White Hat / Black Hat SEO

Competitor Drops 10,000 links since last index. Lets play detective.

One of the intriguing things about SEO is being able to reverse engineer your competitors rankings because all the technical information is available for those who know where to look. I recently looked at my Dashboard and saw that one of my competitors had dropped 10,000 links. The questions is why? Google algorthm change? Blackhat Penalty? Something else.? Here are the numbers, I am going to lieave my own clients site out because his numbers are pathetic. www.Leafly(dot)com 50.4k Links Down 10k www.thcfinder(dot)com 1,530 links Down 71 www.weedmaps(dot)com 64,000k links Up 1.5K Is it just me or is that a lot of links to loose over one indexing period?

| DavidMeshah

0

Negative seo by Shady SEO Firm?

Recently a former client of man called me up and said that his rankings for his Auto Repair Shop in Tacoma WA had dropped and he had his worst November in sales since they hired this new SEO firm to rebuild their website and provide SEO. Of course the first thing I did was check his back links and sure enough there are 22 links from Yellowbook.com all pointed to different cities I checked the SEO firms website and they and they had 4 links from YellowBook. The problem was the links from YellowBook were all optimized from different cities. I am pretty sure Google penalized my client for the unnatural back-links to YellowCrook.com. Does the community agree that these links caused the penalty? I included the links in pictures on my LinkedIn Profile. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/case-study-how-google-erased-60-percent-revenue-from-small-meshach?published=t Here are the links. <colgroup><col width="202"> <col width="545"></colgroup>
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/automotive |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lower-queen-anne-seattle-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Lower Queen Anne Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/bonney-lake-wa/mechanic | Mechanic in Bonney Lake, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa/auto-mechanics | Auto Mechanics in Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/shoreline-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Shoreline, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-repair | Auto Repair in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/lynnwood-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Lynnwood, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Auburn, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/redmond-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Redmond, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/matthews-beach-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Matthews Beach Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/kent-wa/auto-transmission | Auto Transmission in Kent, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/monroe-wa/truck-service-repair | Truck Service Repair in Monroe, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/wilburton-bellevue-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Wilburton Bellevue, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/laurelhurst-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Laurelhurst Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/seattle-wa-98166/auto-oil-lube |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/gig-harbor-wa/auto-oil-lube | Auto Oil Lube in Gig Harbor, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/northeast-seattle-seattle-wa/auto-repair-service | Auto Repair Service in Northeast Seattle Seattle, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/auburn-wa/auto-transmission |
| http://www.yellowpages.com/burien-wa/automotive | Automotive in Burien, Washington with Reviews & Ratings - YP.com |

| DavidMeshah

0

Client Wants To Use A .io Domain Name - How Bad For Organic?

Hi, I have a U.S. client who is stuck on a name that he wants to get as a .io (British Indian Ocean) domain name for a new site. Aside from the user confusion/weirdness, how much harder do you think this makes this sites organic in the U.S. in the future with a .io domain name? FYI, the other part of the domain name he wants to use is short, meaningless and implies nothing in and of itself. Thanks!

| 94501

2

Infinite Scrolling on Publisher Sites - is VentureBeat's implementation really SEO-friendly?

I've just begun a new project auditing the site of a news publisher. In order to increase pageviews and thus increase advertising revenue, at some point in the past they implemented something so that as many as 5 different articles load per article page. All articles are loaded at the same time and from looking in Google's cache and the errors flagged up in Search Console, Google treats it as one big mass of content, not separate pages. Another thing to note is that when a user scrolls down, the URL does in fact change when you get to the next article. My initial thought was to remove this functionality and just load one article per page. However I happened to notice that VentureBeat.com uses something similar. They use infinite scrolling so that the other articles on the page (in a 'feed' style) only load when a user scrolls to the bottom of the first article. I checked Google's cached versions of the pages and it seems that Google also only reads the first article which seems like an ideal solution. This obviously has the benefit of additionally speeding up loading time of the page too. My question is, is VentureBeat's implementation actually that SEO-friendly or not. VentureBeat have 'sort of' followed Google's guidelines with regards to how to implement infinite scrolling https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html by using prev and next tags for pagination https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en. However isn't the point of pagination to list multiple pages in a series (i.e. page 2, page 3, page 4 etc.) rather than just other related articles? Here's an example - http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/11/facebooks-cto-explains-social-networks-10-year-mission-global-connectivity-ai-vr/ Would be interesting to know if someone has dealt with this first-hand or just has an opinion. Thanks in advance! Daniel

