In general, I think it's never a good idea to outright remove or delete a blog post - especially one that may actually be helpful to proper visitors. In this case, I'd suggest setting blog posts that disrupt your site's flow/funnel or otherwise cause this sort of issue to "no-index". Deindexing posts / pages like this will remove them from SERPs, but will leave them accessible to visitors. Don't be too heavy-handed with de-indexing though. Do this to one or a few posts, and see how that effects your site after a month. Then, if it's had a benefit, you could de-index more (not all) posts like this.
Best posts made by Lumina
-
RE: What to do with mismatched blog content?
-
RE: Thin Content pages
I strongly disagree that more content wouldn't help the user. You could write about each client, how you approach work with clients, describe each portfolio item, each project therein, etc. There are so many different things to write about within these pages of yours - stick to the who, what, when, where, and why and go from there.
-
RE: Old site penalised, we moved: Shall we cut loose from the old site. It's curently 301 to new site.
Without seeing the data in detail, I'd have to give a pretty general answer: If your old site has a poor DA, been penalized, or is itself spammy, then having it redirect to a new site is only one step better than just staying on the old site. When you redirect, you're passing link-juice from website A to website B; both bad and good. It's the same reason why you disavow bad links in the first place, though in this case, the redirect is at least under your control.
Anything that points to your new site factors in its overall stats. It sounds like your old site is hindering your attempt to break away from the bad links. My recommendation would be to cut the redirect, and only reinstall the redirect when you've cleaned up website A.
-
RE: How is best to use Permalinks for Wordpress /category/postname or /postname
In the short-term, even using 301 redirects may have a slight negative effect on the weight of your links, but in the long-term, they shouldn't be affected by it really.
-
RE: How to show on Google Maps for specific areas close to me?
Yes, but I'd also make sure to do it in small bits at a time. Meaning, don't change everything at once. Make a small change, wait a bit to see the results, and if they're good, then make another small change. If the results of the first change aren't what you want, then rethink your keyword strategy and try something a little different!
Good luck! Give an update in a while if you can. I'd be interested to hear what happens.
-
RE: PDF Instructions come up in Crawl report as Duplicate Content
Yes, you absolutely should add unique text to each of these pages. Not only so that they aren't flagged as duplicate, but because it's always an SEO benefit to have more good content. If you don't have the capacity to write such content, however, you may want to remove them from indexation.
The reason that these pages are being flagged as duplicates is that Google isn't parsing these PDFs. Which means that, all Google and others see are pages with no content and an iframe. It's also pertinent to note that Moz will flag anything with more than 90% overlap as a duplication.
I hope this helps!
-
RE: Why does our Facebook not show up when searching for our business name?
Taking what Rebecca's said, there are two things I'd suggest you do:
- Sort out the fact that there seem to be multiple pages for your business.
- Get your branding on key. "NJ & PA Personal Injury Attorney Richard P. Console Jr." is entirely different from "Console & Hollawell Facebook", which is entirely different from "myinjuryattorney". Your branding is all over the place and not at all unified. Yes, "myinjuryattorney" is a nice url-bit, but it has nothing to do with the name or branding. Even with schema, that's going to be hard to mitigate.
-
RE: We are being penalized for one specific key word (and phrases it appears in), how can we figure out why?
First, I'd note that using the same strategy for similar keywords doesn't necessarily mean they'll have similar results. Sometimes, keywords need very different strategies, content-association, and have different competition / difficulty.
Is it only you who are having ranking issues for this brand, or are other websites having the same issue?
-
RE: Description on Google+ & ALL Citations the same or?
Descriptions don't really count when it comes to unifying your brand across different platforms/sites in the sense about which you're asking, but I would still try to keep your descriptions similar. If nothing else, it clarifies to users that your page on abc.com is the same business/etc as your page on xyz.com.
-
RE: Should we pay for this attorney directory?
From experience with clients of my own (for which we develop websites and counsel), I can say that paying for a spot on a blanket directory is usually not worth it. The ideology behind that is twofold.
- If you can pay for it, so can anyone else. That makes the intended value moot.
- It's a common misconception that all directories benefit SEO or presence. Some actually hurt SEO. I don't know if the one you've mentioned would help or hinder, but the first point still stands.
I suggest that if you join directories, you handle that process by either asking clients (past or current) how they found you, or by researching which directories - if any - tend to bring traffic to groups similar to yours.
As an aside, I'm always suspicious/wary of any website that's poorly designed, and martindale.com is no exception.
Good luck, and I hope this has been helpful for you!
-
RE: Consolidate to one robust web property?
You're very welcome Trent. I'll give you a few more examples you may want to research:
- Having a higher number of product pages creates a more robust e-commerce experience, while also ensuring customers can find **related products **where they otherwise wouldn't.
- It generally costs more to host and maintain several websites rather than one (something that a lot of people overlook).
- If/When you have a blog (and you should), you'll have one centralized website which will hold its influence and SEO benefits.
- Working with any CMS or back-end development will be much less costly and more efficient.
- If you have reviews or any other customer interaction, they'll hold more worth in one place than spread across several sites.
- You can more accurately use analytics, create goals and objectives, and estimate ROI on your efforts.
