No, you do not have to pay for link removals. Document the request, note they asked for payment, and then disavow the site.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-link-payment-17387.html
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No, you do not have to pay for link removals. Document the request, note they asked for payment, and then disavow the site.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-link-payment-17387.html
It's nice to have all URLs be consistent (all lowercase for example) but there is nothing wrong with having capitals in your URL. As you mentioned, the chance that someone types in a long product URL instead of copy/paste is very low and even if they do, they'd probably check their link to your site. I would leave it as is and not worry about it.
Amazon uses capital letters in many of their product URLs. The only difference is their non-cap versions work as well.
You could use Screaming Frog to do something like this. Go to Configuration-> Custom and add the word or phrase you are looking for. Screaming Frog will collect URLs that have that word in the site HTML.
You are on the right path and realize you have a problem.
My #1 suggestion would be to fix this at a programming/development level to prevent this from happening. Canonical tags can be used to help/fix the problem, but they are more of a suggestion to the search engines as opposed to a 100% perfect fix.
If you can't eliminate the problem, have no fear using the canonical tags. Each category, subcategory and product should have their own canonical URL and the duplicates can canonicalize back to them.
If you are on an external website and clicking a +1 button, I do not think it is possible to switch away from your main personal account.
If you are on the G+ platform, in the top right corner, click on the image of your face to open up a drop down menu and select your business page. Now, you will be using G+ as that account and your comments and +1s will be from the business account.
OSE crawls a different number of domains/pages with each update. It is normal to see fluctuations in all of these metrics for for links to appear/disappear in OSE reports.
OSE and Linkscape data is an extremely valuable for gauging site/page strength, as well as a healthy amount of backlinks to a given page. I do not think it is a great tool to use for benchmarking your site authority or backlink profile growth, due to the inconsistencies between their indexes (or is it indices).
If you are tracking competitors with it, you will likely see similar fluctuations in there data as well.
You will be just fine if you remove your feed.
With the death of Google Reader and the lack of Feedburner support, I wouldn't be surprised if Google got rid of Feedburner down the road.
I think you are fine. All of the URLs above seem to point to single focused pages, based around an immigration issue related to South Africa.
The way you have it now probably isn't the slickest looking for branding, but I don't think you'll be seen as spam and I try prefer to leave the URLs the same unless change is absolutely necessary.
The canonical tag is unnecessary if you don't have problems with URL variations (tracking parameters, session ids, etc). Don't just think about external links though, if your own CMS or internal linking structure links to the same pages in different ways, the canonical tag can be a patch while you work on a development fix.
All that being said, I'm a fan of having it on every page.
Hey Dan,
In this case, I would not exclude crawling via robots.txt. Perhaps later after you have verified the URLs are out of the index.
Just because Google can't crawl a page, doesn't mean they won't keep it in the index. Excluding crawling will not get a page out of the index.
Add the NOINDEX, FOLLOW tag you listed above and give it some time.
Use GWT if it's urgent or the information is sensitive.
Ideally when creating a new staging area, you'd want to exclude crawling via robots.txt.
Add the NoIndex tag to the head of your pages to get them removed from the SERPs. Make sure the page is still crawlable though, as if you exclude it in robots.txt first and then NoIndex it, Google won't be able to see the new NoIndex tag.
If there are not a lot of pages to remove, you can request page removal within Google Webmaster Tools.
Good answer. I second this advice.
I see no problem in this. Every page has to start somewhere and get it's first few +1s or likes. There is nothing here against Google's TOS that I know of.
Google selectively shows rich snippets.
Plug your URL into the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
If it works, stop worrying about your snippet and focus on other areas of your site you can improve.
Hi James,
I think you are on the right path with these three statements:
I wouldn't consider #3 to be exclusive from 1 and 2. If it was my site, I'd work on all of these.
I don't know your website URL, but if you feel like it is very Keyword Heavy, I would also consider "de-optimizing" it a bit. Bascially- just make sure you've written page titles and copy for humans.
There is nothing wrong with having a "404 error" if the page is an expired product. Obviously, you don't wont to be linking to a 404 page on your site, so I'd suggest using a tool like Screaming Frog, potentially even OSE, and monitoring your 404 pages in Google Webmaster Tools to see if it is still currently being linked to.
