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Category: White Hat / Black Hat SEO

Dig into white hat and black hat SEO trends.

  • jef2220


    We are currently looking into improving our TTFB on our ecommerce site. A huge improvement would be to asynchronously load the product prices on the product list pages. The product detail page – on which the product is ordered- will be left untouched. The idea is that all content like product data, images and other static content is sent to the browser first(first byte). The product prices depend on a set of user variables like delivery location, vat inclusive/exclusive,… etc. So they would requested via an ajax call to reduce the TTFB. My question is whether google considers this as black hat SEO or not?

    | jef2220
    0
  • davegill


    Hi guys, I have been ranking #2 for a popular search term for several months now, and today I noticed a drop to #5, so I went to check my backlink profile, and I'm seeing thousands of no-follow exact keyword matched backlinks, all from spammy looking websites. I looked at some of the links and they do link to me, but I didn't generate these links, and I have never paid anybody externally to build links for me. What is the best course of action for me here? link disavow tool?

    | davegill
    0
  • mschianoyo


    We're thinking about moving our domain from www.domain.net to domain.com as we just acquired the dot com domain.  www.domain.net receives roughly 20million pageviews per month and gets about 90% of it's traffic from search engines. What is best to do in this situation? Should we start using .com instead of .net?  301 redirecting traffic to the .com from .net? Should we drop the www in front?

    | mschianoyo
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    According to Moz Analytics we have a link coming from here: http://www.grayshadowfinancial.com/ The anchor text is earthquake prone map. I can't find the link, but if I cntrl+f  "earthquake prone map" it shows in the find box, even though I can't see it. I'm guessing this is some spam tactic and they are hiding this with their CSS? Is there anyway I could see it? Best, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • icanseeu


    Hi Folks, I have a customer whos keyword rankings for Google have fluctuated rather widly over the past two months which has caused some consternation on their part dispite our reassurance. This is caused in large part due to their lack of understanding of SEO, little effort on their part in implementing changes for SEO and what I belive to be unrealistic expectations (having done no SEO work on their site wanting to see first page ranking for competitive keywords like 'heart attack' within 4-8 weeks). At the moment we are using just keyword rankings as a KPI and I wish to reframe them by using additional or alternative KPIs so that as rankings fluctuate with future Google seach algorithm tweaks and changes that the customer isn't solely focused on them. I am still in the process of formulating this list but so far I have decided to include the KPIs listed below. Month-on-Month / Quarter-On-Quarter Organic search traffic volume (should be rising) Top landing pages excluding branding keywords and homepage (should corelate to content created to target specific keywords) Number of landing pages on the client site that rank List of landing pages and bounce rates (are the 'gateway pages' holding visitors due to meeting their search requirements?) Average number of keywords per landing page (possibly integrated with the landig page reports above as a dimension to demonstrate correlation of # of keywords to landing pages) Some visibility on top keyword search terms (provided from Adwords where possible and GWT also) Top organic keywords (from adwords and GWT) Conversions from organic search (will vary from client to client for their own needs but will primarily be implemented using Google Tag Manager event tracking for things like enquiry forms etc) Referral traffic Delta/Ranking trends over large set of datapoints (will depend on how often you poll/track rankings but for example if you track rankings weekly then assess the trend of the rankings over 3-6months to smooth out the fluctuations) Your thoughts and feedback on this would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Dave

    | icanseeu
    1
  • esiow2013


    Thanks in advance!

    | esiow2013
    1
  • seoninjaz


    Webmaster Tools is saying we have close to 24 million links to our site. The site has been around since the mid 90s and has accumulated all these links since. We also have our own network of sites that have links in their templates to our main site. I'm fighting to get these links "nofollow"'d but upper management seems scared to alter this practice. This past year we've found our rankings have dropped significantly and suspect it's due to some spammy backlinks or being penalized for doing an accidental link scheme network. 24 million links is too many to check manually for using the disavow tool and it seems that bulk services out there to check backlinks can't even come close. What's an SEO to do?

    | seoninjaz
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    My cousin asked me to look at his site, http://www.gaport.com/ and I'm wondering what his main website flaws are? I looked at his backlinks, and while I don't know enough to exclude penguin being the cause, I don't think it is. I think it has more to do with duplicate content and lack of keyword optimization. However, before I tell him that, I wanted to get the opinion of this forum, please. Thanks! Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • synchronyinfo


    My website penguin 2.1 dropped back to page 5 and beyond, can you help me to come out from this ? My head is breaking, also I would like to know how to be on top for local business search (maps)

    | synchronyinfo
    0
  • WebServiceConsulting.com


    I know Penguin focuses on links but do you need to personally reach out and try to manually remove the links, or can you simply place the bad links in the disavow tool. I know for manual penalties you must manually reach out and try to remove and use disavow as an absolute last resort. Does the same go for algorithm penalties? Any insight would be helpful.

