I was thinking the same thing, you got hit with the EMD update recently especially if it happened this week.
Posts made by cbielich
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RE: Huge drop for main branded keyword
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RE: What's a reasonable time to start ranking for a niche site?
I agree with Chenzo, post Panda and Penguin make sure your site shows that you are the man in the subject/service and convince others they should go to your site.
Making a site, adding keywords and SEO and sitting waiting for something to start happening doesn't work anymore
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RE: Are you an in-house SEO or an Agency/freelancer SEO ?
In House - Agencies are Drama
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RE: Removal request for entire catalog. Can be done without blocking in robots?
If your intention is to keep the page for "follow" I would not submit a removal request for the page since that will wipe it off the map. Google needs to crawl your page to know you don't want it indexed.
Things can take a while, sometimes many months before its not indexed properly. Google also has a disclaimer that it could possibly keep the page indexed for a while.
Also you have to make sure that you do some post things after the removal is made to ensure it never comes back
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663419
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RE: How much do internal links help?
Internal linking is so much more important now especially in a post Panda and Penguin world. Do it wrong and you could seem spammy to Google.
Here is a great video that will help give you a better idea
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday
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RE: Too Many On-Page Links?
Had the same issue.
I had over 3,000 reports of to many on-page links.
Some of my pages have thousands of links. Thought Google would hate me for it and penalize me. Decided to go with "it was better for user experience" which it was and it has not impacted my ranking.
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RE: Google webmaster tools Who links the most updates?
Here is a senario I found with one of the sites that contained links to me.
domain.com linked to an internal page located at /page1/ so the link to that page was domain.com/page1/. This page contained a link to me but has been removed BUT the link to the internal page on that website has also been removed. So the website no longer has the link domain.com/page1/, but the page is indexed and still exists. Since Google will not find a link to that page on their site will Google ever recrawl that page?
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Google webmaster tools Who links the most updates?
Has anyone ever seen in the section in GWT "Who links the most" actually update. I have sites listed in there that had me on a blogroll so I had 93,000 links to me and they removed those links months ago but GWT still shows that number of links. Does anyone else actually see those numbers go down as links are removed?
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Does anyone else love SEOMOZ as much as me?
I don't think so, Im just saying....
Love your tools, analytic's and especially your robot. It has improved my site's performance greatly
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Page Rank Sculpting
Just a thought.
With the way pagerank works and passing link juice evenly across all your links. Would it make sense to structure your site so that each page passes your all your link juice from lets say your homepage to another page. Then that page would contain all the link juice from the homepage. Then do the same thing with the next pages. For instance
Homepage - linkjuice 10
- link1 - follow
- link2 rel=nofollow
- link3 rel=nofollow
- link4 rel=nofollow
- link5 rel=nofollow
Link1 - linkjuice 10
- link1 rel=nofollow
- link2 - follow
- link3 rel=nofollow
- link4 rel=nofollow
- link5 rel=nofollow
Link2 - linkjuice 10
- link1 rel=nofollow
- link2 rel-nofollow
- link3 - follow
- link4 rel=nofollow
- link5 rel=nofollow
Link3 - linkjuice 10
- link1 rel=nofollow
- link2 rel-nofollow
- link3 rel=nofollow
- link4 - follow
- link5 rel=nofollow
Link4 - linkjuice 10
- link1 rel=nofollow
- link2 rel-nofollow
- link3 rel=nofollow
- link4 rel=nofollow
- link5 - follow
and so on.
Theoretically would'nt this help pass a ton if not all of link juice to your main links? Sorry if this is a dumb question, it's late and sometimes my mind goes places
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RE: How can I check if the FOLLOW,NOINDEX tag is working?
There are sites out there like http://www.noindexchecker.com/ that will help you double check your work
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RE: Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
I know I have done this before, good idea to check with
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RE: Thinking about deindexing 200,000 pages
I decided to noindex all the pages, but I brought the links back that point to these pages but added the nofollow attribute as well to all of those. From a Google standpoint these pages are not worth indexing, but for user experience the links are needed.
