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Hi Christy,

I think my biggest piece of advice other than "hang tight" is, what did they change other than the domain name?

• Did they change the look and feel of the site?
• Did they change the URL structure (this is especially important, since Google looks at the URL for dates)?
• Did they update their Google News sitemap?
• Are they still properly using Google News meta tags, specifically news_keywords?
• Did they remove Authorship? (I have no proof of this, but I've heard rumors that people think Google still uses Authorship, even though they've removed it. It's possible that's just a mean rumor from bitter SEOs after their rich snippet loss, though.)

Also, did Google give any feedback when they rejected their first application?

Best,

Kristina

Wow. This is a weird one.

The way Google has used "Reply," it seems to think that's your brand name. All of the pages that show up with "Reply" in the page title other than your homepage have " - Reply" appended to the end, like a brand. I've seen Google do this a lot when page titles are just the title of the article, without the brand appended.

The question I can't answer is, why does Google think your brand name is Reply? One really out there idea I have: does Leibish sound like any words in Hebrew that Google may think it's translating for us?

Anyway, my guess is that your unspoken question is, how do I get Googlebot Mobile to label my site correctly? I would:

• Append your actual brand name to the end of every page title on your site. It looks like you rarely do this, so Google isn't seeing your brand name in <title>tags at all, which may be confusing it.</li> <ul> <li>Your titles are already on the long side, so I'd take this time to trim them as well. I like to use <a href="http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html">SEOmofo </a>to test out page titles as I write them.</li> <li>My first suggestion is for you to cut out the SKU - people rarely search for those, and if they do, Google will match them with the text on your page.</li> <li>Also, be a bit less sales-y. Google doesn't love "Buy" in page titles, which you have on your category pages.</li> </ul> <li>Use schema.org to mark up your site, labeling Leibish as the "Name" and probably marking up your address and phone number while you're at it. </li> </ul> <p>I only have two bullets because really...it seems like Google is being dumb here.</p> <p>Anyway, I hope this helps! I'm sorry I wasn't able to come up with more insights. Let us know how things go.</p> <p>Best,<br />Kristina</p></title>

Hey Alex,

It sounds like you've already got some assurance from Patrick, but I wanted to quickly throw in my 2 cents.

The answer to your question has more to do with the people looking for your services than it has to do with a right or wrong structure. It sounds like you're making this change because you think that it makes more sense for people to search by industry than by services. If that's true, you're right, you should center your site structure around industries like you suggested. You should definitely double check with keyword volume, and by asking your customers how they searched for your site, though.

Personally, if I were looking for CRM consulting, I wouldn't look for "sharing economy CRM" (because I work for a company that's a sharing economy). I'd just look for "customer relationship management consulting," then maybe ask them if they've ever worked with a sharing economy site before.

If you check with your clients and look into keyword volume and I'm right, I'd keep the site structure the way it is, and flesh out the services pages and link to pages that are dedicated to how well you do CRM in different industries, assuming there's enough data for that. The key here is to make sure that you're writing content that your potential clients are looking for, not just filling out pages to show that you have a robust site.

I hope this helps!

Kristina

If this is all going to the blog, which is new, this sounds like good news! Chances are, you've written a post that targets a common search term with relatively little competition out there writing about it. You can probably figure out what this topic is by looking at landing pages, or by using Google Webmaster Tools to see the keywords people are using to find your site.

Google Webmaster Tools is a great tool to double check that your traffic fluctuation is real and not a fluke, too, if you're seeing most traffic come from organic. GWT should show the same increase and, like I said, provide keyword data as well.

Let us know how your investigation goes!

Kristina

Hi Tyler,

I think about AJAX and Google this way: if you can see all of the content on your site that you want Google to see without AJAX, you're good. It looks like all of the content loads without JavaScript, it's just the filters that Google won't be able to use. So, if you have 12 items for sale like this example, I think you're in the clear.

The problem is going to come if you start to have more products than you can fit on this page. Site architecture is a big part of rankings; you don't want the crawler to miss out on new products because they're on page 15 and the crawler never gets there. I see that you have a Popular Tags box, which may help with that, but you'll have to be very aware of that as you grow.

This set up may also make you miss out on category pages, which can be extremely valuable. With this set up, I'm not sure that you'd be able to have a landing page for "Android Phones," for example. If Google could crawl your filters, it would be able to come up with that combination.Then again, you may have thought this all through, and are just asking about this specific page. Either way, I hope this helped!Kristina

Hi Patrick,

Hm, that's tough. No, I haven't seen anything like that on my site. Could you give me some more details?

