Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. Research & Trends
  3. White Hat / Black Hat SEO
Log in to post

Category: White Hat / Black Hat SEO

Dig into white hat and black hat SEO trends.

  • AdoptionHelp


    I've been getting some very interesting spam on my wordpress blogs lately: trackbacks on wikipedia articles that are obviously spammy. By that I mean that the comment on wikipedia are obviously spam and the link to my blogs are removed before I even arrive at the page or get the notification. The trackbacks are posted on valid wikipedia entries. My concern is that this is a move by an unsavory competitor to try to get my sites in trouble. I can't really see how this would be effective though. All I can come up is that it might eventually get my domains banned from being linked to in wikipedia. I can't think of any problems this would cause in google or other SE's. What could be the purpose behind such a spam campaign? Any feedback?

    | AdoptionHelp
    0
  • chanel27


    Hi, We are running 2 types of service in our company. 1.) Dry Cleaning 2.) Laundry Services The problem is we have 2 website but only 1 office address.
    It is not recommended to put same address for the both websites
    both doing laundry & dry cleaning services. Is there any tip on how we can get listed on Google place without using the same address for both website?

    | chanel27
    0
  • PeterRota


    Why does Google recommend schema for local business/ organizations? The reason I ask is I was in Structed Data Testing Tool, and I was running some businesses and organizations  through it. Yet every time, it says this "information will not appear as a rich snippet in search results, because it seems to describe an organization. Google does not currently display organization information in rich snippets". Additionally, many of times when you do search the restaurant or a related query it will still show telephone number and reviews and location. Would it be better to list it as a place, since I want to have its reviews and location show up thanks? I would be interested to hear what everyone else opinions are on this thanks.

    | PeterRota
    0
  • ConversionChamp


    I would like to know how SEOMoz community members approach adult SEO. How do you approach a project when you get one (if you do it that is). If you dont do adult SEO, why do you not do it? Is it because it's much more difficult than normal SEO or do you not want to associate yourself with that industry?

    | ConversionChamp
    0
  • BobGW


    Hello, I like the concept that a directory is good only if you would still want the link if it passed no link juice. DMOZ and Best of the Web fall into that category. And so do some niche directories. How do you determine whether to go with a niche directory or not? Also, what's the ratio of how many niche directory links you'd want compared to other types of links (being very safe) 3:1? 4:1? 5:1? Does it matter what your other links are? Thanks.

    | BobGW
    1
  • jasarrow


    In light of the recent penalty put on the Interflora site, does anybody know who their SEO company is or was (or if they were doing it in house)? Also, do you think SEO companies that are responsible for things like this should be named and shamed?

    | jasarrow
    0
  • maestrosonrisas


    I keep getting attacks to my website every time that are being blocked by OSE firewall Is there any way to stop this? I am affraid because they actually manage enter my website on the past, and i dont know if they can enter on the future or if having all the pluggins and wordpress updated. I am safe enough, and i am not sure if there is any type of virus on my computer Macbook as those attacked pages were recently updated from my computer. Is there any malware scan for Mac Thanl you == Attack Details == TYPE: Found Basic DoS Attacks DETECTED ATTACK VALUE: dDos Attack ACTION: Blocked LOGTIME: 2013-02-25 11:48:18 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/75.126.24.81 URI: [http://www.propdental.es/](http://www.propdental.es/) METHOD: HEAD USERAGENT: N/A REFERRER: N/A == Attack Details == TYPE: Found Basic DoS Attacks DETECTED ATTACK VALUE: dDos Attack ACTION: Blocked LOGTIME: 2013-02-25 10:13:17 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/107.21.150.82 URI: [http://www.propdental.es/blanqueamiento-dental/](http://www.propdental.es/blanqueamiento-dental/) METHOD: HEAD USERAGENT: N/A REFERRER: N/A ``` == Attack Details == TYPE: Found Malicious User Agent DETECTED ATTACK VALUE: curl/7.15.5 (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.15.5 OpenSSL/0.9.8b zlib/1.2.3 libidn/0.6.5 ACTION: Blocked LOGTIME: 2013-02-25 03:13:52 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/119.245.226.74 URI: [http://www.propdental.es/sonrisas/los-martinez/](http://www.propdental.es/sonrisas/los-martinez/) METHOD: HEAD USERAGENT: curl/7.15.5 (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.15.5 OpenSSL/0.9.8b zlib/1.2.3 libidn/0.6.5 REFERRER: N/A ``` ```

