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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??

Hi Emma

First of all, great news that your penalty was lifted. Are things back to what they were prior to the penalty being imposed?

In terms of my website... As it's an algorithmic penalty, not a manual one, there's no reinclusion request to submit in my case.  So, the only way I can show penance is to show that some links have been manually removed - most likely I would only get a very small percentage of these removed, if any, due to the spammy nature of these sites.

I can still go through this outreach process.  But, I mainly wondered if there was any disadvantage in doing the disavow first. I am very concerned that there could be a Penguin update before I get chance to outreach then disavow.  Due to the seasonality of my market, a few weeks can make a dramatic difference to the chance of survival of the business.  The window of opportunity for sales happens in the spring and summer.

I can always do a second round of disavowing afterwards.

Thanks

Coral

Interesting video... loving Matt Cutts' T-shirt

There's no reinclusion request to be made as it's just an algorithmic penalty.  Not a manual penalty.

Your stats are interesting, and show much better success than anyone else's I've heard. 50% is amazing, but doesn't seem that representative of the general experience (from what I've read). Well done to you though.

Just to clarify, I'm not thinking that there will be a Penguin update in the next three weeks.  Rather, if there is an update and I haven't actioned it, that's things looking pretty bleak for me for the entire season. Because, by the time the next one arrives, it could be too late (as things are quiet again).

I need to remove/disavow hundreds of domains due to an algorithmic penalty.  Has anyone disavowed first and done the outreach thing second as a tactic?

The reason why I was considering this was as follows:

• Most of the websites are from spammy websites and unlikely to have monitored accounts/available contact details.
• My business is incredibly seasonal, only being easily profitable for half of the year. The season starts from next month so the window of opportunity to get it done is small. If there's a Penguin update before I get it done, then it could be very bad news.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

(Incidentally, if you are interested in, I also posted here about it: http://moz.com/community/q/honest-thoughts-needed-about-link-building-removal)

Thanks Craig, I agree with you that I need to try and get these dodgy links removed rather than going for the more straight forward disavow option.  I've now identified the links, actually 3k URLs but much less domains.

Can you recommend any programs that will obtain contact info and manage the emailing process?  I have signed up for a trial with Rmoov and tried to obtain contain info but it's not really worked.

Oh, it's an algorithmic penalty, not a manual penalty, sorry if I wasn't clear,

I have an ecommerce website (built using Magento), and have just had the functionality extended to allow me to define my own canonical URLs.  Currently the URLs are www. domainname.com/product-name.html but I can now change this to www.domainname. com/product-category/product-name.html.  I was led to believe that this would be good for SEO.

However, I have since had conflicting advice - it's been suggested that any links across the website that link to domain/category/sub-category/product will pass weight and authority through to the specified canonical anyway.   Plus longer URLs are generally worse...

I'm confused. Is it worth changing them?  If so, would it be a bad thing to change all 700 canonical URLs at once?

Good point, I think I probably need to err on the side of caution and not go overboard, as you say.

Yes, already planning things like product Q&As and reviews to help with the product pages.

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Wow, Dr Pete replied to my question! Thank you - and, actually, thanks to everyone who took the time to post.

UPDATE...

Since my last posts, I have actually moved forward a little. I did have an audit undertaken by someone that specialises in traffic drops. It transpires that it's not very clear cut - definitely not entirely a clear link-based penalty situation - and the indications are that it's probably Panda with a touch of Penguin. Upshot is, I'm having the site redesigned to minimise duplicate/thin content issues (and generally improve the user experience) and I have engaged someone to do the link removal outreach/disavow. Still early days, but now I have some kind of game plan, I feel a little more optimistic.

TBH, I'm still a little wary about the link removal/disavowal process, but we'll see... I had such varying quotes for this work, it's crazy.

And, still need to crystallise in my mind how I'm going to earn new links.

Thanks Kurt, appreciate your reply. I will be using both ideas to incorporate as much text content as possible!

