Hi Brandon,

If your site is connected to Google Webmaster Tools, you can find out what page is the source of the link producing the 404. This can be done by logging into your GWT dashboard, clicking Site Health then click on "Crawl Errors" and then click on the "Not Found" tab. You will see a list of links producing 404 errors. Click on the link you want to investigate and you'll get a pop open window with more info. You will see three tabs "Error details," "In sitemaps," and "Linked from." Click linked from and you'll see the information you are wanting.

If you are not connected to Google Webmaster Tools yet, the process is fairly simple, even if you have limited access to your site. There are several ways to load your site into GWT and verify ownership, including simply installing a meta tag, or uploading a simple file to your root directory. GWT offers a wealth of information that can be a great supplement to the info you get from SEOMoz.

I hope this helps!

Dana

Good question!   I use a browser extension in Firefox called SEO for Firefox. It's free and one of the many things it will do is highlight "followed" and "no followed" links in different colors so you can quickly see which is which. I highly recommend it. It also will catch broken links. It's very handy!

No, I wouldn't worry about this at all. This is why Google has already allocated a finite number of "Fetches" and URL + Links submissions to your account. These numbers are based on the size of your site. Larger sites are allocated more and  smaller sites less. [Please see my revised statement below regarding Google's "Fetch" limits - it isn't based on site size]  I don't think enough Webmasters take advantage of the Fetch as often as they should.

Hope that helps!

Dana

I forgot to address your question about duplicate content. Are you using canonical tags in your blog? If you place a rel=canonical tag on each of your blog pages with the full URL of the page you want to be viewed as the source of the original content, this should solve the duplicate content problem. If you already have tags in place then you may have another issue. If you are using canonical tags, you may want to go through and make sure they don't all look like this:

The tags should be specific to each page. This may be something

you've already done, and I might be explaining

in a way that's too basic. If so, I apologize. Just trying to make

sure you're covered!

If it's relevant and valuable I'd advise buying it only if there two conditions are met:

1. The original content stays intact
2. You are willing to devote time and resources to adding fresh new content, regularly

If those things are satisfied I'd say "go fot ir!" - Otherwise, it's a no go. IMHO

As always, I am interested to know what others have to say about it.

You are welcome David, and no this isn't a lifetime limit at all. I believe it resets at least once every 30 days, maybe more often than that. I manage four different sites, some large, some small and I've never run out of fetches yet.

This appears to be a pagination issue. If so, then the solution may be fairly simple. You have a few options. You might want to first make sure that your canonical tags are in order. How you do those will depend on whether or not you want pages in a paginated series (like a category page with more than one page of products listed) included in Google's index. If you want them indexed, then each paginated should have its own rel=canonical tag, specific to that page. If you really only want the first page included in the index, then you could include a tag like this    at the top of each page in that

partcular paginated series. You may also need to include rel=next and rel=prev,

depends on your content.

Here is an excellent video on pagination from Google that describes various options,

depending on what type of content you have and how you would like it to be indexed:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html

Hi Hardley,

OSE updates only about once a month. The last update happened a few days ago and the next one is scheduled for December 6th. Here's a link to the update calendat: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule

I'd check again after the next update to see if your backlinks are showing up at that point. If not then it's possible that the directories with which you've submitted may no longer be indexed by Google. This has become a more and more common issue as Google is trying to clear its index of directories that have no editorial discretion and just include links to any site that pays them for a link.

Hope that's helpful!

Dana

I agree with you Kurt. In our space we see duplicate content everywhere, from manufacturer's sites to vendors to resellers. There is no such thing as a "duplicate content penalty." Google doesn't penalize duplicate content. They may choose to ignore it, which may feel like a penalty, but that's not technically what's going on.

I also agree with EGOL. If getting a lot of product descriptions is a daunting task, hire some writers. You can get it done for way less that you think. Need inspiration? Watch Fabio's video from MozCon 2012 where in 15-minutes he describes how he and his team created thousands of unique product descriptions in a very short amount of time without spending a lot of money: http://moz.com/videos/e-commerse-seo-tips-and-tricks

Cheers!

