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.
What's your best hidden SEO secret?
- 
					
					
					
					
 Work hard play hard and stay away from grey or black areas  
- 
					
					
					
					
 Hah hah. I agree with Richard. The mo community. And I'm also sympatico with Gianluca. Llong walks outside in the fresh air does wonders for my creativity. Ideas come easier. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 To make rest a project after a while. That pause will benefit your creativity, because your brain will work on it in the background without stress. When you return to the project, it will seems new somehow and those ideas your mind was breeding will come out with force. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 I have not been here long enough to have any 'hidden' secrets except SEOmoz  However, I do find that backlinks with great anchors really, really works well. 
- 
					
					
					
					
 That blackhat is a really poor long term strategy  
- 
					
					
					
					
 That one single hour in each day when I get in the "zone" and do week's worth of work in a single shot. Still figuring out how to extend that for the full 8 hours  
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
- 
		
		Moz ToolsChat with the community about the Moz tools. 
- 
		
		SEO TacticsDiscuss the SEO process with fellow marketers 
- 
		
		CommunityDiscuss industry events, jobs, and news! 
- 
		
		Digital MarketingChat about tactics outside of SEO 
- 
		
		Research & TrendsDive into research and trends in the search industry. 
- 
		
		SupportConnect on product support and feature requests. 
Related Questions
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?
 Hello good people of the MOZ community, I am looking to do a mass edit of URLS on content pages within our sites. The way these were initially setup was to be unique by having the date in the URL which was a few years ago and can make evergreen content now seem dated. The new URLS would follow a better folder path style naming convention and would be way better URLS overall. Some examples of the **old **URLS would be https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-9-17-2012,default,pg.html Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin44355
 https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-11-13-2012,default,pg.html
 https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates/buying-guide-9-3-2012,default,pg.html
 https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates/buying-guide-7-19-2012,default,pg.html The new URLS would look like this which would be a great improvement https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
 https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
 https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates,default,pg.html
 https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates,default,pg.html My worry is that we do rank fairly well organically for some of the content and don't want to anger the google machine. The way I would be doing the process would be to edit the URLS to the new layout, then do the redirect for them and push live. Is there a great SEO risk to doing this?Â
 Is there a way to do a mass "Fetch as googlebot" to reindex these if I do say 50 a day? I only see the ability to do 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend.Â
 Is there anything else I am missing? I believe this change would overall be good in the long run but do not want to take a huge hit initially by doing something incorrectly. This would be done on 5- to a couple hundred links across various sites I manage. Thanks in advance,
 Chris Gorski0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity?
 Hello everyone, Maybe it is a stupid question, but I ask to the experts... What's the best way to noindex pages but still keep backlinks equity from those noindexed pages? For example, let's say I have many pages that look similar to a "main" page which I solely want to appear on Google, so I want to noindex all pages with the exception of that "main" page... but, what if I also want to transfer any possible link equity present on the noindexed pages to the main page? The only solution I have thought is to add a canonical tag pointing to the main page on those noindexed pages... but will that work or cause wreak havoc in some way? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau3
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Is Chamber of Commerce membership a "paid" link, breaking Google's rules?
 Hi guys, This drives me nuts. I hear all the time that any time value is exchanged for a link that it technically violates Google's guidelines. What about real organizations, chambers of commerce, trade groups, etc. that you are a part of that have online directories with DO-follow links. On one hand people will say these are great links with real value outside of search and great for local SEO..and on the other hand some hardliners are saying that these technically should be no-follow. Thoughts??? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Magento: Should we disable old URL's or delete the page altogether
 Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Does DMCA protection actually improve search rankings (assuming no one's stolen my content)
 Hello Moz Community, I had a conversation with someone who claimed that implementing a DMCA protection badge, such as those offered at http://www.dmca.com/ for $10/mo, will improve a site's Google rankings.  Is this true? I know that if my content is stolen it can hurt my rankings (or the stolen content can replace mine), but I'm asking if merely implementing the badge will help my rankings. Thanks! Bill Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bill_at_Common_Form0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		ECommerce product listed in multiple places, best SEO practice?
 We have an eCommerce site we have built for a customer and the products are allowed to appear in more than one product category within the web site. Now I know this is a bad idea from a duplicate content point of view, But we are going to allow the customer to select which out of the multiple categories the product appears in will be the default category. This will mean we will have a way of defining what the default url is for a product. So am I correct in thinking all the other urls where the product appears we should add a rel canonical to these pages pointing to the default url to stop duplicate content? Is this the best way? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spiralsites0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Bing flags multiple H1's as an issue of high importance--any case studies?
 Going through Bing's SEO Analyzer and found that Bing thinks having multiple H1's on a page is an issue. It's going to be quite a bit of work to remove the H1 tags from various pages. Do you think this is a major issue or not? Does anyone know of any case studies / interviews to show that fixing this will lead to improvement? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0
- 
		
		
		
		
		
		Is 404'ing a page enough to remove it from Google's index?
 We set some pages to 404 status about 7 months ago, but they are still showing in Google's index (as 404's). Is there anything else I need to do to remove these? Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0
 
			
		 
			
		 
			
		 
				
		 
			
		 
			
		 
				
				 
				
				 
				
				 
				
				 
				
		 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				 
					
				