    | maestrosonrisas
    0
  • dwallner


    I'm researching a competitor using site explorer and the seomoz toolbar and getting some strange results. When you search by the domain name in site explorer you get no results, but the toolbar shows 170K incoming links. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com I noticed the top referring page was a strange internal url so I ran that through site explorer and discovered 19 links.. When you put the strange link in a browser, it redirects to the home url;..  At this url the toolbar shows 220 links and semoz shows 19 http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/?xid_78e7f=0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.augustagreenlawns.com%2F%3Fxid_78e7f%3D0f2a64344c8de6bdf2d8cdf8de93ea5c What is up with that url?  What are they doing? This is a site ranking #1 for my local search term even though he has about 50 pages of almost duplicate content.  See link below.   I'm really scratching my head here. http://www.augustagreenlawns.com/home.php?all=categories

    | dwallner
    0
  • ExploreConsulting


    I need help reconciling two points of view on spammy links. On one hand, Google seems to say, "Don't build spammy links to your website - it will hurt your ranking."  Of course, we've seen the consequences of this from the Penguin update, of those who built bad links got whacked. From the Penguin update, there was then lots of speculation of Negative SEO attacks.  From this, Google is saying, "We're smart enough to detect a negative SEO attack.", i.e: http://youtu.be/HWJUU-g5U_I So, its seems like Google is saying, "Build spammy links to your website in an attempt to game rank, and you'll be penalized; build spammy links to a competitors website, and we'll detect it and not let it hurt them." Well, to me, it doesn't seem like Google can have it both ways, can they?  Really, I don't understand why Competitor A doesn't just go to Fiverr and buy a boatload of crappy exact match anchor links to Competitor B in an attempt to hurt Competitor B.  Sure, Competitor B can disavow those links, but that still takes time and effort.  Furthermore, the analysis needed for an unsophisticated webmaster could be daunting. Your thoughts here?  Can Google have their cake and eat it too?

    | ExploreConsulting
    0
  • DROIDSTERS


    Hi Mozzers I have a bit of thing I was pondering about this morning and would love to hear your opinion on it. So we had a bit of an issue on our client's website in the beginning of the year. I tried to find a way around it by using wild cards in my robots.txt but because different search engines treat wild cards differently it dint work out so well and only some search engines understood what I was trying to do. so here goes, I had a parameter on a big amount of URLs on the website with ?filter being pushed from the database we make use of filters on the site to filter out content for users to find what they are looking for much easier, concluding to database driven ?filter URLs (those ugly &^% URLs we all hate so much*. So what we looking to do is implementing nofollow noindex on all the internal links pointing to it the ?filter parameter URLs, however my SEO sense is telling me that the noindex nofollow should rather be on the individual ?filter parameter URL's metadata robots instead of all the internal links pointing the parameter URLs. Am I right in thinking this way? (reason why we want to put it on the internal links atm is because the of the development company states that they don't have control over the metadata of these database driven parameter URLs) If I am not mistaken noindex nofollow on the internal links could be seen as page rank sculpting where as onpage meta robots noindex nofolow is more of a comand like your robots.txt Anyone tested this before or have some more knowledge on the small detail of noindex nofollow? PS: canonical tags is also not doable at this point because we still in the process of cleaning out all the parameter URLs so +- 70% of the URLs doesn't have an SEO friendly URL yet to be canonicalized to. PSS: another reason why this needs looking at is because search engines won't be able to make an interpretation of these pages (until they have been cleaned up and fleshed out with unique content) which could result in bad ranking of the pages which could conclude to my users not being satisfied, so over and above the SEO factor, usability of the site is being looked at here as well, I don't want my users to land on these pages atm. If they navigate to it via the filters then awesome because they are defining what they are looking for with the filters. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks, Chris Captivate.

    | DROIDSTERS
    0
  • maestrosonrisas


    Hello my wordpress has been constantly attacked every day, files were uploaded and redirections were made to others websites. I instaled sucruri pluggin paying the annual fee, and no result. They keep acessing the web. And i uploading backup security. Know i have instaled OSE wp firewall and seems that they are getting more dificulty accessing and uploading files. But still sending like 40 attacks every day. Is ther any way to stop this? were is some information of the blocked attacks LOGTIME: 2013-02-22 10:58:01 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/27.153.210.183 REFERRER: http://www.propdental.com/index.php?option=com_registration&task=register LOGTIME: 2013-02-22 10:52:09 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/2a00:1d70:c01c::69:61 URI: http://www.propdental.com/video//wp-admin.php FROM IP 40 attacks this ip every two seconds: http://whois.domaintools.com/2a00:1d70:c01c::69:61 URI: http://www.propdental.com/video//wp-admin.php ACTION: Blocked LOGTIME: 2013-02-22 10:49:10 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/103.31.186.82 URI: http://www.propdental.com/ METHOD: GET LOGTIME: 2013-02-22 10:37:10 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/120.43.11.251 URI: http://www.propdental.com/blog/tag/carillas-de-porcelana-cerinate METHOD: GET USERAGENT: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.95 Safari/537.11 REFERRER: http://www.propdental.com/blog/tag/carillas-de-porcelana-cerinate ACTION: Blocked LOGTIME: 2013-02-22 10:28:52 FROM IP: http://whois.domaintools.com/36.251.43.51 URI: http://www.propdental.com/ METHOD: GET USERAGENT: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.94 Safari/537.4 REFERRER: http://www.buyclassybags.com/