| Daniel_Morgan

1

Unrelevant links

Hi there, In my website, There are lots of unrelevant/unnatural links coming in Google Search, we have removed it Through Remove URLs option, Also Cleared All Spammy backlinks, made website Content Cleared , But still it gives us unnaural links,, because of that our website rank loosed. We have also Disavow that All links, But Still not got any Solution, Can any Buddy Suggest Where We are making Mistake? any body can help please?? Thanx in advance

| pooja.verify04

0

Site traffic halved not sure why

Hi guys, not sure if anyone can help, but we had a client's google organic traffic literally halve from the week at the end of August to September (29 Aug 2016 to be precise) and it hasn't recovered since (here's a screenshot from GA http://puu.sh/sAmd3/b071dd1e57.png) I've been doing a lot of digging around on Moz and elsewhere about any Google updates that may have gone through around that time and there doesn't seem to be anything that I would think would affect it. I thought it might be to do with Penguin, but that doesn't seem to be the case. A while ago before then we did have some domains and pages 301 redirected to the main site when multiple other sites were rolled into the one, but I wouldn't have thought that should affect it. After that I've also gone and removed all those sites and redirects too (couple of weeks ago) but that doesn't seem to have fixed it. There's no black hat SEO done on the site so very odd to have this happen. I'm rather out of ideas what it could be that has impacted things so suddenly and that we couldn't get it recovered from. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

| BrisbaneSEOWorks

0

To buy or not to buy? Domains with history..

I am involved in setting up a new business which as of yet is to decide on a brand name.. As the availability of domain name in local tld (and ideally .com) is of so much importance, the brand naming process is inextricably linked to this. Therefore, upon finding a suggested name was available to register (without premium) there was a degree of satisfaction. However on looking at archive.org it was discovered that the .co.uk had been a sex/marital aid store back in 2004 and more recently in 2014 a travel blog / affiliate. Q is; Is the past history of what is a site with possible black hat links a reason to avoid registration? Or, does time cure all? And, is there a way in which domain health can be reliably confirmed? Thanks in advance for your input..

| seanmccauley

0

Buying links - where is the line drawn?

I apologise in advance if this has been discussed before, but I'm a bit confused by this whole buying links/outreach scenario. Example.. High ranking PR site (PR 85) has people advertising they can get you links from that site in exchange for money.
You would give them an article and it would look natural and a link - branded or keyword - links back to you. This is not new to people here who know of this. Obviously there is a difference between a link farm (crap site just selling links) and one of these highly recognised sites where you can obtain a link from. I'm sure a goody 2 shoes will now tell me 'i should do everything natural not be tempted', but I actually dont know where the line is drawn between the same site giving a natural link to me and someone selling a link from the same site. Google isnt going to downgrade the site I'm sure but how do they combat this or even do they combat it? Do we have to accept that buying links is still a normal process and if done in moderation and discretely, you can get away with it?

| nick-name123

1

Should You Link Back from Client's Website?

We had a discussion in the office today, about if it can help or hurt you to link back to your site from one that you optimize, host, or manage. A few ideas that were mentioned: HURT:
1. The website is not directly related to your niche, therefore Google will treat it as a link exchange or spammy link.
2. Links back to you are often not surrounded by related text about your services, and looks out of place to users and Search Engines. HELP:
1. On good (higher PR, reputable domain) domains, a link back can add authority, even if the site is not directly related to your services.
2. Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose. So, what do you think? Test results would be appreciated, as we are trying to get real data. Benefits and cons if you have an opinion.

| David-Kley

2

Not getting any data in Search console

Hi there My website Ranking well, But in Search console it is not Fetching any Data, here is Screenshot http://prntscr.com/d4m2tz , Why i am not getting any report For Clicks, Impressions ?? is there any mistake which is made?? please any body can help out. Thanx,

| pooja.verify05

0

Spam signals from old company site are hurting new company site, but we can't undo the redirect.