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0
  • Harbor_Compliance


    We've come across an offer through HostGator from Attracta for link building.  They have a few packages but the basic offer is as follows: 50  Pro Links (text links to the site within 72 hours)
    30 ¢per link,
    $30 per month Has anyone tried link building services through this company?  If so, would you recommend them?  Any insights otherwise? It doesn't exactly sound white hat but at the same time we're curious to buy a month and see what links we get. Thanks in advance for the feedback!

    | Harbor_Compliance
    0
  • projectassistant


    We are using a custom wordpress theme for to help us optimize our webpages.  We're trying to structure the webpages so that things are as optimized as possible for our clients.  I was wondering if we could get some feedback on whether or not we using the correct page structure across the site.  We have set a no-display class on the H1 so that the page title wouldn’t mess up the layout and is placed above the logo and have placed other header tags on the different page sections and added in keyword variations to avoid having untitled sections. Is equal to ? Is there a better way to structure this content?  Are we not doing something that we should be or overdoing anything? I guess my main question is what would be the best way to use HTML5 to structure this website?http://estheticdentistry.net

    | projectassistant
    0
  • zsyed


    Lets say that my competitor has the domain name and website called remotecontrolcar.com , .net and .org . And he has great links and good white hat google juice. What if I get MyRemoteControlCar.com , .net, and .org domain name.. Would my domain name help me in rank against him as long as I have similar google juice? Thanks.

    | zsyed
    0
  • Ripe


    So, in recent years some services have been developed such as Engageya I want to ask the experts to weigh in on these types of services that generate traffic. I know of sites that have achieved higher ranking via these NON-bot, user browser visitors. Here's their own explanation. Any thoughts will be appreciated. I could not find what Google's Matt Cutts has to say about these affairs, I suspect not very good things. However, I KNOW of sites that have achieved higher ranking, with about 30-40% of traffic coming from similar systems to this. Join our exclusive readers exchange ecosystem Engageya offers an exclusive readers exchange ecosystem - either within the network only, or cross-networks as well - enabling participating publishers to exchange engaged readers between them in a 1:1 exchange ratio. No commissions involved! Why networks work with Engageya? Create traffic circulation within your network - increase your inventory and impressions within your existing properties.Engage readers within your network and experience an immediate increase in network's page views. Enjoy readers'- exchange from other networksOur engine intelligently links matching content articles together, from within your network, as well as from other networks. Get new audiences to your network for non-converting users clicking out. New revenue channel - monetize pages with reader-friendly content ad units, while making your readers happy!This is the time to move from aggressive and underperforming monetization methods - to effective and reader-friendly content advertising.
    Let our state-of-the-art semantic & behavioral algorithms place quality targeted content ads on your publisher's content pages. Enjoy highest CTRs in the industryContent ads are proven to yield the highest CTRs in the industry, starting at 2% and up to 12% click-through rates! This is simple. Readers click on an article they are interested-in, whether it's sponsored or not. Enhance your brand - Offer your publishers private-label content recommendations today, before someone else does.Content advertising is becoming more and more common. New content advertising networks and suppliers are being introduced into the online advertising market, and, sooner or later, they are going to approach your publishers. Engageya offers you a private-label platform to offer your publishers the new & engaging content ad unit - today! Comprehensive reports and traffic control dashboardTrace the effectiveness of the content recommendations ad units, as well as control the traffic within your network.

    | Ripe
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, Takeshi had the good idea to compare google analytic traffic data to penguin updates. We may have got hit by Penguin 2.0 (#4) on May 22, 2013. There's nothing in GWT indicating it though. Most of our traffic is return customers, by the way. I've attached a Google Analytic Screenshot.  It just happens to be the time when we removed a bunch of paid links. Will you look at this screenshot and make sure that it was Penguin, then give me some advice about 20 little blogs with keyword rich anchor text. 2 paid links that look editorial 1 sitewide paid link w/ keyword rich alt tag 1 more paid link that's an image near the footer on a single page, keyword rich anchor text. 1 paid link site with different types of links scattered across the site - 30 links total We have 70 links total - the above 25 are paid. penguin.gif

