Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey everybody!

So, for those who have followed some of my posts I have myself in a bit of a quagmire that I am not going to get into. Some solutions have come to light and others are still pending and I will update my past questions with solutions!

On the safer side of things I have a new situation. As I am going through our pages we have three different pages for "Admissions"

• Admissions

• Admission Guidelines

• Admission Information

The "admissions' page has no link or feed to the other admissions page, and actually has no content on it at all. The "Admission Guidelines" page feeds to the "admission information" page, which although is extremely redundant is a different project for a different day.

I am planning on putting a 301 on the "admissions" page and sending it to the "admission guidelines" page. When I do so, should I delete the old page? Does it matter? Is there a pro or con for either?

Thanks guys!

Custom Report Tab.

Top right corner next to Campaign Settings under your profile picture. You can make the report you need to make.

Not only that but you can also take the individual URL that is having an issue, plug it into the domain audit tool and analyze that individual page and report just that page. That will be a clear concise audit of just that URL.

I wrote this before you posted you're response, so I will have to think more

Good Morning!

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is very hard for things to change online and have little to no effect be felt either positive or negative.

To expand on what Kevin is asking above it is incredibly difficult to examine what is causing drop in traffic without knowing what came before. For example, if you changed ANY of the URL's and didn't properly put in 301's that is a very quick way to get some of your traffic back. I ran your website through Screaming Frog, which is a spider of sorts and it found one 301. Without telling Google where an old URL lives you are loosing any SEO that the old URL had.

Another thing to consider is the content. If the previous website was a literal rug encyclopedia on repairs and was the go-to website for "oriental rug repairs", and the content was now shifted more toward "oriental rug cleaning" you may see a drop in traffic as Google feels that you have less authority with the new content, and have lost authority in the old.

Hope this helps guide a little.

Another good resource below.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-avoid-seo-disaster-during-a-website-redesign/

I concur with the Dr. of Cleverness.

Lvet,

Good morning! Well, there are a few things to keep in mind here. Matt Cutts has said a lot in regards to duplicate content, and people taking content. If someone posts an article & then it is copied and then posted somewhere else Google looks at a lot of factors to determine who will get credit for the article; who posted first, who has more authority and trustworthiness etc.

In this case, not only does your website appear to have more authority, but you also posted first, so on a surface look, it would appear like this is going to hurt them more than going to hurt you. Adding the rel-cannonical tag is basically telling search engines that you know this is the same content as somewhere else, and that you only want one version to be indexed. Search engines have also said that they pay attention to them, but are not obligated to follow it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LsB19wTt0Q Matt Cutts video on the duplicate content and how to make sure you get credit.

My advice, encourage them to rewrite your their content because it will help them bring business and rank better with Google! You kill 2 birds with one stone. You get your page back, and they get their own content!

Hope this helps!

Well, that is good news!

Welcome!

Another simple-ish trick you can do is to create a campaign in Moz. The campaign will run an audit of your site and take a look at all of your webpages, checking all of your tags, links, etc and it will actually give suggestions of what to do & where to start. The Moz campaign will show you which keywords are sending traffic to your website and which pages should be optimized from there.

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for SEO, and depending on how much needs to be done, it might be in your best interest to contact an outside professional for a consultation!

Good Luck!

Good Afternoon!

Does anybody know what sort of impact I can expect to see from switching hosting? Not only that but how long it takes to come back from that sort of thing?

Our website has steadily been dropping since I took it over about a month ago. I have been slowly, tediously trying to prune the bad stuff, and one of our issues is with out host.

Any thoughts would be great! Thanks.

Demi,

I am running into a very similar problem with my website, and after coming across the same Matt Cutts video as the one linked above I have begun a pruning campaign of my own. A plethora of the links that are coming to my website are all asking for 5$ for my link to removed. I haven't paid for anything, yet, and obviously would prefer not to, but drastic times call for drastic measures.

In one of my posts a few weeks ago EGOL, a member on every single SEO board ever made (literally), said:

"I don't trust having Google do stuff for me that I could do myself, because plenty of times Google says how they are gonna do things and then change their mind without tellin' anybody."

