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Hi Purple Indigo,

If I can, I'll try and actually telephone the person I want the link from - this way they can't bin my enquiry out-of-hand without reading it! It is much, much easier to get the link you want if you can speak to the person (if the person runs a business local to me, I'll try and meet them for coffee to ask!) If I can't speak to a link prospect, I will email them. These have a lower success rate than the ones initiated by phone.

We haven't created any link bait for our sites. This is mostly down to a lack of resource. I can't ask for a designer/writer's time for something that may not work. But, having said that, we do create a ton of regular advice articles (I work for a mortgage broker specialising in landlord mortgages) and these get linked to naturally (but there is no control over these links, but they are still very nice to have!!!)

What are your preferred methods?

Amelia

I honestly don't think the fundamentals have changed that much from when I started out in SEO about 10 years ago. Yes, some link building techniques have become toxic and some onsite practices too, but SEO in it's most basic form has not changed. We are still trying to make sure our site is the best match for the search queries we want to rank for. And, the way we get there is still the same - on-page techniques backed-up by quality links from relevant sources.

No black and white animal ever spoiled my rankings and I believe it is because I have always erred on the side of caution. Sometimes, I've been desperate for links and come close to making poor decisions though! I always compile a list of links before I start actually trying to build them and I always look at the list afresh the next day. If something gets in due to me feeling a little desperate, I can always take it out the next day when I'm thinking more clearly!

To be relevant in 2014, you must do the same as you should have been doing in 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.... etc. That is to say,. you should be reading Google's webmaster guidelines and make sure you don't do anything against the 'rules'. You should be creating content that people actually want to read, to watch, to listen to, to gaze at.... It's not easy getting this right but I've found a good way of making sure my content resonates with my target audience is to read forums to get an idea of the sorts of things people are worried about/interested in or talking about online.

You may find it does the opposite of what you intend if your visitors don't use social media - they'll feel left out of the party and nobody likes that! There are many many reasons why someone would choose not to be on social media, and forcing them to have an account just to read an article is never going to work - they'll just leave and find the content elsewhere on the web.

Check analytics to see how socially engaged your visitors are. If they are, then I'd test it as a tactic - it may not work for long though, because it's the sort of thing Google doesn't like ('Don't do as I do, do as I say!!!!')

I bet Mr Cutts is thinking of a way to thwart your plan as I type this

Good luck whatever you do, and please let us know what the outcome is!

Amelia

Hi All,

My developer has asked me some questions that I do not know the answer to. We have both searched for an answer but can't find one.... So, I was hoping that the clever folk on Moz can help!!!

Here is couple questions that would be nice to clarify on.

What is the actual address/name of file for news xml.

Can xml site maps be generated on request?

Consider following scenario: spider requests http://mypage.com/sitemap.xml which permanently redirects to extensionless MVC 4 page http://mypage.com/sitemapxml/ . This page generates xml.

Thank you,

Amelia

I think you'll need to create a new Google account for the MCC, then you can create as many child accounts within the MCC as you like

One thing though....

You say in your original post that an agency has been managing your dental Adowrds account - so surely this account still exists and you should be able to take control of it? I would try and do this if you can so you can compare your PPC against what the agency ran for you.

If it is an in-house CMS I see no reason why you can't make your developer do the work to get it exactly how you want it. Otherwise, what's the bloody point in having a bespoke CMS?

Devs will nearly always say things aren't possible when they are. It's a constant battle. I know because I've battled it before.

I should say that I am not involved in this battle currently -  our current dev is incredibly accommodating and just does everything I ask - believe me its a breath of fresh air and makes a massive difference. I have a situation where stuff our old dev said was impossible have suddenly become so!

Haha Looks like Branden beat me to it with the same advice!

Hi Erik,

You need to set up a 'My Client Center' account and link your adwords accounts to this. This will give you completely separate reporting etc. Link below explains it:

http://www.google.com/adwords/myclientcenter/

If you get stuck, just phone your Google account manager! (Log into your adwords account and click on 'Help' in the top right hand side and then choose 'phone' and it'll give you the phone number for your country).

Good luck

Amelia

Hi,

It sounds as though you have done everything right.

BUT - (this is a bug-bear of mine) Google doesn't display breadcrumb rich snippet info on https pages.

Also, some directories won't link to https pages (not ever seen this as a major issue because it's usually the spammy directories that do this)

Amelia

Thank you - we are doing competitor anaysis, but I hadn't thopught of compiling a list of common directories. Neat idea!

Thanks again for responding

Thanks - we're doing this already... I was just hoping to find some general ones as well... Hoping that someone else had done the work for me LOL.

Thank you for responding

Yes, try looking at the server response. Screaming Frog will tell you this.

