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A website I'm working on is clearly algorithmically penalised. I've spent a lot of time mass disavowing spammy links, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. We have been planning to build a new website anyway since we are rebranding. 1. Is it possible to tell which pages are most likely to have a penalty applied? 2. If the website as a whole has a penalty, will redirecting certain pages to the new website carry the penalty? 3. Our website is structured as sales pages and blog content. It is the sales pages that have the spammy links, yet most of the blog content does not rank either. Would it be a good strategy to only redirect all the blog posts (which have natural links pointing to them) to the new website and not the sales pages? 4. The homepage has a mix of spam and very good editorial links. If I have disavowed links and domains, can I safely redirect this page?

If a business creates a profile in a directory and adds their Google+ page, and they add the domain/profile URL as a publisher they contribute to, is that a legit use? They are the author of the business profile, but it's not an article.

There is a tactic called content locking which requires a user to share a post or homepage URL in order to unlock content (either a video, a full post or downloadable ebook). Do you think this is manipulating signals to increase search rankings? Argument Against Using Content Locking Social signals and links from Google Plus shares clearly correlate to increased search engine visibility. Requiring a user to pay for content with social sharing is only used to improve search rankings. According to the webmaster guidelines: "Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, 'Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?'" Argument For Using Content Locker Users tend to value their social profiles and won't share something unless they believe it is valuable. Requiring a share is just a push to motivate them to share something they value. Additionally, it is similar to an email opt-in in that the publisher now has a social media lead they can follow up on. It's not just about SEO, it's about tapping into social network traffic and engagement on social networks.

Here is the page: http://www.designquotes.com.au/business-blog/top-10-australian-business-directories-in-2012/ It's fairly old, but when it was first written it hit #1 for "business directories". After a while it dropped but was receieving lots of traffic for long tail variations of "business directories Australia" As of the 4th of October (Penguin 2.1) it lost traffic and rankings entirely. I checked it's link profile and there isn't anything fishy: From Google Webmaster https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtwbT3wshHRsdEc1OWl4SFN0SDdiTkwzSmdGTFpZOFE&usp=sharing In fact, two links are entirely natural http://blog.businesszoom.com.au/2013/09/use-customer-reviews-to-improve-your-website-ranking/ http://dianajones.com.au/google-plus-local-equals-more-business-blog/ Yet when I search for a close match in title in Google AU, the article doesn't appear within even the first 4 pages. https://www.google.com.au/#q=top+10+Australian+Business+Directories&start=10 Is this simple because it's an old article? Should I re-write it, update the analysis and use a rel=canonical on the old article to the new?

Providing members and embeddable badge is a well known link building tactic. Is it better to have the badges from hundreds or even thousands of members link back to the homepage of a website, or a lot of different inner pages? The inner pages would the their individual's profile which sits under a category (such as a service and organisation by location). Member's websites would be related to the content of the website generally. What are the advantages of each? 1. Links to homepage make it easier to rank for competitive keywords on the homepage? If the types of websites were to vary a lot, say a carpet cleaning website and a web designer website, if they all linked to the homepage, would it cause some confusion for the link profile?

A directory list page that uses the individual business page review data. Instead of the scheme markup indicating the a particular business page has a review, the page that lists all of the businesses gets the review instead. This means the list page can get hundreds of reviews which could potentially affect its SERPs. A competitor is doing this now. Is this an abuse of the system? Should it be reported? How does on report this kind of this?

We already know that over optimsied anchor text for external will cause a penalty. But what about internal links? All of our blog posts include an advertisement linking sales pages. These links all use the exact same anchor text. Is linking to an internal page from so many other pages (blog posts) likely to trigger a penalty? Here is an example: http://www.designquotes.com.au/business-blog/four-ways-to-enhance-your-e-commerce-site-for-busy-shoppers/ This links to http://www.designquotes.com.au/web-design-quotes Many of the posts link to the same page using the anchor text "Compare Web Design Quotes from Local Designers."

If we are to change our branding and set up a new domain name to match that branding, we will need to set up redirects for all URLs. The new website would exactly match the old. Using HTACCESS we can redirect all URLs fairly easily. Will this exercise cause use to lose authority?

The SEOmoz reports indicate that the following pages are duplicates even though the canonical tag has been added. http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/quotes http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/brief Is this normal?

