Ditto what Karen said - please tell us it's not going away?  It's one of the Moz tools I use the most, especially since it does such a comprehensive CSV export.

Thanks!

-tm

Thank you, Marie - that's been my thinking as well, from every angle that I look at it.  And while there's been no "official" notice from Google, this site has lost >50% of its Google / organic traffic year over year, and it looks like (too early to say for sure) it just suffered another ~20-40% drop around May 8th.

Just trying to get some support for one small piece of extensive triage efforts we're embarking on for these guys - they haven't done anything malicious, but they do have some significant site quality and architectural / duplicate issues to tackle. Right now they're a long way away from being close to ready to request a reconsideration, and I think once we get the bulk of their issues addressed & repaired, they may not need to request one. Plus they were never entirely de-indexed, just hammered very badly and "de-impressioned."

Thanks for taking the time to post your view - I appreciate your input!

Michael - agree absolutely - it's certainly not THE reason - there are multiple (multiple) reasons why this site is currently not performing / well & has been penalized in the past.  I'm just trying to eliminate / get consensus on whether one small (but known) reason may be a risk, so that we can apply best practices to address it.

Curious - why do you feel that Google would specifically not possibly categorize exact same backlinks, not using nofollow, placed in an advertising section of a newspaper / news site, as violating Google's quality guidelines?  If you can point me to a specific article / Matt Cutts post, etc., I would be grateful for the info. So far in my searching, I haven't been able to find anything which advises not simply employing nofollow on this type of link placement.

And (see above replies - also) no warning in WMT, but what appears to be a clear drop in Google organic traffic for this and a sister site, commencing May 8, with a number of references to "More Focus on Paid Link Schemes" (this synopsis from a recent Matt Cutts video:  http://returnonnow.com/2013/05/2013-google-penalty-plans-matt-cutts-video/ )

So, my recommendation to the customer is to simply have these nofollowed, based on the potential risk, to eliminate any additional penalty. But the customer is hesitant to believe that Google would possibly perceive these as falling into the "paid link / passing page rank" category. So it's not even concurrence on whether the site was penalized specifically for this, this time around, but whether these could be perceived as paid / page rank passing - in which case it seems the best practice would be to nofollow them. So that's the question I'm looking for input on - not why (overall) the site has been, and continues to be penalized.  All the potential issues at the moment are too many to list here.

Thanks for your input!

Thanks for your post, Karl - very good point on the branded note. The brand in this case = the business type = a top key phrase. I completely agree, there's definite risk there if little to no variance is applied (which, in this case, there is not much). As for the overall backlink profile, using OSE and much more in depth tools - it's actually not bad, nor were they penalized for their overall backlink neighborhood.

Just to clarify - there are multiple reasons for this site being penalized in the past, which we'll be addressing as we have time / resources.  It seems like it's been hit hardest by the low quality site updates, vs being penalized for bad neighborhood association. I'm just going through a process of elimination in targeting what we can / should fix that we have control over. And this fairly large set of links - all followed vs. nofollowed - stand out to me as being potentially perceived by Google as being paid / passing pagerank since nofollow has not been applied.

So what I'm looking for are thoughts on whether in this specific context (same backlinks / format, no links deper than homepage, followed vs nofollowed, placed in "paid" sections (classifieds, etc.) of news sites - might be perceived as paid per Google's quality guidelines / algo's.  If so, I am of the strong opinion that they should be nofollowed - just to eliminate even the potential for penalty, as well as adhere to best practices.

Hope that clarifies a bit, and thanks again for your insight!

Thanks for the reply, Workzentre - however - I'm not sure you're fully interpreting how follow / nofollow can work in regard to passing pagerank.  This article calls out the issue with paid links / pagerank / using nofollow pretty clearly, I think:  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html  And, as has been seen quite recently, either the publisher OR the advertiser can be penalized for not employing nofollow on this type of link.

Even if custom tagging were used, the question I'm trying to get answered is, based on their own recent algo update statement and the quality guidelines posted by Google, would these links, placed in a paid / classifieds section of a news site, and NOT set off by nofollow - be potentially perceived as paid?

This is just one small part of cleaning up a massive amount of issues for a site which has been pretty heavily penalized for low quality already. But since it also just took another hit, I'm trying to eliminate what I can as being a potential risk / cause.

Hope that makes sense, and thanks for your post!

Thanks, Adam, for the reply.  I read that as Google might send out a notice, however, vs. receiving a notice of paid links is absolute. According to Matt Cutts (this link:  http://searchengineland.com/google-sends-hundreds-of-thousands-of-webmaster-notifications-each-month-90-are-black-hat-related-148524 ) the link buying / selling notices are less than 3% combined out of all the WMT notices sent.

If you read the WMT policy, it seems to clearly state that this type of link - when NOT specifically nofollowed - violates Google's quality guidelines:  http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-reminder-about-selling-links.html

Also, if you read Rand's SEOMoz thread which you linked to, the overall consensus, even back then, along with Rand's adjusted guidance, is that there is significant risk involved with placing paid links at all.

