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By that, I mean that does Google just devalue spammy links, or does it devalue the links and penalize your site on top of it?
Does it hit specific keywords, or does it have effects site wide?
Does penguin run constantly, or only on specific days?
If spammy links are removed, how long does it take to recover?
One of customers provides IT Support for a municipality. The municipality's website (1000+ pages) has a footer link with the anchor text "IT Support" linking to our customer's site. The link is there for employees to get help. In mid summer, our customer's rankings tanked for "IT Support". It looks like a hit by Penguin. The question is, could removing the links bring the rankings back? Does Google's penguin algorithm penalize you for the footer links, or are they simply de-valued? Should we pull them down or no-follow them? If they aren't truly hurting their rankings, we would just leave them
EGOL:
If Google decides to drop your rankings instead of sandboxing your site, do they send you a warning?
I have a customer, a Psychologist, who put up +/-20 websites many years ago. He has 1 main site (with his name as the domain) with hundreds of pages of quality content. The other sites are all exact match domains - anxiety counseling, couples counseling, etc. Some are single page sites, others have a good amount of quality content. Many of the EMD sites were getting ranked on the first page, as was the main site. The money site was ranking on the first page for the best keywords
All of the EMD pages linked back to the main site, many with site wide footer links. The main site did not link back. All of the sites are on the same IP address. These sites have been in place for years. I don't believe that he has a duplicate content problem.
About 8 weeks ago, the rankings for the main site crashed, moving 10 or more SERP pages deep. The EMD sites are still ranking. He has not gotten any nasty-grams from Google in Webmaster Tools.
The Psychologist relies exclusively on organic for his business, and it has taken a significant hit.
1. Has anyone else seen this happen?
2. Is it safe to assume that Google finally nailed him for using a linking scheme?
3. How can we unwind this? The other sites are still generating business, and if those go away, he is really screwed.
4. Will taking down all of the links from the other sites be enough? Would moving the money site to another hosting company on a different IP make a difference? Ideas?
I think the white hat answer would be to take down the EMD sites, and 301 redirect to the main site. The problem is that the loss of business from this process could be catastrophic.
We are looking for a solution that will allow us to create attractive and effective PPC landing pages with WordPress. We need to be able to easily create multiple pages with no navigation. Any Suggestions?
I have 2 questions:
1. To check keyword rankings with firefox, i am choosing:
Tools>Options>Privacy>"clear all current history"
Timerange to clear: Everything
Check Boxes: Browsing and download history, form and search history, cookies, cache, active logins
Is there anything else I need to be doing?
2. Search results in my Niche are heavily localized. Is there any way to check rankings in another area? Ex: By default, our rankings are for Northeast NJ. Is there any way to check Baltimore, for example?
I don't want to give details, but a competitor's site ranks ahead of us by a spot or 2 for some of our major keywords, and we can't figure out why. We have more content indexed, we have better content (my opinion), we're better optimized, we have significantly better MozRank and Majestic rankings, we have more links, we have better links. They have a plain Jane Wordpress blog, and their pages don't even have 300 characters. They don't have any awesome links. There are plenty of other sites besides ours that should outrank them.
When I am using the various tools at my disposal, I can see why a competitor outranks us. I'm not obsessing, but this one, I just don't understand.
Has anyone had this experience?
Great Answer Linda - Your Article was awesome! One of the best I've read in a long time. It really cleared up a lot.
Based on my "expert" assessment, we are much stronger than the top listing in the 7 Pack. So at some point, according to your research, we should hit that top spot.
Our niche is a little different than the typical 7 pack. We have a large service area essentially a 90 mile radius, and growing. What is fascinating is how our rankings change depending on where I'm connected. We are in northern NJ, not a large geography. Some areas don't pop 7 packs at all for the same keywords. Looking at the rankings in our Niche for keywords that don't pop a 7 Pack, the results mix is actually similar to the 7 pack. There are some locals, some articles, and some nationals. For one of my treasured keywords, (non-7 Pack) my ranking at home is #4, and my ranking at the office (35 miles away) is #134. (I've checked and double checked...) Bizarre.
What was really interesting is that for a few days (about 60 days ago), the 7 Packs were all over my keywords, and then many of the 7 packs disappeared. Google must have been testing something.