My client was forced to change its domain name last year (long story). We were largely able to regain our organic rankings via 301-redirects. Recently, the rankings for the new domain have begun to plummet. Nothing specific took place that could have caused any ranking declines on the new site. However, when we analyze links to the OLD site, we are seeing a lot of link spam being built to that old domain over recent weeks and months. We have no idea where these are coming from but they appear to be negatively impacting our new site. We cannot dismantle the redirects as the old site has hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links pointing to it, and many customers are accustomed to going to that home page. So those redirects need to stay in place. We have already disavowed all the spam we have found on the old Search Console. We are continuing to do so as we find new spam links. But what are we supposed to do about this spam negatively impacting our new site? FYI we have not received any messages in the search console.

| FPD_NYC

1

Google Penguin penalty is automated or manual?

Hi, I have seen some of our competitors are missing from top SERP and seems to be penalised as per this penalty checker: http://pixelgroove.com/serp/sandbox_checker/. Is this right tool to check penalty? Or any other good tools available? Are these penalties because of recent Penguin update? If so, is this a automated or manual penalty from Google? I don't think all of these tried with black-hat techniques and got penalised. The new penguin update might triggered their back-links causing this penalty. Even we dropped for last 2 weeks. What's the solution for this? How effectively link-audit works? Thanks, Satish

| vtmoz

0

What would you say is hurting this site, Penguin or Panda?

Would you say this is both Penguin and Panda and no penalty has ever been lifted? What would be your general recommendations for this site? seWnoQm

| BobGW

0

It's possible a bounce-rate attack manipulate SEO?

My site has been visited by unusual users with one second session times. This leaves my analytics data confused.

| CompraBit

0

8th October - anything drastic happen?

Hi all, So, I have done nothing SEO heavy on my site for a couple of months, I deleted a page and moved the content to the homepage, but thats about it. Anyway, for our main keyword we have dropped from a pretty regular 20-30th position we have enjoyed for the past 4-5 months right down to 95th. Other keywords have also dropped by a few pages but not as drastic. I got hit by some spammy 'forex' links on the UK Business Forums clones appearing (as per my other post), but they started AFTER the 8th October. Something happened on that day which very rapidly ruined my rankings. Has anyone else seen this happen? Or could it be Penguin 4 checked out my site on that date? I have not dropped at all for my Brand Name or other keywords, it seems to be the higher searched keywords I have taken a plummet on. Thanks,

| phero

0

Google Algorithm non-manual penalty. How do we fix this (quality?) drop?

Hi, See attached image. We received a non-manual penalty on March 22, 2015. I don't think we ever came out of it. We have moved up due to the Penguin update, but we should (by DA PA) be up on the first page for tons of stuff and most keyword are lower than their true strength. What kind of quality errors could be causing this? I assume it was a quality update. I am working on the errors, but don't see anything that would be so severe as to be penalized. What errors/quality problems am I looking for? We have tons of unique content. Good backlinks. Good design. Good user experience except for some products. Again, what am I looking for? Thanks. non-manual-penalty.png

| BobGW

0

UKBF 'forex' clones appearing

Hi all, Just been looking at my referring domains and it seems someone is taking the pleasure of cloning the UK Business Forums website and adding 'forex' based links on all the external anchors. This includes everyone who is listed in their directory. I've put below the domains I know of, but if anyone else knows of more please add them so we can all get them disavowed. domain:redwood96.ru
domain:zanier.it
domain:selskie-zori.ru
domain:gabrielloni.it
domain:reserva-ideal.com
domain:imexaf.com
domain:rassemblementpourjouy.com
domain:windsorlegion.ca
domain:powerconector.com
domain:eltallerdelorfebrewd.com
domain:aepedome.net
domain:spkvarc.ru
domain:mtdnk.ru
domain:koning.rs
domain:rassemblementpourjouy.com
domain:imexaf.com
domain:gabrielloni.it

| phero

0

Is it OK to Leave Links in Comments ?

