I don't think there is a hard and fast rule on that Bob. So many things are involved--value of the page, value of the domain, follow/nofollow, velocity, the value of the non-guest post links, domain diversity, the future quality of those guest blog sites. I'd hazard a guess that you're safe with 3/10 but I have nothing to go on for that number. The thing is, as with all link building, if you put too much emphasis on any one kind of link, you risk of getting burned in some fashion down the road goes up substantially.
Posts made by Chris.Menke
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RE: What percentage of linking root domains is safe for guest posting
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RE: Web domain hurt seo?
Sanaa,
What that does is actually make for a new "sub" domain that is distinct from the pennies.com domain. Depending on how closely tied a subdomain is with the root domain (via links and topics), the subdomain and pages within it all rank independently of the root domain. There are wide variations in the degree of independence a subdomain has with the root but in answer to your question, it doesn't "hurt" SEO but it does require a different strategy to achieve desired results. Here's some lit on the whole domain topic for you: http://moz.com/learn/seo/domain
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RE: Content Marketing and how it effects Rankings
Mathew,
You do have to watch out for keyword cannibalization and synonyms in your content. A term like "second hand cars" is a slippery slope in that it is the same as "used cars", "pre-owned cars" ,"previously new cars", and then you've got all the variations of "used automobiles", "used cars for sale" "used vehicles", "used cars in miami", "billy bob's second hand cars" etc. When you are building out content on a topic with so many synonyms and similar words, it's just about impossible to create pages on each of the many varieties of these term that are so distinctly different from each other that Google is likely to rank them the way you would like, or think they should be ranked. You're not going to rank for all of them anyway, so why try--choose a brand focus and stick with it.
Rather, when you are creating your site and editorial calendar, reserve the hierarchically uppermost page of the site or category for your most competitive term and use content on it that includes all (or most, or a lot of) the synonyms and variations of your main term. Then stay away from anything but casual use or of those synonyms in the rest of your content. You can get away with content on sub pages dealing with "used fords" and below that "used mustangs" and "67 mustangs" below that--those terms are distinctly unique and lend themselves to content that can be distinctly unique and engaging to distinctly different audiences.
Think of your content as something that would appeal to aficionados. How would they talk about the page's product or category? If they would split hairs on the meaning of terms, then you might be able to too if you can effectively used written words to juxtapose their arguments. Search engine's are not any better at differentiating synonyms than we are and if we can't write down words on our sites that are going to help them, they're going to be lost.
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RE: Home Page or Internal Page
It does appear that the internal page is, semantically, a bit focused on "name necklace" than the homepage is, and then you have the fact that your primary navigation is telling google that the internal page is the name necklace page. To boot, you've got some external links pointing to the internal page with "name necklace" anchor text. All of that can easily put the internal page ahead of the homepage for that term.
What that tells me is that maybe you should be using your home page to rank for a more competitive term and develop the internal page's conversion ability (make it a better landing page) for "name necklace". Perhaps your home page could focus on "personalized jewelry" or something like that.
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RE: What percentage of linking root domains is safe for guest posting
The value of a guest post depends on the quality of the content, the amount of social interaction that happens because of it, and the site it's been posted on. PageRank shouldn't be part of your decision-making, as good links are hard to come by and PR isn't a factor in what makes a good link--for most sites. Let me emphasize-- PR isn't a factor in what makes a good link--for most sites. As a matter of fact, sites with high PR and that do a lot of guest posting might be sites to stay away from, I can see a time when a bunch (or even a few) of those links could bite you in the a*s.
If the site allows guest post for topics of a wide variety of niches, it's really no better than an old style directory--Google's not going to give it any weight. If there are lots of blog posts but nobody's commenting on the posts (or it's mostly comment spam), your guest post and the link it carries isn't going to be worth very much to the linked-to site.
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RE: Search engines preferred content posting schedule?