    | maestrosonrisas
    0
  • DROIDSTERS


    Hi Mozzers I have a bit of thing I was pondering about this morning and would love to hear your opinion on it. So we had a bit of an issue on our client's website in the beginning of the year. I tried to find a way around it by using wild cards in my robots.txt but because different search engines treat wild cards differently it dint work out so well and only some search engines understood what I was trying to do. so here goes, I had a parameter on a big amount of URLs on the website with ?filter being pushed from the database we make use of filters on the site to filter out content for users to find what they are looking for much easier, concluding to database driven ?filter URLs (those ugly &^% URLs we all hate so much*. So what we looking to do is implementing nofollow noindex on all the internal links pointing to it the ?filter parameter URLs, however my SEO sense is telling me that the noindex nofollow should rather be on the individual ?filter parameter URL's metadata robots instead of all the internal links pointing the parameter URLs. Am I right in thinking this way? (reason why we want to put it on the internal links atm is because the of the development company states that they don't have control over the metadata of these database driven parameter URLs) If I am not mistaken noindex nofollow on the internal links could be seen as page rank sculpting where as onpage meta robots noindex nofolow is more of a comand like your robots.txt Anyone tested this before or have some more knowledge on the small detail of noindex nofollow? PS: canonical tags is also not doable at this point because we still in the process of cleaning out all the parameter URLs so +- 70% of the URLs doesn't have an SEO friendly URL yet to be canonicalized to. Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks, Chris Captivate.

    | DROIDSTERS
    0
  • maestrosonrisas


    Hello, i am being constantly attacked on my wordpress page. I would like to now according to your experience wich wp firewall pluggin do you recommend thanks

    | maestrosonrisas
    0
  • ExploreConsulting


    I've read articles that indicates Google will provide a higher rank to listing with higher click through rates (i.e, http://bit.ly/132mUd0, "If a search result achieves a higher than average click through rate then it may be given a higher ranking.") First, this seems like a chicken-and-egg scenario: it seems like results with higher rank will have higher CTR from increased exposure, no? Second, if this was an accurate ranking signal, it seems like it would be so easy to black hat (as well as other web usage signals, such as goal conversions and time on site).  I'd just pay some Indian dude to search for my website on different IPs and click through in the SERP. Your thoughts about this scenario?

    | ExploreConsulting
    0
  • maestrosonrisas


    hello my wordpress theme keeps reinfected i dont know were the virus is coming from, they upload archives on ftp and redirects all wordpress pages i installed this pluggin http://sucuri.net what is your opinion about this pluggin my wordpress is all actualized. Any ideas to spot reinfections

    | maestrosonrisas
    0
  • chanel27


    Hi, I understand that meta title and descriptions are very important for websites. I would like to know if meta keywords are important? I have seen people talking about meta keywords are useless and it should be removed from the website to prevent competitors from knowing your keywords. Anyone has anything to share? 🙂

    | chanel27
    0
  • ibcdan


    Back story: During panda and penguin we noticed declining ranks on google. So we hit the Q&A and followed the given suggestions; removing links, optimizing a few tags, etc. We took the time and money to remove quite a few links (200+) using Remove'em. We then submitted our results to the Google web spam team (Google reconsideration request) to find out we have no manual penalty. This bring me to the thought our back links profile might still be hurting us. We had a pretty good results while removing our back links from other webmasters being very helpful and removing our links, most of which were created by old seo company's when "links were king". This brings me to my real question, would it be worth the time disavowing links we think are bad using the disavow tool? Obviously only the ones where webmasters didnt not respond or refused to remove out link?

