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Interesting question.

I think that most people, as in your case, link to open to a new tab if they are linking to another page and don't want a user to be taken too far away from the existing webpage. This applies for both external and also internal webpages. I find in a lot of cases though, external links particularly don't go to a new tab just because people simply forget to put in the code!

There is no existing research and evidence out there to suggest that opening a link in a new tab will have any value on SEO. The key question for me to is to ask why would Google (or any other search engine) attribute more/less value to a link that opens in a new tab? If this question can't be answered in a way that is sound and sensical, then it's safe to say that opening a link in a new tab has no effect on SEO.

For me there is no sound or sensical way to answer that question, and so along with no empirical evidence suggesting otherwise, its safe to say that a link opening in a new tab has no SEO effect.

Hi Ron,

A good tactic can be to find out where people are talking about or asking questions that your created content answers. A good way to do this is to use google to find forums and online communities that are discussing the very area that your content is related to. Drawing people to your content in these forums and communities can be a good way to raise brand awareness or have people reading and sharing your content (providing it is v. good quality or answers their questions).

Another great way to promote it is through social media. Doing this well though through social media usually requires a strong following and regular quality content updates. If you do this well, this platform for content promotion is most effective.

All the best,

Gav.

Loving this new Moz Tool!

As a matter of convenience, it would be great to efficiently conduct a backlink analysis of competitors in the SERP Analysis to expediently check their link profile. Can moz link "Linking RDs To Root Domain" to its Open Explorer tool to open up in a new tab the backlink profile of that domain name that is listed in the top 10 organic results? That would be super convenient!

Hi Oliver,

If Google has penalised the site for duplicate content it will appear in Google Webmaster Tools under a section called Manual Actions on the left hand side.

Configure Google Webmaster Tools to the site and once installed that is the place to log into and take a look!

Good luck!

In response to your questions....

1. Onsite SEO I think initially takes priority and should be the first thing you focus on.

2. You can get on google without any backlinks or with only a few backlinks. However, this depends on (a) What keywords you're targeting, if they are not competitive, this can be achieved (b) the quality of your backlinks if you just have a few. If they are of exceptional quality, you can be right at the top, though once again depending on the competitiveness of the keyword you're targeting.

All the best!

In Australia, some businesses are Pty Ltd (Proprietary Limited) hence, their business name ends with xxx Pty Ltd. How accurate do we have to be when building citations or updating citations that Pty Ltd is included in the business name? We've got clients who have left out Pty Ltd in their previously built citations and we're wondering if it's worth the time to actually update them to include Pty Ltd.

Also, does changing a business name affect its rankings? This is more than just "Pty Ltd", it's changing from XYZ to ABC. We've previously had to change a client's address on their GMB and this had a negative effect on the client's rankings. Will changing the business name have an adverse effect?

Thank you in advance for your advices!

Would second the answers of all responses here, particularly Anthony's.

At the the end of the day, a do-follow link will not hurt your client's site, especially done for reasons such as yours. If that were the case, a lot of sites would be in trouble... as too Google's system.

I would recommend that you place everything in at once and get all your pages indexed as soon as you can. However, you continually look to update and make changes to the content of those pages. This will help to signal to google that you website content is being updated and is staying fresh and relevant.

A blog would be a great idea for you and is an effective device for SEO. Installing a blog and adding posts will further help to 1) provide useful content to your users 2) keep your site fresh and updated 3) generate links if you have exceptional and promote your blog well. These aspects if done well, and provided your site is properly onsite optimised, will help your rankings improve.

All the best!

The first thing I would ask is how you define "legitimate"?

If these "legitimate" sites are websites for actual businesses in your industry then the answer to your question is no. It is not a bad idea to get a bunch of links from legitimate websites that have low Moz scores.

Moz scores only reveal certain aspects of what makes a good linking site. One aspect moz metrics do not measure is relevance. A relevant site in your industry with low Moz metrics linking to your site can possibly do more benefit to your website for SEO purposes than a non-relevant site, unrelated to your industry, with high Moz metrics.

Another consideration to take into account is a site may have low Moz metrics this year but grow to have high Moz metrics in future years. For most realtor websites that are new as you have mentioned, this is likely going to be the case. Getting a link on the site will grow in benefit as the site gains authority and trust with time. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with getting a suitable link on a site with low Moz metrics and there could be great upside future rewards.

The potential problem I'm seeing with your strategy though is that there is a strong possibility that the sites that put a link up to your site for the free program will not keep the link on the site for the long-term, especially when the link doesn't make sense on the site and possibly look spammy. Considerations to have the link applied with suitable contextual text that make sense for the linking site will both be more fitting for them and also beneficial for the SEO of your site.

Hi Val,

You may want to try finding online communities relevant to your industry that would be interested in your blog posts. If people in these communities find your posts really interesting they will share the link, which will enable a good natural linking profile.