I think it depends on what your goals are with the site. If it's a relatively static site and these content pages are the sum total of what will be posted on the site, then I'd say throw it all up there. On the other hand, if you are looking to jump start a blog and in addition to the 100 page already on hand, you're going to have additional content being created on a regular basis, I'd take a different approach. Assuming it's really good stuff that your target audience is clamoring for, I think I'd start with dropping 50% of it on the blog right off the bat and the remaining I'd diminishingly drip in over a period of several months as you're also writing and adding your new content.
Remember, the whole point of content is that it generate engagement. It's true that on it's own, it can provide some relevancy and attract some search traffic, but what you really want is for people to talk about it and share it. Is that the kind of content you're talking about?
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RE: Moz recommends submitting to directories?
It's probably time to come up with a new name for worthwhile lists of sites within a target niche. "Directories" just doesn't do it any more.
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RE: Is there an efficient way to use Open Site Explorer to find unnatural or harmful links
Bryan,
Dr. Pete did a post on this a while back and it might cut some time off the project for you. http://moz.com/blog/link-profiling-with-open-site-explorer.
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RE: Manual Spam Action Revoked... Finally!
Hi Stephane, I'm wondering if you've seen any rebound at all since the penalty was revoked back in May?
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RE: Keyword in Domain Name
Hi Cindy,
No, I wouldn't switch domain just to work in an exact match domain name. Being already established and having decent rankings for your main term, such a change probably isn't going to bring you the value you're thinking it might. Keep on working to develop your existing brand through content on your site and via social channels and you'll make good progress with your existing domain.
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RE: Ranking for competitive keywords
Ciaran,
Starting from scratch to rank for a term like "heart attack" would be quite an endeavor for a seasoned SEO with a client who had a fairly substantial budget, let alone for someone new to the discipline. Not that it can't be done, but knowing enough to inform the client what it will take and what might be more productive options for their practice is part of being and SEO. It sounds like you're working on coming to grips with that knowledge at this very point.
Starting out, I'd recommend a couple of things: Do an advanced Open Site Explorer report on your client's site and then do a comparative OSE report against some of the other sites that rank on page one for that term. Then do another report comparing your client with other sites even further down in the results to get a sense of where the client might be starting from and what they would need to do to get to the top. Installing the Mozbar can be helpful too.
Moz has another tool that you might find handy--it the keyword difficulty tool and be sure that you've read through their How To Do Keyword Research guide, as well.
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RE: Would you "nofollow" links from a column on HuffingtonPost?
Thomas,
I'd cut the followed links back to just a few, make sure the rest are nofollowed, and make sure that you've got your google authorship set up correctly to link back to your profile and that your profile shows you're an author at that domain. Google's already made a decision about those links and how to count them towards sites. I don't think changing the anchor text is a good idea--even if you nofollow them afterwards.
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RE: NoFollow tag for external links: Good or bad?
102,
No harm is going to come to your site if you nofollow all of those. If there's some likelihood that a good many of those links are pointing to sites that are penalized and I had to do all or nothing, I'd nofollow all of them.
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RE: Keyword Stuffing - Where Do You Draw the Line?
Michael,
No doubt, those are fairly competitive terms and each keyword in the title you mentioned probably should have its own page. Using any word more than once in the title today is overkill--if you feel like you need to use it twice, you should be thinking about another page--but if you're thinking about another page, you need to consider whether you've got the resources to get it to rank and whether or not you might actually be cannibalizing traffic from the other page. Titles need to be tight, complete, concise thoughts or concepts and the content of the page needs to on-point with the title.
Be sure to read through this How To Do Keyword Research - The Beginners Guide to SEO - Moz and the rest of the guide:The SEO Guide From Moz
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RE: Keyword Analysis
Eoin,
If you have you Google analytics synced to your Moz Analytics, you can go to Search | Keyword Rankings and then click on the Opportunities tab ( in the old moz pro its: Overview | manage keywords | find new keywords ) and get a list of keywords that people found you site for in the past 30 days. It doesn't give you your rankings for any of those terms unless you add them to your keyword list but it does give you some other good info about the term. Remember though, this keyword data is getting less and less as Google basically not providing it in their google analytics any longer.
