Two Questions
-
1) The PA in the SEOmoz toolbar for ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk/ is completely different to http://www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk. I think in link building I've occasionally left the / off and vice versa. Is google seeing these as two different sites and how can I combine the two so the PA is no longer different? I initially tried a 301 redirect from the less PA to the higher one but it didn't work. Suggestions please.
- I'm trying to rank for the term Scentsy UK. Was told on here that it was unnecessary to get a .co.uk and that if I just link build for my scentsy-uk site which I have been doing. Woke up this morning and my page ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk was no where to be seen on Google. I can still do site: and Link: for my main .com and I'm still ranking first page for other things so don't think I've been penalised at all. However when I try the site: and link: on the .com/scentsy-uk its no where to be found. There was no messages in Google webmaster tools either.
Is this an algorithm thing or have I been penalised?
Also....its now pulling up <cite>www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/blog/tag/scentsy-uk</cite> for the higher ranking results. Have I confused google with having this blog tag as well? Any suggestions to help would be appreciated. Losing a lot of sleep on this website at the moment. x
-
I've asked squarespace for help and they basically said they wont alter any of the httaccess file for me, asked around in the squarespace community and they started saying that this was SEOmoz's crawlers which are completely different to Google and as long as two url's weren't showing up in Google (which they aren't...just two different PA's on the SEOmoz toolbar)...then to not worry about it. They said that Google is smart enough to decide between the two and that from now on I should just focus on one URL for link building.
Feeling a bit deflated....maybe I shouldn't worry about it though. Wish squarespace wasn't so limiting on controls TBH.
Christine
-
Hi Christine,
It could be an issue with the toolbar that's causing the PA of 1 to show up for the first (UK) url you mentioned, but the other two are likely correct.
At the moment you have two distinct pages:
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk
and
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk/
that have the exact same (duplicate) content, and both of which likely have links pointing to them. The same goes for every page on your site, so you're definitely losing some ranking power.
All of your pages should either end with a slash or not end with a slash... it doesn't really matter which one you choose, it just needs to be constant throughout the site. I checked your HTML and there are no Canonical tags, so I'd recommend asking SquareSpace to go ahead and add the first Rewrite I posted earlier to your .htaccess file. I'm sure they've had many similar requests, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. Once that's finished you should be good to go!
Let me know if you have any other questions.
-Anthony
-
The site is through squarespace so I've contacted support to ask whether any of this is possible. I don't believe we are given access to our .htaccess files but have asked to double check.
The only reason why I noticed the different PA's is I happened to type in the different versions of the address in my own location/address bar on the top of Firefox. I did a quick look on Google and only one seems to be getting indexed which funny enough seems to be slightly different as well.
So to clarify:
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-UK/
Showing up on google, clicked on it and the PA in the toolbar in my browser was showing as 1
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk/
shows up as a PA of 17
www.ldnwicklesscandles.com/scentsy-uk
shows up as a PA of 20
Could it just be a problem with the toolbar? I guess I'm just worried that all these sites are showing as different PA when what I want is just one PA throughout any of the variations people may come across.
-
If you're site is still serving both the URL with a trailing slash and a duplicate URL without it, that is definitely something that should be remedied as soon as possible, as your authority from external links is likely being split between the two URLS.
There's two ways to do this... 301 redirection and rel canonical tags. In my opinion a site-wide 301 redirect rule is absolutely the best solution to this problem. The code below will uses Apache's Rewrite Engine to redirect traffic and "linkjuice" to the URL with a trailing slash, which is what I would suggest.
Just add this to the .htaccess file located in the root directory of your domain.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1/ [L,R=301]
_It's possible that the first two lines are already present, in which case you should paste lines 3 - 5 as they are above. _*****Replace 'yourdomain.com' with your domain.
You can be sure that the rule is working correctly by going to 'yourdomain.com/page' and confirming that you're redirected to 'yourdomain.com/page/'.
I also noticed in your question that you used both 'WWW.yourdomain.com' and 'yourdomain.com' when describing your issue. If you're seeing both WWW and non-WWW versions of your pages in search results, it's possible that you have another duplicate content issue, potentially allowing Google to index 4 duplicate versions of the same page... looks like you're good to go though
... I just checked and all non-WWW URLs are redirecting to the WWW versions, so just make sure you add the WWW to the last line of code above (**www.**yourdomain.com).
For other potential readers:
Site-wide non-WWW to WWW 301 redirects can be implemented by adding:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
The opposite (WWW to non-WWW) can be implemented by adding:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
*****Replace **'yourdomain.com' **with your domain and omit Line 1 if it is already present.
It'll take a little time for Google to account for the changes, but if you're redirected when you do the test I mentioned, you can sit back and relax.
Hope this helps and good luck!
- Anthony
-
The seomoz PA only gets updated every no and them it seems.