    | ibcdan
    0
  • MonsterWeb28


    Hey all, I want to be able to see if my website was penalized from the most recent penguin update because we have several hundred websites built and at the bottom of each on it says something along the lines Website by, Web Design by, Hosting by and links back to our homepage. Could this possibly be penalizing us since these links have similar anchor text and on sites that have nothing to do with our services? Thanks, Ryan

    | MonsterWeb28
    0
  • maestrosonrisas


    hello Mattew i have a big problem on the web is the second time that a virus attacked the wordpress of my web. That is why i am being very busy trying to solve it fisrt time i upload a backup before the attack, but now if infected again All de webs that are positioned on google for ejemple if you look for anithing on google "estetica of propdental.com" it redirects to page http://medicaresue.com can you help me please is the second time and i am losing lots of traffic and positions on google thanks

    | maestrosonrisas
    0
  • Benjamin379


    Hi All, I was just wondering if Google is starting to punish anchor text links? I've noticed that one of my clients domains has slightly reduced and they have slipped a few places in rankings for a key term since. I found this bizarre as the last few links I built were both relevant and strong but I did use an anchor text? Any feedback would be useful, I'm slightly confused here?

    | Benjamin379
    0
  • dancape


    I have a client which have been losing rankings for the key term "sell gold" in Google AU. However, while doing some investigating I realized that we have been receiving links from bad neighborhoods such as porn, bogus .edu sites as well as some pharmaceutical sites. We have identified this as negative SEO and have moved forward to disavow the links in Google. However, I would like to know what other measures can be taken to combat this type of negative SEO linking? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

    | dancape
    0
  • gregdotcom


    Our website url is http://www.phoria.com Around January 16th we disappeared from google for the keyword 'kratom' We were on page 3 for the longest time. We have no critical messages in webmaster tools however I did notice most of our links seem to be website directory links.We still rank for a couple terms like buy kratom on page 6.I think a google update occurred around this time so I've read however if we had a variety of links that went against google guidelines wouldn't we have received a message stating so in Webmaster Tools?This month has been very confusing to say the least. Any help would be appreciated.

    | gregdotcom
    0
  • maestrosonrisas


    Can someone explain to me how to get authority in a domain. I have to domains implantedental.net that with few content page authority raised from 12 to 19. no more than 20 pages (one content page a week) And another page propdental.es that with lots of content more than 500 unique pages the domain authority dropped from 17 to 13 (ten content pages a day)

    | maestrosonrisas
    0
  • trickshotric


    I guess this is the usual reaction to a seeing a domain rank above your own website is "They must be cheating"! However... in this case I feel more than justified. The website is aircon247.com they rank top 3 in the UK for "air conditioning" and other quite generic terms in the industry. I'm interested to know your thoughts and what (if any) action should be taken. Here are many of the links that I think contravene the Google Guidelines : Spammy Article Submissions with Inorganic Anchor Text: http://www.furniturearcade.com/decorative-furniture/decorative-accessories-lamps/ http://www.sys-con.com/node/2308271 http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/imagine-a-world-without-air-conditioning-units-7-112555 http://www.retail-digital.com/press_releases/appliances/diy-air-conditioning-installation-options http://www.livingwithwhite.com/three-fun-uses-for-antique-grates-and-floor-registers/ http://www.mcrjk2008.com/2009/04/best-air-conditioning-ever.html http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/comfort-your-business-needs-1682737.htm http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/diy-air-conditioning-installation-options-1677015.htm http://www.housetohome.co.uk/topical-advice/531054/regulating-your-home-environment http://homeklondike.com/2011/01/10/country-style-bedroom-design-ideas/ http://professorshouse.com/Building-a-house/Plumbing-Heating/Articles/Energy-Efficient-Air-Conditioners/ http://www.greenscenedebate.com/2009/04/take-good-luck-at-air-conditioning.html#.URzEmh17L5w http://www.harlynn.com/2009/04/wanna-chill-out.html http://www.loveshaven.com/2009/04/we-are-all-so-excited-for-my-sisters.html http://asiwaspassing.com/2009/05/ Spammy Links in External Website Footers / Side Bars with Inorganic Anchor Text: http://www.w-int.com/ http://www.g-dir.com/home/gardening/ http://www.s-dir.com/ http://www.sefdir.org/popular-listings.html http://www.ribcast.com/ http://rapidcoolsite.com/Home.html http://www.index-guide.org/ http://e-dir.org/ http://www.singaporerealestate.info/blog/?s=%27the+solitaire+call%27 http://www.onlinepureherbs.com/acidity.htm http://erostours.com/cheap-flights-Chicago.html http://www.search-way.com/ http://koolergazi.persianblog.ir/ Blog Spam Inorganic  Anchor Text: http://edcel.net/2009/05/ http://www.bluehatseo.com/quick-answers-1-link-building/ Spammy (Link exchange etc.) Directories: http://ireland.accommodationforstudents.com/info/reciprocal_links_ad.asp http://baliscript.net/barter-links.php http://www.abacushosting.ca/linx.php http://www.whelphelper.com/links.php http://www.spectramedi.com/links_shopping.htm https://www.midwayautosupply.com/linkexchange.aspx? http://artsellart.com/links.html http://www.linkalizer.com/directory/39-1/ http://dogdir.com/region/NA.php http://www.easyezinearticles.com/ezineresources/Outsourcing.htm http://www.patchhomeinspections.com/Links.html http://autoharpusa.com/index.html?p=10 http://www.baliscript.net/webdesign-links.php