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RE: 301 juice from my old website to the new one?
Roybatti,
What is your goal with the two sites? Do you want to keep them separate or is your plan to eliminate to old one--and why?
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RE: Content Marketing: Use of the words "guest post" in outreach email
Be sure you're targeting the person/writer and not the company.
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RE: Content Marketing: Use of the words "guest post" in outreach email
Don't do it by email. Start showing you're paying attention to them in twitter, facebook, their blog, G+.
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RE: How fast to change keyword rich anchor text
I'd say the blogs probably aren't doing anything for you algorithmically and I'm guessing they're not what was sending you the non-repeat traffic. If you're paying for sitewides that are not nofollowed, you should think seriously about stopping that. Pay for links on other sites as much as you like but make sure they're nofollowed.
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RE: Why Can't I Get Indexed?
If it's a brand new site, getting fully indexed can take a while (some months), especially if, as you say, you have very few links. Work on getting to know others in your niche and complementary markets via social media and give them a reason to talk about you and share info about your site/content. Indexation is about authority and importance--the more of those your site has, the more often and more fully your site will be indexed.
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RE: Content Marketing: Use of the words "guest post" in outreach email
If it's your business, maintaining a perspective/persona of someone who's truly interested your topic/market means getting out and networking, shaking hands, introducing yourself, handing out business cards, advertising, writing, publishing, proselytizing,--I don't think those things, or marketing your product is necessarily an ulterior motive. If it's for a client and you're not able to do that, you need to hire someone who can or you're selling the client short.
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RE: Should I blow up our subdomain?
I'd vote for blowing it up. The links aren't helping your domain and if the content's poor quality and not getting any traffic, why keep it around?
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RE: How fast to change keyword rich anchor text
I don't think of the kind of links you mentioned in your question as "paid links". I think of paid links (of the variety Takeshi describes) as those that you pay for on a monthly basis and I think Takeshi is correct in that if the publisher isn't blatant they can be hard to detect--but not always. Those are the easiest kind to get rid of--you just stop paying for them. The kind of links you mentioned I think of as just run of the mill spam links--either they were free or they had a one time fee or someone was paid to add them to a network of some kind.
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RE: Targeting local areas without creating landing pages for each town
Of course, if you've got the physical locations, you're in good shape there.
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RE: Content Marketing: Use of the words "guest post" in outreach email
Bob,
If you're crafting good content in your niche, don't make your intro to publishers a pitch for a guest post--introduce yourself in some other way and after the relationship has started, then open the discussion of sharing a post on their blog. You should already have a number of publisher identified as influencers in your niche and you should be interacting with them socially (retweeting, sharing, commenting their content). Make the investment of getting to know them and show them that you respect their content and their audience and you'll have a much better chance at getting them to do the same for you.
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RE: How fast to change keyword rich anchor text
If they're all followed links with exact match anchor text and you're thinking about making changes to them, I'd just start nofollowing the vast majority of them--maybe even all of them. Google already knows they're their and already knows they're spam and knows to discount them and now you want to go back and change them? I'd say no--as in nofollow. Then spend the client's money building higher quality links and citations.
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RE: Targeting local areas without creating landing pages for each town
It sounds like you're saying that your one ecommerce company has 25 Google local business listings--and growing?! It's very possible that could come back and haunt you unless you in the form of merging or penalization. If not that, it's likely to stop being worth the time as a visibility tactic.
As far as whether or not mentioning local surrounding towns in your page copy will be enough to get you to rank for them, it would depend on competition. If there was no other competition, you would almost certainly rank for your keywords along with the town name but with competition, all the local ranking factors start coming into play and your ability to rank for each one will depend on a combination of all of them.
