Hi Shebin,

The best thing to do is email the Help team direct - help [at] seomoz.org

I had a campaign with a similar issue a while back and the Help team sorted it out for me very quickly.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Perfect!

Glad to hear it's all fixed

Hi Daniel,

The first thing you need to do is to find the definition of the container that “this” is built out of and then add an element called metaDescription.

This will create an empty string until you populate it elsewhere.

Now where you want metaDescription shown, you just use

<title><?= $this->metaDescription ?></title> (replace metaTag with metaDescription).

Next, you need to search your code for the place where metaTag is assigned and add an assignment for metaDescription which can be whatever you want it to be ie a substring etc.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Daniel,

Whenever I hear "Nothing is redirecting when I add this to the .htaccess file" I have one thought:

Is the site using Joomla, Drupal or some other CMS that will overwrite .htaccess rules externally?

Sha

There are social sharing possibilities available with Tumblr that can help SEO wise, as well as domain authority benefits that come with links from the blog to your existing site.

Andrew Dumont just wrote a post about changing from Wordpress to Tumblr for his personal blog.

As with everything it is a personal decision, but if I were forced to have a separate blog anyway, I think I would most likely go with Tumblr, unless there is some compelling reason to build a new domain from scratch.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Glad to be of help

One of the things I worry about most in SEO is changing things for the sake of change ... I've learned the hard way to take a breath and think before reacting. It's a hard lesson to learn, but it can be really satisfying when you discover that you made the right decision.

Hi Bill,

I assume when you say "I do email my list with each new blog post" that you are bulk emailing your established readers, to let them know you have posted since I can't see an RSS subscribe button on the site.

The fact is that established readers for the most part don't need to read anything more than the post you are telling them about in your email. They have most likely already read any other material on your site that interests them.

It is well known that blogs with significant numbers of subscribers often have high Analytics bounce rates for this reason. The data to focus on is sources of your traffic. Do you have a large proportion of referral or direct (type-in) traffic?

The thing to remember is that the bounce rate reported in Analytics is not the same as "real bounce rate" determined independently by the engines. "Real bounce rate" takes into account time on page. I would think it most unlikely that you will see any negative impact in Google or Bing with the time on page numbers you are quoting.

My most constructive advice would be:

1. Check to see exactly what percentage of your traffic is coming from search as opposed to referrals/type-ins
2. Stop messing with things to try to fix what isn't really broken - sooner or later it will hurt you.

The other comments here about the "look" of the site are probably valid - the style does bear a resemblance to some "sales letter" type sites, but on the other hand, you do have a lot of content and it sounds like a good number of happy readers. I would think carefully about any changes you make.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Thanks Ryan,

It's the part of my former life that seems to follow me around, so it's a good way for me to satisfy my overwhelming urge to copy edit everything on the internet!

Sha

Hi Fredrik,

I took a look at the site you have listed in your profile - you might want to add an "s" to "cost" in the text beneath your logo

It looks as though your main problems are spelling, typos and the odd runaway train of thought!

I'm not big on shameless plugs, but will post this one anyway since the link actually includes a "first page or post free" offer for SEOmoz Pro Members.

The site is Little MisSpeller (apologies to anyone offended by the self-promotion). You'll find a short description of appropriate skills and experience there.

As Ryan mentioned, there are a lot of services out there and it is really a matter of finding the one that will work best for you.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi John,

http://www.ixl.com/ is returning a 302 Redirect Status from the server - ie there is a 302 redirect in place

Also, http://ixl.com returns a 301 Redirect - when opened in a browser it redirects to http://au.ixl.com

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Karen,

There are a long list of URLs in your site which, although they do (eventually) load in a browser, appear to be returning a Status of 0 - Connection Timeout.

It is well recognized that Bing crawlers are very sensitive to URLs in sitemaps that return significant numbers of errors. In this case it appears that the crawler may be encountering pages in the site that it sees as unfetchable.

The majority of these URLs are in the following format - http://www.showme.com/sh/?i=36999 (this is one of them), although this one also returns the same result http://www.showme.com/topic/Geography

If you download the Screaming Frog tool from screamingfrog.com and run it, you will see the list of files that are returning this status.

It appears that the amount of time these pages are taking to load is causing a problem for some crawlers.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi GaB,

Sorry, I missed your reference to the URL changes in the original question.

It will depend on exactly what the changes are as to how many Rules will be needed to create the 301 redirects.

If you are retaining file names, but moving whole directories to a new location, then this can be achieved with a single Rule.For example, to 301 Redirect all filenames in Useless Folder 1 to the identical filenames in Relevant Folder 2 can be achieved with a single Rule.