    | trickshotric
    0
  • allenrocks


    One of my domains was hacked right before I took over managing it. The hacker created around 100 links for simply grotesque things. After I took over I erased the entire site, rebuilt from scratch, new server (inmotion), rewrote every page, robots.txt every offending page, and even 301 just in case 404s were hurting me. I am now almost a month in and I have seen zero movement on anything rankings based. This is not a bad domain it was registered in 2008 and has a few decent citations because of the Doc's medical license. They registered for BBB in November and have a 30 year old listing citation from them based on business establishment. I must be going crazy but it's not ranking for anything except the homepage. I didn't know Google could hold a grudge for so long. The only ranking I can sometimes achieve is through Google Places which still has to compete with tough domains. I've already put in a reconsideration request and received a response stating the following:  We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Just check it for yourself I know it's a work in progress but I'm not even considered relevant on page 50! And the crap links are still indexed!! A search for a keyword I'm aiming for with my client's name followed after gives me no results. I am currently using wordpress, yoast xml, and single keyword focusses. My market is tough but no way I can not rank for the keyword and my name.

    | allenrocks
    0
  • maestrosonrisas


    I think a virus as enter my wordpress and is changing my titles and redirecting urls. Help please. How can i find the virus and werre was is gate to enter my web thank you

    | maestrosonrisas
    0
  • Cornwall


    I just had an email from one of my least preferred competitor's SEO company asking about guest posting. They are already totally dominating the SERPs where they have no natural reason for being. Is there anywhere to bring this to the attention of the search engines?

    | Cornwall
    0
  • Ubique


    I have been doing some back-link checking and found that 25% of the total back-links to my PR5 site are Spam and generated over the past 8 weeks. There are 189 links in total from 38 different domains and the anchor text is a combination of 'ugg boots for women' from TLDs in China, Russia and North Korea. The PR of these sites is 15 are n/a, 12 are 0 and the other 11 range between 1 - 6. More interestingly, all the links point to 1 single page on the domain. I have taken down that page now and wondering if I should 'disavow' the offending links in Google and Bing? Clearly with such a high % of my total links now being Spam, I want to be proactive so this does not hurt my rankings in search. If a Spambot is behind it then the issue is going to get worse moving forward. Any advice is welcome...

    | Ubique
    0
  • McTaggart


    Hi, I'm a PR and haven't used a newswire once over last 10 years. There are usually better alternatives which give you more control. Anyway, now a client has asked me for distribution of investor information via a newswire and now I've started worrying about the SEO consequences. I've spent a couple of days phoning around newswires and I think there's a real danger of picking up lots of backlinks from syndication sites (most of the distributors have sites they "partner" with to reproduce your original news release) so... Lots of backlinks will suddenly appear from external duplicate content (I will not carry the news release on client's website (no newsrooom) and I will just use url as link). I'm thinking there's the potential for a penalty (and even if not now, then in the future if Google decides to tighten rules further which looks likely). One newswire has recognized this and now only syndicates on 2 websites. The others haven't including the business newswire I've been asked to use. Your thoughts would be welcome... Thanks in advance!

    | McTaggart
    0
  • TBKO


    Hello Experts Wanted some imput if possible. I own a .org informational site that has been #1 in its category for Google Yahoo and Bing under a major keyword for years.  The site is aged back to 2005 and all of the sudden it dropped on August 10 (Google only- Yahoo and Bing still #1)) but remained atop the primary keywords that it is namesaked for .org (xxxxyyyzzz.org) and then Oct 9-10 it dropped from the page 1 top ranking it had for years on that primary keyword to page 13.  I dont know where to begin to look.  Any ideas how something like this could happen and what "Stones" I should turn. We purchased the website and are not SEO gurus so just not sure.  Any help would be appreciated

    | TBKO
    1
  • Roots7


    I have taken over SEO on a site. The old  people built thousands of pages with duplicate content. I am converting site to wordpress and was wondering if I should take the time to 301 redirect all 10,000 or so pages with duplicate content. The 10,000 pages all have links back to different  to different pages as well as to the homepage. Should I just let them go to a 404 page not found.