It may sound silly ... Just wondering to see your opinion about leaving link on blogs; keyword as name with site link or link in the comment text as long as its relevant.

| Mustansar

0

Key word Ranking are going down

Hi, my website's Keywords Ranking are going down, I am very new to SEO, I don't know what's the reason please help me out....my website is www.tourspackagedubai.com. Thanks

| tariqsalam

0

Curious, have you ever had a client dispute your Moz Ranking Report?

one of my international clients from China does not believe that his site is now on page #2 for a national search term. He said he had a colleague search from a location in the United States and his site did not come up in any of the top 10 Google search page results. Suggest any ways to back ranking up? Maybe use an additional rank report? appreciate any/all suggestions. THanks! Chris

| Sundance_Kidd

0

Competitor Inbound Links Increase from 175K to 1 million in 1 month, how?

Hi all, I was recently doing some competitive analysis on external links/DA and came across something peculiar. A competitor of ours had their external links go from 175,179 in August to 1,141,365 in September. I've attached a screenshot showing the increase. The competitors domain authority also increased from 82 to 89 in the same time span. Has anyone else come across such a large link increase in such a short period of time, while also being rewarded for it? Obviously at first glance it seemed extremely black hat and unnatural, but I would love to be proven wrong. Thanks! Cw5tN

| mstpeter

0

More than 450 Pages Created by a hacker

Hi Moz Community, I am in charge of the Spanish SEO for an international company, related to security. A couple of months ago, I realized that my Spanish/keywords/post all vanished from Google, Yahoo, Bing and Duckduckgo. Then I noticed that somebody in command of the main website used a disavow all! I was in shock, as all of you can imagine. Knowing that all the inbound links were spam score under 4, highly relevant and so. Later on, I was informed that the website was hacked and somebody took that action. Of course, it did not solved the issue. I continue researching and found those pages - "Online%20Games%20-%20Should%20Parents%20Worry%20Or%20Celebrate%3F" - all of them like this one. I informed the owner of the website - he is not my client - my client is the Spanish Manager. They erased the pages, of course plus sent all those, to avoid the 404 responses, to the homepage with a 301. My heart stopped at that point! I asked them to send all those with a redirect 301 to a new hidden page with nofollow and noindex directives. We recover, my keywords/pages are in the first page again. Although the DA fell 7 points and no inbound links for now. I asked for the disavow file "to rewrite it", not received yet. Any better ideas? Encountered a similar issue? How did you solved it?
Thanks in advance.

| Mª Verónica B.

0

Multiple similar links without the penguin?

Hi, I´m working with a site where clients proudly will publish a link to us as sort of a sign/partner symbol for using our services. Potentially we could have thousands or at least hundreds of links pointing to us and we could tailor/provide snippets for the links that clients can use on their site. I´m part of a team that just started working with this site and I realize this is a great opportunity that has not yet been exploited. I´m also a little paranoid that this tactic might be picked up by the penguin or that google sees it as black hat if not done wisely ? But links will only come from respectable business sites although ranging from different genres both really big and small.
Today links are mostly leading to our frontpage from our clients but I would like to tailor links so that each client could link to a page that is targeted on the keyword/service they have been using (and awarded diploma for) I think this would serve both the client and our SEO better ? I would really appreciate suggestions and comments on how to approach this best! Here is my plan so far, trying to make good/right use of the opportunity without offending google:
-Most links will be through a logo/sign that shows the award/diploma earned through our service.
I think the "alt" -tag should include both our company brand name and the service/target keyword for the page it´s leading to. -We could also provide a short text describing the earned award and our brand name and this whole text would also lead to the same page on our site.
...I guess using only the targeted keyword as anchor -link within the text would be a bad idea? -Where possible I would also like to customize this short text a little for each client (although that will be hard and only possible to some degree). As we provide "link material" for the client to include on their site, would it be wise to have them use an image that is hosted on our site or send them the image so they can publish that instead? Grateful for any feedback on this! Thanks!

| Agguk

0

How can I remove Japanese hacker in my site

Hello, How can I remove Japanese hacker in my site?? here i have attached screen shot for it , http://prntscr.com/cmxmmx My website is hacked From long, please help out to solve this Problem Thnx in advance

| poojaverify06

0

Is There Such Thing as Minor Penalties or Restrictions?