That says it all right there. At the time we were talking about redirects, which is slightly different then this, but still. The more that you can do on your own the better. Not only will it be immediate, but it will effect all search engines, not just Google. Even the Disavow Tool suggests contacting the webmaster and asking to be removed. The Disavow Tool is a very advanced dangerous tool, that used incorrectly, can harm your site.

Marie Haynes, one of the "penalty experts" around in the SEO world wrote a great article on the Disavow Tool. Here it is below.You can also find here around these boards if you're lucky! It's rumored she has an affinity for Penguins and Pandas, but that's just water cooler talk.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2330944/7-Things-You-May-Not-Know-About-Googles-Disavow-Tool

Anyway, I think the disavow tool is great FOR GOOGLE, but use it carefully and sparingly, and pretty much as a last resort. Ray-pp brought up some good points about Google ignoring some of the links, and I too am confident in their ability to weed through the jungle of negative SEO. There is also "link rot" which is the concept that over time a link that is left alone will slowly wither and die a painful death and stop hurting you as much as it is.

Depending on how deep the spam runs, it may be worth calling in some 3rd party SEO experts who deal with penalty analysis, and spam. Depending on the size of your website and just how much they are hurting you, it's always worth getting a second opinion.

Hope that helps!

Touche...... Robert..... Touche.....

To address my point more thoroughly, when people are searching for something and include a geo-location, I almost consider that a separate metric. It is adding a very specific term to the search engine then restricts to a location. I don't think most people utilize their browsers capability to it's full potential, and most people don't realize that you could just search for plumber and most likely Google is going to determine the best results for your area. (I could be completely wrong on all of this by the way).

When I look for a plumber in Los Angeles I usually search for "Plumber Who Has The Best Plumbers Crack, Los Angeles, Ca" You don't? I kid. I completely agree with you in this regard. If I am looking for a store/service/restaurant in a specific location then yes I would agree.

In a general sense, if I was just searching for something, coffee, lollypops, turtles, I would never search for something in such a general sense. Now unfortunately I often have to come to terms with the fact that just because I do something, doesn't mean everybody else does, however, even my mother tells me she types full sentences into Google when she searches.

Now I know you are sitting there asking yourself how this all relates to plurals? The point I was trying to make originally was that once the phrase is determined to be most beneficial for SEO purposes, optimize from there. I would bet that regardless there will be enough times where both words have to be used just to make it grammatically correct.

At the end of the day the Lollipop vs Lollipops will lead you to the same place, much like your statement below. Both Lollipop & Lollipops have been used 5 times (well 6 now) in this thread. They both seem pretty optimized to me. I mean, this page alone will probably be #1 on Google for Lollipop & Lollipops! (7)

Regardless I agree with what Robert said below. Robert has drastically more experience than I do, I would defer to what he said in a heartbeat!

Thanks!

Lollipop (8/7)

James,

Google is smart. Very smart. I would wager that Google is able to identify the difference between the usage of word in plural form, rather than a separate word all together.

When was the last time you searched for one word? People don't use Google/Yahoo/Bing for one or 2 word searches anymore, so my immediate suggestion is optimize for which ever term makes the most sense for the phrase you are optimizing for.

Use the keyword tools. Are people searching for "Green watermelon lollipop" or "cheap, bulk, lollipops" and then optimize from there. As far as it being an other language, you will just have to find out whats the most common term.

If I start a website that sells glasses I'm not gonna call it SpectacleShop.com, unless I want to target the geriatric community. Regardless, find what the most common term for lollipop is, and then optimize for the phrase that works for what you are selling. For what people are searching. Google is in the business of providing information. You need to make it as easy as possible for Google to provide YOUR information.

Also this is a good Moz thread on this same topic http://moz.com/community/q/singular-vs-plural-seo

Hope this helps!

Thanks guys.

That was where I was leaning. Social media is tough. I don't want to give up on it because it's such a huge pool of data that there has to be SOMETHING there. At the same time, I personally would NEVER go to facebook/twitter/instagram to look for rehab. If I was drunk or hungover that's the last thing I would do.

However, it's just too big to be ignored. It does provide a nice place to expand our community with professionals and potential referrals, which in the long run, does help.

Thanks

Hey Mozzzzzzzzzzzzzzers!

I work for a high end rehab. We have a Facebook page with 800 fans, twitter with 5,500 followers, and a linkedIn with around 1,000. I noticed that the previous CEO probably bought our twitter followers, so that explains our minimal engagement. The part I am having a hard time grasping is that all of our competitors, including the big guns in the industry are struggling as well.