For some of the category pages, it won't be possible to do this as the category only contains, say, 9 products.  So, for these categories, I was thinking of using a secondary description below the products.  Only the first paragraph will be visible, the rest appears on clicking 'read more' (but all content loads at once).  Good or bad idea?

Appreciate any comments you may have!

I have an ecommerce website that has common text on all the product pages, e.g. delivery and returns information.

Is it ok to use non-crawlable JavaScript injected text as a method to make this content invisible to search engines?  Or is this method frowned upon by Google?

By way of background info - I'm concerned about duplicate/thin content, so want to tackle this by reducing this 'common text' as well as boosting unique content on these pages.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

I need to remove around 800 bad links, probably about 500 domains as a very rough estimate.  These were built by a previous link building company.  Here some example domains:

http://globalweddingblog.com
http://theweddinginsider.net
http://www.couturefashionissues.com
http://www.topfashionlabels.com
http://weddingworldnews.com
http://www.savingsdistrict.com
http://bestfemalesblog.com
http://mylatestfashion.com
http://lastfashion.net
http://womansonlineblog.org

I have already tried emailing a hundred or so with a manual link request - with zero outcome.  Hardly surprising when you consider the types of sites they are.  I've had a quote for a link removal service, but I'm not sure if it's wise to pay someone to do this work - not sure what resources/tools they would have above and beyond what I can access and there could be increased risk.

Any advice?

I need to signficantly boost the content on the category pages on my ecommerce website.  Currently, they're pretty thin, with some only having approx 50 words of unique content.  In the past, I've intentionally kept the content on these pages quite light, to keep the aesthetic a certain way.  It's a fashion-based site, so it's very much about the visual.

However, with the introduction of Panda, I need to change this mindset.  But, there must be slightly more creative ways to boost the content to stop the pages looking too text heavy.  I'm not talking hidden text or anything, but ways to break it up in different blocks on the page to make it look natural/relevant, while keeping it looking great.

Anyone have any good ideas? Or, any links to ecommerce sites that have employed brilliant methods?

Thank you, I'll probably go with the header and footer approach or just the footer.

Thanks guys.

... In particular Facebook likes for social proof and credibility?  (We have 1.7k likes, more than most competitors).

Aimed at the higher end of the market, I've tried to keep the aesthetic a bit more pared down.  But, perhaps this needs to be made more prominent?

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)?

I've spent the last few hours just reading up on disavowing. (This by Marie Haynes, who contributes on MOZ, has some eye-opening articles on it).

Based on this, I think it might be just too risky to use the disavow tool. I haven't read any success stories with using the tool, and think it could even harm my site.

Thanks, I have read through the information on the link that you sent over. Sounds fairly simple on the face of it, although I was under the impression that you had to demonstrate that you had made the effort to have the links removed prior to going down the disavow route. Perhaps this is no longer the case?

Re: desperate measures, I'm not quite there yet, but if I spend a whole chunk of cash (investment level, certainly, for my business) and it doesn't work, then that would probably be it really, very sadly.

Thank you, replied.

It's tweaked/refreshed continually, albeit at a pretty low level.  I'm certainly not blogging every day, for example.

Thank you.

My last SEO actually generated some reports using link detox. He thought it was a good tool. But, he never did any link removal. (That was never his remit). He forwarded a list of links to me to action. I started to email the 'webmasters' but never got anywhere - literally nothing from a couple of hundred emails.

I should add that the first link building company went bust. I think all the links they built were perhaps on a blog network, e.g. Wordpress 'blogs' with no real person managing them. Which is a problem!

If link removal requests are going into the ether, what options do I have?

Saying the link removal requests don't work, I would go down the disavow route. If (big if) I manage to successfully disavow, is there a chance my rankings could get worse??

Sorry, I'm asking more questions now. Any further guidance much appreciated.

It's a brand (which is pretty established now) so can't really start all over.

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.

I have a small online business that has suffered through Google updates over the past year.  Turns out that the links built by a previous SEO were harmful - yes, it's the usual story, I know.