Thanks
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Thinking about deindexing 200,000 pages
So I was hit with Panda and Penguin. Since then I have been trying to figure out what is it that Google is seeing as "low content" on my site along with links. Concerning low content I am a dictionary based site and I have over 200,000 pages which link to sepecific definitions to words like /dictionary/word/a and so on. Most of these pages if not all have a bounce rate of 100% and very little to no traffic. I used to link every word in my database in my site which is where Google got the links from to begin with. Since then I have removed those links with no impact to my rankings, but Google still has them indexed. I am thinking about deindexing all of them from Google. So all my pages with /dictionary/word/[word here] would be removed. Just wanted to get some opinions on that. Maybe a good idea?
Also what would be the preferred method to deindex them.
Robots.txt?
noindex tag?
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Word structure on page optimization
My question is this. I have a scrabble dictionary site and I list a ton of words on the page. I removed then as links just in case Google might be thinking i am spamming, but could there be a difference in listing words like
this
word1, word2, word3, word4, word5
and instead like this
word1
word2
word3
word4
word5
could the first way trigger Google that I am spamming?
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Ugh...getting organized with my SEO
One thing I have learned about SEO is that it takes a patient, organized and task oriented person in order to be a good SEO'r. Luckily I have these skills which I think helps me with my own personal SEO, but at the same time I have other personality traits that work against me at the same time which can distract me from staying on track.
- I am a goal oriented person - I like to create weekly, monthly and yearly goals to help keep me focused.
- I am a patient person
- I am a task oriented person - I can repeat a task over and over again even if I hate it.
- I am very organized - I am a better house keeper than my wife (which drivers her crazy)
but at the same time I have some other personality traits that work against me which counter act against my strong points.
- I can't leave a task undone and I have to complete it immediately
- I am a multi tasker - I can do 20 things at once.
The struggle I have is even though I set goals, complete them and have the patience to do them at the same time I tend to work on things and won't move on until they are done. Even though their importance may not be as pressing an other areas. For instance I will work on getting rid of Google errors (404's), fixing code issues with the site people report instead of taking the time to work on the bigger things like fixing issues which effected me from Panda and Penguin. I get stuck on these smaller tasks since I know I can complete them faster, but they never seem to end.
I would love to hear other models SEO'r use to help them organize their time management and spreading the tasks across the board and get everything done.
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RE: Hit with Panda, but still confused
I'm so sorry, didn't realize I said March. It was April 24th my rankings tanked. Also where did u see the canonical solver?
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RE: 100 + links on a scrolling page
Google (Matt Cutts) talks about this and saying that there is no set number. He does say that you want to be careful not to make it spammy. I had a similar issue that hit me with Panda and since then I have fixed the issue. I believe that link placement is important and how you place them on your page effects this as well.
For instance
Link1
Link2
Link3
Link4
Link5
is better than
link1,link2,link3,link4,link5
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RE: "Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but sample pages are not related to page indicated with duplicate content
Without seeing the pages myself there some tools that can assist you in this that you can get more info
http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php/
http://www.duplicatecontent.net/
They will give you more detail and show you the similarities. Also if you have very little content on the page then that increases your chances of there being duplicate content issues with very little wording.
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RE: Webmaster Index Status - Not Selected > Ever Crawled
I have not had that happen to me, but TBH that sounds kind of buggy. Every Crawled should never be less than "Not Selected" You might want to submit a ticket for that to Google. Google has to crawl a page before it can make a decision on it.
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RE: Header and Footer Links on Home and other catelog pages of site
Google (matt Cutts) specifically talks about links on top hold more value than links on bottom. If you are concerned with those links on the top, I wouldn't IMO. Almost every major site including SEOMOZ places their links for login,register on the top right and their rankings are not touched.
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RE: How reliable is GWT's keyword data & what is the most accurate way of determining keywords you currently rank for?
Concerning keywords you currently rank for you are going to find that in Webmaster tools, under "Search Queries" That will give you the keywords how you are being found and what position you are ranking for that term.
What do you mean "seems off". If you are referring to position then you have to remember that Google also does custom searches so I always check my rankings on Google with a different browser and delete all saved data before I look. That way I know I am getting the default rankings. Also depending where you live also depends on ranking because of Google's Data houses and if they have updated their index's. GWT gives you the average based on all of the data houses.
