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I dont see noticeable bumps because Im usually ranking at 1 already when the box shows up in the serps for me

I would assume that it does get more clicks. From my stats a couple %'s doesnt count for me.

If it's a very tight niche with similar or related categories, Id just go with a post name. It's cleaner and easier to promote.

I go the category route if it's a different set of products/topics or ecommerce site.

Both works

Honestly, I have never seen it work.

For me, it's just like any other badge, just for show, just to add to the credibility of the site which could indirectly affect bounce rates/sharing/etc.

Definitely because you can only do so much in a day, right?

Depending on the project's urgency and goals, we use different ways to come up with a task list.

I normally have a template in my project management tool that can be used on specific sites. Then each week, we break down what can be accomplished within the timeframe. Sometimes, we do it just monthly. The important thing is to actually be within budget and finish the tasks

Use scrapebox. Run your list of links and check if it's indexed. )

Dont worry about the descriptions. It's just for additional info. I would prefer to have unique descriptions to maximize my visibility and relevance in Google's POV.

Just wait for it to update. It's normal to not show up. Just check back at a later time.

How long have you been doing SEO for it? The keyword is in the domain so it "tends" to work faster. I would just continue to do offpage work (just be patient and it will start showing up) if you are already sure with your onpage SEO on the site.

Yeah, google will see the 301 and follow it. Just patiently wait for them to update on their end.

Oh wait, you might be using a local business page, have you asked for your verification postcard? After you verify that then that should be it. But still put the publisher code on your site

Hi!

It probably shows up because other links are still pointing to those urls. If they are now properly redirected then you can just mark them as fixed.

Im assuming you already did the usual submission part and identified the exact coordinates of the place and verified the address.

If so, then you'll have to wait a bit. Sometimes it will take a couple months to show up. Sometimes, it shows up faster.

Hi!

So you just go to your My Business page and add your URL there. Or go to your G+ page, go to about, and add the url there.

It will ask you to verify it so go to your website, and add the rel=publisher code there (mentioned on the page you showed)  - then go back to G+ to verify it. Sometimes, it wont verify immediately so just give it some hours or a day. Do something else.

Check back and youll see that itll have a green checkmark which means it's verified.

I did in my answer above.

If you want to totally solve it, also add a canonical to lead to a page that has ALL your posts shown. (Done manually, not through yoast)

That's a lot better than the initial one. You can start running your tests, see how it goes.

As for the ad, you need to test more images (and later, ad titles)

Try faces, women, bright images, while running what you are using now. You know the niche more than anyone so your assumption on using a conservative image might prove better, but youll never know until you test it out to your market.

I actually use rel=publisher for the main brand account most of the time since it's a publisher tag.

I would fix up the alignment of the current setup. I would lessen the size of the header and actually fit the video at the upper part of the page. Ask them to sign up so they scroll down.

I would also consider wistia (and gather optin within the video)

You can run 2 tests with 2 title versions as well. I think a stronger initial title would help plenty. Good luck!

You can deal with this in a practical manner. You can think of it from the point of view of the searcher.

Practical thinking would tell me that the person would either look for on Google (a separate page about it) OR if he can't find it, then he'll go to the page where he bought and look there, maybe there's an FAQ section on that specific product page or a link to the resource area.

As a 1st time buyer, I would not know immediately that there's a resource page so Google is my first choice.

So I would go with a separate page, specifically for that item, then link back to the product page

The product page should also link to that page.

I was referring to your meta keywords, not the title/descriptions

For keywords like that, I would look at what changed with the results. Does it show local results now or does it show more images which could've pushed you down.

That's a big drop so it could be because the title got changed. You might've ranked there mainly because of your title tag (even without links) so you might want to try to incorporate that into the title again or do a completely separate page for it.

That's right. You might want to check your analytics. See if your traffic on those thin pages dropped. You might also want to check your indexed pages on webmaster tools to see if it dropped.

If you see signs in any of those, then you found your main problem.

That's the only thing I would work on right now actually. Edit them or redirect to meatier, relevant pages.

One thing I'm sure of is that this isn't Penguin as you never really did create any links to it

The title will not have that big of an impact to drop your rankings. I go with 65 chars, but 70 is fine. Your meta keywords area is spammed to death though lol so you might want to minimize that. Is the drop huge though? It's hard to say how you can get a big drop with tweaks like that.