-
RE: Two websites, same business name, same NAP
If your client is adamantly opposed to having the better of the two consume the other business, then yes - the only other viable option I'd see would be to treat them as completely separate businesses that are only related by owner. Name, address(es), phone number(s), email(s), etc. should all be changed if that's the case. For all intents and purposes, they would have to be treated as two unrelated businesses.
I hope your client will chose the prior solution rather than this, but I imagine either would be better than continuing in their current state. Good luck to you.
-
RE: Can anyboday spot on ?
Or at least the url to whatever view you're talking about.

-
RE: RE: Custom Report Notices - "To make changes to this report, simply edit your report settings."
It's extremely unclear what you're asking about without you giving a little more background. If this is an email you were sent by Moz, then here are answers to each of your 3 points as well as an additional point:
- Correct, clients can't login or make changes - however, whomever is using Moz can. Meaning, if you're running a campaign for a client and they want a change, you could make that change. This is what I'm guessing is the situation, but if you want to provide more information, I could revise my answer accordingly.
- In most business settings (and generally), it's unwise to give multiple people direct access to a login for any analytics platform. For security reasons, as well as protecting data and ensuring it's unaltered, it's best to keep one person to a login. However, if more than one person should want/need to see this data, then sharing these reports is the best solution.
- If this was sent to you (presumably the Moz user), then it makes sense for this to be in an email sent to you.
If I had to guess, you're forwarding this email directly to your client (again, please correct me if that's not the case). This email isn't generated with the expectation that Moz users will outright forward it to their clients; I think the intention is that you'd download the report and write your own email. As such, the intention of this email is disparate from an email you should send to a client.
-
RE: Should we pay for this attorney directory?
I'm sorry if I didn't clarify - what I meant was that the money put toward that directory, be it a one-time payment or a residual, would almost always be better spent toward other marketing or SEO efforts. If this doesn't greatly effect your budget, then it's worth considering (especially if OSE say's it's a quality link).
Most of my customers are SMBs, so I tend to counsel against paid listings/directories - but I didn't take into consideration that you might not have a similar budget.
Let's append my answer to: if you have the money to test the value of this, then do it.

-
RE: What client gifts do you give for the holidays?
I think the important thing is that is show some thoughtfulness. If you know something that the client needs/wants in their office, or if there's something they could use for business, or even if you happen to know everyone likes a particular food (for which you could get a basket); something along those lines is typically best.
-
RE: Should I change my listing title or even my domain
That really depends on what your analytics say. If the trade-off between the volume you do get for "yard care" would remove a lot of traffic, or your site is well-ranked for that, changing to "lawn care" may hinder you more than hurt. Again, this depends on your rankings, keyword goals, and how much a difference the switch might make. All that said, from what you're saying it sounds like the switch to "lawn care" may benefit you in the long run.
Another important note: if you're going to change the branding/name from "yard care" to "lawn care", make sure you do it everywhere. In every directory you're active on, all social media, and other branding. It's important that those things be universal.
One last note: While changing your keyword focus, I'd suggest still having content for "yard care" as a keyword so that you don't lose as much of the work as you may have put into it.
-
RE: Self linking - loss of link juice?
I don't see any reason why those would be harmful, since they're not actually links - they're references to JavaScript itself. That means that it's not going to affect rankings or anything of the sort. But it also seems unnecessary to use JS for a menu in that way. Users aren't going to notice or care, but I think it's an odd choice from a UI perspective.
-
RE: Philosophical: Does Google know when a photo isn't what your meta data says it is? And could you be downgraded for that?
Certainly an interesting question. It's becoming more and more evident that image recognition software (more specifically, subject recognition) is gaining traction within big names including Facebook and Google. The software (still in development) can recognize subjects, objects, settings, etc. - to the point where they can "name" an image based on these factors. Which, of course, is extremely relevant to this conversation.
That said, I disagree with the notion that incongruities between an image name, alt-text, or title and the recognized subject of that image will have any factor at any point in time. I have two main points on why I suspect this will never become practice:
- Naming an image based directly on its contents has never been a suggestible convention. Historically, naming an image has been more about the "message" or intended use of that image than about its direct, visual content. To push content creators to start doing this would be overly heavy-handed (yes, even for Google).
- The web would be utterly polluted by images with the exact same name, all over the place. As you'd brought up stock photography and its proliferation across the web, I'd counter that this is exactly why it won't happen. The amount of images by this convention that would be named "man in suit at laptop" alone is staggering.
More to the point, Google and other curators prefer specificity; so much so that it would be impossible for them to accurately define more than the visual assets - which often don't make up the bulk of a pictures meaning.
TL;DR version: Do I think what you're suggesting is possible? Absolutely. Do I think it will happen? No; this would go against naming conventions and Google's own desire for specificity.
-
RE: How Does Google Consider a Business Name as Duplicate?
In business listings and directories, it's best to have a consistent NAP (name, address, phone). Meaning, the name listed on Google+ should be the same as Facebook, as Linkedin, as BestOfTheWeb, as Yellowpages, etc. However, this will have no direct effect on SEO or rankings whatsoever. Search engines (including Google) are typically smart enough to figure out that these are all the same company, even if there are slight discrepancies.