I'd start by asking yourself why you want followers, and then think about the return on investment you're likely to get.
There's no quick way to buy a loyal following, you have to earn it.
You want "followers", not "zombies"...
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I'd start by asking yourself why you want followers, and then think about the return on investment you're likely to get.
There's no quick way to buy a loyal following, you have to earn it.
You want "followers", not "zombies"...
Having thousands of no-follow site wide links is unlikely to be worth very much if anything. You'd be better off getting a small number of links from domains that are authoratitve and/or relevant to your niche. So think about getting links that have a high contextual relevance too. (The content in which they appear is about the same topic).
There's a risk that site-wide links get people into trouble with penguin / unnatural links and anchor text over-optimisation.
The exception here is where the links have the potential to bring you relevant direct traffic which have have a high conversion rate depending on the source.
What links do you need in your footer?
The importance of these pages isn't just their ranking position, but also the traffic that they are getting, and the conversion rate (how qualified are the visitors?)
I would audit your content and find out what pages really matter to you and then, if you really need to, remove the links to the pages that aren't of any commercial value and question if you actually need those pages at all.
Can you consolidate content onto one page (for example combining any lega/privacy policy/terms of service content onto one page)
Are any of the pages in your footer also linked in your main navigation? If so then you can probably remove them from the footer without affecting too much. I would add a word of caution through - if you've got lengthy content and visitors (the real human beings) are using the footer to find their way about then it's going to affect usability.
Removing links from a page passing lots of link equity then you are going to weaken the target page - if you've got loads of links on your home page and you prune some of the zero value pages you may find that you're passing more equity to your important pages.
As Moosa suggests, if you want to do some housekeeping, reduce the risk by making small changes and testing.
So much depends on how you've implemented tags on your site and who your audience is.
It can be tempting to implement tags to try and make up for a broken categorisation and it's tempting to add tags to a page because they mention a topic rather than because it's actually relevant to that tag.
It worth taking a look at your analytics to see if (and how) your visitors are using your tag pages. I've see many sites where visitors just don't use the tags (there too many, they're meaning less, or even they are not obviously links!) and a lot of this depends on just how many tags your using, how meaningful these tags are to people and the relevance and quality of the articles you have associated with each tag.
Have you got internal search set up on your site and are you capturing the search data in your analytics? This can provide some great insights in what people are struggling to find on your site and what they expect to find. It can also highlight areas where your IA isn't working.
(As James mentioned) If your tag pages are indexed, and getting inbound search traffic then segment your non-paid search traffic and look at the bounce rate and other engagement metrics. How valuable is this traffic to you, and how relevant are they finding your tag pages as the answer to their query?
Hi David - Don't think you can do with with Followerwonk. It's all about Twitter user's profiles and who's following who. Don't think it does any analysis of actual tweets.
Does something like Topsy give you what you're looking for?
http://analytics.topsy.com/?q=%40PhilpottsLtd
Doug.
Aha! These are your breadcrumb links. Normally the URL isn't clickable, but in some cases Google will extract the breadcrumb from your page and present it under the title. (Check the breadcrumb of the ranking page and see if it matches)
They've been doing this for a while. See this article from 2009:
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/new-site-hierarchies-display-in-search.html
What about off-site factors? Do they have well optimised Google+ Local pages for their individual sites (linking to their respective location pages on their site?) What about citations? Do they appear in local and authoritative listings? Have they got any reviews?
How competitive is the niche?
Hi Dana, I found this article which might be of interest while I was looking for an answer for you:
This paragraph caught my eye:
"Twitter helps make this hard to do by preventing users from following more than 10% that follow them, once a user follows 2,000 or more. So if 2,000 follow you, you can follow up to 2,200; if 10,000 follow you, you can follow up to 11,000, and so forth."
Looks like you just hit the 2000 barrier...
Doug (Yes, I'm following!)
It is confusing and it's something I was wondering when I first saw the Matt Cutts, Feb 2013 video. From what Matt says:
But, I guess the problem with understanding this is that you can't take 301s and links and consider them in isolation. It's not an either/or.