I have two pages for this example. http://www.designquotes.com.au/web-design-quotes/ http://www.designquotes.com.au/web-design-quotes-melbourne/ The first URL is an SEO optimised page. The second URL is 99% the same, except that it specifies a city. It's intended use of for a PPC campaign. The first page has major cities mentioned on the page so I don't have to build a separate page for every city variation. The second URL is designed to be city specific for a geographically targeted PPC campaign. The more specific, the higher the conversion rate. Should the second page (the PPC landing page) use a canonical URL (since it's 99% the same) or should it be noindex?

Adding author markup to the homepage or to SEO optimised sales landing pages is possible. However it doesn't really seem to be using the feature in the spirit of it's purpose. It makes sense for blog posts. It's possible for other pages and will likely improve CTRs from SERPs. But is it against the spirit of it's purpose?

Have a look at this example http://bannerad.designcrowd.com/ For each category of design, they have a landing page on the sub domain. Wouldn't it be better to have them as part of the same domain? What is the strategy behind using sub domains?

It seems that Google now requires authors to have a valid email on the domain. This is easy for the traditional web publication. But what about community websites like SEOmoz? How can a community website allow users to link their Google+ profile? Will community websites like SEOmoz be required to 1. Give all users a domain email 2. Ask users to validate the email address with Google? Seems overly complicated.

I have a service for quote comparison for web design, graphic design etc. My main sales page is http://www.designquotes.com.au/compare-quotes I am thinking of creating 20 or so product specific pages such as this: http://www.designquotes.com.au/business-card-design-stationary-quotes Additional pages such as CMS Wbe Design eCommerce Web Design Logo Desing etc Some of the content is repeat, the main content that changes is in the content slider at the bottom. Is this a good idea, or should I be creating more high quality content like the one below? Will the page be considered low quality or get duplicate content penalties? http://www.designquotes.com.au/web-design-buyers-guide

If I guest post on 50 blogs, all using rel=author so they are attributed to my Google Plus account, would the links be de-valued since they are self reference back to my own blog/website? Would it be better to guest post on a blog that doesn't use rel=author?

Website content is 9 tutorials published to unique urls with a contents page linking to each lesson. If I make a PDF version for distribution of document sharing websites, will it create a duplicate content issue? The objective is to get a half decent link, traffic to supplementary opt-in downloads.

We are having trouble with SEO branding. When I search for "designquotes" with the quotes, our site appears with sitelinks  and it's great. However our brand name is Design Quotes. Which sometimes we aren't even first for. If I search for designquotes without the quotes, still no luck. Should we do lots of link building for Design Quotes or should we start calling ourselves DesignQuotes and build links with that as the anchor text? website is designquotes.com.au

I have a page that targets "web design" at /web-design/ I also have a page at /web-design/price-cost-calculator/ In the second page the target keyword is "web design price" and "web design cost". Do I need to repeat the "web design" part in the sub folder, or is it sufficient to have it in the root folder? I.e., /web-design/price-cost-calculator/ or /web-design/web-design-price-cost-calculator/

A client changed domains and both are being indexed. There are thousands of content pages. I can install a 301 redirect Joomla plugin and configure it so that each page redirects to the new domain. I have a feeling I will need to manual set every page. OR I can create a domain level redirect setting in cpanel using wildcards. I think this will automatically pass every old URL to the new URL. Which is the better approach? The cpanel option sounds like less work.

I have about 1000 unique and organically generated articles. My quote compare business has had briefs submitted by clients for over two years. The content has only been accessible to registered members. I want to polish it ASAP. Is it better to publish the content on the existing website in a sub folder or set up a new website to publish the content and have every article link back to the main website? Content is around 300 words x 1000.

Hello experts! I have a query about publishing a backlog of content. Run a quote requesting website for design. When we first built it, I was not well versed in SEO. However today I know a whole lot more, thanks to SEOmoz mostly. For two years customers have been requesting quotes which are then given to registered designers. The brief provided by the customers is locked away behind a private log in area for designers. There is a ton of unique content there that can't be indexed by Google. Here is my idea: 1. Register a new domain, something like, designjobs.com.au 2. Use Wordpress to publish the briefs submitted by clients. 3. Link each brief to our main website for SEO benefits. However we have over 1000 quote requests dating back over two years. If I published this all at once would Google treat is as suspicious? If so, should I alter the dates and have them published one at a time?