Dana

My first inclination is to say "be patient" and ride out the dip. I have never seen a complete site overhaul that didn't experience a dip in traffic. Next, I would say "Are your ducks in a row?"

What I mean by that is:

1. Have you set up appropriate 301 redirects if any of your URLs were re-written?
2. Are those 301 working properly (did you test them)?
3. If no 301 redirects, did you implement canonical tags?
4. Are you actively monitoring Google Webmaster Tools? Are you acting on those reports?
5. Have you created and resubmitted a new sitemap to Google?
6. Did you reinstall analytics or are you using different analytics? It could be that your analytics have changed more than your traffic (This is a big one....really consider this carefully).

If the answer is yes to all of the above. Be patient. I know it's hard, but don't freak out and sit tight. You should be fine after a little time.

Dana

Personally I would select the 4-5 keywords that best describe the website, products or business and just stick with those. I don't think inserting a whole bunch of keywords is going to be beneficial, and honestly, the keywords probably don't matter at all. However, I understand that some directories will make keywords a required field so you may have to put something there. I would proceed with caution and just approach it with a "less is more" attitude.

Also, another word about directories, make sure you research them very carefully before you decide to submit. Answer these questions:

How long has the directory existed?

What is the directory's Alexa ranking?

What is its PageRank?

How many inbound links does the directory have?

How many of those inbound links are .edu and .gov links?

Is the directory even in Google's index any more?

Does the directory have real human editors? [try emailing them to see if you get a human answer0

Does the directory just include every site that pays them? If so, reconsider your submission.

Does the directory properly categorize the sites it lists?

If you answer those questions about each one, you'll get a better idea if a particular directory is worth pursuing or not.  Also, make sure that this is part of a much larger, broader link-earning strategy.

Dana

Thanks so much to you all. This has gotten us closer to an answer. We are consulting with the folks who developed the Web store to make sure that these solutions won't break other things if implemented, particularly something mentioned to me by our IT Director called "Sim links" - I'll keep you posted!

You came to the right place for the validity you seek I frequently vet things here in the forum and it has proven very helpful in convincing other members of my team to go one way or the other. Also, I completely agree with George's suggestion to use the "alt" attribute if it is indeed an image we are talking about, but it appears we are really talking about a bonafide

tag for text with keywords in it.

That being the case. Stick to your guns and insist on it being visible. If you really feel that it disrupts the design...it would be better to leave it out than to make it invisible.

Good luck!

Dana

Great suggestion Joel!

I agree with Gregory that this is a very typical ecommerce scenario. It's also very common to see the search volume greater for the generic terms and then less and less as things become more specific (down to specific models of bikes, for example).  I disagree with Chris' suggestion regarding the use of the "nofollow" attribute, here's a Matt Cutts video explaining why: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022462.html  -  Matt Cutts reiterates, point blank, "I would not 'nofollow' internal links." [Period]

I would take a long hard look at the brand and product pages and try to figure out how to make them more compelling. Do you have customer reviews? Are they being cultivated (i.e. collected, posted, requested...regularly)? Are your product pages getting social shares? If not, spend some time cultivating that. Without seeing one of the pages, my best guess is that there are 5-10 things that you could do right away to make those pages stickier and more compelling. Do that. Don't waste your time trying to sculpt PageRank.

Just my 2 cents! Hope it's a little helpful.

Dana

Google did some user testing on this topic, to find out if users preferred longer pages or paginated pages. According to their research, users preferred longer pages because there is always latency when moving from one page to the next. Here's the video where a Googler cites that research: http://youtu.be/njn8uXTWiGg  If you want to have it both ways, you could always break your content into pages, but put a "View All" option at the top. Personally, I am one of those folks who doesn't mind scrolling down through comments. If given the choice to continue on to a second page of comments, I probably wouldn't.