Consider the following:
1. Page 1 -[link to]-> Page 2
Nice and simple, page 2 gets it's full entitlement of page rank ( taking into account share/link and dissipation)
2. Page 1 -[link to]-> 301 -> Page 3
Now I've got an extra step. Does this mean that the page rank that Page 3 inherits is affected by both the link and then the 301? Does the page rank dissipation happen twice?
If, say 50% (not real numbers!) of page rank value is lost for each link/301, then the original link to the 301 would lose %50 and the 301 would lose the same, (50% of the 50%) which means that page 3 get's just 25%
What if I end up in the horrible situation of having
3. Page 1 -[link to]-> 301 -> 301 -> 301 -> Page 3
Does page rank decay happen on every redirect?
Personally, I've only used redirects where necessary and, where I can, I've tried to get inbound links updated to point to the correct page.
Here's an article from SearchEngineLand about how Bing still uses the Keywords meta tag:
The Meta Keywords Tag Lives At Bing & Why Only Spammers Should Use It
Looks as if Bing use the keywords meta-tag as possible negative signal to identify spam. If you're going to use it, then be careful about over stuffing...
If you want people to click on these snippets in the serps, also remember that you want to make the titles as appealing as possible. It's not just about ranking, but click though too!
I suspect that shorter, more straightforward titles, that closely match the search query, are going to perform better.
Take a look at what Amazon do for example (picked at random!):
Something like this in the H1: "TeckNet NEW Kindle Leather Case / Cover With Magnetic Clasp for NEW Amazon Kindle / 6 inch / 2011 generation / Book Style - Black,TeckNet,MT-183-Black"
changes in the title tag to: "TeckNet NEW Kindle Leather Case: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics"
You meta description, while not a ranking factor, can significantly affect the number of click-thoughs you get in the search result pages (SERPS).
Think of your Page title, and description as the equivalent of a small ad you might place in a newspaper. It's got to be relevant, interesting and compelling for the searcher. You want them to think that they're going to find what they're looking for if they click on your page.
Try to match snippet to the searchers intent implied by the keyword (where possible).
Without knowing more about your business, what your offering are and the keywords that don't seem to have much traffic, it's hard to be specific.
First, have you chosen the right keywords?
One common problem when looking for keywords is to look for terms that describe your product/service and ignore those words/phases that your prospects may be using. What are the needs/goals of your prospects? Can you find keywords that can target those needs?
For instance - Perhaps there are potential customers out there that don't know what the solution is to their problem - they won't be using the same keywords as someone who know what solution they need and is just looking for a provider.
Also remember that while setting your sights on a highly competitive keyword can be a great long term goal - you really need to find those low-hanging fruit. Can you find less competitive keywords that you can target. Even if they have much less traffic - a large slice of small pie is still going to be worth more than crumbs (or less) of a large pie.
There's nothing to stop you building content targeted around lots of these less competitive keywords - just make sure that the content provides value to the visitor and helps move them towards the goals of your site.
Don't forget non-search traffic. If you can promote your business in the right places (where do your customers hang-out?) you can position your business as an authority in your niche. Maybe you'll get some direct referrals and more brand related search traffic.
Hope this helps!
Also remember that it's not just about search ranking but getting the click through from the SERPS. Even if hyphens may not be a factor as far as Google is concerned - remember to think about how the human being will think when deciding which link to click in the SERPS.
A long generic, keyword rich URL with no brand identity and lots of hyphens is going to look pretty spammy to me. (It's not JUST about the hyphens!)
That said, for a two word domain the hyphen can really help with readability.
Another thing you may also have to factor in is any brand guidelines or brand consistency requirements. Depending on the customer they may have guidelines that constrain your use of hyphens or what words you can join together or even the order of words/brand names.
I agree with Takeshi, but would add the following point:
If you've got the time, it can be well worth reaching out to those websites linking to you and asking them to update their links to link directly to your new content. Not just because of the link, but because it's also a great opportunity to make contact and build awareness and build relationships with those other sites.
