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Thank you Miriam. Yes those posts did help and have set me straight on H1 tags.

Thanks MiriamEllis

I've had two quite different comments on this and I think the key bit is your point about bots not caring so much about H1 tag. How much don't they care? I thought H1 and TITLE still were of high importance. If my goal is to get best rank for a client and MOZ page optimiser gives me a better grade with an exact keyword H1, I'm feeling more inclined to go with it and as David-Kley says above...

"If people are looking for PLACE, in CITY, and the first thing they see when they hit the page is PLACE serving CITY, state...might be that they say "This is just what I was looking for""

Well this does make good sense. I search for something and the website instantly tells me I've found what I was looking for.

So I've actually decided to go with "Boston Physiotherapy" although I do think a more sales and customer focused H1 would look less manipulated. It's a difficult one.

What's is the best way to go about optimising a page for a regional search phrase. E.g. 'Physiotherapy CITY' and keep the text looking natural and not manipulated?

Previously I've added the search phrase 'Physiotherapy CITY' to TITLE and H1 but this can look clumsy when used in the H1 tag.

If I grade a page using MOZ on-page optimisation it will suggest I add the search phrase to the H1.

What the recommended way of doing regional on-page optimisation?

I've done 2 link cleaning exercises and disavow requests so far but haven't removed those. I can see they are bad links but they're actually from decent, relevant sites in most instances which is why I haven't touched them yet.

What do you think is most damaging, run-of-site links or keyword link text?

So if you can't have too many nofollow links to upset Google, does Google respect the nofollow 100%?

I've been trying to recover from a Google algorithm change since Sep 2012, so far without success. I'm now wondering if the nofollow on external links in my blog posts are actually doing me damage. http://www.smartdatinguk.com/blog/

Does anyone have any experience of this?

I don't know if removing bad links will work for me or not as I've only just completed the process. I now plan on using the disavow tool to remove the links I didn't get removed by my own efforts.

The removeem.com tool did help me identify potentially harmful links. It's a tedious task so using a tool like Removeem over Site Explorer and manual removal requests was the way I chose to go.

Hi

I'm in a similar position to you and have been trying to get my site back since about Sept 2012. Over the last 4 weeks, I've been through the process of requesting link removal of low quality links using the RemoveEm.com tool. I now have a report detailing sites I've contacted, how many times and whether the link has been removed. My site has lost rankings rather than being completely dropped from the SERPs so I may need to use the disavow tool rather than just do a re-index.

So my answer would be,

1. Try removing poor quality links yourself first and perhaps use a tool to help do this www.removeem.com. Then use the disavow tool
2. A natural policy going forward has not helped my site.
See http://moz.com/community/q/is-there-anyway-to-recover-my-site-s-rankings

Thanks, for your help. I'll give that a try

Well I'm not really sure how to clean up my back link profile. How do I know links are a problem? A lot of my links are perhaps questionable. I'd be wary of removing links that are of some use. How do you evaluate this?

In regards to content, the regular blog posts are user focused, well written and relevant but not link worthy particularly. Over optimised content has mostly been removed.

I've been watching my competition for 10 years so have a pretty good idea what they've been doing. I stopped running singles events in about 2008 and started promoted other event companies events on my site in returned for a link back. Often these links were run of site in their footer. Although I varied the link text I think these type of links were unnatural and perhaps the cause of my problems now.

My site has been top 3 for 'speed dating' on Google.co.uk since about 2003 and it went to below top 50 for a lot of it's main keywords shortly after 27 Oct 2012. I did a re-submission request and was told there was 'no manual spam action'. My conclusions is I was dropped by Google because of poor quality links I've gained over 10+ years.

I have a Domain Authority of 40, a regular blog http://bit.ly/oKyi88, a KLOUT of 42, user reviews and quality content.

Since Oct 2012 I've done some technical improvements and managed to get a few questionable links removed. I've continued blogging reguarly and got more active on Twitter. I've seen no improvement and my traffic is 80% down on last year.

It would be great to be able to produce content that others want to link to but I've not had much success from that in over 10 years of trying and I've not seen many others in my sector, with small budgets having much success.

Is there anything I can do to regain favour with Google?