    | Roots7
    0
  • Crumpled_Dog


    We have been reviewing our off-page SEO strategy for clients and as part of that process, we are looking at a number of superb info-graphics on the subject. I see that some of current ones still list "Directories" as being part of their off-page strategy. Aren't these directories mainly there for link-building purposes and provide Users no real benefit? I don't think I've ever seen a directory that I would use, apart for SEO research. Surely Google's  Penguin algorithm would see directories in the same way and give them less value, or even penalise websites that use them to try to boost page rank? If I were to list my websites on directories it wouldn't be to share my lovely content with people that use directories to find great sites, it would be to sneakily build page rank. Am I missing the point? Thanks
    Scott

    | Crumpled_Dog
    0
  • CHECOM


    We are near the end of a site redesign and come to find out its in javascript and not engine friendly.  Our IT teams fix to this is show crawlable content to googlebot and others through the user agents.  I told them this is cloaking and I'm not comfortable with this.  They said after doing research, if the content is pretty much the same, it is an acceptable way to cloak.  About 90% of the content will be the same between the "regular user" and content served to googlebot. Does anyone have any experience with this, are there any recent articles or any best practices on this? Thanks!

    | CHECOM
    0
  • DCochrane


    After reading this article http://www.seomoz.org/blog/designing-for-seo some questions came up from my developers. In the article it says "One potential solution to this problem is a mouse-over. Initially when viewed, the panel will look as it does on the left hand side (exactly as the designer want it), yet when a user rolls over the image the panel changes into what you see on the right hand side (exactly what the SEO wants)." My developers say" Having text in the rollovers is almost like hiding text and everyone knows in SEO that you should never hide text. "In the article he explains that it is not hidden text since its visible & readable by the engines.What are everyone's thoughts on this? Completely acceptable or iffy?Thanks

    | DCochrane
    0
  • chanel27


    Hi, Can someone tell me what my SEO consultant is doing? I have engaged a SEO company in Singapore for my site: Http://www.rollerblinds.com.sg The thing is for the 1st 2 months, it is ranking well but for the next 4 months it is out of google. I noticed my links are on some strange article site. Is he doing blackhat tactic, I have been paying monthly for many months now with no result. Shall I continue to pay and how can I recover?

    | chanel27
    0
  • inizio


    Hello Moz and Mozfans,
    I would like to ask you a question. Our friend runs a real-estate server site with aprox. 450 000 visitors a month. There is aprox. 15 000 products to be sold. The problem is, their business strategy lies in visits, not conversions. They also run a huge (you may call it linkfarm) syndicate of exact-match domains, where all those products are feeded. Of course there is supposed to be a duplicate content, but for some reason Google does not care and indexes them. As a result this syndicated exact-match domain agregate has aprox. 350 000 visits a moth, almost as much as their main brand and domain. The thing is they need those numbers. Finally my question: Should we persuade them to: A. forget the linkfarms and focus on their top-product B. milk the linkfarm as much as possible before ban C. something else? Thank you very much. Bestr regards INIZIO

    | inizio
    0
  • xtopher66


    Firstly we have no warnings or messages in WMT. We have racked up thousands of anchor text urls. Our fault, we didnt nofollow and also some of our many cms sites replicated the links sitewide to the tune of 20,000 links. I`m in the process of removing the code which causes this problem in most of the culprit sites but how long will it take roughly for a crawl to recalculate the links? In my WMT it still shows the links increasing but I think this is retrospective data. However, after this crawl we should see a more relevant link count. We also provide some web software which has been used by many sites. Google may consider our followed anchor text violating spam rules. So I ask, if we were to change the link text to our url only and add nofollow, will this improve the spam issue? We could have as many as 4,000 links per website, as it is a calendar function and list all dates into the future.......and we would like to retain a link to our website of course for marketing purposes. What we dont want is sitewide link spam again. Some of our other links are low quality, some are okay. However, we have lost rankings, probably due to low quality links and overuse of anchor text.. Is this the case the Google has just devalued the links algorythmically  or is there an actual penalty to make the rankings drop? As we have no warnings in WMT, I feel there isnt the need to remove the lower quality links and in most cases we havent control over the link placements. We should just rectify that we have a better future linking profile? If we have to remove spam links, then that can only be a good reason to cause negative seo?

