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We've had some shuffling for a keyword in the SERP results over last few days! Anyone else seeing their rankings bounce all over? It's only affecting one keyword that was previously a stable performer - this has occurred for the last few weeks (with no major changes to the page). Would be keen to hear your thoughts!
Thanks, I thought as much, just wanted to look into every avenue.
Currently we have a big drop down navigation menu with a hell of a lot of links for this site:
SEOmoz is complaining that pretty much all pages have too many links, around the 160 link mark.
Should I think about nofollowing all or certain links on the navigation
Yeah, report it. Lazy SEOs shouldn't benefit, it sends out a bad message.
The purpose of the canonical tag is to tell Google which page to index first. So, on that note, I usually use the canonical tag on the strongest page in terms of pagerank, as this shows which page is linked to the best.
I'm also guessing you're using a framwork/platform like Magento, this can make linking quite difficult. I often suggest creating Brand pages, and link to the product page, the "3rd URL", from there. Brand pages also great for SEO, as most people search for brands first. Great place to get some fat head keywords in.
Also, make sure you put in the http:// as well, I think it is good practice to put in the full URL.
I agree with the above 2 comments, but it could also be because the pages are fairly fresh, and so need a little more time to build their page rank.
I think it may also have something to do with the amount of traffic the pages actually get.
You see it in blogs all the time. Some really popular* posts, can get decent page rank, whereas others don't, even when they are on the same level.
*Popular through analytics, not from comments or links, but merely traffic. Maybe Google notices them more. Maybe link juice is more powerful if users go through the link. Who knows.
Where are you getting this data from?
It might be because the sites have been deindexed, because they were rubbish and spammy links.
If they were all coming from one site (i.e. a site wide link), that website might have been taken down or deleted your links.
If you saw the difference in OpenSiteExplorer or the moz bar, it might be because they sites were not recrawled this time around?
I would say it's a good thing. I think it's something that Google could not punish.
Think about how many clothing brands will have a "buy from here" links. It would be ridiculous for them to punish that, it's a clear and distint sign that you sell their product, or you represent their brand.
You might not get too much link juice from them if they have hundreds of suppliers under one page.
I don't think there is any hard evidence on them, Rand talks about the footers and manipulation here:
There is evidence on the fact that if they are linking to a page that has already been linked to higher in the code, they count for nothing. Only the first anchor text links count in google's eyes. So unless you're linking to pages that are not within the nav, it's fairly pointless from an SEO point of view.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
I think using the Footer for linking to pages already linked to is a waste of time. People use the navigation to find the page they're looking for. Footer anchors should be used for the stuff people expect to see there, i.e. T&Cs, policies, trust signals, awards, contact us, address, Company No. etc.
I don't think there is any hard evidence on them, Rand talks about the footers and manipulation here:
There is evidence on the fact that if they are linking to a page that has already been linked to higher in the code, they count for nothing. Only the first anchor text links count in google's eyes. So unless you're linking to pages that are not within the nav, it's fairly pointless from an SEO point of view.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
I think using the Footer for linking to pages already linked to is a waste of time. People use the navigation to find the page they're looking for. Footer anchors should be used for the stuff people expect to see there, i.e. T&Cs, policies, trust signals, awards, contact us, address, Company No. etc.
I just want to confirm something about duplicate content.
On an eCommerce site, if the meta-titles, meta-descriptions and product descriptions are all unique, yet a big chunk at the bottom (featuring "why buy with us" etc) is copied across all product pages, would each page be penalised, or not indexed, for duplicate content?
Does the whole page need to be a duplicate to be worried about this, or would this large chunk of text, bigger than the product description, have an effect on the page.
If this would be a problem, what are some ways around it? Because the content is quite powerful, and is relavent to all products...
Cheers,