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That's one thing I hadn't considered thus far - thanks for the tip, Anthony! I'll make sure the URLs are removed properly.

I just think creating 'new' pages would be easier than working through the mess the old SEO company left behind.

With decent content on-site and a few relevant in-content links, it shouldn't (hopefully) take too long to get back up the rankings!

Hey guys,

I'll get straight to the point - a small (growing) website I'm working on has a number links pointing to it from totally irrelevant sites (66, to be precise). These were built by an SEO company prior to me working on the site, and lead to an over-optimisation penalty for one keyword.

This number doesn't sound large, but proportionally (to all other links), it is. It didn't used to be, but a lot of the links coming in have now 'died', and the domains they came from are now just parked.

Anyway, I have managed to contact pretty much all the webmasters, and 27 of these links have been removed. Unfortunately - as I'm sure many people know all too well - a good handful of the contacted webmasters haven't replied, and the bad links still remain on their websites (either in-content or on links pages).

I have decided to 'refresh' the website with some new (and better) content - providing much more information and a valuable resource.

My question is - what should I do?

• Should I just replace the content on the existing pages (slightly altering the URL structure to match the topic more) and 301 the old URLs to the new ones?

• Or should I delete the pages and create new ones - thus making sure this particular section of the site isn't affected by any bad in-bound links?

I'm more inclined to opt for the latter option, and 'start fresh' with the pages - so I know I've got total control over them, but wanted to get the opinion of the community before I made a decision.

Thanks in advance for your responses!

Nick

Adding to the other responses - yea they are nofollow, but remember that pinterest is MASSIVE at the moment, so any social interaction is good from this end. I wouldn't be bothered about the type of link, try and get traffic moving to your site from pins!

I second that rule of 7! I was trying to remember what it was called when writing my response - thanks for jogging my memory!

One possible solution would be to add the 'family' of pages you currently list to your sitemap page, and just have your 'parent' pages listed on the sidebar.

People coming to your site will only visit the 'children' pages through exact-match search terms or through their user journey, so you needn't worry about listing everything on the homepage. Your homepage is there to help entice people to look further - let them discover your other products easily, rather than being given a list of options they must choose from.

That's an opinion - not a solution, really, but it gives you an option at least! Your site would be cleaner and easier to crawl if you just had the parent pages in the sidebar

I know this is an old feed - but on the subject of influencing the 'Search Suggest'... has anyone played the 'LogosQuiz' game on the iPhone - if not, hear me out, because it is interesting (I think...)!

The game is pretty simple, you've just got to guess company logos. However, you are able to obtain hints - and these hints come in the form of full sentences.

Now then, I was stuck on a few of these last night and thought I'd ping one of the 'hints' over to google. I literally got 2 words into it and the FULL hint (about 10 words) was suggested (something about computer software manufacturer on east coast of somewhere or other...).

I know this isn't about 'how' to influence the Search Suggest - but just look at how powerful the 'social sphere' is when a game like this is able to have such control over the suggestions (they're missing the trick with marketing though, because the game developers don't rank for the hints!).

Just thought I'd share that with you guys - something a little light-hearted and kinda fun!

Ah ok, I see - I must have mis-read. Either way, you'd still be placing duplicated content on several pages, and this could affect how you rank for certain keywords.

Of course, it's your call, but by a best-practice approach, you're always safer with unique content. I think of it like this - an author wouldn't copy and paste some of chapter one and place it into chapter two of their book unless it was completely relevant (which is rare) - so a web master shouldn't do this either (unless you're quoting with a link).

Just my own opinion on this one (and one I know other SEOs on here will share) - duplicated content is best avoided on your website. You want to be unique, right??

Firstly - you'd have two separate pages competing for the same keyword, so you'll never be able to get 'the best' out of one page as the other one will be sapping away some of its visits and authority.