From an SEO standpoint, provided the pagination is handled properly, I don't think there's an advantage one way or the other, unless you take into consideration that your bounce rate could potentially go up with paginated pages. Even if it did though, I doubt that would significantly hurt you from an overall SEO viewpoint.

This is also a great suggestion. Haven't yet made the leap for paid Majestic SEO tools, but I am oh so close!

This is a great question, and although the post is from last year, I still think that this interview with Janet Driscoll Miller is the clearest, best explanation of how to implement this that I've heard:

http://www.widerfunnel.com/events/google-and-search-engine-optimization-an-interview-with-janet-driscoll-miller

Here are additional comments from my own Q&A answer on the subject:http://moz.com/community/q/rel-author-tag-attributing-content-to-a-company#reply_121257

Hope those are helpful!

Dana

I would highly recommend submitting a sitemap. I am surprised you haven't already. Is it because there are so many articles? Is there any way to generate an automated list of your article URLs? If you can then formatting a sitemap shouldn't be that difficult even if there are a huge number of them. I also like your idea of adding the "View all" option. The company where I do in-house SEO is battling pagination issues at the moment and we believe this is a good solution and it is one that is supported and even recommended by Google here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html

I hope that helps a bit!

Hi Paul,

You ask interesting questions, the answers of which are all subjective really. Yes, a wide variety of anchor text is a good thing. As your site gains history, it will also naturally gain a link profile. Every site's link profile is a little different. Some sites, like "Apple" for instance, probably have much heaviier percentage of branded anchor text than your local family-owned computer store. If you are chugging along and all of a sudden something drastically changes your link profile, this might or might not cause problems with rankings in the SERPs. Some wild fluctuations, even in smaller businesses, can be quite normal, particularly if there was a big news event surrounding their business (perhaps they were acquired by a much larger company) or something of that sort.

You are correct in how you are defining briand names (IMHO). Yes, it absolutely could end up being your name. In fact, I encourage everyone who works and writes online to consider themselves, personally, a "brand" in addition to whatever other businesses they are involved with. This is one thing that makes Google+ so perplexing to me because it totally confuses personal and professional brands (hopefully they'll sort that out soon).

Yes, you absolutely could turn your name into a brand name. It doesn't even take putting it on your site anywhere. I an an in-house SEO for several websites, and one of them, one I built, has "Dana Tan" as it's next most often used anchor text next to its brand "Celebrate Communion." The site is young and tiny, so I assume this will change over time. This came about as a results of my blog commenting where I actually sign with my real name instead of trying to stuff in keywords and be all spammy

That being said, when I'm analyzing reports, I do not consider "Dana Tan" to be a "branded search term" for the site "Celebrate Communion." I do however consider it a branded search term for my SEO blog.

All that being said, yes, it's a very good thing to have branded search. That traffic converts at a higher rate and a much lower cost per conversion (if you are using any paid campaigns) than other traffic because they are predisposed to you. In most cases, branded terms will be the majority of your anchor text, with, hopefully, a wide range of other terms filling in the rest.

Hope that helps, and I apologize for the spacing issues in my response. My Mac doesn't like to double space in SEOMoz.

Dana

It can take Google a long long long time to remove old pages from its index. I'd highly recommend manually submitting the relevant URLs via Google Webmaster Tools' URL removal tool and do them a bit at a time. We have done this quite successfully. Otherwise, I think you're doing the right things. Hope that helps!

Okay, this one's a doozie:

My crawl report is listing all of these as separate URLs with identical duplicate content issues, even though they are all the home page and the one that is http://www.ccisolutions.com (the preferred URL)  has a canonical tag of rel= http://www.ccisolutions.com:

http://www.ccisolutions.com

http://ccisolutions.com

http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain

I will add that OSE is recognizing that there is a 301-redirect on http://ccisolutions.com, but the duplicate content report doesn't seem to recognize the redirect.

