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Hi Rodney

There are two ways to look into this, Correlation and Causation.

Some Correlation seems to be there from what you've said, with the widget being added about the same time as your rankings dropped (though would likely need longer for the pages concerned to get re-crawled and any effect to be seen in the SERPS).

However I'd be extremely surprised if there was any Causation.  I've never experienced or heard of this particular AddThis widget or a similar social sharing widget to cause a websites' rankings to drop.

Likely nothing more than coincidence with the timing.

Have a look for any other correlations, check back over the past two or three weeks and if you've made any other changes or acquired any suspect links, look into those to see if they may have caused a drop in your rankings.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

That's a great answer from Marcus.

A blog post here on SEOmoz from last week entitled  "The Exact Match Domain Playbook: A Guide and Best Practices for EMDs"  is well worth a read too, check out the section towards the end, "A few things to consider for solving problems with EMD sites".

Regards

Simon

Hi Maria, this usually has absolutely no effect at all on SEO, though can't be completely sure without seeing it and your website. The main consideration with such pop ups is User Experience rather than SEO. Hope that helps, Simon

Hi Damien

The SEOmoz bot is  rogerbot

Check out  http://www.seomoz.org/dp/rogerbot

As for an IP Address, rogerbot is crawling from 'the cloud', so doesn't have a static IP address, it's constantly changing.  This is confirmed by Aaron Wheeler (SEOmoz Staff) as the last reply on this answer to a previous question.

I'd suggest checking to see if rogerbot is Disallowed in the robots.txt file

If not, chances are the website is simply not on rogerbot's radar yet.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Thanks Ryan. I like your more detailed answer on user experience, spot on!

Hi Zsolt

You'll find a blog post here on SEOmoz really useful, entitled "URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects - How Does It All Work" by Jennifer Sable Lopez (SEOmoz Staff).

There is a section on the '301 Redirect process', you may also find the first section 'URL Rewrites' helpful.

There are some useful links within, depending on whether you're using Apache or IIS.  The reason for the redirect and your technical environment will determine the most appropriate way.

RedirectMatch 301 /folder/filename.php http://www.domain.com/newlocation

is probably what you're after anyway going by your example in your question.

Also some really helpful information at http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Alexander, a good question.

I'm not sure it will benefit yourself or your visitors by adding in a State element such as FL to your URL structure. Main reason being 'semantic search', Google will know that FL means Florida and vice versa.

The actual decision probably lies with your keyword research, as in what the differences tend to be in search volumes between States and State Abbreviations for your main target keyword searches.

The shorter option without eg. FL looks neater from a user experience perspective, slightly easier to read. So long as you optimise the on-page well such as Titles, Descriptions, H1 tags etc then you'll be able to cater for both with the shorter URL.

Hope that helps, Regards, Simon

Hi Robert, thank you.

Indeed, it would be great to have some research to validate the actual answer, if indeed there is a definitive answer.

From reading my original answer and your reply above, it seems that we are both in general agreement that hyphens in domain names tend to have no bearing on SEO. User Experience is key to choosing the better option rather than SEO. We've just gone about explaining the same thing in a different way.

From my experience and knowledge, hyphens in a domain name have Zero Direct Impact on SEO and search rankings, they make no difference either way.

However, there are Usability factors such as User Engagement that do affect SEO; if having a hyphen in a domain name or not affects the click through rate one way or the other, that could well have a small part to play in the overall ranking algorithm, thus in search rankings.

Personally, like yourself, I like to see hyphens in domain names because it does often read better.

So to summarise, I believe there is No Direct Impact when it comes to hyphens in a domain name, however I believe there Is In-Direct Impact through User Experience factors.

With best regards,

Simon

Hi SEOPA

A good question. I can see two main options for you;

**1) **Have 1 physical home in a chosen category on your website for the product. List the product in the other category though point the URL of the menu item/link to the other category where it physically sits. So 2 separate listings for the product, though only 1 physical landing page for it. No duplicate content issues here, simply an extra navigation path which can benefit usability as the product fits within more than 1 category.

An example that I can relate to your question with regards to this option; on a site that I work with, we have 'buy to let insurance' under a property category and 'landlords insurance' within a business category. It's the same product, with the business category listing pointing to where the page actually sits, which is within the property category. This benefits visitors as the product applies to both property insurance and business insurance, this method aids user experience & easy navigation.

**2) **You've kind of answered this one already. The 'similar' product would have a Different Name within each category, with unique content. The product would be geared towards different audiences, so essentially, two different products both with unique content. So long as the navigation is clear and obvious for your visitors as to which one to view, I can't see any issues with this, other than page maintenance (am guessing there would be changes to make to both pages from time to time as the product changes/develops).

With this second method, you could potentially gear each product page towards different primary keywords, if indeed that's appropriate to do so.

• So either option can work well. Focus on the User Experience first and foremost, get that right, then optimize your chosen option for search.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi levalencia1

H1 tags are a ranking factor, though one of so many and have a very small direct impact on rankings.

Is still worth having an appropriate & relevant H1 tag though, perhaps more-so for User Experience than for SEO.

Ideally, H1 tags would be actual text rather than a logo or an image.  However so long as the logo/image has descriptive Alt Text (which it does in the example in your question, though maybe 'Printers & Printer Supplies' would be better than the brand name) then that's also fine.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi There,

A good question.

**1)  **Your example for Ted Baker based on a similar Title structure for your own site:

Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men's Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com

This is not an ideal title, it is spammy with all those mentions of 'Ted Baker' within, is too long and is simply not necessary, it's not good for Search and also it's not that good for User Experience/Readability.

So it's best to avoid these types of Titles

2) Your example from the SEOmoz blog post that you linked to:

Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org

This is a much better Title structure; it starts off with the main keywords/keyword phrase (great for search) followed by a descriptive title element based on what that actual page in question provides.

