Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Howdy, my friend.

This does sound a little complicated.

We have a .com website which has a little domain authority and is growing steadily. We are a UK business (but have a US office which we will be adapting too soon)

We are ranking better within google.com than we do on google.co.uk probably down to our TLD.

From first line it sounds like you have one domain (.com), second line tells me that you got two domains (.co.uk and .com). So, which is it? well, it wouldn't affect my answer, I guess, I'll cover both.

So, let's go step-by-step:

1. Is it a wise idea to 301 our .com to .co.uk for en-gb enquiries only? - No!Because i can be in any part of the world and i can set my browser locale header to whatever i want. Or it can happen automatically due to whatever circumstances. So, let's say I'm travelling from UK to US. My browser is set to en-gb locale, I do my search for your company in US, I get redirected to UK website, even though I want to fing US one - no good. Bad UX

2. Is there any evidence that this will help improve our position? will all the link juice passed from 301s go to our .co.uk only if we are still applying the use of .com in the US? - I combine these two into one answer. Link juice can be passed if crawlers can differentiate locale on a given URL. Here is how they can do it:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=en

So, let's say there is a website with link to yours. It's one link. You can't set two "hreflang"s, or "rel"s, or write it in two languages at the same time on the same URL. So, basically you can tell bots to consider that link as a "juice-passer" to only one domain.

Now, is there a good reason for you guys to have two different domains? If it has similar information, style etc., you can combine them into one (use subdomains or subfolders - Matt Cutts video) and pretty much cut efforts in half with double the return

If there is a good reason for you guys to have completely different domains, I would concentrate for building/working/structuring .uk website for UK and .com website for US. It means that you'll have to do two backlink profiles building, two different technical and "another one" (forgot the word ) SEOs and so on.

Hope this helps.

Hi there

First of all, Google's "link" search operator is not accurate. At all, actually. Read this post of Rand: https://moz.com/blog/google-link-command-busting-the-myths

Now about OSE. The way it works is the explanation of why your links can be still shown as well as the explanation for why new (or older existing) links are not being crawled yet.MOZ has it's own index, it does not contain all links on the internet. It's large, but still limited. So, in case of local listings, for example, MOZ doesn't crawl past few first couple hundreds results. Here is the topic on this matter: https://moz.com/community/q/local-listings-aren-t-being-crawled

Also, the OSE index is updated about once a month, so, if you deleted/disavowed backlinks after last update (date can be found here), it will not show changes for sure.

And lastly, Even if you disavow backlinks through Google, they are not being removed from it's existance, they are still on those forums/sites/etc, they are just not being counted by Google as link-juice passing entities.

So, to sum up: Google "link:" search operator is inaccurate, mozscape index is being updated every month, not every day, at the same time crawling only "surface" links, and disavow doesn't equal deletion.

Hope this helps!

Sorry for confusion

"End version" as end result people see in browser's address bar after all redirects.

If people type in "www.mysite.com" and it's being redirected to "mysite.com" - then "mysite.com" is end version.

If people type in "http://mysite.com" it redirects to "http://www.mysite.com" then to "https://www.mysite.com" - then "https://www.mysite.com" is end version.

If people type in "https://www.mysite.com" and you redirect them to "mysite.com" - "mysite.com" is end version.

Hope this helps.

For listings and GMT use the version, which is the "end" version for user.

Example:

For my website I use https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com. That's my "end" version,Https and www version, I want this version to be displayed in SERPs, listings etc. So, no matter what version you type in address bar (hyperlinksmedia.com, http://hyperlinksmedia.com, www.hyperlinksmedia.com, http://www.hyperlinksmedia.com,https://hyperlinksmedia.com) they all gonna be 301-redirected to https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com.

So, I use it in listings, if listings don't allow to use https://, I use next best thing, which is http://www.hyperlinksmedia.com.

And I use https www version in GMT. Because that's the version I want to track, since it's the "end product", I'm not interested in transitional steps.