Hi there,

You can use your robots.txt to noindex the incorrect URLs, then via webmaster tools you can request to have the incorrect pages removed from Google's index. (Webmaster Tools > Google Index > Remove URLs). There is a help document here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/59819?hl=en

Good luck!

Amelia

I've found WN before and thought it looked quite good due to the domain authority. However, like you say, it's just a scraper.

Hi,

I'm looking for some decent directories. I was just wondering if anyone knows of a big list of good ones?

If you have a list on financial / money related ones that would be absolutely fabulous but I know that is moon on a stick stuff...

I'm just sick of the naff ones!

Thanks,

Amelia

PS - I DO have other link building methods besides directories.

Copyscape.com will tell you if you have duplicate content. If you have a big site with loads of pages I'd buy credits or you'll have difficulty because it only lets you check a few pages per day (I can't remember what the limit is). With the paid version you can upload your xml sitemap (s) and it'll check all the pages in that file. Then the report will highlight the bits of copy that is duplicate.

I've read the guideline at health.moz.com on this issue and all it says is to reconnect the account, which is what I've already been doing.

It says that the error message is incorrect and that the tool is still collecting data, but I don't think it is. I guess I'll wait and see what happens once this has been fixed. Thank you Christy for taking the time to answer the question.

Hi Christy,

Thank you for getting back to me. I've only just checked back today, so am about to try your instructions. I'll post back when I've done it.

Thanks again,

Amelia

It's really annoying! I've had problems ever since it switched over to Moz Analytics. Only just got around to shouting about it though...

Come on Moz - it's not just me with this error!!!

I was going to suggest Screaming Frog too. There's also Xenu if you want a free tool but IMHO it isn't nearly as good as screaming frog.

Hi,

Every time I log back in to Moz my Google analytics connection breaks. I have to reconnect it every time I want to look at something.

Thanks,

Amelia

Hello,

I've done this. It had absolutely no impact on our listings. I did exactly what you are suggesting to do.

I'm not saying it'll have no impact for YOU because I don't know that, but it didn't impact me so is likely not to impact you too. If that makes sense!!!

All the best,

Amelia

Pleasure

Hi Nicholas,

Option 2 is better because the hyphens actually separate words, and so robots (like Googlebot) read them as individual words rather than alloneword.

Matt Cutts video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQcSFsQyct8 on underscores vs. hyphens (not quite your question, but it appears that underscores are 'read' by Google in the same way as your first example.

All the best,

Amelia

Hi Chiaryn,

Thank you so much for sorting out the problem with the reports.

It looks like the reports are now populated, so I think you must have fixed whatever the problem was.

All the best,

Amelia

PS Happy Halloween!

Good idea.

I don't know of any 'magic' ratio, but surely you should put nofollow on all user generated links? That's kinda what it was invented for. Normal links (or 'follow' if you will) should be used for linking out to sites you can personally recommend to your visitors - either the sites offer additional insights that your content cannot or doesn't cover, or it corroborates what you're saying (e.g. linking to a government resource or wikipedia).

Does that make sense?

Good call George.

Hi Luke,

Use the canonical tag. Some info from Google here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en

Good luck!

Amelia

Hi Josh,

I'm doing a similar thing - not exactly the same as we are merging 2 websites into one and then just for the fun of it putting the whole lot onto a new domain...

We've not done this yet as our new site is being built. Anyway, I found this webinar really useful: http://moz.com/webinars/domain-migrations-lessons-from-the-moz-transition and this blog post: http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons

I hope they help!

All the best,

Amelia

Hi Chiaryn - Thank you, I'll take a look tomorrow morning - I've had one of 'those' days and not quite got the time right at this moment.

Thank you again for helping me.

Amelia

Thanks Chiaryn!

Hi,

Is there a bug in open explorer?

I've run a few backlink reports but when I download to csv the csv's are empty... It's kinda wasted most of my afternoon

Amelia

Hi EGOL,

Thank you. I get what you are saying.

However, we do have a really good website. And I'm not just saying that.

We launched our website last July, and have been regularly updating it with information relevant for our target market: UK Landlords (We're a BTL mortgage specialist). We get around 7,000 visits per month. The majority of this traffic is from organic rankings or PPC advertising, though we are getting more and more referral traffic every month.

We regularly contribute to several influential blogs - one of which is the most influential in our niche, so I don't think our problem is that our content is poor.

Simply - I want to get a few people on board who can offer our website visitors something we can't do ourselves. Specifically, I wanted to introduce a 'Landlord's Blog' - written by  landlords, for landlords. Whilst several of my colleagues are landlords, they either don't have the time to write for us or,(sorry guys!) the skill to do it justice. Hence my wish to get a key influencer on board...