    | xtopher66
    0
  • Tinny


    Hello to all, I have done on page for my new seo project and now after all these google updates, i am thinking that how to start my off page work like what should be the off page strategy. What are the off page tasks which i do to improve my website serp? Pls guys suggest me so that i can start my off page for the website... I am totally blank that what  are the off page tasks one should do by looking at the seo updates... Thanks & Regards KIRTi

    | Tinny
    0
  • Phil_


    I'm a developer spending ever more time on SEO for SMBs. I've never had cause to buy links. Not one bit. I've done ok. Until now that is. Now I am getting my arse kicked into last year. By, I think, a top SEO company. Really, you know these guys and they are whiter than white. But what they have achieved seems an impossibilty to me using white hat techniques. Maybe they are from another planet than me. Or maybe something else is going on. In six months they have built 40,000+ links. These are unbelievably high quality links in their thousands. Really top notch. Keyword rich anchors slap bang in relevant content on great, great sites such as newspapers, univertsities, government, corporate, charity etc. Nothing spammy at all. Amazing. I was skimming but I found nothing to question at all until link 800 which was a cloaked link on a well known review site's product page. But generally the high quality sustained. Gradually, some began to feel somewhat worked into the content, although worked very well.  2000 links in and there are still magazine and review sites, still page authority 40+. There are still local government sites at 10,000 links when the export file ends. I go dizzy at the thought of the remaining 30,000. How far down could this quality have gone? Gulp. I am in awe, intimdated...and a little suspicious. How on earth do you do that with a pure white hat on? Actually, whatever colour your hat - how on earth do you do that? Rand's position is clear. He doesn't do it. Other's are less unambiguous. Comments like "I do it, you do it, we all do it" go unchallenged. Even on a recent link buying question here on SEOMoz most comments say don't do it but one advocates "Paid, targeted, individually prospected links". Am I too suspicious - a fool trying to rationalise my relatively pathetic link building? Honestly, you should just see these links. Of course, maybe some of you have. 🙂 Come on, please don't tell these guys simply worked hard. But maybe that's the harsh truth I cannot face. I have to say I cannot see the site generating an income to pay for the man hours needed for 40,000 high-value, white-hat links but then what do I know. Tell me, what do you think: Is it possible to build 40,000 very high value links in six months using pure white hat techniques - or is there another way? Phil

    | Phil_
    2
  • TheInternetWorks


    how come this guy has all but 1 of the top ten results? (UK results - I'm guessing same in USA?) - with thin content on a spammed keyword on multi-sub domains? How can we 'white hat' guys compete if stuff like this is winning?

    | TheInternetWorks
    0
  • Joseph-Green-SEO


    Our website was hit with the "Pharma hack", "Google Cloaking Hack", or "Blackhat SEO Spam".  and Google showed in the results this website may be compromised. After cleaning out the hack from the website I chacked with the Seomoz tool Open Site Explorer and I found that they hacked 1000 of other websites  and created links to my website. They were  building a few 1000 links to the  website with the clickable text "buy cheap online pharmacy". and more like that. This website www.washington23.com has been hacked and gives over 200 links to your website for pharmacy items.  And Google considers this from your impotent links as i can see in webmasters. What can I do about it?

    | Joseph-Green-SEO
    0
  • VMLYRDiscoverability


    Would greatly appreciate some opinions on this scenario. Domain cruising along for years, top 1-3 rankings for nearly all top non-branded terms and a stronghold for branded searches.  Sitelinks prominently shown with branded searches and always ranked #1 for most variations of brand name. Then, sub-domain launches that was over 80,000 local pages - these pages are 90-95% similar with only city and/or state changing to make them appear like unique local pages.  Not an uncommon technique but worrisome in a post Panda/Penguin world.  These pages are surprisingly NOT captured as duplicate content by the SEOMoz crawler in my campaigns. Additionally about that same time a very aggressive, almost entirely branded paid search campaign was launched that took 20% of the clicks previously going to the main domain in organic to ppc. My concern is this, shortly after this launch of over 80k "local" pages on the sub-domain and the cannibalization of organic clicks through ppc we saw the consistency of sitelinks 6 packs drop to 3 sitelinks if showing at all, including some sub-domains in sitelinks (including the newly launched one) that had never been there before. There's not a clear answer here I'm sure but what are the experts thoughts on this - did a massive launch of highly duplicate pages coupled with a significant decrease in organic CTR for branded terms harm the authority of the main domain (which is only a few dozen pages) causing less sitelinks and less strength as a domain or is all this a coincidence?  Or caused by something else we aren't seeing? Thanks for thoughts!

    | VMLYRDiscoverability
    0
  • 94501


    A site I work with allows registered user to post blog posts (longer articles). Often, the blog posts have been published earlier on the writer's own blog. Is posting a link to the original source a sufficient preventative solution to possibly getting dinged for duplicate content? Thanks!

    | 94501
    0
  • MattBarker


    We noticed recently a huge amount of referral traffic coming to a client's site from various hard cord porn sites. One of the sites has become the 4th largest referrer and there are maybe 20 other sites sending traffic. I did a Whois look up on some of the sites and they're all registered to various people & companies, most of them are pretty shady looking. I don't know if the sites have been hacked or are deliberately sending traffic to my client's site, but it's obviously a concern.   The client's site was compromised a few months ago and had a bunch of spam links inserted into the homepage code. Has anyone else seen this before?  Any ideas why someone would do this, what the risks are and how we fix it? All help & suggestions greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance. MB.