What I'm looking for here is consensus on whether links with this specific placement (in a "paid advertiser" section of a news / classifieds site, which are NOT using nofollow, would likely be perceived by Google as potentially paid. IMO, they could easily be perceived as such, given the context.

It sounds like you think differently, which I completely respect, but it would be great to see any recent authoritative articles / resources which give more info on why these would not be interpreted as paid / passing pagerank.

Thanks!

Thanks, Carson for posting.  And no, no WMT "bad link" smackdown notice (nor is their % of toxic / suspicous links alarming).  As for a paid link warning, does Google even send those?  Either way, negative on that count, too.  There are numerous other issues with the site in question, including some hesitant architectural decisions which have resulted in a large amount of duplicate content / multiple paths to destination URLs, so the site's very likely been hammered for that as well.  Plus incredibly tortuous nav, an insane amount of links on the homepage, previously no robots.txt, no sitemap (coming soon) and at one point up to 3.4 million pages indexed (for a 30K page site).  Also two parallel coding platforms, DotNet + ihtml.

I've got a complete audit already, and we've stuffed cotton in the wounds hemorraghing the worst, while we start to tackle fixing the architecture & duplicate nav / content / non-customized URLs piece, etc.  Also addressing a number of server errors.

Aong with that, we're also working to address other potential issues, and these particular links, since they're already on paid / advertising (classifieds, etc.) pages - stand out to me as links which seem to fall under the "paid placement which can pass page rank" category, which is clearly stated to be targeted in algo updates, as well as the Google Webmaster Policy. However, the customer in this case is confident that these links are not hurting them - so it's a bit of a challenge pursuing the path of "fix what we have control over" and employ best practices.  They also rolled these backlinks out in two large batches last summer (way before I was on board), rather than spreading them out a bit, and there is little variance in the anchor text (brand name / business name).

Almost everything I've read indicates these should be nofollow, but the customer would like to read what the SEOMoz community has to say also. So here we are.

Thanks again, for your input!

Here's the challenge. I am doing some SEO triage work for a site which offers a legitimate business for sale listing service, which has a number of  FOLLOWED link placements on news / newspaper sites - like this:  http://www.spencercountyjournal.com/business-for-sale.

(The "Business Broker" links & business search box are theirs.)

The site has already been penalized heavily by Google, and just got pushed down again on May 8th, significantly (from what we see so far).

Here's the question - is this the type of link that Google would perceive of as paid / passing page rank since it's followed vs. nofollowed? What would you advise if it were your site / client?

From everything I've read, these backlinks, although perfectly legit, would likely be classified as paid / passing pagerank. But please tell me if I'm missing something.  My advice has been to request that these links be nofollowed, but I am getting pretty strong resistance / lack of belief that these links in their current state (followed) could be harming them in any way.

Would appreciate the input of the Moz community - if they won't believe me, and the majority here agrees about nofollowing, maybe they'll believe you.

Thanks!

BMT

Ah Volusion. Yes, we've run into this issue.  Unfortunately, you can't add an

around the logical spot for the product name (at the top of the page below the crumb trail)  So what we've done, and had very good results from in long tail / product-based search results, is to repeat the product name (sometimes with a bit of a keyword tweak) as the leading data in the product description area - where you do have control over the HTML.

Here's an example:  https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3y63p/5pnd?size=o

The CSS which styles the H1's was edited to match the product name display at the top of the page, for consistency.

In order to quickly implement this run of site for all products, we used the CONCAT function in Excel to append the tags, and generally used the "productname" value to populate the heading text, then appended the closing tag + the actual description, and then just inserted back into the db.

CAVEAT:  If you're pulling a product feed back out of Volusion, you'll want to strip the HTML out of that description, in order to not get wonky behavior in the CSE's (comparison shopping engines).

Hope that helps - if not, and there's anything else I can add - please let me know.

Cheers!

BMT

5pnd?size=o

Double check that the recent rel=can update for the main URL / homepage (your non-www to www) has not been accidentally applied to ALL the pages.  That single mistake can hoark a site's indexing 100%.

Ah Volusion. Yes, we've run into this issue.  Unfortunately, you can't add an

around the logical spot for the product name (at the top of the page below the crumb trail)  So what we've done, and had very good results from in long tail / product-based search results, is to repeat the product name (sometimes with a bit of a keyword tweak) as the leading data in the product description area - where you do have control over the HTML.

Here's an example:  https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3y63p/5pnd?size=o

The CSS which styles the H1's was edited to match the product name display at the top of the page, for consistency.

In order to quickly implement this run of site for all products, we used the CONCAT function in Excel to append the tags, and generally used the "productname" value to populate the heading text, then appended the closing tag + the actual description, and then just inserted back into the db.

CAVEAT:  If you're pulling a product feed back out of Volusion, you'll want to strip the HTML out of that description, in order to not get wonky behavior in the CSE's (comparison shopping engines).

