Questions created by AlanMosley
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Google Analytics underreporting
I have a site selling items, I use paypal buttons and get a report using ipn back from paypal telling me when I have sold a item. I also have a Google analytics event setup on the button, and one on the confirmation page.
Reporting & Analytics | | AlanMosley
For example in the last few days I have sold over 10 items from the website, but have only 2 events from the button and none from the confirmation page. The confirmation page depends on the user getting redirected back from PayPal so I can see that being upper reported, but there is no way you can buy without clicking the button.
I have the chrome addon from google to debug your analytics code and it fires every time.
The figures seem to report only about 20% of events over a long period of time. If it was not working at all, I could assume I have not set things up correctly but this is not the case, I get a regular flow of events but at about 205 of sales.
I am very disappointed with GA, seems a waste of time. anyone else had the same expirence?0 -
Are duplicate images a sign of low quality?
I look after a lot of small businesses that can not afford to get cutom made images for their sites, this made me think, If i was a search engine and saw a site with duplicate images, would i think that this site is of low quality? It is my guess that they would.
Industry News | | AlanMosley0 -
Bing beats google to disavow links
You can now disavow bad links in Bing WMT, google has stated they will be doing the same, this should shake up the rankings when many sites get penalties lifted http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2012/06/27/disavow-links-you-don-t-trust.aspx
Industry News | | AlanMosley1 -
Blocking spammy links
i have a client that that google has said in a reconsideration request has spmmy links. My question is can i simply block those request at the server, make the server drop the responce rather then go though the imposible process of getting them removed? Does anyone have any expirence with this? Thanks
Link Building | | AlanMosley1 -
Whingers and Winners
I remember this forum was full of people whinging about being out ranked by spammy websites with cheap links.
Industry News | | AlanMosley
Now I see people with spammy websites and cheap links whinging they have lost rankings.
Those who were the wingers are now the winners and those that were winning are now whinging.
Every dog has his day
There was a time where you could beat the system, those days have long gone, for long term results its not a matter of beating the search engines, but making sure you have not made any mistakes, that you are free from errors, you have prefect crawlability, good content and quality links.6 -
Rich snippets stars gone
i had some rich snippets stars for reviews showing on one of my clinets sites, but today they have gone, has anyone had this happen, if so what did you do to get them back?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | AlanMosley0 -
Over optimization penalty on the way
Matt Cutts has just anouced that they are bringing in a penalty for over optimized sites, to try and reward good content. http://searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google%e2%80%99s-working-on-an-%e2%80%9cover-optimization%e2%80%9d-penalty-for-that-115627?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed-main
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AlanMosley3 -
301'ing googlebot
I have a client that has been 301’ing googlebot to the canonical page. This is because they have a cart_id and session parameters in urls. This is mainly from when googlebot comes in on a link that has these parameters in the URL, as they don’t serve these parameters up to googlebot at all once it starts to crawl the site.
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
I am worried about cloaking; I wanted to know if anyone has any info on this.
I know that Google have said that doing anything where you detect goolgebots useragent and treat them different is a problem.
Anybody had any experience on this, I would be glad to hear.0 -
Is your content above the fold
Google released an update today that will rank pages with plenty of content above the fold higher than those that don’t.
Industry News | | AlanMosley
If you have a lot of ads above the fold then don’t expect to rank.
I see many CMS sites with very large banners across the top and content pushed down low on the page, will these pages also be hurt by the update?
The update is crawling now, you might want to check your SERP’s and see if there is much movement going on.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html0 -
Is a canonical to itself a link juice leak
Duane Forrester from Bing said that you should not have a canonical pointing back to the same page as it confuses Bingbot,
Industry News | | AlanMosley
“A lot of websites have rel=canonicals in place as placeholders within their page code. Its best to leave them blank rather than point them at themselves. Pointing a rel=canonical at the page it is installed in essentially tells us “this page is a copy of itself. Please pass any value from itself to itself.” No need for that.” He also stated that a canonical is much like a 301 except that it does not physically move the user to the canonical page. This leads me to think that having such a tag may leak link juice. “Please pass any value from itself to itself”
Google has stated that GoogleBot can handle such a tag, but this still does not mean that it is not leaking link juice.0 -
How changing my domain name brought back rankings.
