Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Of course. You can see one of mine here at http://linkbuilding.inetseo.co.uk.

That started to rank after less than a week of it going live.

-Andy

Hi Jon,

Use of the canonical tag in this situation is just what it is intended for. Have a quick read of what Google says in these situations:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

• Consolidating link signals for the duplicate or similar content. It helps search engines to be able to consolidate the information they have for the individual URLs (such as links to them) on a single, preferred URL. This means that links from other sites to http://example.com/dresses/cocktail?gclid=ABCD get consolidated with links tohttps://www.example.com/dresses/green/greendress.html.

While Google do say it is a recommendation, I find that in situations like this, it will work just fine for you. As David said, give it a go, but I can't see that you will have any problems. Google is pretty good at sorting these issues out, and especially so if you tell them which is your preferred page for ranking:

"While we encourage you to use any of these methods, none of them are required. If you don't indicate a canonical URL, we'll identify what we think is the best version or URL."

-Andy

My phone is constantly attached to me, more so than the ability to write anything down, so on the home-screen, I have my voice recorder. I say what I need to and then rename it. Takes me 2 seconds and means I forgot nothing - even when I am offline or have limited internet access.

The files stay there until they are no longer required.

-Andy

Andrew,

I would find someone else to work with as he clearly knows nothing about SEO if he is proposing tactics like that.

Google Panda is seeing off a lot of article and poor quality websites now. What you want is fresh, unique content for your website and announce it in the right way - but avoid what he is proposing at all costs.

To answer your question, it is both a waste of time and you could get a hit for doing it.

Regards,

Andy

If you read the original post again, Sara says "we don't have R&D capacity".

They wouldn't be able to do all this.

-Andy

A little known, and highly valuable service, called Feedback Army.

I have used them on many occasions and you can set questions for live site users to complete actions on your site and give you an answer. It is the most accurate way to get live feedback from real individuals - and they come back with some startling insights.

It's so cheap, everyone should give them a go

Edit- Let me just add, this is cheap, but far from a worthless service. Amazing value for money, but do remember it is user testing, not an in-depth report. The key to this is asking the right questions.

-Andy

Hi,

First of all, what is making you think it is so bad? I would be cautious of trying to convince them so much that you end up alienating them and diving in there with someone else to try and get your point across, might just do this.

I like to turn to statistics and testing at this point. Are there pages not converting well? Is there is a penalty of any sort because of the copy? Have you thought about adding a live user testing application like Inspectlet to show them how people are navigating the pages?

-Andy

Basically, you want to stop worrying about do-follow and no-follow and go for relevance. You also want to look at citations and mentions as well because there is much more at work with Social SEO than there once was.

On the other note, try not to pay anyone else to submit and try to gain you backlinks unless it is part of an agreed SEO program. My advice here is to walk away and just create great content that will see you getting linked to.

Also, be active in Social Media to build your reputation and standing.

Regards,

Andy

Hi,

There are so many factors that could be causing this, that it will be impossible to speculate - without actually working on the site at least.

You say that you have cleaned up the link profile - does this mean it was poor / damaging before? When and how was this completed? How many links were 'cleaned'?

How many new links were built to the site and how were these acquired? What sort of sites did you get links from?

-Andy

They have a pretty good FAQ, but you want to be asking questions relevant to site satisfaction and ease of use. What's the aim of the site? Can you find this product easily using just the search box? What message is your eye drawn to first?

Those sorts of things

-Andy

Hi,

It is always good to have nice clean URL's, but I wouldn't advise trying to change them all just for the sake of wanting to change them, especially if they are ranking so well.

What could be way better than 1st place?

Google has even said in the past, not to change URL's for SEO purposes.

If you had a problem because of this, then it might be a different discussion, but for the most part, a URL plays just a tiny part of what Google looks at.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

I'm afraid I would never condone the use of such a service because at some point, Google is going to look at these in more detail and see hundreds of back-links from non-relevant sites and directories and will act accordingly, as only Google can.

I understand your frustration, but bide your time, get some great content written and go social with it

Hi,

Just as a side note, a particular pet hate of mine (and many others) is video playing with audio immediately when you visit a page. If I were in an office and this started, I would be panicking to find it and probably never return.

I can only offer the same suggestions that I do for others in the same boat as yourself here. Without working on a site and spending hours analysing it, it could be any number of factors.

With the phrases you give above as examples, are you trying to get the homepage to rank for them? Have you followed best practices throughout the site? Have you ever ranked highly for the site, or has it always been at this level?

-Andy

A common one here is to look at the images on your site and make sure no-one is referencing them on their own site. This can increase hits to a site.

Does going through Google Analytics throw up any suggestions?

-Andy

Daft question perhaps, but are you sure nothing is blocking access as it seems to suggest in the screenshot?

When did you do the fetch as Google?

-Andy

Dont worry about follow and no follow. just concentrate on getting yourself spread as wide as possible. Tweet, Digg, Like, InShare, +1 et al. Get your articles out to as many places as possible

Hi Jonathan,

These sorts of problems can be many different things. With what you are saying, I would be leaning towards thinking that you had a penalty from Google - that would be where I would start looking.

