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Hi Jonny,

If I am understanding your question correctly, you have two concerns:

1. Linking from your subdomains to your main domain

2. Creating micro sites which link back to your main domain

Regarding linking from your subdomain site to your main domain (i.e. from london.site.co.uk to www.site.co.uk/london) I am not aware of any issue Google may have with that process. Even though technically a subdomain is a different site, Google is clearly aware you own and operate both sites and would not provide external linking value to such links. In other words, I would not expect that type of link to be used to manipulative search rankings.

With the above understood, I would suggest the process is inefficient. It is likely your best course of action would be to eliminate the subdomains and simply use the content on your main site.

Regarding the micro sites, that is a concern. Your approach is highly likely to be considered as Doorway Pages. Based on your description, it seems like a textbook case. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2721311 

I expect you will receive a response from the Moz team by Monday on your other open Q&A / ticket. The person who answers that question may be able to answer this one, or pass your inquiry along to someone who does.

I believe reverse-engineering the PA / DA is pretty straight forward. To the best of my knowledge, the following is true regarding the calculation:

• It is 100% based solely on link data

• OSE is the single data source for the calculation

• there are only a few factors: the PA/DA of any linking pages/sites, the number of links on the page providing the link, the number of links being received by the page/site.

• typical factors known to be used in PR such as relevancy, link location, etc. are not factors in PA/DA

• spam factors are not considered in PA/DA

To the best of my knowledge the above is correct. Only a SEOmoz employee could possibly confirm and I am unsure on their NDA requirements. I would expect their formula is proprietary.

With the above understood, a DA of 30 represents the number and quality of links received for the website. The same applies to PA.

A site with DA of 29: http://www.cheshirecatnarrowboats.co.uk/

A page with PA of 31 http://www.shmoop.com/alice-in-wonderland-looking-glass/cheshire-cat.html

I recognize you are likely aware of the above information and seeking something deeper. I am sharing this information in case it is helpful.

Sorry about that Adam. I sent an email to a couple helpful Mozzers. I am sure one of them will respond very soon.

Hi Adam,

Hopefully you will receive a response. If not, I suggest you go to http://www.seomoz.org/help and submit a ticket.

I can't say exactly what formula is used for PA/DA, but it is designed to emulate PR. Either way, as long as you include PR you already have a logarithmic metric.

Whatever system you use will be challenging. Why?

• Google includes 200+ metrics to determine search result positioning

• Google adjusts search results based on numerous personal factors including location, browsing history, etc

• It is pretty safe to say Google's algorithm includes metrics which are linear, exponential and logarithmic

With dozens of various tools on the market designed to analyze keywords, why not chose to utilize an existing tool which is professionally developed and maintained for this purpose?

Keri, I am not entirely clear. If you set your gl=us, you also see the SERPs without any local results. I have the feeling I am missing something.

I second Site Tuners. Rachel did an evaluation for a client's site and it was excellent. They record the entire presentation and you can play it back as well to ensure you do not miss anything.

There are many factors involved but, at a high level, a bad link profile as detected by Google's Penguin algorithm is one with a high percentage of keyword anchor text links.

The way most natural links are created is to copy and paste a link. For example, a link to this Q&A thread is: http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-does-a-good-link-portfolio-look-like. When site owners create links to their own site, they often try to take advantage of Google's algorithm by using specific keywords such as good link thread.

When you take a site which sells watches and you look at the profile and see most of the links are URLs with some occasional anchor text links thrown in, that would be a more natural profile. When you see most of the links use anchor text such as "best watches" or "cheap watches" that indicates a high likelihood of manipulation.

There are numerous other aspects of a good or bad link. Some criteria to consider:

• the PR of the linking page

• the number of links on the linking page

• the position of the link (in content is best whereas a footer link would offer less value)

• the anchor text

• the relevance of the linking site to the target page

You can go to Open Site Explorer and examine the backlink profile of good sites such as Google and the New York Times, then compare it to some spammy sites. You will see the difference quickly.

Just to add a bit to Kane's response, the closest you can get to what you refer to as "standard Google results" is as follows:

1. Use either Chrome's Incognito Windows (CTRL + SHIFT + N) or FireFox's Private browsing. By using this method you can be sure no cache is used.

2. Be sure not to log in to Google. If you use the suggestion from step 1 above, you will be fine.

3. Use the SEOmoz SERP Control Panel which is part of the SEOmoz toolbar. Press Google US non-personalized (or make a setting for any country). This option does two things. First, it sets your geo-location to the US instead of your local area. Second, it appends your query with pws=0 to eliminate personalization.

By using the above steps, you will come as close as possible to receiving the Google results without adjustment.

The above does not account for one factor and that is regionalization. Even with all of the above steps taken, Google will still show different results based on your physical location. You need to use a proxy server to perform your search query from various locations in order to determine your query's sensitivity to location changes. The tool I recommend for this task is GeoEdge. It is free for search results.

There is nothing negative about the message. It is common and expected for sites which use CDNs.

The extra categories, menus, etc do not cause any issues. They make it more difficult to work with the site and find the root issue.

Imagine you set up a stereo that uses 10 wires for power, sound, etc. If you can cleanly view the 10 wires, it is very easy to diagnose any issues that may arise. Now imagine the same scenario but there were 50 wires, 40 of them which don't actually do anything but are there nevertheless. You wind up wasting time checking each of those wires to eliminate the possibility they are causing problems.

With the above stated, your question boils down to you are not able to properly set the Title tags on your Joomshopping product pages. You should ask the Joomshopping publisher for assistance.