I see numbers like these all the time:

• 30,000 facebook fans with posts getting 5/6 likes and a comment here and there.
• 7,000 twitter followers with every 10th tweet getting 1 or 2 favorites, a RT is a blue moon
• Experts in the industry with high blog views, high credibility in their field, huge fan base, and engagement like the engagement above.

If I look back since 2005, we have accrued 250,000 hits on our website... 236 are from facebook. Our best month was last year in December and I honestly can't figure out why, there was nothing done differently.

I am a firm believer that if there is no audience then it's not worth the time. That being said, I can't help but think we are all missing something in the addiction field.

I guess my questions are:

• What do I do in an industry where there appears to be minimal engagement across the board? (Dr. Drew doesn't count.)
• When do you/have you decided to cut your losses on social media and just use it as a place to have representation and not as a place to drive profit?
• Is there always a way to get engagement? Do you believe some industries are just doomed? (That's an unfair question isn't it?)

Anyway, just food for thought. Would love to hear your opinions! I also would love to know about any marketing and or social media forums you all participate in that I can direct some of the more social media/marketing specific questions towards. I don't want to make things too convoluted.

Thanks everybody!

When I first started SEO there were 3 big guns in three search marketing world.

• Majestic for Backlinks.
• Mox for SEO
• SEMRush for SEM

I still think those 3 are they best in their realm, and with an unlimited budget, I would pay for all 3. But I don't have an unlimited budget, and I to had to pick just one, so I set out to do some research like you did. Upon further review, I did found that someone actually basically did the baclkink study for me!

http://www.analyticsseo.com/blog/link-data-research-majestic-seo-moz-linkscape-ahrefs-part-2/

They all have their pro's and con's, but for me, Moz seemed to be the best bet. I looked at is as an investment. I felt that in the long run, the quality of links that Moz were finding was more important than the extra links that Ahrefs or Majestic were finding. My second thought was that as all these companies grow, Moz, seemed adapting to the needs of modern SEO better than the other companies. So after weighing the pro's and con's I figured it was worth it and would only be a matter of time before Moz's backlink tool was more powerful, or would outshine the others simply because of efficacy.

So far, I am pleased.

As I said, with an unlimited budget, I would have all 3 programs. Moz, SEMRush, & Majestic. I can't, so I choose Moz, any day.

Hope that helps.

Got it, I see.

Well, let's see here. I will state I am no expert in this realm. This is much more of a job for the likes of EGOL or RobertFischer. EGOL in particular with his intimate knowledge of NOINDEX

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-noindex-behavior/

(Scroll down and look at the first post on Matt Cutt's blog there.)

That being said, I still have a few thoughts.

I think you certainly could continue to do what you are doing, I also think that Er_Maquai brought up a point that I touched on as well. Obviously the best scenario is to avoid a 404, and to have original content. Now unfortunately if you don't have have any content to write, or the person doesn't in this case, that set's you up for thin content, and a lot of duplicate content.

It seems to me there is no way to avoid having the extra pages without some sort of script or coding which houses the profiles somewhere other than on a separate page or on a flux capacitor somewhere. So going off that you could create a generic "no profile page" that gets published and use the rel=canonical tag.

I take back my prior statement about "ANY" content. Thin, pointless content, is thin and pointless, and won't benefit you at all. I hope that wasn't interpreted  that way.

Again, I think this one is somewhat out of my scope of help, and it might even be worth calling in an SEO professional who specializes in forums for a second opinion. It's like having surgery, gotta go to another Dr to verify your diagnosis.

Sorry I couldn't give a better answer!

Good Morning Yair!

A 404 is a 404 plain and simple. And if Google was able to report it, then they were able to get to it. Which basically means, someone else could. I'm not sure what platform you are using currently using but there are plenty of easy options for a quick fix.

If you wanted a simple option you could just throw up a 302 if you are planning on putting content up SOON. Temporary redirects differ from 301 because they are temporary. Google has to evaluate if they should keep the old page, so in this case, when you are planning on launching the old one (well, technically new one) you might be able to use that to your advantage.

A better idea would be to noindex/follow the pages (before they have content) and let the links to these pages be follow links.