Your AOL trick is the answer to my biggest frustration. My rankings reports vary wildly based on where I sit. AOL clears that up.The only real way to control rankings is to be 1-2 in AOL. Who knew?
Thanks for your response!
Can you tell me why?
Some of our generic, non localized keywords (ex: "Information technology services") are triggering Google+ 7 Pack listings with local results. We are ranking on the first page for those keywords in organic. The companies listed in the 7 packs have worse link profiles, mediocre SEO fundamentals, fewer citations, and no +s or reviews. Our Google+ page has been up for a few weeks, and we added content: images, videos, a detailed profile, and articles. Our competitors have nothing but a blank site. We did our research, and we also built well-optimized pages for each of the keywords that triggers a 7 Pack.
Assuming Google decides we deserve to be there, how long should it take for Google to place us in the 7 Packs?
Our vertical is a little different - IT Support - the 7 packs are localized within a 40 mile radius, and the organic SERPs are a mix of regional and national (ex: IBM) players. Are the results totally geocentric?
Does it pay to build legitimate backlinks to our Google+ page or link there from content on our corporate site?
Thanks to all. Built one page for all, and we are on the first page for all - and then some. We also got some lesser variations ranked as well. Spot on advice.
We rolled out a new site for a customer on an old (branded) domain (14 years old) about 3 weeks ago, and we are doing very, very well in Google for 40+ keywords, but we can't make a dent in Bing. Absolutely nothing. We are using the Webmaster tools for both. Are we missing something? Are we not using the Bing Webmaster tools correctly?
Based on what I've read, setting up localized landing pages ie: /web-design-atlanta, web-design-nyc, /web-design-chicago, etc especially with duplicate content is a big no-no. Remarkably, 2 of our competitors are doing it, (they are just swapping out the locations), and it's working. They don't even have office addresses or local phone numbers listed. They are on the first page for multiple location based searches ("web design nyc", "web design atlanta", etc.).
I thought Google penalized for this, or at least didn't index the content. What gives? Am I misinterpreting Google's AUP? Can I report them?
If it's legal, we should be doing it as well.
We have a sister company that provides online administrative services to .EDUs. The administrative site has thousands of pages, with good pagerank, excellent trust, and a clean bill of health from Google, as does our corporate site. We have the ability to put footer links on every page back to our corporate website. Options:
1. Do nothing for fear of getting penalized by Google
2. Footer Link: Web Design by Logo, with "Web Design" being the anchor text.
3. Footer Link: Web Design by XYZ with "Web Design" and "XYZ" being the anchor text for link diversity.
4. Footer Link: Web Design by Logo with "Web Design" and the Logo (Alt Text "XYZ Corp") being anchors for link diversity.
5. Put up a page (or 2) about web design on the administrative site, have all of the footers link to that page, and have that page link back to our corporate site.
We really aren't doing anything wrong here, but both sites have a clean bill of health and the Google spam police have me paranoid. Our corporate site has an excellent link profile with hundreds of links from .gov, .us, and .edu. The links have commercial value, and can drive traffic to our site.
Looking for your thoughts before we make a move.
Wow, good to know. I assume Incognito browsing with chrome is the same deal?
I use Firefox for research, and I make sure that I am logged out of google. Is that enough?
We are currently ranked #2 locally (NJ) for "IT support", and #27 for "it support". This is a fairly recent development - like today. I know "it" is a stop word, but I have never seen this before. The funny thing is that this is the only "IT" search where this happens. Most of my keywords contain "IT".
What's up with this?
The good news is that a lot of our rankings have stabilized somewhat, and we are doing better than expected. We need to build more content and backlinks, but we have a decent foundation.
When can you feel relatively (in SEO safe is extremely relative) safe that your rankings have settled? Any indications?
Thanks Jesse. I need to take back some high fives.
The Google SERPs for my keywords are pretty regional. We are in the "IT Support Company" space. I've checked with friends in other parts of the country, and we don't show up in the SERPs in other parts of the country for KWs that we are ranking for locally. Questions:
1. I see both national and local players showing up in the SERPs. Is there any kind of formula for how Google decides who gets on the first page?