    | BobGW
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    This company http://www.synapseinteractive.com/portfolio/kempnrugelawgroup.php is linking to us, with a bs graphic about how they improved our rankings for some keywords. I have no idea who this company is. Does this happen often? Also, I'm tempted to contact them to take it down, but I really don't need some questionable company getting annoyed and then linking 10,000 spam sites to me. Any thoughts on what to do? I'm tempted to just do nothing, but for I ignore it, I want to make sure there's insidious about this link that would cause me any problems down the road. No, I haven't got any GWT or BWT messages about it. Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, One of my client's sites is ranking lower than he should. This happened when we took off backlinks (20 little blogs, several site-wide paid links. It really dropped the site, but it had to be done. Since then we've increased his # of root domains by 10% through white hat link building in his non-competitive niche, and rankings are still poor. I know that's not much in the way of added backlink value, but we're working on it. My question is, how have the recent (and coming) updates possibly effected us. We want to take the remaining problem areas off right away, but another drop in traffic is not a good idea. Even though the blogs (see below) have no backlinks of themselves, they cause drops when taken off) He still has -20 little blog backlinks w/ a quarter of them being exact match anchor text.
    -1 sitewide paid link - an image,  exact match alt tag anchor text
    -1 non-site-wide paid links that is an image near the footer, exact match alt tag anchor text.
    -3 links on a domain, this one looks fairly editorial, but there are a bunch of paid links on that page. Changing to non-exact-match  anchor text
    -2 links on two domains that look completely editorial with no other paid links on that page. non-exact-match anchor text -70 backlinks total with about 1/3 being problematic. How does this site look in regards to updates and when to take links off without tanking our site even more? Thanks.

    | BobGW
    0
  • TomKing


    I'm getting there, I can see the light! 🙂 I have covered one complete audit of the link profile and I am now going back over it looking at the links I had 'question marked' - I should have this completed by the end of this week and I will then focus on using DISAVOW for the links that I am really struggling with, the foreign sites that are in Chinese or Russian, the sites that have absolutely no 'contact us' information and have been privately registered (in WhoIs) I have come across this domain which links to our site about 8 times and although I cannot find any contact info I can't quite make my mind up, to be honest I would rather get rid of it BUT I'm trying to avoid taking the easy option of disavowing where I can; http://www.askives.com/ Fo anyone who has gone through what I am currently going through, please help me just this once and tell me 'should it stay or should it go'?! 🙂 Many thanks! Andy

    | TomKing
    0
  • nick_pageone


    help needed guys, i run a website http://www.happyhop.co.za they sell jumping castles, and thats it, i have worked on this site for the last 3 years and its been preforming very well, after the 2.0 penguin update I lost huge rankings was 1 in google for jumping castles now on page 10... I went onto webmaster tools reviewed Manual Actions got this (No manual webspam actions found.) then reviewed my links, ran them through http://www.penguinanalysis.com and my score came back at 125% which is high, but then ran a competitor who is ranking number 1 and they are at 145%... i have now disavowed a few bad links, and have removed alt tags on my blog http://www.happyhop.co.za/News-and-Articles .... the articles I write are not bloggy and are informative. I then sent Google a manual reconsideration request, but havent heard back from them? Still nothing has changed and its been over 3 weeks. Can anyone help me.

    | nick_pageone
    0
  • dotlineseo


    What is the difference between Positive Impact, No Impact, Negative Impact and Extremely Negative Impact in term of Google Update like panda or penguin etc.

    | dotlineseo
    0
  • sandyallain


    I own a network of travel sites, after all the changes that happened to past 12 months and so. I am really thinking if maybe my sites are worthless. I mean, let's be honest here. I understand what Google is doing. So i ask myself. If I wasn't trying to make a living with google adsense and affiliate sites... Would I still have these travel sites ? well the truth is NO NO... Therefore should i forget about my content site ? It is a punch of useless content. well some interesting information but it is a travel guide like many others online. What do you think? now it is better to focus on your product site or create 1 good websites rather than a network of sites that worked very veryyy well the past 10 years...

    | sandyallain
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  • stever999


    Hi, I manage a website within the pharmaceutical industry where only healthcare professionals are allowed to access the content. For this reason most of the content is behind a login. My challenge is that we have a massive amount of interesting and unique content available on the site and I want the healthcare professionals to find this via Google! At the moment if a user tries to access this content they are prompted to register / login. My question is that if I look for the Google Bot user agent and allow this to access and index the content will this be classed as cloaking? I'm assuming that it will. If so, how can I get around this? We have a number of open landing pages but we're limited to what indexable content we can have on these pages! I look forward to all of your suggestions as I'm struggling for ideas now! Thanks Steve

    | stever999
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  • WebServiceConsulting.com


    There has been mixed opinions regarding the best practices in using alt tags/image titles. I am looking to avoid over optimization techniques that are potentially hurting my site. Right now I have a website in the crafts/DIY niche and every one of the page titles on the site are long tail keywords. Every page title is the main targeted keyword and for every one of those, that keyword is the image alt tags/image title. I have been told that the alt tag/image title for a post should NOT be the keyword your going after so what I'm looking for here is the best practice in dealing with these alt attributes. Should I change it to something other than the ranking keyword? Or not putting anything at all be a better approach? If I do this, will I lose rankings? Would like to know all the repercussions of these actions. I need to know what is the best approach here in avoiding over optimization penalties. Any insight or recommendations would be greatly appreciated here!

