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Hi Rodrigo,

OK - so I was able to find the page functionality in question on your actual site just to double check what was going on.

Since this content isn't important to the page from an SEO standpoint, it makes sense to just remove these pages from the index.

To do that your best bet is probably robots.txt. Here's a good stackexchange with John Mueller confirming that.

I believe any one of the following entries can do the trick, but highly recommend you double check my work and test this before you implement it. This is also a good time for me to add a liability disclaimer if you accidentally noindex your whole site.

1. Disallow: /AjaxPages/PopUp/CheckPrice
2. Disallow: /AjaxPages/PopUp/CheckPrice.aspx
3. Disallow: /CheckPrice
4. (choose one of these, you don't need to use all of them)

Pretty sure Robots.txt is case sensitive, so /checkprice may not work.

There is also something called an X-Robots-Tag that could do this instead of your robots.txt file. Instructions on that at https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag?hl=en

Finally, consider testing this on your staging server before rolling it out live.

It's real, has been for longer than many people realize IMO.

If it's done sloppily then it can be easy for the victim to demonstrate to Google that they weren't responsible. Sadly, it's easy for the perpetrator to make it look like it was done by the site owner.

I sleep knowing that if my domain doesn't have a history of sloppy spam and hard-core anchor text optimization, it's easy for me to point to the start date of any negative SEO campaign as post-Penguin. That's pretty good evidence that you didn't just suddenly start building shady links to your domain.

If you already were building shady links and someone else just sent more in your direction, there's not much to say other than that sucks, and you're going to have to spend a hell of a lot of time contacting webmasters to remove links and documenting your process.

Hey there,

There's no problem with running 2 different blogs with www.companysite.com/service1/blog & www.companysite.com/service2/blog URL structures. Hubspot and Moz are both good examples of companies that segment out 2 or more blogs in different subfolders. If both blogs have the same categories, you may bump into conflicting issues, but you should be able to segment these, eg title tags of "Service1 Category Name - Company Name" and "Service2 Category Name - Company Name".

Not sure about that non-profit subdomain you mentioned - that sounds like quite a few blogs. But, if the content is truly different then it's not a big problem.

As Josh said, the local service landing page scenario you laid out is a totally different situation. If your two services share an office in that city, then I would generally prefer to see this permalink variation, but it's not a deal killer:

• www.business.com/brighton/service1/
• www.business.com/brighton/service2/

For a moment, let's say you do carpet cleaning and window cleaning. Having two pages for those cities like this is entirely fine, if you properly build out unique content for those pages that is different than the other city and service pages across the site. Otherwise, these pages are effectively duplicate content, and they aren't going to perform well. Examples of unique content for a location+service page would be testimonials from customers at that location, names/bios of staff at that office, custom photography for that office and their work and services, etc.

Go for it. Putting aside any discussion as to whether it's right or wrong to "out" competitors, there's little danger to you if you're not doing anything shady.

The URL structure is mostly subjective to me - there's not a clear value between the two. I tend to think of services as a subset of each store location, as opposed to the the locations being a subset of the service sets.

So - if it's easier to build the URLs the way you laid them out already, that's not an inherent problem.

I'd probably value branding if it's clear what the store provides. For example, I'd certainly click on Fred's Pet Store, but I wouldn't necessarily click on Fred's Home Goods, even if they happen to have tons of pet supplies.

Title changes like that are typically something Google does on their own that you can't change. Take a look at the articles below for other recent info (Jan 2012) about Google changing titles and snippets.

For what it's worth, "New Hampshire Cat Toys" isn't showing any local results for me

• SEO by the Sea: How Classification of Page Elements and Search Results May Influence Alternative Titles and Snippets Displayed in Google
• Google Webmaster Blog - 01/12/2012: Better Page Titles in Search Results

You'll need to create redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. Once Moz gets a chance to recrawl this within a month the errors should go away.

If you changed the permalink structure on an established site (not a new site), then it's even more important to create these redirects, both for users and for web crawlers trying to give you credit for your incoming links.

Yup, they've been changing title tags for at least a year now. Here's a Google Webmaster Blog post about it from Jan 2012:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/better-page-titles-in-search-results.html

If you changed 2500 URLs on a 10 year old site and didn't create redirects then you have a much bigger problem on your hands than Moz alerts.

1. Did you create 301 redirects after changing these URLs?
2. Please send an example of a new URL and the old version of that URL.
3. Is your traffic holding steady in Google Analytics since you made these changes?

