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Hi David,

As far as I can tell, a campaign does not have to have GA connected to it. But it behaves differently when it does. Also weird things happen when old Moz Pro campaigns are viewed in the Moz Analytics dashboard. Here's what I am seeing in my MOZ account...

1. Moz Analytics and Moz Pro behave very differently.

2. a week ago I created a quick campaign in Moz Analytics just to test something, I did not associate it with any Google Analytics account. It has data in it now, but not as much as other campaigns that are associated with a GA account.

3. also a week ago I re-activated some old Moz Pro campaigns that do not have GA associated with them. They now appear in the Moz analytics dashboard - but with the spinning icon and the "We are collecting your data now. Check back within 24 hours" mesage.

4. to view those old Moz Pro campaigns in functioning manner, I have to skip the Moz Analytics dashboard and view them through the old Moz Pro dashboard which is here  http://pro.moz.com/campaigns/

Hope this helps you.

Thanks David. That does explain the issue better.

However, the occasional really long lag time for OSE to re-crawled pages that have been 301 redirected is still a problem for those of use who subscribe to Moz and are trying to use it to monitor and improve our SEO. But I think there is an easy solution...

Give Moz subscribers a new tool like GWT's "Fetch as Google" - but call it "Fetch as Moz" and have it trigger BOTH the Moz spider and the OSE spider to go re-crawl that page. This would let us quickly and positively know that our data for 301'd pages has been transferred to the new page.

Can this be done?

Hi Daniel,

I also submitted a Disavow file, then learned new things and updated the file to reflect the new knowledge.

You can only have ONE disavow file. So you simply create a new file (which may or may not contain many domains that were in the original) and then go to Google Webmaster Tools and delete the original file and upload the new one.

This article has good info on how you should create your Disavow file: http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool

Especially this part from the article:

Google rejects many disavow files because of bad formatting, but webmasters usually never know. Guidelines state the file type should be .txt only and “must be encoded UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII.”

Good luck!

When the plural is made by just adding an S, then Google seems not to differentiate the singular or plural. You can verify it by opening two windows and searching for the term both with and without the S and seeing if the results are ranked differently.

But if the plural is a whole different word, like Goose and Geese or Mouse and Mice, then you will definitely have to makes a decision on which to use.

I am totally stumped by how Moz regards Root Domains vs Subdomains. Help?

Root Domain is pretty easy, it just has nothing in front of it. Like  mysite.com

Subdomains appear to be totally undefined. This is especially vague in the "Competitive" sections. That's "Competitive Domain Analysis" in Moz Pro, and "Competitive Link Metrics" in Moz Analytics. In both I can see the comparisons on either the Domain (root) Level or the Subdomain level. But neither tell which Subdomain they are providing data about!

Is it www.mysite.com? Or is it store.mysite.com? Or is it blog.mysite.com? Or is it ????

I believe that SEO best practice is to choose to use either mysite.com or www.mysite.com and redirect everything to that version. But Moz Analytics does not let you enter www.mysite.com when setting up a Campaign (it strips off the www). Fortunately Moz Pro does let you set up a campaign for www.mysite.com

But (as far as I can tell) neither program will let choose to enter your competitors by their preferred URL, meaning as competitor.com or www.competitor.com or store.competitor.com - and from looking at my campaign data I think we really should be allowed to do so. The comparisons are quite different when looking at Domain or Subdomain level because some competitors redirect everything to the www version (like I do) and some don't. Right now we are comparing apples to oranges to mystery fruit (since we do not know what subdomain the Moz data is for)

I don't mean this to be a rant. But has anybody else noticed this? Or am I just totally off-center here and missing some important insight?

I have two e-commerce stores (one using Yahoo Merchant Solutions and one using UltraCart) but neither of them are set up in the generic Categories/SubCategories/ItemPages format. So take what I say just as different opinion...

First the techy answer: What I have read is that it would be good practice to either:

1. pick your best selling "Armani Jeans Polo Shirt" color and set the rel=canonical tag on all the other color pages to point that one best selling color

or

2. use the  "Armani Jeans Polo Shirt" subcategory page (the one all the colors variations are linked from) and set the rel=canonical tag on all the other color pages to point that starting subcategory page

Now the different opinion:

You wrote "We do not do it with colours (the dropdown) because the cateloge of clothing can become quite thin when viewing. That and becuase the majority if not all major retailers do not do it this way."

I think the reverse is true... Having separate pages for each color dilutes your SEO effort by making most of your pages "thin" with no really unique content. Your blue page will not be any different from your green page (except for different pictures and the words blue and green interchanged). Also if you are a newcomer to selling these clothing items, perhaps you should do it differently than "all major retailers do"? You can't really compete with them on their own terms - they are too big and too well established. So perhaps using a different store format will help, and putting all the color and size options on a single strong unique page may be the way to do that. It may open some unique marketing or presentation possibilities.

Good luck!