Hope that helps - if not, and there's anything else I can add - please let me know.

Cheers!

BMT

5pnd?size=o

I would leverage local optimization the same way I would if the business were in an adjacent, larger metro area.  Meaning - list in and enhance / optimize the company's listings in the usual local listings channels - maps, local directories, services / products directories, etc.  Many if not almost all "local" directories will also provide nearby community search results, or give users the options of extending a search to say, a certain no. of miles / km's beyond a certain zip or postal code.  These extended searches will generally pick up a business listing from a nearby community if it's relevant to the search.  We have one client whose business address is in a very small, non-searched for locale, yet they consistently show up (via various local listings) in searches based in a nearby large metro area.  As optimize your listings and content, you might also want to refer to the company's location as in the "South Londery area" vs. or in addition to simply being in "Londery."

If you're supplementing organic search with paid, you can always use both town names where applicable in paid keyphrases, and expand your geo-targeting to include the larger community area.

Ditto what Karen said - please tell us it's not going away?  It's one of the Moz tools I use the most, especially since it does such a comprehensive CSV export.

Thanks!

-tm

In addition to the value of the relevancy of the domain name to the business, which - I agree - is a value that the individual business owner must evaluate and decide, there are two other tremendous key points in having a domain name which either matches or is highly-relevant to the primary business function.

First is the SEO value. All other factors being even (domain age, quality of landing page content, backlinks, etc. etc.) - a highly relevant domain name will almost always achieve better organic ranking vs. a similar competitor site with a less or non-relevant domain name.

Second - and this can make a tremendous difference economically over time - is the SEM / PPC value of a relevant domain name including your top keyword / key phrase will, all other factors being even, cost you less to advertise on a PPC-basis than a non-relevant domain name.  So if you're in a market where your price per click is several dollars or higher - a non-relevant domain name can cost dollars (pounds) per click more than a relevant one.  This can make a difference of tens to hundreds of thousands of increased ad budget cost over time, depending upon overall ad spend.

So while several thousand dollars / pounds for a domain name seems expensive, it's a cost that can likely be quickly amortized if it's for a commerce-based website which has a decent annual revenue, especially when you factor in paid search as well as organic.

Hi Andrew -

I've found in extensive paid / organic keyword optimization synchronization, that well-written supporting content tends to take care of the long tail pretty effectively, so for synching paid/non-paid optimization, I use the following approach:

In selecting specific paid keywords to target for improved SEO, trying to optimize for too many keywords can end up diluting your overall organic results, depending partly on site structure and site focus.  I generally look at the top-ten best performing keywords for each ad group over time - which should correspond to fairly granular / specific categories, subcategories or landing pages of a website.  Then, based upon user behavior, conversions, and average CPC, I generally most specifically optimize for the top five, then include more depending upon overall search interest, etc.  Solid SEO and high-quality, relevant supporting content for your most expensive paid keywords, should not only help support your organic results, but it should also help to keep your CPC costs down as much as possible by contributing to solid landing page Quality Scores (since QS is a factor affecting CPC).

The optimal end result is to have your website show up above the fold on search results pages for both paid and organic searches for key terms.  This is relatively easy to do for more obscure terms / long tail terms, but can be pretty challenging for extremely competitive terms / when competing with older, more established sites. This is why I'll devote more time to optimizing for the keywords / key phrases which more difficult to rank well for.

So, bottom line, I work to keep SEM costs in check and keep a site in front of customer / reader eyeballs by optimizing for the most popular, most expensive, best performing keywords / key phrases.  If 90% of traffic comes from <10% of keywords, and I can have a site rank well w/ minimal effort for the other 90% of key words / key phrases capturing traffic, then I'm going to spend the most effort on the 10% or less that bring the most traffic.  (And yes, I realize this goes against quite a bit of "optimize for the long tail" discussion - but I do a lot of SEO+SEM in synch, and targeting the long tail can become counterproductive to down right detrimental in paid search.  I find that good content will nail the long tail consistently - so it takes care of itself.)

Here's the challenge. I am doing some SEO triage work for a site which offers a legitimate business for sale listing service, which has a number of  FOLLOWED link placements on news / newspaper sites - like this:  http://www.spencercountyjournal.com/business-for-sale.

(The "Business Broker" links & business search box are theirs.)

The site has already been penalized heavily by Google, and just got pushed down again on May 8th, significantly (from what we see so far).

Here's the question - is this the type of link that Google would perceive of as paid / passing page rank since it's followed vs. nofollowed? What would you advise if it were your site / client?

From everything I've read, these backlinks, although perfectly legit, would likely be classified as paid / passing pagerank. But please tell me if I'm missing something.  My advice has been to request that these links be nofollowed, but I am getting pretty strong resistance / lack of belief that these links in their current state (followed) could be harming them in any way.

Would appreciate the input of the Moz community - if they won't believe me, and the majority here agrees about nofollowing, maybe they'll believe you.

Thanks!

BMT