For URLs where the actual filenames will change, or where only some files are relocated you would need to implement individual Rules for each URL.

However, if your site is large, there is another alternative, provided that your URL structure supports it. That would be the use of Database Rewrites to implement the 301 redirects as URL's are requested from the server.

There are some requirements for this to be a viable option:

• There must be a Database behind your site infrastructure
• There must be some identifier in the URLs that will remain constant with the change in site structure. Most commonly this would be a unique product ID number or  product name

Basically what happens with Database Rewrites is that when the server receives a request for a URL, the identifier is matched against those in the Database and when the match is found the 301 Redirect is written and the new URL served.

For very large sites Database Rewrites would be the most suitable solution as very long lists of Rules in the .htaccess will eventually impact processing and load times.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Dennis,

SEOmoz will track rankings for all of the pages crawled within the root domain or subdomain that you have entered for your campaign, so the answer is NO.

If you are seeing different results when you check rankings manually in Google, you need to keep in mind that the SEOmoz Ranking report provides non-personalized results. Also, the way in which embedded local results appear in the SERPs will affect the result. When they are normal results with enhanced local listing they are counted.  If they appear in a 6,8, or 12 pack they are not counted. While Google continues to experiment with local listings, the SEOmoz team continues to respond with updates.

Hope that helps,

Sha

PS - If you want to optimize different pages for your keywords using the On-page Analysis tool, you can click "Report Card" in the On-page tool. You will see a selector at the top where you can type in any URL and choose any keyword from your list.

Hi Volkinator,

The 5XX Error is a generic error message which means that the crawler encountered an Internal Server Error. You will need to check your server logs for information that will point you to the source of the error - generally this will be a server software error that needs fixing. If you don't have the expertise to do this you will need to ask your Techs or Server administrator to fix it for you.

The Overly Dynamic URL notice is a Warning, rather than an Error. This is intended to bring to your attention the fact that these URL's contain more than 2 parameters. While search engines can crawl dynamic URL's, representatives of some search engines have advised that the inclusion of more than 2 parameters may negatively impact their ability to crawl. The Warning is provided by the SEOmoz Pro App so that you have the opportunity to correct the situation if you wish, however this may not always be possible. It is essentially your choice whether you pursue a fix for this one or not. Generally, if you have a small number of URLs with this problem it is probably not going to have a huge effect on your site. However, if the URL's concerned happen to be those related to your most important products or services, then you may want to get them fixed.

The 302 Redirect notice is also a Warning rather than an error. The main reason for highlighting them is to make you aware that they are not passing link value from page to page. If you have redirected the URLs with the intention that they will always point to the new URL, you should consider changing them to 301 Redirects as this will allow link value to flow from page to page. One reason for a lot of 302 Redirects on an ecommerce site may be that Buy buttons are set up to 302 redirect instead of using standard links. If yours is an ecommerce site and you have a lot of 302's this could be the reason.

Also a Warning, the Too Many On-page Links notice is telling you that there are more than 100 links on the page.

The explanation at the top of the page when you click the button to see the URLs in question is probably the best way of explaining. Here it is:

"You should avoid having too many (roughly defined as more than 100) hyperlinks on any given page. When search engine spiders crawl the Internet they are limited by technology resources and are only able to crawl a certain number of links per webpage. In addition, search engine algorithms divide the value of some popularity metrics by the amount of links on a given page. This means that each of the pages being linked to from a given page are also affected by the number of links on the linking page. For these reasons, we recommend you include less than 100 links per page to ensure that they are all crawled, though if your pages have a high page authority, search engines will usually follow more links."

The most important part of this is the watering down of link value, but sometimes extensive navigation will mean that you are more prone to having more than 100 links on the page. Once again, it is your decision as to whether you accept the issue as sub-optimal, but unavoidable, or whether you pursue a fix.

Hope that helps

Sha

Hi Sonja,

It sounds like you are referring to issues with pagination within your site.

The rel=next and rel=previous tags were recently made available to address this situation.

Here is an explanation of how to implement the rel=next & rel=previous tags from the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi William,

Of course your take on what is ideal (and Sparkplug's) is totally correct, but my guess, given that the recommendation is not to move the entire site to the LAMP setup, is that they are faced with a bit of a catch 22.

Obviously without knowing the exact situation it is only a guess, but I would be betting that the main site is inextricably tied to Windows technology which makes it either impossible or cost-prohibitive to switch platforms. If that is the situation, then the proposed solution would be the best option if you definitely require a Wordpress installation.