Obviously you can do this once you've got the new domain launched and the redirects in place.
It's not really about he number of keywords your targeting , but making sure you're targeting the right keywords.
You need to consider:
how difficult it will be to rank for you chosen keywords (What cost / time)
The return on investment - how much traffic is optimising for the keyword going to get you (be realistic)
What is the value of the traffic from this keyword to the business. How relevant are the keywords to the business's offering and the searchers needs?
How well does this traffic convert? There's no point ranking highly for terms that just send you badly qualified traffic that is just going to bounce...
Can you identify any "low hanging fruit?" Are there less competitive terms that you can rank for more easily and still earn some traffic?
Even if there is less traffic for a keyword, you can find that a large slice of the traffic is worth more than crumbs for a more competitive term that you'll struggle to rank for.
The next question is whether on-page optimisation is going to be enough...
From a visitors perspective, if you've got links to deep pages, then it would be worth creating redirects to the relevant content on the new site.
If someone follows a link from another site with anchor text along the lines of "see this great article about x" and it just goes to the homepage, the visitor is going to find it rather jarring...
Absolutely agree with you Grumpy Carl! I can see that this change is just going to increase the need to check rankings in order to find out which page is ranking.
Why we can't get this link in the google webmaster tools data I just don't know (but I know it's nothing to do with privacy!). I just want to know which pages the keywords are sending traffic to... grr
I just get a feeling that it's all going to get messy and I'm going to be spending a lot more time in front of spreadsheets.
Trying to find "non-branded keyword phrases revealing searcher’s intent with high volume and CPC?" is a bit like looking for the holy grail.
Some things to remember.
1. CPC is just one measure of the competitiveness of a keyword. It's related to the value others place on this keyword and how much they are prepared to spend to try and capture traffic by advertising. It doesn't necessarily reflect the value of this traffic to your business. And if they keyword is competitive, how confident are you that you can rank for this keyword?
2. As a general rule, the more generic the keyword, the higher the search volume, but the lower the commercial intent. (If I search for "dogs" you can't tell what I'm after, if I search for "puppy training bristol" then you know exactly what I'm looking for and where.
So, if I run a puppy training service, which traffic is worth more to me? Millions of hits for "dogs" or <10 visits a month of high intent traffic around a keyword that actually relates to my business? (I don't train puppies by the way!)
3. Remember the long-tail. If you have a content rich website you will find that while your branded/head terms have higher volume, you should be getting lots of visits from low volume search terms.
For one of my highest traffic sites, my strongest keyword provides less than 15% of total search traffic. Most of my search traffic comes from keywords with almost no volume. Keywords that I have never considered!
http://moz.com/blog/how-big-is-your-long-tail-whiteboard-friday
Don't get overly obsessed by high traffic volumes. You run the risk of crowding out the people that really matter. You need to look at the value of the traffic to you vs the competition/effort you'll need to spend creating great targeted content.
4. Remember your goals! Unless you're making an income from on-page ads then your goal is unlikely to be "get more traffic". For a business, your trying to get more sales leads, more higher margin leads. You don't always need high volumes of traffic to achieve these business goals. How much revenue does the site need to deliver?
5. Be realistic. If you're running a very small niche business, you're unlikely to attract high volumes of visitors. What you need to focus on is making sure that you get in front of the right people. The people that will help your meet those goals!
Some thoughts that might help:
Define your (true) goals at the start and keep them in mind as you work through the process.
Before you start your keyword research, try to identify who your customers really are. The better you can understand your target audience the easier it will be to write content for them. Don't assume that you know who they are or what they really think.
Can you talk / interview your past customers? If you can, try to capture their thoughts/words using a voice recorder. It's important to understand the words that they use when talking about your products/services and their needs/motivations.
Look at any testimonials, customer feedback or comments. You don't need to limit this to your own site, take a look at your competitors or any forums/social places that your customers congregate. Don't be afraid to engage your target audience - just do so in a friendly authentic manner.