I've been in touch with an SEO about link removal/link building and have had a proposal.  It's not cheap and I would need to dig deep, but it'll certainly be worth it if things work out.  If it doesn't, it'll probably become impossible to continue the business. Personally speaking, it's a sorry situation.

For link removal, the SEO's proposing to contact the webmasters followed by disavowing, if needed. There's 15k links, but I think a high percentage of these are from industry blogs that I sponsor that have site wide links.

Have you heard many success stories about outsourced link removal?

For link building, they will be targeting industry websites and blogs.  The thing is, I know most of the industry bloggers anyway, and can probably reach out to them myself, if I can develop the right high quality content that they will want to feature.  Call me a cynic, but I'm not sure how the SEO can do this.  The quality of content on these blogs is extremely high as it's a very creative/visual industry that I'm involved in.  I'm just not sure how much scope there is for a third party (with no knowledge of the industry) to do this effectively.  That said, there's blogs that aren't directly related to my niche, and I suppose there's possible opportunity there.  Maybe??!

If the link removal is a good idea, am I better off trying to build links myself and combine that with the link removal service?

Now been reindexed. Thank you.

Thanks Chris, yes, that's a good point that Google still has knowledge of these pages.  At least that's one positive.  I guess I will need to be patient.

Thanks very much.

Generally speaking, how long does it take for Google to recrawl/reindex an (ecommerce) website?

After changing a number of product subcategories from 'noindex' back to 'index', I regenerated the sitemap and have fetched as Google in WMT.

This was a couple of weeks ago and no action yet.

Second question: Does Google treat these pages as if they're brand new?  I 'noindexed' them back in April, and they were ranking ok then.

(I had noindexed them on the back of advice from my SEO, due to concerns about these pages being seen as duplicate content).

Help!

Thanks, I think I'll just leave these for now as it's only three sub categories that have the 'tripling up' of links.  Appreciate you both taking the time to reply.

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?

Thanks, I have regenerated the xml sitemap.  Fingers crossed it doesn't take too long to see the pages fall back into the index!

As it happens, my developer has since emailed back to say that there is a canonical link for each category but it points to itself. Is that a problem?? He can't tell me.

Thinking about it, I'm unsure about manually adding a canonical link for each product/category.  I'm concerned about errors creeping in over time, with URL changes, etc. With hundreds of products, I think it won't be too difficult for this to happen.  Plus, the XML is automatically generated, so don't think the URLs will match. Have you had encountered these problems before?

Thanks for taking the trouble to answer.  I have now made all categories 'index, follow'.

No canonicals are automatically added to category pages, so can't use this technique.  Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Should I 'Fetch as Google' in WMT?  If so, is it best to add the URL for every single category that I've updated?  Or, just wait?

Appreciate your help, Lynn.

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?

The website uses Magento version 1.4. which actually does have the canonical link back to the base URL feature. This was in place already before I started even messing around with making these changes.

I will revert the categories back to 'index, follow'.  Some questions about this:

• Is it best to do it all at once (or will this look odd/'unnatural' somehow from Google's perspective)
• How long will it take for these pages to re-rank?  They were made noindex in April, so would it be like starting again as if these were totally brand new pages?

Another SEO has recommended another approach, which is to identify the 'best' URL (from SEO point of view) and add the canonical link to the rest. Is there a way to implement/manage this easily in Magento?  I can't seem to find a solution online on this.

I have an ecommerce site built using Magento and urgently need advice on best practice for handling multiple product categories (where products appear in more than one category on the site creating multiple URLs to the same page).

In April this year, based on advice from my SEO who felt that duplicate content issues were causing my rankings to be held back, I changed about 25% of the product categories to 'noindex, follow'. This has made organic traffic fall (obviously) as these pages fell out of Google's index.  But, contrary to what I was hoping for, it didn't then improve rankings - not one iota, nothing - which was the ONLY reason why I did this. This has had a real negative impact on sales, so I'm starting to think this was actually an a terrible idea.

Should I change them back?

And to ask a wider question, what is best practice for this particular scenario?