Welcome to the Q&A Forum

In FireFox, click View, select Toolbars, then make sure you have a checkmark adjacent to SEOmoz Toolbar. If you have a checkmark, the tool bar should be appearing.

Hope this helps.

Mike

I am pretty sure the SEOmoz toolbar uses the same metrics as Open Site Explorer, which is only updated a few times per month. In any case, creating a new page means you are starting off with little or no authority PA:1; however, once you include 301 redirects to that page, internal linking structure, and links from external websites, that authority will grow.

As for your other page being at the same Google position as before, that is good; however, that is not always the case. You are correct in stating that a 301 helps transfer the link juice from one page to another, but it is not a 1:1 transfer... which means that in some cases you could lose traction in your current Google position.

All of that being said, it sounds like you have everything set up correctly with your 301 sending link juice and traffic from your old page to your new page. It will take a couple weeks (typically) for SEOmoz to update Open Site Explorer and the SEOmoz toolbar to reflect these changes. Also, it can take some time for Google to rank your new page accordingly, as it must built some trust and authority with Google.

Hope this helps.

Mike

Hi Gina,

If you use Google Webmaster Tools you can see how many pages you submitted on your sitemap and how many Google has indexed under Optimization > Sitemaps.

It will also list if you have an issues with your xml sitemap.

Hope this helps.

Mike

If this is an internal link on your website, you would want to change the actual path to point to the newer secure-document-storage page.

If this is an external link from another website, you'd create a redirect that will take the incoming request for the old document-security page and push the visitor to the new secure-document-storage page.

Make sense?

Mike

Hi Gina,

You should try to fix any errors. Errors can impact your users' experience, as well as interfere with web crawlers and even impact your rankings.

404 errors:

• /balancing-seo-with-your-website-design/ links to /on-target-web-design-santa-barbara/ using anchor text "It is best to get a custom design
• /5-steps-to-increase-traffic-to-your-website/ links to /we-create-websites-that-bring-you-more-business/ using anchor text "increasing traffic to your website,"

Warnings are more or less a "if you have time and can, you could fix these". They really do not impact your rankings, but if you are trying to be perfect, you could fix them.

Notices are just a "heads-up". They do not impact rankings, UNLESS you are blocking robots ; )

Long story short, fix Errors, work on Warnings when you have time, verify you already knew about the Notices.

Hope this helps.

Mike

Hi Carlos,

I think part of this has to do with the breadcrumb functionality you have built into your site.

So for instance, /Mens_Wetsuits-598/ has a ton of inlinks. Part of this is because your top navigation is linking to /Men_Wetsuits-598/ on every page on your site, then your breadcrumb functionality is linking to /Mens_Wetsuits-598/ on each of your 252 men's wetsuit products.

If you want a further look at internal linking structure, I would recommend Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It will scan your entire site and can show you all internal in-links and out-links for each page on your site.

I hope this gives you some insight as to what is happening. It is not of course a comprehensive explanation, but you can see how something as small as a breadcrumb can easily inflate the number of internal links.

Mike

Hi Rachel,

Personally, if this is an SEOmoz or other software error, I would disregard it. The reason I would disregard it is your titles and content are different... even if it is just by 1 character. This approach does make sense for your niche.

Now, IF you were having problems getting both of these pages indexed or if Google sends you a duplicate content message, that would be cause for some concern.

I just Googled clear contractor bags 42 gallon and I see both your 4mil and 3mil thicknesses listed in positions #7 and #8 respectively, as well as #1 and #2 under the Google Shopping area.

If I were you, I would not worry about it.

Mike

The only thing that can happen is if Google indexes an http and https version of the same page. It isn't a HUGE deal... just depends on how obsessed you are about the site structure.

You could potentially have visitors start linking to the https version vs the http version, in which case that would be a problem.

Depending on the complexity of your site and code, this rule may be able to help you... where it says, pattern="download" that means that if someone visits the downloads section of your website, it will allow for https.  You can continue to add additional folders by just repeating that code and replacing "download" with whatever the folder names are that you want to allow to use HTTPS. I did a Google search of site:lucid8.com inurl:https and noticed that your download section was indexed as using HTTPS, that is why I used it in this example.

If you are just using simple folder structures, this rule is not too bad to implement. I previously just implemented it with pattern matching and that was not fun.

Any way, if it helps great, if not, just try to keep your internal linking as consistent as possible. Sometimes the best way to do this is use absolute paths vs relative.

Mike

<rule name="AllHTTPexceptSIGNIN" stopprocessing="true"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="<a href=" http:="" (www.)(.)$"="">http://(www.)(.)$" negate="true" />
                        <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="on"><add input="{URL}" pattern="download" negate="true"></add></add></add></conditions>
                    <action type="Redirect" url="<a href=" http:="" {http_host}="" {r:0"="">http://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:0}" redirectType="Permanent"/>
               </action></rule>

The full subdomain of your website in this case would be www.mysite.com. The www is considered a subdomain.

I just responded to your other question and was guessing that you had a campaign setup for your non-www version and that is why you are getting the 301 redirect notice.

As Joram suggests, you can remove the non-www version from your campaigns.

Mike

After diving deeper, it looks like it is a matter of breadcrumbs and other types of navigation.

