I'm guessing link rot or something to do with upstream links. Majestic SEO may give you some insight into what back links may have disappeared prior to you losing traffic.
Posts made by Chris.Menke
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RE: Lost over 65% of organic visits since Sept - Please help
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RE: Migrating to New site keywords question
I thumbed you down ssaltman--your replies aren't making me feel very helpful.
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RE: Migrating to New site keywords question
To line your new site up with the existing baseline of the old site, I'd be looking more at your stats than at the keyword tool. Go to your analytics and look to see which keywords were bringing you in the most traffic for each landing page and focus on those.
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RE: Lost over 65% of organic visits since Sept - Please help
Is the drop in traffic happening for keywords across the board or for specific keywords? From the graphs you gave, it looks like a change in your traffic pattern started in November and your decrease in traffic may have started as early as late that month, too. Doesn't really look like a penalty, though. What changes had your seo's been making prior to that time.
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RE: Migrating to New site keywords question
SSaltman,
If you're speaking specifically populating the keyword meta tag, you don't have to worry about it.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/meta-keywords-should-we-use-them-or-not
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/
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RE: Combining two exact match domains under brand name
I guess the safest, fastest, most gradual way to do it would go like this:
Go ahead and get your brand site up and running as a stand alone site on a different host with different registration info. Work on creating content and a link profile as separate from the others as you can. Set up a google+ profile verified for that domain and begin ramping up social media efforts for it.
Then, start pumping good content onto your emd's that gradually link out to numerous other quality resources, including, once in a while, the quality content you're putting on your brand domain.
With this method, you'll hope to get traction for your brand domain before your emd's lose value (if they do). But if the emd's do lose value before they can pass full 301 juice to your brand domain, your brand site is already building a solid base for itself.
On the other hand, the fastest way to deal with it would be to create your brand site and then to go ahead and 301 each page from your emd's to the appropriate page on your brand site and get the benefit of those two sites 301ing to the brand for as long as that benefit lasted.
With this method, you'd certainly expect to get traction for your brand domain before you emd's lose value (if, in fact, they did), but you'd lose out on the benefit of having those two emd's in the serps at the same time--for the period of time that they didn't actually loose value (if they did--but you'd never be able to actually determine that.)
As the executive decision maker, you get to make that call.
Does that make sense?
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RE: Cross domain rel alternate, will it help or hurt?
According to Google, here's when rel="alternate" hrefland="x" is recommended:
- You translate only the template of your page, such as the navigation and footer, and keep the main content in a single language. This is common on pages that feature user-generated content, like a forum post.
- Your pages have broadly similar content within a single language, but the content has small regional variations. For example, you might have English-language content targeted at readers in the US, GB, and Ireland.
- Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.
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RE: Blogger benefits
Hey Lawrence,
"Unique content" isn't necessarily what you should be shooting for. Rather, unique**,** exceptional, inspirational, credible, fun, and beneficial to share, is the ideal. If you're creating that, you might as well put it on your main domain and forget about blogger for the time being.
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RE: Block Level Link Juice
I don't think I've seen any tests on that but one way to test would be to put link to three separate but very similar pages from three other pages of very similar strength--one of those would have a link to one of the target pages from the footer, one would have a link to the second target page from the body, and one would have a link to the third target page from the navigation bar. All links would use the same nonsense anchor text. Once all the pages percolated, you'd expect that a search in google for the nonsense term would show that the top result would be from the strongest link.
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RE: Can using the Google Keywords tool and/or SEOmoz cause problems for my company's IP address?
That's not a problem I've heard of often. I might wonder about your internet connection. A lot of searches being done from a single IP address could be the problem. Multiple internet access circuits may solve or help isolate the problem. Maybe there are automated searches being done over that circuit? Is anyone running local software to do ranking reports--like webceo or something like that?
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RE: How much is Page Rank really worth?
First thing I'd do is look at their traffic history if possible. Look as far back as you can and see if there are significant drops in traffic. It would be a good sign if there were not any significant drops. If the terms they're getting their most traffic for now were the same terms they were getting their most traffic for two or three years ago--and they rank down on page 2 or 3, it could be a sign of fixable under optimization.
