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Category: Algorithm Updates

Discuss algorithm updates and impacts.

  • airnwater


    Hello, I work for an online retailer that has the opportunity to add a lot of SKUs to our site in a relatively short amount of time by borrowing content from another site (with their permission).  There are a lot of positives for us to do this, but one big question we have is what the borrowed content will do to our search rankings (we normally write our own original content in house for a couple thousand SKUs). Organic search traffic brings in a significant chunk of our business and we definitely don't want to do something that would jeopardize our rankings. Could we run into issues with duplicate content penalties if we were to use the borrowed product descriptions? Is there a rule of thumb for what proportion of the site should be original content vs. duplicate content without running into issues with our search rankings? Thank you for your help!

    | airnwater
    0
  • Boodreaux


    I get great traffic from Google but Yahoo is at about a 20 to 1 ratio on visitors. Is there anything I should do to increase Yahoo traffic?  I bought a Yahoo Directory listing about 3 months ago but it did no good. Thanks, Boo

    | Boodreaux
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  • jumpdates


    hi, I was trying to locate resources on the topics regarding how much the google bot indexes in order to qualify a 'good' site on their engine. For example, our site has many pages that are associated with logged in users and not available to the public until they acquire a login username and password. Although those pages show up in google analytics, they should not be made public in the google index which is what happens. In light of Google trying to qualify a site according to how 'engaged' a user is on the site, I would feel that the activities on those member pages are very important. Can anyone offer suggestions on how Google treats those pages since we are planning to do further SEO optimization of those pages. Thanks

    | jumpdates
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  • topclass


    I was wondering is there really a difference between website content, articles or blogs and most important do search engines see it differently? My website is pretty much an ecommerce site and most of my long text is on my blog. The only other pages that have much content is the homepage, all the other pages may have a paragraph. I am just wondering if i need to make more actual pages with text/content or is having my blogs good enough? I am no expert in seo and just wondering if i am wasting too much money on getting blogs written or should i get more content. Content being a page called commercial printing and blog being a page called why do do i need commercial printing? Also would it matter to the users who find the site? Would the users come to my site just looking for information or would they actually think of me for the service?

    | topclass
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  • franchisesolutions


    I see that around mid November 2013 a handful of my sites pages dropped off of Google completely. It was around the data refreshes in November, and while everyone says it doesn't effect that much I was wondering if anyone knew if it could knock some of my pages out of the rankings for a specific keyword. Note - we had previously held muliple listings for different pages on our site for this particular keyword. Google kept the highest ranking and knocked the lower ones off. See attached image of our keyword ranking history to see what I mean. DcJJM0M

    | franchisesolutions
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  • bloomnation


    Do keywords in the footer carry the same weight as keywords on the rest of the page? Should we avoid having some keywords in the footer?

    | bloomnation
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  • sakeith


    is it proper to "canocalize" more than one page in a site? Or should it only be on the home page? eg: http://www.sundayschoolnetwork.com">

    | sakeith
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  • gXeSEO


    Referring to the webinar on SEOMoz about Local Search that was presented by Nifty Marketing (http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/be-where-local-is-going). I have a question my client asked us regarding why we broke out their locations into microsites, and not just used subfolders. So here are the details: The client has one main website in real estate. They have 5 branches. Each branch covers about a 50 mile radius. Each branch also covers a specialized niche in their areas. When we created the main site we incorporated the full list of listings on the main site; We then created a microsite for each branch, who has a page of listings (same as the main site) but included the canonical link back to the main site. The reason we created a microsite for each branch is that the searches for each branch are very specific to their location and we felt that having only a subfolder would take away from the relevancy of the site and it's location. Now, the location sites rank on the first page for their very competitive, location based searches. The client, as we encourage, has had recommendations from others saying this is hurting them, not helping them. My question is this... How can this hurt them when the microsites include a home page specific to the location, a contact page that is optimized with location specific information (maps, text, directions, NAP, call to action, etc.), a page listing area information about communities/events/etc., a page of the location's agents, and of course real estate listings (with canonical back to the main site)? Am I misunderstanding? I understood that if the main site could support the separation of a section into a microsite, this would help local search. Local search is the bread and butter of this client's conversions. AND if you tell me we should go back to having subfolders for each location, won't that seriously hurt our already excellent rankings? The client sees significant visitors from their placement of the location URLs. THANKS!
    Darlene