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RE: Would Panda target this?
purple,
5 pages like that isn't enough to get you a penalty, although 6000 thin/dupe pages like that would be enough to put your site in a class with spam sites. So the question is--how do you deal with those other 5995 pages when the time comes to put them back up, if it comes. I'd be thinking of breaking them down first by manfacturer (with a strong page on your unlocking service for each one) then by model type (with a strong page on your unlocking service for each one) and then you might start breaking them down by specific model number. With so many new model numbers coming out each year, it seems like you'd keep your hands full creating content for just the new ones, let alone old ones but you could work your way back in priority of those that give you the most business.
As far as the content itself, it could be videos about how the consumer could unlock each specific one themselves, interviews with owners of unlocked phones, information about the phones themselves (development history, carriers that sell them, sales specs, technical specs, OS's used....) There's a whole ocean of information you could be giving your audience that pertains to the genre of cell phones, unlocking, carriers, mobile devices, manufactures, OS's, etc. Standardize on a number of specific points of data from those areas that you think best gives the audience a picture of your brand's philosophy about being in business and include them in the content for each new page you create. Remember, you've got to think like a publisher if you're going to pull yourself out of that penalty.
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RE: Not alt tags but Title and description Meta: My designer's answer.
I was speaking in terms of the pictures in your portfolio on your site not the blog, as I assumed those were the images you were talking about. Was I incorrect?
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RE: Not alt tags but Title and description Meta: My designer's answer.
Loan,
The architecture of your site makes your images reliant on JavaScript to be visible in the browser and to bots, which means that the only thing search engines have to go on as far as an understanding of your site is the meta data but in a quick look, I'm not even sure the URLs that the images are on are getting crawled. It seems that Google image search contains images from a previous iteration of your website but it is not able to find those images now if you click on any of them. If you want your images to be found in search, I'd recommend you get with your developers and have them come up with an alternative to the current architecture.
Do this search and see if you can click through to any of your images: site:celynnenphotography.co.uk -inurl:blog
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RE: HELP my client wants to run two yoga companies from the same address
Catherine,
Moz's local expert, Miriam Ellis, gave the following answer to a similar question a while ago and it goes straight to the point. If the client can't sincerely answer yes to the following questions then they would be putting their existing local listing in jeopardy of being penalized or merged with another listing.
1) Does the business have a unique, dedicated physical address (not a virtual address, P.O. Box or shared address)?
2) Does the business have a unique, dedicated local phone number in the city of location (not an 800 number, not a call tracking number, not a shared number)
3) Does the business have in-person transactions with its customers, either at its own location (like a restaurant) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber)?
If the business does not meet any one of these 3 criteria, it does not qualify for local inclusion. I don't know where your client is at on points 2 and 3, but if they can't say yes to point one, Local SEO will be nothing but problematic for them. Here's why:
If 2 or more businesses share an address, suite address or phone number (or even if their names are too similar), Google will frequently merge the business details of the listings. This means that Joe the Barber can end up with Jim the Plumber's business name, phone number or reviews showing up on his listing. Merging is one of the most difficult issues to deal with in Local, and one to be avoided at all costs.
Here is a Google help file on this issue: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175290
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RE: Purchasing a domain to redirect to a new domain (note same industry) - Black hat or White hat technique?
There wouldn't be any problem with buying the domain and the blog, moving the content from it page by page to your domain and redirecting each url on the other blog to the new url where the content can then be found on your domain. It's a fairly normal thing to do when companies merge, get bought, change domains, or go out of business. There's nothing black hat about that--it's just good business.
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RE: Is it ok to place internal links from the sidebar?
Again, do what you feel is useful/best for your reader/audience as it won't make a difference SEO-wise.
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RE: Problem to log into moz
Been having the same problem. Twice, I logged out, cleared my cookies and logged back in successfully--but I'm not sure that was actually the solution.