Write content that speaks to this audience. What matters to them. What are they most concerned about and what are their concerns etc. Write broadly around specific topic topics that matter to you and your audience.
Look at the keywords that people are using to find your site (even the low volume ones). Look for common themes/topics. Can you create better content around these topics (you can look at your bounce rates to see if the landing pages around these topics are doing their job), again, you need to consider intent. People may have got the answer they're looking for and left.
Instead of optimising for keywords, think about optimising around topics.
Do you have site search on your website? I find that this can provide a great insight into what your visitors expect to find on your site. You should definitely review this regularly and use it to inform you content strategy.
Use segmentation in your analytics to understand what different types of search traffic actually means to you.
Focus on what matters.
Are other sites loading normally?
Can you resolve the host name from a command window on the PC:
nslookup {hostname}
If you can't resolve the hostname then it's probably a DNS issue. (you could try adding an entry to your hosts file and see if that gets around the problem?)
Looks ok to me. I did a search for (with the quotes) "Weber 522053 - Electric Barbecue Q 140 Grey - Online Shop"
The Title was the full title as you described. I think tried doing a site: search on the the domain and the specific url and again saw the full title.
Google can do some weird stuff tot he title if it thinks that that the title does not accurately reflect the content of the page or its relevance to the search query.
This one is looking ok to me though.
Remember that the title isn't just there to get your keyword in front of the search engines. In conjunction with the meta description it also has to persuade people to click-through from the SERPS and visit your site.
As long as you keep it short, natural and make sure people feel that they'll find what they're searching for when they click on your site it should be ok.
You might also want to think about how your can differentiate yourself from the competition. In the example above "best" is pretty generic.
For a recent project I found optimising for "my keyword + year" got me a chunkier slice of a competitive keyword than if I'd just gone for the keyword alone.
Yes you need to get your important keywords in there, but you've also got to think broadly when you cover the topic on your page and think about the human visitors.
Trust and credibility are important factors and poor copy - especially when it's bordering on spammy, over-stuffed or irrelevant to the searchers intent, is a great way to undermine your website - and that can start in the SERPS!
As you mention, you use tags to give visitors the ability to browse articles with that cover the same subject matter. Normal practice would be to give the visitor a list of articles that have been tagged with this term.
A list of articles shouldn't flag up as a duplicate of any of the other article pages.
However, I notice that on a couple of the tag pages I took a look at that I just get one article being displayed, and being displayed in full. This is obviously going to be a duplicate of the original article.
I suspect that this is because for a number of the tags there is only one article to be returned.
I would look at how you are presenting articles when listed in the "tag archive" view and perhaps only display the introduction to the page with a link to the full article.
You may also want to think about the tags you are using so that you have fewer tags with only one article.
Hope this helps!
Yes, I've been through this too. My gut feeling here is to focus on your audience and think about how they will consume and share this information.
For example, how can you make it easy for Dave to walk into his boss and tell his boss exactly why he should hire you!
There's absolutely no reason why you can't put the case-study on-line to allow people to read, or at least scan through the document on-line. AND allow them to download the PDF so that it's easy for them to print, read off-line or share around their team/colleagues.
Having the content on a web page also gives you more opportunities to engage your audience (social sharing, even comments etc)
Where PDFs can really come into their own is where you have complicated graphs, drawings that you just can't scale well to fit on a screen, provide enough context and stay legible!
Oh, and make sure that you've got links in your case-study PDF documents to take you to relevant/useful pages on your website.
If you do decide to go down the PDF only route - please do your visitors a favour and provide a really good extract so that they know what they're going to get. I've downloaded too many case-studies that turned out to be rubbish, irrelevant or just blatant marketing bumpf! (Thinking about your audience first can also change the way your approach case-studies and whitepapers!)
Hi Dana,
When you click on the checkout button - what's the mechanism for taking people to the https:// site. Is it just that the checkout link uses https:// in it's link? Is there some javascript wizardry you're particularly concerned about?
Even though googlebot follows this one link to the https version of the cart, it will still have all the other links on the previous page queued up to follow (non-https) so I don't think this will stop the crawl at that point. It would be a nightmare if googlebot stopped crawling hte entire site everytime it went down a rabbit hole!