    | gXeSEO
    1
  • DougHoltOnline


    Is it wise, while doing a link building campaign to not only focus on the main website target page, but also the Google+ Local page? Here are two strategies I was thinking of using: 1. Conduct a city specific link building campaign to direct traffic to the location specific page on the main website AND the Google+ Local page. 2. Use the main website to direct traffic to each cities specific Google+ Local page. Does it make sense to drive links to a Google+ Local page? It does to me, but I haven't seen anything written about that yet... or perhaps I've just missed it along the way. I'd love to hear the communities thoughts. Thanks! Doug

    | DougHoltOnline
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  • WebRiverGroup


    As I'm doing more research into Google's devaluing links, I can do nothing more but to wonder if we will be penalized for previous links (bad links). Here is the situation: Our company was ranking very well for this particular keyword (within the top 3 positions on Google). However, in the last 6 months, we have seen rankings drop significantly (now to the point Google doesn't even recognize the existence of the page). With Google not recognizing us, we decided to do an experiment. The experiment: Make another page with a different URL and delete the existing page that is not ranking in Google. Our Experience: We have noticed that our pages will get indexed and ranked within weeks or making a new page. Our Goal: To get ranked on Google Will our new page get penalized from the old page if it's an entirely new URL? Will the fact that Google in devaluing our links effect our new page that we are trying to get ranked? Any insight would be of great value. Thanks in advance

    | WebRiverGroup
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  • totaldriveways


    Hi, I am really struggling with current predicament i find myself in. I am a small to medium sized business based in Newcastle in the UK and am trying to rank well locally for the keywords that i feel my customers will be searching for locally. I have got to the stage where i am on page 1 of google uk or nearly there but cannot compete against the national companies who have the search terms then just add pages for virtually every city in the country. For example my main product is "Artificial Grass" and my city/town is Newcastle This is where my office is and where my customers are. This is also where my google places page states. Now theres a company that sells Artificial Grass called  www.asgoodasgrass.co.uk that are based no where near but use the power of there site to come up in every local search by adding a page "Artificial Grass Newcastle" as well as  hundreds of others. They rank 3rd and im 8th. There actual Newcastle page is poor, where as i put everything into my page including pics, video etc. Still no joy. I feel i am always going to rank behind these big boys even though i am the actual local company and have no intention of working others area that are not local to me. By the time i rank behind the above type companies and the likes of yell.com i feel i am never going to be seen and fall back on expensive adwords to help me along. I am a complete newbie at this and would love any help or tips you could give to give me a fighting chance in my area. My site is www.totaldrivewaysne.co.uk incase you want to look as you will have gathered my other primary product is driveways for which also i feel like i have a million competitors! many many thanks for any responses John

    | totaldriveways
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  • mattylac


    Anyone else noticing this happening? In Google search results, many of my sites are now showing up in the following fashion... "Site name: page title" I read a few articles in the past few days that state that Google may be playing with the algo but have not read anything from Google directly. I should add that I first noticed this on Feb. 21 and have seen it rolling out more and more since. I have only noticed it on a few competitor websites thus far. Edit:Some links talking about the subject http://www.seroundtable.com/google-brand-title-appending-16432.html http://semandseo.blogspot.ca/2013/03/google-brand-title-in-search.html http://www.designbigger.com/blog/seo/google-rewrites-page-titles-to-push-brand-over-keywords/

    | mattylac
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  • adamlcasey


    I posted an infographic back in April, 2012 on my company blog. 
    I added embed code at the bottom, so people could embed on their websites (not many did that I can tell) I also submitted it to a number of Infographic directories and got links back from around 5-6 of them. The title of the Infographic is exact match long tail search term.(6 words) By July it had hit Position 6 in Google.co.uk, where it stayed in the top 10 until December fluctuating between positions 6-9. I haven't done anything else to the post and yet since December it has started to trickle down the rankings, in the past 3 weeks it dropped from 15th on Feb 3rd to 93rd on Feb 17th, then bounced back up to 33rd on the 25th of Feb and has now fallen again to 89th yesterday. Is this normal or have I been hit with a penalty of some sort? Not sure if this matters but I have the word infographic at the end of my title?? Also when I run it through OSE I don't see some of the backlinks that I can see from GWT.