If, however, you don't see any significant drops and you examine a page (maybe their homepage) and it looks appropriately optimized for appropriately competitive terms but the page is not showing up anywhere in the results, I'd hesitate. There could be a penalty far back in it's history that you're not able to see.
Take a look at the wayback machine and see what the site looked like prior to the analytics history you're able to view. Was it the same site? Maybe the people you're buying it from bought it from someone else who'd spammed and jammed it. If that were the case, maybe a simple reinclusion request could fix the problem--if there is one.
There are a lot of possibilities and they're all worth looking into. Of course, the smart buyer might do exhaustive research, keep the results close to their vest, and push the seller hard on the lack of traffic issue to suppress the price.
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RE: Seo back linking proposal review
In this field, it can take some time to learn what an "expert" is or isn't. One may learn from trial and error or from copious reading but in either case, it requires an open mind, an understanding of your own level of knowledge as compared to those who are providing input, an ability to absorb a lot of information and relate it to a foundation of knowledge that regarded as the law of the land. A sound understanding of marketing is a big plus, too.
I sense from your question that you may be new to this forum, although I see you've been a member for a few years. I also sense by your subsequent replies that you may doubt the wisdom of a recognized authority here.
If I may do so, I'd like to offer a bit of wisdom myself: The senior people in this forum are not trying to sell you anything and will not steer you wrong. They give good advice and are worth listening to.
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RE: Is Galaxy.com blackhat?
You know what I do when I want to get sense of whether or not a directory page might be worth it? I go to the directory page that I would expect to get a link from, click on a link, then run a OSE report on the page I land on to see how it shows in the report. Do that for a few more links on that and other pages and you'll get an idea of it's value. Keep in mind that directories are often not a good choice when it comes to long-term link value.
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RE: Proper way to include Location & Zipcode Keywords
You've got a few issues with this client:
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They are telling you how to do SEO. If I felt I had to defend what should be put in the description tag, I'd leave a client in a heartbeat. I mean, what are they hiring an SEO for? Why not just dictate their wished to their web designer and save a few bucks?
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They are telling you to do the wrong things. Almost 4 years ago, Matt Cutt let us know that Google doesn't use the meta keyword tag any longer (except, now for Google News) and Bing uses it to help identify spammers (like your client?).
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50 cities? Why stop there? Why not drop in all 50 states--and each of their major cities? If they don't all fit in the description, you could put them up in the title tag! The client doesn't understand algorithmic search or the value of your guidance and that make for an uncomfortable work relationship.
If the client wants to serve fifty cities, they should first begin to engage customers in fifty cities. The client shouldn't count on Google to introduce him/her to those markets. The client introduces himself/herself there, begins engaging clients with content through social channels and then Google reflects that engagement that in their search results.
If the client actually has offices with physical addresses that can recieve mail in those 50 cities and phone numbers that can answer a phone call in those 50 cities then the client needs to invest in local search marketing to assist with their visibility in the local results.
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RE: What if an employee leaves and removes Rel=Author verification from their Google Plus profile?
Basically, you're SOL (siht out of luck), as we said in the Navy. There was a good discussion on this topic here some months ago here.
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RE: Unstable ranking
In google analytics, select a week, or month that you were getting good traffic and select compare to the past and then compare organic search sources against a week your traffic was off. The ones with the biggest changes will show at the top of the list. You'll be able to see if some of your terms are losing traffic or if all of your terms are losing traffic equally.
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RE: Google Analytics
James, have you set up a google account with that email address? Have you successfully been made a user of other client's analytics with this gmail address?
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RE: Unstable ranking
I see you have google analytics installed--are you spending any time reviewing your stats?
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RE: Unstable ranking
Juana Maria are you monitoring which keywords have the traffic that is going up and down?
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RE: Am I Wasting my time using pingler.com
Sorry to all, I shouldn't have replied in that manor.
