Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do I have to optimize every page on my site?
-
Hi guys I run my own photography webstie (www.hemeravisuals.co.uk Going through the process optimizing my page for seo. I have one question I have a few gallery pages with no text etc? Do I still have to optimize these ? Would it rank my site lower if they weren't optimized?
And how can i do this sucessfully with little text on these pages ( I have indepth text on these subjects on my services & pricing pages?
Kind Regards
Cam
-
Hi there! Yes, you've definitely received some great responses! If your question has been answered, please mark up to three responses as a "Good Answer" and mark this question answered. Thanks!!
Christy
-
Would just like to say a big thanks for everyones input here has gave me alot of food for thought and also alot more to do
hahaThanks again !
-
I would optimize the pages that you want to drive traffic to for keywords that are naturally relevant to each page. Never stuff a page with keywords (use your gut to determine the right amount) and always write copy so that it is completely readable and not awkward for your visitors. I would also avoid creating multiple pages just for the sake of targeting similar keywords with no other purpose (e.g. you have a page that targets "red apple" and a page that targets "red apples"). I've seen sites get smacked by Google Panda for doing this.
Sites with poorly-written SEO copy seem spammy and will be an instant turn off to whoever's showed up at your virtual doorstep.
Pages such as Contact Us and About Us don't really need optimization per se. However, all pages should at least contain unique and relevant h1s, meta titles and descriptions. Also, always avoid duplicating text between pages. This helps your website be more search engine friendly. I find that the Screaming Frog SEO Spider and Google's Webmaster Tools HTML Suggestions are great for diagnosing which pages on your site need these unique elements.
-
Some great answers people thanks very much Smart Cow what did you mean when you said
''That said there are always things to improve Have a look at H1 and H2 settings you have on the home page.'' What have I done wrong ?
Cheers Cam
-
Good Morning!
Google is about content, and SEO is more and more about marketing.
Optimizing is important of course, but even Matt Cutts said it wouldn't be worth your time to go back and optimize old pages that were not optimized. That being said, I personally feel that optimizing the gallery as far as the meta tags are concerned as was mentioned above is more than enough.
If you have the time to go back and optimize everything, it certainly will not hurt to do it. However, if you have limited resources, I think you are better off writing blog posts about images that are in your own gallery, developing your Google authorship, etc.
Google wants content. Show Google you are an Expert, Trustworthy, and an Authority (EAT) http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2355230/google-search-quality-guidelines-now-reward-expertise-authority-trust
-
Generally, optimizing a page means that you are targeting a specific key term you want to rank for. While you might not see measurable "negative" SEO effects of having pages with no content, I believe that you could use those pages to target key terms. Images rank as well as pages. You can use image alt attributes and add some content to those pages which may help drive some traffic. I like to play safe rather than sorry. It takes a little bit of work, and you might not have keywords for those pages yet, but you could use the images as ranking tools.
-
There are many level to ensuring your site is optimised that is not just text on the page. Page load speed, page name and page bounce must all surely play a factor. This is a nice site that engages with nice images and not ruined by extra text to try an please a search engine.
For keyword content, keep your blog up-to-date with honest genuine content, maybe pointing to a gallery when you update the images.
As far as I can see SEO will become (is becoming) something that reflects good honest and engaging content rather than making sure you have scientifically optimised your site.
Show your passion for your subject and it will be rewarded with visitors interested in your service and products. Try to second guess and over optimise a site and you will be found out , maybe not today or tomorrow but eventually.
That said there are always things to improve Have a look at H1 and H2 settings you have on the home page.
Also notice at the top I did not say it was a quick site have a looks at speeding this up http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141126_61_VQT/ people may bounce away even before viewing your page whatever the great keywords you may have optimised with.
Just my 2 pennies worth, hope it helps
-
I see you got a answer from someone that knows more than me. I recommend that you take Kevin's advice, and apologize for my bad advice.
-
There are many ways to optimize gallery pages (optimize H tags, optimizing file size of images, adding short descriptions, good page titles, implementing proper tags on the image, good ux and so on). There is an excellent tutorial here. Good luck!
-
Disclaimer: I am definitely not a SEO expert, but i cannot see any reason for why you should get penalized for having a few gallery pages on your site. That would just give people another reason for doing "bad" SEO by using shady methods to get their gallery-pages and similar pages with no/minimal text to rank better.
-
Thanks very much ! I had wondered this and wasn't entirely sure how the page rank worked in terms of optimization on every page. As I have 4 Gallery Pages & 1 Home Page for the Galleries 'hemeravisuals.co.uk/galleries/weddings. But that makes sense really enjoying moz feeling i'm finally getting to grips with this SEO !
-
Yes, you can have unoptimized pages. They will naturally not get a very good pagerank, but as far as i know it does not hurt to have some pages with no text as long as you have enough content on the rest of your site.
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
-
Rel canonical tag from shopify page to wordpress site page
We have pages on our shopify site example - https://shop.example.com/collections/cast-aluminum-plaques/products/cast-aluminum-address-plaque That we want to put a rel canonical tag on to direct to our wordpress site page - https://www.example.com/aluminum-plaques/ We have links form the wordpress page to the shop page, and over time ahve found that google has ranked the shop pages over the wp pages, which we do not want. So we want to put rel canonical tags on the shop pages to say the wp page is the authority. I hope that makes sense, and I would appreciate your feeback and best solution. Thanks! Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shabbirmoosa0 -
Is it ok to repeat a (focus) keyword used on a previous page, on a new page?
I am cataloguing the pages on our website in terms of which focus keyword has been used with the page. I've noticed that some pages repeated the same keyword / term. I've heard that it's not really good practice, as it's like telling google conflicting information, as the pages with the same keywords will be competing against each other. Is this correct information? If so, is the alternative to use various long-winded keywords instead? If not, meaning it's ok to repeat the keyword on different pages, is there a maximum recommended number of times that we want to repeat the word? Still new-ish to SEO, so any help is much appreciated! V.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vitzz1 -
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
Optimize a Classifieds Site
Hi, I have a classifieds website and would like to optimize it. The issues/questions I have: A Classifieds site has, say, 500 cities. Is it better to create separate subdomains for each city (http://city_name.site.com) or subdirectory (http://site.com/city_name)? Now in each city, there will be say 50 categories. Now these 50 categories are common across all the cities. Hence, the layout and content will be the same with difference of latest ads from each city and name of the city and the urls pointing to each category in the relevant city. The site architecture of a classifieds site is highly prone to have major content which is not really a duplicate content. What is the best way to deal with this situation? I have been hit by Panda in April 2011 with traffic going down 50%. However, the traffic since then has been around same level. How to best handle the duplicate content penalty in case with site like a classifieds site. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ketan90