Hello Mozzers So generally its said that when a site receives a penalty from Google - it's obvious - you can't miss it... But does google apply minor penalties (say dropping 5-10 places for one not so great link) One particular campaign we've been working pretty hard - really great stuff - all white hat techniques - but there were a couple of links I wasn't 100% sure on - but got them any way as I guessed that the effect of them, if not positive, would be neutral at worse... (The sites wen't obvious spam sites but just seemed 'not great') Recently after, we dropped around 8 place for our main keyword ranking. It's not a very competitive space. Is this likely just standard inexplicable fluctuation, or is there such thing as minor penalties or restrictions? Cheeers

| wearehappymedia

0

How do i check content is fresh or duplicate?

Hello there, As per google we need Fresh content For our website, i have content writer, but if i want to check it is duplicate before Submitting any where , Then How can i check ?? please any body let me know. Thanks,

| poojaverify06

0

Do you see sites with unfixable Penguin penalties?

Hello, We have a site with 2 Penguin update penalties (drops in traffic) and one quality penalty (another drop in traffic) all years ago, both just drops in rankings and not messages in Google Console. Now that Penguin is hard coded, do you find that some sites never recover even with a beautiful disavow and cleanup? We've added content and still have some quality errors, though I thought they were minor. This client used to have doorway sites and paid links, but now is squeaky clean with a disavow done a month ago though most of the cleanup was done by deletion of the doorways and paid links 9 months ago. Is this a quality problem or is our site permanently gone? Let me know what information you need. Looking for people with a lot of experience with other sites and Penguin. Thanks.

| BobGW

2

Anyone seem anything from penguin yet?

I know its early days and even the wonderful Dr Pete said it will take a few days to notice anything, but has anyone seen anything. I've not seen any rise in traffic yet, but none of my ranking tracking tools have ran yet. Anyone seen anything, are you expecting to see any?

| Andy-Halliday

1

Should I delete older posts on my site that are lower quality?

Hey guys! Thanks in advance for thinking through this with me. You're appreciated! I have 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content that has been a large focus of mine over the last couple years. They're incredibly important to my business. That said, less experienced me did what I thought was best by hiring a freelance writer to create extra content to interlink them and add relevancy to the overall site. Looking back through everything, I am starting to realize that this extra content, which now makes up 1/3 my site, is at about 65%-70% quality AND only gets a total of about 250 visitors per month combined -- for all 384 articles. Rather than spending the next 9 months and investing in a higher quality content creator to revamp them, I am seeing the next best option to remove them. From a pros perspective, do you guys think removing these 384 lower quality articles is my best option and focusing my efforts on a better UX, faster site, and continual upgrading of the 350 pieces of Cornerstone Content? I'm honestly at a point where I am ready to cut my losses, admit my mistakes, and swear to publish nothing but gold moving forward. I'd love to hear how you would approach this situation! Thanks 🙂

| ryj

0

How to remove this type of external link from Google

Hello, My website has been hacked few days Before, But after resolved it It is generating bad links, So i am Dis-vowing it , But as it is generating links like this,
http://domain.com/a></p><h1>DIXCEL HS-typeスリットディ
i am Not able to disavow it As it generating Spacing between. So my question is : Is there any Way to remove this Type of link from google???
If any body know Please Let me know, I need Do remove this As soon as possible,
please Help, Thank you

| innovativekrishna1

0

Confused how to make my post title from the following keywords

Hello i want to make a website of laptops repairing and want to target the following keywords in one post acer e55 lcd problem solution acer e55 lcd diagram acer e55 lcd ways acer e55 lcd jumper acer 355 lcd ic faultt the above keywords are just i posted an example so can you tell me how can I target them in one post haveing good title the one title in my mind is acer e55 lcd problem solution diagram jumper ways is this correct way of title or i have to do some thing else please help thanks.

| salmansalmanpk

0

Penguin: Is there a "safe threshold" for commercial links?

