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I'm not sure if it would affect the current page speed but it would fix the invalid HTML error from the validator. If the validation errors concern you it might be worth giving it a try and testing the result? It's good to make sure that pages validate all the high issues at least to be sure of no possible display or rendering issues in different browsers now or in the future.

That error is coming up from the validator because the links to your stylesheets are outside the ending body and html tags. The stylesheet links normally go within the tags at the top but I understand from what you've said for page speed these have been moved to the bottom page however no tags / html / stylesheets / javascript etc  should be outside the ending and tags.

If you move the CSS stylesheet references and the comments so they are where the javascript files are (before the ending tags) that would fix the fatal error you are seeing.

Hope that helps!

It's a website for a mobile app and the references for it around the web (in iTunes for instance) all rank on first page, it has a unique name. The link profile has been fine since the penalty was lifted, a few links still need to be cleaned but they are all in the disavow file that is uploaded to Google. It's weird because we aren't even in the top 10 pages.

If the website was hit again then wouldn't a notice have come through in Google Webmaster Tools by now?

Hey Kristina, thanks for your reply, see my answers to each bullet point below:

• The www version does not rank for the brand name. Initially the non www version was the main website but we changed this to the www version during November 2014.
• The reconsideration request was submitted on 18/10/2013 and Google responded on 24/10/2013 stating that the manual spam action had been revoked.
• Not a lot of value right now but changing the domain name will be impossible.

Thanks Ryan, I guess you're right but we're trying to minimize the negative impact, a new domain name is not possible.

Thanks for the reply Monica. Unfortunately, a new domain is not possible.

Hey Moz Community,

My questions sounds pretty simple but unfortunately, it isn't. I have a domain name (we'll use example.com for this) http://example.com which 301 re-directs to http://www.example.com. http://example.com has bad links pointing to it and http://www.example.com does not. So essentially, I want to stop negative influences from http://example.com being passed on to http://www.example.com. A 302 re-direct sounds like it would work in theory but is this the best way to go about this?

Just so you know, we have completed a reconsideration request a long time ago but I think the bad links are still negatively affecting the website as it does not rank for it's own name which is bizarre.

Actual Question:

How do I re-direct http://example.com to http://www.example.com without passing on the negative SEO attached to http://example.com?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks guys - much appreciated.  Personally I didn't think it mattered which way it went round, however just interested to hear if there was a good reason for this.  The a href= example is a good example of how it shouldn't really matter.

OK so this is a really, really basic question.  However, I'm seeing some meta written differently to normal and I'm wondering if a) this is correct and b) whether there is any benefit.

Normally it's like this:

However, I am seeing it written like this is some places:

So, the content= and name= are swapped around.  I assume the people that did this were thinking that bringing the content forward would mean that Google reads keywords first.

Just wondering if anybody knows whether this is good practice or not?  Just spiked my interest so apologies for the basic nature of the question!

Hi all,

We're seeing a very strange result in Google Webmaster tools.  In "Links to your site", there is a site which we had nothing to do with (i.e. we didn't design or build it) showing over 1600 links to our site!

I've checked the site several times now, and the only reference to us is in the rel="author" tag.  Clearly the agency that did their design / SEO have nicked our meta, forgetting to delete or change the author tag!!

There are literally no other references to us on this site, there hasn't every been (to our knowledge, at least) and so I'm very puzzled as to why Google thinks there are 1600+ links pointing to us.

The only thing I can think of is that Google will recognise name="author" content as a link... seems strange, though.  Plus the content="" only contains our company name, not our URL.

Can anybody shed any light on this for me?

Thanks guys!

Thanks for the great advice both, much appreciated!

That's an awesome post as well Carson, thank you very much for sharing.  I think we are going to have to change our techniques - the point about link building formerly being the easiest part of your job really hit home with me.  It seems that link building is going to be a much more laborious process.

As far as agencies go, it's going to take a great deal more in the way of time and resources to service clients.  At the moment, it seems that the only way forward for the average agency is to employ more staff or out-source elements of the link building process.  Either that or SEO simply becomes much more expensive.

With that in mind, do you think the days of local businesses ranking alongside high-street brands on P1 may be coming to an end?

We had a message in webmaster tools to say our site had 'unnatural links' pointing towards it.

I investigated and found a number of sites where we had uploaded articles, containing links, had been de-indexed.  As such we have suffered a few drops in rankings.

I have submitted a reconsideration request and I'd like to get on with recovering any lost ground.  However, I am wondering whether it's best to cease any link building activity whilst the reconsideration request is processed.

Please do let me know your thoughts and experiences on continuing to build links after submitting a reconsideration request.

Thanks Daniel - clearly something they are paying for.

If you Google 'Rightmove', you'll see they have a site search bar in the Google search results - please see image link.

Anybody have any idea how they have managed to achieve this?

jRz8l

Cheers bozzie311, I'll look into that - much appreciated!

I haven't read the article and I'm not sure you'll get a 'penalty' for multipe H1 tags.  However, I always ensure that I have just one H1 on each page.  This is more because I do not want to dilute the H1 content, so I decide on the absolute top target/s for the page and give 100% of the H1 juice to that.  By the same token, I would not have a 10 word H1 either because each one of those words is only getting approx. 10% of the value.  Some off-the shelf web-design packages (such as Magento, it seems) automatically place H1 tags around header images.  Wasted - get rid of them and get a keyword rich H1 on the page.

Hi SEOmoz community,

A UK based client will soon be opening an office in the USA.  We have advised them to create a new website specifically aimed at the US market, primarily because the way you talk to your potential customers is slightly different than here in the UK.

However, this has also raised the question of hosting.  Of course we'll be advising them to host their new US site in the States, however does it matter where?  For example, if their office is in NYC,  would it matter if their hosting was based in Dallas?  I.e. does Google rank sites hosted in a US city / state higher for localised searches?

Interested to hear your thoughts - thanks for your time!

Mark

Also, Ryan is of course correct to say you can use the www. or non www. version - I just have a preference for www. because I think it looks neater!

I agree that a 301 is most certainly the best long term solution; however the canonical also provides an opportunity to send over some of the value to the new page/domain before you do that.  Hence I usually implement the canonical for a month or two, then redirect.  Especially when you're moving to a new domain, it's a good way to faze in the move over rather than going cold turkey, as it were.

If the site has over 600 pages, I'd pick the 50-100 most common landing pages (see Google Analytics) and transfer them.  If 10 of the pages get 10000 visits each and the other 590 get 2 visits each, maybe just do the top ten.  Hope that makes sense!

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for your resopnse.  The <title>validates no problem.  It is the <meta name="title" content="etaojfopahfopasjfio" /> that does not validate.  I realise this is depreciated, however I still think it is important to include surely?</p></title>