Secondly - why would you want to duplicate your content (other than cutting corners and attempting to dominate a keyword)? Forgive me for being blunt, but it's pretty spammy and doesn't look natural. You'd be best doing what you suggested and creating more high-quality content that people WANT to read and share. An extra week writing better content may sound like a chore right now - but you'd spend much longer than a week trying to clean your site up when you realise your duplicated content isn't working.

That's just my view on it - but I feel pretty strongly about duplicated content. Pet hate, some may say!

Create killer content - better than your competitors - that's going to be worth reading. Informational first, then move into sales.

Hope that helps!

Depends if you mean page rank or rank on Google! I think we're all a bit obsessed with our rank on the search engines - but it's easy to get too hooked on checking constantly.

I try to focus on working on my own content development and not stress about the rank - that should come naturally over time (with a little helping hand from a carefully-thought-out strategy).

Hey,

I seem to be getting some old data too - just links from websites that are no longer active. Don't think it's anything to worry about, just knuckle down on your site and check back in a week or so to see if any changes have been made. As long as you know what you've been doing (by keeping a log of it), there's nothing to worry about.

On the plus side, your DA has increased - that's gotta be worth a smile and a pat on the back!

Not too bad really - there are some links that could be questionable, but they're just from press releases (the links themselves are OK, it's the other links on the referring sites that are concerning). The only real concern I had was all these 'rubbish' links that had suddenly expired and whether that was going to have some sort of effect on the site.

My instinct was telling me that there wouldn't be an issue - but thought I would make use of the community here to see if people had experience of this!

Thanks again!

Hi Greg,

I haven't had any webmaster tools notifications - but the ranking patterns (dropped by exactly 50 on one main keyword) suggest it might have been under review or something.

Just can't help being a tad paranoid with SEO these days! I'm working on the content side of things, and have created some more informative and detailed content for the website - it's just a case of getting it out there now and hoping people will share the content!

Cheers for the responses

Hey guys,

I recently asked a question similar to this, but wanted to spark up a bit of a discussion around it to see what everyone's feelings were on it.

The web is always changing - as we're all too aware - so links you may have obtained (by however means) let's say 2 years ago may not be 'active' now. By that I mean you may have had a link from "example_-website.com" in 2010 and now "example-_website.com" is no longer an active website - but still shows a parked domain.

The thing is... this parked domain is still cropping up in OSE, suggesting that Google may still believe there's a link there - and may not have re-crawled that site to prove otherwise.

The issue I've had with this is an SEO company built links to the sites I'm working on now (one of the sites has been penalised as a result of their link building). These links aren't 'active' anymore and when viewed on OSE, they just head straight to a parked domain with no visible (or in-source) link to my site.

What are everyone's feelings on this? What would you all do?

I'm in two minds whether to re-write a section of the website.... but I'm swaying towards creating better content and NOT re-directing the old URLs to it (just contact the decent links and ask for a change of link).

Looking forward to seeing your responses and speaking to you all!

Nick

Adding to what charles1 said, I have noticed that the 'old-fashioned' ping a blogpost/content to Google isn't really relevant anymore.

Instead, if people are viewing your content - and getting to it from different sources (Twitter, Google+, Facebook, etc.), then it's more likely to be indexed sooner. The sooner someone interacts with your content, the sooner it's indexed!

Hi Osanda,

Just from the information you have provided, it could be down to a few things (only speculating, though!).

It may be that the search terms just aren't that popular in Sri Lanka, but are more so in other places.

Have you tried hosting your website on servers elsewhere to see if this impacts your results? I'm no expert on this, as it's not my field - but I'm just suggesting a few things.

Finally - is your traffic low? or are you happy with it? If you're happy with it, don't worry! It may be the case that more people may opt to use the .com version of Google or the .co.uk version if they can do - it's all down to their preferences.

Hope this provokes some thought/leads to an answer for you!

Well it sounds like you've been careful on the approach to building the links. Have you analysed the websites above you (with a fine tooth comb) and critically analysed yours as if it was someone else's?

I know it's frustrating, but I'd say remain patient and just remain ethical. It may be the case that these .gov links look good because of their 'authority' but the actual relevance of them to your site may not be ticking boxes. You'd be better getting a natural link from a .co.uk or .net, for example, rather than trying to sap authority.