The obvious alternative, since the blog would be separate anyway, would be to set up a Tumblr blog with links back to the main site.

Sha

Hi Sonja,

Adding the meta noindex tag will instruct the search engine to remove the URL from the index.

In almost every case I would recommend using noindex, follow as this will allow link juice to continue to flow to other pages within your site.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi,

My first impression is that your existing site is under windows hosting and your developers' advice is aimed at ensuring that your Wordpress installation is on a LAMP system. This makes total sense.

While it is possible to install and run Wordpress on Windows, the preferred option would always be to use standard LAMP hosting as there are things in WP that will not work as they should with Windows hosting. Most notable of the things that will be a problem is URL rewriting. Running WP on Windows requires a high level of expertise and is likely to require ongoing work, hacks etc over time.

In contrast, Wordpress can be installed and self-managed with great success on a LAMP system.

On the whole I would say that the solution recommended by your developers would be less frustrating and way less expensive than installing WP in a Windows environment (for both you and your developers).

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Alexandre,

You will need to look at the code in the .htaccess file generated by All in One SEO to see whether the plugin is just using URL rewriting or creating 301 redirects. As far as I am aware, that particular plugin does not have an option to manually stipulate when you wish to create a 301, but the only sure way is to check the code.

You will need to go into your wordpress /blog directory and download the .htaccess file, then open it in a text editor (like notepad). This is a separate .htaccess file, specifically relating to what happens within your wordpress installation.The one in the root folder for your site will not tell you what you are wanting to know.

I don't use All In One SEO as I prefer the Yoast plugin, but typically, what you might expect to see is code that looks something like this:

BEGIN WordPress

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule>

END WordPress

The key to identifying whether the plugin is using standard URL rewrites or creating a 301 Redirect is to look at the very last part of the Rule - the part that is enclosed in square brackets [ ]

A plain vanilla flavored standard URL Rewrite Rule will end with [L]

If the Rule is creating a 301 (Permanent) Redirect, it will end with [R=301,L]

and for a 302 (Temporary) Redirect, it will end with [R=302,L]

As far as your question, which I understand to be asking essentially, "what is the difference" between the two:

• A standard URL Rewrite is simply instructing the server that any request for a certain URL  should be served a different URL. As far as the search engine is concerned, nothing changes. It is simply used to change the ugly URL to a pretty URL (in your case one that contains the keywords you want).

• A 301 redirect serves the alternative URL, but also sends a signal to the search engine that the URL requested has been permanently replaced with the one that is served. This indicates to the search engine that the requested URL should be removed from the index and replaced with the URL that is served. A 301 redirect also signals to the search engine that most of the link value being passed to the requested URL should now be passed to the URL that replaces it in the index.

Hope that helps,

Sha

Hi Alexandre,

You will need to look at the code in the .htaccess file generated by All in One SEO to see whether the plugin is just using URL rewriting or creating 301 redirects. As far as I am aware, that particular plugin does not have an option to manually stipulate when you wish to create a 301, but the only sure way is to check the code.

You will need to go into your wordpress /blog directory and download the .htaccess file, then open it in a text editor (like notepad). This is a separate .htaccess file, specifically relating to what happens within your wordpress installation.The one in the root folder for your site will not tell you what you are wanting to know.

I don't use All In One SEO as I prefer the Yoast plugin, but typically, what you might expect to see is code that looks something like this:

BEGIN WordPress

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule>

END WordPress

The key to identifying whether the plugin is using standard URL rewrites or creating a 301 Redirect is to look at the very last part of the Rule - the part that is enclosed in square brackets [ ]

A plain vanilla flavored standard URL Rewrite Rule will end with [L]

If the Rule is creating a 301 (Permanent) Redirect, it will end with [R=301,L]

and for a 302 (Temporary) Redirect, it will end with [R=302,L]

As far as your question, which I understand to be asking essentially, "what is the difference" between the two:

• A standard URL Rewrite is simply instructing the server that any request for a certain URL  should be served a different URL. As far as the search engine is concerned, nothing changes. It is simply used to change the ugly URL to a pretty URL (in your case one that contains the keywords you want).

• A 301 redirect serves the alternative URL, but also sends a signal to the search engine that the URL requested has been permanently replaced with the one that is served. This indicates to the search engine that the requested URL should be removed from the index and replaced with the URL that is served. A 301 redirect also signals to the search engine that most of the link value being passed to the requested URL should now be passed to the URL that replaces it in the index.

Hope that helps,

Sha