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I think it's the SEOMoz crawler, but what I have found is that the error reports are limited here whereas GWT is much bigger and shows the links leading to the error. My guess is that SEOMoz limit the number of crawl errors they show due to limitations set on their crawler i.e. while their crawl is comprehensive, it's not going to capture what Google does.

This may be a silly question, but have you got Google Webmaster tools installed? That will show you the source of the errors.

If your site is on IIS then you should also use the awesome IIS SEO toolkit provided by Microsoft for free.

Whoa! That was a mouthful!

I have recently switched to Disqus because of the additional functionality like embedding media which I think enhances the "conversation capabilities".

The ability to login from any one of the main social media platforms makes it easy and therefore encourages people to get involved.

I am not keen on Facebook alone because you don't want to be dependent on a single platform and as for the Wordpress comments, nothing particularly wrong with it, but it is quite limited if you compare to Disqus.

To keep your pages and avoid the duplicate content issues i would suggest expanding your product description e.g. 
Dell Color Compatible 3130CN －Magenda with chip 
Dell Color Compatible 3130CN －Black with chip

...those are your produce titles, which is fine, but they are also the in page product descriptions and there is only one word different.

Now the reality... you have over 20K pages indexed so the above approach may not be so practical unless you have a bit of cash to throw at a mechanical turk project that gets all your product descriptions rewritten.

You really ought to introduce something like Disqus that lets people comment on products which in turn would generate a load of unique content, but this would take a long time.

If I was you I would consolidate products like this into a single page with a comprehensive product description and then put a canonical tag on each of the individual product pages so you can still keep them separate, but for SEO purposes you are telling the search engines to pick up one great pages and not loads of poor pages with no unique content.

Hi Andrea,

Thanks for your detailed reply, the problem is not really that this deeper page ranks. Its whether I can leverage the authority this deeper page holds to push the homepage to position 1.

We are about to set a new linkbuilding campaign once we have figured this out, as I want to make sure we have nothing working against us within the site before starting on this.

Thanks again for your help

Hi,

I'm working with a very niche website where only one product is sold. This means there is a small keyword set (just variations of same keyword) that we are optimising for.

Currently the homepage www.example.com ranks in position 2 for target term - "sample". But there is also a required deeper page www.example.com/sample which has lots and lots of internal links targeted to "sample" pointing to it. This page ranks position 8. Effectively this is optimising the deeper page for the same keyword as for the home page through internal anchir text. This deeper page must exist as it has much more detailed information about the product.

We want the homepage to rank highest and I'm trying to figure out if we are confusing Google and splitting authority between 2 pages. Best result for us would be to have homepage in position 1 and the deeper page can disappear (total visits would increase).

So the question is, is there a solution to do this? My initial thought was use canonical tag on the www.example.com/sample page specifiying www.example.com. Can we do this? Its not duplicate content.

Other option I considered is to nofollow links to the deeper page. Again not sure if this will have positive or negative impact. My fear is by removing 40 odd internal links with "sample" anchor text will reduce relevancy of the domain as a whole for the "sample" keyword.

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks

Thanks Hannah. I think we have managed to convince them to go with a separate site on .co.uk which has always been my preferred approach to international SEO.

I'm always worried that even with the right intentions, there is still a risk of Google misinterpreting.

Separate domains means no confusion.

As for overlays, it works very well for another client of ours and makes no difference to bounce rate. One lesson we did learn was to ensure we had first click free activated!!

Thanks for reply, yes its definietly a hole. The more i research the deeper it seems to get. It wasn't our recommendation for the current solution (decided in house) so luckily its not a hole I've dug even though I'm now in it!

Hi,

We have a new client who has built a brand in the UK on a xyz.com domain. The "xyz.com" is now a brand and features on all marketing. Lots of SEO work has taken place and the UK site has good rankings and traffic.

They have now expanded to the US and with offline marketing leading the way, xyz.com is the brand being pushed in the US.

So with the launch of the offline marketing US IP's are now redirected to a US version of the site (subfolder) with relevant pricing and messaging. This is great for users, but with Googlebot being on a US IP it is also being redirected and the UK pages have now dropped out of the index.

The solution we need would ideally have both UK and US users searching for xyz.com, but would see them land on respective static pages with correct prices. Ideally no link authority would be moved via redirection of users.

We have considered the following solutions

• Move UK site to subfolder /uk and redirect UK ips to this subfolder (and so not googlebot)

• downside of this is it will massively impact the UK rankings which are the core driver of the business - also would this be deemed as illegal cloaking?

• natural links will always be to the xyz.com page and so longer term the US homepage will gain authority and UK homepage will be more reliant on artificial linkbuilding.

• Use a overlay that detects IP address and requests users to select relevant country (and cookies to redirect on second visit)

• this has been rejected by ecommerce team as will increase bounce rate% & we dont want users to be able to see other countries due to prduct and price differences.

