Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Free mass traffic software? Sounds like something to walk away from, but what is it called?

It's a tough one to answer with any certainty - I have done reconsideration requests that have been granted in a few weeks - other times it has taken twice as long.

If Google clear it, it is, for all intents and purposes, cleared of any wrongdoing in Google's eyes, but I can't tell you if they keep an eye on it or not.

As Russ said, have some documentation at hand so that you can show them you are the new owner to help fight your corner.

And yes, look at all possible angles, including the one where the good name has a black mark next to it.

How many articles are you talking about that you are worried could be duplicated on the web? Have you done a search to see what the damage could be?

Is re-writing the old articles a possibility?

Absolutely 100% white - no shades of grey at all

All of my customer sites are SEO'd to match the Google guidelines and don't go close to anything that be classed as remotely grey (or black).

The things I find make the biggest difference, outside of ensuring the site is up to scratch, is the content. Being a copywriter, I often write entire knowledge bases for customer sites so they have a lot of unique content to share with their customers, via social media sites, to have mentioned in articles, for other sites to link to... the list goes on.

Part of this is down to the fact it is not written for the search engines, but very strong written words for visitors.

Many wont understand just what a difference this can make - coupled with a well put together site = good results.

Regards,

Andy

Can you add your URL so I can have a look please? It will be much easier to tell you a little more about what is going on.

Regards,

Andy

I have to say that for myself, I would never go anywhere close to black hat (or grey) with a website belonging to a customer. There is too much at stake, including my own reputation!

it is more than possible to achieve great results with the right know how - my largest customer has more than 80,000 pages - of these, about 90% of them are on the 1st page for their targeted keywords - of that 90%, about 70% are in the top 2-3.

Trust me, it is more than do-able

Regards,

Andy

it is down to Google as to how long they would consider it a problem, but the thing to do here is to request a reconsideration of your site.

This is done through your webmaster tools and gives you a chance to tell Google what you have done.

Bad reputation caused by the site in the past can only be rectified by doing some reputation management

Worthwhile having a watch of this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/preventing-linkbased-penalties-whiteboard-friday

There is always a chance that this could cause you harm so I would proceed with caution and do what you can to remove it. On the one hand it could cause you problems, on the other, it might not. Then there is somewhere in between where it might have just a small impact.

Truth is, where best practice is concerned, that is not a healthy link so I would consider getting it removed.

Regards,

Andy

I did wonder the same myself but with so many sources talking about bounce rates, I thought it prudent to err on the side of caution.

Doing nothing is not really an option as I never leave things to chance (and this has worked in my favour more times than I care to remember in the past).

I am leaning towards my 3rd option of pulling part of the registration process back into "Site 1" so a click on a job, will keep you within the primary site for a second page.

Thanks MaryAnne,

Sorry, I omitted to add that this is being done for the purposes of the Google Panda update as there are mutterings that a high bounce rate could also be taken into account. No-one really knows if this is true or not, but if it is, what percentage of this will be taken into account - call it a damage limitation exercise.

It can be a pretty fast bounce sometimes if there are only a few jobs for them to look at on Site 1.

Regards,

Andy

Greetings!

I actually don't have a definitive answer to this so wish to throw it out to the community for thoughts and feedback.

I have a client who we shall call "Site 1", but they also have a job board, we shall call "Site 2".

A product of their own success, they have a high bounce rate with visitors landing on Site 1, seeing a job they want to apply for and bouncing straight off to Site 2.

The problem is that this is resulting in Google seeing some of these pages as having bounce rates of 80% to 100%, based on this formula:

Bounce rate = total number of visits viewing only one page / total number of visits

Now, I hate anything black hat or grey hat so wish to know how you would deal with this...

1. If the results from Site 2 were displayed in a new framed page on Site 1, would this still be classed as a bounce?
2. If when they click on a job on Site 1, they were taken to an intermediate page on Site 1 saying "Thank you, you are being redirected to your chosen job" for 5 seconds before being taken to Site 2, would this be classed as a bounce?
3. Perhaps the job they wish to apply for 'pulled' from Site 2 and actually displayed in a new page on Site 1 would be a better way to go?

I think that option 1 might work, sure that number 3 would but not so sure about number 2, but look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Regards,

Andy

To give you an idea, I did a test to see if Yahoo still uses them, and they do - however, Yahoo say they don't place much stock on them but they could be the difference between you getting above a competitor or not. However, Google and Bing don't use them at all.

Personally, I don't bother.

Regards,

Andy

One of my customers just has a page that is hidden from public view (www.url.co.uk/adminpage), no-indexed and isn't in the robots file and in 10 years, there has never been a hack attempt.