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0
  • esiow2013


    Thanks in advance!

    | esiow2013
    0
  • sanj5050


    Hi everyone, This is my first post here, and absolutely loving the site and the services. Just a quick background, I have dabbled in SEO in the past, and have been reading up over the last few months and am amazed at the speed at which things are changing. I currently have a few clients that I am doing some SEO work for 2 of them, and have had an ecommerce site enquire about SEO services. They are a medium sized oak furniture ecommerce site. From all the major changes..the devaluing of spam links, link networks, penalization of overuse of exact match anchor text and the overall encouraging of earned links (often via content marketing) over built links, adding to this the (not provided) section in Google Analytics, and the increasing screen real estate that PPC is getting over organic search...all points to me thinking on major thing..... That the search engine is trying to push eCommerce sites and sites that sell stuff harder toward using PPC and paid advertising and allowing the blogs/forums and informational sites to more easily reclaim the organic part of the search results again. The above is elaborated on a bit more below.. POINT 1 Firstly as built links (article submission, press releases, info graphic submission, web 2.0 link building ect) rapidly lose their effectiveness, and as Google starts to place more emphasis on sites earning links instead - by producing amazing interesting and unique content that people want to link to. The fact remains that surely Google is aware that it is much harder for eCommerce sites to produce a constant stream of interesting link worthy content around their niche (especially if its a niche that not an awful lot could be written about). Although earning links is not impossible for eCommerce sites, for a lot of them it is more difficult because creating link worthy content is not what eCommerce sites were originally intended for. Whereas standard blogs and forums were built for that exact purpose. Therefore the search engines must know that it is a lot easier for normal blogs/forums to "earn" links through content, therefore leading to them reclaiming more of the organic search ranking for transaction and non transaction terms, and therefore forcing the eCommerce sites to adopt PPC more heavily. POINT 2 If we add to the mix the fact that for the terms most relevant to eCommerce sites, the search engine results page has a larger allocation of PPC ads than organic results (above the fold), and that Google has limited the amount of data that sites can see in terms of which keywords people are using to arrive on their sites, which effects eCommerce sites more - as it makes it harder for them to see which keywords are resulting in sales. Then this provides further evidence that Google is trying to back eCommerce sites into a corner by making it more difficult for them to make sense of and track sales from organic results in comparison to with PPC, where data is still plentiful. Conclusion Are the above just over exaggerations? Can most eCommerce sites still keep achieving a good percentage of sales from organic search despite the above? if so, what do the more niche eCommerce sites do to "earn" links when content topics are thin and unique outreach destinations can be exhausted quickly. Do they accept the fact that the are in the business of selling things, so should be paying for their traffic as opposed to normal blogs/forums which are not. Or is there still a place for them to get even more creative with content and acquire earned links..? And finally, is the concentration on earned links more overplayed than it actually is? Id really appreciate your thoughts on this..

    | sanj5050
    0
  • ICTADVIS


    Website (A) - has a landing page offering courses Website (B) - ( A different organisation) has a link to Website A. The goal landing page when you click on he link takes you to Website A's Courses page which is already a popular page with visitors who search for or come directly into Website A. Owners of Website A want to ADD an Extra Menu Item to the MENU BAR on their Courses page to offer some specific courses to visitors who come from Website (B) to Website (A) - BUT the additional MENU ITEM is ONLY TO BE DISPLAYED if you come from having clicked on the link at Website (B). This link both parties are intending to track However, if you come to the Courses landing page on Website (A) directly from a search engine or directly typing in the URL address of the landing page - you will not see this EXTRA Menu Item with its link to courses, it only appears should you visit Website (A) having come from Website (B). The above approach is making me twitch as to what the programmer wants to do as to me this looks like a form of 'cloaking'. What I am not understanding that Website (A) URL ADDRESS landing page is demonstrating outwardly to Google a Menu Bar that appears normal, but I come to the same URL ADDRESS from Website (B) and I end up seeing an ADDITIONAL MENU ITEM How will Google look at this LANDING PAGE? Surely it must see the CODING INSTRUCTIONS sitting there behind this page to assist it in serving up in effect TWO VERSIONS of the page when actually the URL itself does not change. What should I advise the developer as I don't want the landing page of Website (A) which is doing fine right now, end up with some sort of penalty from the search engines through this exercise. Many thanks in advance of answers from the community.