• Use a homepage with country selection (and cookies to redirect on second visit)

• this has been rejected by ecommerce team as will increase bounce rate% & we dont want users to be able to see other countries due to prduct and price differences.

Is there an easy solution to this problem that we're overlooking?

Is there another way of legal cloaking we could use here?

Many thanks in advance for any help here

Yes thanks. That is not an option unfortunately because that is without a doubt my number 1 preferred route for international seo.

Did you know that you can also direct sub-folders in webmaster tools so that they are targeting specific countries?

Before I decide on a thumbs up or down, I thought I'd jump in to claim my "answered within 4 hours" bonus Moz Points

I'm with you on your frustration because that's exactly it... you want to know why they disagree so that you can perhaps learn something.

I reckon some people have taken the very clever bait laid out by our esteemed colleagues at SEOMoz and are actively seeking to inflate their Moz score (SEO Ego) at every opportunity because it all adds up right? SEOMoz is widely known now... as far as I'm aware... I guess it looks better on the resume when pitching for business or a new job to be able to say.. "Hey, I'm ranked in top 100 contributors on SEOMoz" or "I'm classified as an SEO Journeyman"... this may be entirely nonsense, but that's my opinion.

I will be the first to put my hand up and simultaneously hang my head in shame as someone who's been in this game for over a decade and has only recently started writing a blog. I totally buy into the "brand you" concept and am therefore committed to trying to raise my trading value by , amongst other things, acquiring Moz Points.

This Q n A is a masterstroke from the SEOMoz guys because a) it gives em loads of fresh content and b) acts like a magnet to pros and novices alike who either want to get help or get seen.

And now... for the thumb... I give you an UP!

I would argue these topics are easier to build links for because they are so niche and therefore less competitive, so perhaps you should go back to basics and try some or all of the following:

Niche directories - i know directories are old hat and outdated, but if you could get a few links from "eco" sites (toxic waste removal) or indeed government sites such as town councils etc then you will get some benefit. Don't forget it is worth linking out to authority sites too i.e. if you link to the local council site on how to get rid of toxic waste safely then then your link neighbourhood improves.

Niche publications - If you can place articles in these sites with contextual links then you're on to a winner. Case studies and how to guides are always welcome material.

How to guides - Especially when it comes to plumbers, boilers etc. I worked with a plumbing company before and suggested they post how to guides on everything from fitting a tap to what questions to ask your plumber about a new boiler etc. The push back here is often that "if we tell them how to do it then they won't get us to do it", but would you really try and fit a boiler yourself if you had the instructions? Try http://www.e-zine-list.com/index.shtml for a list of niche pubs

Become the expert - sites like Yahoo Answers are awash with people looking for answers on various topics so if your client can put in a little time each day to answer questions they could become recognised as the go to guy on their subject.

Hi Ben.

Have you checked to see the articles themselves have been indexed by Google? In other words using the site:search or the article title in ""?

If they are indexed and you are looking for the links themselves i.e. link: then it is probably because Google doesn't show everything, just a sample of links pointing to your site.

If you use Open Site Explorer or MajesticSEO you will get more reliable link figures, but again you should bear in mind that OSE and MSEO don't contain the entire web so may not have picked the links up yet either.

To keep your pages and avoid the duplicate content issues i would suggest expanding your product description e.g. 
Dell Color Compatible 3130CN －Magenda with chip 
Dell Color Compatible 3130CN －Black with chip

...those are your produce titles, which is fine, but they are also the in page product descriptions and there is only one word different.

Now the reality... you have over 20K pages indexed so the above approach may not be so practical unless you have a bit of cash to throw at a mechanical turk project that gets all your product descriptions rewritten.

You really ought to introduce something like Disqus that lets people comment on products which in turn would generate a load of unique content, but this would take a long time.

If I was you I would consolidate products like this into a single page with a comprehensive product description and then put a canonical tag on each of the individual product pages so you can still keep them separate, but for SEO purposes you are telling the search engines to pick up one great pages and not loads of poor pages with no unique content.

Finding Link Opportunities With Advanced Search Queries | Distilled blog http://ow.ly/1swIgW

White Hat SEO: It F@$#ing Works | SEOmoz http://ow.ly/4xeL4

The Evolution of Google's Rankings http://ow.ly/4fhi3

This may be a silly question, but have you got Google Webmaster tools installed? That will show you the source of the errors.

If your site is on IIS then you should also use the awesome IIS SEO toolkit provided by Microsoft for free.

I think it's the SEOMoz crawler, but what I have found is that the error reports are limited here whereas GWT is much bigger and shows the links leading to the error. My guess is that SEOMoz limit the number of crawl errors they show due to limitations set on their crawler i.e. while their crawl is comprehensive, it's not going to capture what Google does.