It doesn't really matter if it is on a new or existing page - however, on a new page you can title the new page to be something related perhaps? Then there is the school of thought that says if you have low quality content, get it replaced.

Regards,

Andy

As far as I am aware it hasn't arrived over here in the Uk as yet - what some sites in the UK are seeing is that some of their terms are being hit in the US though.

Regards,

Andy

"tip for future content: include things they can't include, like your name, your customers, etc etc"

If only this were the case - one of my large customers has thousands of pages of duplicated content - these scrapers don't bother taking out names sadly.

Avoid spinning content at all costs. By all means read articles, understand them and re-write them from scratch, but don't copy snippets or sentences otherwise you run the risk of coming under the watchful eye of the Google Farmer algorithm - and you definitely don't want that!

Regards,

Andy

It sounds to me like you need to move away from them ASAP! Is the site a static HTML site or are there databases involved as well? In bringing the site back, you need to make sure that everything comes back over and the transition is not messed up for you.

Link juice isn't passed equally through all links, but does trickle through at some level. Exactly what this is, is something of an unknown though. Perhaps someone can add a little more clarification on this?

I would say that adding another good quality link would make little (if any) difference and it is not something I would hesitate doing myself.

However, there comes a point where a page full of links will have a negative effect, but with just a few well targeted ones, I would say you would be fine with that.

Regards,

Andy

If it falls as a part of the quote then yes, I would certainly add that in for them. Could be a worthwhile payoff for you - and them

Google uses the IP of the server hosting the site as one way of delivering that content to the correct target areas. So in short, yes, this is a problem and one that you need to resolve.

It is an SEO tactic that is used if you are country specific and want to target other locations.

Regards,

Andy

You're welcome

It makes interesting reading, doesn't it And a very effective way they use to come up with those that are most profitable.

I would guess a few that would be hard work would be...

Sex
Porn
Homepage
Google
Click Here
Viagra

Some of the highest paying Adsense keywords can be seen here

Regards,

Andy

I personally would take your time looking for a company and whoever you do talk to, ask for examples of work they have done in the past. You want to see clear results from other customers of theirs.

Have a read of this as well - some good points and examples in there. Sorry, I haven't used anyone to do viral marketing for me so can't offer any references.

Regards,

Andy

Hi Todd,

The rule of thumb is that the first link that Google comes across is the most important one, so it would be worthwhile looking carefully at this. You can have other links on the pages, as long as there are not too many, because this can actually improve the user experience, so they will never count for nothing - just be mindful that the content is the important part right now.

Where possible try and embed anchor text in content that is 'on-topic'.

Regards,

Andy

What CMS are you using? It might be that you need to get someone to do some code editing for you?

Regards,

Andy

Content can be expensive, but can also be a necessary evil for you, if you aren't able to do this yourself. Writing just for the sake of it could be a very bad move because, as Dejan has already mentioned, it could trigger the new algorithm from Google, and that could spell you problems.

Best not to bother than write something poor

I have been doing this a long time now and have never come across anyone who endorses this as a technique. To me if it smells even slightly of desperation or 'grey hat' then I steer well clear.

You can  rest assured that Google will get what the page and site are about without having all of these multiple links to the same pages being thrown at them - in the same way they say not to keyword stuff because they don't need to keep being told

Regards,

Andy

I am assuming that they are looking at SEO because they need some help getting ranked in the SERP's, and what they have already have done is certainly not a practice I would endorse. My thoughts on this would be to remove all those links that take you through to the same page but with different anchor text. It is OK to have a few other links in the copy that take you through to other pages as, if nothing else, this can help with Google crawling the site and visitors whilst they are browsing through.

Regards,

Andy

I think you will find for the BBC that they are more interested about getting the content up there first, rather than just categories. And I have to agree with why they do this.

There is no point in a visitor coming to your website and just seeing half a page of links before they get to the content itself. For the user experience, this would be a bad move. Not sure there are really any times I can say having a huge list of links above the content is a good move.