I was unsure exactly what you meant by this. The only difference between follow and no follow links is that you are telling Google not to let your linkjuice carry over to the page you are linking to. You are linking to the page without vetting them. My apologies if you already knew this, but I was slightly confused by your sentence. Google will still go to that page to check it out.

Another option: change your schedule and don't put up pages that far in advance that you aren't planning on publishing. I edit everything offline. Google likes new stuff, especially content. Of course they take longevity into account as well, but as far as making a big splash, putting a website up piecemeal is like having people show up at your birthday saying "Suprise!" when you answer the door when you were the one who invited them. The notion is nice, but it just doesn't have the same effect. Not only in the Google realm, but even more so in Social Media.

My favorite option, and my personal recommendation would be to play the cards you were dealt. Get rid of the 404 and the 200 and embrace that you have a new page! Go on and write a profile piece for the member. Write some sort of Biographical data that can act as a placeholder. At this point it doesn't even need to be stuffed with keywords and amazing seo phrases.

On Second Thought: I'm not sure exactly what your forum is for, and if this issue is specific to a few members or if you are referring to bulk membership, but I have a few ideas on how you might be able to extrapolate some of the signup data into even a simple post to avoid getting a 404! Even if you parsed some of the forms from signup and created a simple little one page that displayed, I think that could help.

At the end of the day, Google loves forums that are strong and authoritative. They also understand that every single person on a forum isn't going to post and isn't going to interact. So depending on what kind of forum you have, and what exactly you are doing, some of the forum issues will just have to be accepted. I think it would be more valuable to clean up negative linking and and analyze internal issues and build form recognition etc. than fix soft 404's coming from a handful of users. Again all of this depends on the size of your pool.

Also, you could just track their usage, if someone is logging in all the time and not posting then fine, I would deal with it because who knows what they are doing in the real world. If someone made an account in 1999, and then threw their computer out of the window in Y2K and never bought another one because they still believe that everything crashed, well then maybe its time to fix that 404.

Hope that helps!

Sorry if my train of thought is a little off this morning.... not enough coffee!

Yes it does thank you!

When I asked out dev (who also hosts our domains) to adjust the settings for the rogerbot he said

"3 pages per second is basically me undoing the portflood setting completely, thus rending the site very insecure to brute force attempts, which would inevitably drive the server load very high in anywhere from 3-24 hours."

I am glad that he is concerned about the security of our website. At the same time, I find it hard to believe we need anything near this intense. We do not have any online store, we do not collect credit card data or anything like that.

It seems overkill...

Hey everybody.

Our server guy, who is sorta difficult, has put these ridiculous security measures in place which lock people out of our website all the time. Basically if I ping the website too many times I get locked out, and that's just on my own, doing general research.

Regardless, all of our audits are coming back with 5xx errors and I asked if we could add rogerbot to the robots.txt. He seems to be resistant to the idea and just wants to adjust the settings to his firewall...

Does anybody know if putting that in the Robots.txt will override his firewall/ping defense he has put in place? I personally think what he has done is WAY too overkill, but that is besides the point.

Thanks everybody.

If you are sold on prestashop and are sure you have the URLs taken care of then that is pretty much all you can do in that regard.

I still think you should look deeply at the links after the site is done, and possible do all of this on a dev server to make sure everything copies over as well as you hope.

I am not super familiar with Prestashop. So I am hesitant to give much specific advice on it. Some of my concerns come more with that. I personally use Magento if the client is sold on a eCommerce based CMS. They are the largest, most SEO friendly, and the most protected when it comes to plugins etc. Plus eBay owns it now, so you have that behind it.

Regardless, I don't know if I really even have '10 things" for you.

1. Check links before and after to make sure everything matches up.

2. TEST, TEST, TEST. Try to break your website, on a dev server. Someone else will if you don't, that way you can identify it before somebody else does.

3. Check plugins. Plugins are one of the best ways to ruin a website. One update, or lack of an update can throw an entire website offline.

4. Accept that any change you make will have an effect. SEO is just like Newtons laws. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Now, in the long run, switching to a CMS could be extremely beneficial, at first it very well may hurt you. I would highly doubt that it would drastically impact your rankings, but in my opinion, you cannot make a change in this world and not have there be some sort of ripple felt somewhere else.

Good Luck