Here is an example of how different pages are linking to /Mens_Bags-600/:

/Electric_Goggles_and_Electric_Sunglasses~65

• links once via the top navigation

/Surfdome_Mens_Bags-600/132

• links twice via the top navigation and the breadcrumb

/Bags-372/

• links three times via the top navigation, left navigation, and in as in-line text as MENS BAGS>

As you can see, depending on the page, the linking structure can vary greatly on your site. I didn't dive extremely deep into your site, so there definitely could be other instances of other types of linking structures on different page layouts. This would definitely explain why some of your pages have MANY in links, while others don't.

I hope this helps; otherwise, like I said, Screaming Frog can pinpoint exactly where your in links are coming from, which can help you figure out the entire linking structure of your site.

Hope this helps.

Mike

It sounds like you are maybe trying to target multiple keywords on a single page?

This can be extremely difficult as the purpose of the page is not clearly defined.

As Jesse suggests, create a new page and follow the guidelines here for creating a perfectly optimized page.

Hope this helps.

Mike

If you go to your campaign overview page, you will see a little box below the mini overviews that will say something like, "Last Crawl Completed: Apr. 3rd, 2013 Next Crawl Starts: Apr. 10th, 2013"

I personally use SEOmoz PRO tools in combination with Screaming Frog. I verify many of the problems using Screaming Frog, then fix them, then rescan (which is instant), then wait for my SEOmoz PRO tools to reflect my changes. SEOmoz does a great job of warning you and keeping you in the know... where Screaming Frog gives you a lot of information, but you really have to know what you are looking for and would have to keep on top of it... SEOmoz is more automated... if that makes sense.

Mike

You don't need to really worry or stress about the missing meta descriptions and long titles.

Meta descriptions do not impact your rankings and Google will automatically create a description for your page if it appears in the SERPs.

Title tags that are too long do not impact your rankings... at least not directly. If your title tag is over by 10 or even 20 characters, it will not impact whether your pages ranks or not. The 70 characters is a suggestion as that was the number of characters that would display in the SERPs; however, now it is based on pixil width. The only other important info you need to know about titles is that you put your most important keywords towards the beginning of the title.

If you are unsure about how or are unable to edit these pages to add or edit the description and title, it isn't going to make our break your site from a ranking standpoint.

Some CMS will automatically generate 301s if you edit a URL's structure. It does this so that any old links pointing to the old URL will be brought to the edited URL. The CMS will not fix broken links that point to the old URL, but on the server side, if someone clicks on an old, broken link, they will be brought to the edited URL page  - if that makes sense.

I understand that you want to attack warnings and notices and get things perfect; however, sometimes it just isn't possible. Whether it is a CMS issue or knowing how to fix something complex - what does matter is that you investigate each warning and notice and make sure that it is not negatively impacting your site. From the sounds of it, the handful of warnings and notices you have are just fine.

Hope this helps answer your question.

Mike

It does not matter from an SEO standpoint whether you link to https or http from your homepage to a secondary page.

What does matter is that you only have one version. You do not want to have http://domain.com/second-page and https://domain.com/second-page on your website.

Hope this helps.

Mike

Hi Kyle,

I am confused by looking at the URL you provided.

The link is missing an "i" in clients and also cannot end in .comXYZ. It would need to end with something like http://www.XYZclientsSite.com/XYZ. But the displayed URL is also different than the linked to one: www.XYZclientSite.com/XYZ vs www.XYZclientsSiteXYZ.com - like one appears to be a directory and one appears to be the sites root.

Original:

www.XYZclientsSiteXYZ.com

Rewritten?

www.XYZclientsSiteXYZ.com

I don't know if I answered your question or if I need additional information because of the items described above.

Mike

That is the problem... that they are the same site.

That means that Google can index both versions and visitors and other sites can create backlinks to both versions - which is not good, because it splits your backlinks up between two sites instead of one.

You need to set up a 301 redirect from one of the versions to the other, as well as set a preferred version in Google Webmaster Tools.

Hope this helps.

Mike

I think it could be a lot of different things. One of them is that Google's SERPs are always going to be more up-to-date, hence the Next rankings update: XXXX in the bottom right-hand corner of the Rank Tracker tool page.

Here is some more information from SEOMoz about Rank Tracker:

"Why do the rankings returned by Rank Tracker sometimes differ from what I see when I check the search engine? Don’t worry – it’s perfectly normal. Rankings are constantly in flux and rarely universal. Some factors that may affect rankings include:

• Performing searches in different geographies (even in the same state/country)
• Hitting different IP addresses or data centers
• Having personalized search turned on (or even getting automated personalization based on search history)

Luckily, trend data is quite good, so even if the positions you see vary slightly from what Rank Tracker reports, the gains or losses are indicative of relative performance. Don’t expect to see precise correlation, but do keep an eye on ranking trends over time."

Hope this helps.

Mike

Keri's example of Moz's "top secret project" is a good one.

If you Google "top secret project" they are appearing at the bottom of the second page SERP.

Hi Sarah,

It would be best for your to create your own topic so that others can give their help to your specific question.

Once you post your question, I will be happy to respond there.

Thanks,

Mike

That does seem like a lot of links; however, if it is linking to relevant content and is doing so with using unique and applicable anchor text, I would think you should be fine.

If it is always linking to your root domain with the same anchor text every time, that may raise a red flag.

Long story short - if it looks natural and makes sense, you "should" be fine.

Hope this helps.

Mike