Also, every single one of our 404-error pages (we have set up a custom 404 page) is being identified as having duplicate content. The duplicate content on all of them is identical.

Where do I even begin sorting this out? Any suggestions on how/why this is happening?

Thanks!

Hi Chris,

This is very unfortunate and I am sorry you are going through it. I would use Google's disavow tool and also forward them the correspondence that's taken place. Whether they do anything about it would be doubtful I think. But I do think they need to be made aware of what the ripple effect is from certain algorithm changes. Whatever you do, don't pay this guy to remove your links [IMHO] he is just trying to take you to the cleaners [literally] and I wouldn't trust him to get the job done. Google luck!

Dana

I totally agree with Marie. First and foremost, be calm. Don't freak out and start changing a whole bunch of things. Make sure your client knows what's going on. Far better for them to hear it from you than discover it on their own. Make a plan. First, document everything that has recently changed. Hopefully you've done that already. Start with that 301 redirect. You already know it's a problem, whether it's caused this or not.

Has anything else changed? Meta tags, specifically title tags? I have seen a site drop from a #1 branded search position and disappear for up to a day because the title tags were updated. Then it reappeared back in it's original spot. It's possible that your clients site is in a Google dance, but my gut says that's not it. Start with the 301...and while you're at it, check and make sure that the non.www version of the homepage is properly redirecting via 301 as well as any other potential URL versions that also produce the homepage and that may have inbound links.

Good luck and please let us know what happens. Hang in there!

Hi BigBlaze,

In general, I think the architecture I see on your sample site looks perfectly acceptable to me. It looks like you are only going down to one subcategory after that, which is a good thing. I think when too many categories becomes a problem is when the categories go 3 and 4 deep with subcats of subcats of subcats. Once your content or products get buried that deep, it's hard for search engine bots to keep crawling. I think if you can keep you architecture as flat as possible and still make it easy for people to find what they seek, you will do just fine. I think adding the filter width, length and depth as sorting options is good. Just remember that there is navigation and then there is sorting. Giving your visitors several clear and even redundant ways to find things is good.

Hope that helps!

Dana

Hi Bob,

I'm going to take your questions one by one:

1. (1) Do charity websites or company websites with link pages ( about5-10 other links) or links / logo's on the front page offer value even on unrelated sites?  - YES, definitely. This is a great way to get .edu links. find out what universities are selling sponsorships for their websites, or contribute enough to make a good scholarship fund and then ask to have your company logo and link on every page of the site. THere is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Several e-commerce sites have done a good job of doing this.

2. What happens if 80% of the link building I am doing comes from blogs? - FABULOUS - I don't see any problem with this unless you are out there planting blog comments that are spam.

3. I have links that are clearly spam - GET RID OF THEM (I'm sorry, Did I shout????)

4. The "key" here is genuine....c'mon, your next door neighboor  kcan tell if that page is keyword stuffed or not. If you read a page and think to yourself "Gee, hmm, I wonder if that's keyword stuffed..." - It probably us. Rewrite it.

I hope this helps a little!

Dana

You might try the good folks at http://www.goinflow.com/ - Everett Sizemore in particular. He gave a very good mozinar on eCommerce SEO here: http://moz.com/webinars/ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues  This is how I became familiar with him.

There are also two guys at http://www.melen.net, Matthew Prepis and Oleg Korneitchouk (Oleg is active here in the Moz forum) who performed a high level audit for us that was top notch. They were striving to win our business and are still in the running. They are excellent.

Either of these two might come in quite a bit lower than a company like RKG, depending on the scope of the project of course.

Hi Andy,

I believe the problem is that your title tag is too long. Google can only display about 70 characters maximum for a title and yours is 79 characters long. Count includes spaces and punctuation too. Make a title that fits within that limitation and Google should display it.

Dana

I think blog commenting can still certainly be effective for SEO when it's done right. I think you're on the right track. I read your first comment and I have a suggestion that hopefully will make your comments more authentic, and hopefully then, get them read and noticed a little bit more.

