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It does seem like you may be setting up some obvious patterns of backlinking for SEO gains, which Google Penguin can penalize. It especially depends on what anchor text you are using.

Remember that Google prefers linking to be "natural." This means that you produce great content, and then in turn, others will want to share that content by linking to it. A backlink to your website should be seen as an "editorial vote" from one website to another, as opposed to you going out and creating all of your backlinks yourself. Here is a video from a bald Matt Cutts on techniques for building links.

If your primary SEO strategy is to go about linking to yourself on various forums and blogs, and especially if you are using money anchor text like "seo company new york" then you may be setting yourself up for an over-optimization penalty of some kind.

In regards to the discussion forum you participate in, I would check to see if those links you are creating are marked with a rel="nofollow" attribute. If they are, then I would not worry so much about them harming you, but also know that they can't really directly boost your ranking either.

A link is like an editorial vote from one website to another.

If you can vouch for the quality of the site you are linking to, don't hesitate to place the link, provided it is relevant and useful to your visitors (and not just there for some kind of reciprocal link agreement for SEO = Bad).

On the flip side, blogs and forums that encourage user contributions often add the "nofollow" attribute to links by default, because you, the webmaster, may not be able to vouch for the quality of the sites your readers are linking to in a comments section, and the links are possibly being placed as part of a link scheme for SEO.

So, in short,

If you are placing a link on a web page or article because you think the site provides useful information that enhances your content = Good, go for it!

If you or a visitor places a link for the sole purpose of ranking improvement for a particular keyword = Proceed with caution.

Hello! We have a 100+ MB PDF with multiple pages that we want Google to fully index on our server/website. First of all, is it even possible for Google to index a PDF file of this size?

It's been up on our server for a few days, and my colleague did a Googlebot fetch via Webmaster Tools, but it still hasn't happened yet.

My theories as to why this may not work:

A) We have no actual link(s) to the pdf anywhere on our website.

B) This PDF is approx 130 MB and very slow to load. I added some compression to it, but that only got it down to 105 MB.

Any tips or suggestions on getting this thing indexed in Google would be appreciated. Thanks!

Hello! We recently received a great link from a local university. My colleague did a few presentations at the university, so they were nice enough to turn a mention of our company name on their academics page into a link when we asked.

The problem is that we've been told that the mention/link will disappear after about a month.

So, my questions:

1. Can we do anything to further exploit that link in the short time we have? My colleague brought up doing some kind of funky link pyramid thing where we create links to that page, which would possibly give us even more link juice. I know nothing about this sort of thing. Is it recommended/not recommended?

2. Is there anything we could possibly do to preserve the link in Google's index and have it still count in our favor after it's taken down? Maybe some kind of crazy iframe magic trick?

Thanks!!

This article on Google's content quality scoring definitely recommends having your content "immediately visible" and "above the fold." There was a page layout algorithm in 2012 that the article claims "lowered rankings" for sites that lack content above the fold.

I think you have the right idea. If these low ranking pages have thin or low quality content, you can definitely re-purpose or remove them. It will probably lead to a better website/user experience. You can also consider merging content if you think it will make for better quality content overall.

I would take a look at this Moz Blog post on content auditing. It's pretty much the most thorough guide out there on the subject as far as I'm concerned.

Hello! We have a website that is built using Asp.net. My colleague and I are wondering whether or not changing the framework from Asp.net to php or html would have any negative impact on current rankings.

My colleague was told by an SEO company that doing this would have a big negative effect, but we just can't see why that would be. The URLs of the site do not have an .asp extension, so we don't feel there would be any issues with 404s after the migration. The content, meta data and URL structure would remain the same.

We posted this question in the Webmaster Central Forum and were told by a top contributor that it wouldn't have any negative impact, but we wanted a second opinion here. Thanks!

I was originally taught by my SEO sensei that you can include 1 link for approx. every 100 words. Still, I wouldn't do more than 1 or 2. You definitely don't want to include more than one link to the same page. Here's a video of Google's (former?) Matt Cutts on that.

Be very careful when guest blogging for links. Here is what Cutts had to say about Guest Blogging:

I wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy.

http://searchengineland.com/matt-cutts-stick-a-fork-in-it-guest-blogging-is-done-182147

If you are guest blogging for links, I would suggest reading Cyrus Shepard's The Rules of Link Building here on the Moz Blog. He states that you should never ask for the anchor text, and I agree. Worry more about the quality of the content and less about the link.

First, you don't want to hire an SEO company that makes "guarantees" about getting you 1st page Google placement within a short amount of time.

A) Google's in charge, not them, so they can't promise you anything.

B) Generally, the techniques that are utilized to get you 1st page results quickly are against Google's quality guidelines and are easily discovered and penalized by Google. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

To elaborate on point B, more specifically, I'm talking about the creation of "unnatural" backlinks that are intended solely to boost rankings for particular keywords. I would definitely interview the SEO company and ask them what sort of techniques they employ. If they mention link building, I would insist on seeing samples of links they've built for clients.

If they show you poorly written articles or discussion forum posts containing money keyword links such as "house painter boise" or "office furniture delaware" then I would recommend you avoid the company. These exact match anchor texts can improve a website's ranking for such terms in the short-term. In the long-term, however, a website's link profile will show very obvious signs of abuse. It's kind of like a person who's been on steroids for an extensive period of time and will inevitably get slapped with a manual or algorithmic penalty.

You want a more modern and up-to-date company that utilizes quality content marketing and creative social media and marketing solutions to garner your website more natural links.

I would also attempt to diagnose if your website currently has any such penalties. You can use Google's Webmaster Tools to check if you have a manual penalty, or you can use something like the Fruition.net Google Penalty checker to see if you were negatively impacted by Panda or Penguin. If any of the above prove to be the case, I would then do a lot of research on penalty recovery before hiring an SEO company to improve rankings.