NB. The Domain Name/Business Name at the end is usually unnecessary for pages other than the homepage, about us page and contact page. In this example, it seems to repeat the domain name, a waste of valuable space and simply doesn't need a repeat of the domain name. Other than that, it appears to be a great Title tag for what I imagine the page is about.

What this better Title example in 2) above is getting at is Symantec Search.  This can be two things:

i) Words that are closely related (Collection and Collections) (Clothes and Clothing) are assumed to be the same thing, so if the search phrase contains e.g. Clothes, relevant pages optimized for Clothing can be returned in search results.

ii) Where words in a title are taken to form the phrase being searched on, as per your suggested example in your question (Ted Baker Mens Collection). The words don't have to appear in order, if they are close together, that can be good enough, so with a great Title, you'll be catering for many different versions of a similar search.

So to sum up, start replacing your current Title structure with the structure in that Blog Post (it's an old blog post, though still spot-on today) and in your question (and 2) in this answer).  From your question, it seems that you suspected this to be the better option of the two, which is most certainly is.

So that's an example structure of:

**Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008  **

as your new structure, for appropriate pages, without the domain/business name at the end for most pages.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Annie

I'm surprised there hasn't been lots of answers to your question.

Check-out this video here on SEOmoz entitled  "Whiteboard Interview - Google's Matt Cutts on Redirects, Trust + More" featuring Matt Cutts being asked some questions by Rand.  It opens with a partial answer to your first question:

"These days we use it a little less" (2 years ago)  ~  basically means that in locations such as the US, most of Europe, Japan... & so on, where Bandwidth is rarely an issue anymore, 'If-Modified-Since' isn't taken notice of, it's not worth including anymore.

In say developing countries where bandwidth is sometimes still on the low side, it may still be used, hence why a sweeping 'it doesn't matter anymore' statement wasn't given.

**Your second question:  **

• Content, fresh unique value-adding content that is, that's engaging and shareable, is always a positive aspect to work on, which in turn can lead to some awesome new links. This encourages the bots to visit more regularly.
• Ensuring that your site doesn't have any technical issues (say causing significant downtime).
• Ensuring that Robots.txt isn't wrongly disallowing any pages from being crawled.
• Keeping an eye on Google Webmaster Tools (& Bing Webmaster Tools) for any messages or errors.
• You can alter the crawl rate in GWT, though is usually best to leave it on the default auto setting.

Hope that helps,

Simon

Hi there,

You have a fab website dedicated to your son and his amazing progress, you must be very proud of the little chap.

Your question;  there is some tidying up required moving forwards.

An example of a good redirect that you have is:

www.noahsdad.com/  is being 301'd to  www.noahsdad.com

You apparently have 23 other pages being redirected from a version without  /  at the end to a version with  /  at the end, e.g. http://noahsdad.com/story  301'd to  http://noahsdad.com/story/

The main issue with redirects this way round (non / pointing to a page with / at the end) is that with inbound links, the vast majority will point to pages without  /  at the end, so you'll be loosing some link juice through the redirects.

However, you already have many links pointing to your pages with a  /  at the end, some of this link juice would be lost if those pages are redirected.  Though looking to the future, it could still be worth doing this sooner rather than later, so long as you try and request that your most valuable inbound links kindly have the  /  removed from the link, a time consuming process.

So an option is to remove the redirects that are in place, then 301 redirect the URLs with a  /  at the end to the corrosponding URLs without the  /  at the end.

You'll also need to update your sitemap.xml ( http://noahsdad.com/sitemap.xml ) to remove the  /  at the end of URLs once the 301 redirects are in place.

Over time, the URLs with a  /  at the end will disappear from search engine indexes.

So it's a calculated decision to make really, whether or not to change your Redirects around.  It will likely result in some ranking drops (and more importantly, some visitor reduction) in the short-term, however would likely be more beneficial to do so in the medium & long term.

I hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

Hi Catherine

It's still considered good practice to include a sitemap.xml though not always essential.

It's debatable as to whether or not it actually brings benefit to do so (likely does in some cases such as for dynamic sites and new sites) though as Webmaster Tools still has the facility to receive sitemap.xml files through a submission, is usually good to spend a little time creating one. One more tick in the box for on-site SEO.

A good read on this topic can found at  http://www.brilliantthinking.net/2012/05/22/benefits-of-a-google-xml-sitemap/

Hope that helps,

Simon

A great answer from Ryan.  The subdomain route can provide a better seamless user experience than the entirely different domain option.

The only thing I'd add is to consider what to name the subdomain if that ends up being your chosen option.

E.G.  mobile.playpoker.com  or  m.playpoker.com

Many (though not all) opt for the shorter option of just an m rather than the full word mobile.

Regards

Simon

Hi Bob

On the SEO side, keywords in domain names don't directly matter as much as they used to, especially with Google. That's the general consensus these days.

On the Usability side, it still helps if there is a keyword or two in the domain name, it helps with that remember-ability as you mentioned plus can help with Click Through Rates if it 'does what it says on the tin'.

What the keyword(s) is depends largely on whether Brand or Product/Service is your most important selling point.

If 'Bob Weikel' is your brand that you'd like to be the main selling point, then include those words.

If 'Health Coach' is what you'd like to be foremost known for, then go for that.

And of course, your suggestion of  'bobweikelhealthcoach.com'  includes both brand and service and isn't too long, though more difficult to remember perhaps than either or.  Perhaps drop the Bob and become known as 'w****eikelhealthcoach.com' as a suggestion.

There's no definitive right or wrong, it's what best matches your business purpose & goals.

If you haven't already read it, have a read of a Domain Guide here on SEOmoz which may help you further.

I hope all that does help you out,

Regards

Simon