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RE: Is it ok to place internal links from the sidebar?
You'll be fine doing that, though it's not going to do much as far as SEO. Your next thought should be is this going to help the visitor. Sometimes too many links just make things more confusing.
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RE: Why does Google dislike us so?
I can't see what's on the left side of that graph but if it's a steep incline, you may be seeing the results of a gradual devaluing of links that helped build your rankings and traffic to the point of early 2012. In any case, it does look link-related to me, in that the authority of your site may be declining relative to other sites that are relevant to your keywords.
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RE: Ranking for Synonymous Terms (ie. lawyer & attorney)
Ricky,
While Google's working to unify rankings for synonymous terms, synonyms can often have slightly different uses and meanings--especially regionally. At the least, be sure to investigate if that's the case with your terms in your region. You're likely to get a bit more traffic if you have separate pages ranked at the top for each term but whether the value's there for you or not is a different matter. The more advanced Google gets, the more difficult it is to know what differences are required in the two pages in order to differentiate them and get them to rank for the separate terms. Personally, I think it's better to choose one or the other as part of your branding and just go with it.
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RE: Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
Not that they're likely to hurt you--or help you, for that matter--but if enough people disavow worthless sites like these, maybe we won't have to spend time wondering about them as we go through our link audits because they'll have been wiped off the map.
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RE: Still Battling On With Link Profile Audit
Add it to your disavow list and rock the Casbah : )
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RE: I have two sitemaps which partly duplicate - one is blocked by robots.txt but can't figure out why!
There are standards for the sitemaps .txt and .xml sitemaps, where there are no standards for html varieties. Neither guarantees the listed pages will be crawled, though. HTML has some advantage of potentially passing pagerank, where .txt and .xml varieties don't.
These days, xml sitemaps may be more common than .txt sitemaps but both perform the same function.
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RE: I have two sitemaps which partly duplicate - one is blocked by robots.txt but can't figure out why!
Luke,
The .php one would have been created as a navigation tool to help users find what they're looking for faster, as well as to provide html links to search engine spiders to help them reach all pages on the site. On small sites, such sitemaps often include all pages of the site, on large ones, it might just be high level pages. The .txt file is non html and exists to provide search engines with a full list of urls on the site for the sole purpose of helping search engines index all the site's pages.
The robots.txt file can also be used to specify the location of the sitemap.txt file such as
sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap_location.txt
Are you sure the sitemap is being blocked by the robots.txt file or is the robots.txt file just listing the location of the sitemap.txt?
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RE: Low quality websites with spammy EMDs still ranking higher than genuine websites?
It's as though Google's saying "Let's leave the low quality queries to be filled by the low quality sites." I mean really... the only people who take a search like that seriously are the marketers who are trying to get their sites to rank for them-- people actually looking for kitchen remodeling contractors are searching with other terms. Wouldn't you say?
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RE: Negative SEO to inner page: remove page or disavow links?
Howard, If the page isn't of importance to you, yes, you could just remove the page. You could also change the url of the page and let all of those links unresolved. If the links are not targeting a live page on your domain they won't have an impact on your domain.
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RE: How long does it take to reindex the website
Coraltoes, in the case of sites and pages with minimal authority, it can certainly take a month or more URLs to show they've been updated in the index--it will happen eventually, though. Your newly removed-from-noindex pages will not be seen as new pages as the URLs, themselves, are already known to google and the noindex tag doesn't delete Google's knowledge or the crawling of them--it just eliminates the URL's visibility in the index.
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RE: My conundrum
David, it can be hard to get away from a term that a site's homepage has traditionally ranked well for. It can come down to getting new links to the homepage that are able to re-position the page in the light of the new target search term (from the US, would be nice), eliminating or revising existing external links pointing to the homepage (I wouldn't disavow them though), and on linking out from the homepage (and other pages of the site) a new page optimized for that undesired term with a links containing the undesired term.