Hi Diane, I can completely relate to the problem of stolen content. I'd come to accept that for one particular project content will be "stolen".

As Greg says, try contacting the webmaster and asked for proper credit and a link back. (Although, make sure you actually want a link back from the site first!) They may be more responsive to this than a request to remove the content...

Another tactic is to embed links to other articles on my site. Make sure the links are absolute links (full domain/path). It would make moving the content around later a pain to manage, but does mean that if the content is copied and pasted onto a different site, you'll be getting the inbound links. Make sure the links a relevant/useful. I like to reference my older content etc.

Hope this helps.

It can also depend on the user expectation, the type of content you're delivering and the nice/demographic you're targeting.

If you're running a site to support education in Africa, you would probably want to make sure the site is optimised for lower band-width connections.

If someone clicks on a link expecting a graphically rich, interactive site then they'll probably be prepared to wait a little longer. (Such as a high-quality images of the week page)

Also, remember that this is going to vary from device to device. No mobile visitor is going to thank you for trying to download gigabytes of data on a page!

As Matt says, keep an eye on your page load speed, look at where your visitors are abandoning your site to see if it's likely that page load times are an issue.

Understand the who your page is aimed at and the technologies/platforms that they are using to consume your content.

On the flip side, there's no point having a page that's quick to load if the content is so brief/thin that it wasn't worth clicking on the link!

Key really is to make sure the content is worth the time and answers the visitors questions/satisfies their goals. When creating pages, think about the user intent and make sure you're designing for the visitor. Remember visitors are investing their time/attention in your site - make sure they get a return!

If you can spend time testing your assumptions then that'll help you make changes based on real data rather than guesswork.

Hope this helps.

Hi Vasil, the number of linking root domains (and all of the link metrics) comes from the Mozscape (previously known as linkscape) index which is usually updated each month. It's the same index used by Open Site Explorer.

You can find more about the update timetable here:

https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule

Hope this helps!

I agree with Matt here. You've got a legitimate relationship with these sites, and the presence of these links will be a benefit to your visitors who may want to other countries you serve.

You may even find it beneficial to raise the profile of these other sites as showing you have a global presence may increase confidence/trust in your brand. (As with all such things you'd want to do some testing to make sure as it'll depend on your audience).

Be careful creating international gateway pages. Done badly they can lead to all kinds of problems...

Hi Mark, I'd be wary of making assumptions based on just one (or two) metrics.

Remember it's not just the number of links, but the link equity of the links too. All things being equal, one site's page with a reasonable number of links from low value blogs etc may be outranked by another site's page that has just a couple of links from authoritative site but even then this is massively oversimplifying things.

Page linking root domains are worth more than domain linking root domains, but this is normally off set by the quantity of domain links vs the one or two a page may get.

By the time you throw in page relevance, anchor text, freshness, social, etc thing get more than a little fuzzy!

Moz's Keyword Difficulty & SERP analysis tool does a good job of laying out all the relative strengths and weaknesses:

http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty

EGOL, how do you manage the redirects when you've got so many?

Thanks for sharing your experience!

The title tags on the site in question were being automatically generated by the content management system. Due to the particular subject matter some titles tend to be quite long so it was decided to drop the company name which was being automatically appended and is itself rather long.

Unfortunately I don't have total discretion to modify page titles as I see fit, which makes things interesting!

I'm now implementing custom <title>tags so that the company name can be appended where it needs to be, in a consistent manner and drop it from the longer titles that need to take precedence. The company name isn't added to the longer titles.</p> <p>I agree that keeping your title short and specific helps, and adding the company name can boost trust and click-through.</p> <p>I guess we all need to remember to regularly check the titles being displayed in the SERPS and to really make an effort to educate content creators about creating good titles.</p> <p>Thanks.</p></title>

Thanks EGOL, I agree it's frustrating, especially as in this case we took the decision to remove the company name from the title...

As well as company names, and URLS/Domain do they use any other "entities?"

Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I was surprised to see that Google had algorithmically modified my page titles in the search results by adding the company name to the end of the (short) title.

<title>About Us</title> became  About Us - Company Name

Interestingly, this wasn't consistent - sometimes it was "company name Limited" and sometimes just "company name.

Anyone else notice this or is this a recent change?