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RE: Why SEO
For question #1: You don't have that many direct competitors for those search terms and the overall strength of the homepage isn't bad, compared to those that you do have.
For question #2: If you weren't already being overwhelmed by traffic for keywords like "online grocery shopping Dallas" you may look to branch out and try to get traffic for terms like "online grocery shopping", "buy pistachio and cherry tart online", "online gourmet foods", etc. Someone in that scenario might look to eliminate all possible hurdles that stand in the way of ranking for those terms. Such a person might add some additional content to those pages, as well. But, if you're happy with how things are going for you now, then there's probably no reason to worry about any of those things.
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RE: Am I Wasting my time using pingler.com
My initial thought was a snide 'Well, what changes were you expecting to notice?". But, while I was out searching to see if maybe there was some hitherto unknown-to-me legitimate reason for you to expect something, Guru Fisher beat me to the punch. I guess that's why he's a guru.
Anyway, I didn't find anything that changed my mind and had someone done even the little bit of searching that I just did, there'd probably be no reason to ask the question you asked. Additionally, I'm wondering about the logic of going ahead and paying for a service that may not have been providing you a perceived value as a free tool.
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RE: Which title tag would you choose?
I'm not big on the keyword-overstressed /redundant keyword titles. I think this is just as effective:
Plastic Flower Pots [brand]
or
Flower Pots - Plastic [brand]
and use "free delivery in your description. If that's too trim for you, I'd go with #2 or #3 - minus the "with" or "from".
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RE: What's the best way for SEO newbie to analyze & fix a site after being hit by Panda?
I'll tell you, I have to wonder why a company with such a major problem is requesting that a "newbie" fix it for them. Nothing against you, Ramon, but my first thought is that they're hoping to get someone to spend a bunch of time on it for cheap, which could have been what got them in trouble in the first place.
If they're coming to you for advice and they know you're new to SEO, be up front with them and say your best advise is that they move all the content (minus any low quality outbound links) to a new domain and start over. I wouldn't even redirect the old site to the new one. Unless they're going to pay you well for all the time your going to take learning everything you need to learn to make a serious effort at solving a difficult problem such as this, cut to the chase and see what they say.
If they go for that, then you can spend your time fixing the problems you know you can fix and help them build a better link profile. That's my two cents.
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RE: Google Authorship and Hobby Blog
Jerrod,
Use the g+ (email) account you want to be most closely associated with your name. Down the road, it is going to be how google identifies Jerrod David online. It will include a history of your interaction with Oxford Cloth Button Down, as well as any other interactions, posts, comments that Google can assign to that identity and that identity may bring strength to any domain to with which it's been verified. (Verification is going to be the topic of your next question.) It's more difficult to maintain multiple identities in Google these days so chose wisely and maintain your online identity as you would your real identity--always think about what you're doing and remember that any action may reflect on you for a long time.
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RE: Blog post ideas!
You've done all the hard work, now comes the easy part! It's hard to understand why those other guys aren't all on top of this. Just boil your brand message down into a single sentence that describes your corporate values and differentiates you from your competitors; create a number of buyer personas by digging into your business objectives and understanding your buyers' needs at various intervals in their buying cycles; research those personas in social forums to see what types of content they might be sharing, who they might be sharing it with and who their influencers are; based on that, create content that promotes your brand message, addresses the audiences buying needs and gives them reason to share. Et voila!
Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNwf3ETUph4
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RE: Biggest Benefit for Footer Links "Created by ___?"
Vary your anchor text, link out from only from only a few pages (their strongest pages, preferably) and make sure each of those outbound links point different pages on your site.
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RE: Question about duplicate images used within a single site
I can see how dupe images it might be an issue if you rely on image search for traffic but likely not in your case. On the other hand, 400 pages with the exact same image...? That is a lot. It seems that you might help yourself if you alter each image with a little copy specific to the page you've put it on and tailor the alt tags so that they're aligned with the image and the geo data for it's specific page.
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RE: Does Google penalize duplicate website design?
