Welcome to the Q&A Forum

thank you for your response.

we ended up getting a violation because our website was infected with maleware. We successfully identified the code, removed it and subsequently were noticed by Google that the site was now clean.

During the period when the site was infected, our adwords campaigns were suspended by Google, which made total sense. We never got an specific notifications from the Adwords group stating they were suspending the campaigns.

We assumed that once the site was determined to be 'cleaned' by Google, our Adwords campaigns could be re-activated.

So far, our efforts to reach out to Google have failed. No communications and no understanding what still remains to be addressed.

Any suggestions or contact information would be appreciated.

Thanks for your help and support.

Alan

Google adwords not allowing us to reactivate after GWT violation removed and site deemed clean by Google.

Attempts at reaching them for guidance have been unsuccessful. Any suggestions?

Thank you.

We have a large and old site. As we've transition from one CMS to another, there's been a need for create 301 redirects using our ht access file.

I'm not a technical SEO person, but concerned that the size of our ht access file might be contributing source for long page download times.

Can large ht access files cause slow page load times?  Or is the coding of the 301 redirect a cause for slow page downloads?

Thanks

In both the new GA and former version, how are RSS feeds handled by Google Analytics.

If not, is there an easy means by which to account for this traffic, in order to have a better picture of traffic.

Thanks.

Alan

Thanks Joel. I have a laptop and at times, the distinction between google adwords and organic seems faint. Nevertheless... I think you're right. To the unsophisticated, not sure they make note of the differences, when they don't know there's a difference in results. I agree... there's good synergy when you can get ppc and organic working...as they say in real estate...location, location, location... when you see those results repeatedly on the same page... it has impact. Thanks.

Thanks Saijo. I somewhat agree. The distinction between organic and ppc, now that ppc has moved to the top left side from the olden days of just being on the right hand sidebar... blurs the differences. Thanks.

Thanks for your response. We've invested many years in SEO successfully. One interesting change over the past year is that the traffic has dropped for some KW phrases without any change in rankings in Google. In some cases, these are terms sitting at #1 or #2. I think the demarcation between PPC and organic is becoming harder to distinguish and given the naivete of many consumers... many assume the listings are one and the same. If I'm right, it means that a higher percentage of searches are pulling from sponsored links than organic compared to the past. Is there any data or research to negative or support this assumption? Thanks. Alan

Simply put, are consumers clicking on ppc in lieu of organic search. In the past, people use to say that ppc accounted between 30-40% of traffic with organic accounting for majority of activity. My question is whether those numbers have changed, and if so, where are we now?

A friend in Boston in does SEO, remarked that many of her 'sophisticated' friends didn't know the difference between ppc and organic.  Seems odd, but with the move to place ppc results  from the right hand sidebar to the top left hand column, certainly gives it more presence and makes the separation between ppc vs. organic less distinct.

I certainly understand the value of doing both, but depending on the answer, it begs the question... is the expense of moving up a position or two in organic worth the effort and monies, if ppc is becoming the dominant raffic tdriver?

Anybody have any recent statistics on ppc vs. organic?

Thanks.

So I can be clear, if there is one landing page for the main KW phrase, but there are a number of KW phrases that drive traffic to that landing page, you are recommending looking at the traffic changes of those individual KW phrases.

For example.... if the main KW phrase and landing page is: healthy eating recipes. But we have 5-10 KW phrases that drive traffic to that landing page... look for the differences in each of those traffic channels as a possible clue. Is that correct?

thanks.

thanks... will look for on-page differences, if any.

Before we are comparing 2011 traffic to 2012... I don't see 'not provided' category for the march 2011 period.  if there's another way of obtaining this, would appreciate guidance.

I can share that the declines in actual traffic are significant, not even moderate. And this holds true for the top ranking KW terms.... as opposed to the long-tail.  making it especially disconcerting.

my great fear is that ppc is starting to overtake organic search search in very competitive search markets... given the number of sponsored offers between Google and something I'v been seeing...buzzads  that sits above google adwords in my browser.. hence a total of 8 sponsored links before you can see the organic search options. Not to mention has faint the sponsor link box has become.

thanks.

thanks... we recently updated our description tags to be more inviting and compelling. Our previous tags were simply re-do of the title tag. so I know our tags improved. I can go back and look at the competition.

thanks.

I'm comparing our best search traffic month in 2011 (March) with our current traffic (April)and have seen significant declines in traffic, despite no change in our rankings or even improved rankings for the same terms.  Trying to sort out an explanation.

We have been a white-hat SEO site since our inception over 10 years ago.  Our SEO consultant doesn't think we've been affected by any algo changes, at least not to any significant degree.

My only explanation for this possibly anomaly is:

• decrease in the use of the KW terms in search over time (how to determine?)
• generalized increase in PPC instead of organic search driving traffic
• possibility that Adv Web Rankings is no longer accurately collecting SERP rankings

Does anyone have any other thoughts or considerations that might explain the decline in traffic, despite maintenance or improvement in rankings?