2. Some of my keywords trigger Google+ listings. How long does it take to show up in Google+, assuming we're optimized appropriately, and we have earned a placement?
3. For Moz's keyword ranking tool, how does it handle regional searches? Moz's tool is going to show different KW rankings than what I will see. My immediate concerns are rankings in my area (NY Metro), but we want to go national. How do we track rankings in different areas?
4. Is it possible to be on the 1st page with Google+ and Organic listings?
5. Do the Google+ 7 packs have generally better, or worse CTRs than similarly placed organic listings?
We just did a site redesign, and removed the noindex, etc. about 10 days ago. Over the last 24 hours, I've gotten some of my top keywords on the first page, but now they are gone, a few hours later. I assume this is typical?
Are the 7 packs representative of Google+ business listings or Google + Places listings? This is making my head hurt..
I was doing keyword research, and for some of my keywords I was seeing Google+ listings last week. they were gone earlier this week, but now they are back. We weren't in them anyway (new project) but can anyone explain this? Same computer, Same IP,
I have 3 keywords that I am targeting. Assume for the time being that they are all equally competitive. Includes local exact match monthly searches:
Managed IT Services - 3600
IT Managed Services - 720
Managed IT Support - 170
They are all exactly synonymous, not to mention other keywords such as IT Managed Support, Managed IT Service, IT Managed Service, Managed IT Service Provider, etc.. My current strategy is to target the top 3 all on one page. The problem then is the title tag:
Managed IT Services | IT Managed Services | Managed IT Support
Pretty spammy. I could build pages for all 3, but how would I incorporate them into the website since they are all synonyms.
Can I get some recommendations on how to handle this? What would you use for a title tag? How would handle separate pages with synonymous content?
Google+ has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into my SEO plans. Over the last few weeks, Google+ listings started showing up in the SERPs for my money keywords. The good news is that once we launch our new site, we have a good chance of getting into the Google+ 7 packs. The bad news is that SEO on a national level just got tougher with the local Google+ listings crowding natural listings down the page.
Questions:
1. How does Google+ determine who goes into the 7 pack?
2. Is there always a 7 Pack? Can there only be a 4 pack?
3. I see Google+ listings for companies that don't have a Google+ page. How is that possible?
4. Through my keyword research, I have about 20 keywords that are triggering Google+ listings in the SERPs. Some SERPs are only showing 2-4 G+ listings. Is it safe to assume that this is because no one has put those keywords in their Google+ description, and hasn't optimized for those words on their site?
Looking for suggestions - one of my targeted keywords is "IT Support NY". I can't for the life of me figure out a way to use it in a sentence.
Any ideas?
Ouch. In my opinion, you have way too much Red in your template. Red on white is very powerful - it draws your attention more than just about any color combination. When I look at your home page, i get confused. The nav bar is red, the bins are red, copy is red. I don't know where to begin. I can't figure out which way to go.
In design there is a concept of "foreground, middle ground, and background". This is about color contrasts. The content that you want customers to see and act on are "foreground". They have larger graphics, larger fonts, bold fonts, and attention grabbing colors. Middle Ground is supporting information - ad copy, generally. It needs to be readable without overpowering the foreground. The background is the fine print - terms of use, etc.
With all of the red, everything on your site is in the foreground. Half of the elements on your page scream "Look at Me!" That's what causes confusion. The most powerful foreground combinations are red on white, white on red, black on yellow, yellow on black, black on white.
Action Items:
1. Strip out all of the red on every page. Make your Nav bar a quiet shade of blue or green. No red bins in images. No Red copy.
2. Stay away from Red in general - Stop signs are red for a reason. Red buttons on pages typically don't convert well red=STOP! For your action items, use orange and a bright green in small doses. They have tested out the best. Just about every major website has blue or green as the dominant color in the palate. There is a reason for it. It's easy on the eyes, and it's easy to drop in an orange button that grabs your attention.
Just doing this will vastly improve your bounce rate.
I can't even tell you about the site's organization - the red hurts my head.
Take a look at major e-commerce sites, and mimic what they do in terms of color, organization, navigation, etc. Every pixel on every page on Amazon has been extensively tested for usability and conversions. The color of the cart, the term "add to cart", the position of the cart, the color scheme, the navigation, - everything has been extensively tested by the best in the business. Why would you want to reinvent the wheel?