    | ICTADVIS
    0
  • legendz


    Hello all, this is my first question on Moz, i can see lots of people use it. Overall great community. I have a question, about title tags, ive done some keyword re-searches via Adwords-Keyword planner. And i need help combining the title tag for my pages. This are my most searched keywords:
    Main keyword - ACE Online Related keywords : Private Server Top 100 Download Gameplay Guide Now ive combined my title :
    ACE Online Private Server - Top 100, Download, Gameplay, Guide Do you think this is good writen title or something its bad, i really cant deside. Please help

    | legendz
    0
  • KempRugeLawGroup


    I saw Moz has discussed PR web in earlier posts, but they are mostly months to years old. I'm wondering if PR Web is a good service? A lot of my competitors use it, but it seems just like a paid link to me. If for whatever reason, PR Web is an approved loophole, does anyone have any suggestions on which plan to purchase? Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0
  • anneoaks


    I have taken on the SEO/Inbound duties for my company and have been monitoring some of our competitors in the market space. In June one of them began a black hat link building campaign that took them from 154 linking root domains to about 7500 today. All of the links target either /header or /permalink/index and all have anchor text along the lines of "Windows 7 activation code." They are using forgotten forums and odd pages, but seem to be finding high DA sources to place the links. This has skyrocketed their DA (40 to 73), and raised their mozRank, mozTrust, and SERP positions. Originally I thought to report it to Google, but I wanted to wait a few weeks and see what the campaign did for them and if Google would catch on. I figured adding 81K links in 2 months would trigger something (honestly, if I was able to find out they were doing it then it's got to be obvious).  But they have grown every week and no drop in rankings. So my question is would you report it? Or continue to wait and see? Technically they are not a "competitor" in the strictest sense of the word (we actually do sell some of their products as OEM), but I find the tactic despicable and it makes my efforts to raise our rankings and DA seem ineffective to people not in the know about SEO. Interested to see everyone's responses! Taylor

    | anneoaks
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  • Immanuel


    One of our competitors (who are ranking top spot ) have this trend of building backlinks from websites build for the sole purpose of seo. (see example) When you see the website it's just a submission of articles from different companies trying to rank for a certain keyword most of the time poorly written. Our competitor seems to be doing this a lot...
    What do you guys think, is it just a matter of time before Google cracks down on them or is this technique actually working for them? (even though it's rather grey hat) Or... could it be someone trying to build "poor" backlinks to them in an attempt to push them of the Google throne 😉

    | Immanuel
    1
  • CFSSEO


    I think my site got hit by a negative SEO campaign.  We got nailed by the latest Google update and our traffic dropped significantly.  We don't buy links, ask for links, do link exchanges, etc.  Since the last update was all about spammy backlinks, I downloaded backlinks from Google Webmaster Tools just to see if there was any info in there. There are tons, hundreds, thousands of backlinks from spammy sites to us.  Sites that are spammy as heck and sell backlinks on the footer.  I can only assume someone went after us with a negative SEO campaign.  We're the #3 site in a hot market. Is the only way to combat this to disavow all those spammy backlinks with the Google disavow tool?  We also have a manual penalty on our site as well.  I've asked for a reconsideration request and have heard nothing.  Please advise.

    | CFSSEO
    0
  • chandman


    Hi, I have lost all my rankings after Penguin 2.1 update. I haven't did anything wrong. Want to know the root cause of the penalty so that I can overcome this. Any help would be appreciated. Website: http://tiny.cc/hfom4w

    | chandman
    0
  • auke1810


    Hello Mozzers, I am wondering about the effect of link building by swapping links between websites and adding a link partner page to the web shop containing hundreds of links. I have this new competitor coming in to the SERP of Google competing on the keywords I am targeting. The competitor has way more links than our web shop. The competitor has a page with hundreds of links to other web shops witch on there turn has a link to there web shop. (not all off them link back btw) I always thought it is no use sharing links with other websites this way in creating a huge page with hundreds of links. it is of no benefit for neighter website to do this. Still it does seems to work (?) and tis strategy is used by a lot of web shops in the Netherlands. How are you guys looking at this?
    Witch of you guy's are using strategy like this?
    Should I pick up this strategy myself?

    | auke1810
    0
  • pandronic


    I started developing a new niche of products in my country about 3 years ago. That's when I opened my first store. Everything went fine, until a year ago, when someone I thought was a friend secretly stole my idea and made his own competing store. I was pretty upset when I caught him and decided to make it as difficult as possible for him, so I made another 4 stores, trying to get him as low as possible in the search results. The new sites have similar products (although not 100% identical), slightly different titles, images and prices. They look different and are built on different e-commerce platforms. They are all hosted on the same server, have roughly the same backlinks, use the same Google account for Analytics, have the same support phone numbers etc etc. I wasn't thinking that I'm doing something fishy, so I didn't try to hide anything. Trouble is that those sites, after doing fine for a few months, dropped like bricks in the search results, almost to the point that they can't be found at all. At the moment, the only site that ranks relatively well is the original one and a couple of secondary pages with no importance from one of the other sites. How did this happen? Does Google have something against this practice? Did they take action by themselves when they realized that I was trying to monopolize this niche, or did my competitor report me for some kind of webspam? And more importantly, what do I do now? Do I shutdown all but my original site and 301 redirect users to it from the others? Can I report my competitor for engaging in the same practice? (He fought back and now he has 3-4 sites, some of which still rank kind of OKish, also he has no idea about web development, SEO or marketing, he just crudely copies what I do and is slowly but surely starting to do better than me).

