Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for all the responses! Much appreciated.

Hi Mozzers,

We are looking at expanding our analytical reporting for e-commerce. I want to know more about what customers are doing on the website and how we  can interact with them. For example, how many customers make X amount of purchases and what their conversion rate is etc. I've looked at More2 and I know Analytics can give me some of this data but want to know more.

Anyone have any software ideas?

Thanks,

Karl

Thanks Keri, good to hear!

Hi,

I currently have a Moz Pro account, if I was to downgrade to a free account am I still able to ask and answer questions on the Q&A area? Also, would I lose my points accrued?

As the others have already said, it largely depends on the website and how much work you put into it. If you have a good PR team and are able to generate some buzz around the product/service you offer then there is more chance of you gaining a higher PA and DA.

Don't get too hung up on PA and DA though, they aren't the be all and end all of the quality of the website.

Good luck!

Google still crawls and indexes "hidden content" but from a user point of view if you have to hide it then it probably isn't worth reading. From experience, we use some css to dropdown extra content when the client insists on it being there but it is too long.

If it has to be there then I don't think it will be doing any harm but if you don't need it then get rid.

Hi Oleg,

That's right, so the website scales depending on the device you are looking at the website on but there is also a /m/ version as well. So we should redirect the /m/ versions to the standard URL's?

Thanks again

Hi Mozzers,

A website I manage has a mobile friendly version of their main website and a /m version as well. I was wondering if anyone had any experience in the best way of handling this? Should we just get rid of the /m version and tag the mobile friendly version?

Thanks!

No, it would be for the whole page. It's good practise to have the canonical tag on anyway though

Technically it is still a duplicate title tag, you just won't be getting penalised for it that's all.

What content is going to be duplicated? The reviews?

The best way would be to add a canonical tag to the website. You need to identify the main page the content is going to be on then add the canonical tag. For example, If you have 4 pages with similar content then pick the page that has more authority and canonicalise the others to that page.

Here's more info on the canonical tag https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

Ok, thanks for the advice.

Thanks Andy,

So bid on the generics and see what we get from it? Would you bother bidding on terms like "luxury..." and "designer..." as well?

Hi Mozzers,

I am starting a PPC campaign for a website that sells high-end products. The search volume for the generics is very high but I think the conversion rate on those will be quite low given the price of the products. Does anyone have any experience in doing PPC for high-end retailers and what type of keyword I should be bidding on?

Thanks!

A canonical tag tells Google that you are aware of the duplicate content that exists on your website and you are telling Google which page to count as the authority. Pages with a canonical tag WILL be indexed.

Websites with duplicate content can, have and will be penalised by Google, that is what Panda is all about. The canonical tag does fix this in the majority of times but if there is a way of removing any duplicate content then this is advisable.

Directories are unlikely to get you better rankings, many directories have been devalued in recent months. Given that many of them are freemium, you are better spending your time writing a great piece of content and reaching out to bloggers/websites to help you spread the word about your brand.

1. Always start with the onpage optimisation, without it your backlinks will mean little. Think more about site speed, URL structure and user benefit because this is what will give you a better conversion rate.

2. It is possible but as Gavo said below, it depends on how competitive the keywords are. Look at interacting with people on social media, follow them, look at how they would like to be connected with and do so. For example, if some influential in your industry is talking about a particular topic, put your spin on things and get a conversation going. This will help make you an authority in this industry.

What does your link profile look like without the websites that have been disavowed? Is it quite bare now? When we undertook penalised websites we carried on building high quality links to try and put the balance in our favour, have you done likewise?

It does seem odd how the message is no longer there and they are saying there is no manual action. Have you considered an algorithm penalty maybe? duplicate content? That's a possibility.

Hi Fred,

Sorry to hear about your problems, you're not the first and certainly won't be the last. In my opinion, your backlinks are looking quite spammy. When I look at your profile using Open Site Explorer there are quite a few directories in there and press release websites, both of which have been hit recently, devaluing the links from them.

It does sound like you've been hit with a algorithm penalty (because Google will tell you about any manual penalties in Webmaster Tools). Your anchor text isn't too bad as you've got the brand in almost all of them the websites that you have links on have very little authority and won't be helping you to rank at all. You need a content strategy implementing and to find some bloggers/website with real connections to talk to, that way you will get some brand exposure, put your service in front of real people who may actually use Martha's and in turn, help you rank better.

Google usually gives a message saying they've lifted the penalty, something like "previously the webspam team took action on your website but we've now lifted this..." Did you not get one?

Hi Robbie,

If the URL's are remaining the same then that is the first thing, you won't have to worry about redirects etc. Make sure any blog posts that you have will remain the same as well and also any RSS feeds you have.

You'll want to know how easy it is to add/remove pages from the CMS and how easy it is to edit pages. If you've got an e-commerce website then look what happens when products become out of stock etc. I

If the URL's are staying the same then you haven't got much to worry about really, it is just functionality really. If you are moving to a new server then there are issues like speeds and uptime to think about but that's a different ball game!