You mention a lot more links back to you than your competitors have - perhaps it is Penguin that has performed a manual / algorithmic action on the site? When was the last time you were ranking well, or has this always been the case that the site has never ranked too well? Who built the current links to the site and how long ago was this done?

It could be so many other problems that it could be impossible to go through them all here, but the correlation between Bing and Google is something I have seen many times with penalties. Rank well in Bing, but bad in Google.

Sorry it's a little open ended, but like I said, it could be so many other things.

-Andy

Sorry for just copy and pasting this. Here are suggestions for what to do if there is no site change possible:

If your new site doesn't appear in the Select a site list, check the following:

• Make sure you've added your new site to your Webmaster Tools account, and verified ownership.
• Make sure that your new site is not a subdomain. For example, you can use www.example.com, but notwww.example.com/newsite or http://newsite.example.com.
• If you've specified a preferred domain for your new site, only that preferred domain will appear in the list. For example, if www.example.com is not appearing, make sure that you have not specified http://example.com has your preferred domain.
• If you submit a change of address notice redirecting traffic to your new site (www.example.com), you can't then submit another change of address notice specifying that the content on www.example.com has moved to a new site.

-Andy

Hi,

The top and bottom line, is how many are needed.

I have clients who dominate huge search terms and have pages with many hundreds of links - others who only have a small number and the only difference between the two is what is actually needed.

If you have so many that the page is confusing, then I would reduce them. If you do have many hundreds, why do you have them? Can they be reduced without affecting usability?

There is no one answer to this and each case much be looked at on its own merits.

-Andy

Just looking at the names of some of those directories, I can tell you they are worthless - The Great Directory? i Web Directory?

I would be searching for sites that will benefit from what you have to offer and contact them - steer clear of directories of this kind. However, find a directory that is dedicated to your niche, and that is acceptable.

Andy

Hi Josh,

Keri has asked the same question I was thinking about when reading this.

One thing to consider around this is that SEO isn't just about getting people to your site - it's about getting the right people. I personally would be looking for phrases like "charitable donations", "charity donations", "donate to charity", etc. Those people that are searching for those phrases have one clear action in mind, whereas "donate" could be anything, including people just looking for general information.

-Andy

External redirects shouldn't have any influence in what Google does when wishing to select a domain move.

It's a little awkward without actually seeing everything, and I have never had any problems myself, but perhaps someone else could chip in with additional info?

-Andy

Hi,

The page title is a two-fold benefit.

1. It explains the page to Google
2. It tells visitors what they can expect

Best practice here dictates that you write your title for your audience, but not ignoring the important keyword(s) for Google as well.

Try not to keyword stuff as pages like this tend to look unnatural before you have even got to them.

-Andy

Unless you get a warning from Google in WMT, don't worry about trying to Disavow them - just don't try and create any more

If you are after a little inspiration on what to do, I wrote a bit of a link-building 101 that could give you some ideas?

Do you have Google+ setup and Authorship on your site? have you identified what it is that caused you to get hit? Panda / Penguin / Page Quality, etc.

Andy

Hi,

Before you moved over to Wordpress, how were your rankings then? Was every page being delivered as expected?

-Andy

Hi,

Do your images appear in your sitemap? Generally, there isn't a lot of difference between what Google and Bing look at, but they may both have different scores they associate with various aspects.

With this in mind, make sure that:

• The image is well optimised and not too large
• The file is named accordingly
• Has good descriptive ALT text (but not spammy)

Outside of that, it will also help if you build external links to that page and as with any SEO campaign, if you have pages that you wish to be more prominent for the search engines, remember to do some internal linking too.

I hope that helps a little.

-Andy

Hi Dana,

Have you had a look at the site with Builtwith.com? Perhaps this will give you some information?

https://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fwww.pens.com%2fblog

Just looking at the source code of the blog page though, it seems as though Yoast is already installed?

-Andy

Google+ can help with identifying who you are as an organisation and owner of content on your site. Might not help with this particular problem, but worth doing all the same.

If you are 100% sure that it is Penguin, then I would start with manually contacting some of the sites where you have questionable links and ask for them to be removed. If this doesn't work, or if links wont be removed, then it might be that you should look at using the Disavow tool and just get rid of anything that might be causing you problems.

After you do that, if can take a number of weeks for Google to get round to spidering all those sites to see you are no longer there.

Another blog post of mine on the Disavow tool with video from Matt Cutts and links to help pages on Google as well.

Andy

I assume your site is running Wordpress Ruben? This is quite common - you should be able to find your fix here. Snippets do cause a lot of problems, especially when plugins are in use. See how you get on with that.

This error occur when Google Snippet cannot find date it was published or last updated.To solve this find,**<span < code="">class="post_date">`'j F,Y'); ?></span <>`** and replace it with<span < code="">class="post_date date updated">`'j F,Y'); ?>``</span <>```

-Andy

My MOZ Rank = 10th... Adjusted Rank = 10th

Hi Nick,

I'm not aware of any studies specifically around this (other Mozzers might chip in with something) but this is a daily struggle for many site owners.