    | pandronic
    0
  • Peter2468


    I have a trial of all the tools at the moment and it's a lot of fun. I have been delving into site explorer and found that some competitors have links to them from obvious seo promoting paid blog sites. One has no other links except a paid for blog from a site that openly admits it offers paid marketing and they shot up to 4th on page one for a main keyword phrase. The info from moz and matt cuts video's say not to do this, but it's so tempting. The blog is well written, while I sit here and do the right thing, my competitors have page one. If the blog is well written and is meaningful  is it OK and if google ever decide it's paid and don't like it, wouldn't it be better to be page one for 6 months and then recover? I'd love to give the link to the seo, blogger thingy but don't want to come across as promoting it in any way. I am sure there are loads of them anyway.

    | Peter2468
    0
  • MNoisy


    We have implemented quite a few large websites onto cloudflare and have been very happy with our results.  Since this has been successful so far, we have been considering putting some other companies on CL as well, but have some concerns due to the structure of their business and related websites. The companies run multiple networks of technology, review, news, and informational websites.  All have good content (Almost all unique to each website) and rankings currently, but if implemented to cloudflare, would be sharing DNS and most likely IP's with eachother. Raising a concern of google reducing their link juice because it would be detected as if it was coming from the same server, such as people used to do for their blog farms. For example, they might be tasked to write an article on XYZ company's new product.  A unique article would be generated for 5-10 websites, all with unique, informative, valid and relevant content to each domain; Including links, be it direct or contextual, to the XYZ product or website URL. To clarify, so there is no confusion...each article is relevant to its website... technology website- artciel about the engineering of xyz product
    business website - How xyz product is affecting the market or stock price
    howto website - How the xyz product is properly used Currently all sites are on different IP's and servers due to their size, but if routed through cloudflare, will Google simply detect this as duplicate linking efforts or some type of "black hat" effort since its coming from cloudflare? If yes, is there a way to prevent this while still using CL?
    If no, why and how is this different than someone doing this to trick google? Thank you in advance! I look forward to some informative answers.

    | MNoisy
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  • mezozcorp


    Hi, My website was one of many that dropped in rankings this last Friday, The company that i outsourced my SEO 4 months ago did a bad job. Now  i'm doing everything my self to recover, so i was thinking getting a new hosting, duplicate the website with a same content (i have original quality content) and 301 my old domain to new one? How long can it last with Google? Can penalties be passed via 301 redirects ? Looking forward to your help.

    | mezozcorp
    0
  • BlueNinja


    Hi Guys, We are new to MOZ and just getting some data on one of our projects Shottle Hall This is a wedding venue in Derbyshire and as you can imagine it's quite a competitive niche. We have been working with them to help build website content and build natural links. However we are against a lot of sites that have obviously had lots of "questionable" SEO work done in the past and these sites are still ranking above Shottle Hall One competitor has lots of links from very low quality blogs - that they have obviously made themselves http://derbyshire-attractions.blogspot.co.uk/ Another site is ranking well and is buying banner links that pass page rank http://whimsicalwonderlandweddings.com/ This really makes me think should we be doing these tactics ?? We are told by Google that this is not the way to rank but I am very disheartened by these facts!!

    | BlueNinja
    0
  • BD69


    My company has stuffed several hundred links into the footer of every page. Well, technically not the footer, as they're right at the end of the body tag, but basically the same thing. They are formatted as follows: [" href="http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm">" target="_blank">http://example.com/springfield_pa_real_estate.htm">](</span><a class= "http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm")springfield, pa real estate These direct to individual pages that contain the same few images and variations the following text that just replace the town and state: _Springfield, PA Real Estate - Springfield County [images] This page features links to help you Find Listings and Homes for sale in the Springfield area MLS, Springfield Real Estate Agents, and Springfield home values. Our free real estate services feature all Springfield and Springfield suburban areas. We also have information on Springfield home selling, Springfield home buying, financing and mortgages, insurance and other realty services for anyone looking to sell a home or buy a home in Springfield. And if you are relocating to Springfield or want Springfield relocation information we can help with our Relocation Network._ The bolded text links to our internal site pages for buying, selling, relocation, etc. Like I said, this is repeated several hundred times, on every single page on our site. In our XML sitemap file, there are links to: http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/
    http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Homes/
    http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Townhomes/ That direct to separate pages with a Google map result for properties for sale in Springfield. It's accompanied by the a boilerplate version of this: _Find Springfield Pennsylvania Real Estate for sale on www.example.com - your complete source for all Springfield Pennsylvania real estate. Using www.example.com, you can search the entire local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for up to date Springfield Pennsylvania real estate for sale that may not be available elsewhere. This includes every Springfield Pennsylvania property that's currently for sale and listed on our local MLS. Example Company is a fully licensed Springfield Pennsylvania real estate provider._ Google Webmaster Tools is reporting that some of these pages have over 30,000 internal links on our site. However, GWT isn't reporting any manual actions that need to be addressed. How blatantly abusive and spammy is this? At best, Google doesn't care a spit about it , but worst case is this is actively harming our SERP rankings. What's the best way to go about dealing with this? The site did have Analytics running, but the company lost the account information years ago, otherwise I'd check the numbers to see if we were ever hit by Panda/Penguin. I just got a new Analytics account implemented 2 weeks ago. Of course it's still using deprecated object values so I don't even know how accurate it is. Thanks everyone! qrPftlf.png