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Hit with Panda, but still confused
Back on March 24th I was hit with Panda. Pretty much all but my main keywords were hit and I was wiped off the board. Luckily I kept my rank with my main keyword which was part of my URL. I have been since trying to figure out what Google thought was spammy with my site. I made changes, but nothing changed except my main keyword. I have been confused as to why I still ranked well with my main keyword, but nothing else. I have read from several posts of others complaining about the same issue. Seeing some keyword rankings go down, but not all. I also have read that if Google thinks even one page is spammy it might effect my whole site.
Today I found a couple pages that might have been contributing to the low rankings. I am a scrabble based site and I had several pages that listed many words related to things like 2 letter words, 3 letter words, words that end and start with. These pages would contain from hundreds to over a thousand words and I was linking them all to my dictionary look up portion of my site. I have some other sites that do the same thing but not nearly as much as my main site and they were still doing just fine. I had over 3500 pages giving me warnings in my Pro Account about to many links on a page, but I have been ignoring it because I felt I was helping my users by giving them a less step in having to type the word to search. I have removed all these links except I found a couple pages that were still doing it. I just removed them so hopefully that helps this time.
My question is do I have to wait till the next panda refresh or just until the next time Google crawls my site to see the changes.
UPDATE: it is not 1.24.2013
It's been a while since I asked this question and just wanted to fill in on the updates and things I have done since then to maybe give some hope to all you penguinizers. My site https://www.wordgamedictionary.com/ has changed quite a bit since I posted this original question. I was hit on April 24th with Penguin and just was racking my brain trying to figure out what I did to get there. Here is some advice I have learned since then.
- Be Patient - Its going to be a long road to recover from it (I am still recovering almost 1 year later, but I am recovering)
- Don't Freak Out - Yeah it sucks when you income drops 50% in a matter of overnight, but you can change that.
- Check your back links (Yes this is beating a dead horse with a stick, but it's true)
- On page anchor link text - Are they over miss used keywords? Change that. Make it look natural
- For goodness sake! check for spelling errors
- ADD FRESH CONTENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I would say about something new at least once a week. 3 to 4 is good (unless you are Q and A then you will have much more). Think to yourself "What would keep me coming back to my site?" If you don't have it, they add it
- Back links are not going to come to you unless you are creative. Sitting there thinking they are going to fall on your lap is dreaming.
- Back linking is nessary to stay ontop, but you can get them naturally. Experiment a ton and take risks. The more risks you take, the better chance you will eventually succeed.
Today I have almost fully recovered from Penguin, but what is awesome is that by taking the natural and pro active method to SEO I have actually increased my overall traffic to my site by double since April 24th. I am still recovering from the original keywords that I was hit at, but whats awesome is that I have gained so much traffic from other keywords that I ended up doubling my traffic.
The next time you think you know everything there is about SEO, slap yourself...because you don't
Some nice Link building articles I have found to be good
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml
http://www.slideshare.net/RossHudgens/link-building-strategies-2013-edition-15477553
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/advanced-link-building-strategies/53439/
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To many links hurting me even though they are helping users
I have a scrabble based site where I function as a anagram solver, scrabble dictionary look up and tons of different word lists. In each of these word lists I link every word to my scrabble dictionary. This has caused Google to index 10018 pages total for my site and over 300 of them have well over 100 links. Many of them contain over 1000 links. I know Google's and SEOMOZ stance that anything over 100 will hurt me. I have always seen the warnings in my dashboard warning me of this but I have simply ignored it.
I have posted on this Q and A that I have this issue, but IMO having these links benefit the users in the aspect that they don't have to worry about coping the text and putting it in the search box, they can simply click the link. Some have said if it helps the users then I am good, others have said opposite.
I am thinking about removing these links from all these word lists to reduce the links per page. My questions are these.
1. If I remove the links from my page could this possible help me? No harm in trying it out so this is an easy question
2. If I remove the links then I will have over 9000 pages that are indexed with Google that no longer have a link pointing to them, except for the aspect that they are indexed with Google still. Is it going to hurt me if I remove these links and Google no longer sees them linked from my site or anywhere else?
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RE: Google cached snapshots and last indexed
Thanks, that's what was happening to me
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Google cached snapshots and last indexed
My question is I noticed today that the snap shots of my main pages were outdated. About a month. Then I clicked on the "Learn More" link about cahced images and Google says
"Google crawls the web and takes snapshots of each page. When you click Cached, you'll see the webpage as it looked when we last indexed it."