    | adamlcasey
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  • iivgi


    Good morning, One of our HTML experts, just told me that Google is not reading meta keywords or meta description - and they (or one of them) are no longer part of my website SEO ranking Do you know where can i read about it? Are other SE do look at these parameters? Thank you SEOWiseUs

    | iivgi
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  • EEE3


    Has anyone come across any great guides to pair with client data to help you determine if their website has been penalized? I'm also not talking about an obvious drop in traffic/rankings, but I want to know if there's a guide out there for detecting the subtleties that may be found in a client's website data. One that also helps you take into account all the different variables that may not be related to the engines. Thanks!

    | EEE3
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  • powpowteam


    Our site was recently hacked by spammers posting fake content and bringing down our servers, etc.  After a few months, we finally figured out what was going on and fixed the issue.  However, it turns out that Google has indexed 26K+ spammy pages and we've lost page rank and search engine rankings as a result. What is the best and fastest way to get these pages out of Google's index?

    | powpowteam
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  • atuomala


    On a recent Google search, I noticed that the top result also displayed the Google map of the location next to it but aside from that, it also displayed that business' Google+ Profile picture. I'm wondering how that is done. We have a Google+ account as well with an image associated with our business. At this point, the map doesn't even display for our business, but how does one get the map and the profile picture to appear on search results? Here's a link to the search result in question:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=tech+squad&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS511US511&aq=f&oq=tech+squad&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=en&rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS511US511&sclient=psy-ab&q=tech+squad+wi&oq=tech+squad+wi&gs_l=serp.3..0l2j0i30l2.6041.6590.0.6592.3.3.0.0.0.0.79.158.2.2.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.1.4.psy-ab.DoA-PSlyt-A&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.42768644,d.cGE&fp=b5d841bb1ab219dc&biw=1440&bih=785 tech_squad_serp.jpg

    | atuomala
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  • richdan


    I will be pitching to an established major UK-based fashion brand in a few days. Their brand is well-known within their target demographic and they have only recently starting selling their collection online. They are currently unconvinced of the need to use SEO for any terms other than their own brand names for which they would naturally rank with little extra effort. Can anyone point me to any research or data that shows consumer trends to research fashion purchases online or trending away from shopping mall browsing habits?

    | richdan
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  • Covantech


    Hello friends, I am new to seomoz forum  and this is my first query. Even i asked this query in many forums, i didnt get the right answer. it will be a big help if anyone answers my question. Since 2yrs i am doing seo for my site. even i am following all the white hat techniques and doing every submission manually. Still my site traffic is below 100 visits. Can any one help me to increase the site traffic? What are the techniques i need to follow to increase site visits? Also one of my sites recently got disappeared from google. I have checked all the pages listed in google for my site's major keywords. I didnt find the site anywhere. Can u hep me why this condition wll happen and what to do to overcome such issues?

    | Covantech
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  • NetvantageMarketing


    For one site I work with the images link to the home page of the site rather than the page the image lives on. I think this is hurting my bounce rate quite a bit. Thoughts?

    | NetvantageMarketing
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  • syndicate


    On Jan 28 - 2013 google dropped many of our keywords from its index.Here is the history of Rank June 24 2012 - RANK  2 Nov 18 2012 - RANK 8 NOV 25 2012 - RANK 15 JAN 6 2013 - RANK 10 JAN 13 2013 - RANK 21 JAN 20 2013 - RANK 9 Jan 27 2013 - RANK 6 JAN 28 2013 - DROPS OUT OF GOOGLE Graph http://i.imgur.com/ABYJ3MS.jpg The ON PAGE is an A for the homepage, errors and warnings are all DOWN over time. Would the last Google Update have caused this? Bing and Yahoo went UP and google dropped right out http://i.imgur.com/vP8Uvu8.jpg The red box is the keyword in question, but many others dropped out of top 50 Anyone have any ideas on what I should look for or which update could be responsible? ABYJ3MS.jpg vP8Uvu8.jpg

    | syndicate
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  • EngagedMetrics