Thanks! I have noticed that we pretty much don't have the keyphrase on a page anywhere. Work is going to be done on that for sure.

Now, you are talking about UX, but what about crawlers? that's what defines your rankings, pretty much, isn't it? When i look at our Google master tools "content keywords", "seo" is number 1, "Houston" is number 2. Also, we have "seo houston" phrases in html elements like alt tags, metas, titles etc.

So, I do agree that there is no "seo houston" phrase for human eye, however, there should be plenty for crawlers. Does that matter? Am I thinking in right direction?

Hello, fellow MOZers.

We are a web design company, and we had SEO as secondary service for years. Due to changes in the company we started pushing SEO as one of our main services about 6 monhs ago. We have separate page , targeting that service, as well as case studies, supportive information pages, even SEO Center, which is like a blog about SEO only. We are not using black hat SEO, doing honest link earning and building, don't use keyword stuffing, everything is by the book.

I understand that SEO takes time, especially for a company which has a footprint as web design company, not as SEO company. We are ranking very good for web design related keyphrases, however, we don't see any improvements for SEO related keywords. It always was and is between 25-30 SERP.

At the same time, competitors, who are ranking on first page for SEO related phrases are pretty bad looking. Design-wise as well as blackhat-SEO-wise. Everything is keyword stuffed, UX is horrible, prices are ridiculous.

So, do you guys have any thought/advise on how we can see results / why we are not seeing results.

Links:

Google search result: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=seo%20houston

Competitors: www.seohouston.com, www.graphicsbycindy.com

Our pages: https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston.php, https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/seo-houston/

Hi there.

Well, let's go step by step:

1. www vs non-www.

From SEO perspective It doesn't matter what version you link to, as long as you have proper 301 redirect from one version to another.

RewriteCond %{http_host} ^your-domain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.your-domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

This will assure that you wouldn't have duplicate content and will give Crawler Bots understanding what version of your website is "canonical". Just remember that "www" is technically subdomain. At the same time you can set preffered version of your website in Google Webmaster Tools. This will "tell" google how to display your website in Search Results.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en

2. GMT "no data available"

If you have added new version (http://, www, non-www, https://) of your website to GMT it will require some time to gather all information.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2571221?hl=en

3. MOZ different results

Make sure that you do have proper 301 redirect from www to non-www (or the opposite), if you just did it, it will take time for MOZ tools to recrawl and understand that. If redirect is proper you should see in Open Site Explorer a message like this (when you enter the version, which is supposed to be redirected):

You entered the URL http://your-domain.com which redirects to http://www.your-domain.com/.

Because it's likely to have more accurate metrics, we're showing data for the redirected URL instead.

Click here to analyze http://your-domain.com instead?

So, first, make sure you have redirect, then wait until it's recrawled. (You can request recrawl in GMT).

Hello, fellow MOZers.

Here is the question:

Is there any benefits/disadvantages of having pages, grouped by common type of service, to be put into subfolder with keyphrase-friendly phrase?

Example:

We have website https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/ and several services under "SEO" niche, such as:

• SEO (page name seo-houston.php)
• Social Media Marketing (page name social-media-marketing-houston.php)
• Email Marketing (page name email-marketing-houston.php)

So, is it better to have these pages in root directory like this:

• https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com**/seo-houston.php**
• https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com**/houston-social-media-marketing.php**
• https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com**/email-marketing-houston.php**

OR is it better to group them in subfolder "houston-seo-services" for "extra" keyword and convenience reasons like this:

• https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/**houston-seo-services**/seo-houston.php
• https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/**houston-seo-services**/social-media-marketing-houston.php
• https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/**houston-seo-services**/email-marketing-houston.php

Any thoughts will be appreciated. Thanks!

Mr. Rand himself! Wow

Thanks for the input! By the way, those first comments on that article are mine

Gonna read on the article you linked to, see what it says, while drinking soothing tea to come down my spammy-techniques-confused brain.