What is your hosting setup? Are you using some form of cloud hosting such as Amazon or have a CDN set up?

Generally speaking, that message from Google is a good thing. It means they have optimized your crawl rate based on your setup. If you feel there is a need to adjust the rate, it can be done. Are you experiencing any issue?

The Panda/Penguin issue would have no relation to your crawl rate settings.

Your sending me the admin information for your site was unexpected. I went ahead and logged in to examine your setup. It's a mess.

For example, there are dozens of categories from the default Joomla software and other extensions such as Parks, Fruit Shop, etc. All these categories should be deleted or, at the very least, unpublished since they are not in use. You should set up categories for you content.

Your articles are set up in a manner that is not intuitive. For example, you have a Wedding Bands for Men page. I searched for an article called "Wedding Bands" but it does not exist. This led me to your Menus. Once again, there are many menus not in use which makes the site more difficult to administrator.

The Wedding Bands for Men page uses Products, not an article which is part of JoomShopping, a specific extension you chose to install.

To answer your specific question,

**On some pages the page display option for the _browser page title _works and on some it does. On the pages it doesnt it is pulling the information of the Alias. ( which is common with most site ) **

There are different types of content on your site. There are articles and then "products" which are part of JoomShopping. The JoomShopping content does not seem to be displaying in the manner you desire. I have no experience with this particular extension.

As a note, your site is not professionally developed. You will continue to encounter numerous other issues if you do not either invest a large amount of time understanding first Joomla, then each extension involved on your site, or hire a professional.

Please change your password.

Your second example, the Rings page, is part of your navigation. In Joomla you likely have it as a Menu Item and a Category. The first example is likely an Article. These are handled differently. If you can post screenshots of your admin panel settings, we could offer better advise.

Please also share exactly what is the desired outcome.

Hi Moosa,

The answer will vary based on the specific situation.

If you buy domains which have backlinks then redirect them to your site in an attempt to pass PR to your site, you are attempting to manipulative search rankings. That is clearly a problem.

If you buy keyword domains and put up 1 page sites with the goal of ranking for those terms, then forwarding them to your site, that is also clearly a problem.

If your site is SacramentoVacuums.com and you purchase all the local area site names (RanchoCordovaVacuums.com, FairOaksVacuums.com, etc) and redirect them to your site for the possibility of type in traffic, that is not a problem. Even if you purchased 100 such domains...these domains do not have backlinks, they don't have a site, you are not attempting to rank any of them, you are simply trying to gain a bit of extra traffic.

If you are concerned, you could always 302 redirect the sites. That would be an unusual implementation, but I do not see any problem with it.

Based on what you shared, absolutely.

My question is...why redirect the domains? If there is no backlinks to the site and there is no page on the site, the sole reason is for type-in traffic. If you have an established website with a long name, you could later acquire a short name and 301 redirect it for either marketing or type in traffic. For example, bankofthewest.com owns botw.com and it used to redirect to the main site. Now they use it for their mobile site.

Vikas, I am very familiar with the page you shared. I still stand by my response as correct. I believe you are either misinterpreting the guideline, or you have not fully explained the situation which is why I had requested an example.

Using the example I previously shared, if I purchased "SEOtips.net", "SEOtricks.net"  and 100 other domains then 301 redirected all of them to my site, that would not violate Google's Guidelines. There is no attempt to manipulate search rankings. My site will not rank any higher because I redirected these domains to my site, assuming these are new domains which have never been used.

You quoted the policy on Doorway pages. Please read Google's definition of a Doorway page. It is a single web page designed to rank in search engines, pull traffic for the terms related to the page, then redirect the traffic to the target site. That is not what is happening here.

I am perfectly comfortable with your selection of Tyler's response as the correct answer. Tyler's response gets a thumbs up from me. Nevertheless, the response I shared is accurate.

I have never heard of this company. After a brief review of their site, my advice is to stay away.

When reviewing an SEO company, I typically examine their site to see if they have any major SEO issues. If a SEO company has major issues on their own site, how will they manage your site? Of course, this logic can be faulty. You can have a great roofer whose own house has a leaky roof.

Some things I noticed immediately:

• the site has a logo, but the favicon is the default joomla favicon

• the site is duplicated in both the www and non-www domains. This is an SEO issue which simply should not happen on a live site.

• their backlink profile is very spammy. I would expect the site to be penalized either manually or experience Penguin issues. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=greencowseo.com%2F&sort=page_authority&filter=follow&source=external&target=domain&group=0

• their logo file name is logo.png and there is no ALT text

• their address is 8383 Wilshire Blvd.Beverly Hills, CA 90211. If you Google the address it is an office building, but the website does not list any suite number. Seems suspicious.

• one of the URLs from their site: http://www.greencowseo.com/2-uncategorised?start=4\. This type of URL should not be seen on a live site.

• they have some complaints on the official Google forums: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/uYzKH4RWrIg/tnP_KXe28OcJ

• they claim to represent Dell, Toyota and numerous other high profile clients. There is absolutely zero evidence on the site to support their claim to represent these clients.

• the site lacks a privacy policy, which I believe violates some laws

• no signs of social media, BBB registration or anything to show there is any legitimacy to this company

I could go on....but the above should be more then sufficient.

Hello Brien,

I noticed your robots.txt file currently shows as

**User-agent: ***

That is not a properly formatted robots.txt file. You need to add an additional line. Try adjusting as follows:

**User-agent: ***

** Disallow:**

This change MAY resolve the issue. If not, I would suggest checking your server firewall settings to discover if any ports or crawlers are blocked.

I can't agree with Anirban's suggestion. A 301 redirect would be the superior solution.