Hello everyone, Here I am with a question about Penguin. I am asking to all Penguin experts on these forums to help me understand if there is a "safe" threshold of unnatural links under which we can have peace of mind. I really have no idea about that, I am not an expert on Penguin nor an expert of unnatural back link profiles. I have a website with about 84% natural links and 16% affiliate/commercial links. Should I be concerned about possibly being penalized by an upcoming Penguin update? So far, I have never been hit by any previous Penguin released, but... just in case, you experts, do you know what's the "threshold" of unnatural links that shouldn't be exceeded? Or, in your experience, what's the classic threshold over which Google can penalize a website for unnatural back link profile? Thank you in advance to anyone helping me on this research!

| fablau

0

Hosting Multiple Websites Within The Same Server Space

Hi, So, I have a client who wants to host two websites (which you could refer to as sister sites) on the same hosting account. For some reason, I was under the impression that doing as much may be detrimental (for SEO purposes). Am I correct in thinking this? Can I get some back-up documentation or comments here? I look forward to hearing what you all have to say. Thanks for reading!

| maxcarnage

0

SEO Tactics - All in the Game?

Hey Mozzers Hoping to get some opinions on SEO at a small business level. We're engaged in SEO for a number of clients which are small businesses (small budgets). We stick to strictly white hat techniques - producing decent content (and promoting it) and link building (as much as is possible without dodgy techniques/paying huge sums). For some clients we seem to have hit a ceiling about with rankings anywhere between roughly position #5 - #15 in Google. In the majority of cases - the higher ranking clients don't appear to be engaged in any kind of content marketing - often have much worse designed websites - and not particularly spectacular link profiles (In other words they're not hugely competitive - apart from sometimes on the AdWords front - but that's another story) The only difference seems to be links on agency link farms - you know the kind? Agency buys expired domains with an existing PR - then just builds simple site with multiple blog posts that link back to their clients sites. (Also links that are simply paid for) Obviously these sites serve no purpose other than links - but I guess it's harder for Google to recognize that than with obvious SEO directories etc?... It seems to me that at this level of SEO for small businesses (limited budgets, limited time) the standard approach for SEO is the "expired domains agency link sites" described above - and simply paying bloggers for links. Are the above techniques considered black hat? Or are they more grey-hat? - Are they risky? - Or is this kind of thing all in the game for SEO at the small business level (by that I mean businesses that don't have the budget to employ a full time SEO and have to rely on engaging agencies for low level - low resource SEO campaigns) Look forward to your always wise council...

| wearehappymedia

0

Are links on sites that require PAD files good or bad for SEO?

I want to list our product on a number of sites that require PAD files such as Software Informer and Softpedia. Is this a good idea from an SEO perspective to have links on these pages?

| SnapComms

0

What is the best way to eliminate ghost traffic from Google Analytics?

Hey Mozzers, I just wanted to see how you all deal with eliminating Google ghost traffic sources from Google. I tried setting up a RegEx 'include' list before, but it seemed as though I was blocking potential traffic sources when I did as much (I'm probably missing something here). Anyway, I'm interested to read how you all have dealt with this issue in the past, thanks for reading!

| maxcarnage

0

Sub Domain rel=canonical to Main Domain

Just a quick one, i have the following example scenario. Main Domain: http://www.test.com Sub Domain: http://sub.test.com What I am wondering is I can add onto the sub domain a rel=canonical to the main domain. I dont want to de-index the whole sub domain just a few pages are duplicated from the main site. Is it easier to de-index the individual sub domain pages or add the rel=canonical back to the main domain. Much appreciated Joseph

| Joseph-Vodafone

0

Is it worth disavowing entire affiliate network?

