Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Is Google reporting just the main domain, or specific pages where the links are coming from?

-Andy

Do you fancy PM'ing me details of your site & search terms for me to take a look? I would be interested to see cases like this.

-Andy

Hi,

Absolutely! If you think about it, if you see a title that doesn't fit and you only see half a message, then you are unlikely to click on it. You can miss off important messages to help people make an informed decision and pass up opportunities for SEO.

-Andy

Dull and unnecessary

While outreach is important, something that often gets overlooked is linkable assets - why is someone going to link to your site? I talk a little bit about linkable assets on my own site here, but it is essentially creating content or 'something' that is going to entice others to link to you.

People are more precious of their sites than ever before and don't give links away easily, so it's important to give them that reason.

Get those creative juices flowing and make some noise.

-Andy

Hi Ruben,

Some say it's fine, others say it's dangerous - and there is a discussion here on MOZ that took place some time ago. However, there doesn't seem to be any conclusive data either way to suggest that it's a problem.

That said, I do recall that with one of the algorithms, Google did say to make sure your site isn't too obviously templated and avoid repetition. As a matter of course, I would suggest you make sure these aren't the same as it is another opportunity to get additional keyword diversity in there.

-Andy

Hi,

Because it is a subdomain, that will already be happening. That is why you will see both as 30. I think it was back in 2011 when Google stopped treating Subdomains as separate sites. The link to the subdomain will be seen as an internal link.

If you want to increase the DA of both, then you need to start doing some link building to the primary domain. This will pass down the line.

-Edit... There is also nothing wrong with building links to the store either. This is just like linking to any other internal pages.

-Andy

Hi,

It is very possible that more people are clicking on your adwords ad, as mathamatix has said. Have you noticed a drop in organic positions? Also check Google Webmaster Tools to make sure there are no manual penalties that have coincided with this. It's unlikely, but always worth covering all bases.

Just looking at your numbers though, I would guess your adwords ad is taking away from organic.

-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

Hi,

You are correct that both can help. However, you don't want to artificially inflate pages with keywords or filler content that is only there to try and serve a purpose, as this will come back and bite you. If you can enhance your current pages, then this is a great way to improve what is already there. If you think that a subject requires a dedicated explanation though, then this can also help.

The example you gave 'does voltage optimisation work in hotels'... if you can write an article based on this without it just being the same as 'does voltage optimisation work', but with the word 'hotel' added in now and then, then yes, it's worthwhile. Also, don't write for Google - write for your viewers. Make each page as good as you possibly can.

-Andy

Hi,

There is no real issue with either noindex or rel=canonical. Which one I would choose would depend if you have been penalised for this already?

Canonical is used to tell search engines of a preferred page, and is used to handle duplication issues, but I wouldn't create a constantly changing canonical in this manner. I would set the http://www.theatermania.com/video/mary-louise-parker-tommy-tune-laura-osnes-and-more_668.html to canonical back to http://www.theatermania.com/videos/, as this is the main page for all videos.

-Andy

Well, I know Bing says they support it, but how well it works, I don't know.

You can read about it here on the Bing blog post, and Tom from Distilled answered a similar question on Moz here.

Hopefully these will help a little.

-Andy

You're welcome

Hi,

No, you only need to have one lot of sitemaps. All major search engines work off the same protocol standard, so you don't need to worry about this.

-Andy

Hi,

As Ray-pp said, there isn't an optimal number of pages that are going to serve you better.

However, if you want to help Google discover more about your site and pages of importances, look to create a good internal linking strategy. This doesn't mean that you should just add footer or sidebar links though - these are context links that talk about a different subject, along with a link to the appropriate page.

If you get this right, you can gain a lot in terms of Google understanding more about what you have to offer, and the links to primary pages can also lead to an increase in the SERPs for various phrases.

-Andy

As others have said, this will achieve nothing. However, there is a good way to use Google+ with new posts, and that is to optimise the first 35-50 characters as you would a blog post or other page you are trying to optimise. The reason being, that first part then becomes the page title for that particular post.

-Andy

Hi,

I tend not to use 302's for anything other than a temporary redirect - 301 is generally the one that works best for SEO because it will pass more page rank than a 302.

Moz also have a 'best practice' post on this here.

-Andy

Hi,

Trying to pass yourself off as another company is never good in anyone's eyes - especially Google's. Keywords are based around your own phrase requirements and where Google thinks that you should appear for them.

Can I ask, are you looking to rank for the Pop Warner phrase, or something else? A brand is always going to rank well for a phrase that includes that name - it would be a bit of a slog to try and knock them off really.

