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After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Just saying.... I would spend that sponsorship money on beer. Guaranteed enjoyment. No worries.
Two hundred links, going out to a list of sponsors, many of whom might be sponsors only for the manipulative benefit... sounds like a footprint that would stand out on the Google webspam radar.
Actually, I wouldn't buy beer. I would spend the money on content.
Most of my work is writing articles that take between three days and a week to author. I also have employees who assist with these articles by taking photos, making graphics, doing research, collecting data and posting them to websites. Some of these articles attack very difficult keywords.
After doing this for about 12 years on the same website, I still don't know how these articles are going to rank. A year or two after posting some are on the first page of Google defeating popular websites that surprise me. Others, perplex me because I am being beaten by pissants - in SERPs that I would judge to be much easier. I suspect that semantics, keyword diversity and titles that elicit clicks help the pissants beat me but I don't know for sure.
I can't predict how my own rankings will turn out on a website that I know well, in an industry where I have worked for 40 years and against competitors who are often people who I know by name or are even my own customers. The SERPs can be very difficult to understand. One thing that I will say with confidence is that DA and PA explain nothing and give zero guidance in winning a fight. They count as zero importance in my decisions. I can't even tell you those numbers for my own websites unless I go look. That's how little attention I give to them.
You came here asking how to beat a directory and you got good answers and an action plan.
Unfortunately you look at metrics that google does not use, metrics that are based upon a domain, metrics that have nothing to do with the methods of winning a SERP. Don't allow rubbish metrics to frighten you away.
These are directory sites that you are trying to defeat. Directories.
They are not the Library of Congress or the Pope. Pages on these sites are defeated by small businesses every day. Pages on Amazon are defeated by small businesses every day. These small businesses didn't run because they faced competition. They got to work.
If you are willing to work hard you should not fear competition. Because where there is competition there is usually a lot of search volume on a lot of diverse keywords. And, where there is competition there is usually a lot of money changing hands. Attack there with long content with diverse keywords and excellent quality. There is a good chance that you will earn traffic. Attack that keyword with multiple pages, each of excellent quality and targeting the long tail. One of more of those pages might eventually gain rankings for the short tail keyword.
Maybe you will not win if you fight. But you will never win if you run.
I really enjoyed Robert's answer because we all see so many of these DA and PA envy questions.
To build on Robert's theme of "leverage your advantages" - these directories are usually built by people who know very little about your local area or industry. They are also generally cookie-cutter sites built by factory workers who live 1000 miles away. For those reasons, it is often very easy for a local expert or an industry expert to build content that is vastly superior and to provide a landing page experience that impresses the visitor enough that he will share it with others. You probably also know the visitor better than the factories who build these sites too.
Put some time into your content and presentation. Winning there can significantly improve the success of your page in the SERPs. It can also significantly improve your chances of attracting the searcher to your business instead of the business of your competitors. Show your expertise!
We did some 301 redirects in early February. There are still some pages on the old domain hanging in the SERPs - however, the 301s are sending the traffic to the right place.
The more powerful your domain, the longer it can take for the pages to drop from the SERPs, because you have a lot of spiders coming in through existing links. Also, weak domains can take a long time to drop from the SERPs - they have lots of pages that are rarely crawled.
Over 95% of my revenue comes from organic search
Yay! Nice work! You are one of the few remaining businesses who are able to do this.
My ROI on AdWords is roughly zero.
Me too. I just did yet another experiment to convince myself that it is almost impossible for a small biz, a retail reseller, to make good money, even any money, using Adwords.
My question is: if I pause all of my AdWords campaigns, is there ANY chance that my organic rankings (and organic click-through rates) will suffer?
My opinion on this is "NO". I would turn them off with confidence. I think that you will still get some of the sales that are currently coming in through Adwords.
First, could Google retaliate to my reduced ad spending by dropping my rankings?
I don't think that they will do this. I don't think that Google is vindictive in this way. Several years ago we used to run Adwords quite a bit. We would turn the ads on and off for employee vacations, sick days, and when our retail stock was low. Organic rankings never changed a bit.
Second, will searchers think differently about my organic link if they don't also see the accompanying paid link on the SERP?
I doubt it. I think that lots of searchers skip over the ads. Any searcher who runs ad blockers probably skips over the ads while cursing. I think that dropping Adwords might increase the profit margin of your business because it was probably depressing the profit margin while you were paying for the ads.
I think you are a smart guy because you have done the math to figure this out. Most people who run Adwords are blissfully losing their shirts and pants.
Just so you know... there are people out there who will adamantly disagree with me.
When I post here, I am saying what I would do with my own websites.
If I was the web designer I would not use these links. If I was the web design client I would not want those links on my website.
My comments are related to a situation like this.
Egol.com is a webdesign business and designs a website for CarSeller.com. Egol.com puts links in the footer of CarSeller.com that point to his own website at Egol.com.
In my opinion, those links are manipulative if their anchor text is Egol.com and they are not nofollowed.
If they have anchor text of "Dallas Web Design" then that is really spammy.
Designers want those links for their ranking value. That is manipulative intent.
Any good designer should know that Google dislikes site-wide footer links and links placed with manipulative intent. They should also know about nofollow.
These kinds of links will never be on one of my websites.
If I see code in a title tag, I will know that a dumb programmer worked on that site. It tells me that there could be other surprises waiting inside.
So, I will not click into that site. I will skip over it.
If
was in the titel tags of one of my sites we would do whatever is needed to get it out of there. We would work for an entire week to get rid of it because we don't want to be in the SERPs with our pants down.
GOOGLE: "Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that may violate our guidelines:"
These links are "manufactured" for the purpose of manipulating the search engines. That is exactly why a lot of web design firms place them in the footer of their client's websites.
**you are spammy if you put a link in the footer to your site? Is that correct? **
It's not spammy if you nofollow the link. That removes the manipulation.
You could add "Web design by Egol.com" to the footer in unlinked text and that brand mention might be helpful for your rankings without it being a link.
According to Google it is a link scheme. If the anchor text is keyword optimized then it is also linkspam.
The two affiliate sites are well etablished and huge sites, so I guess they know what they are doing...
Lots of affiliates are really smart people. They often have websites that are much more powerful than the vendors that they sell for. The result of that is that their sites will often displace the program site in Google search results - because they are more powerful.
Lots of people say that people who copy your content will not outrank you, but those folks need to upgrade their knowledge. If your content is published on more powerful sites or lots of less powerful sites you can be outranked or filtered from the SERPs.
If you tell these folks to take down what is currently published on their website or point rel=canonical to your site you run the risk of them refusing or taking your product off of their page and replacing it with your competitors product.
The best way to fix this is to look towards the future and have rules for all new affiliates that they must not republish content from your website. That will reduce the number of affiliates that you acquire and you run the risk of them writing really bad content that misrepresents your product.
Affiliates can be your strongest ally or your strongest competitor. Tread carefully.