That's not to say that you wouldn't want to consider no-following your checkout button. I'm sure neither you, nor google want to the innards of the cart pages to be indexed? There's probably other pages you'd rather Googlebot spent it's time finding right?
My take on the Google blog about understanding Javascript is that the aim is to try and do a better job discovering content that might be hidden by Javascript/Ajax. It's a problem for google when the raw html that they're crawling doesn't accurately reflect the content that is displayed in front of a real visitor.
Agree with Robert, however you chose to manage / present your images is up to you and will be dependant on the number of images and how frequently you're uploading etc.
What matters more is giving your images context and meaning by (as Robert says) great captions that describe the image, good titles that help make your the images accessible to those using screen readers and search engines.
Grouping images by category and adding a good category description that helps provide context can help.
Interestingly Majestic SEO Site Explorer shows no data from it's historic index, but shows 2 referring domains, 85 Backlinks from it's "fresh" index.
Keep building the links!
If you've got things like duplicate title and meta-description's going on then I'd certainly take a look at fixing those. Being able to manage these two tags is vital to managing the way your pages will appear in the search results. (And your title tag is an important ranking factor).
Normally, if your page doesn't validate then it's not a major problem and search engines won't penalise you for it. If however, your page is so badly crafted that the html errors, and general page structure makes it difficult for the search engines (and humans) to read your page then you're going to suffer.
The key is to make sure that your site/page content is accessible. How accessible is your page to someone with disabilities, using a screen reader etc.
You've got to make sure that the search engines can understand what your page is about or your page won't be seen as a relevant page for any search terms...
How bad is it? How does google render the page in it's instant previews (you can check this is Google Webmaster tools)
The instructions are near the bottom of the page:
In order to use Fetch as Googlebot, you'll need to have added and verified your site in Webmaster Tools. Then, follow these instructions:
Once googlebot has fetched your page you'll have a "success" link that you can click on to see what Googlebot saw.
This will be the header, including the server response code and then the html that googlebot received.
What this doesn't tell you is how this was interpreted by Google, of course this is where SEOMoz's on-page reports and crawl stats can help detect errors and way your can improve your on-page optimisation.
Of course the most important thing to a new blogger is getting some traffic. There's little point writing articles unless people are reading them.
Work on getting some backlinks to your blog. At the moment Open Site Explorer is only showing links from 4 domains and pretty much all of these links are no-follow (no-follow links are not seen as an endorsement and pass little authority to your site.)
I'd look at making some connections with other bloggers out there and see if you can do some guest posts. This is a great way to get backlinks and also get your content/name in front of people. You want to target blogs that cover related subject matter and have a good number of subscribers.
Hope this helps!
The mozrank on the SEOmoz tool bar is coming from SEOmoz's linkscape index.
Different services will use different methods to discover links so you'll find that Alexa, MajesticSEO, SEOmoz etc can show some significant differences in the data they collect.
I wouldn't worry so much about what your scores are, just what you can do to improve them. After all the only real thing that matters here is getting the right traffic and improving engagement once they get to your blog.
If you're commenting on blogs in order to get links then note that these links are usually no-follow links and may not be doing very much to improve your reputation - you don't want to be seen as a comment-spammer.
Your time may be better used by finding higher quality ways to get backlinks. See my previous comment about guest posting.
If you've not already done so I'd recommend reading the SEOmoz beginners guide to SEO and SEOmoz's Professional Link Buidling Guide
HI Greg,
Your site isn't in the Linkscape index that the SEOmoz tools use, as a result there's no data for the tools to work with. If you look-up your site on Open Site Explorer you get the error "No Data Available for this URL"
If you've only got a small number of sites linking to your site you're going to limit the chances that your site will be found and included.
You mention you have a ton of links from a forum you visit. A bunch of links from just one domain (especially forum posts) isn't going to make your site that visible out there on the net.
I would look at ways to promote your site more broadly. Can you get links from a number of other, preferably high authority sites?
