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We recently found our site had 65,000 tags (yes 65K). In an effort to consolidate these we've started deleting them. MOZ is now reporting a heap of 404 errors for tag pages. These tag pages should not have links to them so not sure how come they're being crawled. Any suggestions from experience in this area would be useful.

Hi Moz,

We are currently doing SEO for a hand therapy company called the Hand Therapy Group. They rank well, however, one competitor, Sydney Hand Therapy, is ranking higher than them for the term "hand therapy Sydney" (which is one of our highly focused keywords) with three different URLs (their home page, contact page and about page) despite the latter two pages have no backlinks.

I understand why Google might see their homepage as being more relevant because their name is Sydney Hand Therapy (even though the Hand Therapy Group have more backlinks) but why do the other two URLs rank so well?

Any help/info/advice would be brilliant!

Cheers!

What are people calling proposals, pitches & presentations these days?

When someone requests a proposal from us (often for a website & digital strategy) we send 2 documents: A proposal, which is the nuts and bolts - and an accompanying presentation - which goes over our process in a more general manner: our approach to web design, our approach to SEO, digital marketing etc... basically our slick schtick...

What are the terms people use for this type of document or document combo - the proposal and the presentation?

Hello Mozzers

So generally its said that when a site receives a penalty from Google - it's obvious - you can't miss it...

But does google apply minor penalties (say dropping 5-10 places for one not so great link)

One particular campaign we've been working pretty hard - really great stuff - all white hat techniques - but there were a couple of links I wasn't 100% sure on - but got them any way as I guessed that the effect of them, if not positive, would be neutral at worse... (The sites wen't obvious spam sites but just seemed 'not great')

Recently after, we dropped around 8 place for our main keyword ranking. It's not a very competitive space. Is this likely just standard inexplicable fluctuation, or is there such thing as minor penalties or restrictions?

Cheeers

Hi,

That would primarily depend on the goals of the sites / sub-domains.

Hey Mozzers

Hoping to get some opinions on SEO at a small business level.

We're engaged in SEO for a number of clients which are small businesses (small budgets). We stick to strictly white hat techniques - producing decent content (and promoting it) and link building (as much as is possible without dodgy techniques/paying huge sums).

For some clients we seem to have hit a ceiling about with rankings anywhere between roughly position #5 - #15 in Google.

In the majority of cases - the higher ranking clients don't appear to be engaged in any kind of content marketing - often have much worse designed websites - and not particularly spectacular link profiles (In other words they're not hugely competitive - apart from sometimes on the AdWords front - but that's another story)

The only difference seems to be links on agency link farms - you know the kind? Agency buys expired domains with an existing PR - then just builds simple site with multiple blog posts that link back to their clients sites. (Also links that are simply paid for)

Obviously these sites serve no purpose other than links - but I guess it's harder for Google to recognize that than with obvious SEO directories etc?...

It seems to me that at this level of SEO for small businesses (limited budgets, limited time) the standard approach for SEO is the "expired domains agency link sites" described above - and simply paying bloggers for links.

Are the above techniques considered black hat? Or are they more grey-hat? - Are they risky? - Or is this kind of thing all in the game for SEO at the small business level (by that I mean businesses that don't have the budget to employ a full time SEO and have to rely on engaging agencies for low level - low resource  SEO campaigns)

Look forward to your always wise council...

The campaign is yes but we're not sure about the data here. Can it be relied on?

HI MOZ!

A client has asked us to set up their campaigns to help serve ads at the most relevant times of the day based on analytical data. Is there a tool that shows show queries based on time of day?

Thanks!

Hey Mozers,

This is an old and often criticized method of SERP however we have a client who has requested we create suburb specific pages for their site.

PLASTIC PLANTS "SUBURB" NEED PLASTIC PLANTS IN "SUBURB"

They have shown us a competitor who is ranking for hundreds maybe thousands of suburbs in Australia using this method.

Any thoughts or experience in this area would be appreciated.

So that sort of thing is actually going on?

The best approach would be to treat your site like a blog so that each video has the opportunity to be found on it's own merit. you can setup catagories of course so that people can search and filter that way too. Without seeing the site the question is a little too simplistic I could be easily missing something here but I can't imagine a huge home page with hundreds of videos being very user friendly. UX is a crucial part of good SEO.

We've found (and I'd love someone else to verify this) that there is some invisible meta data in JPEGs when they are first created. The name of the JPEG before it's placed in a site seems to have a significant effect on rankings in some cases. Have a play with some meta data editors and see if that makes a difference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_metadata_editors

Hi there!

It's not uncommon for positions to seem like they are stuck for weeks or even months. We've simplified this step by using open site explorer to study the competition who rank higher than us and see why. We call this a term ceiling and it's based on MANY factors but the good news is one good link can help you break through that ceiling. Hope that helps.

This is probably the most basic of SEO questions which no SEO I've yet met can answer. Analyzing a keyword for a client with the Basic SERP report reveals a lot but at the same time not enough. The term Logo Design (yes bad I know) shows at least 50 companies spending hard on SEO but there is no too in MOZ that can actually tell you why someone with less PA, less links, less DA actually ranks higher than someone else.

Surely you guys out there face this quandary all the time. The why? When you've exhausted everything what do you tell a client? Your numbers and your authority is better than the competition but they still rank higher!

Hey,

Just wondering what tools people recommend for finding out trending content on social media?

Thanks

Why do you want to delete them? Not sure how this is a Moz related questions to be honest. Might be better for a web dev forum.

For quite some time now Google and other search engines has cared way less about the domain and focused a lot more on brand integrity. That's why MOZ exists!! Because so many of the other factors rate so much higher than your domain. I have found that with a solid brand and good content the most obscure domain can rank.

Completely drop the whole URL / mirror idea and focus on what matters most: branding / UX and content.

Thanks guys I'll wait until the month cycles through and see if anything has changed.

Hello,

Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories...

Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway.

Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this

Thanks!

Hi Ben are they 202 or 404?