First I would not recommend doing this to anyone else, but my circumstances were extreme.
Industry News | | AlanMosley
Let me explain to those that did not read previous posts on the subject. I had a domain thatsit.net.au, I had never really promoted it as I used a keyword domain to rank in search engines but kept this domain mainly for email, but having said that it did rank ok considering, it ranked first for my business name at least.
A few moths back I decided to promote it and check the rankings, I was surprised to see that it ranked last for almost every thing,. Even my business name. Let me impress when I say last I mean in most cases absolute last and if not last very, very close to last.
I decided to get some links happening to move it of bottom, in my experiences a site that ranks that bad even a few links with show a big jump in rankings, it is easier to get from page 1000 to page 900 than it is to get from page 2 to page 1. The site had about 200 links and I pushed that up to about 1,000 but I was still at the bottom even for long tails searches where I was the only exact match on the internet.
asking for advice I got responses like you need better links and the such, this did not account for the sudden drop in rankings, as I knew the history I knew that thee was something deeper going on, I asked Google for reconsideration they said there was no manual action taken.
I should also mention I ranked very well in Bing all this time and still do.
By now I was getting paranoid that someone was stuffing me up somehow as a last resort I changed the domain name from thatsit.net.au to thatsit.com.au I did this about 10 days ago.
Today I searched for my company name and I came up #4 not bad from not being in the top 1,000 a few days ago.
Rankings are not where they used to be but I can handle that, I have 301’ed across all my links and have stated to change over the links I control, but as I still don’t know why the other domain would not move from the bottom as search results I am nervous that I may 301 over the problem.
I have never really done anything in the way of Black Hat SEO that would get me banned, maybe a bit of light grey over the years but nothing to worry about.
Anyhow I am non the wiser as to why things happened like they did. But I did want to report back to others that read the posts and thought that maybe I was imaging things.
I was never really depended on the domain ranking, what really bothers me is not knowing why the .net.au domain fell from rankiings and I still don’t know why.1 -
Subdomains seen as one site
Earlier this month Google announced that sub-domains are now
Industry News | | AlanMosley
be treated as one site. At first I thought this was good news as I like to use
sub-domains for separation of categories and the like. But what about links
from one sub-domain to the other, they uised to be external links now they are
internal links. If you don’t have many external links, I would say that the
cross sub-domain links would have been important, if you have a lot of external
links then the flow of link juice would be of more benefit. I think overall its
is a good thing. Does anyone have any opinions about this or know of any writings
on the subject since this announcement? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/reorganizing-internal-vs-external.html0 -
Rel author problems
anyone have expirance with google rel author and google profile. I have set up my profile page on my site, and i have added a link to my google profile, this all seems to be working according to Rich Snippet tool.Other profiles, contributer to and recomended link but the tool reports the error below. any ideas? I have aded a link to my prifile in all 3 areas, Error: Google Profile does not link to article site
Industry News | | AlanMosley0 -
Change campaign domain name
I have just changed the domain name on one of my sites, can i change the domain name of the reletive campaigns and keep the data, or do i have to set up a new campaigns?
Moz Pro | | AlanMosley0 -
Sub domains in WMT
Does adding each sub-domain separately in WMT tell the SE that they are separate sites?
Industry News | | AlanMosley
Does the fact that listing only the root domain but seeing data for the sub-domains mean that the SE is seeing them all as the same site? Any thoughts are welcome0 -
Ranking wrong 3 weeks in a row
For 3 weeks in a row my rankings have been showing between 15 and 26 for Bing Australia, when bing itself shows it is between 3 and 5
Moz Pro | | AlanMosley
I understand it can get the rankings on a day when it may have moved, but 3 weeks in a row is a bit strange.
I checked the Bing US and i rank 5. Is there a problem? Keyword
Web Development Perth Website
thatsit.net.au0 -
Have I been mauled by the Panda?
