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 weâre 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?
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Work hard play hard and stay away from grey or black areas

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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.
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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.
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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.
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That blackhat is a really poor long term strategy

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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

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Version 2: http://www.site.com/test?hello%5B%5D**=all&howdy**%5B%5D**=all&ciao**%5B%5D**=all Question: Will search engines view these as duplicate content? Â Technically there is a difference in characters, but it's only because one version encodes the brackets, and the other does not (See:Â http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp) We are asking the developer to encode ALL URLs because this seems cleaner but they are telling us that Google will see zero difference. Â We aren't sure if this is true, since engines can get so _hung up on even one single difference in character. Â _ We don't want to unnecessarily fracture the internal link structure of the site, so again - any feedback is welcome, thank you. đ0 -
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Begin HackRepair.com Blacklist RewriteEngine on Abuse Agent Blocking RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BlackWidow [NC,OR]
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RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} CazoodleBot [NC,OR]
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RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Default\ Browser\ 0 [NC,OR]
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RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DISCo [NC,OR]
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RewriteRule ^. - [F,L] Abuse bot blocking rule end End HackRepair.com Blacklist1 -
Is 404'ing a page enough to remove it from Google's index?
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URL Length or Exact Breadcrumb Navigation URL? What's More Important
Basically my question is as follows, what's better: www.romancingdiamonds.com/gemstone-rings/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (this would fully match the breadcrumbs). or www.romancingdiamonds.com/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (cutting out the first level folder to keep the url shorter and the important keywords are closer to the root domain). In this question http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/37982/url-length-vs-url-keywords I was consulted to drop a folder in my url because it may be to long. That's why I'm hesitant to keep the bradcrumb structure the same. To the best of your knowldege do you think it's best to drop a folder in the URL to keep it shorter and sweeter, or to have a longer URL and have it match the breadcrumb structure? Please advise, Shawn
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