When you are organizing your site templates, think about how you want visitors to behave, and make the navigation and choices that you want them to take stand out, and above the fold. Try to build your site so that visitors never touch the navigation bar. Map out a path that you want them to follow and make it easy on them - put buttons like "Start Now", "Click Here".
Pick up the books "Don't Make me Think" by Steve Krug and "Convert" by Ben Hunt.
That's what I thought. I just read something to the contrary. Does anyone else know anything different?
When evaluating a PPC landing page for Quality Score, does Google evaluate the other pages that the landing page is linked to?
For example, if we have a well optimized page on the site for "Widgets", can it outscore a well optimized PPC landing page that is isolated in a "disallow" directory with no links into or out of the page?
I'm not sure if I am making myself clear...
From a purely SEO /link juice perspective, is there any benefit to linking from body text to a page that is in a pervasive primary navigation? The primary nav puts a link at the top of the HTML. With the tests done by members of this site, the "first link counts" rule negates the link juice value of a link in the body text if there is already a link in the nav.
Now I've also seen the data on using hash tags to get a second or third link, but ignoring that, it would seem that links in the body text to pages in the nav have zero effect.
This brings me to another question - block level navigation. If anchor text links pass more juice than links in the top navigation, why would you put your most coveted target pages in the top nav? You would be better off building links in the content, which would create a poor user experience. To me, the theory that anchor text links in the body pass more juice than links in the primary nav doesn't make any sense.
Can someone please explain this to me?
I understand the concept of silo architecture. What I don't understand is how to build the site navigation.
I see experts talking about silos, but their sites have pervasive top level navigation. In theory, your top level nav breaks your silos. If I have 20 pages of supporting content all linked to my silo page, and the top nav is on the supporting content pages, then those pages all link to the pages in the top nav - silo broken, and link juice diluted.
it would seem to me that the only way to build a true silo is to strip out all of the navigation on a supporting page, and only have it link to:
1. The silo landing page
2. Other supporting pages in the silo.
is this what Bruce Clay does? I've seen Rand's lectures on silos as well. Is this what he is doing? I recently saw a video by the Network Empire team, and they'd also have a pervasive nav.
Can someone please explain this?
Can you clarify? I am using Layer Slider, which uses a mix of text and graphics. You can see it at www.csm-corp.com. The sliders are generally 250 high, and the images (people) started off at 300 high. They needed to be scaled down to fit, and they don't encompass the whole slider.
What am I doing wrong?
No offense taken. They are high res. The slider is blurring them. Should I reduce the size of the slider?
Can someone give me a sample of an effective meta description tag? All of the best practice stuff I read doesn't talk about how to raise CTR. It seems to me that this is a neglected area of SEO, and we want to do this right. Obviously, we will need to test.
For example, my main home page keyword is "IT Support"
Things I might want to put in the tag:
Free Network Assessments
100% Risk Free Trials
"Relentless IT Support" (Major Theme)
30 Years of Experience (since 1984)
Eliminate your IT Support Headaches Forever (Too long)
Call to action?
BTW, Thanks to everyone for your help. This is a great community. Solid advice from experts.
Here's an example of what I would create
Relentless IT Support Since 1984. Trust and Accountability. 100% Risk Free Trials. Contact us today for Free IT Assessment.
Looking for some advanced help here. I've been reading a lot of conflicting information on this, and I am hoping someone can clear this up.
My question is regarding length and complexity of title tags. For example, my top level keywords are:
IT Support, IT Services, IT Outsourcing, Help Desk, etc.
I also have pages for many modified versions ex: IT Support Services, Managed IT Services, etc.
I have robust pages for each. Should my title tag be:
IT Support | CSM Corp. - Simple
IT Support Company | CSM Corp. (Picks up a longer tail)
or
IT Support | Secondary Keyword | CSM Corp.
Does adding secondary keywords dilute the strength of the primary keyword?
If long is preferable, can someone give me an example using "IT Support"?
So what you are saying is that there is no way to keep the pages out of the serps and restrict them from getting link juice?