    Our site www.alphameasure.com has been online since 2005 and currently has a page rank of 4. The site has always ranked on page one or two of Google for our primary keywords (Employee Satisfaction Survey, Employee Engagement Survey, Employee Surveys). I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but now our site is nowhere to be found.  I'm thinking our ranking dropped somewhere in mid to late January? We did use an SEO company in the spring of 2012 that went on a link building campaign for us.  They added about 450 inbound links over a three month period.  Other than that - nothing has really change on the site. We're getting ready to release a new version of our software that was being re-written during all of 2012, so the timing of losing our rankings is just awful. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated? Thanks in advance,
    Josh

    | EngagedMetrics
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  • CleanEdisonInc


    Only for one set of my keywords. But I fell from first page to off the map in one fell swoop. Did this happen to anyone else? Should I be worried?

    | CleanEdisonInc
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  • gfiedel


    I am looking for a basic description of the use for schema tags and how and in what circumstances they are best applied. I have found a few resources such as schema.org and here on this forum, but find I still need a basics lesson and subsequently, some ways to execute. The Raven plugin appears to make the code visible to the viewer which seems unacceptable...Guess I'm just a bit stumped! Thanks in advance for any available hand-holding on this. ;o)

    | gfiedel
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  • tdawson09


    I haven't used the Google operator link: for a while, and I noticed that there is a big disparity between the operator "link:" and the GWT's links to your site. I compared these results on a number of websites, my own and competitors, and the difference seem to be the same across the board. Has Google made a recent change with how they display link results via the operator? Could this be an indication that they are clean out backlinks?

    | tdawson09
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  • SoundinTheory


    I do a lot of work for a large estate agency based almost solely in London. They get a considerable amount of traffc and all other stats, on the whole, are always positive. The only thing that is decreasing regularly is the percentage of new traffic. My understanding of user behaviour for this market is that no one in their right mind would make an enquiry or arrange a booking without a) looking at the property at least twice themeselves (once to before the enquiry and once before a viewing) and b) more than likely show a partner. Plus the site is well laid out and useful so I believe users are favouring our site over the comparison sites. So  questions: Should I be panicing What is the most efficent way of increasing new visits? Things to note: The HTML titles throughout the site are a bit of a mess - key word rich but too long and inconsistent. Could this be a contributing factor to the CTR? Also in the past month we appeared in over 4k different queries but our non branded impressions are down 22%. Could more concise, less keyword stuffed HTML titles help this? Do I need to look at the page titles to ensure that they contain the exact phrases that are in decline? Any help will be greatly appreciated!

    | SoundinTheory
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  • GeorgFranz


    Hi girls + guys, a site of us were hit by a google update or a google penalty. We have lost 50% google traffic in one day (25th april, 2012). (Total visitors in average per day: 6k, yesterday: 3k) It's a german website, so I think google.de (germany) was updated. Our rankings in google.at (austria) are also affected, but it's not that bad as in google.de. We have not done any specific on page seo activities in the last two months. GWT doesn't have any message for us (no critical errors). After my first analyse I can say this: google has indexed 17k pages (thats fine) we are on 1st place with our domain name the last three days, the google traffic went up (+20%), but yesterday it was 50% below average (so -70%) last week we had a very good day, we had twice the traffic than normal, but this calmed down the following days we have lost number no. 1 places at two high traffic keywords. We had these no 1 rankings for years. We have been outranked by two of our competitors, but they have not done any onpage changes. We have lost a lot of positions at a lot of keywords. But there are also keywords which moved up. We have good content, useres are visiting 5 pages in average. No virus, no hacker (no hidden cloaking page) it's an old domain (2002) Lot of (good) inbound links Lot's of likes, g+. Good twitter activty. So, all in all I think it's more likely a ranking algo change than a penalty (a penalty for what reason?) My specific question(s): Is there any "check list" which could help me to find out the reason for this mess? What is the best strategy to regain the positions? New HTML code? New On page seo? (seomoz grades most of our important pages an A) Any idea would be appreciated! Best wishes,
    Georg.