If I were you I would completely disclose who you are and that you are in the business of selling furnace filters. Do this above and beyond just putting it in your link. Be authentic and conversational. The beginning of your comment started out good, because I felt like I was getting some good information and advice. But the end (particularly when you asked me to Google a specific term), struck me as a pitch, and that was a bit of a turn off.

Can commenting work? Yes. Just remember to be real, write conversationally (no marketing-speak) and above all, give more than you get.

Good luck Jean, I hope this helps!

Dana

Howdie,

Yes, I believe we got this sorted out. Interestingly, it wasn't any of the suggestions made here causing the 301 status code responses. I posted a thread in Google Webmaster Tools Forum regarding the issue and received a response that I am 99.5% sure is the correct answer.

Here is a link to that thread for future readers' reference: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!mydiscussions/webmasters/zOCDAVudxNo

I believe the underlying issue has to do with incorrect handling of a redirect for this domain:  ccisound.com

I am currently pursuing getting it corrected with our IT Director. Once the remedy is in place, I should know right away if it solves the issue I am seeing in the server logs. I'll post back here once I am 100% certain that was the issue.

Thanks all! This has been an interesting one for me!

Hi Tyler,

Here's a partial answer. I am not a specialist in local SEO so you might get some more detailed ideas if some of those folks chime in on  this one.

It seems to me you only have two options. One is to create unique content for each hospital. The other, doing as you suggest an using content created oin one site and re-using it on another is only going to work if you use canonicalization properly. The downside for that is the site with the canonical tag is going to get credit for that content and the site without the canonical tag isn't. You could be fragmenting good content in ways you may never have envisioned when you began. The result could be that one hospital site does way better than another in the SERPs.

I would encourage your clients (I am assuming these hospitals are clients and that you aren't directly employed by them), encourage them to express to you what is special about each of those hospitals. What differentiates them from other hospitals in the same area, and perhaps even from each other. This is the harder, but better route I think.

I hope that helps a little!

Dana

Yes, absolutely. Attribution is considered to be a very reputable way of linking.

Hi Vadim,

Here is what I consider to be one of the best posts on PageRank and how it works: http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

Here is a quote about the potential of increasing PageRank by increasing the number of pages on  a site:

"

|

Example 5: new pages

Adding new pages to a site is an important way of increasing a site's total PageRank because each new page will add an average of 1 to the total. Once the new pages have been added, their new PageRank can be channeled to the important pages. We'll use the calculator to demonstrate these.

Let's add 3 new pages to Example 3 [<a>view</a>]. Three new pages but they don't do anything for us yet. The small increase in the Total, and the new pages' 0.15, are unrealistic as we shall see. So let's link them into the site.

Link each of the new pages to the important page, page A [<a>view</a>]. Notice that the Total PageRank has doubled, from 3 (without the new pages) to 6. Notice also that page A's PageRank has almost doubled.

There is one thing wrong with this model. The new pages are orphans. They wouldn't get into Google's index, so they wouldn't add any PageRank to the site and they wouldn't pass any PageRank to page A. They each need to be linked to from at least one other page. If page A is the important page, the best page to put the links on is, surprisingly, page A [<a>view</a>]. You can play around with the links but, from page A's point of view, there isn't a better place for them.

It is not a good idea for one page to link to a large number of pages so, if you are adding many new pages, spread the links around. The chances are that there is more than one important page in a site, so it is usually suitable to spread the links to and from the new pages. You can use the calculator to experiment with mini-models of a site to find the best links that produce the best results for its important pages."

So you see, it could be that those additional pages have potential to really help your site, but perhaps they aren't optimized in terms of the internal linking structure. Before deleting a bunch of content you worked hard to create, I would take a look at how those new pages are being linked to and what pages they are linking to. Study the internal architecture and you will most likely find your answer.