I know this sounds really dumb, but does that really mean the last time Google indexed that page? So the changes I have made since then have not been taken yet?
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RE: Can't rank with certain keywords for the life of me
Thanks for using my site
also I have always had a hard time with "content" because no one uses my site for content, they use them for my forms (just like you :)) I consider myself a "tools" based website.
The way I figured was that people care more about my form than anything else, so putting that form on every page will make it easier for users to get what they need. That was my reason for adding the form to almost every page.
Fluff? Yeah totally fluff lol - Good ideas I will make some of those changes
Call to action - with trying to keep a form on every page could I make the call to action scroll down and place the form at the bottom of the page? or you think just have one main page with the form?
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Can't rank with certain keywords for the life of me
I have a website http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com in which functions as a scrabble dictionary lookup and word finder for scrabble. There are many keywords that rank well for this niche but the main ones I target are
Scrabble Dictionary
Scrabble Cheat
Scrabble Word Finder
Scrabble Help
I used to rank well for all these keywords, I am 4th with scrabble dictionary currently but with the other 3 am no where near the top. On March 24th I dropped off the map for scrabble cheat, scrabble word finder and scrabble help. I actually dropped to 9/10th for scrabble dictionary on that date as well but since then I have been able to hold on steady to 4th.
I can't figure out why I can't rank for those other keywords anymore. Its almost like Google has penalized me for those keywords. I have contacted Google a few times to ask if I have any penalties and they have told me that I don't.
Even though in my backlinking I have targeted these keywords I can't seem to rank for them no matter what I do. The only idea I have come up with is that Google has re-associated those other 3 keywords in a group and separated scrabble dictionary on its own.
I have other sites I have created in the same niche and I have noticed if the URL contains "word", "Finder" and/or "cheat" I can rank in the 3 keywords within about a week all the way up to the second page. My main site FSD has the highest DA and PA compared to my other sites. Any idea why I can't seem to rank for those other 3 keywords anymore?
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RE: Finding links online that already exist as link juice based on search results
If I am the founding father please promote my article
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Finding links online that already exist as link juice based on search results
I'm curious about this, I can't find anything on the net that talks about it. I wrote an article about it on squidoo and have had no responses so I am thinking this is very rare subject. The question is I have done some backlink research with my competitors with linkdetective.com and found many links (even follow ones) related to sites that provide search results. Here are a link about what I am talking about as an example, I have found many more besides this one.
My site appears in those results. When looking at the source there is no "nofollow". I found this page because linkdetective.com had this link listed pointing to my competitor. Are these valid backlinks?
What I have been doing is adding these links to http://www.google.com/addurl so that Google knows about them. Is there something I am missing or are these valid?
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RE: Link Building Tactics for 2012?
Just a question: aren't these practices going against what Google is trying to fix with the Panda update?
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RE: Link Building Tactics for 2012?
Andy you made content with the post and comments you made. Now this blog post has a ton of great links and resources lol!
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RE: What's your best hidden SEO secret?
Ok that idea is awesome!
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RE: Adwords campaign and adgroup ideas
Is it bad to target one keyword per ad?
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RE: Adwords campaign and adgroup ideas
very good to know that, there were so many keywords I wanted but thought I could not use them because they could be getting these results even thought they were not near me. Thanks so much
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Adwords campaign and adgroup ideas
When it comes to SEO, I can do that. When it comes to adwords I tend to scratch my head. No idea why, I just do. Anyways I want to get some ideas of how I can setup a killer campaign and structure it and target relevant keywords. Here is my description of my business
We are a private christian school providing preschool, elementary and highschool. We are located in Henderson, NV but service Las Vegas, NV as well. We have some of the highest scores and accolades in Nevada so we pride ourselves with those and feel we should target that.