    | BD69
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  • binpress


    We've contracted a traditional SEO firm, mostly for link building. As part of their plan they want to submit our site to a large list of link directories, and we're not sure if that's a good option. As far as we know, those directories have been ineffective for a long time now, and we're wondering if there is the chance of getting penalized by google. When I asked the agency their opinion about that, they gave me the following answer - Updated and optimized by us - We are partnered with these sites and control quality of these sites. Unique Class C IP address - Links from unique Referring Class C IP plays a very important role in SEO. Powered by high PR backlinks Domain Authority (DA) Score of over 20 These directories are well categorized. So they actually control those directories themselves, which we think is even worse. I'm wondering what does the Moz community think about link directory submission - is there still something to be gained there, is there any risk involved, etc. Thanks!

    | binpress
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  • CayenneRed89


    Hi There I recently launched a very large website - rich in good  quality content, nice design and good onsite SEO. The website is a 100 + pages and gives the user informative content. In terms of SEO and linking building - a few guest posts, PR's and directories have been submitted. All links have been relevant and quality.  No spam links used at all and the number of links submitted has been very low. Only a handful.. We have seen a significant drop in rankings and I am scratching my head as to why. My worry is that Google has slapped us for having an affiliate link on the website. Each page - except the homepage has one advert on them.  The advert includes an affiliate link. Does anyone have any recent experience of affiliate websites been slapped? Can anyone help??? Much Appreciated

    | CayenneRed89
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  • BobAnderson


    I am currently struggling with our site www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk to rank our PVC banners page http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html On the UK search I have the following positions. hfe-signs.co.uk/banners.php
    signfirm.com/banners.html
    bigvaluebanners.co.uk/PVC_Banners_High_Quality_Cheap_Outdoor_PVC_Mesh_Full_Colour_Banner/
    bannerprintingandroid.co.uk/pvc-banners/
    printedbannersandsigns.co.uk/
    your-print.co.uk/pvc-banners-special.html
    bannerbuzz.co.uk/pvc-banners
    bannerbuzz.co.uk/
    auraprint.co.uk/products/banners/
    vinylprinting.co.uk/pvc_banners.html
    banners.co.uk/CustomBanners-BlankBanners.htm
    use - http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html I can't decide if it is url structure of the site, to many links on the left hand nav diluting power, keywords, etc but it does not look right that we are so far down, at least 2 of the pages above us have no content at all and some have no links or social either. Any help would be appreciated.

    | BobAnderson
    0
  • WebServiceConsulting.com


    I have a site with paginated search result pages. What I've done is noindex/follow them and I've placed the rel=canonical tag on page2, page3, page4, etc pointing back to the main/first search result page. These paginated search result pages aren't visible to the user (since I'm not technically selling products, just providing different images to the user), and I've added a text link on the bottom of the first/main search result page that says "click here to load more" and once clicked, it automatically lists more images on the page (ajax). Is this a proper strategy? Also, for a site that does sell products, would simply noindexing/following the search results/paginated pages and placing the canonical tag on the paginated pages pointing back to the main search result page suffice? I would love feedback on if this is a proper method/strategy to keep Google happy. Side question - When the robots go through a page that is noindexed/followed, are they taking into consideration the text on those pages, page titles, meta tags, etc, or are they only worrying about the actual links within that page and passing link juice through them all?

    | WebServiceConsulting.com
    0
  • esiow2013


    I just want to know your thoughts if it is necessary to add meta noindex nofollow tag in each page of my new website before migrating the old pages to new pages under a new domain? Would it be better if I'll just add a blockage in my robots.txt then remove it once we launch the new website? Thanks!

    | esiow2013
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  • WindshieldGuy-276221