There was an update during that final week of October but it wasnt widely reported on. I think it's even bigger than the panda/penguin that came before it. I still dont have a conclusion on what it was but looking at your site, I would think it could be about the content. The indexed pages are really thin, hence possibly being the cause for the big drop.

The algorithm will use freshness based on the urgency/nature of the keywords. For something like that keyword, I dont see it being a problem at all. If it's a really important page, just move it to a page (im assuming you use WP) -then improve it and use the same url structure.

I actually never had any trouble with them so Ive never disavowed them UNLESS im working on a penalized site. I dont have second thoughts and just throw them in there. They have no effect at all besides messing up your stats anyway.

From my experience, not all penalized sites get their penalties passed. It could also depend what penalty it was.

My best guess for this issue is that they might also be using a lot of other non penalized 301's that already have good standings.

Hi!

I would look at the source of the traffic first (they have to be coming from somewhere) or IF the site has injected codes.

I've seen this happen before. Injected codes (invisible or not) then they spam you with links and traffic from different countries. Some country specific traffic gets more visibility hence more traffic from there.

I hope it's not but it's better to be safe and check if you were hacked.

I wont point at the competitor yet as that's a very minimal thing in terms of SEO. It just messes up your stats though.

It doesn't matter.

PS. If I really had to pick a way for G+ to really work for SEO, it's getting people to actually share it instead of just +1s.

I would stick with what you have then optimize. I would also remove the english articles and come up with a separate content strategy for that. Itll save you time and keep things within a strategy so you can track performance better (but youll have to check if those articles already get traffic and links first)

Other options i could think of will need more time and a lot of changes (and cost)

You can just noindex those sub pages in Yoast under Titles and Metas

Hi

Yeah, lets say they use Xrumer.

They hack your site, insert pages of their own, and links on your pages.

They put those urls in text files based on their keyword targets/groups.

They run the software, using those list with their link sources and using their auto insert random url template.

So that pings a 404 to GWT so the 404 shows up there.

If these are pros, they already know that the pages are dead by now, as they confirm links after each run. It just takes a bit more time for GWMT to get notified so you'll see them trickle in.

So you'll see those 404 pages getting links from different dates.

Hope that helps

I would go 404's (and let them die) as I dont think those have any good content on them since it was just generated.

Redirecting them wont really do much.

Probably lost some links? Some might have dropped based on the latest returns for Moz's database.

I didn't see much changes from what Im monitoring. It's normal to see this changing and bouncing a few points up and down.

There was an algo update at the end of october that wasnt really reported on. About 3 days before the end of the month.

If it started there, then I dont think that's penguin. That's something else.

I can't really help with that if it did happen within that time frame. I don't have enough data to say what to specifically check so be sure to do the usual onpage audits/speed/links and go from there. If it happened to your subfolder, then I would worry about the whole domain. I would however, check the whole search results for the affected sub+keywords, what changed, where the competitors are, were videos added, are there more "authority" sites showing, were those ranking and linking to me affected and so on.

Good luck!

I totally understand what you mean, especially with keywords like that and the nature of searchers looking for that.

Switching to a page doesnt really matter. Just move over the content and try to use the same permalinks. If the url structure right now of the post is impossible to replicate, you have some choices to do. 301 the url or worst case, canonical+nofollow.

Don't sweat it, it's going to be the same content. Just be sure to remove the post once you've moved it.

Good luck!

I have a different opinion for this.

It's just one domain for me and it's not a million pages. Both are yours. Just leave the link alone. Either way, you can always remove it anytime.

If I'm really bothered, I would just make it a link on one page of that domain.

It's like all those sites having blogrolls, nothing really happened to them. You can look around other blogs, SEO guys, accountant, mommy bloggers, etc. They do that all the time.

That is, unless they were multiple artificial blogs from their own private networks specifically to boost their SEO/game google.

Hi Dave,

Just add the https version to webmaster tools.

Then wait. That'll fix all your issues.

The collected data from the old http though wont show in the new one. It's completely normal for that to happen so dont worry.

Hope that solves your problem

Since those URLs are already gone after you cleaned it up, you can just mark those as fixed. GWT usually is pretty late with picking those up. I've handled my share of hacked sites, some with invisible links.

If they appear again, then you'll need to find where they are getting through. It's a pain but you have to fully check your files for scripts and encrypted codes.

Aside from those, it's just time. Google will eventually stop showing them.

Good luck Andrew!

PS. You might want to look at some of your pages using Google's cache result. You can see invisible links using that. Just in case you haven't done this part.