Kris, decided not to buy the domain. Your info help me to conclude it was just too risky. Will see if I can negotiate a content link on the site instead. Thanks again for a great answer!

Thanks for the awesome reply! Will review and revert back.

Thanks for the awesome reply! Will review and revert back.

Good advice for sure, but this site has had no new content for 2 years and is in a good position, probably because keyword is not that competitive. It's not where it is due to regular content. Would that change your advice?

There is an expired blog which scores well for a search term I'm interested in. I'd like to know if people think it's a good idea to buy it to get a link essentially? Also, if I buy the domain and the content is wiped, does anyone have any tips on what I should do in regards to content to maintain the domains value? I don't generally look to buy domains for links but on this occasion it could be worth the effort and expense.

I don't think so really as I can get a CSV, XLS from Follerwonk. I need to get that data into a List. Thanks.

Hi Mark

Yes a List of Contacts. It seems one of the obvious things to do once you've used Follerwonk to find a group you want to communicate with.

I use Hootsuite but can't see anywhere in there or find any other tools to import a text file of Twitter usernames into a Twitter list. Does anyone know how?

Thanks for your comments Bryan.

It seems the Exact-Match Domains update on the 27 Sept exactly coincides with my drop. I'm not sure why I would be affected as my domain name is my brand not keyword.

The other update on this day was Panda #20 but I don't what to take from the details of that update. I would say it's more likely Panda #20 and not the EMD update. Do you know what this means? "Abandoning the 3.9.X naming scheme"

My site has been top 3 for 'speed dating' on Google.co.uk since about 2003 and it went to below top 50 for a lot of it's main keywords shortly after 27 Oct 2012. I did a re-submission request and was told there was 'no manual spam action'.

I have a Page Authority of 53, a regular blog http://bit.ly/oKyi88, a KLOUT of 40, user reviews and quality content.

I did discover that another URL I using was set to a 302 instead of a 301 for some reason. I don't necessarily think this was an issue as Google should know which is the trusted URL and therefore which content to list. I removed this redirect completely about 3 weeks ago, but I've seen no improvement.

I'm looking at improving various things, but I'm still not sure why I've been hit and wonder if I'm missing something obvious? Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

Thanks Marcus, that's really helped. I've discovered that old pages Google had indexed are still accessible even though they can't be found via links from the site.

Hi Marcus, thanks for your comments.

I realise I've been on borrowed time with this one which is why I introduced a blog nearly 12 months ago to try and improve the content quality but I guess this has not been enough. I know the blog isn't amazing, but certainly more recent post are unique, relevant and well written. http://www.plentymorefish.net/fish-dating/

How did you come across the URL http://plentymorefish.net/scotland ?

I spider the site with Xenu to check it but I can't find that URL.

Thanks

Paul

Thanks Adam. That confirmed my thoughts really. I just wanted to check if I'd missed something.

I have been #2 in Google for "plenty more fish" for about 8 years and have now disappeared.

I've been told that I have no manual spam action against my domain www.plentymorefish.net.

Can anyone suggest why I have disappeared and how I might rectify this?

My guess is something to do with the Panda update Sept 27th - EMD (Exact Match Domain), although I don't understand why Google have left a competitors site #1 as this also has exact match domain. Maybe they've just picked one exact match domain to display and have not chosen mine as the .com has a better overall SEO score.

Appreciate any assitance. Thanks.

Good suggestion. Thanks for your help.

Hi Aran,

I don't really want to post the URL on this public post, but I can say that I have a site that has some auto-generated regional content, which I realise is not recommended.

What's happened is two pages are completely identical down to the fact that various regions have similar town names and the code is showing the same page. E.g.

England/Bedfordshire/Bedford
England/Lancashire/Bedford

It would be easier for me to put 301 redirects on the dupes so I can avoid having to get into the code and remove the auto-generated duplicate pages. Links to the duplicate pages will still show if I just do redirects.

I think I've answered my own question really as it would be best to remove any links going to duplicate pages to reduce out-bound links on the linking pages.

Paul

SEOMOZ Pro is showing some duplicate content errors and wondered the best way to fix them other than re-writing the content.

Should I just remove the pages found or should I set up permanent re-directs through to the home page in case there is any link value or visitors on these duplicate pages?

Thanks.