Welcome to the Q&A Forum

It will take some time, have you checked on multiple search engines?

Did you get your answer Kath?

Interesting, have you checked out there backlink profile?

Can you find any others?

What is your website visitor counter like per month? Same as the source you are getting this info from ?

Look at the site above you (adowrds )and below you, if you were looking for your services/products, who would you click on, honestly ?

Probably just an off CTR counter, wherever you are getting the info from.

"Might sound a bit paranoid, but could Google have done this on purpose to try to make me carry on with adwords?"
Shall we do some research in the name of paranoia.....let's see if anyone can find any high ranking organic sites, that also have adwords ads. Who's up for it?

I assume the dead links can be A. Broken or B. No longer linking to you - It may not mean the site is not linking to you as they may have moved the link to another page etc. just that the exact link that have previously been seen, is no longer.

If the links gave you a rank boost, and are no longer linking to you - yes they could harm your site in terms of rank loss, otherwise I would not worry too much.

I really don't think there is much of a difference - both the same page, although perhaps a landing page is a direct hit from either a URL typed in or a link, whereas an entrance page could be used when they are specifically reading other pages directed from that page.....if that makes sense.

Best guess of mine simplified, same page, just thought of as slightly different for analytical reasons/metrics.

"in google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor"

That's your problem right there.

If you tell google that your site is aimed towards the U.S market, you will have to put up with "Unites States" next to your site.

Sorry but there is no way around it, that's google for you.

Probably, yes.

Any restriction you place on the google bot can be seen as sneaky, something like a pop up in instant preview I would not worry too much about, honestly, how much do you use it when you are looking for info or a site?

Not sticking up for them but you have to appreciate the amount of people that would probably try to send them all sorts of viruses anyway they can, also they probably don;t have or want to take the time looking at everyone so closely, basically they will just see if the offending stuff is still there, if it is they won't give you any love.

Honestly, it's probably something so simple you have overlooked it. Keyword ratio's above 6% can be taken as spam depending on content amount, non relevent link coming in/going out, links from already penalzed sites, anything unnatural is now what google has been focusing on, not just backlinks, so go through your site, obviously the HP is the first point to start at, if you are really sure there is nothing going on in the way of spaminess or over optimization, comb through your other pages. It will usually be a problem one your best ranked pages. Or, ex best ranked pages if you have been hit with a penguin slap.

Unfortunately I don't see a way around it

It's a bit tricky, because google could still deem a spammy link even if the DA or DT is relatively ok.

Consider adding nofollow to links you may think google could see as suspect, these will usually be to sites that are heavily optimized, actively advertise/offer link exchanges/highly non relevent sites etc....

Usually if you have a link on your page it will have anchor text, to place a link to another site behind an inage/ico COULD be seen as a neg signal.

It may not be your intention, but google cares not about your intentions, it does what it wants.

You can always use the nofollow tag if you want to keep the link and are worried it may be effecting your site.

Usually in webmaster tools it will notify you of any issues, have you checked there?

Think about the term you want to rank for the most/get the most traffic for, then have that in the url.

All the best

The tag is usually used to indicate you have duplicate/very similar content on the same site.

So if you have the tag pointing to an offsite site/page it could be the reason you are getting the warning?

It comes down to the quality and seo practises of thier sites.

If they have been spammy with thier link building and you are linking to them, it will not be in your favor to keep a link to them, you could add the nofollow tag though, may help a bit.

What was the message?

Just because penguin was rolled out on a specific date does not mean you couldn't get a warning early/later on, They want us to think it was released on the 24th, but was it really.......

You are right too, backlinks certainly need to be cleaned up if they are spammy.

Short answer to your question, yes.

A quick question to everyone who says update the content, that is fair enough, but whenever we undertake a site wide update/slight content addition/change it seems we get hit with a filter/penalty.

Sort of like "your site is changing, we need to wait until you stop to rank you properly"....it's really weird.

Although I wonder if it has more to do with slight title tag changes too, any thoughts, anyone?

I would think it has to do with the profile being public or not and how popular/used the page is......