    I had a website that recently got penalized. The pagerank dropped to zero on the homepage and moved to page 200 on google. I checked manual actions on my site in web mastertools and it says that no webspam is found. I am curious to find out why my website would drop. I had a a network of 5 blogs that I was linking to the site that also lost page rank but theres is N/A now. I am thinking thats where the trouble started because i did not use no follow. Question 1 My question is if I remove all the links to the other site or make them no follow will the penalty lift. I am thinking that the penalty is an automated on and not a manual one. Does any one have experience with automated penalties? Did they lift after you fixed the issues. Did you regain most of your original rankings? Question 2 What happens to all my blogs. I spent all lot of money on have posts written for it. Can any of the content be salvaged. I have over 1000 pages written on 5 different blogs. I can send you a list of the urls so you can see what I am talking about.

    | WindshieldGuy-276221
    0
  • Felip3


    In the past many of the articles we posted in our blog we post on Ezine articles. After Penguin still make any sense to post on Ezine? Can the post on Ezine make any bad or Good to our ranking? What kind of tactics are guys using to promote articles/post in your blog?

    | Felip3
    0
  • Whebb


    Hey Everybody, Have a client that recently came to us asking for SEO help. Did some initial analysis on their current SEO status and most everything looked pretty good. On-page work was pretty good, nothing really lacking there other then missing alt tags for all images. Their linking profile looked good too. Lots of good links from quality sources, all relevant. Client has done some good press releases. They could probably use a bit more focus in their content as it is somewhat general and not keyword focused. Initially it didn't look like they needed any help with their SEO, so was a bit curious as to why they contacted us. Today we get their google analytics information and immediately noticed that they have had a 85-90 percent drop in organic traffic from all major search engines that started about two weeks ago. If all their SEO looks to be done properly, any ideas what would account for the massive drop in traffic? The only thing that looks like may have happened is that they may have dropped a couple spots from position #1 to position 2-3 for some of their highest traffic terms.  Even if that is the case, I would not expect such a high drop off in terms of organic traffic. Just curious as to what anyone else can attribute the huge drop in traffic to or what else may help identify the issue. It's almost as if analytics was turned off or removed from the site, but that is not the case.

    | Whebb
    0
  • Webrevolve


    Hey guys, I've just been doing some searching and couldn't quite contemplate how heavily low-quality and spammy EMDs are still running some Google searches. Just take "cheap kitchens", for instance. Here are a list of URLs that appeared; http://kitchenunitsdoors.co.uk/ http://www.kitchenunits9.co.uk/ http://www.aboutkitchenunits.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchenunits1.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchensonline.com/ http://www.buycheapkitchens.com/ http://www.cheapkitchenscheapkitchen.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchensforsale1.co.uk/ http://cheapkitchensaberdeen.co.uk/ http://www.kitchensderby1.co.uk/ http://www.cheapcheapkitchens.co.uk/ http://kitchen-cheap.co.uk/ http://www.cheapestkitchensinbritain.co.uk/ http://www.cheapkitchenss.co.uk/ http://www.cheaperthanmfi.com/ http://cheapkitchenuk.co.uk/ As you can see, none of them appear to be genuine retailers and are setup purely to influence Google rankings. I'm amazed that Google is still giving so much weight to these types of sites - especially considering how search is meant to be better than it ever was before! Any insights into why this is?

    | Webrevolve
    0
  • theseolab


    I've done a bit of reading on google now "scrapping" the keywords metrics from the analytics. I am trying to understand why the hell they would do that? To force people to run multiple adwords campaign to setup different keywords scenario? It just doesn't make sense to me...If i am a blogger or i run an ecommerce site...and i get a lot of visit regarding a particular post through a keyword they clicked on organically. Why would Google wanna hide this from people? It's great Data for us to carry on writing relevant content that appeals to people and therefore serves the need of those same people? There is the idea of doing White Hat SEO and focus on getting strong links and great content etc... How do we know we have great content if we are not seeing what is appealing to people in terms of keywords and how they found us organically... Is google trying to squash SEO as a profession? What do you guys think?

    | theseolab
    0
  • redcappi


    Our users create content for which we host on a seperate URL for a web version. Originally this was hosted on our main domain. This was causing problems because Google was seeing all these different types of content on our main domain. The page content was all over the place and (we think) may have harmed our main domain reputation. About a month ago, we added a robots.txt to block those URL's in that particular folder, so that Google doesn't crawl those pages and ignores it in the SERP. We now went a step further and are now redirecting (301 redirect) all those user created URL's to a totally brand new domain (not affiliated with our brand or main domain). This should have been done from the beginning, but it wasn't. Any suggestions on how can we remove all those original URL's and make Google see them as not affiliated with main domain?? or should we just give it the good ol' time recipe for it to fix itself??

    | redcappi
    0

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