Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Keith, there are a lot of factors that go into the actual search engine rankings that you and I see on the search results page. With the particular query "what is google voice", Google has decided that the MacWorld article, with a title of "what is google voice" is more appropriate for the query than the actual Google Voice page.

I would gather that from the query that the user is wanting an explanation of the product: they're not wanting to go to the Google Voice page itself. So, Google is showing the answer to the question rather than the actual site that they're asking about.

This also is a good example of Google Hummingbird at work, where they're able to understand the query better, and deliver better search results based on the actual query, not just look at "keywords".

Oren, Keri is right. Followerwonk has said that Facebook is a lot different from Twitter, and so you may not be able to get the same data.

At this point, I recommend looking at Google Ripples for posts on Google Plus, using the Explore tab, and also looking at info from sites like CircleCount.com. I have a feeling that Google is being very careful about the data and analytics that we can get for certain reasons. For example, as AuthorRank potentially comes into play, there's going to be certain info that they just don't want us to have access to.

Brad, ultimately you have to weigh the time involved in creating the spreadsheet(s) required, gathering the data, and then uploading, with the benefits. If the current data is correct, then it wouldn't hurt if you didn't take the time to upload the data.

However, keep in mind that if you're going to upload the data, then that will help with verification. So, since you've taken ownership of those listings, there's a better chance that you may rank better and show up more often in the search results because those are verified listings. This goes for Bing as well as Google.

So, yes, I do believe it is "worth it" to take the time to verify the listings and upload the data (and take ownership of those listings).

Fiona,

Just to be clear, what you're referring to are subdomains, and not domains. You're right, though, there are definitely issues related to duplicate content that is going to cause ranking problems. Typically, Google will rank the content that they crawled first: the others will be the duplicates.

The best way to deal with this is to decide which subdomain you really want: which will typically be www.clientdomain.com and then 301 redirect all of the others to www.clientdomain.com.

If, however, there is unique content on the other subdomains, then you wouldn't want to redirect those.

BeytzNet, I would make every attempt to welcome everyone to your community, not just authority figures. Treat them just as if they're anyone else who has just joined.

If you owned a restaurant and a celebrity walked in, would you give them special treatment? I hope not. They're just there to eat, not be paraded around in front of everyone. Welcome them to the community, welcome them to your restaurant, and give them the same special service that you would anyone else.

Jeremy, a while back there was a time when having two separate websites was preferred. However, that's not the case anymore. It's more important now to build your site's Domain Authority and Trust, and then let that DA and Trust pass throughout the site to help all of your site's pages rank well.

If you were to have separate websites, then you would have double the work to build the same Domain Authority and Trust. If you had one site, it's not as much work.

Let's say, for example, you get mentioned in the media and they link to your Phoenix location page. Well, that Domain Authority and Trust will pass throughout the site--and will actually help your other locations rank, well.

So I would definitely NOT set up separate websites. But, you might consider registering those domains and 301 redirecting them to your location pages on your main domain name.

I would, though, set up separate Google Plus Local pages for each location, and make sure each is verified. They should also link directly to the location page, as well.

No, Google does not penalize you for having content that requires registration in order to view. As long as you give Googlebot full access to the content so that they can crawl it properly, it won't be an issue. There are plenty of sites doing this successfully, and they don't have any problems.

Rasmus,

Google has been doing this (changing your title tag) for a while now. Google doesn't normally just "guess" your brand name or website name, they usually get it from somewhere. I would try to find out where they are getting it from and see if you can change it there. As Andy suggests, if it's your WordPress blog, then there is a chance that they're taking it from your blog's title, and you should be able to change it.

Eduardo,

I haven't looked into the specific backlinks, but there are a few factors involved. First, most likely you are not seeing all of the links to the site and to your competitor's site. I would check Webmaster Tools as well as a few other sources of links (ahrefs, majestic, open site explorer, etc.) and combine those links to get a better picture of the links to your site. Different tools have different crawlers and they all don't get all the links all of the time.

It sounds as if you may have an issue with bad and toxic links pointing to the site, I would review all your links and get the toxic and bad links removed (focus on the low quality links with exact match anchor text). There is a very good chance that you are suffering from these bad links.

Stephan,

When it comes to redirects, as long as the server returns a 301 Permanent Redirect when a page is requested, it doesn't matter absolutely whatsoever when it comes to SEO and rankings.

There are other considerations, though. If it's done at the registrar level, then it will inevitably lighten the load on the server. But, you generally won't notice a difference unless there's a large amount of traffic and a LOT of redirects involved (thousands of redirects, not just a few).

Lisa, if you have admin access to the Google Analytics accounts, that generally should be enough to verify Google Webmaster Tools. I have only run into issues verifying the site with Webmaster Tools if the site doesn't have the latest Google Analytics tracking code on it.

David, whenever you get that message from Google, they're looking for you to make a considerable effort to remove the links, not just disavow the links. So, before you submit another reconsideration request, you'll need to do a few things:

• identify all of the links. Don't just get the links that OSE gives you, get the webmaster tools links, the ahrefs links, and the majestic SEO links, as well

• review all of the links and identify the toxic/bad/unhealthy/paid links (the ones that Google is having a problem with).

• contact site owners to get those links removed. You'll need to document everything, even show the emails you sent as well as when you sent them, etc. etc.