301 the domain over to capitalize fully but it sounds like you might want to keep both sites active.

If you have content that you want to move over or is ranking, be sure to create separate 301 from the old url to the new url. The page that receives the 301 will benefit from that. In many cases, the new url will rank in the place of the old one.

If they have pages that have great backlinks (like an about page or products page) but you don't really want to move them over and want to just delete them, then just 301 those urls to relevant urls on your site and you will benefit from their links.

Hope that helps! Good luck!

Assuming both are on different servers or if you can do the transfer for the whole thing quickly:

1. Just copy the content over, including the meta details, images etc.

2. Put a 301 from the old page url to the new page url.

3. Update both sitemaps and refresh them in webmaster tools.

That's basically it.

There can be other tricky things like if you decide to 301 the whole domain or if you want to leave both content on.

I encounter sometimes that with my clients. The basic thing to do is just to add a canonical since they are already noindexed especially for themes that utilize certain pages within a page. Crazy sounding but some themes actually does this so you can't remove the duplicate page, so noindexing it then adding a canonical is already good enough.

But since you mentioned these are just tags, then simply noindexing them is fine. (I'm assuming these are just basic wordpress tags)

As for your pagination question, use a canonical to link to a URL where all the posts are shown. That's the basic rule for that situation and it's somewhere in Google guidelines about pagination

There's really no way for them to enforce that policy unless a lot of people squeal about it.

I know here at Moz, it's really something like a Taboo, but it's really not. Big companies do this daily and they do it in bunches.

I would suggest though (since you mentioned that it's just a bitly link) that you just go for it IF the price is right and if it's targeted enough.

Look at it at the standpoint of getting traffic. You mentioned that it's a good site then it probably has a good spot for your link so it can bring in leads. If you can optimize to capture these leads or just get them to your sales funnel, then it'll be worth it. You'll get more links down the line.

It's pretty much like guest posting or paying for a best of the web spot.

Check out RevCom's answer.

Then check this out:

• Did you get affected in the middle or the last week of the month? Check your traffic.

If you were, then you got affected by the algorithm updates during those times.

You MAY or MAY NOT have been affected by it. Maybe the links pointing to your were affected, maybe something changed in the keyword/niche rankings, maybe it's showing other new things now that pushed you a bit lower.

Now you can check out Andy's answer and do a link audit to see why you got affected.

As for the www. non www -> be sure to add the current one to webmaster tools as well.

I haven't actually seen a way to upload CSV's on Bing yet. (Weird I know)

I've always had it done one at a time...unless they magically added a button recently but it's been one at a time ever since.

Hi! Yeah, that's what i said. I would just ignore it and mark as fixed. Just be sure you crawl the whole site so that you dont have the old one linked on some page on your site.

Hi again Igor!

Those pages do not exist anymore right?

If you load them, they just show a 404? That's how I understand this since you moved to using a different plugin.

If your site's 404 page is optimized then, in my case, I would just mark them all as fixed and wouldn't bother with them.

I'll also make sure no other page is linking to those dead links.

As an alternative, I would export them, then do a redirect to the homepage. It'll bog you down if it's a lot so it's my last choice.

Hope that helps

Locally, they work a lot better. Globally, they aren't like what they used to (from my experience and tests)

For your question, I would actually "mix it up" - sitewide and single page. So there's variation.

Remember that you shouldn't just rely on it though. Get some  other inbound links, too

Part 1:

I would definitely get that fixed asap. I would also check analytics (add in a separate https if you haven't) make sure analytics is actually tracking each page, http or https

Are you tracking rankings though? Have you seen any dips? Have you seen any trends declining over the months/years? That might also be affecting your traffic so it might be a combination.

Part 2:

Definitely. You have to check your site and optimize it for mobile. IF that is really a valuable part of your strategy, then you have to look into that ASAP. They are really big in usability right now and they even show a rating in the their pagespeed/insights tool for mobile. Be sure to fix the issues.

Since it's an old site with that much traffic, you might want to start doing a content audit as well.

Good luck!

Pretty sure google knows of domains like that already.

If your link profile is already solid, then that's irrelevant. You should spend your time on other more important things.

If you just want to do it now, then disavow it. It won't really change anything since you have a solid link profile already.

Its hard to actually capitalize on the images nowadays. It's still very niche dependent so that's something I can't answer directly.

As for getting the page to load instead of the attachment, as you are on wordpress, try out Yoast SEO and check out the permalinks area to see what you are looking for.

Good luck!