A good place to start is looking at who's linking to sites similar to yours. Look up your competitors sites in Open Site Explorer and see where they are getting links from. Maybe you can get links from those sources too.
Hope this helps.
Hi Marisa,
I'd start by looking at how your human beings are navigating your site and see how much cross-category jumping there is, but I suspect that your suggestion would be a good idea.
As you say, Instead of having the drop-down navigation with all the categories, you could replace this with just the top-level (FIRE, POLICE, MILITARY,SPORTS etc,).
I notice that these top level categories don't have a page themselves, so you would then need to create a page for each with navigation to the sub-categories.
These top-level pages can be optimized for phases like "police patches" etc, perhaps put the most popular patches on this page.
Can you add more text to the individual items too. A shortish description for each patch would help.
Could you add a "vote for this patch" thumbs up widget? Can you contact the organisations who's patches they are and run a competition to get them to come a vote (get a link?). Depends on how happy they are to have their patches featured in the gallery.
geeks.com do have the keywords all over the page. Each printer item has the word "refurbished" in it (I counted 11 times). They have both a high domain authority (73) and high page authority (58). They have the keywords in their Title too.
The keyword phrase "refurbished printers" looks pretty competitive to me and I suspect your site/page just doesn't have the authority to compete at the moment.
Looking at the introduction on your Refurbished Printers page - it doesn't read very well and looks/feels rather stuffed with keywords and not a natural way of writing and maybe a little "overcooked".
I'd think of ways you can build more links, offer more genuinely unique/useful content and maybe look at less competitive niches you can target while you do this. Are there any low-hanging fruit out there keyword wise?
Totally agree regarding the H1s. They should be used for the main title of an article - not for branding or other "stylistic" reasons. I would definitely recommend making the change.
As for the page naming convention - if the pages have good content (with the broad terms that Vahe suggests) then I don't think it's too much of a problem. After all, I'd expect a page about burlesque hen parties to be called "burlesque hen party"! As long as you're being authentic about it.
Thanks for the weather report! Are these new or returning visitors? (Does that reveal anything interesting?)
Is this a constant bounce rate or a recent change? What's the trend? What's the period covered?
As well as emails... any printed material (or other) with QR codes?
It's your blog directory widget that's adding buckets of links to each page and the more articles you add to your blog the worse it's going to become. I'd take a look and see how people are navigating from between articles.
I strongly that it won't do much hard to remove this directory. Maybe replace it with a list of just the top level categories instead of all the individual articles?
It's the collapsing categories plugin. If you look at the page source you'll also see that it's adding an awful lot of javascript to the top of the page.
I also note that the recent posts widget is showing white links on yellow backgrounds for me.
Hope this helps.
I don't know if this google video might help: Video about pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
It talks specifically about this kind of article index pagination.
Hi Robert, as has been mentioned used the SEOmoz report card as a guide, but don't worry if you're not getting full marks! You've also got to look at the big picture too.
Your goal isn't to have the worlds most finely optimised titles! Your goal is to get more (qualified) visitors and make them customers.
With so many variables, both search engine ranking factors and human behaviours, to play with there are lots of things to take into consideration and getting overly focused on just one thing can be detrimental.
Yes, you do want to have your key words in your page titles - but remember your home page isn't your only page and you may have pages that are more relevant (or should be more relevant) for "Widget Program" for example. You need to decide which pages you want to rank for what, and why! Don't expect your homepage to do all your heavy lifting!
Homepages, unless the site is very focused, tend to end up being very generic and broad and tend to cater for those searcher/visitors who know your company brand and search for you by name (or enter your domain directly)
Remember too, that "containing relevant keywords" isn't the only job that your page title has to do. There's no point ranking highly in the SERPS if your snippet looks so spammy and unappealing that nobody wants to click on it.
The combination of your page title, description (and to some extent your URL) need to provide a compelling reason why someone would want to click on it. Are they going to find the answers to the questions, satisfy their needs etc? Can they see the benefit they receive by clicking.