Long answer, I know, but I hope it helps!

|

I believe this is happening because Google bot is interpreting these as two separate pages. Sure there's a canonical on one, so Googlebot might consider that one the source of the original content, however it's still seeing two pages and those pages do have identical Title and Meta Descriptions. In other words, just because there's a canonical tag doesn't pre-empt Google from identifying the duplicate content as a duplicate.

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but I am fairly certain this is the case. Interested to know what others have to say.

Dana

It looks to me like Google has indexed the new URL version of the page yet but the ones ranking seem to be the old versions of the URLs and those are 301-redirecting, which can be slow, depending on where the searcher is located. It could be a speed issue that's causing the drop in rankings.

I didn't see a canonical tag on the new version of the pages. Adding those could help Google identify which page is the preferred version. It's going to take time for those old versions of your URLs to drop out of Google's index. You could use the URL remove tool in GWT, but if it's a large site this can be cumbersome.

Just some thoughts, not definitive by any means. I'm am curious to hear what others might have to say.

Hi Robert,

First let me say that I think this is the best keyword ever! I've never heard of a Quaich and considering half my heritage is Scottish I definitely learned something new today.

Okay, for the matter at hand. Just for grins, try changing your title to "Quaich Shop | Free Delivery | kiltmakers.co.uk" - Why? Your current title has "stop" words in it (i.e. "and" "the" "with" etc.) and  "Quaich Store" or "Quaich Shop" is a completely accurate description of what your page is about.

The only other suggestion I have for on-page optimization is that your article is pretty short, and basically repeats, in a substantially similar way, other information that is already on the Web about the Quaich. Write something longer, more interesting, maybe even funny (are there any Quaich jokes? lol). For such an unsually item (I'd never heard of it before and couldn't even begin to pronounce it) I'd think you could write an awesome article that doesn't just repeat other stuff that's out there.

Then see what happens.

Hope that helps!

Dana

I loved this. The new robots.txt file is a big yawn. I miss the video. Can you guys add it back (or something equally delighting)? Pretty please?

Hi Garrett,

It really depends on the nature and use of the image. I'd really take that on a case by case basis. If you created unique images that received a ton of links or social shares, or they provided something important to your end users, than sure, recreating them on the same URLs might be a great idea. You might want to spot check a few in AHrefs, OSE and Google ANalytics to see if they were generating buzz, traffic, links or all three. Choose some likely candidates and find out what you see in those tools and let that guide how you proceed. Cheers,

Dana

Hi Diane,

I agree with 100% and his was a great answer. In terms of managing your link-building efforts, i.e. keeping track of who you've contacted where and when and whether or not you earned a link from them or not, I think Raven Tools has one of the best tools to help you organize and keep track of those things.

I love SEOPro Tools and have found them to be indespensible in tracking keyword position, particularly historically. The Forum here of course is one of the best SEO resources anywhere.

Sean actually turned me onto a new tool I'm going to be trying this year: http://www.webposition.com/

As he mentioned, there are a lot of "Get Links Fast" services still out there. To some extent they are still working (one example is Linkvana.com). I would take Sean's advice and steer clear of these. We used Linkvana for a few months and fotunately didn't do it for long so we didn't hurt our business. It was an enormous waster of time for temporary, short-term ranking gains that disappeared quickly. I wrote 84 unique blog posts that were then published to a number of blogs in Linkvana's network. Within 4-6 weeks, all but twelve of those blog posts had disappeared because the blogs where they were posted were removed from Google's index. That's a lot of work for a measly 12 links from poorly ranked (PR 3 and below) blogs. Since we are already a PR3 site, a bunch of inbound links from sites of PR3 and below aren't of any help to us at all really.

I get those same emails every day. They appeal to one's sense of greed. Just don't fall victim to the temptation of finding any easy way. Real SEO is hard work and takes time and patience.

Good luck Diane! I hope this helps

Dana

You are very welcome Rick. Thanks for providing more details. Has your site experienced any other changes since the beginning of the year? I can see by looking at it in the free tools at http://ahrefs.com that you started the year with a lot of inbound links and many of those have been cleared out (most likely from Google algo) over the course of this year. Did you replatform the site, change URLs and/or change the architecture of the site since the beginning of the year?

