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I would second Justin's recommendation of the attribution builder rather than using URL shorteners.

-Andy

Ah sorry, I misunderstood the Title for meaning ALT text.

It is important to try and be as unique as possible with the page title. It can lead you into duplication problems, but more than that, you can fall into Keyword Duplication (cannibalisation) issues. This is where Google doesn't know which page to rank for a particular phrase.

The best way around this, is to come up with a naming strategy, where you can substitute words for something unique to the page.

For example "Buy Mona Lisa prints online" could be made up of "Buy <title>prints online" and you substitute the <title> for that particular image name.</p> <p>Of course, this just an example of how it works, and you can create a number of different templates to use. It is a good way to avoid having everything look and sound the same.</p> <p>-Andy</p></title>

That way, I think they are important for the promotion and SEO of web development companies.

Hi Bob,

No, these won't do anything for SEO in terms of link-building. Google isn't interested in footer links as something they want to see, but that doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile having there. There are benefits, but they aren't SEO. If someone likes a site and wants to see who developed it, for example.

If you want to create a good backlink profile, then you need good quality links in reputable sites. And don't worry if you see these as making up the majority of links for your competitors, it just means they don't know / haven't spent any time on building good links.

-Andy

This is one of those circumstances where Google know that an attorney and lawyer are one in the same and will deliver results for Lawyer when you search for Attorney. As David said, if you try to cover off both words here, then you could land yourself in trouble.

If I do a search for "London Immigration Attorney" then I get results back for Lawyer, so for me, this is the phrase that I would go for.

-Andy

Hi James,

Am I right in assuming that there's a Panda filter on the /deals/ segment

Unfortunately there is no guaranteed way to say this is the case, but generally if you see a drop in traffic / positions that coincide with an algorithm refresh, then this can be telling.

Is it just traffic to those pages that has dropped, or positions in the SERPs?

-Andy

Hi James,

Thanks for clearing that up - I don't like to assume and get anything wrong

For this, you want to use rel="alternative" hreflang"nnnn". This will allow you to serve up duplicate content to different locations. Google goes into this in more detail here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

It has been introduced to help exactly this sort of problem.

I hope it helps.

-Andy

Hi Donald,

Absolutely create one page with a keyword focus, but don't fall into the trap of keyword duplication / cannibalisation. For example, you wouldn't create separate pages for very similar terms like 'web design' and 'website design' (sorry Toby). This is handled through on-page content, where you want to create amazing content that uses a wide range of related words & synonyms. Also look into LSI keywords as these can help increase a good range of supporting phrases.

Keep each page with a strong focus, create some good blog posts and set to also doing internal linking. A great resource to understand how important this is can be found here: https://econsultancy.com/blog/65433-why-internal-links-and-hub-pages-are-a-major-factor-in-seo-success/

-Andy

Hi Tej,

Moz have a best practice guide on redirects here, but the general rule of thumb is that a 301 is used for most scenarios where a permanent redirect is required. This also passes more link juice than a 302, which is generally used for temporary redirects, and passes no link juice.

In terms of SEO, a 301 is almost always the preferred option because of the benefits in helping a site retain a more natural flow of link juice.

-Andy

Hi,

There is no problem with international SEO and duplicate content, as long as you follow the rules around this. Start by reading this checklist from MOZ as it will give you a great grounding.

I would also read this article from Google as this will walk you through what you need to do.

HREFLANG will be used to explain to Google about international pages with duplicate content.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Its funny, I always have the right direction when working for my clients but when it comes to your own websites and seo optimizations it always helps to get a second pair of eyes. We are all bias to our own work.

I couldn't agree more

As Google has said that guest posting is now considered a spammy tactic, I would look at this as a possible part of the problem. Read what Matt Cutts says about it here.

You need to be thinking outside the box and look for other ways to build links, but I would cease guest posting. You need to also look at how links coming back from these guest posts were created, as it is very easy to get this wrong and cause yourself an additional headache. You should never use keyword rich anchor text, for example.

-Andy

One area that is often overlooked, and that is hugely powerful for any site, is internal linking.

An internal link to a page will tell Google that you consider it to be important, based on the phrase you are using. Remember that with internal linking, you should be as descriptive as possible.