Often you're better off ,putting your efforts into a single domain and getting that to rank, rather than splitting your efforts between all those other domains--I mean, what are you going to do with those new sites that is going to get them to rank that you couldn't do with your original domain? If they're exact match domains, I wouldn't count on their effectiveness for the long term--or even for the short term.
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RE: Indexed sites
Use your OSE report to find pages that are being linked to from external sources and be sure to redirect all of those. Use your analytics report to find pages that are bring in search traffic and be sure to redirect those. The rest are neither being linked to nor bringing you any traffic so their priority is on the low end, anyway.
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RE: Better SEO Option, 1 Site 3 Subdomains or 4 Separate Sites?
If you already have the 4 sites running on different domains, each has different content, and you linking sparingly and appropriately between the domains, I'd call it a toss up as to whether it's better to keep them separate or bring them together. Have you looked into buddypress for managing the separate domains within a single CMS? I think it can handle that.
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RE: Indexed sites
Hi goodcat, you'll see from the FAQs on this page http://www.seomoz.org/help/crawl-diagnostics that the report data is from seomoz's crawl. Your question was asked and some answeres provided not too long ago over here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/is-it-possible-to-get-a-list-of-pages-indexed-in-google.
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RE: Does Google penalize duplicate website design?
Do you already have a main site that is ranking for all the main keywords and you're just about to roll out these five new ones or are these five new sites your first ones and your business plan revolves around those five?
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RE: Are links between a subdomain and a root domain internal or external?
A search engine considers a subdomain to be a different entity from the root domain and links to and from are considered external. Don't be counting on those links from the subdomain to be doing much for the root domain, though, unless your root domain is a strong entity unto itself. A few links from separate pages may be helpful but engines won't be oblivious to the fact that their coming from the same IP address as the root domiain (as most subdomains are).
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RE: What happens when content on your website (and blog) is an exact match to multiple sites?
Hey Morgan, I've seen this often with professional sites of all sorts. The vendor is selling a content service but the buyer is either not aware that the same content is being sold to all their clients, or not aware that it makes a difference. Often, the buyer is on the hook for the service for a year or so.
Here's the thing: Competing in the search engines is about differentiating your website and getting people to engage with your content--and it's hard to do either of those things with content that's common to hundreds or thousands of other sites. In answer to your question, the duplication doesn't necessarily make you site irrelevant, it just doesn't give search engines a reason to rank it higher than the next dentist.
What that content does do is provide your local visitors with a feeling that your practice is up to date with news and technology and that can be an advantage over a site that lacks any updated content--you'll just have to drum up those visitors from somewhere other that organic search.
One of those other places is local search. With or without dupe content, you can still focus on making your local results stronger and it can be argued that that's better than showing up in the organic results for many dentists.
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RE: Setting up a Blog for more inbound links
James' advise was solid. Put the blog on your main site and focus your limited resources on producing quality content and on outreach to promote that content. You've got to get good links to at least one of the sites, and with that being as hard as it is, you might as get them to your main site--which means the content needs to be there. Once site A is overflowing with content people are clamoring to link to, then you can think about doing something with site B.
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RE: Does Google penalize duplicate website design?
Think of the gazillion Wordpress sites out there--they're all the same architecture and they can rank. Your tactic used to be more prevalent, back when linking between sites (you won't be doing that, will you?) with thin content (they won't have that, will they?) helped lift all of them in the rankings.
While there are plenty of examples of multiple sites owned by the same company showing up in the same page-one search results, there are as many, or more, examples of them all showing up at the bottom of the results. It seems to me that if you're asking the question you're asking --at this point in the project, you may not be well enough informed to keep yourself out of the later group. I'd kindly recommend doing some additional homework before you launch.
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RE: Splash page - is it possible to rank well?
See if he'll let you do a 2 month test with a different home page and let him see the difference in the traffic/business and then let him make a more informed decision.
On the other hand, the page that all your "home" navigation links go to should be a page like the one you wish your home page would be--a page with a bit more static content than the /начало/ page and one that other parties might link to instead of the domain's (current) default page. Develop your external links to that page.
