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I'm a Moz member, mostly just lurk, and love the Moz community. I work at a non profit company that does benchmarking data and helps school districts improve process in education. Our building flooded and our site is currently offline, is there anything we can do to stop/lesson any SEO page rank drop between now and when we are back up? We have worked very hard to get these rankings. I know it is minor compared to all tragedy in Houston, but we have worked hard to get these SEO gains (YEAH MOZ!) and I'd hate to lose them because of Harvey. Any suggestions, assistance appreciated! Ralph

I'd like to be able to easily track blog posts by month but in Google reports when you set a date range obviously older blog post still appear and with amount of blog posts we generate without seeing the date in the title it's not obvious what was published and when it was published. For example if a Blog Title was "/dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge-01-11-15 would it hurt SEO? The reason is I'd like to have a quick way to know how new posts do each month compared to older content

Over this past weekend Google switched the page which usually showed in search results for keyword benchmarking. It went from from http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking to http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking-portal/osb. Also on Google the Rankings for the keyword 'benchmarking' sank from 15 to 47 for http://www.apqc.org/benchmarking Just looking for some theories or ideas or anyone that has had this happen to them.

For some reason Google is not pulling the meta description for one of our key pages. Instead it just takes the first sentence from the page which makes the description horrible. Why would it be doing this if the meta tag field is populated?

We are a member based company. Membership is by business not individual. So for instance if your widget business is a member anyone with a [email protected] email address can sign up and use all our content, portals, etc. I want to take emails and figure out if they are on Twitter. I know Twitter allows you to search your contact list but this wouldn't be that. It would be a list of emails I create. Are there any tools or suggestions to do this in a efficient way besides searching each individual name on Twitter? Thanks for the help.

The person in my position previously had quite a few paid directories our site was listed on. What is the best resources you guys have used or know of to figure out which ones are good to keep? For instance one that is up for renewal this week is site-sift.com. I know the person previous to me did some not so ethical stuff and I'm trying to clean up messes. Any advice on directories would be much appreciated.

I need to do a voice of customer survey on one of our key webpages. It's  basic questionnaire of why did you come here today, did you complete your task, etc. The company we were using last time Ipercetion has gone up tremendously in price and I was looking for another vendor with same attributes of easy to build survey and simple code that can be put on page easily. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Where I work we use Cogix to do in-depth surveys and I'd like to do as much indepth tracking of the survey as possible. My code experience in Analytics setting up code and tracking events is limited but my IT department could help if I knew which direction to go in. Basically what I want to do is on a survey we have like this http://surveys.apqc.org/ViewsFlash2/servlet/viewsflash?cmd=page&pollid=OSBC!HCM_Recruiting_2013 What is the best way to set up tracking so I could know where they abandon survey? Would it be event tracking or something else?

If you have a Top ranking for keyword in Google but for Bing and Yahoo you rank considerably lower how do you balance the desire to rank better in Yahoo/Bing with not wanting to damage your Google ranking? Have people found certain on page SEO tactics help one but damage the other? Does anyone else have great Google rankngs for keywords but Bing/Yahoo are mediocre to poor?

For a conference page marketing built the meta tag didn't have correct year and date of the conference. I updated and used webmaster tools submit to index to try and get it updated in google search quickly but meta tag has not updated. Are there other avenues to get this corrected?

New to company in SEO and they wanted a page to rank high for certain term : knowledge management on this page: http://www.apqc.org/knowledge-management Ran SEO Moz optimizer and did suggested changes. Moved score to A and ranking was on google first page but now it's dropped considerably last 2 months as the bounce rate has gone through the roof. I'm at my wits end and don't want the higher ups on me for the drop. I'm not sure what to try next.

I've seen this question asked a few times, but I haven't found a definitive answer.  I'm quite surprised no one from Google has addressed the question specifically. I ran across this post the other day and it piqued my interest: http://www.datadial.net/blog/index.php/2011/04/13/special-characters-in-meta-descriptions-the-beboisation-of-google/ If you're able to make your result stand out by using stars, smiley faces, TM symbols, etc it would be a big advantage.  This is in use currently if you search for a popular mattress keyword in Google.  It really is amazing how the special characters draw your attention to the title.  You can also see the TM and Copyright symbols if you search for "Logitech Revue"   Radioshack is using these characters in their adwords also. Has anyone found any definitive answers to this?  Has anyone tracked CTR and long-term results with special characters in title or description tags? Any chance of getting penalized for using this? As a follow-up, it looks like you could also put check symbols into your meta-description tags.  That has all kinds of interesting possibilities. http://www.seosmarty.com/special-symbols-wingdings-for-social-media-branding-twitter-linkedin-google-plus/

It's my understanding that adding a nofollow tag to pages that aren't of significance to users can help with page shaping and directing google to the most important links on my home page. I have 4 links on my home page that I'm considering adding a nofollow tag to: Privacy Policy, Legal Policy, Anti-Trust Policy, and Help-Desk Because these links are in the footer on every page I think they're probably sucking up some useful link juice.  It's doubtful that anyone would actually search for our privacy policy or legal policy to find our site.  I'd rather the juice to spread to other pages of use. What do you guys recommend?