Thanks again for your input

Amelia

Hi,

I've identified a list of key influencers within my niche. I now want to connect with them, specifically to ask them to provide regular content for our site (they'll hopefully promote it via their own channels as well as us doing some promotion). The reason I want to do this is because it's easier to move Mohammed than the mountain! - I want to piggy-back on their success!

How would you go about doing this? Some of the influencers are follwing us on Twitter and I've had some nice discussions with them over the last few months or so (our Twitter has only been going since about March this year). Would you reach out via Twitter, or call them up? I really don't want to mess this up!

Thanks,

Amelia

Hi Chris,

You bring up two points here.

I don't think I can help you much with the first point, beyond saying that rankings are often volatile, and can and do move down as well as up (when I worked for an agency, we often used to say to clients (managing their expectations) that 'search isn't linear' and movement down as well as up is to be expected.) This is especially true of new campaigns.

Remember, if you lose rankings for some keywords it doesn't always matter hugely if the keyword gets few searches or the intent behind those searches doesn't match your page. (though in the second instance, you could re-write the page to make sure it fits with what the visitor is expecting to see.)  So, don't completely despair!

Check Analytics for visits and conversions - these are the metrics your bosses will be caring most about in real terms. If your work is having a positive affect on these, then you know you are definitely on the right track.

Regarding the other problem you have: most people don't want to read accounting articles. I have a similar problem with optimising a very dry and some might say dull subject. It isn't always easy to come up with things to write about in this instance. What I do, is try and work out basic 'profiles' of my intended audience, and then try and work out what sorts of things this person wants to read about (within my subject area, which is finance). Then I go ahead and write the piece. So... Think about the sorts of people who use your website - I haven't spent long looking at it, so this suggestion may not work for you, but I would think about writing things that business men and women are interested in. This could be anything, from the kinds of investments they may make to an article about juggling the work/life balance. For example - would your product help a busy working-mum get her accounts done quickly so she can focus her attention where she (presumably) would prefer it to be: with her family?

I hope this helps - keep at it, these things take time and don't whatever you do start to feel despondent about the rankings. It will happen so long as you provide high quality content and create quality backlinks to the site and blog.

Good luck!

Amelia

Hi,

I wouldn't use it either.

I was quite excited by it at first, but they let 'all sorts' in. Naturally, I searched for my niche, and found some articles, but clicking through to them revealed what I feared. whoever 'wrote' those posts either doesn't speak English as their first language or they used spinning software. I suspect it may be both, but either way I wouldn't want to be associated with such drivel.

Try myblogguest.com - it's the best guest blogging platform I've ever come across - get the paid version though because then you have access to the fantastic 'articles gallery', which is worth it, believe me.

Also, try tweeting something like: '#yourniche anyone looking for a guest blog about XYZ, #guestblogging' or something like that. You'd be surprised by the response - we have a really good regular guest blogging spot by reaching out via twitter. You may need to do a few variations, with keywords and hashtags and what-have-yous, but really try it. It won't cost you anything at all; and at least that way your outreach is with real people.

Also, try and find blogs to post on by doing backlink analysis - I have got a huge list just by going through our competitors backlinks. And the best thing about this is its infinite - your competition will always be adding new links. But, I wouldn't rely solely on backlink analysis (or any method for that matter - variety is the spice of life AND Link Building...)

Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Amelia

ps - I've recommended myblogguest to a few people on this forum. Let me explain, I have absolutely ZERO affiliation with myblogguest. I just use it as a customer. And happen to think it's the bizniz in terms of guest blogging!

Hi Everett,

Thank you - this is great info.

Have a great day

Amelia

Thank you K. - Very useful and informative.

Thank you Devanur

Hi,

We are about to rebrand.

This means we need to move all of our content on to a new domain. I want to make sure this process is as smooth as possible and we don't lose too much by way of rankings.

I have read this page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/04/best-practices-when-moving-your-site.html and plan on following the instructions to the letter, but was wondering if anyone had any additional tips? Also, the article linked above is OLD. From 2008, is there anything'new' that I should know?

Thank you (in advance) for any help you can offer, it is much appreciated!

Best wishes,

Amelia

EDIT: I forgot quite a big element when first posting this question!

We are merging two existing websites into the new URL. The two sites are for two different products we offer, but we'll now be offering both products under the same URL.

But how are they going to do it?

I wouldn't have thought they could distinguish between a guest blog and a normal blog post unless it's labelled as a guest blog (and let's face it, if Google goes after guest blogs, then all those sites promising to publish guest blogs will change their message pretty quickly).