Regards,

Andy

Check your google web masters account for examples of why google doesn't worry too much about this. Under the significance' on my site, there are 4 occurrences of how the word Design has been found. They are Design, Designing, Designer and Designs. Whilst search traffic might show you one thing, google is smart enough to recognise the word Design is the same as Designs. Just write it so that it makes sense to the reader because the quality of the content is playing a big part now. Regards, Andy

Outside of personal likes and dislikes, I have never come across a time where it has made a difference, but then again, I tend to just leave them as standard. Perhaps someone else has something different to show you but i wouldn't have said it's a problem. Regards, Andy

Ok first things first... From a usability point of view, there is far too much happening on that page. You would be much better off splitting the page up more and have this as an overview page without also of the images on there. Page load times is a big problem and this was loading slow, and since Caffeine, this is an important metric and should not be ignored. Towards the bottom of the page, all those rotating images made me dizzy trying to see what was going on. Back towards the top of the page, your header font and colour don't seem to fit well with the rest of the site and this can cause problems for some visitors in terms of how much they trust you. A clean well formatted page will win every time. Just a few points for customer interaction. Regards, Andy

I dont know about other countries, but here in the UK there are a deplorable number of so-called "SEO companies" who seem to ignore the importance of well written content and instead try to fool people into thinking that a few site changes is all thats needed, and in turn, build the content for the search engines thereby slowly killing their customers website.

This I find falls into the "ignored" category.

Regards,

Andy

Have a look at this from Rand - makes some interesting reading and will answer just about every question you have.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements

Regards,

Andy

Hi Andi,

If you think about it, external links are normally outside of your control, so Google is unlikely to penalise for this. There are more than 3,000 links to one of my customers and so many are the same phrase, but never has there been any problem in 10 years. However, variety is good wherever possible.

With your institutional site, is it hosted on the same server? Is the server your own or is it a shared resource?

If you are noticing what is known as "Google Dance" (yo-yo of positions), then this often happens until Google has decided where to place you.

Regards,

Andy

To be honest Dana, outside of the basics mentioned, I tended not to go overboard and many of them started to rank naturally as Google spidered the site. Just remember to give the link to the PDF a strong anchor text and if possible, add a little content around it to explain what visitors can expect in the document. Also remember to add a link to Adobe so that they can download the free reader if they dont have it already.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Andy

First thing is remove ads that are "in your face" and concentrate on your content. Looking through that page you gave as an example, the content at the bottom is too far down - it needs to be moved higher up the page - the top would be preferable.  If needs be, use a "more" to drop down the content in its entirety.

Make sure every sentence there is unique and not duplicated on other external sites.

To be honest, I can see exactly why Google has knocked it down - removing your ads is the first step. The second should be to make your page content rich and interesting for your visitors.

Regards,

Andy

Yes, you can optomise PDF's - have a read of this as it seems to cover most points

http://www.seoconsultants.com/pdf/seo

Sorry, I forgot to add that PDF's are useful for those who are wishing to download something to read at a later stage or whilst offline. Don't rush to advise them that HTML is the way to go unless it actually is. I have printed off many a PDF and taken it into meetings with me.

Regards,

Andy

"but could there be a way of Google gauging this and maybe counting number of posts/replies within each of the forum to see if the person is actually active?"

I think that is something that only Google could confirm, and aren't likely to. Best thing is steer clear of anything remotely black hat and sit back and laugh at those that suffer when Google does start targetting these - because they might at some point!

Andy

Hi, Is it possible that the drops you are seeing coincide with the release of Panda? I just took a random line of content from one of your pages and there seems to be many occurrence of this on your site and other called tonnnocover.com I am working with a number of sites who are all suffering from a terrible case of plagiarised content that is not their fault and are now feeling the pain. Not saying this is the case with your site, but if there was ever a time to make sure your content is unique, this is it. Regards, Andy

For me, OSE lets me see my customers competitors back links that are related to their industry sector and go after them. Not always possible, but I have had great success with this in the past. It is a manual process for the most part for me but a great starting place - then the hard work begins

Regards,

Andy

Sounds like a little bit of a 'Google dance' going on, and this is a lot more common than you might realise.

As Nemek has already said, there could be different factors for this, but it is not unheard of to rank more highly for a phrase quite quickly then drop again - it's all part of Google's great game.

Don't worry, it will sort itself out in time.

Regards,

Andy

Don't forget that the description has no effect on the SEO. Tis is just for those reading the search results. I would suspect that with a site the size of amazon, descriptions will be made up from algorithms, or a description pulled from a database. Might even be something stock that the manufacturer supplies them with. Regards, Andy

The word "Buy" is more about an action you want someone to perform, as opposed to "Shop For" which is "Let's go and look for something".

Assuming you are wanting someone to buy something from the page they land on, I would opt for "Buy". Been to a few conferences where this has cropped up in various guises.

Personally I never search for "Shop For" for anything, but always use "Buy".

Regards,

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

Hi Neil,

I have had very good success with Google places for customers by adding them into more local directories (for one part). Open any places page and go down to the bottom and look at the local results where the site is being found. You want to get yourself into more of these - find out which sites others are being found in and drop your customers in there

Regards,

Andy

Hmm I thought I had IE 6 or 7 on one of my other machines but everything has been upgraded to 8 now I'm afraid.