So i just discovered that a site I now managae has a .com version - as well as the .org version that is the one everyone knows about! I'm guessing this is not a good thing... So the whole site eg www.abc.org/example has a mirror page www.abc.com/example.... What should I do about this?    Is it really bad to have 2 versions out there? Thanks!

Hi there, When I did a redesign a few years ago, I had it in my mind that site links in 3 or 4 columns at the bottom of the home page, and every other page, would be good for SEO.  Having links to interior pages using keywords and phrases from the home page and all that…. I think this might now be outdated thinking?  As long as there are some links from the home page to important interior pages to pass link juice that is what matters?  Google might not even looks at links in the footer?  Is this correct? Thoughts? Thanks so much!

Hi there, We have a content  database as part of our site and I noticed that the way the database is loaded with new content, it means that the URL’s for these pages are really long, around 100 characters or sometimes more http://www.xxxyy.org/knowledge-base/documents/word1-word2-word3-word4-word5-word6-word7-word8 Is there a suggted maximum character length for a URL?  Kind of like for title tag where I max out at 69… Should I truncate the URL’s or at least reduce the numbers of words in them to something less spammy?  Does that make a difference? Thanks!

Hello,
When I do an OSE back link analyses of some sites that are listed in some directories we are considering, for almost all the directories and companies in them, the directories are listed in the OSE report, listed as followed, and usually have decent domain rank and page rank. So this means that the link from the directory is obviously being picked up by OSE and it’s listed as a followable link. My question is just because the link is picked up by OSE does that mean that the search engines value it too?  Or could Google see the link ok but throw it out of the equation, presumably because it does not “like” the directory? Hope this makes sense
Thanks!

Hi there, We have some keywords that are ranked so far apart on the search engines its puzzling. For example we have keywords ranked at say 10, 9, 7 etc  on Google, not in top 50 on Bing or Yahoo.  Stuff like that. Surely the algorithms can’t be that far apart?  Is this indeed normal?  Does anyone have the same issues? Thanks

3 things : 1. Does Google factor in overall site traffic in rankings?  So for 2 sites, all other things being pretty much equal, the one with higher traffic will be listed higher? 2. Does this logically imply that sites with lower traffic overall face an uphill struggle to be ranked highly??? 3. As an extension to this, would it be true to say that by increasing site traffic, say with Google Adwords or other online or offiline or whatever advertising, that might help get higher SEO rankings??? Thanks so much for your responses.  This forum is great!

So we know that links from highly ranked websites, pages with high DA, PR etc, matter.  What about the traffic on these links?  Do Google and others look at the traffic on the links and factor that into the algorithm?  What do people think about this? Just wondering about this as don’t see it talked about much….Thanks

Does anyone know if it is still worth it  getting a link from a page on a site with a really low Page Authority  - say a news page on a site that has an SEO Moz tool bar PA of  just 1 or 2, but the domain of the site has a high DA like say 83 Is this worth getting?? Thanks

I have found a bunch of around maybe 20-30 directories that we seem not to be in, and that seem like they might be worth it from what I am reading… My question is  - is it a problem to submit to this number of directories all at once – i.e. within the same week or 2? Or should I think about spreading the submissions around a month or 2? Just worried that Google etc might through a flag with a bunch of submissions all at once… Thanks

Thoughts on ScrubTheWeb.com and SearchSight.com ? would directories like these be a good idea?  We are a b to b company... Thanks!

Hi there, I just started using the pro tool 6 weeks or so ago.   I have done all the on page optimization I can and am starting to think more about building links to my site. What I want to know is how important are directories as part of this link building program? Should I treat doing an audit of what directories we are in, identifying what ones we should be in, and actually signing up for these ones as an important and vital part of the link building program? So basically how important are directories?  We are a b 2 b business if that helps.I am kind of assuming directories are (still) important and that we should spend some time on this, but just wanted to get some expert thoughts on directories, approach to use etc etc.     I reckon it should be easier than other link building, as we can at least pay a fee and get in the directory, so it’s less a case of someone doing us a favor as other links sometimes seem to  be….

If a site has a bunch of 404’s that are basically old URL’s that no longer work and point to pages or documents that don’t exist anymore -  Can someone clarify if it’s a problem when fixing a bunch of these 404’s to point them all to the home page? so if there is not really anywhere else that is applicable for the old broken URL, is it really a problem to 301 old pages to the site home page? I have read some different things on this recently on some different sites, so I just wondered what the latest thinking on this was….thanks...