Thanks.

is there a tool that allows you to follow the actual frequency of search for specific  keyword phrases over time (ie years).?

Thanks.

thank you. this was very helpful.

Doug...

I don't know if users really use it. I suspect not  and I think our preference would be to have users use the category links to nav.

How can/would I know if our users use the tag cloud links on the blog page?

Thank you. I understand what you're saying.

Thanks Adam...

So given that there are almost 50 tag clouds linking off the blog homepage, removing the tag cloud sounds appropriate , in order to preserve the link juice for the blog homepage. Right?

We have a popular blog, but SEOmoz analytics is telling us that theblog  homepage has greater than 100 links and this needs to be addressed.

One very big source of links on the blog homepage is the tag cloud. Can tag clouds be a source of link juice dilution?

If so, is should we consider either removing the tag cloud altogether (not essential to the site) or consider doing no-follows?

Thanks.

Since the launch of our newly designed website about 6 months ago, we are experiencing a high number of 500 server errors (>2000).

Attempts to resolve these errors have been unsuccessful to date. We have just started to notice a consistent and sustained drop in rankings despite our hard sought efforts to correct.

Two questions... can very high levels of 500 errors adversely effect our google rankings?

And, if this is the case,  what type of specialist (what are they called) has expertise to investigate and fix this issue.

I should also mention that the sitemap also goes down on a regular basis, which some have stated is due to the size of the site (>500 pages). Don't know if they're part of the same problem?

Thanks.

With improvements in our rankings, we are seeing adverse changes in our measures of engagement. My gut reaction is to believe we are attracting more unqualified traffic, thus higher bounce rates, declines in pages/visit and time on site (approx 15%, 15%, 25%, respectively).

While recent improvements in navigation might have contributed  to these engagement declines, do you have any suggestions how best to determine whether these declines are due to nav changes vs. due to copy/content issues?  There's been no change in copy content during this period.

Thanks.

We are accumulating a signficant number of 500 errors, now reaching 3000 URLs after only 2 months since the re-coding of our site in Expression Engine.

I haven't gotten a straight answer re: implications or solutions... by default, suggesting  that it's not of any consequence.

History: The site was initially developed in EE (prior to that, an HTML platform) with a host of site issues. We then contracted an EE specialist to properly code the site. The 'new; site was released Sept 21st.

I'd appreciate some guidance and recommendations, so I can go back in hand to the developer.

What are the considerations or consequences, if any, for ignoring the 500 errors?

What are strategies or solutions for removing them from Google Webmaster Tools and preventing future 500 errors?

Thanks.

Alan

Hi... posted this question on Friday and you were great responding back very quickly.

I responded back sharing my goal is to use it to gain some insights about my competitors.

I see you haven't responded. I'd be appreciative to know what program/software you recommend.

Thanks.

Thanks Himanshu...

Sounds interesting and something I'll try. I'm not familiar with these other software recommendations and appreciate the suggestions.

As you well know, this process is tedious enough. Getting some shortcuts or employing some alternative strategies may help, if not make it more interesting.

Thanks.   Alan

yes. my thinking is that strong competitors have done their due diligence. why not review their efforts against my results to look for any gaps or more creative thinking.

i've found that many of our competitors employ this approach with copy, why not do the same with KW determination?

Thanks.

alan

I use traditional methods for keyword discovery, but occured to me that perhaps competitive keyword software should be applied to competitor's sites for further possibilitites.

Any opinions or experience using this strategy? I know it used primarily for PPC, but value for SEO KW discovery?

Any personal recommendations on which programs considered most effective?

Thanks.

Alan

Thanks for the thorough response. It's clear that YouTube is the way for us to proceed. Forgot that it's the 3rd largest search engine.

Clearly the advantages are significant.

I'll have to see how to control for competitor links and advertising.. hopefully this is not too technical.

Thanks for your great help.

Alan

We have produced a number of video guest testimonials.

Any SEO considerations or other hosting it on our website (what software to use?) vs. YouTube (and just embedding it on the webpage)?

Are there certain situation or circumstances when YouTube is not the best choice for placing video on a website?

Thanks.

Over 10 years ago, we decided to run our blog external to our main website. contrary to conventional wisdom then, we thought we’d have more control/opps for generating external anchor text links, plus working in a bona fide blog software environment (WP). As we had hoped, the blog generated alot of strong inbound links, captured inbound links of it own from other sites and I think, helped improve our SERPs and traffic. Once the blog was established and with the redesign of the website, we capitulated, and finally moved the blog onto the main domain.

After reading a number of pieces on Panda and the new reality of SEO, sounds like bounce rates (in particular), time on page, and other GA measures may have a more profound influence on google rankings now. Given that blogs are notoriously for high bounce rates (ours is), low time on site, depth of visit, seems logical that it adversely affects our site averages for the main domain). Is it time to re-consider pulling our blog off the main domain to reassert the ‘true’ GA measures of the main domain?

I guess it still gets down to the question... is the advantage of all the inbound links to the blog on the main domain of greater value than moving the blog off-site and reasserting better 'site stats' for google's pando algo?

Thanks.