Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Typically this doesn't really matter - links built to a domain will always benefit that particular domain, regardless of whether it can be accessed at 'www.', 'non-www.', 'http://' or 'https://'. I would bet my bottom dollar that there will be almost zero impact on your positions.
Remember to couple this change with a change in Google Search Console to set your 'Preferred Domain' appearance in Google Search results - this can be done under 'Settings' > 'Site Settings'.
I'm sure it would probably be valuable and pass on some SEO benefit but if it's likely that someone has purchased this domain purely for transferring the link equity of inbound links to your website, then there's always a chance that this is going to be picked up on.
A small chance, but a chance nonetheless.
Hi,
No, they shouldn't penalise. A lot of companies are bought out by bigger companies and then only have 1 page on a new domain to redirect all of their pages to. I would say that there would be little to no chance of any penalisation.
All the best,
Sean
Hey Anders,
I always ask myself the question "Is this link useful for users?".
If someone will be reading those pages and will come across the areas of expertise - they will likely want to find out more about them, especially if they're unsure of what they are.
My vote is to add the links in - it creates an association between these pages and benefits users looking to find out more about the services the staff specialise in.
Cheers,
Sean
Hey Adrian,
In my opinion, none of the above are 'doorway pages' (sorry!).
A 'doorway' page is one of many pages that webmasters use as spam entry points to a website and are typically targeted towards the same keyword with a variable attached - most commonly 'locations'.
Here's an example - e cigarette online retailers tend to have little to no local presence within an area but they will build a list of pages to make it look as if they do:
In this example, they've even gone as far as to add in a list of these URLs (navigable from the footer) to ensure search engines crawl them - http://vapour-hut.co.uk/e-cig-town.php.
It's all a bit of a black hat tactic to grasp a whole bunch of search traffic that they otherwise shouldn't have. In your first example, the two pages for 'trumpet' and 'piano lessons', although similar, are targeting vastly different searcher intents which are relevant to the originating website - ergo they are not doorway pages.
I hope that makes sense 
All the best,
Sean
Hey Jason,
Check out something like BuzzSumo if you haven't already - it's a pretty powerful database of content marketing metrics and should help you understand what content has worked previously within your niche and why.
It's also got a pretty hefty influencer database which you can freely extract, even within the free trial period.
Failing that, I think Ahrefs has an almost identical content/influencer database which can be freely extracted also.
Regards,
Sean
Hey Becky,
Check out the Moz Algo update page for more detailed information about algo updates:
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
All the best,
Sean
Hey there,
Google wrote up a guide to hidden text, content and links. Check this out:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66353?hl=en
Maybe pass this to your devs and get them to check all the guidelines are adhered to.
I hope this helps,
Sean
Hi Becky,
Authority-wise, they were product pages that were deep down in the IA of the site so they had very little PA anyway. And rankings-wise, they were very niche, branded products so we didn't have a great deal of competition anyway - rankings were always pretty good.
Even if you're selling something unbranded and generic, I would say that you should create the pages ASAP to start the ball rolling. You're not going to get penalized in the first instance of loading them on and when you come back later to optimise them, you should gain rankings.
Cheers,
Sean
Hi Charles,
I would say that this might require a little bit more context if I'm being totally honest.
Visibility scores are often a metric created by SERP tracking software and how they're calculated can vary, making it hard to understand the impact of your 1.17% visbility score.
In regards to keyword rankings and your position 7 SERP, it's hard to say how good it is without understanding what the keyword is you're ranking for and the service your website provides. For example, if you're an industry leader with a ranking of #7 for your brand term, it's likely that this is a negative result. On the other hand, if you're a small travel blog and you're ranking position 7 for 'travel blog', then it's likely that you're doing pretty well!
All in all, I would say try and compare it to your industry averages and benchmark against your competitors to find out exactly how you're doing.
regards,
Sean
This is exactly my point, the view=quick version of the page needs a canonical pointing back to the proper version of the page. Yes, it's not a normal webpage but that is now search engines are viewing it because it's missing the tag.
This will signify to search engines that the 'view=quick' version of the page is a duplicate of the normal page and that it should not be ranked within search results.
Hey,
1.) Yes you can do this and it won't 'negativel impact it' but it might cause a couple of Search Console errors when you come to submit the URLs - blocking crawlers in the robots.txt file is a directive that instructs them not to crawl that particular page. With this being said, supplying them with a sitemap of all page locations will not mean that they crawl these pages, but it is an instruction to crawlers that these pages do exist. Personally, I would meta noindex these pages to make sure that they don't reach search engines as the blocking in the robots.txt file can often not be enough to prevent this, especially if you're also submitting a sitemap.
2.) In short, I don't think you can have a single XML sitemap containing URLs from multiple subdomains BUT you can have sitemaps for multiple subdomains hosted on the TLD individually. Google have broken this down really well in their Webmaster Tools post:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/75712?hl=en&topic=8476&ctx=topic
Hope this helps!
Sean
Hi Christy - what's the best course of action for submitting ideas/posts for the main Moz blog now that YouMoz is being phased out? Or is this only for higher profile contributors?
Hi Alan,
If they're not willing to share their link/outreach targets with you, I would steer clear of them.
What they're saying about it being their 'intellectual property' is complete rubbish. At the end of the day, the site they're building links to is your business and it should be in your best interest to ensure that links that are being built to the website are of high quality. It sounds like they're being unnecessarily shady.
Find yourself an SEO that is transparent and working **with you **to create a solid link acquisition strategy, not working in isolation and secrecy.
All the best,
Sean
Hey there,
You absolutely do need to. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not migrating their disavow file when they switch domains/encryptions.
Sean
Hey Edward,
Whilst paid/free tools are great at drilling down further into what you're looking for, sometimes it's best to take it back to basics. Google has a search operator for 'related:' which you can use to find sites that search engines consider to be closely related to another site of your choosing. I would say to try and find a single site within your niche (preferably an industry leader) and put it into Google.
For example, searching for 'related:moz.com' in Google returns the following examples:
Whilst it's not a swanky tool for establishing relationships between user bases and link metrics, it's (in my opinion) one of the best starting places for 'related' searches.
All the best,
Sean
Hi Nikki,
You're absolutely right. There will be a domain level http > https redirect in place within the htaccess file and page to page redirects.
Any page to page redirects that sit below that rule can be put in manually and will be caught **after **the domain level rule and this will not conflict.
All the best,
Sean
This does seem a bit odd. but the domain also doesn't have any inbound links which is what I believe is one of the main things that Moz tool picks up. Perhaps you should build a couple of inbound links to the domain and see what happens?
Hey Thomas,
It looks like your tweet did the trick and they've been tweeting a whole bunch of people - congrats!
I shall turn off the sad music now.
Sean