If the only difference is a / I don't think it would make any difference, as long as both get to the same page.
Site: and link: isn;t indicitive of google penalties. There are many different penalties that can be dished out and you will almost always be left in the dark about them.
If you have been link building, check that. Google is huge on unnatural linking now.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Question about Crawl Diagnostics - 4xx (Client Error) report
Hi here, I was wondering if there is a way to find out the originating page where a broken link is found from the 4xx (Client Error) report. I can't find a way to know that, and without that information is very difficult for me to fix any possible 404 related issues on my website. Any thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Moz Pro | | fablau0 -
I am trying to find inbound links for one of my site urls. My question is does SEOMoz able to track all internal links as the Open Site Explorer shows 0 internal links?
It shows 0 internal links when I am pretty sure we have multiple internal links.Should we use absolute urls or relative urls for internal links?
Moz Pro | | SulekhaUSLLC0 -
Total link graph question
how is it that our website and our two competitors basically have the exact same link graph, except for at different levels?
Moz Pro | | imageworks-2612900 -
Two PR 5 websites, but little to no link data in OSE. How??
As the title states - We've recently developed two sites for clients - within the last 4 months or so. With the Google PR update, both sites are sitting as PR 5 sites. I've tried to have a look in the OSE for the backlink profile of both websites, but I see nothing. Even Majestic SEO's fresh index doesn't provide much info. The DA of each site is 11-16. I would really love to see what's generating the link juice to these sites. Any ideas? The two sites are: https://bfore.co.za
Moz Pro | | Mark.RedGiant
http://ictjournalafrica.net0 -
Is it possible to have two (or more) Twitter accounts for the same campaign?
I use a primary (personal) twitter account and a business twitter account to keep it separate. Both accounts will have content that is related to my site, is it possible to use both for the same campaign?
Moz Pro | | stuartlcrawford0 -
Authority On Authority Question
Hi, What does it mean when seomoz shows our domain authority as 43, but our homepage authority as 52 or higher? More recently, the two used to be roughly comparable at around 52. Maybe it doesn't matter, but it did change and it makes me curious. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | 945010 -
Initial Crawl Questions
Hello. I just joined and used the Crawl tool. I have many questions and hoping the community can offer some guidance. 1. I received an Excel file with 3k+ records. Is there a friendly online viewer for the Crawl report? Or is the Excel file the only output? 2. Assuming the Excel file is the only output, the Time Crawled is a number (i.e. 1305798581). I have tried changing the field to a date/time format but that did not work. How can I view the field as a normal date/time such as May 15, 2011 14:02? 3. I use the ™ symbol in my Title. This symbol appears in the output as a few ascii characters. Is that a concern? Should I remove the trademark symbol from my Title? 4. I am using XenForo forum software. All forum threads automatically receive a Title Tag and Meta Description as part of a template. The Crawl Test report shows my Title Tag and Meta Description as blank for many threads. I have looked at the source code of several pages and they all have clean Title tags and I don't understand why the Crawl Report doesn't show them. Any ideas? 5. In some cases the HTTP Status Code field shows a result of "3". Why does that mean? 6. For every URL in the Crawl Report there is an entry in the Referrer field. What exactly is the relationship between these fields? I thought the Crawl Tool would inspect every page on the site. If a page doesn't have a referring page is it missed? What if a page has multiple referring pages? How is that information displayed? 7. Under Google Webmaster Tools > Site Configurations > Settings > Parameter Handling I have the options set as either "Ignore" or "Let Google Decide" for various URL parameters. These are "pages" of my site which should mostly be ignored. For example a forum may have 7 headers, each on of which can be sorted in ascending or descending order. The only page that matters is the initial page. All the rest should be ignored by Google and the Crawl. Presently there are 11 records for many pages which really should only have one record due to these various sort parameters. Can I configure the crawl so it ignores parameter pages? I am anxious to get started on my site. I dove into the crawl results and it's just too messy in it's present state for me to pull out any actionable data. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Moz Pro | | RyanKent0 -
On-Page Keyword Optimization Question
First let me say I want to improve the text of the site I am working on focusing on the site visitor in the first instance. I run the "On-Page Keyword Optimization" The page fails on "Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document... ...Occurrences of Keyword 48" well over the limit of 15. The occurrence include those in the site navigation and strapline, but it was my understanding that Google was aware of nav areas/areas common to most other pages on the site and that keywords in these areas weren't viewed as being part of the page content. The keyword is the main keyword for the company, and the page is the home page i.e. "acme widgets" the others are "acme widgets for the home"... well you get the idea: The page breaks down as follows: 5 instances in primary nav 1 instance strapline 3 instances secondary nav Remainder in page body I am told by the tool to reduce to 15 instances, so should I? Have 9 instances in the nav and other areas and 6 or so on the page Have 9 instances in the nav and other areas and 15 or so on the page
Moz Pro | | GrouchyKids0