• Did your landing pages lose traffic across the board? Or did some fare worse than others? It's possible that only a few really key landing pages were hit, which is having a large effect overall.
• In Google Webmaster Tools, have you seen a dip in impressions along with clicks? If there's a dip in impressions, then search patterns are probably changing (even if you didn't expect seasonality in your niche). If impressions are still high, look for the specific keywords that have a lower click through rate.
• Have your branded searches dropped? Like Jasmine said, it's possible that there's a competitor out there that's stealing your traffic by getting people to search for their brand rather than yours, which would be hard to catch. Any changes like that in your industry?

Best,

Kristina

Hi Matt,

How long ago was "recently?" I've often seen Quality Scores get reset when I change the destination URL, but then time will get them back to what they were before.

Best,

Kristina

Wow, Jose, you got a whole audit from Luis.

1. Luis makes a good point about Seville vs Sevilla. When you're trying to target a region other than your own, make sure that you change the location in Google Keyword Planner. Seville is the English version of Sevilla (which I know sounds strange, but we also call your country Spain rather than España).

2. Both subdomains and subfolders can effectively designate different languages. If you've made the call to use subfolders, that's fine. It's probably what I would have done, too, since that means the Domain Authority will transfer easily.

4 & 5. Keyword repetition in URLs isn't necessarily bad in your case, because it's caused by a lot of subfolders.

It seems like there's been some debate here on more subfolders vs less: there isn't a hard and fast rule about it. If you have more subfolders, those pages higher up in the structure tend to get more link equity out of the deal and rank better. That takes away from deeper pages, though, which are presumably targeting the most important words. If you use fewer subfolders, the link equity will be evenly distributed, but that means that higher level pages will be weaker and deeper pages will be stronger. In your case, I don't know the answer, since I don't know how competitive different keywords are at different levels. If I were your SEO, I'd tell you to stick with your current URL structure, because moving pages to new URLs tends to cause a big knock in rankings for awhile.

Hi Jose,

I like your current set up, with more pages at 500 words. 500 words doesn't make for thin content from a search engine's perspective, and it means that you're delivering a more targeted result for searchers; if you don't have separate pages and they search for "restaurants in Seville," they're not going to be thrilled if they land on your mega guide page and have to search to find what they're looking for.

That said, you may want to change the language on the main Seville page so you don't call these "detailed" city guides.

Good luck!

Kristina

Hi Whittie,

Just to confirm: by "the website itself is on a 303", do you mean that the URLs you're using in Google AdWords 303 redirect to the rest of your site? If so, that can definitely be the issue. Google AdWords tracks with URL parameters, so if those aren't being transferred to the URL that Google Analytics is tracking, things won't track correctly.

Like Louis said, if this is the issue, you'll probably have other issues in GA. Is all of your traffic showing up as direct?

Best,
Kristina

Hi Rose,

Hopefully Donna answered your question already, but I want to jump in with some SEO prioritization advice.

Alt text like this can add to the relevance of the page, but minimally. It can also help your image rank correctly in image search, but that doesn't bring much traffic now that Google pulls images into its results page.

I had similar conversations with our compliance team when I worked for a university, and they had a similar perspective, that alt text should be determined by the flow of the reader rather than for small SEO boosts. The nice thing is, though, when images are important to the flow of the page, and are more likely for the alt text to support the keywords you're trying to target on a page.

In short: if I were you, I'd let this argument go, and just push for alt text on images that tell a story. There's no SEO penalty for not using alt text, and I doubt you're worried about ranking for "father and young son."

Best,

Kristina

Hi there,

Unfortunately, this isn't something that anyone can tell you without at least a few hours of research - Google has a pretty complicated algorithm!

I can tell you some more things to take into account, in addition to Bob's list:

• **Keyword relevance: **For the search queries that you want to rank for, does Sea Dwellers look the most relevant? Do you use the phrase that you want to rank for in your page title, the h1 of the page, and on the page itself? Be careful not to sound like you're writing for robots rather than humans, but using the exact same phrase as you want to rank for definitely helps with rankings.
• **Inbound link relevance: **Where did you get the links to your site? More links from relevant sites (for example, unsponsored posts about the best company to dive with) are going to help with local queries like "dive Key Largo."
• **Potential spam / paid links: **If you've paid for links or have spammy links coming to your site, Moz may have an inflated version of your PA or DA metrics, since it isn't as good at recognizing that as Google is (though they're working on it with their spam score).

Good luck! If you're feeling especially frustrated about this, I'd recommend hiring an SEO to give you some definite answers.