Hi Ian Watson. We have 2 questions (hopefully you are still monitoring this thread)

1. In the case of an old-page.html that is 301 redirected to current-page.html, will Link Explorer automatically assign inbound links going to old-page.html to the current-page.html ?

2. What is the purpose of showing "Internal, followed links" and "Internal, nofollowed links" on the COMPARE LINK PROFILES PAGE?  What good does it do to know or compare those counts?

Thank you!

Hi again Coral. There is a communication gap happening hear around a few certain words. Just fixing that will help you a lot in moving forward. Here it is...

Panda is not the same as Penguin......Panda is not the same as Penguin.....

Panda is a manual action, where you get de-indexed, get a notice, and have to do the whole terrible link removal and re-consideration request nightmare. You do not have this problem. So forget all about massive link removals and re-consideration requests.

From what you describe, you have a Penguin problem. That's just Google's programming noticing some weirdness in your link profile and either not counting the funky links or giving you a slap, a penalty, relating to those funky links (as in too high a % of a certain anchor text = a slap for your ranking for that anchor text keyword).

There are no re-consideration requests accepted for a Penguin penalty. All you can do is fix the links. And there are just a few ways to do that. Here are the ones I know of:

1. if the page the funky backlinks all point to is a sub-page, and there are few good links pointing to it, you can just abandon that original page (make it a 404) and create a new page to replace it. This rarely works because usually the funky links are pointing to the homepage and you can't abandon that.

2. get the links removed. If they come from a site you have some control or influence over, this is nice. But usually they are junk automated sites and there is almost zero chance of having the links removed

3. Disavow the domains that the funky links are coming from. Disavowing domains is usually better that individual URLs. Especially to get rid of sitewide links. You can use it to thin out your number of links using the exact anchor text you are getting slapped for. And to get rid of links from nasty toxic malware and porn sites.

Google gave us the Disavow option for this purpose. It can be used wrong, but most tools can. A good SEO group can check out your history and link profile and tell where the problem lies. I would suggest that it is not critical that the SEO company be UK based, but it is critical that they be good and that they are willing to work with small businesses affordably. It does matter that they speak english, so UK, Canada, US, New Zealand, or Australia are all fine.

Hi Bruce,

I have two small ecommerce sites, so your question is very interesting.

I haven't heard before the phrases you used: "short head and chunky middle keywords". I guess keywords are described differently in NZ

We started out adding content by adding "article" or "guide" or "how to" pages to the site. These pages do not contain any Buy buttons, but do contain image and text links to our store pages. You can see an example here: http://www.bestdryingrack.com/How_to_dry_flowers.html

These article pages (on both sites) tend to be some of our most active landing pages, though they don't feed people into the store pages at a high rate. But even at a low rate, they are a super cheap way of letting potential customers know about our stores.

But we have since switched to adding content in a blog format. The blog is of course hosted on the site in a /blog/ folder so it helps are total link count. We made this switch because it made it much simpler to write about a broader range of topics. Before we spent weeks planning and writing a 3 page "guide" and connecting it into the site. Now we can do a single page blog post in a day anytime we come across something interesting or amusing. And it doesn't even have to closely relate to the products on the ecommerce site. Here is an example: http://www.easydigging.com/blog/apple-peeler.html

We have not been running the blog long enough to know at what rate the pages will feed people into the store, but I assume it will be similar to the article pages.My hope is that we can post weekly and therefore create more blog pages than we ever used to create article pages. Doing so would feed more people into the store and also keep increasing our link count.

Hi Wesley,

I am using Constant Contact for rating requests. I have had good luck breaking the customer history up into 1 month chunks, and also including the customer's first names in the file of contact info I upload. That way the past customers get a semi-personalized email that starts like this...

Hello Mike,

Please tell us how happy you are with the tools you purchased back in July 2013.........

My guess is that I will reach some point as I go farther into the past where the number of good reviews I get becomes minimal, and then we will stop at that point.

We do use Shopper Approved to collect and publish the ratings. I know there are divided opinions over if it is better to collect them on your own site or use a service. I like using a service because: 1) it is easy, and 2) I get Stars to show in my PPC ads.

Re-reading my post, part of it seemed unclear...

What I think would be wise would be if the "Competitive" section let you choose exactly what URL structure to use when comparing yourself to competitors.  Then you could look at the search results to see if your competitor normally appears as a root domain or a subdomain, and compare them as such. Like this...

www.mysite.com -vs- store.competitor001.net -vs- competitor002.com -vs- www.competitor003.com

There could also be a tab to compare all 4 at the root domain, but it seems much more valuable to compare them using the URL structure that actually appears in the search results.

Then we would really be comparing apples to apples

I'm not an SEO pro, just a guy with a couple of ecommerce stores trying to keep up with the changes. But getting to pages 2 or 3 does mean you are doing the basics right. The way I understand is that it takes an additional "order of magnitude" of effort and luck to jump up each page level.

So if jumping from page 4 to page 3 requires an effort level 6, then jumping from page 3 to page 2 will take and effort of 60, and jumping from page 2 to page 1 will take an effort of 600.