I often point people towards this document, as it contains so much valuable information:

https://econsultancy.com/blog/65433-why-internal-links-and-hub-pages-are-a-major-factor-in-seo-success/

-Andy

The only think I can see that is missing, is a self rel=canonical to the home page. I would have this as a matter of course.

I also can't do a quick crawl on the site as I am getting a 403 Denied error.

-Andy

Is this a page / article in your site anywhere Nikola? I'm wondering if it's some kind of referrer spam.

-Andy

Hi Bob,

As long as site A hasn't had a penalty of any kind, this will be your quickest route. Don't worry about no content being updated on there for some time - lots of sites don't get updated all the time. Google will see when work is started and come back to crawl more often.

Also, don't worry about buying a domain to match keywords - EMD lost any real benefit some time back.

-Andy

It certainly sounds like it Luke. If there is nothing there that is content-worthy, then it 'could' cause issues. I always ask my clients to imagine they are Google and "what would you think if you visited that page to look for great quality content that they should index and share with others".

-Andy

Should we even have a /en-us/ version when our root domain is the default version, in english, and targeted to US primarily?

Hi Andrew,

The general rule of thumb here, is if your target is the US and language English, then this should sit at the root of the site rather than within a location identifier - so from what you say, this is implemented incorrectly.

Correct this and it should correct your issues.

However, you will need to set some 301's so that any pages that are indexed under /en-us/ will forward on to the new and correct URL.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

Hi Patrick,

Will this hurt your SEO? Maybe, but not in the more traditional way. For example, there is no direct penalty that this would fall under, but what it could do is confuse the user experience. Just keep in mind that SEO isn't just about your SERP positions.

As a user on any site, you want to see consistency. If you change theme part way through, then this can devalue the level of trust in the site as it no longer looks like the original site.

I would stick with one theme and if you aren't happy with the current look and feel, change your whole site to match this.

From Google's perspective, no, this wouldn't cause a devalued ranking by installing an additional theme (unless SEO issues arise from the installation), but there are a whole host of reason why you shouldn't do it.

-Andy

**"Does Google absolutely hold you to making every attempt you can at getting those links removed? Add how does it know? No one responds so it seems to be such a waste of time. And many now actually charge to remove your links." **

Ah, that old chestnut

Do Google know if you have been trying to contact sites to try and get links removed? Simple answer is no. They have no way to tell this. They can't base this on any successes you might have, because as you said, most never reply, or hold you to ransom.

I have completed a lot of disavows now and the vast majority of these are clients just wanting the disavow file creating and then uploading. Of course, there is a fair bit of work in doing this, because you don't want to get rid of god sites, but even so, I have had a huge amount of success in fixing Penguin and manual penalties without having to go out and chase sites for a link removal.

Could it be anything else? It's possible, but as you said, there are a lot of very poor links, so this is certainly where I would be looking to start.

However, don't just stop there. After the disavow, you should be creating new site content, linkable assets and heading out to complete some outreach and gain them some good quality links to offset what was there previously.

-Andy

No need to go with canonicals. A bit of .htaccess code should do it. Pretty sure I got this from Stack Overflow in the past for a client with the same issue:

<code>RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d RewriteRule^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]</code>

Give that a go and let me know how you get on.

Edit - Found the page I was looking for here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21417263/htaccess-add-remove-trailing-slash-from-url

Cheers,

Andy

Hi Dan,

Is there a reason you want to go for a .co.uk? Why not just add the UK content into a /uk/ version of the site and set HREFLANG to handle the different international pages? That way you don't lose any rankings and all you are doing is moving content around on a current domain.

No need to take it to another site.

Here is some good reading that will help you setup the site and make sure you don't miss anything:

• https://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
• https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation
• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

The fact that is is on the same domain doesn't matter because HREFLANG will tell Google which content is for which country.