Looking through your home page's source code, I see that the keyword has been incorporate into the copy once or twice, the meta description and an image alt tag. That's a good start.

I would also incorporate "Tennessee health insurance" into the home page's meta title and h1 header. These are two fairly important hotspots with onsite optimization.

I would also try to naturally incorporate the keyword 1 or 2 more times within the home page's content. Lastly, I recommend brushing up on Chapter 4 of Moz's SEO Guide: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development

It does seem like you may be setting up some obvious patterns of backlinking for SEO gains, which Google Penguin can penalize. It especially depends on what anchor text you are using.

Remember that Google prefers linking to be "natural." This means that you produce great content, and then in turn, others will want to share that content by linking to it. A backlink to your website should be seen as an "editorial vote" from one website to another, as opposed to you going out and creating all of your backlinks yourself. Here is a video from a bald Matt Cutts on techniques for building links.

If your primary SEO strategy is to go about linking to yourself on various forums and blogs, and especially if you are using money anchor text like "seo company new york" then you may be setting yourself up for an over-optimization penalty of some kind.

In regards to the discussion forum you participate in, I would check to see if those links you are creating are marked with a rel="nofollow" attribute. If they are, then I would not worry so much about them harming you, but also know that they can't really directly boost your ranking either.

I think you have the right idea. If these low ranking pages have thin or low quality content, you can definitely re-purpose or remove them. It will probably lead to a better website/user experience. You can also consider merging content if you think it will make for better quality content overall.

I would take a look at this Moz Blog post on content auditing. It's pretty much the most thorough guide out there on the subject as far as I'm concerned.

This article on Google's content quality scoring definitely recommends having your content "immediately visible" and "above the fold." There was a page layout algorithm in 2012 that the article claims "lowered rankings" for sites that lack content above the fold.

I've had SEO consultants swear that you should still fill out the meta keywords tag because some search engine in a galaxy far, far away is apparently still giving it some clout. I say leave it blank. The search engines that matter won't give you anything positive out of it, and you never want to find yourself in a position where you're actually getting dinged for having that field stuffed with too many keywords, or having the same keywords duplicated across every page.

I also agree with Donna that it's making it easier for your competitors to see what you're targeting.

If you ever have a client who demands to know why you're not including meta keywords, you can show them this blog post directly from Google that pretty definitively states that they have no ranking value: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

I agree with Marie. I see indications that your site has been negatively impacted by Google Penguin 3.0.

Viewing your site on semrush, I see that your loss in traffic occurred in October '14 -- the same timeframe in which Penguin 3.0 was rolled out.

I also see only "money" keywords populating your website's link profile (e.g. "alaska yacht charters," "alaska charter boats," "alaskan yacht charters", etc.). In other words, these links appear to be links that were created by you (or by extension, an SEO company) for the purpose of increasing Google rankings. Google considers this to be a "link scheme" and penalizes this activity: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en

To move forward, I would first make sure that your website is verified/connected to Google's Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en). It's 100% free and you can simply upload a verification file to your server to get started. From there, you can review your website's inbound links and anchor texts. I would do a lot of research on DIY link audits before considering doing one yourself, but I can tell you that Google recommends being ruthless. Don't just pick a link or two that come from a Russian site. You have to be objective and honest about the links pointing to your site and whether or not they were created for the sole purpose of improving your ranking for a keyword. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-disavow-machete-16844.html

The first step for removing links is to simply reach out to the webmaster of a site/directory containing a dubious backlink and kindly ask them to help you remove it. If you had an SEO company build these links for you, ask them if they can provide you access to the user profiles they created to make these links. Hopefully you can just log in and get rid of the link yourself.

Your success rate in removing links by  email solicitation may be very low. Most won't respond. Some may even ask for money. Never do this(!!!). It isn't the end of the world if you can't remove a link. Google has provided us a disavow tool that you can use to simply write off these links instead. They won't count toward your SEO anymore, but they can't count against you either (in theory). https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

If you can clean up your backlinks, then you have a shot at recovery, but this can only happen once Penguin refreshes again. We have no idea when this will be. It took over one year(!) between Penguin 2.1 and Penguin 3.0.

For that reason, you may actually want to consider building a new site in the meantime. More info on whether you should do that or not here: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penalty-new-site-18200.html

I would optimize the pages that you want to drive traffic to for keywords that are naturally relevant to each page. Never stuff a page with keywords (use your gut to determine the right amount) and always write copy so that it is completely readable and not awkward for your visitors. I would also avoid creating multiple pages just for the sake of targeting similar keywords with no other purpose (e.g. you have a page that targets "red apple" and a page that targets "red apples"). I've seen sites get smacked by Google Panda for doing this.

Sites with poorly-written SEO copy seem spammy and will be an instant turn off to whoever's showed up at your virtual doorstep.

Pages such as Contact Us and About Us don't really need optimization per se. However, all pages should at least contain unique and relevant h1s, meta titles and descriptions. Also, always avoid duplicating text between pages. This helps your website be more search engine friendly. I find that the Screaming Frog SEO Spider and Google's Webmaster Tools HTML Suggestions are great for diagnosing which pages on your site need these unique elements.

Looking through your home page's source code, I see that the keyword has been incorporate into the copy once or twice, the meta description and an image alt tag. That's a good start.

I would also incorporate "Tennessee health insurance" into the home page's meta title and h1 header. These are two fairly important hotspots with onsite optimization.

I would also try to naturally incorporate the keyword 1 or 2 more times within the home page's content. Lastly, I recommend brushing up on Chapter 4 of Moz's SEO Guide: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development