If the page has external links pointing to it, I'd recommend 301 redirecting it to whatever category/subcategory the product belongs to.
Hi Barry,
You can learn a bit more about redirects here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
From your description of the original question, I'm thinking that you are describing a problem of having duplicate content on pages like this:
www.site.com and www.site.com/index.html
Does that sound accurate or plausible?
Hi Stephanie-
If the copy is just basic 'About the Company' blurbs or paragraphs, I would be fine with it.
If LinkedIn has duplicate versions of entire blog posts that have potential to get shares, links and rank, I would remove them from LinkedIn.
Do some simple search queries for phrases from the content. Are you being outranked by LinkedIn?
How much copy is duplicated between the two pages sites and how important are these pages potential acquisition of organic traffic are the two main questions I would be thinking about.
If I'm understanding correctly, I think you need to simply do a 301 redirect of your index pages to the canonical version of each URL.
If each page has unique and valuable information related to the specific topic, I would absolutely not consider that to be spam. If each page is just a bunch of keyword-rich text and offers little value, then yes, I would consider it spam.
No, there are not.
My recommendation: Use these as guidelines but don't obsess over the grade. Get to a A or B level, then switch your attention to usability, conversion and overall awesomeness of the page.
Yes, something like that appears to be possible.
I just now copy/pasted the URL above from my previous post and checked the source. The canonical is now correct.
In the first post above, when I clicked from the homepage, the canonical tag did not change. Only the URL.
It appears you have a problem with improper canonicalization.
I clicked on the first post I saw:
http://www.indieshuffle.com/two-door-cinema-club-next-year-rac-mix/
That page, has the canonical tag set to your homepage. That would be a great reason for Google to choose not to index your post. You are essentially telling Google your posts are your homepage.
Remove that canonical tag or change it to reflect the actual post URL.
Would definitely question the rationale for doing this and recommend that your time is spent improving your one main site as opposed to rewriting it onto a second domain.
Hi Mahai-
If you are writing reviews on your website, I would focus on making them the most comprehensive reviews available online of each product you are reviewing. A well-written, thought-out, balanced review with great pictures will be appreciated by everyone.
If the review is positive, the company whose product is reviewed might very well link out to you. Who doesn't like linking/sharing a positive testimonial/review for their own product? Make it easy for them to link to it. Offer an embeddable badge or graphic perhaps.
Other websites looking for information about the product will also likely link to your review as well, respecting it for the well-thought out, balance review that it is.
Put the focus on the reviews. The links will come.
It means your website is creating a lot of different URLs. However, Google is deeming them as low quality (perhaps duplicates or near duplicates) and choosing not to index them.
I would look at these two options first:
You also need to figure out, how many pages does your site actually have? Should you have significantly more or significantly less than 3,400 URLs in the index?
If you should have more than 3,400 URLs, I'd suggest making multiple sitemaps based on site sections. This will allow you to see what sections are having problems with indexation.
Technically, it doesn't necessarily matter. However, it matters to you for these two reasons.
Losing link juice: probably negligible but why risk it
I would change the canonical link. It should not be a difficult switch.
I would optimize for on-page quality (great writing) and not worry about optimizing for an awkward keyword phrase, even if there is search volume.
Say you put 'Solar Panels for Home' as a bold headline somewhere on your page. Maybe you go up a ranking spot or two, perhaps gather a bit more traffic. Are those new visitors or the previous regular visitors going to convert after reading something like that?
Google is getting pretty smart. Write about the topic (solar panels for homes) in a natural way and you'll be just fine.
If you really want to try and force something in there, you could try something like this:
"Solar panels, for home use, are becoming increasingly more affordable...."
Here is my simplistic take:
I think either of those options is just fine.
URLs on the left are short and sweet. URLs on the right are a bit more descriptive.
I would draw the line at this question: Are you doing multiple things only for the search engines and not for the users?