-Andy

No problem at all

-Andy

Should we report this proactively to the web spam team using the guidelines here? No

**Should we request a malware review as recommended within the same guidelines, keeping in mind the site hasn't been given a 'hacked' snippet in the search results? **

No

**Is submitting a massive disavow links file right now, including the 490k-something domains, the only way we can escape the wrath of Google when these links are discovered? Is it too hopeful to imagine their algorithm will detect the negative-SEO nature of these links and not give them any credit? **

Yes

This sounds to me like you need to be thinking 'damage limitation', and by submitting a disavow now, you will be doing just this. Don't worry about the fact there are so many domains there, that is what the tool is all about. However, Penguin hasn't had a refresh in some time (12 months), so one might consider this and think that while you have time on your side to fix it, a refresh could be round the corner - so hop on it

-Andy

If it's that you have both www & non-www versions of your site, you need to do this through the .htaccess file. Have a look at this page for some info on how to create a bit of code to add in there. This link is assuming you want the www version of the site to be the one you use.

http://dense13.com/blog/2008/02/27/redirecting-non-www-to-www-with-htaccess/

-Andy

Quite simply PR does not affect your position in the SERP's. One of my sites is a PR1 but is just under Wikipedia for one particular well contended phrase and above sites that are a PR 3 or 4.

Content and good organic links are your friend

Regards,

Andy

This is the company who designed the site for them - perhaps get in touch? But I also think it might be a custom build - perhaps on the back of another well known theme.

http://www.innergys.com/

-Andy

Or 301 redirect these pages to home page?

This is something of a no-no. Google states that a 301 should be used to redirect one page to another that is similar. If you can't find a good match, you are better leaving it as a 404.

I heard there's a Wordpress plugin that 301 redirects all the 404 errors successfully preserving all the potential link juice.

As above, if you have a plugin do this for you then you could find that old URL's are redirected 'en-masse' to the same place, which will do you no favours.

-Andy

...using ccTLDs might not be worth it compared with using a folder

That's be the route I would be investigating first.

-Andy

Hi Philip,

I would hold fire until Google Panda has been rolled out as there are many unknowns about which sites are being hit right now. There are affiliate sites in the US that have taken a nose dive, so for the sake of a few weeks, hold onto what you have and then review again when we all know more.

Regards,

Andy

Hi,

As Logan has said, you want to avoid too many redirect chains, but if you are only talking about 1 or 2 hops, then the chances are you will never see any negative effect.

That said, I always try and keen these down to 1 hop so rather than having page A to page B & page B to page C, are you able to edit the redirects and then just have Page A to Page C? If you can cut out the middle hop, this would be much better.

Wordpress is going to be the same as any other site where redirects are concerned. There are also a lot of really good plugins to help with redirects, so do look into them.

-Andy

are there cases when it is just better to start over from scratch.

I'm sure there are, but they will be very few and far between. In all these years of doing SEO, I haven't ever had to do this.

They have literally thousands of bad links and strange site pages that they say they weren't even aware of.

Spend a little time going over these and a disavow will take care of it. However, don't expect positive changes in days. Some take many months to update.

Google will still figure it out and follow you with the penalty

Do you mean build a new site to start again? Well if you have a Penguin hit, then this will follow you. Other penalties could be resolved by a rebuild / refresh of the site though as this will all be on-page.

-Andy

Two reasons that I see are preserving any link juice from domains linking to old URLs and ensuring no future/current loss of rankings.

I can see no reason not to go back, just take care to ensure any old 301's are removed and that you don't fall into any redirect-chains. That could get messy.

-Andy

Took us about 2 weeks I think - perhaps post something in the Google Webmaster forums?

Andy

If there is one thing I have learnt it is to steer well clear of anything that is not completely white-hat (ethical) because Google pops up now and then and surprises everyone - Look at the recent changes with 'Panda' and the sites they are going after there!

There is no long term substitute for a well designed site with fresh, unique content that is easy for visitors and search engines to navigate.

Regards,

Andy

No problem at all Jeremy.

With the links, concentrate on those with spammy do-follow anchor text first and remember to disavow from a domain level if you think that there is a chance more will be added from that source in the future. Saves a lot of heartache further down the line.

-Andy

Sorry, changed my response. I went to the last domain first.

I am off out shortly, so a little limited in time to check this. I would start by contacting the host, GoDaddy, and raising a ticket with them. You might find it is something as simple as a mis-configuration or mistake on someone's part.

-Andy

Hey Doug,

Never seen that myself before and can only imagine it is either a mistake, or someone has been misinformed that there is some benefit to this.

Like you said, these aren't links that would appear naturally, so something odd has certainly happened.

-Andy

Ah sorry, I misunderstood.

