that you are having an issue with canonical setup, as long as you are using them correctly. More info about canonicals:

• What Google says officially: Consolidate URLs with rel=canonical
• A Moz resource: Canonical tags - Best practice Moz

What I did see is that you are using hreflang tags incorrectly: pointing to the home page.
Consider THIS PAGE, for instance, your hreflang tags are:

When it actually should be pointing to the current page:

Its always good to remember that there are some really good resources about internationalization:
Hreflang generator - Aleyda Solis International SEO - Moz Learning Center The Guide to International Website Expansion: Hreflang, ccTLDs, & More! - Moz Blog The International SEO Checklist - Moz Blog

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

It's all good.

Yeap, both hreflang tags in both pages.
Think it this way:

• One hreflang is telling the actual language of the page.
• The other is telling that there is a version in other language.

Best luck!
Gaston

Hi there,

The biggest issue here is that hreflangs aren't set up correctly. As you are only pointing the IN version to the EN version.
Keep in mind that there have to be two tags, pointing out both ways.

As always, when it comes to international, these resources come handy:
Hreflang generator - Aleyda Solis International SEO - Moz Learning Center The Guide to International Website Expansion: Hreflang, ccTLDs, & More! - Moz Blog The International SEO Checklist - Moz Blog

Best luck.
Hope it helps.
GR

Hi seoanalytics,

Could you please reply with the articles or comments where its said that?

Actually, it happens completely the opposite, when an algorithm update happens we see big movement in rankings.
They've said that they deploy several updates each week, but most of them are minor.
Here that recent official tweet: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1194365017073700864

Hope it helps.
Best luck

• Gaston

Hey seoanalytics,

If you are willing to remove from Google's index just a bunch of pages, you can use the URL removal tool(link)
The fastest way to remove a page from Google is by returning HTTP410 status code.
If you cant do that, then using a robots noindex tag either in the HTML or in the HTTP header will work.

Keep in mind that you should not be blocking crawling on robots.txt.

More information about controlling indexation:

• Official resource about indexing: Block search indexing with 'noindex' - Search Console Help

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

HiJane

On the one hand, you should not set DA as a KPI. Improving you DA won't assure you better rankings nor more impressions.

On the other hand, links are on one part of an SEO strategy and one of the most important parts of Moz's algorithm to calculate its metrics.
I'd suggest you to start taking a deep read to some of the best tutorials out there. Here I'm listing some of them:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide - Google Search Console Help
- The Beginner's Guide to SEO - Moz
- A Complete Guide to SEO: What You Need to Know in 2019 - Search Engine Journal
- A Simple 7‐Step SEO Tutorial for Beginners - Ahrefs

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston

Hi Mike,

As long as you are referring to Wordpress, yes it's safe to remove tags that have no content nor are being used.

Best of luck.
Gaston