How long has it taken for your site to get to the page 2/3 zone?

I too think that C is best, but instead of listing the inventory in ALL the stores perhaps you can have them select their local store and then just show the inventory level at that ONE store for the rest of their visit to your store (or until they select a new local store)

Showing the inventory at all stores may be a bit distracting on the page (bad for CRO) and may lead to lots of customer phone calls asking if you can have something from store A sent over to store B for them (which could be a pain in the butt)

That is a bit more tricky. But not impossible...

You just need to get the ones who are interested in coming to your place SOON to click something. Couple of ideas....

Make a special secret landing page for your PPC ads (it can look much like your current homepage or where ever your ads have been going so far) and do either #1 or #2...

1. leave off something important (like your Hours, or your Specials, or the Nightly Schedule) and put a big obvious button like "Click here for our hours" to goes to a hidden Hours page (which is only accessible from the PPC ad's special secret landing page) which becomes your conversion page (where the PPC conversion success code goes). The assumption here is that only those who are serious about coming to you place will click the link. It's not perfect, but better than nothing.

2. create a limited time offer (like "Get a Coupon for free bar nuts - good for the next 2 days only!" or maybe "Get a Coupon for a half-price cover - good for next 24 hours only") and put a big obvious button going to a hidden page like in #1 above. This is perhaps more accurate, but also could be a pain in the neck because of dealing with the coupons and because the possibility your regular patrons will learn about it and go click you PPC ad just to get coupons.

The "special secret" and the "hidden" pages should not be listed in your sitemap should probably be tagged like this:    The "noindex" hides them, while the "follow" lets your PPC and Analytics track people to the conversion page.

What do you think?

Hi Robert,

Your attached image seems to be for Moz Pro, which works a little better for this subdomain issue. The Moz Help Desk folks have told me that there is a problem with Moz Analytics not using the www subdomain (it gets stripped off) and that they are working on it.

But the "Competitive" sections are not fixed by putting in the competitor's preferred subdomains. This is because the output on the Competitive Analysis page still re-arranges them to either lump all the Root Domains together or lump all the Subdomains together - but never a mix of the four preferred domains (1 being the user's domain and the other 3 being the competitor's domain).

I think that on ecommerce sites it is good to display the social media icons only on certain pages.

Basically on the pages people are likely to share: Home, Product pages, on-site Blog pages.

You can probably leave them off things like the Category pages, Contact, Guarantee, and other instructional pages.

Hi Peter. Maybe I'm reading your description wrong, but it sounds like a pretty standard ecommerce arrangement.

Is the following true?

Search Volume (ranked highest to lowest):

1. Generic Products (mountainbike, commuter bike, racing bike, etc)
2. Product Brands (Schwinn mountainbike, Trek mountainbike, Hurley mountainbike, etc)
3. Brand Models (Scwhinn 851, Schwinn 3400, Schwinn 4xtc, etc)

Page linking plan in question:  ( >>> means links going to a collection of pages)

Generic Product page >>> Product Brand pages

Product Brand page >>> Brand Model pages

Although this is a pretty typical ecommerce arrangement, I personally think it is not the best plan for sites only selling a few products. When there are only a few products I think it is better to go straight from the Home page to the specific product pages.

It works well. Very quick. Some interesting topic ideas popped up.

I would suggest adding the ability to use some of the common search qualifiers. I first searched "garden", but got lots of Olive Garden results and couldn't use -olive to remove them.

Then switched to "gardening" and that worked great. Further refining it to "gardening tools" caused some circles like Twitter to come up empty and others like Quora to show great results. So it appears it can be used to tell how common or well-received your content may be in different circles.

I was surprised that you did not include Google+ as a circle. Can it be added?

(If you repost your question later, maybe add a screen shot of typical results)

Robert wrote: "I went into Moz analytics and can set up a campaign (already have them set) with or without the www."

I wish I could   The Help Desk folks took a look at my account and wrote back "You are absolutely correct. The www is supposed to be displayed in your campaign settings so this is definitely a bug. I will have our engineers look into this and will let you know what I find out"  Maybe it's just me...

Robert wrote: "My question would be as to the overall result, are you seeing something that is incorrect? So, even if it strips out the www, when you compare the results in OSE, are they different? "

Oh yeah. I will (hopefully) attach a picture below showing the Moz Analytics / Competitive Link Metrics for one of my sites. Hopefully you can see that there are huge differences depending on if it is displaying the root domain or the subdomain.

When I look at the Google search results, it appears that we all use the www or store subdomain - which appears to be weaker than the root domain results for all of us.

Maybe I should change all my 301 redirects to the root domain version?

domain-vs-subdomain.jpg

To make it nice for the visitor, I suggest that at the bottom of the Archives section of the page linked above that you put an additional blue box (like you have for 2013) that just says Older. Below that put a link that says something like 2011 and 2012 issues and have it go to a new page with individual links to all the archived issues. That may also prevent Google from eventually considering them orphan pages.