What's more, if the .gov sites are already linking out to others - remember that you're sharing the link benefit with all those other sites, so it may not actually be that valuable.

Try and explore other ways you can get links in your niche rather than asking for them - the rankings will come naturally then!

I see you're at the 'why isn't anything happening stage' of SEO work!

This doesn't necessarily mean that the work you've done isn't helping your website - but you need to analyse your link building strategy.

How did you go about getting the links? What anchor texts did you go for? If you've gone keyword heavy on links, for example, it's likely you've been penalised.

I can't stress how important it is to look natural. What you perceive as natural may be completely different to how Google perceives 'natural'. Remember, a link should look like someone is referring to you/referencing you as the source of information/a product. You've almost got to have an element of paranoia about you when thinking about whether something looks natural.

As for the impact time - this all depends when Google is crawling your site and how often. If you're updating content pretty often - why not stick some news content in there too, or reviews, or offers... something people can share and interact with rather than simply read and click away from.

Good luck, hope your site gets to where you want it!

While it may affect your presence higher up in the search engines - to start with - it's a perfect opportunity to develop some exciting content for that section of your website, an excuse (not that you need one) to present something new, if you will. And I don't just mean static pages, I'm talking content people can share - interesting, educational, inspiring (insert other relevant word here) content that links well throughout your website (and sends your readers/audience on a buying journey, starting at information/education, ending at checkout).

Sure, 301 the old pages to the new one to gain whatever benefit you can out of them - but make sure you don't spend all your time worrying about this... jump on the social side of things and look at how visitors are interacting with your content, then think about how they might be tempted to share it (special offers, for example...) - the opportunities are endless.

That's just my take on it. Don't spend all your time worrying about the re-structure; that's something I've just learned!

I think the drop has already happened - so that's why I'm re-writing/improving the content for that area of the site and just starting fresh with it.

I'm sure with the right bit of promoting (through social media, etc.) the new section will pick up a bit of traffic.

It's a tough decision about the re-direct though - because the SEOMoz Page Authority for the affected pages is close to 50.

Thanks for your replies guys - really appreciate the insight!

I'll run a check over them today and find out.

A lot of the links seem to be parked domains or errors - see moldovanembassy (.org) (.uk) and ishouldknowthis (.) (com) - don't want to link to it, so do the relevant bracket removals!

The sites are completely irrelevant, which is mega frustrating. Really not focusing on link building when the profile is so 'varied', so I'm going to focus on on-site work and providing real content for people to like, share, etc.

Whenever I see offers like this, I ask myself would I want my site to be submitted to 50 others... along with every other site that this service submits? Link farming - or as Malcolm Gibb has said, paid link directories - are a cheap and spammy way of padding out your profile (something some inexperienced SEO companies will do for smaller sites).

If you're going to pay.... You should be able to find more niche and relevant sites that may cost a little more for 'one link' rather than 50 links for a little cheaper.

Hi,

This is my first post/question in the forum - so apologies if this topic has already been covered - or if the question seems daft!

Here's the issue:

I have started working on two websites, and have been doing a lot of on-site work, increasing valuable content, etc... I'm now slowly moving onto more off-site stuff and have noticed that a lot of the backlinks to both websites (built by SEO companies before I got here) are 'dead' and simply return 404 errors (yet they still show up in site explorer).

I'll be honest, the links aren't great; the SEO companies have taken the word 'relevant' and completely re-defined it in their books!

Will these links - from sites that aren't relevant... but are dead - have any impact on my SEO efforts from now on? Or should I treat these sites as a kind of 'clean slate' and work on building the brand naturally through social media and user experience, etc?

Also - I'm re-structuring the internal pages of the site... would it be worth re-directing the old URLs (with all the dead in-bound links - that may have suffered a -50 penalty) to the new ones, or just start fresh with the new pages?

Any advice, tips or stories to share (relevant ones, of course!) will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Nick