So far when it comes to structure I have come up with this setup
Campaigns
Henderson
- adgroups
- Preschool
- Top Keywords
- preschool
- Example Keywords
- preschools in henderson, nv
- preschools in henderson nevada
- preschool henderson nv
- preschool henderson nevada
- Example Keywords
- top rated
- Example Keywords
- top rated preschools in henderson nv
- top rates preschools in henderson nevada
- Example Keywords
- best
- Example Keywords
- best preschool in henderson nv
- best preschool in henderson nevada
- Example Keywords
- preschool
- Top Keywords
- Elementary
- Top Keywords
- private school
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Example Keywords
- Elementary private schools in henderson nv
- Elementary private schools in henderson nevada
- Elementary private school in henderson nv
- Elementary private school in henderson nevada
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- top rated
- Example Keywords
- top rated elementary private school in henderson nv
- top rated elementary private school in henderson nevada
- Example Keywords
- best
- Example Keywords
- best elementary private school in henderson nv
- Example Keywords
- private school
- Top Keywords
- High School
- Top Keywords
- private school
- top rated
- best
- Top Keywords
- Preschool
Las Vegas
- adgroups
- Preschool
- Elementary
- High School
I didn't finish the rest because you should get the point. I don't know if these are exact keywords, I just know that private school, top rated and best tend to be what people type.
Then each adgroup will get a relevant ad pertaining to those keywords.
Am I going overbaord? or is this a good start?
- adgroups
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RE: Link farming and related websites
So basically links to my old site that I am redirecting will pass link juice to my new domain as long as my new domain does not already have those links right?
Just want to make sure I understand this before I start this process.
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RE: Link farming and related websites
If I have website A and Website B
If I redirect Website B to Website A will Website A's Link juice be replaced with Website B's or will Website B's link juice add to Website A's?
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RE: Link farming and related websites
What do you mean my link sources? Internal links or links going out?
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RE: Link farming and related websites
Yes I would like to know this too
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Link farming and related websites
In my niche I have about 17 sites I have created. They all provide unique content, html, and all have a variety of uses that differ from each other mostly, some repetition but not really. All these sites are related to the same niche. I do link to each other in my sites. I don't go crazy and link every site to every other site or span links on footers. I somewhere in the content link here to there. Not even consistent, just linking to related pages from others. I was wondering if this is something I need to be careful about or could I get hit with link farming?
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RE: Keyword tool
I love http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-list/generator.php. It can spin single main keywords into short phrase ones for you easy.
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Setting preferred domain as www or none www
Way back before panda I used to rank for certain keywords pretty well. Of course like many others after panda I lost some of those rankings. I have been getting better since then so its not that bad. I was poking around in Google Webmaster Tools and I noticed something which I need some clarification in.
History my site freescrabbledictionary.com used to be indexed as a none www. Then some time ago I can't remember when I set it to www. Tonight I was looking through my webmaster tools and I noticed something that did not make sense to me.
In my content keywords section for the none www my list is as follows
Content Keywords
<form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET">
Keyword Significance 1. scrabble 2. words (2 variants) 3. dictionary 4. cheat 5. finder 6. friends 7. maker (2 variants) 8. noun 9. letter (2 variants) 10. hasbro 11. mattel 12. spear 13. found (2 variants) 14. sowpods 15. freescrabbledictionary 16. builder 17. affiliated 18. search 19. solver 20. lists </form>
Then I looked at my www lists and its
Content Keywords
<form action="https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/keywords-list?hl=en&siteUrl=http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/" method="GET">
Keyword Significance 1. words (3 variants) 2. scrabble (2 variants) 3. letter (4 variants) 4. points 5. cheat (3 variants) 6. friends (2 variants) 7. finder (2 variants) 8. anagram (2 variants) 9. dictionary 10. tool (2 variants) 11. hasbro 12. mattel 13. spear 14. game (4 variants) 15. mobile 16. affiliated (3 variants) 17. berkshire 18. canada 19. calculations (5 variants) 20. coming (4 variants) </form>
My none www version has the order (especially the first 5 keywords) that I want, my www version is no were near it. If I change back to the none www version could I possible see an change in rank? or can it effect it if I change it?
I am starting to think I shot myself in the foot when I switched...
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Are nofollow links really not effecting rank?
I honestly find it hard to believe that nofollow links are not being considered for rank. Take for example Google finds 2,000,000 nofollow links for a site. Are they really going to ignore that?
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RE: Reducing the site's header to get more content Above the Fold
Just always ask yourself this question "Is it good for your users or is it going to benefit them." Trust me like many of us SEO we get caught up in the mindset of "old"SEO practices were we want to optimize for ranking. Google does not want us to write content for search engines, write content for the user. So if it's a good decision that will benefit the users then do it.
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RE: Am I Doing this Canonical Right?
change this line from RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301] to RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.com$1 [L,R=301]