Are you monitoring your Google Webmaster Tools account? There may be some clues there regarding potential site errors (503, 403 and 404 status codes) and duplicate content that could be getting in your own way.

Let me know. A thorough site audit would most likely get you some answers and give you some directions on where to focus your efforts to regain traffic.

Dana

Chances are your Titles were being automatically constructed using the Titles of your posts. Yes, you will probably have to go back through and do proper titles for each one so that they don't exceed character lengths in Google and other search engines, but, take heart, it will be worth it. Right now the search engines are either making up their own titles or using truncated versions of your longer titles.

Take the time, go through and write really great titles for those 2,000 posts. It'll benefit you SEO. Don't worry, 2,000 titles really isn't and insurmountable task. You don't need to rework every page, just add titles of the proper length using a plug-in like Yoast. If you do ten a day you can have it done in a month.

Hope that helps a little!

Dana

Hi Carl,

I don't blame you for being confused. Since none of us knows what Google is actually rewarding as an "authoritative mention," whether that be a followed link, no followed link or a brand name mention, my answer can only be based on conjecture and experience. Hopefully there are some fellow Moz folk out there with some data to support what I am about to say.

I think that if we can track brand mentions, so can Google. Consequently, while it might not be the case right now, very soon it may not matter at all if a brand mention has a link or not. As for sites that are adding the "nofollow" attribute to your citation links...I'd probably be thankful that they care enough about the integrity of their content and their sites to take the time and discipline required to do this. In a way, they are protecting you too.

While Google has brought down the hammer on guest blogging, I think they are smart enough to know that inviting a high-authority and knowledgeable expert to write a post for their blog is and has been very normal practice in journalism since journalism began. While they would most likely never come out and say it (because doing so would divulge too much info about their algorithm), but I firmly believe that a "nofollow" link from certain sites are more valuable than a followed link from others. Along those same lines, I think a brand mention without a link from certain places, my be much stronger than a followed link from other sites. While I'm sure it's a complex equation, Google is certainly capable of writing an algorithm that could take all of these factors into consideration and assign a value to that brand mention or link, regardless of whether it is linked, followed or nofollowed.

That being said, when we produce content, sure, if I see a brand mention that isn't linked, I most likely will contact the editor of the publication and ask if they would consider adding one. I think the key for us is, we don't produce content purely for the purpose of getting links. We produce content based on our company expertise and actual work/projects we've completed. Sometimes it's something we write and sometimes it's someone else writing about what a great job we did. As long as it's quality and relevant to our audience, I don't really worry about the other stuff, to be quite honest.

I am very interested to know what others have to say on the subject.

Hi,

I agree with EGOL that the "100 links" rule is old information.

To more specifically answer your question, yes, all links in your global navigation, footer and links on category and product pages are all counted as internal links and all (provided you haven't done anything silly like added "no follow" attributes) pass link equity throughout your site. For this reason it's important to be strategic about the architecture of your navigation and internal linking structure. Ideally, your top most important pages should be included, if possible in your navigation and/or footer.

It's not unusual for large eCommerce sites to have significantly more than 100 links on a given page.

For example, Home Depot ranks #2 in Google for the term "flushmount lights" with this page: http://www.homedepot.com/b/Lighting-Ceiling-Fans-Ceiling-Lights-Flushmount-Lights/N-5yc1vZc7nk

As you can see from the attached screenshot, this page has 523 links on it. While clearly exceeding the "100 links" - this page still has no problem ranking very well for a targeted keyword.

For verification that Google dropped the "100 links" rule, check out this Matt Cutts video from November, 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHG6BkmzDEM

EGOL is also right that Moz should update their suggested SEO best practices to reflect more current methodology.

Hope that's helpful!