Additionally, if a publisher agrees to publish a guest blog on their site, aren't they endorsing (voting for) the guest blogger? Wouldn't it then be a 'natural' link because the publisher has agreed for a guest to publish content on their blog and therefore must believe that whatever the guest blogger is saying is worth sharing with their visitors?  Also, the blog editor (or owner) will have to review the guest blog before publishing it, so again, it's been verified by a human. To me this seems to be perfect content, and what we want and need more of online.

One more thing. The 'problem' with guest blogs is usually down to quality, and I would agree with you that there are a load of rubbish guest blogs published on similarly rubbish sites. These are the problem, not people employing professional writers and researchers to generate useful and informative content that people actually want to read.

I just can't see how it would help the index to remove sites that provide useful content. Or, am I missing something here?

I've read this as well, but I just don't quite get how or why Google would want to go after all guest blogs! I get that some are rubbish and spammy and I guess those are the ones that cause a problem, but a guest blogging campaign should be as much about gaining traffic from referral sites rather than using if purely for link building.

I think about it like this: if a guest blog brings me traffic by itself then the SEO benefit of the link is the cherry on the cake. Without the SEO benefit, I still get targeted traffic to my site that converts.

Hi Studio33

We use My Blog Guest (http://myblogguest.com/) for our guest posting activity.

I recently petitioned my boss to be allowed the paid version, and it's well worth it! We have the most basic plan (can't remember what it's called, but it's the cheapest one there) which allows us to post 10 articles in the Articles Gallery. I think there are other plans, but I couldn't say how good they are or not because I haven't used them!

Before using the paid version we'd spend ages on the my blog guest forum trying to get guest posts from relevant sites, but it just wasn't time-effective for us. But, if you're not 100% sure if you want to pay for it or not, then go for the free version to test the waters - especially if your budget is tight (though I do think the price is fair for the service they offer - which is excellent).

I also send out tweets on a fairly irregular basis with the hashtags #guestblog and #guestbloggers if I really need something quick, and that works pretty well (we got a regular guest blogging spot on a very influential and high trafficked blog in our niche from sending out tweets).

Good luck with your guest blogging - it is worthwhile.

Amelia

What's the problem?

Thank you again, Scott!

Thanks for replying Scott!

In webmaster tools there are 25 crawl errors. These are all pages that never actually existed on that site. Like I say the IT department messed up the DNS when they set our landlords site live - all the landlords pages were listed under the smartloan domain.

I haven't marked them as 'fixed' yet because I haven't actually fixed them (yet)!

Landlords does not reference smartloan at all - and vice versa. They are completely separate businesses (though owned by the same holding company).

I haven't done a change of address - maybe I should have done this back in July 2012 when this problem first happened?? All I did then was to noindex the urls in smartloan's robots.txt, then in WMT I did the remove urls thing, which worked back in July.

What is concerning me is whether this will affect smartloan - as a business it will pretty much depend on natural search visits, and won't survive without it...

Thank you again for replying and for your reassurance that it probably isn't something to worry about - my developer says the same thing, so maybe I'll just let sleeping dogs lie and hope for the best!

Have a great evening (or morning/afternoon if you're in a different time zone!!!)

Amelia

I may be missing the point here, but why do you need two pages at all? Google understands synonyms so surely as boat / ferry are essentially the same thing, you could probably get away with just writing one... Especially as the message would be the same for both topics.

If you feel you need two pages, then definitely make them unique!

As for URLs - if you can, make sure your keyword is in the url.

Hope this helps

Hi,

I'm going to have to give you a little bit of a back story here...

In July last year we launched a brand new website, www.turnkeylandlords.co.uk. It was on a new domain.

The IT department set it live, and unfortunately messed up the DNS settings so that the site was launched under the wrong domain, smartloan.co.uk.

This error was rectified within hours.

Unfortunately in those few hours, Google indexed it!

I then had to set up webmaster tools for both domains, so I could use the 'remove URLs' tool in there, to remove all the URLs from the smartloan domain.

That all worked fine, the Landlords site was probably set back a bit, but we're now achieving some quite good results for it.

2 weeks ago we launched Smartloan as a product, and of course launched the website we've been working on for months...

You guessed it! Google is now looking for all those old Landlords pages under Smartloan.

My first thought is that we should do 301s. Would that be the best course of action, do you think? Webmaster tools has found 25 of them so far, but I know there are more - the Landlords site launched with about 90 pages...

And where should I send the 301's? To the Landlords site, or to the smartloan root?

Is there anything else I should do?

Thanks for your help!

Amelia

Thank you Marcus!

I didn't even think of deleting the original 301! What a bloomin' obvious solution

I really appreciate you taking the time to answer this for me.

Amelia