    | MattBarker
    0
  • shags38


    I inadvertently created a mini link farm some time back by linking all of my parked domains (2000 plus) to some of my live websites (I was green and didn't think linking between the same owner sites / domains was an issue). These websites were doing well until Penguin and although I did not get any 'bad link' advices from Google I figure I was hit by Penguin. So about 3 or 4 months ago I painstakingly deleted ALL links from all of those domains that I still own (only 500 or so - the others were allowed to lapse). None of those domains have any links linking out at all but old links from those domains are still showing up in WMT and in SEOmoz and every other link tracking report I have run. So why would these links still be reported? How long do old links stay in the internet archives? This may sound like a strange question but do links 'remain with a domain for a given period of time regardless'? Are links archived before being 'thrown out' of the web. I know Google keeps archives of data that has expired, been deleted, website closed etc, etc for about 3 years or so (?). In an effort to correct a situation I have spent countless hours manually deleting thousands of links but they won't go away. Looking for some insight here please. cheers, Mike

    | shags38
    0
  • te_c


    Hi! Some time ago, a friend of my added our site to a directory. I did not notice it until today, when in the search results for my domain name, the directory came in the first page, in the four position. My friend wrote a nice article, describing our bussiness, and the page has a doFollow link. Looking at the metrics of that directory, I found the following: Domain Authority: 70; main page authority: 76; linking domain roots: 1383; total links: 94663 (several anchor texts); facebook shares: 26; facebook likes: 14; tweets: 20; Google +1: 15. The directory accept a free article about a company, does not review it before it is published, but look for duplicated articles representing spam; so one company can only have one listing (in theory). Is there any formula to know if a directory is safe to publish a doFollow link? If they don't review the link I would say is not a good signal, but is there any other factors to take into account?

    | te_c
    0
  • MagicianUK


    I've tried to be completely "white hat" in my SEO efforts and my site ranks pretty well.  However I'm being consistently beaten in the rankings by sites that pull every trick in the book and never seem to get penalised.  One of my main competitors has 100s of near identical pages (just the town name different on each) and ranks close to or at the top for many searches, and has done for a couple of years now!  Another uses massive keyword stuffing without any apparent adverse results.  I don't want to follow their example, but my business is suffering as a result.  Why can they get away with it and is there any way to "complain" to Google about it?

    | MagicianUK
    0
  • Superinks


    Hi guys, I know this is stupid but I bought an SEO package for around $400. Received the report, and my... it was a complete load of spam. It was basically a blast to lots of sites with random articles and my anchor texts all over the place. Theres thousands of these links and the articles dont make sense, I'm not sure what i'm going to do! This is my main Ecommerce website and i'm worried, i've complained and I hope to get a refund however i'm worried hes going to just blast my site and get me penalized by Google. It is clearly blackhat. Is there anything I can do? I'm very worried. Thanks

    | Superinks
    0
  • Cocoonfxmedia


    I have several pages which are showing duplicate content on my site for web design. As its a very competitive market I had create some local pages so I rank high if someone is searching locally i.e web design birmingham, web design tamworth etc.. http://www.cocoonfxmedia.co.uk/web-design.html http://www.cocoonfxmedia.co.uk/web-design-tamworth.html http://www.cocoonfxmedia.co.uk/web-design-lichfield.html I am trying to work out what is the best way reduce the duplicate content. What would be the best way to remove the duplicate content? 1. 301 redirect (will I lose the existing page)  to my main web design page with the geographic areas mentioned. 2. Re write the wording on each page and make it unique? Any assistance is much appreciated.

    | Cocoonfxmedia
    0
  • mcliddy


    Hi Everyone, I'm new to the whole SEO process, so was wondering if anyone can help me. I want to keep a record of all SEO activities in one place for the website i'm trying to optimise for. I have created an excel sheet which have the follwoing tabs -Overview & Rankings
     - Keyword Research Competitior Analysis
     - Keyword Distribution Map Onpage SEO Link Ideas Link Research
    -Link Building Log
     - PPC Campaign Does this all seem correct?
    Could anyone help in telling me what process you do to keep a record of all SEO onsite activity? I hope this isn't a  stupid post, but help would be very much appreciated Many Thanks Matt

    | mcliddy
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Browse Questions

Explore more categories

  • Moz Tools

    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

  • SEO Tactics

    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

  • Community

    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

  • Support

    Connect on product support and feature requests.

Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.