Blueprint, as far as I understand it can't really be used to prevent people stealing your content because you need to have to similar versions and place the tag pointing to the one that is of lesser value or that you don't want to come up in place of the original. Or are you saying if you find some of your content elsewhere offsite you can place a canonical link to it, and this will tell the spiders it is your content rather than theres?

Antonio, if you have placed the tag on the newer page pointing to the older page you are telling the spiders that the newer page is the preferred/more original content.

It's a good question. Google blabs non stop about natural links and ranks websites based on links (big part of ranking anyway), however how are those of us that can not get lots of natural BL's compete against those who have obviously bought thousands of links?

Google is very retarded at times as it seems to reward websites doing the wrong thing over the ones who are doing the right things.

When you find out, let me know.

What do you mean exactly by "Both versions of the page"?

And what is the outcome you hope to get from this?

Not much of an seo expert then is he.

For long term rankings they are great indicators, but as Conrel said it still doesn't guarantee anything, you still have to do some leg work.

The most likeey cause is over optimization or similar page content.

If you scroll through the serps for the same keyword that would usually bring up the disappeared page and another of your site pages comes up further down like page 3, 4 or whatever, you can be pretty sure one of those two issues is the cause.

I read sometime ago a good structure is to have every page on the site accesiblie in 3 clicks.

Don't create orphan pages, always have the same link block/menu on every page and you should be ok.

Site structure is only about 10% of the issue.

You need relevant titles/content and links coming into your site to rank well.

Not sure about the domain report option, but if enough webmasters report links from the same domain you can be sure that it will get deindexed/blacklisted soon enough.

Updowner, you will be one of them.

Assuming you have not got any messages from google in WMT, you can go to the specific link page, and see if there is hundred/thousands of links that are obviously all there for the wrong reasons.

Numbers is the main way, PR of 0 or N/A may be an indicator too (why would hunfreds of sites want a link from a 0 PR page) put both together..... a link page with hundreds of outbounds with a 0 page rank (indicating google has stripped it)..... is apretty sure bet.

Apparently google MAY be bringing in a link reporting tool in WMT. cant wait for the day.

But when you are talking thousands of links it would be no easy task.

I have been thinking about blocking specific IP's in htacess in regards to trying to combat spam links, not sure if it would work though, but you would surely be telling the bots you don't trust the site/domain.

Apparently the only thing to do is to submit a recon request, admit to G you've been caught up in some promis by an SEO company, and tell them you have tried to get them removed but you can;t, but when you are talking thousands of links......you may want to seriously consider starting form scratch if the recon request does not get accepted, at least keep the site on the back burner in the hope google does come out with the reporting tool and that way you will have a nice clean site half way developed too.

All the best.

It could be seen as spammy by some anal search engines.

Why would you want to do it anyway?

It's possibly just our experiance, but we will never hire any SEO companies.

You are putting your site and business into the hands of someone else. And paying them for it.

What may work for SEO now, may not work in the future.

There are basics to creating a good website with easy enough SEO you can do yourself, but it takes time to read, research trial and experiment.

Start learning and don't put your fate into anyone elses hands.

I have never trusted G.A not just the metrics, but the fact google can use it to rank your site based on the data you are willingly sending them. Google is well known to never reveal it's cards so half the time even when we think we know what's going on, we only know the half of it.

G.A has the ability to help your site, but also to squash it.

It depends how many exact match achors you have out there, from what sites and how relevent it is to your domain/title and content.

If your site is joeblow.com and it's content is about horse racing but you have 100 achors for "best horse racing tips" becuause that's what you want to rank for it is indicitive to google those links may not be natural and if deemed so you may lose some of the ranking juice from those links.

Devaluation of links has been a huge going on lately in the google backyard. Especially since Mr penguin migrated from the icy slopes.

Sitelinks are a sign of domain authority in googles eyes, I dont mean it's like a huge thing, but google trusts your site enough to show more links and that's a good thing.

I have seen them come and go just by switching browsers, I.E shows them mozilla doesn't and vice versa, also if you have made a lot of changes recently it could be a case as you say of google trying to figure out when you will stabalize and then rank you/trust you accordingly.