A title made of a list of keywords is less likely to be compelling.
Hope this helps!
I'm not sure how much link equity you're earning from those links (even given the vast number). With so many links on each page and the relatively low page authority of the linking page I'd be surprise that these links make much of a difference.
Questions to ask yourself though:
Is the site linking to you a legitimate/authentic site. Does it exist for a reason other than "to provide links"
Why do these links exist? Do they exist for a legitimate reason? (Without knowing your site it's hard to be specific).
How long have these links existed and what's the anchor text.
How is the linking site ranking for it's own target keywords - you can use this as an indicator for the authority/reputation google believe that site has. (The site you mention seems to be raking well for Irish property price tracker" etc.
My gut feeling (without too much digging) is not to worry about it.
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I really wouldn't worry about these links, I don't think these are going to harm your backlink profile.
Instead of spending time getting these removed I'd spend the time looking for good quality, relevant links. No point wasting your time on these or incurring the risk changing your backlink profile...
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Yup, your context and your goals etc are all going to play their part. I don't agree that H1 = your logo on your home page. That's a bit too black and white for me.
Do whatever you need to do - nothing to stop you modifying the theme!
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Depends on the authority of the site doing the linking and the relevance, authority and freshness of page it's linking from .
It might be good opportunity to start a discussion with the web master of the linking site to update their pages to link to newer/more relevant pages on your site.
As Mike (not related) says, it's unlikely to make much of a difference.
Might be hard to tell on a Chinese site, but can you take a look at the context? Is there a reason why they're linking to your pages?
Can you establish whether they are a legitimate business/website?
Who else are they linking to and who's linking to them? (What's the neighbourhood look like?)
Are you getting any referral traffic from those links? If so, what can you tell about those visitors?
How big a proportion of your link profile are these links? Is it seriously unbalancing your link profile?
I've seen something similar with product/service comparison pages that automatically scrape your price and a have "Look we're cheaper, check them out if you want" link to their competitors sites.
If they are linking to you and have a legitimate reason to do so - is there an opportunity there? Can you establish a business relationship? (Obviously depends on why they're linking.)
I wouldn't hit the big red disavow button without knowing a little more about the impact of those links might have and the potential risk - which may be mitigated by the strength/size of your overall link profile.
You are probably better off now worrying too much about any existing URLs with %20's in. Editing these URLs isn't going to make a massive difference (if any).
Plus, there's always a risk when you edit URLs that you break link that are earning your lots of link equity. If you decide to edit your URLs then you've got the headache of setting up re-rdirects or contacting any linking sites and asking for them to change the links. You'll need to check your internal links too.
The big advantage of not having %20s or other strangeness in your URLs is that it does makes them more meaningful are shareable by human beings. You really don't want to have to read these out or print them on the side of a lorry or brochure!
So, I'd suggest it's not worth worrying about, but may depend on your circumstances (such as the age and the number of links). If it's a new site with no links to these pages and there aren't many of them then you may want to do it just to keep things tidy/consistent.
If you've got more than a few, with inbound links to them then you're probably better off using your time elsewhere.
No problems. Be interested to hear what the problem was if you're happy to share?
I use Pingdom (https://www.pingdom.com/) to monitor my sites.You can monitor one site for free and it'll send you emails and an SMS when your site goes down and comes back up again. It'll keep track of your servers up-time and response time too.
If you site foes down, how's a plug-in going to let you know?
Yes, this sounds absolutely correct.
You can check it's working by doing a search for some unique content in your article or using the query with the article's title:
site:{domain} "title"
If everything is working correctly you should only see the canonical version of the article in Google's index. (you can also use the inurl: to check too.
Be aware that the value of any inbound links to that article will be allocated to the canonical version. (This doesn't apply to social follows/likes though.) So think carefully about the audience for the article before deciding which version is canonical.
It may not apply in your case, but it can be a good idea to think about your readers too. By adding a link in the article to the other site, you can help to cross-promote them. You may find tat if some of your visitors find your cross posted article relevant and useful to them they may be more interested in other article on the source site.