Best,

Kristina

You may have already gotten your answer from previous responses, but if you haven't: what sorts of events do you have pages for? Is it possible to have one URL (since you mention the main event page) which changes content based on what is coming up next? This may make the process easier.

Hi Ashley,

To clarify, this is just a section of the page, right? The page will still have essentially the same information for both mobile and desktop users, but tailored to their devices? It's fine to remove or change up inconsequential elements of the page. Webmasters have had to do this from the start, for ads, complicated navigation, and other page elements that are helpful on a desktop page but cluttered on a phone screen.

If this content is the majority of the page, though, and sends a different message, you should probably create a separate page for mobile visitors. If this is the case, let me know and I can follow up with more specific recommendations.

Good luck!

Kristina

I disagree with Hashtag here; I think it's worth making a stripped down mobile version of your site, especially if you focus on the pages that bring in the most mobile traffic for you. Going fully responsive is a great end goal, but the buzz in SEO communities is that this will have a significant impact.

Just make sure that you set things up properly, since separate mobile sites can be tricky!

Hi Tina,

Are you thinking of creating a subdomain because you want to be able to tell Google Webmaster Tools which country to target, or because you don't have the flexibility with your primary site to create pages targeted at each country?

If it's the former, you can geotarget in Google Webmaster Tools by subfolder by verifying by subfolder.

If it's the latter, I'd recommend making only one subdomain with all of the country landing pages, because you don't want to create a whole bunch of weak subdomains. New pages on your primary domain will start with more Page Authority (and therefore higher rankings) than new subdomains.

But, taking a step back, you don't really need to formally geotarget these pages through Google Webmaster Tools. Geotargeting is for when it's not apparent which country a page is targeted at, like when you're selling shoes in the UK but not in America. The page needs to be about shoes, not the UK, but still needs to tell Google that its content is only for the UK. In your situation, the page can be about the country it's targeting.

If you create a page that has the page title Liquid Text Available in Australia in May 2014 and the URL liquidtext.net/australia, Google and visitors will understand who your page is for. No need for any extra work!

Hope this helps,

Kristina

I've actually run into 1) a lot. When you search for site: you get the raw index data, not what Google will show in live SERPs. This is a problem for rich snippet text as well; when Google can read your rich snippets but chooses not to show your mark ups, the mark ups will show up in site: but not in any other searches.

I was able to find the "our range" version when I was searching just now, so this is still a problem, I'm afraid. I've given you my opinion in more detail below.

Hi Andrew,

Wow, this is an interesting find! Not something I've heard of before.

Like others have said, Google has recently started to take it upon themselves to rewrite your page title if they feel it's not descriptive enough. Linda shared a link that went over their official guidelines above.

Mmy theory is that "Camera Filters - Digital Camera Gear" isn't descriptive enough to Google (possibly because your brand name looks like a product category, which it may not like in the page title), so it's searching your site for more information about camera filters. I wasn't able to do a full crawl of your site, but I was able to find a few links to the Camera Filters page in Google's index:

• 8% OFF ALL Camera Filters during the 8th Month (which is now redirecting home, but Google still has it in its index): "Click here for our range of Camera Filters."
• Camera Filters - Which one... (which Google also has indexed separately in the blog pagination 2 - Digital Camera Gear "To view our range of filters, please click HERE."

My theory is that Google has an algorithm that identifies low quality page titles and tries to replace them cleverly, but it doesn't have enough information to do that well in your case. To test this out, try writing a more robust <title>like:</p> <p><strong>Camera Filters - UV, Polarisers & More - Digital Camera Gear</strong></p> <p>My guess is, Google will like this better and stick with your page title.</p> <p>Let us know how this goes!</p> <p>Kristina</p></title>

Hi there,

Just checking in to see if you figured this one out?

I have an alternative theory: Google may be pulling the page title and meta description from Dmoz for both the mobile and the desktop site. That's what I was actually seeing with Amazon. If this is true, then the page title is not indicating that Googlebot mobile is crawling the desktop version of the site (which is good!).

Best,

Kristina

Thanks for the shout out, Ryan! Although, I think Smashing Magazine has already answered this question the best:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/07/22/responsive-web-design-should-not-be-your-only-mobile-strategy/

Basically, what you want to do is load high quality images for desktop, but remove those images or serve lower quality images for mobile. You can either do this by loading the images you need with JavaScript rather than CSS, so matchMedia can change the images based on device type, or you can set up your server to deliver differently sized images based on device type.

Hope this helps!