Your homepage is now redirecting to https://www.duracard.com/default.aspx

All of your PA 51 data is for http://www.duracard.com/

The default.aspx needs to be 301 redirected to http://www.duracard.com/, and it should have a canonical tag installed as well.

Let me know if you need details on the process, but that's the reason for the PR/PA disappearing.

Hi - I'm not familiar with the 2016 edition, however there's a few posts out there discussing older Windows servers issues. Historically speaking, IIS causes SEO headaches, but they can be fixed or mitigated with proactive efforts to do so.

Here is a post worth reading on the topic, but it won't cover newer concerns that might have been addressed since it was posted in 2011:

• https://moz.com/blog/what-every-seo-should-know-about-iis

Windows also publishes what they call the IIS SEO Toolkit which most SEOs have had good things to say about: https://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/search-engine-optimization-toolkit

Here are two blog posts talking about how to use the IIS SEO Toolkit:

• https://builtvisible.com/how-to-install-and-use-iis-seo-toolkit/
• https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/microsoft-iis-seo-toolkit-seo-tips-and-tricks/

In regards to your question on pinging - are you talking about pinging external servers when new content is published? I wouldn't call that a major SEO concern, but let me know if you mean something else.

I'll send a tweet seeing if anyone else can weigh in on your questions that has more recent experience than me.

I would think of these as keyword first, and use the general topic to inform what should go on that page. You'll also need to separate the purpose of the page versus the intent of the keyword.

For example, let's say you sell payroll software. A few of the keywords you'll encounter might include:

• payroll
• payroll services
• payroll software
• free payroll calculator
• how to do payroll

Each of these keywords has a different intent - so I would start out by identifying what the user should likely find if you were magically ranking #1 for that content:

• payroll - this is a "split intent" keyword and the user could be looking for a number of things. Let's set this aside for a moment, but most likely only your highest linked pages will rank for a head term like this, so your goal is to either get your homepage ranking, or get your "payroll guide" type of content ranking.
• payroll services - this is going to be a features/services type of page or even a homepage, since the user is looking for someone to take over their payroll. As a software company, you may want to build this page and tell users how your team handles payroll (if they do) or how the user doesn't need to hire a full service because your software makes it so easy.
• payroll software - this user likely wants to do their own payroll but automate the process with software, maybe even making it a one-step process. That deserves a feature/product type of page experience selling them on what your software offers.
• free payroll calculator - this user is most likely already handling their own payroll and just wants to use a quick tool to spot check their numbers. You should built a tool that does this for the user, and then have a call to action on the page that says you can save them a lot of time by just using your software instead.
• how to do payroll - this user is early on in the process of hiring employees or managing payroll and wants a complete guide to make sure they're doing it right. This type of query deserves a long-form guide, similar to the Beginner's Guide to SEO.

On each of these pages it might be natural to talk about taxes, W2s, benefits, deductions, etc. But you're going to talk about them different on each of these pages. Yes - you will want some body content on every page you publish that is intended to rank for something, but you can talk about the topics differently on every page.

Does this process help you in figuring out what type of content to put on each page? I can keep going but want to make sure that this is helping.

Do you already have a job where you can practice SEO? Alternatively, do you have a personal website you can practice on? That experience is far more valuable then a certification. I don't think it lends much credence to any SEO agencies that are hiring, they're looking for things like hustle & creative thinking.

Between reading every SEOMoz blog post ever written (or at least most of the ones written in the last 2-3 years), as well as the Beginners Guide to SEO, and actually doing it on a site, you'll learn most of what you need to know.

Just my 2 cents, I've never heard of SEOCertification.org but for all I know they might be reputable to someone...

You won't be penalized for publishing someone else's content on your site, however if it's published elsewhere first, your site probably won't get as much value for it. You'll always be in a fight with the other version for which one is seen as the original, and there's a good chance you'll lose against a local publication with a more authoritative website.

Ideally when I republish content from one source or another I'll partially quote the original article and then link to it. If I have to republish the whole thing, I'll start with a credit, such as "This article is republished from the original at LocaBusinessJournal.com/article-url/"

Changing the phone number across the site is going to cause issues with local citations which are going to be essential for a plumber, so this probably won't be the best solution for call tracking. Typically local business call tracking should be done using javascript-based tracking solutions that dynamically change the phone number based upon the source of the visit.

