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Hello Mozzers!

I want to discuss the science behind the perfect META Title in terms of three factors:

1. Ranking

2. CTR

3. Search Volume

Hypothetical scenario: A furniture company "Boogie Beds" wants to optimise their META Title tag for their "Cane Beds" ecommerce webpage.

1. The keywords "Cane Beds' has a search volume of 10,000

2. The keywords " Cane Beds For Sale" has a search volume of 250

3. The keywords "Buy Cane Beds" has a search volume of 25

One of Boogie Beds SEO's suggests a META Title "Buy Cane Beds For Sale Online | Boogie Beds" to target and rank for all three keywords and capture long tail searches.

The other Boogie Bed SEO says no! The META Title should be "Cane Beds For Sale | Boogie Beds" to target the most important two competitive keywords and sacrifice the "Buy" keyword for the other two

Which SEO would you agree more with, considering

1. Ranking ability

2.  Click through rates

3. Long tail search volume

4. Keyword dilution

Much appreciated!

MozAddict

Good day Mozzers!

Moz bot is finding URL's in the Catalogue pages with the format www.example.com/something and www.example.com/something?p=1 as duplicate (since they are the same page)

Whats the best solution to implement here? Canonical? Any other?

Cheers!

MozAddict

Ok, so we could canonical the first page in the pagination, that way any links to the pagination would flow juicy juice to the first page. That would make sense, since it would strengthen its ranking as a landing page as well.

I think ill implement the canonical and get rid of the content on pagination anyways, just avoid the problem completely.

Ace Marty!

Appreciate your response Marty.

What is your opinion on content for category pages. Currently we have the same content displaying on paginated pages for the same category (?p=1, ?p=2, etc)

Should we display content just on the first page and remove it for rest of the pagination or is this ok?

We are using rel="next/prev" but not sure if this is treated as duplication?

Great answers guys! I would personally also prefer 301's over canonicals. So the next questions is, to keep URLs with the trailing slash or without the trailing slash. I tend to lean towards without, since most URL's are indexed that way already, its easier on the eyes, and people tend to link that way.

Any preference?

Howdy Mozzers!

Our magento store URL's are accessible with or without a trailing slash at the end. Canonical's and 301 redirects are not set up for one of them at the moment.

Will this cause duplicate issue? Do we need to set canonical or 301 up? Which one is recommended?

MozAddict

Hello Mozzers,

What values are accepted in parameter field in webmaster? I want to block URL's with + in them. Parameters does not seem to accept + as a valid value

Thanks!

Howdy Mozzers!

Say we're creating great content on our blog and would like this content to be seen and shared by as many people possible. Should we submit our blog posts manually to social book marking sites or use an automated service like Only Wire?

The advantage of using automation is obvious, saves time on submission. Are there disadvantages? Is google bot going to raise an eyebrow and give us a dirty look?

Cheers!

MozAddict

Thanks for the heads up on robots.txt. I also think the attribute landing pages will not provide the same user experience as the layered navigation pages. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the matter.

Cheers!

Thank you for your fantastic input!

I think your point on adding unique content to pages is great advise. This is something we aim to do, although it will not be possible on all the pages that will be generated, since the combinations will probably be in the thousands.

We are currently using rel prev next and rel canonical on the filtered pages for the purpose of using them as landing pages

Another potential route could be to robot.txt the layered navigation and create attribute splash pages as landing pages for important keywords. These pages would be manually created and contain custom meta titles/descriptions and on page content. These pages are not a part of the main catalogue search page, instead are separate pages. For example the URL for such a page would be domain.com/abstract-art instead of domain.com/art/abstract

What are your thoughts on this route? Which option is better in your opinion?

Hello Mozzers!

We have an ecommerce site built on Magento. We would like to use attribute filters in our layered navigation for landing page purposes. Each page will have a unique URL, Meta Title and Meta Description. For example:

URL: domain.com/art/abstract (category is Art, attribute is Abstract)

Title: Abstract Art For Sale

Meta: Blah Blah Blah

Currently these attribute pages are not being indexed by google as they are set in google parameters.

We would like to edit google parameters to start indexing some of the attribute filters that users search for, so they can be used as landing pages.

Does anyone have experience with this? Is this a good idea? What are the consequences? Will this dilute Page Rank? Could this destroy the world?

Cheers!

MozAddict

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for contributing your thoughts. I think keywords in URL's are useful in two ways

1. They give an indication to users what the page is about

2. They give an indication to search engines what the page is about

Although the keywords "Cane wood furniture for sale" can be used in the Meta Title, H1 tag and onsite content, I don't see any harm in adding them to the URL as an additional indicator, other than the downside of increasing the URL length.

So I suppose it depends on whether google gives more preference to keywords in URL's over their length or vice versa

Howdy Mozzers!

What are your thoughts on short URL's vs Optimised URL's. For example if a website currently sells wood furniture and wants to target the keyword "Wood Furniture For Sale", which URL would be preferable:

Short URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture

Optimised URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture-for-sale

The website also uses facet navigation and selected attributes are added in a fixed order sequence after the category. For example if Cane is selected as wood type:

Short URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture/Cane

Optimised URL: www.domain.com/wood-furniture-for-sale/Cane

Which one do you prefer (between the short URL and optimised URL) and why?

Cheers!

MozAddict

Why are you using this technique, you could have done like make a landing page, ask for language selection or have a main site and show different language selections then link to that language page.

Since 2 months, i never see it running, always says it is down.

I have experienced it personally, on one ofmy sites, it dropped ranking for one keyword and still maintained for others.

There wasnt any message in GWT, the reason was that two of my sites were on same hosting server and some how one site had its all home page mixed up with in other website pages. It was something like hidden text. Now the issue is resolved and ranking is coming back.

Another possibility could be too much exact match anchor text links. There will be i guess an algorithmic penality for this and your keyword along with traffic will be dropped.

Without GA and GWM , you are using long titles with too much word "Dubai", Think about how users will percieve it when looking it.  You could use something like that

Website Design, SEO and PPC , WSI Net Power

Using Dubai too much will not do too much.

ALso look at your on page, did you also change the content. See if you are using words you are trying to rank in on page text.

If you have mentioned the URL in citations and also have applied 301, then users will be redirected to new domain automatically.

Does google consider it to be spam by having multiple languages posts on a blog such as English, Arabic, spanish blog posts.

I have seeon some trends for sites which do not even use XML sitemp and robots e.g. see this site. How do you see if sitemap is not used.

Also for classified websites, should ad pages be included in sitemap because after certain duration those ads will be deleted and google might not be able to crawl. What do you suggest about XML sitemap for classified website.