I mentioned my problem a few nights ago, but since then I think I may have found my problem. I have a site that was never really promoted to any great level, but for the main keywords I could find it in serps with out clicking though too many pages. I came up first for the company name in both Bing or Google. Recently I finally decided to promote it and did a bit of a ranking check. First I still come up first for my company name in Bing, but in Google I come up 900+ out of 1000, virtually last. For my main keyword, the title of my site and optimized well for, I come up last, absolutely last. For long tail terms from my home page where I am the only site in the world to have the exact term, I come first in Bing, and absolutely last in Google. I don’t do black hat, but I thought I must be flagged by Google and I asked for reconsideration, they replied that no manual actions had been taken again the site, and referred me to the usual Google guidelines. It was very frustrating, I then had a thought, I had a long forgotten sub domain that had a load of duplicate content, it was a load of Microsoft documentation and other dev stuff from other sources, rss feeds and the like. Nothing sinister, but duplicate all the same. I am now thinking that this maybe my problem. I have 410’ed the whole sub domain as the site has not been maintained for some time anyhow. Does anybody know of simular, sub domain causing loss of ranking for root domain
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley0 -
Rankings Last, google says no flags
I have a site thatsit.net.au I have never really promoted, but it used to
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
rank ok, the other day I decided I should spend some time on it as its my own
site and potential customers expect to see my own site rank well. I did a bit
of checking and in Bing I come up in first 4 for Web Development Perth, that is in
the .au TLD for Australia,
but in Google I am like 700+. If I take this line out of my home page and put it in quotes “a local Perth web development company” I see I am the only person in the world to have
this long tail query in both Bing and Google. If I search for the same without
quotes in Bing I come up first. If I do so in Google, I come up absolutely last.
I thought I must be flagged, but Google have replied that there is no manual
action taken on my site. I have no answer for this, It is hard to believe if I am the only person in
the world to have a long tail term that I would come last for it. Any ideas? I hope Matt Cutts reads this, and can come up with an explanation
besides write good and useful content.0 -
Whats with these links
I have a competitor
Link Building | | AlanMosley
that has shot up lately taking number one spot for various keywords when I look
at his links in Open Site Explorer I find many links that are links to downloadable
objects, not web pages. A few
examples, if you click on them, do not open who knows what they are. But what
the story, how are these links to his site, anyone know anything about this. Thanks http://wolfet.co.uk/etmain/mitchelldown.pk3 http://www2.dupont.com/Tyvek_Weatherization/en_US/assets/downloads/cad_fluidapplied/FA-S-201.dwg?Action=livre_or&start=24750&forum=alainfrancois http://mobile.earthcam.com/download/EarthCam%20Mobile%20v4.0.msi?faq&page=39560 -
Google places rejected
google has rejected a few listing i have for certain businesses, i have read the guidlines and I am well inside them. It does say that if business name is changed you need to re-verify, but does not allow you to do so. I think google have lost their way, they should stop building operating systems and electric cars and get their web site sorted out.
Industry News | | AlanMosley0 -
Whats happaning with Plus1's
What do we know about googles +1's, are they used as a signal? i noticed that they have some reports on them in google web master tools.
Algorithm Updates | | AlanMosley0 -
Do we have a timeline of google, bing updates
I thought it would be handy if we had a timeline with dates of any updates to the algo's.
Algorithm Updates | | AlanMosley
Does one exists here at SEOMoz or elsewhere.
Thanks3 -
Campaignes for sub domains
Rand yoou mentioned soon we will be able to list the root domain and be able to track subdomains also in the same campaigne. I could not find the article again now, do you have a ETA?
Moz Pro | | AlanMosley0 -
Will the word arse in a domain name cause a problem
I have a customer that wants to use the domain name cooksarse.com, what my concern is that the word arse may cause him problems with search engines, even get flaged as Adult content, or family filters. The site is a fun social site and nothing about it you couyld not talk about in church except the name of the site and domain. "cooks arse" am i being overly concerned or could this be a problem
Branding | | AlanMosley0