Without seeing the pages or knowing the keywords, my thought would be to improve the existing pages if they are already performing well in Google, but if they are causing concern from a visitors point of view, then that might be a different conversation.

Combining pages isn't as difficult as it sounds as long as you get them right and have checked to see if the keywords are synonymous and to what level - I have found that in doing this in the past, there is a cut-off point where it is prudent not to try and get a page to rank for too much.

Another way of achieving this is to use page anchors to capture some of these additional keywords. I have had better than moderate successes with these in the past as well. Google has no problem in indexing these if they benefit the page and visitors.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

Just remove the pages - don't even bother to try and 301 them, but a good 404 page won't hurt. If Google have already penalised you, albeit a heavy-handed method, show them you are serious about fixing it. In the re-inclusion request, explain what you think has happened.

Andy

It really doesn't matter, but it is considered more commonplace to have the www at the front. No SEO benefits either way though.

-Andy

Hi Brant,

I see a lot of this and I am going to guess Penguin (bad link profile) over Panda. Just a cursory glance at your site would suggest this, although I reserve the right to change my mind if I was to spend any time looking at this

Happy to run a quick scan and give you a better idea if you wish?

-Andy

There really isn't a right and wrong answer to this, but I will say that the content has to be long enough to answer the question that the page is answering.

In some circumstances, this might mean a short page with just 200 words - other times it might be more. 5000+ sounds a bit insane and like they are trying to over optimise, in which case would make me wonder about the phrase itself - is it low search volume?

There are so many variables that come into play with ranking pages that it would be impossible to say with any degree of certainty what is going on without actually seeing it.

From a usability view, this also sounds very excessive.

Make your pages clear and straight to the point without any waffle - and with 5000+ words, I would be surprised if all of that was really needed.

-Andy

I see no problem doing this - like you said, just republish and you should be golden

What is the reason for doing this? What are you wanting to achieve?

Imagine if you are Google - ask yourself "does this look natural to me?"

As a one-off site, then not much of a problem - but 100+ sites? Especially when you look at the sites themselves - as you say, all keyword rich. I can't imagine Google would look at this and consider it natural.

-Andy

Are you sure you don't have a different login or details been used from another account? It appears to be the listing that is in question, so perhaps this has already been setup under another login?

-Andy

Both are going to be important because your product level might capture a larger audience, but your specific product might gather up long-tail terms for people ready to buy that actual item.

However, do ensure the buying experience of the specific product is as good as it can be. At this point you have someone ready to buy. Help them commit as quickly as possible.

-Andy

Well, guest posting isn't really a black-hat technique (loads of sites do this) but if you suspect them of undertaking unethical techniques, then you can report them here:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93713

Andy

The hash tag means that the page wont be indexed by Google and therefore, carry no page rank. It is like it is invisible. Just launch the new pages because Google will have never seen the current ones.

-Andy

Absolutely agree with Egol. This might not help with the SEO per se, but such a big SEO factor is how happy people are on the page itself. You might find by adding important bullets that you retain someone for longer, make them want to read further and then go on to make a purchase.

Make the pages as good as is possible.

-Andy

The best way to tell is look at your analytics. Have you noticed a drop that coincides with an algorithm update?

This is always a great way to see what updates have happened and when:

http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change

Andy

That will teach me to skim read

Perhaps trying a different 301 plugin will help? Alternatively, you can pretty much redirect anything from within .htaccess.

This page on Webmaster World might be worth reading.

-Andy

Hi Ryan,

I haven't had this myself, so have sent John Mueller at Google at Tweet asking him to have a quick look at this for you. If he comes back to me with a reply, I will update you

-Andy

Hi Daniel,

I don't know how best these should be generated (will be a coding thing that needs writing perhaps) but I can tell you that doing this isn't an issue, as long as you get it right.

If you think about some of the huge sites out there on the web, they don't hand-write each page description.

Have a look at sites like Amazon and Ebay or any other online retailer - they will all be automated.

-Andy

Rel=canonical is only a recommendation to Google. If they wish, they can still ignore it, so there is no guarantee, but for the most part, this won't happen.

You can still use a unique title and description on the pages without any problem.

And you are more than welcome

Andy

Hi Granit,

Has any work been done to the site in the last 2-3 months? Have you had any warnings in webmaster tools at all? I did once see a strange problem where Google wasn't crawling a site correctly because it had been compromised, but after checking, there is nothing like this on yours.

-Andy

I don't think IP factor matters that much

Going to disagree with this here I'm afraid because I have seen some quite overwhelming results based on a user location. I am based in Chester, UK - If I search, based on my IP, I will be shown local results earlier - that kind of thing. I'm not saying this is always going to be the case, but based on locations, it can play a pretty major part.

@Hans - There are lots of things you can do to try and remedy this, but remember that Google has the final say. You could try building your brand strength more and perhaps talk create a few blog posts based around location and product, talk about surrounding towns that you cover and suggestions as Umar mentions above.

Also you could do a little testing and see how your competitors get around this issue. Crossing every 't' and dotting every 'i' is going to be a big key to success.

-Andy