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If you're an ecommerce site owner, will you be changing how you deal with unavailable products as a result of the recent video from Matt Cutts? Will you be moving over to a 404 instead of leaving the pages live still?

For us, as more products were becoming unavailable, I had started to worry about the impact of this on the website (bad user experience, Panda issues from bounce rates, etc.).

But, having spoken to other website owners, some say it's better to leave the unavailable product pages there as this offers more value (it ranks well so attracts traffic, links to those pages, it allows you to get the product back up quickly if it unexpectedly becomes available, etc.).

I guess there's many solutions, for example, using ItemAvailability schema, that might be better than a 404 (custom or not).  But then, if it's showing as unavailable on the SERPS, will anyone bother clicking on it anyway...?

Would be interested in your thoughts.

Has anyone used Ninjapinner?  I'm interested in automating my Pinterest efforts a little, and have seen this tool mentioned.  Interested in using it to (carefully) autofollow accounts.

TIA!

Thanks both.

We sponsor a few blogs in our niche. As part of the sponsorship, they include an advert on the RHS or LHS of the blog page.  Links are dofollow and are sitewide.

Should I be concerned?  Should I be asking for a nofollow instead, if possible?

I've recently disavowed links and am waiting to see what happens with this - hopefully there's a Penguin update soon - but I wondered if the blog links were part of the problem.

Hi Marc

I hope you don't mind me dropping you a line, but I wondered what you decided to do in the end and whether it was a positive outcome?

We too have suffered an algo penalty and have gone down the link removal/disavow route.  We've also invested into redevelopment of the site.  But, it doesn't seem to be enough and I'm now looking at the possibility of changing the domain as the next step, if things don't improve in the next couple of months.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Hi Manroop,

You posted this a while ago and I wondered what you decided to do in the end and what the outcome was.  I'm interested as I, too, have been hit by Penguin. I've disvowed/removed links, but have not had any further joy - although I need to wait until the next Penguin update before deciding on next steps.  Probably changing the domain is the next step.

In terms of Google +, I need to swot up on this as I'll admit I don't have much of a clue!  Noticed a mozinar video about it, I think, so will look at that as a starting point.

Cheers for this: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies.  I've had a brief look so far, but will look at the article more thoroughly when I get chance.

Thanks Marie.

Sorry, yes, by "take effect", I meant see better results in the SERPS.

I understand that I have been affected by Penguin (I had an audit carried out by Paul Macnamara, who you referred me onto.  He was great, BTW).

So I guess it's just a waiting game.  I'm crossing my fingers very tightly!

From Paul's audit, I do have a good base of links, and I am continuing to build them.  Also, for many keywords, the site actually ranked higher before any link building was ever done by the bad SEO company.  With these things in mind, I'm really, really, really hoping that my fortunes will change on the next Penguin refresh - whenever that might be!!  Will be very disappointed if not.  SUCH a frustrating thing as it feels very much out of my control.

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Marie, in your experience, does it take weeks or months or most disavows to take effect?  I submitted my disavow file 3 weeks ago and nothing so far...

What's the most effective/least risky ways to engage with bloggers these days in order to build links, gain exposure and refer traffic?  I'm in a competitive niche (weddings), and there's no shortage of high quality and unique content being offered to bloggers.

Currently, I do a mix of sponsorship, product giveaways, promotions etc.  But, also have some ideas in the pipeline, such as collaborating with other vendors on styled shoots, etc.  The latter is very time-consuming and, again, is something that has been done LOADS.  So, needs to be very unique to stand out.

Want to avoid things like guest blogs and riskier tactics. For obvious reasons.

Any fairly easy-to-do ideas that I've missed before I explore the more complex ones??

My ecommerce website has menus which contain 'featured product sub-categories'.  These are shown alongside the other product sub-category links.  Each 'featured product category' includes a link, an image (with link) and some text.

All menu content is visible to search engines.

These menus look nice and probably encourage CTR (not tested!) but are they bad for SEO?

Thanks Greg, I've just been mulling everything over before responding and posting further.

Your last post gives me a glimmer of hope. Congratulations on recovering the site, you must have been seriously pleased that it paid off.  I must admit, though, that everything else that I have read on Moz and elsewhere suggests that I should do the whole emailing (probably several rounds), documenting and then disavow thing.  Do you have any links that you can possibly share, please?  Just want to ensure that I'm doing the right thing, before embarking on it.

As a general update, since my last post, I have:

• Scrutinised traffic trends in Google Analytics against Penguin/Panda update dates. There really aren't any sudden drops that I can pinpoint, but more continual erosion over time.  Like your situation, I have also seen rankings plummet for certain keywords only.   Due to over use on exact match in anchor text, undoubtedly. But, these keywords didn't necessarily yield high search volume, so hard to see trends with these too.

• **Ran a Link Detox report. ** This shows -

  • 78 toxic links (6.6%)
  • 759 suspicious links (64%)
  • 347 healthy links (29.3%)

• Had a quote for link removal from a different SEO - unsure whether to outsource this or do it myself.  The quote seems reasonable (and a lot cheaper than the original SEO's quote).

• Arranged a telephone call with an industry PR company, who can maybe assist with gaining earned links.

So, moving forward, I'll look to get a quote for a site audit.  (Thanks for your links, I'm UK based though so probably would be best to use someone in the same country).

Any other options to consider?  Should I do the link removal myself (using Link Detox and rmoov) or outsource it to someone who's done it before (not sure how successfully though)?

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, the same link is displayed three times in the navigation menu (so two repeats)!  There are 3 of these featured menu items in total.

I thought the official line from Google was no to nofollows for internal links?  Has this changed?

Sorry if I've not been very clear. I'm not particularly concerned about industry blog links, it was more that I was just trying to convey link volume. (But not very well, admittedly).

No unnatural links warning in Google WMT.

Nor was there a sudden plummet of traffic either, as far as I can tell.

Thanks both.