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I use semrush for this. It can only go back a few months but does give you some incite.

Hi guys,

I'm working on a project and I need to identify any on-site issues that may be affecting this website:

http://www.jerseystamps.com/

If anyone has any thoughts, I would be more than happy to hear them.

Thanks guys

Last week my website (www.cooke.co.uk) started PPC advertising with Google. This has been successful in increasing the amount of overall traffic to the site.

However, since we started the PPC advertising, our traffic from organic search has decreased significantly. Our rankings haven't changed dramatically enough to warrant such a decrease.

Has anyone else been in a situation where organic traffic has dropped as a result of launching a paid campaign? What did you do to rectify it?

Thanks.

Hi Akhilesh,

In theory it sounds simple - you create great content on your site so your visitors will naturally share and link to it. However, that's easier said than done.

Cheers.

We have recently updated our website www.cooke.co.uk and twice webmaster tools have reported an increase in 404 errors.

However, these errors are not for normal pages, they are things like http://www.cooke.co.uk/?post_type=crown_enquiry&p=1045

I have used the redirection tool in WordPress to redirect all these links to the homepage but does anyone know why this is happening since it is the second time I had to do it.

Thanks.

Hi guys,

I'm conducting a link analysis for one of my websites and I have found a few potentially damaging links. However, there are some people who I have contacted about removing links who have said that they will not remove my link because they are using data that is publicly available.

Is there anything I can do to get those links removed rather than diavow?

Thanks.

Does anybody know if a link on an expired domain affects your SEO?

I'm just asking because the SEO agency we used before used to create websites and then link to our company - very spammy.

We have since ditched this agecny, however they wanted an extortionate amount to remove these links. Therefore, we decided to wait until these domains expired and then the links wouldn't exist.

However, I am now completing a link audit and some of these sites are still appearing in the results (obtained from Link Research Tools) but I cannot access the links because the domains have expired.

Can anyone help?

I'm using a variety of backlink toolsl; OSE, SEM Rush, Link Research Tools and Google Webmaster Tools.

On some occasions the tools are telling me there is a link to my site on a certain page, however when I open that page I can't see any mention of my company.

I have run all these reports today, so I think it is unlikely that Google is using old data.

Does anyone know why this happens and if I should still be concerned about links that I cannot see but backlink tools are telling me are there?

Thanks guys.

Hey y'all,

I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case.

The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site.

Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google.

It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low.

If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are?

Thanks guys

It does say noindex, follow

When I tried to check if it was indexed that way, it didn't return any results

More than likely they're using an SEO company to build links fast. It's common practice among SEO companies to build loads of extra websites to backlink to their clients websites. My company has used an SEO company who operated like this and got us loads of low quality links fast. For example, they set up a blog about book reviews and anchor texted one of our keywords in a review - where it wasn't even relevant, This is the kind of activity the new Google Penguin update is trying to penalise. Don't be surprised if your competitor suddenly drops down the rankings within the coming weeks/months. Focus on getting high quality links, even if it takes longer, it will be worth it in the long run.

Hi Jennifer,

It depends on a number of factors such as keyword competitiveness, how well your on-page optimisation is for those pages, if your site is new or not, the quality of your backlinks and most importantly the quality of your content - is it educating the reader about that particular product?

If you're new to SEO I would suggest you read the SEOmoz Beginner's Guide to become more familiar with how SEO works.

Google is definitely taking your location into account when delivering you search results.

As every Google user is going to get different result I don't think there is any point targeting a national keyword because everyone's search results will be based on the area they are searching from. My advice and this is something that has worked for us is to create unique pages for the areas you would like to be found for. As far as I am aware Google considers 'local' to be a 30 mile radius. So I would say pick the biggest towns/cities in every 30 mile radius and create a separate web page for them. For example, one page for Christchurch, one page for Auckland etc.

Well the thing I look for first the PR (page rank). If the site has a PR of less than 3 it is not worth getting a link from - Google can penalise you for having low quality links. However, the most important thing is relevance. Have a look for blogs, news stories and directories where it would be relevant for you to leave a link. You need to think like a reader, and your link has to be of value to the reader. Ask yourself would the reader really get more information on the topic if they clicked on your link.

When I start with a new site I begin by submitting it to directories, SEOmoz have a list of web directories with high PR. Some of them you have to pay for but they are useful. For example, you need to pay for inclusion for Yahoo Directory but it has a PR of 7 so the quality of that link should have a good effect on you. My rankings in Yahoo shot up when I listed in Yahoo Directory.

It is also useful to build social media page with a link to your website as these sites have high PR already.

Other advice would be to set-up Google Alerts for your target keywords and see what news stories are coming in and if you can add a reply. Try and anchor text where possible.

OSE is good for checking your competitors links. However, it will show all their links - good and bad! So you need to be careful not to link on a site that is of low quality. If a competitor that 1000s of backlinks and a low PR, then that says something about the quality of their links.

It also important to note that you shouldn't rush backlinking. If Google sees a rapid increase in your backlinks they could penalise you for spam. As a rule of thumb create a new backlink per unique visitor to your site per month. For example, if your site gets on average 30 unique visitors per month, then create 1 backlink per day.

So basically look at what's being said about your industry online, see if you can add relevant content. Check for the PR, if it's above 3 then ok, below stay away. Add your site to directories. Create social media pages.

The best thing to do is to each page of your website targeting at different keyword. Use the keyword tool in Adwords to tell you discover how popular keyword terms are and their competitiveness. As a rule I would never target keywords with less than 300 searches per month, as they're unlikely to give you any decent traffic. Unless your site has a PageRank of more than 5, you shouldn't be targeting keywords that are highly competitive, you should build links into your site, increase your PR and then target those keywords.

The main reason we do social media is for SEO. I believe that the social triggers have an impact on SEO and that's why we want to be there.

At the moment, I'm putting up relevant news stories and because we supply oil, this time of year is when we sell a lot of home heating oil - so I'm trying to push that. I have come up with a few ideas like 10 ways to save on your heating bill but I don't want to put a lot of effort into something that won't work.

Contests are not really suitable for us because the vast majority of our business is from B2B sales. Unless someone has a good idea, I don't see the relevance.

I was thinking of giving away company stationery for likes, but I think the problem is directing people to the page in the first place.

There is an energy saving week coming up in just over a week, but it's a bit late for us to organise something and promote it properly.

The main reason we do social media is for SEO. I believe that the social triggers have an impact on SEO and that's why we want to be there.

At the moment, I'm putting up relevant news stories and because we supply oil, this time of year is when we sell a lot of home heating oil - so I'm trying to push that. I have come up with a few ideas like 10 ways to save on your heating bill but I don't want to put a lot of effort into something that won't work.

Contests are not really suitable for us because the vast majority of our business is from B2B sales. Unless someone has a good idea, I don't see the relevance.

I was thinking of giving away company stationery for likes, but I think the problem is directing people to the page in the first place.

There is an energy saving week coming up in just over a week, but it's a bit late for us to organise something and promote it properly.