    | GeorgFranz
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  • ao500000


    Hi,  Back then, a company could get multiple listings in SERP, one in Google Maps area and a homepage or internal pages from organic search results. But lately, I've noticed that Google are now putting together the maps & organic listings. This observation has been confirmed by a couple of SEO people and I thought it made sense, but one day I stumble with this KWP "bmw dealership phoenix" and saw that www.bmwnorthscottsdale.com has separate listing for google places and organic results. Any idea how this company did this? Please see the attached image

    | ao500000
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  • Friedman


    Hello, I helped work on a website for a friend.  We used wordpress, a theme from elegant themes and wrote the content over 4 days.  Zero back links, no seo, etc.  Well, a little on page optimization and that's about it.  Oh, we did ONE back link from a review site. The domain was brand new; never registered before. About a week after it started getting indexed, it jump from no page rank to a page rank of 1.  About a week later, it jumped to a page rank of 2. Again, zero seo (aside from above stated). The site is: trade lines review dot com A page rank of 2 is nothing to write home about, but given the circumstances, how is this even possible? Thanks you!

    | Friedman
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  • tlhseo


    Just wondering from an seo perspective is it better to build a large site that covers many verticals or build out many sites one for each vertical?

    | tlhseo
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  • csfarnsworth


    MATT CUTTS in his like second last video told the world.Guys turn off PR in your Browser.If PR is no longer have value than what an SEO professional needs to know is the site good or bad. 1.Domain authority. 2.alexa 3.SEMRUSH rank 4.compete. So guys need your advice about it.

    | csfarnsworth
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  • Ron10


    do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases?  i've always heard don't get links from unrelated sites but if that mattered, then how would sites with totally diverse pages such as newspaper sites, sears, and other catalogue sites rank for these diverse subjects on their site?  How does Facebook rank when it gets 100,000 links a day from sites that have nothing to do with a social media site?  I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this.  Also,  Do links from unrelated sites give less push than related links? Take care,
    Ron

    | Ron10
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  • Noobtraveler


    My website www.noobtraveler.com has shown a dip of 40% since Penguin's last update in November. I also transferred hosting at time, but I was wondering if I'm over optimizing with the all in one seo pack. I would appreciate it if someone could do a quick sweep and share their thoughts. Thanks!

    | Noobtraveler
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  • SeoSheikh


    Hi there, I've been working on my clients website for a while now. About a month ago I created him a local business listing in Google. I was wondering if there are any new tips to get his business up the rankings in local search? I've researched and only really found information relevant to the old way Google displayed local search.

    | SeoSheikh
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  • EEE3


    Prepare yourselves. This is a long question. With the rise of schema and Google Local+, do you think Google will now have enough data about where a business is located, so that when someone searches for, a keyword such as "Atlanta Hyundai dealers" a business in Atlanta that's website: has been properly marked up with schema (or microdata for business location) has claimed its Google Local+ has done enough downstream work in Local Search listings for its NAP (name, address, phone number) will no longer have to incorporate variations of "Atlanta Hyundai dealers" in the text on the website? Could they just write enough great content about how they're a Hyundai dealership without the abuse of the Atlanta portion? Or if they're in Boston and they're a dentist or lawyer, could the content be just about the services they provided without so much emphasis tied to location? I'm talking about removing the location of the business from the text in all places other than the schema markup or the contact page on the website. Maybe still keep a main location in the title tags or meta description if it would benefit the customer. I work in an industry where location + keywords has reached such a point of saturation, that it makes the text on the website read very poorly, and I'd like to learn more about alternate methods to keep the text more pure, read better and still achieve the same success when it comes to local search. Also, I haven't seen other sites penalized for all the location stuffing on their websites, which is bizarre because it reads so spammy you can't recognize where the geotargeted keywords end and where the regular text begins. I've been working gradually in this general direction (more emphasis on NAP, researching schema, and vastly improving the content on clients' websites so it's not so heavy with geo-targeted keywords). I also ask because though the niche I work in is still pretty hell-bent on using geo-targeted keywords, whenever I check Analytics, the majority of traffic is branded and geo-targeted keywords make up only a small fraction of traffic. Any thoughts? What are other people doing in this regard?