-Andy

Hi Marc,

If the site has only been live for about a week, I doubt very much anything you have done to the site has caused this. It is not uncommon for Google to rank a new site highly for a few days, then you drop into a bottomless pit again. This is only while Google is assessing the site. I would doubt that you could do anything to fix that in such a short space of time.

-Andy

I would go with option 3 Alex. If you want to have most of your visibility aimed at Germany, then it makes sense to have the primary content on here and then have a site.com/en for the rest of the world.

There is no reason to redirect everyone as soon as they get to you if you still have a primary audience.

-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

That's a lot you have going on there Alex.

OK, so first of all, if you have one sitemap pointing to the German pages and another to the English, this is absolutely fine. No harm will come of this. HREFLANG will take care of helping Google understand which pages are for which country.

However, this is going to cause you issues:

So the root www.site.com/ doesn't exist but has the most of the backlinks.

Because you have most links here, and the root doesn't exist, as soon as someone arrives, they are being sent off via a 302 to a new page. Any link juice coming to the homepage is going to be diluted as soon as it is redirected. And a 302 is understood to dilute this a lot more than a 301 would.

I would also look to be doing some internal linking (if this hasn't been done) as well because this can help Google understand more about the structure of your site.

I hope this helps a little.

-Andy

Thank you Amelia

With 4 that is possible, but before you kill everything off, do give my suggestion a whirl to see if that has an impact. However, that also depends on how much of a rush you are in to see a resolution - it could take a little time until Google gets around to resolving it.

Feel free to PM me if you would like me to take a peek at anything.

-Andy

No problem.

What I was going to look for was the chain of 301 and make sure there were no errors in how these were implemented.

You could also use Webmaster Tools to suggest removal of old pages, then use Fetch as Google, to help speed up the spidering process.

It's a little awkward without seeing the sites I'm afraid.

-Andy

Hi Alex,

This really depends on how the mobile site is created, but I would suggest you have a read of this MOZ post that talks about optimising a site for mobile.

-Andy

Do you have example links from both sites that I could take a look at please Michael?

-Andy

Hi,

It sounds to me that some internal linking and no-indexing Tag pages could help with this.

Just doing a very quick scan of the site, I am seeing 439 pages that Google can crawl - 210 of those pages are Tag pages. These tend to fire Google off in all directions and serve no good SEO purpose. However, some like this, but I have seen them cause more problems than doing good.

If the opportunity arises, talk about related blog posts and then link to it - you would be surprised just what this can do for you.

-Andy

The way I see it, I'm reducing duplicate content.

Anything you can do that helps with this, is a good move - nothing wrong with a little tidying up.

the PDF appearing when a HTML page doesn't, is another way of gaining real estate

Do you currently have this happen? PDF's can actually out-rank HTM pages on occasion - they aren't the preferred media type of Google, but like any page, it's all about the content.

-Andy

Hi,

The rel canonical tag won't prevent pages from being indexed - all it does is act as a way to 'suggest' to Google that there is a preferred page. if you don't want pages indexing, you have to prevent Google from crawling and indexing them (noindex).

-Andy

There is no telling if Google are going to see this as a problem or not - until it's too late.

If you are doing this only for the fact you want to offer a scholarship and not expecting links, then the safe thing is to ask for the links to be no-followed. It's hardly a drastic step and it keeps you safe.

Remember, Google aren't going to have a conversation with you about what you are doing - it will either happen or it wont.

-Andy

I see what you mean - it is a bit messy. It appears to be using the ALT tag for the logo as the first part of the description?!

It's something I would need to spend time on to try and get to the bottom of I'm afriad - however, you might find someone else with more schema experience can diagnose in a second. You may have to wait to see if someone else chips in a little later.

-Andy

Hi Peter,

Is the ranking position something that has just happened, or has it never been good?

-Andy

Hi Peter,

If I search for "Best at hire" or "bestathire", both come back in Google absolutely fine. Can you post a screenshot of what you see?

-Andy

"My gut tells me no because helping people with student debt is what we do"

Well, is it being done for links? This is something that is quite a common link building tactic, so Google are probably already on to it. That said, you can always request any links to be nofollowed - that should stop Google seeing it as a link tactic.

It does fall within the darker side of link building as it isn't really an editorially gained link - other sites have been penalised for 'buying-links-in-a-not-really-buying-links' manner before.

-Andy

Hi Isaac,

A link from the homepage would be good - build it into the content somewhere though. The same goes for links from other pages.

Yes, you can tell Google that 404 pages have been fixed, if they are just pages that you have removed. Just remember to make sure no other pages or links lead to these dead pages, as that can cause issues.