For links I personally tend not to trust automated apps or websites they mess everything up if they get it wrong, and rely purely on manual searching here through OSE, Yahoo and Webmaster tools.

Regards,

Andy

Hi Shaun,

It is always difficult to diagnose issues like this without a little more info, so there are a couple of questions I would need to ask:

1. When did you notice SERP movement again? You can often tie dates down by checking the Moz Algorithm History and by keeping an eye on MozCast, to watch for daily Google activity.

2. What work (if any) was carried out prior to this movement? You are also able to annotate Analytics with information when changes were made (on or off-site). Great for keeping tabs on what was done when and impacts seen.

-Andy

You could noindex, follow the blog page, but I tend to see these issues fixed with some internal linking, just to remind Google which page you want to be prominent.

That said, the fact it is page 5 makes me wonder if there is a penalty / trust thing going on here as well. It wouldn't be the first time I have seen this happen.

I would also check your local search setup and make sure everything is completed.

• Keywords
• Google My Business
• Citations & Mentions
• Backlinks
• Reviews
• Local Directories & Business Listings
• Google Data Highlighter / Schema Markup
• Consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number)

-Andy

Affiliate Future & Affiliate Window I hear good things about. You could also try CJ.

-Andy

I don't know about OSE, but if they are being removed then I would just wait it out.

However, a friendly mail to the webmaster of the site won't hurt either. And do you think a competitor would go to such extremes in order to try to damage your site reputation?

Regards,

Andy

Hi Kelly,

will these recipe excerpts be picked up as duplicate content?

Yes, it is likely that crawlers will see it as duplicate content, but that doesn't necessarily equate to an issue for you. How are you finding that they are being indexed? Are they appearing well in the SERPs? Is the additional content on the pages just there to satisfy Google, or is it genuinely useful?

You could also reduce the excerpt size so the levels of duplication aren't as high.

You also need to look at the page and decide how / why you are optimising the pages. Is it just to gain more keywords and then funnel people to other articles? If so, you may fall foul of the Doorway Penalty. I posted this in another question a short while ago:

Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages:

• Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?
• Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
• Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
• Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?
• Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

If you answer yes to any of those, then it might not just be duplicate content that is your issue.

-Andy

Hi,

What phrases are you trying to rank for? I ask because your homepage title is "Best Folk music and Poetry by Local Puerto Rican Artists", so I would assume that you are looking to rank for something like "best folk music"? If not, then you need to think about the key phrase(s) that you wish to rank for and ensure a good, clean page title.

There are so many reasons why a site wont be ranking in Google:

• Domain Age
• Backlinks
• Popularity
• Technical Issues - for example, you have two homepages... http://www.lasalitacafe.com/ and http://www.lasalitacafe.com/index.html. You need to fix these in the .HTACCESS file and redirect so only one page is served. There are lots of sites explain how to do this, and even a discussion on it here on MOZ. I'm not an .htaccess guy, so can't help directly with this.

EDIT. Have you read the MOZ guide to SEO?

-Andy

So you just want to disallow the /review/ element?

*Disallow: /review/

I am pretty sure the wildcard will work.

I would use the Robots.txt tester in Webmaster tools to try it out first before committing to any changes. This will tell you if it works and if so, if it's blocked successfully.

You then try the URL without the /review/ element on and make sure it passes.

-Andy

Before even looking at link building, I would take some time to sort your site out as it is a huge link fest in there!

And no, you dont want to be getting links back from the same class IP. Google is wise to this trick.

Regards,

Andy

Example of what they would like to do

That would be a no-no Shawn. If you are running over SSL, then you need to canonical back to the https version of the page. If you don't, you will end up with errors on the page (yellow warning triangle) and trust issues with Google. What they would like to do is canonical to a malformed URL which it could interpret as a file.

Try going to any URL and just entering it as //www.domain.com

-Andy

My advice here is to get a good strong Scotch, a pack of headache tablets and settle in for the night - it sounds like one holy mess!

The only thing I can really suggest is to just try and tackle one element at a time. The fact that so much has gone on with the sites, would suggest to me that Google has lost track of where it is all up to.

Start at the beginning (wherever that is!) and work through sorting one issue at a time.

-Andy

I have had that in the past - the link appears and then goes again - I wouldn't worry about it too much Never caused me any problems.

Regards,

Andy