What are the characteristics of a Google penalty - i.e. how do you know by looking at the rankings for your keywords? Do all keywords that you had previously ranked for fall from say top 5 to nowhere? Do you disappear from SERP for a branded keyword? Or something else?? Basically how do you know if you have been penalized? Thanks

So for the past 3 or 4 weeks or so I’ve been making some on page tweaks for keywords that we should rank for, implementing all the keyword recommendations, and  getting “A’s” in the report card for page optimization in the Pro tool, and also doing things like fixing a bunch of 404’s that I found ….so I thought I was doing a bang up job… My rankings for some keywords were generally trending (slowly) in the right direction, but this morning I see that 2 important keywords that I had been working hard on, and which had trended from around 40 to in the high 20’s in rankings, has now dropped out of top 50 altogether…. I’m a little dispirited, and now wondering if I did something wrong?  Any thoughts or recommendations?   Is it normal just to drop out of top 50 when you were in the 20's or 30's? Thanks!

Anyone  know if its important that the target keyword is used AT THE START of the meta description, or is it enough that it is anywhere in the description...? I have a few big ones that are at the end of the description and I was wondering if I should move them up to the front... Thanks!

Hi All, So once you use OSE Tool to point you in the right direction of sites that might be able to give you links, what are the best practices for then reaching out to the website?  I get that you need to give value in your request for a link and offer something of value – but what else to think about?? Ie Call them, email them, email who?  Follow up with phone call??? Do you just use the standard contact form on their website?  Presumably you need to track all this, just do it in a spreadsheet? What do you say in the email?  Do you offer them a link (if you can?) I guess it’s a thing that sounds easy enough – go get a link – but I would imagine that people who have done this enough with some success can maybe share some of the things that particularly worked or did not work… At the moment it just seems a daunting  / time consuming task  - even thinking of getting an intern to help do all this – pros and cons to that as well??? Thanks for your time!

So I have spend around a month or so with on page optimization on 25 -30 or so pages and keywords/phrases, with some half decent results…still hoping there is more to come… I reckon now it’s time to look at getting more inbound links with Open site Explorer… Every time I look at it though I get a bit of a head ache…! Can anyone say or point me in the right direction how I should really start using Open site Explorer ?  (I have the PRO tool) Thanks, sorry its such a simple question!

Has anyone typed in a phrase in Google and seen their listing on the SERP, but the page title on the Google SERP  is not what the CMS is set to ? Ie the page title in the SERP is not what is expected?  Something related to the company, but not what is set on the CMS… Very odd – has anyone seen something like this before?  What could be causing it?  Is there a way to change it?

Notice more sites have an "in the News" section on the home page, or something similar like press releases... Apart from providing users fresh content, is there an SEO value to this?  What is the explanation for this? Have a feeling the answer is obvious but just not too sure Thanks a lot.

Once you do an optimise / make some (hopefully positive!) changes to pages re keywords etc - how long does it take for you to move up the rankings  - if indeed you do actually  move up... I made some changes last week and see some slight movement this monday - can I expect more of a movement over a period of a few weeks?  Or does it take longer? Maybe tricky question to answer  but hopefully you know what I mean...

Hi there, I have chosen a keyword for a bunch of my top pages based on relevance, traffic, competition etc, and am tracking in the Tool - so far so good. The issue I am having is with picking a keyword or phrase for the home page - all the suitable keywords I seem to have been allocated to 1 particular sub pages - basically product pages... Anyone come across this issue?  Basically any keyword or phrase that I think might be suitable for the home page, I find a more precise page beneath the home page.... Help gratefully accepted!

I asked this before, but did not really get an answer, so checking again. Really grateful for any help... My question is: Based on the PRO crawl Diagnostics – if we don’t make a  recommended change on say 1 rather obscure page, does that just affect the SEO on that one page only, or does it potentially affect the SEO on all (more important) pages of the site? e.g. home page etc E.g. If we get a “Too many on page links” for a certain page that we don’t really want to rank for – does not fixing that particlaur page really affect the SEO for the site as a whole?  Or just that 1 page (that I don't really care too much about) Hope someone is able to answer, thanks so much...

Or should you just stick to 1 page, 1 keyword all the time? If you do 2, are there any things you should watch out for? Thanks

For those familiar with this in Drupal - is this worth doing? It seems to be a setting that affects the priority of a URL compared to others on the site.  It's set to a default of 0.5 but you can increase up to 1.0 I think. Anyone know about this? thanks

Based on the PRO crawl Diagnostics – if we don’t make a change on 1 page, does that just affect the SEO on that one page, or does it affect the SEO on all pages of the site? E.g. If we get a “Too many on page links” for a certain page that we don’t really want to rank for – does not fixing that particlaur page affect the site as a whole? Hope I explained this ok..