Question for the pro's (all comments greatly appreciated) and it's doing my head in atmo. Recently, we received a temporary algorithmic penalty on one of our pages, which was originally ranking 12th, now 50+. We found out an affiliate put a site-wide link to our site, using the affiliate ID blablabla. I have taken a look at the exact link and checked the status codes on it, seems as if the link uses a 302 to our page. However, yes, you can argue that 302's d on't pass link juice, but I do believe that if a 302 remains in place for a while - Google will treat it as a 301. My question is: considering that affiliate links are causing us problems, is it worth disavowing the ENTIRE affiliate network? - we have over 100,00 links coming from them, all of which are targeting different pages and using different affiliate tracking ID's. What do you think - I don't want to disavow the site then realise it was actually some-what helping the site.

| Brett-S

0

| RosemaryB

0

Does this type of link pass juice?

I have a backlink that looks like this: https://theirsite.com/go/?t=https%3A//www.mysite.com Will that pass link juice?

| vcj

0

Help with ranking

Hi Board users! I have a site that I don't understand why its not ranking. Its called JohnnyJet.com It has great domain authority and plenty of links. Looking at google webmaster tools I don't think there is a penalty. I have not done black hat stuff, so I am puzzled. I have a subdomain that stores some of my old content (some of it is duplicate) http://vintage.johnnyjet.com/home.asp The site has been around for ever, and I need help with a site audit to see what it is that I am missing. I know my long tail should rank much better. 2 questions: 1. Can you guys (board members) send me any insights if you take a peek 2. Can you tell me where to go to get an in-depth audit on my site -- I need a deep dive to get to the bottom of this 🙂 Thanks all!!

| coolhand1980

0

Linking Authentic Sites Together - Semi-PBN?

Recently I've had a lot of ideas of sites to build that all would have some sort of relevance to each other, all that would be relevant to my current business. For example, say you have sites for: bars/clubs, music festivals, cinemas, etc, one site for each. While these aren't all directly related to each other, they all kind of fall within a category of entertainment and having fun. Now, I'm not thinking about this as if I were to build a Private Blog Network, but instead each site would actually be valuable to visitors, be content rich, have regular updates and thriving social media etc, as if each were its own individual business. What would be your opinion on actually linking these together at some point down the line? I must stress that these would not be like typical PBN sites where the themes are the same, content is spun or badly written, no human touches or actual value, anything spammy etc, these would actually be authentic quality sites that you would reasonably expect to have a thriving community. Personally, after changing my ways from blackhat to weary-of-linkbuilding whitehat when Penguin 1 was released, I'm aware of what a bad linkbuilding strategy can do and would rather steer clear, however when I compare the plan of these authentic sites I have in my head to the obvious, low quality PBNs that I find competitors use to rank well all the time, I'm coming around to the idea that they may not pose a threat with the way I intend to implement them. Can I get some thoughts?

| Leads.Bz

2

How can i Rank this website

here is my website www.onlinehackingtricks.com with fresh content and with proper on page seo but if i will do some off page seo then google will give penality to me because my one website got deindexed so how can i rank this?

| SEORAMAN

0

Duplicate content - multiple sites hosted on same server with same IP address

We have three sites hosted on the same server with the same IP address. For SEO (to avoid duplicate content) reasons we need to redirect the IP address to the site - but there are three different sites. If we use the "rel canonical" code on the websites, these codes will be duplicates too, as the websites are mirrored versions of the sites with IP address, e.g. www.domainname.com/product-page and 23.34.45.99/product-page. What's the best ways to solve these duplicate content issues in this case? Many thanks!

| Jade

0

Competitor Black Hat Link Building?

Hello big-brained Moz folks, We recently used Open Site Explorer to compile a list of inbound linking domains to one of our clients, alongside domains linking to a major competitor. This competitor, APBSpeakers.com, is dominating the search results with many #1 rankings for highly competitive phrases, even though their onsite SEO is downright weak. This competitor also has exponentially more links(602k vs. 2.4k) and way more content(indexed pages) reported than any of their competitors, which seems physically impossible to me. Linking root domains are shown as 667 compared to 170 for our client, who has been in business for 10+ years. Taking matters a step further, linking domains for this competitor include such authoritative domains as: Cnn.com TheGuardian.com PBS.org HuffingtonPost.com LATimes.com Time.com CBSNews.com NBCNews.com Princeton.edu People.com Sure, I can see getting a few high profile linking domains but the above seems HIGHLY suspicious to me. Upon further review, I searched CNN, The Guardian and PBS for all variations of this competitors name and domain name and found no immediate mentions of their name. I smell a rat and I suspect APB is using some sort behind-the-scenes programming to make these "links" happen, but I have no idea how. If this isn't the case, they must have a dedicated PR person with EXTREMELY strong connections to secure this links, but even this seems like a stretch. It's conceivable that APB is posting comments on all of the above sites, along with links, however, I was under the impression that all such posts were NoFollow and carried no link juice. Also, paid advertisements on the above sites should be NoFollow as well, right? Anyway, we're trying to get to the bottom of this issue and determine what's going on. If you have any thoughts or words of wisdom to help us compete with these seemingly Black Hat SEO tactics, I'd sure love to hear from you. Thanks for your help. I appreciate it very much. Eric