Cheers!

Saw it, read it. Want mooooore! Mua-ha-ha-haha!

Thanks!

Would you happen to have some similar studies or counter-studies on this subject?

Or links to such?

Hello, fellow MOZers.

I just read this article of this guy (not myself, I promise ) I never heard before:

http://stream-seo.com/churn-burn-backlinks-case-study/

According to him SUPER spam is actually helping, and, according to him again, google punguin didn't knock it down either.

It looks and sounds all very shady and salesy for all those tools he is mentioning (actually, not just mentioning, but linking to). At the same it looks impressive if it's true.

My thoughts are that it's falsified/buttered article, otherwise, if everything he says is true, we would see direct correlation between ranking position and number of backlinks (linking domains).

I've been struggling to resist the temptation to try some spammy techniques to get backlinks to see what happens, but, at the same time, my brain says not to be an idiot.

Thanks for a response.

Your answer does make sense, besides one thing:

We are paying MOZ for PRO subscription and instead of providing fully operational tool, I am being referred to other services?!

That's nice...

Everybody knows that GWT is very incorrect on many-many-metrics, ahrefs and majestic are not free (or at least not full versions of their tools). Hoping to get the most relevant results and SEO picture, we go with MOZ and that's what we get?! "Go check out other services"?

Shame... shame...

Hello, SEO brainiacs. Here is the problem I can't figure out:We have a lot of clients and all of them have local listings, such as Insider Pages, Yahoo local, Bing locals, Yelp, Yellow Pages etc etc etc.
And all of those local listing have company's website link. But none of those links are considered (found) in reports, such as opensite explorer or in Link Analysis Section of Moz PRO.

I do know that MOZ crawl considers only high DA websites, but all of local listing domains have above 80-90 DA score, so they can't be NOT crawled.

I will say that some local listings do appear on very few reports, but far not all of them.

So, what can be the problem?

When Moz shows pages that are 404's you are able to remove them after the issue is fixed. Is there a way to do this for missing Meta Descriptions? It shows that numerous pages are missing them, but when I go look, it's already been corrected and it is still showing months later.

Here is what i got after talking to moz-help people. Thanks to David Lee.

Sorry for the confusion! The pages are not returning a title due to the pages having a 301 re-direct at the time we crawled them which was in November. For any pages with a 301 we will not have any information for the title and we do not show re-directed URLs in the app. If we were to re-crawl the site we will be able to update the data to show the https links.

You can see back in December the site was still resolving the http version which had the 301 re-direct in place: https://web.archive.org/web/20140625093032/http://www.hyperlinksmedia.com/

There are some new links in the queue for us to re-crawl the site so you may see better information after our next index release. It can take 2-3 index updates for them to appear.

Hello, everybody.

I've noticed this strange thing in Top Pages reporting of Open Site Explorer. If i do a report for any website which doesn't have security certificate installed, such as http://www.hyperlinksmedia.com I get normal results, with title tag shown for every page, but, if i do a report for website with Security certificate, such as https://www.hyperlinksmedia.com, report is coming back for non-secure URL version (http:...), so, it says "No Title" for any pages. I wonder, if it influence PA and DA scores.

Although, if i run full crawl test, then i shows all meta and title tags for SSL version of a website's url.

Thanks!

I have heard that when doing a general search, the search engine will pull the results based on IP address. But what if that information is not available? Where does analytics pull that keyword information if there is no location associated with the keyphrase?

Looking for a discussion for using sitemap.xml

We have used them for years and I still see that Google has an area to submit your sitemap to but from everything I research, including Google, sitemaps seem to now-a-days be almost useless.

What do you think and what has your research shown?

Thanks everybody!

Charles Mazzini

From everything I have read, a sub domain is treated as an entirely different website.  So there is no good reason, as far as seo, to have a subdomain unless you simply want to separate your site info.  However, keep in mind that all search data is separate.