This is nuts. My conversion pages will be getting huge amounts of link juice - there are links to them on every page.
I'm not happy about this. Any workarounds?
I have been reading a lot of conflicting information on the Link Juice ramifications of using "NoIndex". Can I get some advice for the following situation?
1. I have pages that I do not want indexed on my site. They are lead conversion pages. Just about every page on my site has links to them. If I just apply a standard link, those pages will get a ton of Link Juice that I'd like to allocate to other pages.
2. If I use "nofollow", the pages won't rank, but the link juice evaporates. I get that. I won't use "nofollow"
3. I have read that "noindex, follow" will block the pages in the SERPs, but will pass Link Juice to them. I don't think that I want this either. If I "dead end" the lead form with no navigation or links, will the juice be locked up on the page?
4. I assume that I should block the pages in robots.txt
In order to keep the pages out of the SERPs, and conserve Link Juice, what should I do? Can someone please give me a step by step process with the reasoning for what I should do here?
The plugin looks great for nofollow, but it doesn't do anything for noindex.
Thanks, Peter.
Can you recommend a plugin?
It's been a while since I've SEOed a Wordpress site. How do I add "nofollow" or "noindex" to specific links? I highlight the anchor text in the text editor, I click the "link" button.
I could have sworn that there used to be an option in the dialogue box that pops up.
I think I just solved it thanks to SEOMoz tools. More than half the pages on the site have a rel canonical pointing at the home page. It was under Crawl Notices, which I have up to now ignored.
That should explain the NA!
Keri:
The site is about 4 months old in its current iteration. It's a wordpress site, but it replaced a Joomla site. The PR N/A is frustrating us. With the home page having a PR 3, the other pages should have some PR, at least a 0.
With the SEOmoz tools, GWT, etc, we aren't getting any errors. Google is indexing the pages. I don't get it.
Andy:
The site is about 4 months old in its current iteration. It's a wordpress site, but it replaced a Joomla site. The PR N/A is frustrating us. With the home page having a PR 3, the other pages should have some PR, at least a 0.
With the SEOmoz tools, GWT, etc, we aren't getting any errors. Google is indexing the pages. I don't get it.
I ran the SEOMoz onpage diagnostic, and i got an alert for keyword cannibalization. My taxonomy is:
www.mysite.com/category (category page)
www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword (supporting page)
Links will be exact match in the primary navigation.
www.mysite.com anchor text "category" => www.mysite.com/category
www.mysite.com anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword
www.mysite.com/category anchor text "category keyword" => www.mysite.com/category/category-keyword
and example would be /IT-support linking with anchor text "IT Support Servers" => /IT-Support/IT-Support-Servers
I'm not going to have a cannibalization problem, am I?
I need a better understanding of how links in different parts of the page pass juice. Much has been written about how footer links pass less juice than other parts of the page. The question I have is that if a page has a hypothetical 1000 points of Link Juice and can pass on +/-800 points via links, and I have 1 and only 1 link in the footer to another page, does it pass the full 800 points? Or... since footers only pass a small fraction of link juice, it passes lets say 80 points, and the other 720 points stays locked up on the page. This question is a hypothetical - I'm just trying to understand relationships.
I don't know if I've explained the question too well, but if someone could answer i it, or point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.
Andy, thanks for your help, but I understand pagerank and ranking factors. The NA is indicative of a problem getting the pages indexed correctly. I have had the problem before on other sites, and it was indicative of a problem with the site's setup.
One site I was working on had the same symptoms. The home page was www.yoursite.com/directory/index.html. All of the inbound links (thousands) went to yoursite.com, no redirect to www. All of the www pages were NA and unranked. We changed the home page and redirects. Boom. PR3, and all kinds of high rankings.
After we made the changes, it took about a week for the PRs to change.
I do use mozrank, and the ranking factors from Majestic, as well. And pagerank is not unimportant. It is extremely important. It is just less important than it used to be.
The site is a few months old in its current iteration. i use google webmaster tools, and the site has been fetched recently after I discovered the problem. No known issues on GWT. The pages are getting indexed. As I said, the home page is a PR3. Other pages on the site should at least have a PR1. Our About page is a PR0. It should probably be a PR2.