    | EEE3
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  • Marketing.SCG


    My company has experienced a significant drop in rankings in the last month or so. How significant? Across our top 11 keywords, we've dropped an average of 6 positions. Some have dropped less (1 or 2) and some have dropped way more (38). We work really hard to provide great content on our site and have been building out our link profile with guest blogging on relevant sites (dailyshotofcoffee.com, for example). No major changes have been made to the URL structure or content on the pages that are ranking for our key terms, so I am not sure where the drop is coming from. For example: One of our key terms is "espresso machine" and we went from #9 to #22 in the last few weeks. We have not made any changes to the main content on the page that is ranking since September. Our on-site page report for this page has us nailing all of the critical factors, most of the high importance factors (not exact keyword in page titles - we use "espresso machines" as that is one of our other terms - or "avoid keyword stuffing" - unfortunately, our products are also named with "espresso machine" and i can't very well not follow those links or remove the term from their names), all of the moderate importance factors, and most of the low importance factors. It has been reporting this way since September. Most of our key terms are this way (haven't had content changed in the last several weeks to months and have great on-page grades). We don't engage in spammy link building (though I did some work this fall on cleaning up bad links a previous SEO company had built out). I'm just really taken aback by the sudden drop in rankings across the board. Any insight or advice anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated!

    | Marketing.SCG
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  • pbhatt


    I have our site + 4 other competitors' sites in my SEOmoz campaigns and all of the DA's dropped by 1 or 2 points. Has anyone else noticed a drop this week? Two months ago, all of these websites also went down 1 or 2 DA points, then some of them came back up a point the next month. What's going on? Thanks

    | pbhatt
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  • EricMoore


    Hi, I have been paying adequate attention to Guest Blogging for the past 4-5 months. I have posted good quality articles on  some decently ranked websites. Of late I managed to get a guest post on a website with a page rank of 4. But I didn't get any referral traffic from it. My concern was will the Guest Blog also contribute to my Organic Search ? Will google give me any points if my links on the Guest Blog are not generating any traffic ? I was under the impression that Guest Blogs will work in your favour and will help in improving your search traffic only if you have visitors from that particular page. Any comments on this ? Eric

    | EricMoore
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  • DragonSearch


    I've been looking into G+ and how to get the information and status updates in to the Knowledge Graph for small companies and have not been able to. Does anyone know exactly how to do it?

    | DragonSearch
    1
  • jojojo


    I was in google places and then set up a goole local account 9 months ago but it is not showing as listed. What am I doing wrong or what can I do about it?? https://plus.google.com/u/0/106415232585067786390/about thanks Jo Ann

    | jojojo
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  • Esaky


    My Site PR5 lost to PR4 ! I worked as per SEOmoz Suggestion - No Traffic Drop, Organic Search is good and higher than referral or Direct Traffic ! What might be the problem ? Nov 29-2012 my site was hacked very badly and google Blacklisted me for the first time and if you see now " it says, Past 90 days nearly 19 times my site was acted as medium to spread virus" Even thought we checked our FTP, Cpanel or Home Directory - Everything seems good. My domain which was hosted - has other domains in the same network and some are porn - those sites are injecting malicious code ! May be that's the reason or please give me some idea how to improve it !

    | Esaky
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  • Ron10


    I'm not the greatest writer but want to do some guest blogging for links and traffic.  Are there any businesses out there that write world class guest blog articles for subjects that match my business? Also, i've read that doing this for links is really moot because the blog posts get archived and become pagerank "unranked" thereby offering little link value after about a month or so.  Once they get archived do they still get counted by google and does the anchor text and page rank still count? Thanks in advance mozzers! Ron

    | Ron10
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  • Esaky


    I followed the rules to minimize the links in the page. Getting Same Traffic to my blog and increased only. But my PR5 to PR4 ? why even 404 Error was reduced o 5 or 6 which i updated now ! not accepting any Text Link ads !  too past 6 months also !