| EricFish

0

Duplicate Content issue in Magento

I am getting duplicate content issue because of the following product URL in my Magento store. http://www.sitename.com/index.php/sports-nutritions/carbohydrates http://www.sitename.com/sports-nutritions/carbohydrates Please can someone guide me on how to solve it. Thanks Guys

| webteamBlackburn

0

Boosting Equity-Passing Links?

Hello Moz folks, We have a SEO client who has exponentially fewer equity-passing links(inbound and internal) than their two major competitors, which I'm sure is a MAJOR factor in their rankings. In fact, the numbers are so drastically different seems to indicate that these competitors are participating in some sort of black hat link farm. For example: Internal and Inbound Equity-Passing Links Our client - 2274 Competitor 1 - 496k Competitor 2 - 143k How is this possible or legit? I don't understand. Our well-known client has been in business for 10+ years and they have a content-rich, WordPress website consisting of thousands of pages that have been optimized for search, including keyword-rich URLs, page titles, metas, H1 tags, etc. The things that keep coming to mind are the need for more links and more content. One thing that comes to mind is that the client launched a new site about 1.5 years ago and changed their domain prefix from http to https. I'm not sure if this would have an impact on inbound link equity or not. 301 redirects are in place so from what I understand, all of the old http pages should have passed at least partial domain equity to the new https site. I'm also wondering if changing the structure of WordPress categories, tags and author pages could somehow dynamically increase the page count and amount of perceived content. We may be overly restrictive with Google Search Console. Anyway, I'm at a loss and don't understand how our competitors, with seemingly similar content, could have exponentially more links and are dominating the search results. Thanks for your help and sage advice. Your input is very much appreciated. Eric pSzXl

| EricFish

0

Looking for service like one load

Hi,
I used to utilize the One Load service and noticed that it no longer exists. Can you please make some recommendations on video marketing platforms that are similar?

| corn2015

0

Subtle line of asking links for money/service/benefits

Hello here, I am putting down a link building strategy according to the latest "good practices" and Google recommendations, but I find myself often confused. For example, I'd like to implement the technique suggested by Rand on his article below: https://moz.com/blog/headsmacking-tip-1-link-requests-in-order-confirmation-emails But if you look at the comments, a user suggests to "ask for links in exchange of discounts", and everyone there applaud him for the idea (Rand included). But, wait a second... am I the only one realizing that now days Google discourage to ask for links for "money, services, or any other kind of 'offered' benefit"? So.. where to draw the line here? Here are other examples that I am not sure are "safe" in link building: 1. Ask for links in exchange of a free Membership on a site (where usually a Membership is sold for a price) 2. Ask for links in exchange of exposure (isn't this a sort of "link exchange"?) 3. Ask for link in exchange of "anything else you can think of", even if necessarily doesn't involve money (i.e. for a "certified site badge", for a free e-book, or anything else) I'd really like to know your thoughts on this very sensitive issue. Thank you in advance to anyone for helping me to understand.

| fablau

1

Can I leave off HTTP/HTTPS in a canonical tag?

We are working on moving our site to HTTPS and I was asked by my dev team if it is required to declare HTTP or HTTPS in the canonical tag? I know that relative URL's are acceptable but cannot find anything about HTTP/HTTPS. Example of what they would like to do Has anyone done this? Any reason to not leave off the protocol?

| Shawn_Huber

0

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