Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Miriam,

I'm sorry to hear that phone trees are an issue for you, as well. Yes, other than the hope of temporarily disconnecting the phone tree, our only other option that we have found is to set up an @domain email and work with a site's support with that added authority. I hope that your teammates have some additional suggestions; looking forward to your response!

Jack

We have several clients whose practices have phone trees enabled for their primary number, which means we aren't able to send automated verification calls for Google, Yelp, ExpressUpdate (Infogroup), YellowPages, etc. Sometimes our clients are able to temporarily disable their phone trees, and sometimes said site's support teams manually verify for us once we have proven our association with the businesses. We just wanted to reach out to see if anyone had alternative solutions or workarounds, since phone trees usually cause a significant hangup. Thanks!

Totally agree with Jared.

If you're only selling one product, it doesn't make sense from a user perspective to have a different page for each keyword variation. Google is smart enough to figure this out. Just use those variations naturally on one juicy page describing all the features and benefits of the product.

If you want to go into more detail about a specific feature or benefit of the product, there's your opportunity to create a new page. Catch a prospective customer at an earlier stage in the sales funnel. Maybe they don't know about Digital Imaging Software. Maybe they just have a problem, and they're searching for a solution. Your subpages could target those more specific search queries.

Check out this post from Matt Gratt for ideas for expanding your keyword research.

I don't see any problem with your approach. By combining all of these resources into one blog post, you're essentially curating content from your own site.

As long as the post provides unique value to the user, then you're golden. In my mind, the value comes with packaging all these different resources into one post, making it easier for the reader to find all the info they need.

I would recommend rewriting the content with this angle in mind. And like Michael said, link to the old blog posts as a way of expanding on certain topics.

Ditto. Thanks for the info, Dirk!

Thanks for pointing me to the other Q&A, Donna.

We've tried most the techniques described in the thread. But I still haven't tried to segment the traffic based on valid hostnames. That sounds like a more efficient way to do it.

It will probably still be time-intensive with 2,500+ sites, but I don't know of any other way. I'm hoping that will take care of a good chunk of the spam referrals.

Thanks again!

Hello, everyone -

I'm looking for guidance on how to block or filter referral spam in Google Analytics. But I'm needing to block for an entire network of Wordpress websites. We have two networks which total over 2,500 websites. We are currently blocking sites we find out about via htaccess. This works, but only after we see we are getting hit with the spam. Updating 2,500+ Google Analytics accounts with filtering is not an ideal option due to the time factor and the fact that new bots coming out almost daily. We can continue the htaccess method, but does anyone have any other ideas for blocking referral spam for a large network of sites? These are the other ideas we have.

1. Blocking all traffic from Russia and China based up subnets. We know many will still get through, but it should block 50% of it, we hope.
2. Moving sites to Google Tag manager.  This is a huge tasks but we have seen that sites using Tag Manager are not effected, at least for now.

Other ideas are appreciated!

Thank you for the response, Miriam, that's very helpful!

Hey everyone,

Over the last few weeks Yahoo Local's Basic Listings have been failing left and right for me. When working to verify a business listing, I have been trying the phone, snail mail and email verifications specifically, and am 100% sure I've been inputting the correct code, yet no matter how many attempts I make, I get the following error:

http://i.imgur.com/pJ7ggBx.jpg

This is for multiple accounts, not just a single instance. Seems Yahoo's just got an unfixed, prevalent bug. I've reached out to their Support for information, but they have been unresponsive.

Anyone else running into this issue?

This is great! Thank you, Miriam.

Totally agree with Jared.

If you're only selling one product, it doesn't make sense from a user perspective to have a different page for each keyword variation. Google is smart enough to figure this out. Just use those variations naturally on one juicy page describing all the features and benefits of the product.

If you want to go into more detail about a specific feature or benefit of the product, there's your opportunity to create a new page. Catch a prospective customer at an earlier stage in the sales funnel. Maybe they don't know about Digital Imaging Software. Maybe they just have a problem, and they're searching for a solution. Your subpages could target those more specific search queries.

Check out this post from Matt Gratt for ideas for expanding your keyword research.

I agree with Chris - it's definitely old school and can look a little spammy, especially if it is overused or calls attention to a somewhat unnatural use of a keyword.

That being said, I don't think bolding a keyword will incur a penalty from Google. If emphasizing the keyword provides some kind of value to a user, than you should definitely consider using it.

One additional point you could make to attract participants is that writing about their area of expertise can actually make them more of an expert.

Only when we write do we really solidify our thoughts and opinions. By contributing articles, you not only "show your expertise," you grow your expertise.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, EGOL. This is an approach I have been using, so I'm relieved to have it verified by another professional. I've been focusing on claiming listings, keeping them consistent, and linking back to the website. Hopefully, this will benefit my clients in the long run.

I don't see any problem with your approach. By combining all of these resources into one blog post, you're essentially curating content from your own site.

As long as the post provides unique value to the user, then you're golden. In my mind, the value comes with packaging all these different resources into one post, making it easier for the reader to find all the info they need.

I would recommend rewriting the content with this angle in mind. And like Michael said, link to the old blog posts as a way of expanding on certain topics.