Hi Ejovi,

If it were my site, I wouldn't do this. I've seen it done on plenty of sites, but at best I don't believe it provides a good user experience, and at worst you might put yourself at risk of a panda update.

If it were me, at the very least I would be writing a paragraph or two about why you're sharing the content with your visitors, and then proceed to quote and link to the original. This should avoid any issues since you're adding unique content to the page. In addition to adding at least a paragraph or two of unique content, I would also try and change the title of the page from what the original post was titled.

If you're looking to partially automate this process in Wordpress, you could use a RSS -> draft post plugin of some kind, and then manually add content to each draft post as it comes in. The more you can add, the less likely it is to be viewed as duplicate or thin content.

One final disclaimer - in theory this content won't perform as well for more competitive keywords. You'll usually get better results from the original content that you're producing. If your goal is to produce content that's going to perform well in search, you're better off sticking with mostly original content.

I think you would generally approach this the same way you'd approach any subjective research, which is heavy on asking questions on a survey. You could research traditional qualitative research processes to learn more about how they're conducted.

You'd be surprised by the emotions that can be hiding in an otherwise 'boring' purchase like a boiler, however. If it's the middle of winter in Chicago and snowing outside on a Tuesday night and your boiler goes out and you have a baby crying in the house and a dog that needs to get walked - I can guarantee you're feeling a ton of emotions (frustration, anxiety, stress) when you open your phone, google "chicago 24/7 furnace repair" and finally get somebody on the phone to come out that night and fix it.

Even in a B2B purchase, there are emotions and motivations that are hidden under the surface, such as picking the more expensive furnace repair vendor that has a better reputation because you need to use up your end of year budget in order to keep it for next year, and you can always justify the choice based upon their reputation or even just a Yelp score.

SO - the hard part is capturing that emotion on a survey form or getting an authentic customer response shortly after purchase, or getting somebody to be truthful with you about these motivations that may be embarrassing or incriminating or whatever.

I think you're best off doing some research on general emotions, and then creating a list of all of the considerations that go into purchasing your product (free shipping? good warranty? website looks trustworthy? my wife will like the color? etc.). Once you have each of those lists, brainstorm how various emotions will factor into each of the purchase considerations, and how it will change depending on your type of customer (b2b vs b2c, enterprise vs SMB, senior exec vs intern, etc.). This may yield a lot of ideas, or not many at all, depending on the nature of what you're selling.

I think once you complete this inventory across each product, each customer type, each purchase consideration, and each emotion - you'll have a pretty darn good idea of how emotions can be factored into your marketing program, such as how to adjust the copy on your product/service pages, and how to create entertaining or educational content that reflects these emotions.

Hopefully that helps, but let me know if I can assist further!

Hi Jonathon,

This won't cause any problems. The only argument one could make to support this theory is if one type of content tended to earn more links. An example would be authoritative content like Wikipedia. I don't believe this to be the case. 1st person voice can be just as link-worthy and perhaps more likely to get shared socially.

Honestly, there's room for both types of content on your site: a resource page written in 3rd person tone about a subject, and a blog article in 1st person with a personal recount about the area. Use the 3rd person content to target a keyword phrase like "Museums in Rome" and the 1st person content for a phrase like "Best Museums in Rome".

Hope that helps.

Correct, those social metrics are getting pulled directly from the API for each social service, so unless SEOMoz has applied a slight time delay or cache, the only delay is the one from Facebook, Twitter, or Google. To my knowledge, that's pretty close to immediate.

If you want to compare social shares month-over-month, just check it 30 days later and it'll be correct.

The other OSE data can be tracked back to the last index update on the update calendar. The last index update was from May 1, but it represents crawl data from roughly Jan to mid-March IIRC. The update next week should be much more "fresh."

Without knowing the keywords themselves, my guess is that if there's no search volume then they're probably not very hard to rank for, so you should tackle all of the above.

Convince her to focus on name + book on the appropriate pages, and create dedicated service pages for any of the other keywords if she wants to pursue those as well. She's going to need to create those service pages anyways to explain exactly what she does, and she'll be pleased to see those service pages ranking soon enough.

At a high level - sounds like stuff around "executive career coaching" and "executive career development". There's definitely some search volume around those types of phrases, so perhaps convince her to go after the bigger ones instead.

Show her the list of keywords she's suggesting and that you're suggesting, in order of difficulty and where they would fit into a content map of the website, and try to agree on a prioritized list to work on, and get her to contribute 300-600 words of copy for those service pages.