Google is looking for you to spend time getting the links removed, and a disavow will not be enough in order to get a manual penalty revoked.

Gregory, without doing a full SEO analysis, it's difficult to pinpoint what exactly is going on here. However, doing some checks with a few tools, I was able to see that there are a few things that could be effecting rankings. For example, the page hasn't been updated since <tt>30·Jan·2014</tt>, which might be around the time that the page started to have an issue with rankings?

I would update the page again with some new copy to see if that will help. Sometimes when you refresh a page it will cause Google to like it again (query deserves freshness type of thing). You could also get some more social shares of the page (Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, etc.) and some new fresh links to the page.

I wouldn't get too caught up, though, in the actual pages and their rankings. This will fluctuate from time to time, and it really can drive you bonkers if you're obsessing over individual page rankings. What I would focus on is building your site's overall authority with new links from trusted authority sites. This will elevate all of your pages in the rankings, and make your pages more "algorithm proof", meaning that when Google changes something in the algorithm your rankings are going to have less of a chance of being effected by those changes.

Rob,

There are generally two separate factors that I would focus on: number of local citations, and number of reviews (actually the velocity of reviews). Consider working heavily on getting more local citations. Make sure the NAP (name, address, phone number) data is consistent everywhere. I would also focus on reviews and getting more reviews of your business posted, as well.

If you have good content on your site, there's a good chance that someone will add a link to your site from WIkipedia if it's appropriate for the topic. That happened to me and my site, and I can tell you that the links from Wikipedia helped: and I even see traffic from Wikipedia. I wouldn't be concerned whether or not the links are going to hurt your site: they will help establish trust.

If your business is established enough and is a public company, for example, there's a good chance that you either have a Wikipedia page for your company or you should start creating one. You'll need plenty of neutral informational type of mentions (news articles, etc.) that establishes your business's credibility.

One important thing to note here is that Wikipedia is a part of the Knowledge Graph, and it's important to get your site/business/link mentioned in the Knowledge Graph. Wikipedia is one way, but you can also participate in Freebase, which will help, as well.

Dominik, whenever you change URLs (domain names) from one to another, there are going to be issues that come up like this. When you redirect one domain name to another you pass on all of the history, links, and soforth to the new domain name.

When you redirected the old domain name to the new one you combined the links of both domain names. And the new domain name could have a link profile that is not very good (or that was worse than the old domain name). I would take a look at all of the links of both domain names and perform a link audit to make sure that there aren't any links that you need to get removed or cleaned up.

Chad,

The latest versions of WordPress do a pretty good job at fixing the holes in WordPress, so I would make sure that you always have the latest version. Also, take a look at the Wordfence plugin, as it is a security plugin that does a lot to stop the majority of the security issues involved. I recommend upgrading the plugin to the paid version, if possible.

As far as optimization goes, I recommend Yoast, as it does a great job of fixing basic SEO issues. However, I recommend adding custom title tags and meta description tags whenever possible.

Like Andy said, I wouldn't worry too much if it's only been about a week. I've seen various issues such as canonical tags being added to a site's pages that have taken a long time (up to two months) to be ironed out.

If you have refreshed the content, the best thing you can do is to make sure those pages are crawled quickly.  You can use social media (Twitter, Google+, etc.) to Tweet and mention those URLs and get them crawled. I would have a strategy in place to get new trusted, authority type links to those pages, as well.

Marike,

Whenever you change URLs, there will be some changes in rankings. However, ultimately, combining several established sites into one larger site will be better in the long run, as it helps with your overall Domain Authority and trust.

Keep in mind that 301 redirects are important--and if possible you may consider moving some content over time, and not move all the content all at once.

Also, your links will need to be updated: reach out to as many site owners as possible to tell them about the new URL change and ask them to update the links.

Jean-Francois,

If you want to accommodate the company asking for the link to be a 'nofollow' link, then that's fine. I would nofollow their link. If you have more than 50 links on the page, though, I would consider whether or not you need that page on the site at all or need to split it into several pages.

Linking out to appropriate on-topic sites will generally not hurt your site's rankings. But, keep in mind that you need to police those links to make sure that you're not linking out to any malicious sites.

Dana,

Yes, Google has indexed the page. However, if you view the source code of the page you won't see any text of the customer reviews. Even if you view the cached version, there is text there: but it's not necessarily text on the page. If you view the cached version, and then see the source code of the page, again, the content is not there. The reviews are not there in the source code.

Let's take this one step further. Search Google for one of the testimonials or a part of one: "Marc Palermo is a great customer service" which is NOT indexed in Google.

Google sees the source code but doesn't appear to be indexing the content.

Hi Huey,

What I would do is first look in Google to see if they're crawling and indexing all of your products. For example. search Google for this:

site:www.domain.com/getproduct.aspx

With that search you should see your products getting indexed. If not, then there is an issue. I don't recommend that you use any redirects at all, as Google can crawl and index URLs with parameters in them.

That said, you should not be using a 302 redirect as it's only temporary one and Google will NOT change the URL, as they are doing now. If you used a 301 Permanent Redirect Google should then show the full URL.

If at all possible, I recommend getting rid of the session IDs and cookies. If you must have them, then those session IDs should not be in the URLs. I would, though, get rid of them for the search engine crawlers at a minimum.