    | Esaky
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  • Cornwall


    After 3 years out of SEO I thought things might have moved on, but apparently not. Bit of back link research and all the top sites in my niche have tons of reciprocal links to barely relevant sites. Do I really have to do this? I mean I thought this was so out of date, it's not much better than keyword stuffing. So, should I just forget my lofty principles asking myself 'is this of any value to my users?' and just take the medicine?

    | Cornwall
    0
  • UnderRugSwept


    After Penguin, our site: www.stadriemblems.com jumped up to #1 for the keyword "embroidered patches." Now, months later, it's at the top pf page two. I'm pretty sure this is because we do have a few shady links (I didn't do it!) that perhaps Penguin didn't catch the first time around, but now Google is either discounting them or counting them against us. My question is, since I'm pretty sure those links are the reason we are gradually declining, should I submit them to Google as disavowed, even though technically, we're not penalized . . . yet? I have done everything possible to get them removed, and it's not happening.

    | UnderRugSwept
    0
  • PinckneyHugoGroup


    My client had multiple top-level-domains. Each one represented an insurance program within a specific vertical. For all the sites at these alternate domains, there was a 30/70 mix of duplicate vs. original content. Some of the alternate domains ranked very well for their target keyphrase groups, where others were absent in results pages. We advised the client to merge multiple domains into their existing main domain, for usability and SEO reasons. We recently ran the merger. Here was our process: On the main domain, transfer the content such that it matches 1-for-1 content on the various alternate domains Setup Google Webmaster tools on the main domain Push the new content on the main domain live and submit a corresponding sitemap to Google Establish 301 redirects on the alternate domains, such that each alternate domain URL points to its respective page on the main domain We did this 12 days ago, and pages (previously on the alternate domains) that had ranked well on Google have now plummeted or are entirely non-existent. Did we do the right thing by merging multiple top-level domains into a single domain? Is this initial dip in rankings normal? How soon should we expect to see it return to its normal rankings?

    | PinckneyHugoGroup
    0
  • Intrested


    Hi folks I'm basically hoping for some tips for great resources specifically focusing on SEO tactics for global FMCG ... Obviously I'm doing my own research but would love help from the community if possible with; 1- material on general SEO 2- Material on local SEO 3- Material on Image SEO 3- material on Video SEO any help would be greatly appreciated

    | Intrested
    0
  • severitydesign


    This may have been addressed before. If it is, please link me to the thread. I'm trying to SEO for local surrounding cities my client services. It was suggested I purchase domains relevant to those cities and create separate pages optimized for those local keywords. Wondering if this is a good tactic. For example my client's business is located in Chicago, but services the surrounding suburbs of Chicago. Whats the current, best way to SEO?

    | severitydesign
    0
  • willwade26


    Hey Everyone, New to SEOMOZ and I have an important question: We launched a new version of our site about 6 months ago and had a TON of redirects in our HTCaccess file due to a change in our permalink structure (over 2000 easily). Anyways, recently we went back in and took 2000+ lines of individual htaccess redirects and consolidated them into a RegularExpression for the ones where we could find a pattern for and the others (30 or so) are just the actual redirect link. Since doing that, it appears our search engine traffic has dropped a bit. It's not crazy, but it's definitely noticeable. I'm not an SEO expert, so my question is this the reason why? How long will we see this decline before we're back at normal levels? We're seeing a lot less crawl errors since doing this, so I think it's a good thing. But I just wanted to check and see. The site is http://thetechblock.com if you want to take a look. Any help would be really appreciated.

    | willwade26
    0
  • Digirank


    Hi, A bit of a general question, but has anyone noticed a improvement in rankings for large domains - ie well known, large sites such as Tesco, Amazon? From what I've seen, the latest Panda update seems to favour the larger sites, as opposed to smaller, niche sites. Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this too?Thanks

    | Digirank
    0

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