Dana

BVeoZ

Hi Vikas,

Yes, you are on the right track. Don't use Fetch as Googlebot. Use "Remove URL" in Google Webmaster Tools. It's not instant, but does work fairly quickly. Hope that helps!

Dana

I completely agree with this. Well researched and reputable directories are still worthwhile. As long as they are part of a mix that includes some link diversity, I think they can be a very valuable way to jump start a brand new site.

Hi Dmitri,

I also see the homepage in Google, but very few pages indexed beyond that, so there does appear to be a serious problem. I don't see anything immediately regarding problems with robots.txt or no index tags. Screaming Frog was able to crawl this site without any problems.

One thing I did see in the few pages that are indexed is the presence of a lot of internal search results pages being indexed.

For example:

https://www.hauteheadquarters.com/shop/rings/2?sort_price=ascandhttps://www.hauteheadquarters.com/shop/rings/2?sort_price=descThese two pages are exactly the same products, just in different order. This page also exists: https://www.hauteheadquarters.com/shop/rings/2 - the same products again. For all practical purposes all three of these pages are exactly the same content. Unfortunately, they price sort pages are not blocked from being crawled and indexed AND they are using self-referencing canonical tags.Based on pages like these and other duplicate/thin content issues across the site, I wouldn't rule out a Panda Penalty. It is highly likely that this site may have been penalized. Just because there is no manual action doesn't mean a penalty isn't in play.Recommendations:1. Audit sitewide content and determine which pages should be in Google2. Implement directives in the robots.txt file to prevent the URLs containing query parameters that don't provide unique content from being crawled.3. Implement canonical tags referencing the original URL without query parameters. Examplehttps://www.hauteheadquarters.com/shop/rings/2?sort_price=ascandhttps://www.hauteheadquarters.com/shop/rings/2?sort_price=descShould both be canonicalized to https://www.hauteheadquarters.com/shop/rings/24. Rebuild the XML sitemap and include only important URLs5. Resubmit the XML sitemap in GSC Wait a anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks after resubmitting the sitemap, then evaluate if this has remedied the problem.Don't file a reconsideration request. This won't do any good because if it is a penalty, it was done via the algorithm and not manually.Hope that helps a little and good luck!Sincerely,Dana

Hi Phil,

I don't think your pages present a duplicate content problem from what's on the page. However, they do present a duplicate content problem from the standpoint of your Titles and Meta descriptions. IMHO, I think Google devalues pages for this and here's why: Imagine you have one of the largest libraries in the world (i.e. Google)...then imagine that you have millions of people in your library trying to find the right book to answer a question or solve a problem. Now imagine, that your library visitor finds a row of books and every single one of them has the same title and short description. Suddenly, finding the answer to a question becomes much harder and the library visitor must open every single book [link] to find out if that particular one actually is the right one for them. You see the problem? I would take a few minutes and write descriptive, accurate and unique titles and descriptions for these pages. Then, I'd say you're good to go!

Hope that helps!

Dana

Hi,

You've worked really hard at putting together a business, a site and now a plan. When I read your list, I was left asking "Why?"

What drove the decision to distribute one press release per month? Is it for a tangible reason? For example, so you release a brand new product every month? If so, then okay, there's a business reason for that frequency and that goal.  But if not, Why once a month? Is it because you think that's somehow going to get you attention in the search engines?

My same question/challenge transfers to everything else in your plan, You mention Web 2.0 submission Web at Squdoo, Hubpage , Tumblr , Blogspot , WordPress. Why those? What made you choose those? Was it driven by data that tells you that your users are hanging out in those places? Or was it driven by what you think Google is going to reward in the SERPs.

I'd personally revisit every item in the plan and determine whether or not there's data to support that decision, if not, move on and find some other way, some other place to promote that's directly relevant to your particular business.

A linkbuilding plan shouldn't be arbitrary. It needs to be intentional. Just my humble opinion. The days of a formulaic/quantity driven approach to link building are long, long gone.

Cheers,

Dana