In the market you're working in, you better have real, link-worthy, thought leadership-type blog posts regardless of what's on your homepage because it's likely that the majority of your search traffic will land on your blog posts--at least until you build awareness and strength for your brand. Don't blame the lack of traffic on the boss' decision on the home page if you haven't pushed really hard for top quality content. If you've done that and he/she hasn't complied, blame the lack of traffic on their business sense, not necessarily on the web site.
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RE: Google Places Account
The business name, address and telephone number belong to the entity. Changes to the information are verified via a google phone call to the company's phone number or a postcard sent to the company's address. Anyone can make the changes to a places page but the changes are not actually implemented until they are verified by the business via a phone call or postcard.
So, if you make the changes while logged into YOUR google account, that company will forever show up in your Google places dashboard--even if someone else makes changes to it from their account in the future. This doesn't mean you've claimed the business--it just means you've made changes to it. I have, for example, many, many companies that show in my dashboard. Each of them I've coordinated with to set up or revise their places page. I make the changes, prepare them to be ready to get the automated phone call with the PIN (it happens in less than 20 seconds) or to be on the lookout for the postcard with the PIN (takes about two weeks) and when they get the PIN, they give it to me, I enter it into my dashboard, and the changes take effect. You don't need to be in the client's google account to do this.
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RE: Switching from HTML Static to WordPress Platform - SEO
They're not the same.
Redirect the pages that have links going to them to their counterparts with the new URLs. Look at your stats and see which pages are bringing in search traffic and redirect those,too. Google will sort the rest out.
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RE: Google Places Account
Google Places or Google+ Business page?
With Google Places, you can add them to your own Google Places dashboard (http://www.google.com/local/add ), edit the business info, and a post card or phone verification will take place as usual with the client company (you can have Google send a verification post card with a PIN in about 2 weeks or You can have Google immediately place an automated call to the business phone number on record and provide a PIN). Once verified, the client gives you the pin, which you enter at your dashboard and the changes then take effect. Some changes don't need to be verified.
If it's Google+, the owner of a Google+ personal profile will need create a Google+ Business Page from within their personal profile and then make you a manager of that page, which you will then be able to administer while logged into your own Google account.
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RE: Web 2.0 Sites | Guinea Pig?
You're going to end up with a siht-load of bad back links and a poor back link profile that will leave the squidoo page with little to no value and which could reflect poorly on your primary site.
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RE: How strong are reciprocal editorial links
The fact that you're getting dramatically different views on the issue leaves open the possibility that there is no steadfast rule to go by here. If that's the case, your SEO experience should be telling you to tread lightly.
A few years back, Bill Slawski wrote a post about what search engines think about reciprocal links. Some months later, Eric Ward a post expounding on "Why Reciprocal Links Will Always be Viable". Both are still relevant and good reads.
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RE: Best practices for a local business move
If you're just 3 months away from the move, it's time to revise (vs. create anew ) the landing page(s) that will reflect your new location and get those online asap, so your organic results can start percolating.
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RE: Could we run into issues with duplicate content penalties if we were to borrow product descriptions?
Adding a lot of SKUs to your site in a relatively short amount of time by borrowing content from another site sounds more like a bad sales pitch than a good "opportunity". If you don't want to put in jeopardy a significant chunk of your business, then simply drip the new sku's in as you get new content for them. The thin content's not likely to win you any new search traffic, so unless their addition is going to quickly increase sales from your existing traffic sources and quantities in dramatic fashion, why go down that road?
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RE: Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
Don't mention it : )
You may also want to look at anchor text for your links pointing from instabill.com to blog.instabill.com. It would probably be better to use "Instabill Blog" vs. just "blog" and even better might be simply "Instabill", if you could get away with it.
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RE: Link masking in WordPress
I've seen people recreate their primary landing pages at new URLs, link to them from a custom sidebar menu, and then rel=canonical the original landing pages, linked to from their primary navigation, to those new URLs. I wouldn't do it, though.