-Andy

Hi Isaac,

It isn't always about exact page matching in this manner - Google knows that a diary and 5-year diary are related and will deliver the page that they think is best suited - in this case, the homepage. However, I would be tempted to look at internal linking from the homepage to the 5-year diary page, and perhaps other related pages from within the site. It's all about creating a self-explanatory structure that gives weight to a page.

You could also look at strengthening this by building some backlinks to some of these internal pages too.

Also, you have a dead page that Google has indexed at the moment: http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/shop/5-year-diary/castelli-5-year-diary

-Andy

Hi,

I haven't actually done this myself, but the best way to handle it is after the move and the www-version of the site has been verified in GWT, just check to see if the disavow file exists there. If it doesn't just re-add it.

The fact that you are redirecting from a non-www to www, means that your disavow document will still be fine to use, as it applies to the new site too.

-Andy

Any links from on-target sites like this is good - just remember to keep the link and anchor-text clean and non-spammy.

With regards the different DA & PA, it just means that the MOZ crawler has deemed the internal page to be of a higher quality than the homepage. I can't think of any reason why this might be an issue, but you might need a MOZ techie to give you specific information on why it shows like this.

-Andy

Hi Rachel,

This is similar to another question asked just yesterday and the same could apply very well to yourself too.

HREFLANG is used in cases like this where a site could encounter duplication issues through this kind of setup. There are two areas to look at and consider here - this answers your question if you decide to keep all TLD's the same.

**Q: <a name="q16"></a>Can I use “rel alternate hreflang” across domains / across TLDs?
A: **Yes! Keep in mind that this markup is on a per-URL basis, so if there are alternate URLs across those domains, you would need to add the markup for each individual URL.

You can get many questions answered here: https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16

If you decided to pull everyting into just one site, then this would fit what you want to do:

• Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

In terms of inter-linking, this seems to be down to the whim of Google, if they wish to see it as problematic or not. If you are concerned about it, leave the links in place and just add the rel=nofollow attribute - this will remove possible issues.

I hope this helps.

-Andy

The main thing to remember about setting up canonical tags, is that they must make sense. For example, it is fine to have 10 pages, each with the same canonical tag referencing one page. However, when you start to get into canonicals referencing each other and jumping around, then Google will probably ignore them, or could cause problems.

With regards back-links to no indexed pages, that is fine. The only time you need to be mindful of this, is if a link points to a page that then gets removed and not redirected.

-Andy

This is a question that has been asked many times, but there isn't really a right answer. It's really a case of which setup best suites your needs.

However, using HREFLANG, you can have just a single website. Here is the situation you have (take from Google).

• Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.

Doing this, you don't need to worry about duplication issues.

-Andy

That isn't something you really should be doing. Google uses canonical tags as a strong hint as to the preferred page. Mixed signals could mess this up.

If Page A is Canonical to Page B, which is canonical to Page C, why not have page A canonical to Page C?

-Andy

So, site 1 redirects to site 2 at the moment, and they want to relaunch with site 1 again? Well, there is no reason you can't do that - just remember to remove the redirect from site 1 to site 2 before swapping them about.

You will also want to tell Google about the change of URL with their Change of Address Tool. Remember to redirect internal pages too.

However, I can't say with any certainty, what will happen with search positions after this has been done. Google may have no problem with it, or there may be some movement while everything is being crawled again.

-Andy

Always an awkward one. First of all, don't rush to kill off the domain. I have done a lot of these and everything can be pulled back. That question of 'if' it should or not though, is only something you can answer.

If you want to know a little about what state your links are in, go to Open Site Explorer, enter your URL and look at the Anchor Text that is used to come back to you. Are most of these 'money' phrases? Is your brand used much?

Look at the Linking Domains. Do you have many that are coming from sites with high Domain Authority? Do you have sites that are linking back to you from more than one page?

When you look at the overview of your site, what does it tell you for your stats? Is everything very low?

Of course, this is only a short peek at what's going on. If you are still unsure, drop me a message and I'll be happy to do it for you.

-Andy

Hi Rob,

The general rule of thumb is don't worry (too much) about no-follow links, although there are times to also ignore this as well.

Key factors that will be making a difference, are the content and the do-follow links. You can't just look at the back-links as the reason why you aren't ranking well.

Without seeing them, I would be tempted to just not worry about the no-followed links, and concentrate on:

1. Making sure the do-follow links are of good quality and don't fall into the spammy category, and
2. Look at your content and how good it is - does it match up to the competition?

It never hurts to do some competition analysis to see how your competitors are beating you.

-Andy

Glad to help

Hi,

Just to confirm, this is for the disavow file, which is a .txt file.

You can use what I have there, but just remember to change the bits with the dates in. You are also correct that over 200,000 is probably not a good thing. I would suspect that many links are the result of being added to a large number of sites, who list you on many pages / sitewide links.

-Andy