Additionally, if you have not already, make sure that the onsite optimisation of your site is completely spot on. All efforts in blogging and social media will go to waste if you have not addressed onsite optimisation factors and done this effectively.

Good luck and hope this helps!

Totally fine to delete page A and put new content on page B. Google will have no problems with that even if is the exact same content.

Will page B get the same ranking results as page A? That is a question that depends on a lot of variables, the key one being have a lot of links gone to page A from other sites? I would use Moz's Open Site Explorer to check that one and see what links have in fact gone to page A.

In any case, if you're set on transferring to page B, a 301 redirect has alluded to would be a good move that wouldn't do any harm at very least, and offer some SEO to the new page otherwise.

A really commonly referenced blog post for link building because it is quite epic is: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

This may start to get you thinking about some ideas that you may be missing out on to getting links.

From what you're saying, it seems like you've got great content on your site, what may be missing are possibly the relationships. My suggestion to you would be to develop relationships with high profile bloggers in your industry and look to service them my serving their readership. Look to develop an organic relationship with these bloggers, understand how you can genuinely help them and what their audience is wanting. If you're content really is awesome and meets what their readers are wanting, and if you really have developed a real and meaningful relationship with bloggers that goes beyond just getting a link, they'll happily link to you.

If you are targeting decision makers of small to mid sized technology firms, it may be worthwhile also balancing an online campaign with an offline campaign (if you're not doing that already). I find a social media strategy is a great way to help SEO and get rankings, through in itself is weak in developing leads, unless done amazingly well. The reason is that most decision makers aren't actually using social media for business-related activities, they have people doing that for them, and those people aren't usually thinking about new service adds and making decisions about them. It sounds though that the purpose for your social media campaign is predominately to help SEO and drive your rankings upward, if this is the case using Facebook and Twitter would also be good for a Social Media campaign to support SEO. You will not get many sales leads from them, but they would be effective for SEO improvement.

Having said that, I find SEO always needs to also be balanced and put in a broader marketing strategy that also involves offline activities - making calls, networking, doing great work for existing clients to build client advocates. You may already be onto these things, but if not and your target market is decision makers of IT firms, these traditional forms of marketing would be additionally effective.

All the best.

We have a website [domain name removed] that is not being properly found in Google. When we run it through Screaming Frog, it indicates that there is a problem with the robot.txt file.

However, I am unsure exactly what this problem is, and why this site is no longer properly being found.

Any help here on how to resolve this would be appreciated!

We have recently come across this site in our work on a website: https://collabosaurus.com

We are wondering if there are any other collaborative tools or sites like this that may be effective for partnering or matching with people for link building purposes. If anyone is aware of anything similar, we'd love to hear about it.

Thanks in advance!

If managing a number of client's Instagram accounts, it seems using an app on a desktop might be more efficient than continually logging in and out of Instagram on a smartphone.

Can anyone suggest though suitable apps that actually enable this to be done effectively for multiple clients? Ideally managing all on the one platform without having to sign in and out would be ideal. Also a free app would obviously be preferred to paid, but open to both.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your help!!

Could you check now to ensure it is OK? A change was made and I believe the source code no longer contains the line:

However, when I look to create a sitemap through a sitemap generator to add to Webmaster Tools, I am still unable to do so, which makes me think that perhaps the problem has not been resolved.

Your further assistance here would be most appreciated.

The best thing to do would be to target one keyword per page. Though one webpage may be the home of more than one keywords.

The most important thing to do is to ensure that you have suitable title tags for your webpages and these title tags don't share keywords. So if you're targeting "pizza delivery bags" on one page, put "pizza delivery bags" as your title tag, or at least part of your title tag. Then make sure that no other title tags of any other webpages has the words "pizza delivery bags" in them, this also goes for title tags of blog posts that you may make.

What has been mentioned above also applies to H1 tags. Include the keywords you want to target for a particular page in the H1 tag where suitable and fitting to do so. Then look to ensure that other webpages do not have the keyword phrase in their H1 tag(s). Doing this for title and H1 tags will ensure that search engines are not confused as to which pages to rank and keyword rankings are not compromised.

And lastly, when you create a blog post link it to a webpage that you're targeting. For example if you're targeting the keywords "pizza delivery bags" on your homepage. When you write a blog post on pizza delivery bags put a link in it that blog that directs back to your home page (i.e. if you're interested, check out our pizza delivery bags). This will ensure that your traffic is directed to your homepage if they come through your blog and will also help with the rankings of your keywords.

All the best!

I'm just wanting to find out more if I can set a CPA strategy for Facebook advertising and re-targeting.

An acquisition for us would be when someone reaches our thank you page. This indicates a successful conversion on our site.

Are we able to set a Facebook strategy where payment is only made for advertising upon reaching that page (and achieving that conversion)?

Thanks so much Mike! Got that export and appreciate you helping us here!