My two biggest tips would be to 1) Write naturally (page titles, copy) and 2) Link naturally (descriptive, not over anchor texty)
Facebook pages and G+ pages can both be transferred over (just create new admins). Also- I'm not even sure what "losing juice from these pages" even means. Do the pages rank well? Have a lot of followers? None of those things would change if they gave you control.
Sounds like you need to shop around for a new provider. You don't want to pay a company long-term that is in it for themselves over a company that is in it for you.
Hi,
Without looking at the site, it can be a bit difficult to see if you have things set-up correctly.
You mention WordPress. Have you considered using an Authorship Plugin? I know there are many out there and I assume most work just fine.
I believe you can even set-up single person authorship through Yoast's SEO plug-in.
I would advise against it.
I would stick them all in subfolders of the www version of the site. www.web.com/texas
If the domain is has an extremely high authority (80+), I would consider it due to potential to dominate the SERPs by getting the www.web version and state.web version both to rank high.
When I search for infographic directory, I show your new site at #2 and #3 for the term.
Your 301 redirect is working correctly.
I would change the links that you do control to your new URL. Such as the Crunchbase listing that is currently outranking you for #1.
Make sure your sitemaps are updated.
Consider doing some basic WP SEO and NoIndex your tag pages. You currently have 188 tag pages indexed, which is a bit excessive.
Then, I would give it more time.
I agree with the other people. An hour sheet isn't necessary. I can "try to build links" for 20 hours and not get much accomplished. Clearly not what you are looking for.
I also would be weary of someone who says they will "build you 15 links" or whatever number is promised. As EGOL mentioned, they may have their own blog network, pay for links or any other number of tactics you want to avoid. Remember, 1 good link is better than 20 bad ones.
It really is a tricky business. A good link builder can offer no guarantees. They can however keep working hard until their client is happy or until they deliver results.
Ask to see some of these things instead:
Hi SanketPatel-
Open Site Explorer is my favorite backlink checker as well, but ahrefs usually has a much fresher index. OSE updates approximately once each month with ambitions to do so more frequent.
So if something dramatic happened a few days ago (like 100 lost links), ahrefs would be the quickest place to diagnose the problem. Compared to waiting another 20 days or whatever for the OSE index to update.
I can't look at your GWT data, so I'm not exactly sure what is going on there. I suspect if you give it a day that data will be back in there.
I can confirm that the link:domain.com query is 99% useless and is not an accurate measurement of anything.
Use ahrefs.com/majestic and opensiteexplorer to check your backlinks. I'm sure they are still there.
Data/Tools are not reliable 100% of the time. Focus on your referral and search engine traffic instead of overall link numbers.
I absolutely agree with Andrea here and recommend blocking Google from indexing your search result pages.
Don't waste your money.
If your new articles are crawlable, indexable and well linked to internally they will do just fine from an SEO perspective.
The main advantages I see to using a blog is the built-in features the platform provides (content management, themes, plug-ins, rss feeds).
I'm not experienced in the insurance industry, but I think your suspicions are correct in that you will have problems competing with the big players in the industry.
One question for you: Does a search for something like 'Quakertown PA auto insurance' bring up local results (map) or just standard results?
I would put my focus on the city level. Try to build links and local citations. Also, focus on what sets you apart from the big agencies. Perhaps there are people searching for 'locally owned insurance companies in Quakertown.'
Open Site Explorer only crawls a representative portion of the web each time it updates. I've had links from big sites like YouTube, Mashable, Yahoo Directory and others disappear off OSE reports a few times. My guess is that Roger's recent crawl did not include the Yahoo Directory.
Simply put, if a link is there and Google has the page in their index, you are fine.
OSE is great for insights and trends, but it is not a way to look at 100% of a website's backlinks.
Link to any site that will provide benefit for your users.
Brad-
My advice may be a tough thing to swallow, but if you are competing in an industry as competitive as insurance quotes, "building" back links isn't ever going to get you ahead. You are so far behind the established sites, that manual outreach will likely never catch you up.
Instead, you need to focus on making your website so much better than the other similar website's so people start to use yours and it begins to naturally build links from authority websites. Making this website will be a big investment.
My example for this would be Hipmunk for flight search. They made their product unique, fun and extremely useful. People began to talk about them. Links from authority sites began to show up.